How Chemistry Stymies Attempts To Regulate Synthetic Drugs

Hugh Pickens writes "Brandon Keim reports that the war on drugs has a new front, with chemists fabricating synthetic mimics of marijuana, dissociative drugs and stimulants. So far lawmakers appear to be a losing the war, as every time a new compound is banned, overseas chemists synthesize a new version tweaked just enough to evade the letter of the law in a giant game of chemical Whack-a-Mole. 'Manufacturers turn these things around so quickly. One week you'll have a product with compound X, the next week it's compound Y,' says forensic toxicologist Kevin Shanks. 'It's fascinating how fast it can occur, and it's fascinating to see the minute changes in chemical structure they'll come up with. It's similar, but it's different.' During the last several years, the market for legal highs has exploded in North America and Europe. While people raised on Reefer Madness-style exaggerations may be wary of claims that 'legal high' drugs are dangerous, researchers say they're far more potent than the originals. Reports of psychotic episodes following synthetic drug use are common and have led to a variety of laws, but so far the bans aren't working, as the drugs can be subtly tweaked so as to possess a different, legal molecular form. One obvious alternative approach is to ban entire classes of similar compounds; however this is easier said than done. 'The problem with that is, what does "chemically similar" really mean? Change the structure in a small way — move a molecule here, move something to the other side of the molecule — and while I might think it's an analogue, another chemist might disagree,' says Shanks. 'That's the crux of the entire problem. The scientific community does not agree on what "analogue" essentially means.""

Comments

I don't understand

[Hentes]

Doesn't every chemical have to go through thorough tests before deemed safe for human consumption?

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. We've injested billions of different molecules from nature since the dawn of time, and until very recently we haven't had the scientific know-how to test them.

Re:I don't understand

[AngryDeuce]

Not if the chemical isn't marketed as being meant for human consumption, obviously...

The synthetic weed that they're selling at headshops and shit nowadays is sold as incense, some of them are sold as bath salts. They say right on the side "not safe for human consumption", but then again, so do cans of spray paint and duster and there are thousands of people out there huffing that shit.

Just more stupidity all because the government refuses to legalize a plant that grows wild all over the damn world.

Re:I don't understand

[dietdew7]

I don't think these drugs are purchased from a pharmacy.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't every chemical have to go through thorough tests before deemed safe for human consumption?

That's why these substances are sold as "bath salts" - because even though they are legal, describing them as drugs would require FDA approval.

Re:I don't understand

[khipu]

but then again, so do cans of spray paint and duster and there are thousands of people out there huffing that shit.

Kittens don't come with warnings. Does that mean they are safe to huff?

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kitten_huffing

Re:I don't understand

[Gr8Apes]

Just more stupidity all because the government refuses to legalize a plant that grows wild all over the damn world.

If the government legalized it and even limited to purchase in gov only stores, they could at least kill off most of the issues related to the drug trade, in one fell swoop removing pushers, drug runners, mules, and cartels. Granted, at this point they'd also have to sell cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and heroin for less than street value, but that's purely attributable to the stubbornness of the "war on drug" folks who've now created this entire underworld subculture. Apparently those "war on drugs" people were incapable of learning from history and what occurred the last time they declared "war" on a common and highly desired item (prohibition). At least they seem to have learned their lesson with tobacco.

Re:I don't understand

[Savantissimo]

"Doesn't every chemical have to go through thorough tests before deemed safe for human consumption?"

No, because we used to be a free country where everything was considered legal until proven otherwise. Back in the early 20th century, it took a constitutional amendment to ban a substance. It was understood that that was not within Congress' powers to do so otherwise, which gave rise to all sorts of dodges such as calling the ban an "excise tax", with outrageously high duties.

We have slid down the slippery slope to the point that agencies such as the BATF, DEA and FDA can ban substances by totally discretionary administrative action - and anyone with molecules vaguely similar can have all property seized, be prevented from making any effective legal defense and sentenced under draconian mandatory minimums to decades in prison. But they still like to pretend that they are still exercising their authority with some authentic legal basis, so they'll do a bit of hand-wringing while actually prosecuting anyone with any potentially mind-altering material, or "precursors" or even just for possessing glassware without license from our masters.

I say they never had the authority to ban anything, nor to even tax anything to a level that would remove it from regular commerce.
When they try to use their power to do so, they are acting outside their delegated auhtority ultra vires, they have lost their immunity, and so are entitled to even less deference than any other band of armed thugs that invades homes, steals property and kidnaps, terrorizes and kills citizens.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to see it positively. There is a lot of people that have their bread and butter dependent on WoD - prison industry for once, all the military regimes outside of US that get help from DEA, the whole new industry of synthetic drugs, the legal drugs that have to be used because the weed is not allowed. Of course the progress in science and around that is associated with it can be useful also in other areas like in generic drugs used in medicine that the bastards from big pharma cannot forbid so maybe it is a good thing or rather has a good aspect also still stupidity of and ethic problems associated with WoD are just staggering and I wonder for years now how is that possible that not only USofA but also other countries go that route without looking at facts and benefits/costs of each route. I suppose it is no wonder than that other things where common approach based on reason and costs/benefits analysis is needed such things do not get resolved.

Re:I don't understand

[Bert64]

Not necessarily...
The black market drugs would need to be significantly cheaper than the over the counter stuff, or it simply wouldn't be worth the risk (of police, of poor quality product, of being ripped off by an unregulated seller etc) for the purchaser... And if the profit margins are slim enough it wouldn't be worth it for the seller.

With legal production, you have efficiencies through economies of scale as well as savings through being able to ship via official channels and not needing to smuggle etc, so you could easily undercut the black market on price and still turn a tidy profit.

Legalizing drugs would destroy the business of those in the illegal drug trade over night, save the police millions and allow the government keep track of who is buying what drugs.

Re:I don't understand

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Yep, it would put cartels and the mafia out of business overnight, leading to less crime and a marked improvement in living conditions and health for everyone, which is why its unlikely to ever happen. Politicians know its good to have a boogeyman in your back pocket to scare the electorate, like wartime presidents never losing office. Law enforcement knows their budgets would be slashed without much crime, and the increasingly paramilitary tactics they are adopting would become unneccessary. In short, those in power would lose control.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the for-profit prisons. They have a vested interest in high crime and recidivism rates. Also I recently found out that they make prison population projections from third grade reading skills, so the for-profit prison industry also has a vested interest in harming education. That there is such a thing as a for-profit industry is a clear sign of a sick society.

Re:I don't understand

[JimCanuck]

If the government legalized it and even limited to purchase in gov only stores, they could at least kill off most of the issues related to the drug trade

In Ontario, they have put so much sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco products, that our prices for them reach 2-3 times more then the US and other Provinces near us who do not tax the hell out of them.

While there are no criminal gangs actively distributing black market alcohol and tobacco, there is however a rather large black market for Native tobacco products that do not get taxed this way, and home distilled alcoholic beverages. As well as the importing of tobacco and alcohol products from places where these sin taxes do not exist.

Making something legal and then regulating it to death just invites more illegal distribution of the products in question.

Re:I don't understand

[TubeSteak]

I believe kittens are known to cause cancer in the State of California.
Thank God I'm not in California! /I manufacture and distribute kittens for the purpose of huffing

Re:I don't understand

[ks*nut]

There are lots of people getting rich because of ludicrous drug laws in this country. How do you think the CIA finances its nefarious adventures? They'll keep the war going in Afghanistan going just long enough to tidy up the fortunes they're making on the opium trade and then shift their attentions elsewhere. Thousands of lives are shattered each year through the use of a legalized drug - alcohol, yes, damnit, it's a drug and we're still throwing people into jail because they're smoking a weed that turns into a flower in their minds. Stupid country.

Re:I don't understand

[wiggles]

I'm allergic, so if I tried to huff a kitten, I'd likely wind up with my face swollen shut. I suppose that makes it unsafe...

Re:I don't understand

[LocalH]

The fact that you say that people think of it as some sort of "sacred text" is part of the problem. Intelligent people such as my self just wish to see the government follow the procedures that the Constitution requires it to follow, in order to gain power that they are not explicitly already granted in the Consitution itself, nor in any amendment to the same. The Constitution is meant to limit the government and empower the people, and nowadays it does neither from a practical standpoint.

We don't need a Constitutional reform, we need a legislative reform to prevent laws from being passed that violate the Constitution, without going through the proper process to amend the same. I would say we need a judicial reform as well, to prevent judges from acting in a manner contrary to the Constitution.

A good start would be to make violating the Constitution a treasonous act on the part of every government employee with power (all the way up to the POTUS). Also, if one knowingly signs a bill that goes contrary to the Constitution, then one should be barred for life from serving in any public office, even on a city council or county board, much less on a national level.

Re:I don't understand

[Mr2cents]

If I were a prison guard, I'd miss those stoners too..

Re:I don't understand

[Strydrdenis]

The main problem with the people involved with the "War on Drugs" don't want it to become legal as they would probably lose their jobs.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The drug problem is two fold.

On the one hand prohibition creates drug cartels and costs a ton of tax dollars to enforce. These drug cartels fight each other for turf and this creates a lot of violence among drug dealers.

On the other side of the equation are drug users. Drug users often

A: Don't work, they can't keep a job

B: Don't have money

C: Need money to get high

So they rob banks, they rob liquor stores, they rob cars, and the crime rate sky rockets. This is why people are afraid to work at a liquor store, they may get shot by someone seeking a high. A huge percentage of theft occurs by drug addicts who want their next high and need money.

While legalizing drugs may eliminate the violent drug cartels (or substantially reduce their numbers), it won't eliminate the problems associated with drug addicts.

One problem with America is that we take a very one sided, militant, approach to the drug problem. We spend the overwhelming majority of our efforts only going after the supply side of the equation, the drug dealers and drug cartels, while we ignore the demand side. We think that if we can simply overpower the drug cartels with more police forces and wasted tax dollars, we will fix the problem. It doesn't work. We need a smarter drug policy, one that also focuses on the demand side as well, for example through rehabilitation programs. Reduce the demand for drugs, get drug addicts off of drugs, and there will be less money to be made in drug dealing and that will also diminish the drug cartels. We need a more balanced approach that targets both the demand and the supply, not just one that simply goes after the supply side of the equation with brute force.

Re:I don't understand

[Mister Transistor]

Yeah, because then they'd have to deal with ACTUAL violent CRIMINALS in the jails, then - not a bunch of basically innocent people guilty of trying to forget that life sucks for a little while.

Re:I don't understand

[Mr.CRC]

Is that really the way you WANT it to be? Think about it...

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I'm going to call bullshit on your rant about drug users. I can pass the drug test - I've done them all. :)

I have used marijuana almost every day since I was about 15 - now I'm 50, successfully had a career as an Electronic Design engineer, both hardware and software. I own my own house and car, both paid off. I had to retire early due to side-effects from cancer, but in my lifetime, I have never stolen anything from anyone to finance my drug-use. Neither has anyone else I know that does drugs.. If I didn't have the money, I went without.

If someone is so out of control they have to resort to crime to support their habits, then yes, they have a problem. THEIR problem, not a problem with drugs, or society, they have a mental or chemical issue that makes them susceptible to addiction. Separate from that they have a MORAL problem that allows them to steal or commit major crimes to further their habits. If not drugs, they would seek other self-destructive addictions, sex, gambling, whatever. The moral issue means they would commit crimes to finance their eating habits or their habit of living in someplace with a roof. This is not a drug related problem at its core.

That said, I would keep some drugs controlled - Opiates and Cocaine, while fun, are ripe for abuse due to their addictive potential. So does alcohol. Pot, Hash, LSD, Mushrooms - these are fine - they are not physically addictive and are more or less self-limiting in that the end of the high doesn't result in a massive desire to do MORE of it. If someone has the chemical imbalance to make them prone to addiction, coke, alcohol and opiates aggravate that tendency greatly.

Legalizing drugs would eliminate the "forbidden fruit" aspect of doing drugs - it wouldn't be so attractive for rebellious teens to do just to piss off society and make them nothing special. This also would eliminate the curiosity aspect (they say it's bad, but the arguments don't make any sense, WHY? Let me find out...).

I will agree education will help things. That, and making drugs safe and legally available to make them commonplace and mainstream will go a long way to eliminating the attractiveness of them for abuse, as well as profitability for illicit sales.

Re:I don't understand

[dave420]

A legal operation would have as close to 0% shrinkage as possible, compared to an illegal operation which would have to factor in seizures of product and equipment, the loss of employees, and raids on premises in the price of their product.

Re:I don't understand

[bitt3n]

Yep, it would put cartels and the mafia out of business overnight, leading to less crime and a marked improvement in living conditions and health for everyone, which is why its unlikely to ever happen. Politicians know its good to have a boogeyman in your back pocket to scare the electorate, like wartime presidents never losing office. Law enforcement knows their budgets would be slashed without much crime, and the increasingly paramilitary tactics they are adopting would become unneccessary. In short, those in power would lose control.

well what we could do is legalize drugs, but then illegalize something else, so that the cartels still have a business. For example, what if we made truck nuts illegal? We could have truck nuts being peddled on street corners, colombian truck-nut smugglers smuggling truck nuts from illegal jungle truck-nut laboratories, and truck-nut kingpins bribing truck-nut police to take out rival truck-nut gangs. To get around the problem of people wanting to put truck nuts on their trucks (capital offense), you could have brown bag laws, where the cops couldn't pull you over unless they could actually see the truck nuts.

Re:I don't understand

[Mr2cents]

That was the point I was trying to make, but maybe my sarcasm got in the way.

Re:I don't understand

[TheRealGrogan]

As opposed to what... keeping things the way they are now, introducing mandatory minimum sentences for growing a fucking plant, raising the stakes and increasing the profits for illegal growers and distributors, while doing even more harm to society? Quality and product safety will also regress and cause more harm.

There is a breaking point with taxation and control of substances. Don't cross it. Yes, they made that mistake with tobacco in the early 90's in Ontario. Everyone and their dog was selling contraband cigarettes, including people's brands of choice too. There was at least one person, if not more, in every work place. They gave in, reduced the taxes so that smokes were back down to less than $3 a pack and the contraband stopped immediately. (People were stuck with cartons of these cigarettes) Then, of course, the anti tobacco lobbyists keep running their mouths and the price crept up again and now they have this new problem that they can't combat. It's very difficult to enforce because of the loopholes that the native people have.

There is still some control though, you still don't have random assholes and criminal gangs growing tobacco and selling bags of it and getting violent over it. If they made tobacco illegal like cannabis there certainly would be more trouble.

Re:I don't understand

[etinin]

Thalidomide was a fucking medication. It was said to be safe. We're not talking about deregulation of health products. Thing is: If you want to take an unproven possibly dangerous chemical, that's your problem. Shit is that 'health agents' claimed thalidomide was safe. And really, nowadays you're much better off buying research chemicals from a reliable vendor, because you know what you're getting and the purity is good compared to street vendors. Of course, they sell pretty dangerous stuff as well. Now, that's the user's problem to find out what's gonna fuck them for a high and what is hather harmless. On a related note, LSD is a lot safer than stuff like acetaminophen. Do you know how many thousands of people die each year because of paracetamol-induced liver failure?

Re:I don't understand

[Hentes]

With dozens of chemicals put into every piece of food I eat I'm quite happy to live in Europe where this kind of stuff is closely regulated.

Re:I don't understand

[TheGratefulNet]

I think darwin would step in and we'd see a huge race of truck squirrels, scurrying around collecting all the trucknuts.

might be interesting, though. and backyard birdfeeders would be totally ruined by the size of trucksquirrels.

Re:I don't understand

[TheGratefulNet]

correction, stupid WORLD.

you think its a US problem that governments have 'agreed' to ban pot? last I checked, almost every single country is onboard this stupid WoD.

*not* just the US. its a false morality problem; but mostly there is MONEY to be made by governments, in various ways, by keeping things illegal.

counter-intuitive but its actually true.

then again, the US has a very high population of religious sheep and those are the perfect 'voters' to keep the status quo going. brainwashed believers are a huge part of the problem; the problem being a regressive anti-progress mindset.

Re:I don't understand

[JimCanuck]

down to less than $3 a pack and the contraband stopped immediately.

And now a pack costs $10-13 and a pack of non-taxed Native smokes costs that $3.

Re:I don't understand

[modecx]

Bah. Some good old fashioned asphyxiation just adds to the euphoria.

Re:I don't understand

[Hentes]

Oh, I get it, then. You are right the the current accepted way of dealing with drug addiction can't cope with this, which is one more sign that the old liberal approach doesn't work. Instead of playing cat and mouse with the distributors, we should try to catch the and users themselves. Instead of making certain substances illegal, anyone found in an altered state of consciusness under the influence of a chemical not cleared for human use should be sent to mandatory rehab.

Re:I don't understand

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yep, it would put cartels and the mafia out of business overnight, leading to less crime and a marked improvement in living conditions and health for everyone,

No it wouldn't. You kill the drug market but leave the players behind, you end up with a ton of violent criminals looking for new profitable crimes to commit. That's what happened with prohibition - it basically created organized crime in the US and once liquor was relegalized they didn't just get regular 9-5 jobs, they branched out.

If drugs are legalized in the US, we should be prepapred for the violence to get worse before it gets better.

Re:I don't understand

[__aaltlg1547]

Only if it's sold as a drug. If it's sold as a "supplement" it's completely unregulated in the USA. This is why, IMO, it's wise to avoid new and faddish "supplements." You have no way of knowing if they're safe. Even when they're extracted from foods, they could still be unsafe at 1000x the level you find them in natural foods. There are many examples. Coffee or tea are pretty benign. But if you made a caffeine-related compound 100X as potent as caffeine, it would be dangerous.

Re:I don't understand

[__aaltlg1547]

Definitely not. I got one caught in my nostril once. But maybe declawed kittens are safe.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Thalidomide was approved by the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada. Even governmental regulations aren't infallible. The FDA gets a lot of bad publicity when it lets bad drugs through but the millions that die because of being denied access to unapproved but effective drugs, they don't even make the local news. The end result is, the FDA makes it extremely difficult to bring new drugs to market, which can represent up to 80% of the retail cost for prescription drugs. We are regulating ourselves to death and charging ourselves an arm and a leg to do it. The reality is, the FDA needs competition in order for it to take the proper amount of risk. Only through market forces can people vote with their wallets, and their lives, to choose the rating agency that represents the best choice to them or their family.

Of course, that doesn't fit into a pithy one-line zinger. So, I guess you've already won.

Re:I don't understand

[paiute]

Thalidomide was a fucking medication. It was said to be safe. We're not talking about deregulation of health products.

I replied to a post which included:" We have slid down the slippery slope to the point that agencies such as the BATF, DEA and FDA can ban substances by totally discretionary administrative action...."

So yes, it was talking about deregulation of health products.

Re:I don't understand

[paiute]

It's between parents and their children, if the potential parents want to take thalidomide after it was shown to be dangerous to unborn children, then it's between the parents and children and government has no right to meddle with that either.

This post is so stupid I am strongly tempted to reply as AC a long screed about how it fits into the GNAA agenda, but even the GNAA is appalled by your post.

Re:I don't understand

[shutdown -p now]

Making something legal and then regulating it to death just invites more illegal distribution of the products in question.

Regulating != artificially high prices.

Re:I don't understand

[shutdown -p now]

Then you'll end up like Texas or Alabama where practically everything they want to do ends up needing to be a amendment that the whole state votes on

Sounds awesome.

Re:I don't understand

[amRadioHed]

If drugs are legalized in the US, we should be prepapred for the violence to get worse before it gets better.

I'm pretty sure that's not what happen after alcohol prohibition.

Re:I don't understand

[amRadioHed]

you think its a US problem that governments have 'agreed' to ban pot? last I checked, almost every single country is onboard this stupid WoD.

The US is the main culprit. We have a lot of influence in world politics, and we use it to force other countries into alignment with our drug policy.

Re:I don't understand

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Only because the murder rate reached an extreme peak the year that prohibition was repealed. The year after the repeal, the murder rate was still significantly higher than any other year during prohibition.

Re:I don't understand

[trevelyon]

Don't forget it will decrease the future prison population by a good amount.

Re:I don't understand

[JimCanuck]

Regulating != artificially high prices.

Regulated products are easy to attach taxes to, as shown with Ontario's "sin tax" on tobacco and alcohol. Don't kid yourself if you think other places wont do the same if they think they can turn a profit and make their books looked balanced by taxing anything they may make legal in the future.

Re:I don't understand

[mysidia]

Politicians know its good to have a boogeyman in your back pocket to scare the electorate

I wouldn't be surprised if the Politicians were getting paid off by the cartels indirectly to keep illegal drugs illegal, so they don't have the competition to deal with; or there's some "understanding" that they don't mess with the cartels' business, and the politicians' family will be safe.

Re:I don't understand

[roman_mir]

No, it's your post that is stupid if you don't understand that people are free to take whatever drugs they want.

Some women drink alcohol and smoke during pregnancy, the government cannot force them not to do so, it is between those women and their children.

Re:I don't understand

[yndrd1984]

So - you give up and admit the validity of my counterargument?

You don't have a counterargument, you have a straw man.

Re:I don't understand

[bentcd]

"May contain trace amounts of kitten."

Re:I don't understand

[couchslug]

"Legalizing drugs would destroy the business of those in the illegal drug trade over night, save the police millions and allow the government keep track of who is buying what drugs."

In other news, my local Food Lion and Piggly-Wiggly supermarket "crews" don't do drive-bys on each other over Budweiser sales.

Re:I don't understand

[Gr8Apes]

True, the players would be left behind, and being organized criminals, they most likely would attempt to enter or expand alternative lines of business that were also criminal. But, with the cash cow gone, you'd start seeing defections and a shrinking of these organizations. Money is what makes them go around, and losing $13-40B of income a year (estimates from various sources on the cartels' annual income of the drug trade) would alter the landscape radically. Short of taking over banks wholesale, there's not a lot of places to capture anywhere close to that amount revenue.

Re:I don't understand

[qwak23]

That there is such a thing as a for-profit prison industry is a clear sign of a sick society.

Fixed that... ;)

Re:I don't understand

[GargamelSpaceman]

This reminds me of junior high school where kids needed hall passes to go to the bathroom. Do most junior high school students need to be monitored that way at home? No. But somehow at school 'the few bad apples' ruin it for the rest. Are we going to let this happen at large?

Don't take the fork off the cork.

Cocaine ought to be legal to sell as a degreaser. If it doesn't work as a degreaser, then nobody will buy it for that purpose. The FDA should have nothing to do with degreasers.

If someone snorts degreaser then they are too stupid to live.

Of course, why not open a restaurant called : Not for human consumption. Cheap food. Tasty food. NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. Who wants to be a human anyway?

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

Your grasp of history is a bit shakey. Al Capone was in the hooker business before Prohibition. As long as you have such a thing as a victimless "crime" that "crime" will be pretty much ignored by most, and exploited by some. When Alcohol prohibition ended, the Mafia moved to other, still (often newly) illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin.

Legalize drugs, gambling, and prostitution and the cartels will have little expect extortion and other rackets that have victims and willing trial witnesses.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

Minus the gov only stores and the ridiculous recreational taxes people want to lump onto these things I agree. Marijuana is safer than most anything sold over the counter at CVS including asprin by a wide margin. Cocaine is in the ballpark of caffeine and carries similar risks and was commonly used in pretty much the same way during the industrial revolution when the US was a major world producer of coca. Despite the propaganda campaigns heroine is really no better or worse than the other opiates including, hydrocodone (vicodin), percocet, oxycontine, prescribed every day.

It's amazing how much less of a big deal it is to have a gram a day habit when the substance is $1-2 for a 10lb bag at the local grocer. Sugar is one of the most addictive substances known to man.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

Definitely, the only risk I see here is the general push to impose extra taxes on these products. Often those taxes are based on current illicit rates. In California for instance the proposed taxes were massive and based on fixed rates instead of a percentage of price. That prevents the market from dropping the price to the appropriate ridiculously low rates most of these substances should be at.

Production of marijuana, poppy, and cocaine is fairly cheap. Using backwoods third world agricultural techniques the average yield for refined cocaine is about 600kg per acre. Marijuana yields 500-600lbs of dried tops per acre. Poppies yielded about 8kg per acre in 2006.

Marijuana averages about $100 per 1/4oz on the black market. Quality cocaine is about $120/gram on the black market.

At $200 an acre farmers are pretty happy in the US: http://www.agrimoney.com/news/corn-growers-profits-to-top-0-an-acre--2796.html

So a legal market wholesale rate for marijuana to give equal profit is $0.36/lb. At that price is it would be on even par with growing corn last year. Cocaine would be $0.33/kg or about $0.15/lb. This does assume that there is enough demand for farmers to be able to sell off their crops and that marijuana and coca carry production costs per acre similar to corn. Somehow I don't think that will be a problem. Those prices might skyrocket to $0.50/lb with real costs! And that will be doubled in the retail market to more like $1/lb. Of course with large scale processing the quality output isn't going to be the same as the current hand manicured and trimmed buds at less than $1/lb I don't think anyone is going to be too concerned. I also don't think anyone is going to be worrying about the THC efficiency loss of ingestion vs smoking at those prices.

Cocaine is completely water soluble. Perhaps a legal market delivery system would entail a sugary carbonated beverage in an aluminum can. We could replace replace caffeine with an addictive stimulant... oh wait.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

"As opposed to what..."

Legalizing things and NOT regulating the hell out of it.

Re:I don't understand

[Politburo]

Yeah, we all know an alcoholic that's gotten millions from the booze companies, right?

Moron.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

The WHO did a long term global study on the effects of cocaine use and found no significant indication of negative health or lifestyle effects associated with low to moderate use.

It was the US representative who pushed successfully to block the results from being published. Just because something is being done across the globe doesn't mean it isn't the US who is pushing it. The US is the largest economy in the world and definitely has the ability to force other nations to pass laws in their interest. Just look at the draconian intellectual property policies the US has forced the rest of the world to embrace.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

"A: Don't work, they can't keep a job

B: Don't have money

C: Need money to get high"

There is nothing about drug use that causes A. I think you are confusing lazy vagabonds sitting around getting high with getting high causing people to be lazy vagabonds. For example there is a higher drug use rate in IT and among rocket scientists than in the general population. You can be certain this would be higher yet if workplace drug testing were prohibited.

Where true B and C are generally caused by the black market. For instance, the risks, effects, and cost of cocaine are all slightly reduced vs caffeine. Coca-cola noticed this and switched to caffeine as the next best choice when cocaine was outlawed. Most people have no trouble getting this caffeine and sugar fixes despite these substances being at least as addictive as any black market choice. Because they are dirt cheap.

Cocaine powered the population of the western world during the height of the industrial revolution. Drugs do not make people lazy and unproductive. Having a black market for drugs just increases the cost of lazy and unproductive people.

Re:I don't understand

[Gr8Apes]

Minus the gov only stores and the ridiculous recreational taxes people want to lump onto these things I agree.

The entire bit on the gov only stores is that there's a single supplier, with no potential of pushers. I don't see the supermarket carrying a 5lb bag of refined cocaine, for example. Also, it would be no different from the state sponsored alcohol stores in many areas. NH has a great distribution system, near as I can tell from my few visits there. Then again, CA has everything in the supermarket. I don't see CA having more or less problems than anywhere else.

It's amazing how much less of a big deal it is to have a gram a day habit when the substance is $1-2 for a 10lb bag at the local grocer. Sugar is one of the most addictive substances known to man.

I'd disagree with sugar being addictive. Desired, yes, addictive, not so much. More harmful? We're still on the upswing of finding out how harmful that switch to high fructose corn syrup and soda/sweet tea really is, but there's no arguing more people have died from sugar than at least one Class I Schedule drug, even due to side effects like stepping into the path of a bus. And the general health costs are tremendous.

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

Don't kid yourself if you think other places wont do the same if they think they can turn a profit and make their books looked balanced by taxing anything they may make legal in the future.

Is a pack of cigarettes a hundred bucks in Canada? A pack of cigarettes has an ounce of tobacco. Guess what an ounce of pot costs?

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

On the other side of the equation are drug users. Drug users often
A: Don't work, they can't keep a job
B: Don't have money
C: Need money to get high
So they rob banks, they rob liquor stores, they rob cars, and the crime rate sky rockets.

Alcohol is so addictive that withdrawal can be fatal. Tobacco is so deadly it kills most of its users. Caffiene is also addictive. So why aren't alcoholics, coffee drinkers, and tobacco smokers all out of work, starving, and robbing people?

You're either a moron, or you work for the drug cartels. That is the only two reasons to argue for the continued outlawing of illegal drugs; stupidity and a vested interest.

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

Well said! However,

That said, I would keep some drugs controlled - Opiates and Cocaine, while fun, are ripe for abuse due to their addictive potential

Alcohol is so addictive that withdrawal can be and often is fatal. Not so with cocaine, less so with heroin. If you want to ruin your life shooting heroin, how is that my or the government's business? If someone steals to support a habit (whether heroin, crack, alcohol, or coffee) then put them in jail for theft.

The only class of drug I would keep illegal is antibiotics. Your misuse of antibiotics (especially the legal misuse in farms on food animals) does affect me, by breeding "superbugs". These should be illegal, and farmers should not be able to use antibiotics at all, only by a veterenarian and only when an animal has a bacterial infection.

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

then again, the US has a very high population of religious sheep and those are the perfect 'voters' to keep the status quo going. brainwashed believers are a huge part of the problem

Odd, my bible doesn't say a single word about pot, even though it's been used by humans for thusands of years. So WTF does religion have to do with it?

Re:I don't understand

[K10W]

There are other matters too including the money big pharma makes off addicts for addiction and maintenance treatment along with secondary health treatments related to use of various drugs. That's a lot of money to throw away. There is also the matter of the instability in the areas the drugs raw materials are produced which fluctuates due to feudal natures etc, organised means alternate sourcing or stablizing such regions which drives those out of power, leads to higher prices as such regions get their shit together and get real infrastructure and so on. Mafia would still turn a tidy profit though just in counterfeit goods (including repackaged to look like branded tobacco, alcohol, the newly legalised drugs no doubt, racketeering, human trafficking, sex trade, legit fronts etc etc).

Re:I don't understand

[wiedzmin]

Doesn't every chemical have to go through thorough tests before deemed safe for human consumption?

IKR? I'd think that the whole thing was white-list based to begin with... how do you end up with a whack-a-mole situation in a white-list based system?

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

"I'd disagree with sugar being addictive. Desired, yes, addictive, not so much"

That is what all addicts say and literally everyone is a sugar addict. Sugar is arguably the most addictive substance known and refined sugar is far more addictive than cocaine. The difference between a 'desired' chemical and addictive one is only availability. Since pretty much everyone is addicted to sugar and generally can't see themselves giving sexual favors in an alley for it or stealing from family or in any of the negative addiction center funded special scenerios they draw a distinction. That distinction is imaginary. First addiction isn't what it is made out to be. Most people wouldn't do those horrible things to feed a habit. Those who would do them, would do them for sugar given an equally scarce and expensive supply.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/08/23/is-sugar-more-addictive-than-cocaine.aspx

Re:I don't understand

[Gr8Apes]

Interestingly enough: this article on sugar addiction states that most scientists are not yet convinced that sugar addiction exists. However, this published research paper, which could have been the source for your link, makes a pretty eye opening case, at the least worthy of more research.

Having stated my skepticism on sugar addiction, I personally have cut my consumption of excess sugar, don't eat much prepared or fast food, and probably am 90% on the way to the "sugar free diet" that some articles profess has all sorts of good health effects. I'd agree that not consuming an extra 3500+ calories a week really does result in not gaining that extra pound. I can concur on one item listed in one article - I no longer eat nearly as much pasta and other starches. However, that may due be as much to the aging process and its associated metabolic slowdown as anything else. Unfortunately, my personal experiences are related directly to rational scientific cause and effect or are inconclusive and do not support any type of argument for "sugar addiction". Also, I don't use sugar substitutes (something about artificial chemicals tasting sweet doesn't ring true to me, just like GM food with customized genes that do not naturally occur in at least the same order or class, but that's a different topic).

Lastly, I've also seen what happens when Type II diabetics finally take their condition seriously and change their diet: the effect of a low to moderate sugar diet is not small. Refined sugar, in moderation is fine for most people. Unfortunately, "moderation" as most perceive it is really consumption on an excessive scale to their bodies. Just one of those 48 ounce cokes is massively excessive. The soda companies had the proportions right originally when they came in 8-10 oz containers, and were expensive enough to be a luxury item enjoyed on rare occasions. They were also made with sucrose, not high fructose corn syrup, the latter which is pretty much like main-lining sugar into your bloodstream.

Re:I don't understand

[mcgrew]

Yes, sometimes I'm an asshole, especially when responding to someone's bullshit that they refuse to back up. You know what? Grow up, son. If you're going to make a rediculous statement, you need to back it up. Bullshit is free.

Re:I don't understand

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Eh no, what happened was they moved on to heroin. Seriously the whole heroin problem in the USA? Mafia, from start to finish. Other than that they were on their last legs.

Re:I don't understand

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes, sometimes I'm an asshole, especially when responding to someone's bullshit that they refuse to back up.

Hey, does being an asshole make you a time traveller? Because the only reason I refused to give you what you wanted is because you were an asshole first. Bullshit may be free, but being an asshole has a price - yours today is to remain smugly ignorant.

Re:I don't understand

[khallow]

In other words, I got caught making up shit so I'm using any excuse to save face. It's a good thing we rude people love to give you plenty of opportunities to weasel out.

Re:I don't understand

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

In other words, I got caught making up shit so I'm using any excuse to save face. It's a good thing we rude people love to give you plenty of opportunities to weasel out.

Nope. Sure, it is easy to accuse me of that. But mcgrew's google-fu must really suck-ass if he can't find the chart showing murder rates before, during and after prohibition.

You saw what mcgrew linked to right? A document behind a paywall, all he went on was the title, he didn't even read what he cited as proof that I was wrong. You sure you want to back that horse?

Tell you what, how about you prove that I am a weasel by finding the stats yourself and showing me up. You are so confident in my duplicity after all, should be a snap, right?

Re:I don't understand

[khallow]

Tell you what, how about you prove that I am a weasel by finding the stats yourself and showing me up.

Not my job. You're the one who made claims and failed to back them up.

Re:I don't understand

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Not my job. You're the one who made claims and failed to back them up.

Hypocrite. You accused me of "making up shit" but you haven't backed that up at all. You've provided zero proof that what I said was made up.

Re:I don't understand

[shaitand]

I think you'll find the article you linked contends that scientists do not like the methodologies of the subject. While the article I linked wasn't the source paper it did give the methodology of exposing mice to a substance and then letting them self dose. That methodology is pretty much the standard for testing if something is habit forming aka addictive.

I think the tendency to resist things being called an addiction or addictive stems from the false negative view of addiction that has been thrust on people in the first place. Our brain is a neural net and an addiction is nothing more than a habit that triggers that neural nets reward pathway. If you build a computer neural net and teach it addition by feeding it two numbers over and over and hitting the reward button when it is right that network will form a pattern around the paths that lead to correct results. It will form a habit (aka addiction) of performing addition in response to two numbers because that tends to trigger a reward. If our neurons didn't become addicted to rewards they wouldn't form into chains and patterns. Recognizing patterns is a function of addiction and pretty much all other human learning and behavior is an emergence of recognizing patterns. Addiction is the basis of all human learning and intelligence. It is not a negative thing.

The mother who got pregnant out of wedlock and abandoned her child and has found herself in an abandoned building performing favors and then laying comatose overwhelmed by the effects of drugs. That woman is the product of her own inability to cope with life and escaped into drugs she is not the product of addiction or the drugs she escaped into. A person can be addicted to those same substances or other substances (recreational or otherwise), indulge in them with moderation, and live a normal reasonably healthy and productive life.

Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

All of it.

Some junkies will kill themselves... but that will taper off quickly. Some kill themselves. Some don't. Some never touch the stuff. If people want to destroy themselves... let them.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've prompted my first ever Slashdot comment.

The problem is that people using this stuff are killing innocents. Look at the Florida cannibal (repotedly on bath salts) and the guy a mile from my house in Farmington Hills, MI who killed his adoptive father and beat his adoptive mother & brother to within an inch of their lives on K2/Spice.

By the way, it hurts a lot of people a lot when a user ODs. A lot more than I thought it would.

Re:Legalize it all.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Junkies who never touch the stuff? That sounds like a pretty complicated achievement.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same reason should be used to ban alcohol,cigarettes and fossil fuels then

Re:Legalize it all.

[AngryDeuce]

If only there existed relatively safe plant that people could smoke instead and not turn into fucking flesh-eating zombies after use...

Oh well, I'm sure Big Pharma will come up with something to combat these cravings at a very reasonable price per dose, because Big Pharma cares...

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've no experience of "bath salts" (besides actual bath salts) but I'd take reports that it contributed significantly the the cannibal's antics with a pinch of salt.

I'm probably being too cynical, but it sounds more like a newspaper going for moral outrage. It's also interesting that you mention Spice, which I have tried myself; it's meant to be a legal version of pot, and that tends to dampen violent tendencies rather than amplify them. The guy you mention may well have been smoking the stuff before the assault on his adoptive family but I'm very skeptical that one led to the other, but of course the papers will take this as a cue to stir up a campaign to ban it.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Higgins_Boson]

You've prompted my first ever Slashdot comment.

The problem is that people using this stuff are killing innocents. Look at the Florida cannibal (repotedly on bath salts) and the guy a mile from my house in Farmington Hills, MI who killed his adoptive father and beat his adoptive mother & brother to within an inch of their lives on K2/Spice.

By the way, it hurts a lot of people a lot when a user ODs. A lot more than I thought it would.

Except you forgot things like this, which totally refute your small area claims of increased crime.

Just because 10 crimes out of 1,000 people happens does not mean you have an increase in problems. It just means you are falling into the media's fascination with only reporting bad things.

Decriminalize/Legalize all but the most harmful and that may be a step in the right direction. Or simply take the exact approach Portugal took.

However, this being /. and all, I do not fully expect you to actually read what I've linked for you.

Re:Legalize it all.

[gstrickler]

Precisely. Prohibition didn't work in the 1920's, it just made drinking more dangerous and added to the crime rate and violence. The "war on drugs" is simply prohibition revisited. Stop trying to make prohibition work, it will never work. Legalize it, tax it, and regulate it, just like we do with alcohol and tobacco.

There may be a few drugs that are too dangerous and need to be restricted, but if the majority of them are available, the demand for the most dangerous ones will drop dramatically, whether they're legal or not.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing they're under prohibition then so things like that don't happen anymore.

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

The problem is that people using this stuff are killing innocents.

So is the war on drugs. It's killing roughly 10,000 people a year across the border in Mexico (which in itself is almost as numerous as are killed by drunk drivers, the most common case of innocents killed by drug users. It's killing people who are imprisoned for using drugs (there are hundreds of thousands if people jailed each year in an unhealthy environment, do the math). It's killing people due to increased government power and reduced freedom. It's killing people due to a massive misallocation of society's resources.

By the way, it hurts a lot of people a lot when a user ODs. A lot more than I thought it would.

How about when that user spends a few years in jail? I bet that hurts a lot of people too.

Re:Legalize it all.

[0100010001010011]

And spend the money on rehab and not punishment. Look at Portugal as an example. And keeping drugs illegal is costing tax payers a TON of money. My GF works in the ER. She's had a patient in and out with sepsis and other serious infections that he got from a needle. Give or take they estimate that the it's cost the hospital "$1M" (in hospital money). Between sedation, partial amputation of a limb, etc. It would have cost the government pennies for a clean needle and some clean, medical grade heroin. And then force him into a treatment program instead of locking him up and making me pay for it.

Re:Legalize it all.

[GrumpySteen]

I don't think anyone has ever eaten some guy's face after smoking a cigarette or filling up their car with gas, so no... the same reason shouldn't be used to ban cigarettes and fossil fuels.

There are rational arguments for why you might want to ban either (and arguments for why you shouldn't), but the one you're presenting here makes no sense whatsoever.

Re:Legalize it all.

[currently_awake]

Most (all) of the problems you list are from poor quality control. If you're smoking/injecting the drug equivalent of mystery meat you've got to expect some strange side effects.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I tried THC for the first time in my life last week a few weeks leading up to my 30th. (To go along with my "Try everything once" mantra since I was raised a very picky eater having never tried some vegetables before 25).

I have asthma so can't smoke, but I found some interesting recipes online. Ended up making gee and then using that in a ton of stuff. Toast, brownies, cookies, spaghetti, etc.
--

Holy fark have I (we) been lied to. Jesus Christ, that's illegal? I want to go back and cock punch every single cop and DARE presenter I ever had. Alcohol has much more serious side effects than that. I had way too much my first time not knowing the limits and I didn't black out or go try to pick fights (as too much Jim and Jack tend to do). I just felt like I was getting heavier and sinking into the couch. It was the worst parts of being drunk (uncoordinated, couldn't talk right, blurry vision) without the blackout to forget it. Subsequent dosages were much better. (And I re-watched the Avengers a 2nd time and that was interesting to say the least).

I already believed that everything should be decriminalized/legalized (Like how Portugal does it) and that was just because of my observations on society. There is absofarkinglutely no reason pot should be illegal let alone a schedule 1.

The WORST possible side effect is that we all turn into the British and queue for everything. If you've seen the episode of How I Met Your Mother where they get in line and time feels like it's gone by for ever, that's pretty much it.

Oh, and it took away (or at least made me ignore) my chronic knee pain. I mean. If you have the means to try it and haven't and you already don't see a problem with alcohol, my suggestion is try it. You will be equally as "WTF".

Anonymous because.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Zero__Kelvin]

While I certainly agree that weed should be legal, let's not forget that hundreds of thousands of people ingest these other chemicals every day, yet only one guy went around eating a guys face. I think we can reasonably conclude that there is no causal relationship between the two.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Bert64]

Bath salts are a legal substance being abused...

Do you think people would resort to taking bath salts if marijuana and other such drugs were available legally? As the article points out, as more substances are made illegal they are creating ever more dangerous substances in order to achieve similar highs. This wouldn't have happened if drugs were legal, if anything research would have been performed to create safer versions.

Also if drugs are sold legally, you can better keep track of who is taking them...

And people kill innocents all the time, wether on illegal drugs, legal drugs like alcohol or prescribed medicine from a doctor, or on no drugs whatsoever... Just because someone had taken bath salts at the time he tried to kill and eat someone, doesn't mean the bath salts had any influence over his decision to commit such an act.

Re:Legalize it all.

[betterunixthanunix]

I don't think anyone has ever eaten some guy's face after smoking a cigarette

Has someone eaten some guy's face after using marijuana? What kind of non sequitur are you pushing here?

The truth is that plenty of people die because of tobacco. Children get asthma because of tobacco. Second hand tobacco smoke can cause cancer. Tobacco smoke is far more dangerous than marijuana smoke (yes, really -- marijuana smoke does contain carcinogens, but even heavy marijuana smokers do not show an increased risk of cancer).

or filling up their car with gas

Cars kill tens of thousands of people per year, and I can assure you that people's faces have been torn off by cars.

The fact of the matter is that the war on drugs has nothing to do with public safety. Making methamphetamine illegal for recreational use (it is certainly legal by prescription) has actually created a much greater risk to the general public: illegal methamphetamine production. I have never seen a crazed methamphetamine user (I am sure they exist, I have just never seen one), but I have seen a house burn to the ground after the byproducts of methamphetamine production caught fire. Mobile production facilities create major chemical hazards on the sides of highways. I would rather have a legal, regulated chemical plant producing methamphetamine for people to buy over the counter than the system we have today.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You can add up every single murder and suicide committed under the influence of illegal drugs, every death by overdose, every death due to organ failure caused by years of addiction ... and you still won't come close to the number of deaths and the amount of damage caused by the "War on Drugs" rather than the drugs themselves. If you don't think the argument makes sense, that's your problem for not paying attention.

Re:Legalize it all.

[kestasjk]

Cops, drug dealers, "assholes", and "plastic companies" are conspiring to keep marijuana illegal?

Re:Legalize it all.

[TheRealMindChild]

The "blizzard" bath salts are not like anything that can be described. I have never taken the stuff myself, however, being in the psych ward over many occasions, these bath salts are the purpose of MORE THAN HALF of the people there.

The situation comes from people using this stuff like cocaine. The first initial buzz is very much like cocaine. But unlike cocaine, you don't do a line every 5 or 10 minutes, because the bath salts have a half-life of possibly from 8 hours to DAYS. After enough consumption, you WILL have a psychotic episode ranging anywhere from schizo tendencies to what you can classically attribute to PCP.

The doctor, Amy Metzger, who is usually the doctor on said psych ward has written a paper about its effects http://altoonaregional.org/news_archived2011.htm#06-03-11d

Re:Legalize it all.

[jittles]

I have never seen a crazed methamphetamine user (I am sure they exist, I have just never seen one), but I have seen a house burn to the ground after the byproducts of methamphetamine production caught fire.

I had a roommate in college who used to be a very heavy meth user. He quit because he started becoming very paranoid and was beginning to hallucinate. It got to the point where he literally thought everyone was out to kill him, and he was afraid that he was going to have to start killing people to save his life. I'm not sure how he realized it was the drugs, or how he managed to stop, but I would be very willing to bet that he was quite dangerous during that time.

Re:Legalize it all.

[kestasjk]

I am "absofarkinglutely" "equally as WTF".

Marijuana. Not even once.

Re:Legalize it all.

[GrumpySteen]

The problem is that you aren't paying attention.

The original post said "The problem is that people using this stuff are killing innocents. Look at the Florida cannibal (repotedly on bath salts) and the guy a mile from my house in Farmington Hills, MI who killed his adoptive father and beat his adoptive mother & brother to within an inch of their lives on K2/Spice." and and the person I responded to said that you might as well use the same argument to ban cigarettes and gasoline. That's a stupid argument because cigarettes and gasoline haven't ever been implicated in violent, cannibalistic assaults.

Nothing in my post had anything to do with the war on drugs, just the stupidity of the argument presented by the person I responded to, so why the hell are you launching into a tirade about the war on drugs?

You're replying to some imagined viewpoint that can't possibly be extrapolated from what I posted. I think the proper term would normally be "strawman", but your reply is so completely unrelated to what I said that I think it really deserves a term that's more derogatory. Unfortunately, I can't think of one right now, so "strawman" will have to do.

Re:Legalize it all.

[betterunixthanunix]

So your point is what...that someone who noticed that his life was becoming terrifying as a result of his drug use was able to stop using that drug? Your roommate did not kill anyone, and he certainly did not create a hazard waste site on the side of a busy highway.

Sure, methamphetamine can create paranoid delusions in its users. Do the people who sell it for recreational use take the time to explain that to their customers? If you could buy methamphetamine legally, you could be given a warning about the danger of using it -- just like we warn people about the dangers of using alcohol and tobacco.

Note that the methamphetamine that is sold legally, the kind you need a prescription to buy, comes with warnings. It is also produced in a much safer, and much better controlled, manner. You do not have to worry that pharmaceutical methamphetamine is laced with hazardous residual chemicals, a common and serious problem with illegal methamphetamine. It is unusual for a pharmaceutical production facility to burst into flames; it is common for an illegal production facility to explode.

People are going to use methamphetamine recreationally, and we need to accept that as a fact of life. The issue we need to address is the health and safety of the public, both those who use methamphetamine and those who do not. Banning the drug has increased the risk to public health; we can do better.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Amouth]

The problem is that people using this stuff are killing innocents.

This is a point less argument, outside of the person using what ever everyone is an "innocent". Everyone whom ever dies by the fault of another was a "innocent" because they did not kill them selves. People add the "innocents" because they know it will cause a reaction out of people, a reaction of "oh no they aren't just killing each other they are killing people like me".

The correct statement is "The problem is that people using this stuff are killing people" and that i can agree with, but if that is really your defense then back it up showing how likely you are to be killed by a person on "this stuff" vs. someone on one of the many many many other things we allow people to use every day. Then step back and realize that humans made it all the way up to the 19th century without having a ban on substances in the way we have now.

Re:Legalize it all.

[betterunixthanunix]

Cars are made with iron, steel, aluminum, fiberglass and dozens of other materials. It would be just as idiotic to ban those materials...

...as it would be to ban certain kinds of matches in response to methamphetamine production:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9271990.htm

...or to limit purchases of ephedrine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Methamphetamine_Epidemic_Act_of_2005

MDPV and Spice products have only rose in popularity because they produce effects similar to illegal drugs. It is worth noting that both of these drugs were simply declared to be illegal by the DEA, which is the same agency that enforces drug laws. It is also worth noting that if you could buy drugs legally, we could give you legally mandated warnings about those drugs -- like a warning that MDPV may induce psychosis.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Dodgy G33za]

And this is different to alcohol exactly?

Re:Legalize it all.

[Dodgy G33za]

Maybe not, but the idea that people could grow a drug rather than have to buy it would be counter to a lot of peoples interests. The AC was just pointing that out...

Re:Legalize it all.

[Poorcku]

You named 3 casualties. All, rare accounts of drug induced behavior modifications. Because I feel very generous today, I will give you 10 more, with no questions asked.

On the other hand the number of innocent victims in drug related drive-by shootings and other violence forms is enormous.More than 8,000 corpses left across Mexico (alone) since 2006 have not been identified, according to the National Human Rights Commission, a government-run body. At the same time, more than 5,000 people who have disappeared during the drug violence sweeping the country have never been tracked down, according to the commission. (REUTERS).

So, yes. Legalize all of it.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

the person I responded to said that you might as well use the same argument to ban cigarettes and gasoline. That's a stupid argument because cigarettes and gasoline haven't ever been implicated in violent, cannibalistic assaults.

Actually, the person you responded to said:

Same reason should be used to ban alcohol,cigarettes and fossil fuels then

I note you deliberately left off alcohol, which is most certainly a factor in a great many violent assaults. And the point of the entire thread isn't the specific nature of the harm these various substances do, but the fact that they are all demonstrably harmful to people other than those using them; the question at hand is whether or not this harm is sufficient cause for banning them. If you want to engage in obvious cherry-picking, go ahead, but be aware that it's really not helping you make your case.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Dodgy G33za]

If only I had mod points and you weren't an AC...

I was brought up to believe that "all drugs are evil" which IMHO is a very dangerous mantra. Luckily for me our student union provided a great booklet on the drugs available and the risks. So was really able to enjoy my uni days with minimal risks. One thing I have noticed though, is that dope has become way more potent over the years and no longer gives you a mellow luvving feeling - it is borderline hallucinogenic, at least for me.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never seen a crazed methamphetamine user (I am sure they exist, I have just never seen one), but I have seen a house burn to the ground after the byproducts of methamphetamine production caught fire.

I had a roommate in college who used to be a very heavy meth user. He quit because he started becoming very paranoid and was beginning to hallucinate. It got to the point where he literally thought everyone was out to kill him, and he was afraid that he was going to have to start killing people to save his life. I'm not sure how he realized it was the drugs, or how he managed to stop, but I would be very willing to bet that he was quite dangerous during that time.

I used to use Meth, it doesn't make you trip. What makes you trip is staying awake for up to two weeks without sleeping, which is what the Meth allows you to do. I saw one chick go for nearly a month with less than an hour of sleep a week. After 3 or 4 days you start hallucinating from the sleep deprivation. Keep that up for long enough and you'll seriously fuck your program upstairs and need an ICU to sober up.
I quit because it was rotting my teeth and I realized I was turning into a piece of shit. Put it down, walked away. Had jitters for a few days, trouble sleeping for a few months, and that was it. I smoke some weed now and then still, and sometimes have a few beers, but that's the extent of my partying these days.

Most of the people who get really wacked out on Meth are actually using what we called "Crank". It's basically a bath-tub version of Meth, but what you end up with chemically speaking is a little different. Or a lot different depending on who did the cooking and what they used. It's just another example of people turning to the strange and exotic when you take away the common and familiar.

As for dangerous, well I'll have to throw this at you:
""Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous - not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless."

Re:Legalize it all.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

And chocolate cake. Man, my mom used to make *killer* chocolate cake.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cops, drug dealers, "assholes", and "plastic companies" are conspiring to keep marijuana illegal?

That's not what he said, quit being a fucking retard.

Cops do not want it legalized. Some because some because they only see the dirty side of drug use and do believe honestly that it should be kept illegal, some because they know it will cost them their job, some because they know it will cost them their budget and a lot of fancy toys. They aren't doing anything illegal so it's not conspiracy.

Drug dealers do NOT want it legal, especially the organized crime syndicates. Some people deal drugs just to pay for their own stash and so they always have a supply, those people are not who I refer to as Drug dealers. Those are users who sell to support their own habit. I'm talking people who are doing it as a business- the last thing they want to do is have to compete legitimately and pay taxes. They make a thousand times the profit while it's illegal than they would make otherwise.

Assholes are people who simply don't want you to use it because they have some moral qualm with letting you make your own decisions. Sometimes religion is involved here, sometimes not.

Plastics and textile companies have fought the legalization for may years... much of the money behind the initial Scheduling of Marijuana came from the cotton industry. They've been worried about Hemp competing with their products for good reason... there are many situations where Hemp can be grown that cotton cannot, and some products which Hemp just makes a better product.

So no, these groups are not part of some grand Conspiracy. They don't even really act in coordination within their groups, with the exception (possibly) of the Drug Cartels down in Mexico. But they DO all have a common, vested interest in pot being kept illegal, and many of them have drank their own anti-marijuana propaganda Kool-Aid for so long they actually believe some of the crazy shit they say about it. (worse then Meth per FDA schedules, for example) So if you want to call that a conspiracy fine, it's not, but it has the same net effect albeit with less organization.

Re:Legalize it all.

[TheLink]

Tobacco smoke is far more dangerous than marijuana smoke (yes, really -- marijuana smoke does contain carcinogens, but even heavy marijuana smokers do not show an increased risk of cancer).

I would rather have a legal, regulated chemical plant producing methamphetamine for people to buy over the counter than the system we have today.

Maybe so, but wait till you legalize marijuana and Philip Morris and friends get their hands on it.

1) Go compare what's in tobacco and what's in cigarettes: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3990-crack-nicotine-in-cigarettes-varies-widely.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16728749
2) Industrially farmed tobacco typically is grown from phosphate fertilizers. That results in higher amounts of polonium in the tobacco. Yes there's plenty of other toxic stuff in cigarette smoke that can increase your odds of getting cancer but polonium certainly doesn't help. Anyone going to bet that industrially farmed marijuana won't concentrate polonium?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-kept-quiet-on--polonium-role-in-cigarettes-907194.html/01proctor.html

Not saying marijuana shouldn't be legalized, but that you shouldn't be too optimistic about the results.

Re:Legalize it all.

[borcharc]

Innocents are killed by misuse more then anything else. Drugs are often sold as other drugs causing dramatically different effects then expected at the dose taken. There are also cases where the drugs are cut with dangerous chemicals to increase the profit of the dealers (Levamisole in cocaine). The black market has no regulation or civil liability for poor quality or mislabeled products. There are also no instructions, most synthetic drug deaths are the result of overdose because there is not effective labeling. Most people have drugs in their homes bought over the counter that if you take 2.5x the maximum dose you will die (Tylenol) without medical attention, but with effective labeling we know not to take that much. I am unconvinced that the crazy guy in Florida was on drugs, lets wait for an actual toxicity report to be published, right now its wild speculation. I am unfamiliar with the incident with K2/Spice in Michigan, but if marijuana were legal, the synthetic cannabinoid market would not exist. Most things that I have hard attributed to drug use have no data to support it and look more like the latest version of Reefer Madness-style exaggerations

Most "synthetic alternatives" for illegal drugs exist solely to fill the demand gap; Bath salts (meth/mdma/speed), MXE (Ketamine), Cocaine, 2C-x, etc. These drugs are prescription drugs in the US and around the world or likely soon well be. MDMA (ecstasy) is in clinical trials with for treatment resistant PTSD with great success. Speed (amphetamine/adderall) and Meth (prescribed under the name Desoxyn in the USA) is given to children and adults for ADHD and sleep issues. Ketamine is used in anesthesiology for adults (3rd world) and children (common in the US) and is being tested in the US for treatment resistant depression with good results. Cocaine is used in medicine in the US. 2C-x/hallucinogens are used around the world for religious and spiritual purposes and have been used that way for much of human history with great benefit (see the recent Johns Hopkins Psilocybin studies) yet we ban them out of fear.

The only way to solve drug issues is to legalize it all and let the FDA regulate labeling and production quality, lets get instructions and quality control and most issues will go away. This is the only way we can stop the endless drug related violence.

Re:Legalize it all.

[xigxag]

In this context, an innocent would be normal taken to mean, e.g. a child or an uninvolved passerby, as opposed to say a dealer, supplier or someone else in the criminal chain who doesn't have clean hands with respect to the drug trade.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

tit-for-tat anecdote time:
of course, it is up to the user to use in moderation. i have done meth plenty of times, in small amounts, and never went past the 2 day mark, while friends have. it's the same with anything. i've done cocaine plenty of times, but i haven't stolen, sold all my worldly possessions, or hurt anyone to get a fix. if i can moderate, anyone can.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will admit to being a user of bk-mdma and mephedrone both common bath salt actives and both currently illegal in the states. I started using them when they were legal. I have stooped using mephedrone (health concerns) but continue to use bk-mdma (along with mdma/2c-b/lsd). The claim that someone could even attack someone on these drugs is absurd unless there was a MAJOR underlining psychological issue at play.

These drugs honestly saved my life, they let me move past the PTSD that completely destroyed my life. Before I tried them I was unhappy, chronically depressed, in an abusive marriage, and suffered from combat related PTSD, and was an alcoholic. Suicide was a common consideration. Using psychoactive stimulants I was able to completely change my life. I am now in a happy marriage, career, I am spiritual, and I have about two beers a month. I am truly happy and have been for years. I take psychoactive stimulants about twice a month on the weekend with my wife and some like minded adults in a very responsible manner and it a very spiritual experience. The thought of violence on drugs that cause such overwhelming happiness and openness in everyone I have ever seen is quite foreign. It makes me believe that the powers that be would rather me be a miserable drunk, depressed, and hopeless.

Re:Legalize it all.

[sjames]

And the only reason the 'bath salts' even exist is that the far more desirable cannabis is illegal.The longer cannabis is illegal, the more crazy dangerous legal substitutes will be made. Had cannabis been legal, the guy would have been way too busy trying to carve a walnut into a pipe to eat anyone's face.

Re:Legalize it all.

[cayenne8]

I don't think anyone has ever eaten some guy's face after smoking a cigarette or filling up their car with gas, so no... the same reason shouldn't be used to ban cigarettes and fossil fuels.

There are rational arguments for why you might want to ban either (and arguments for why you shouldn't), but the one you're presenting here makes no sense whatsoever.

A very small minority of these actions tho.

I mean, in human history, there have been many more incidents of egregious acts by humans to other humans...fueled by nothing more than breathing simple oxygen. People that snap...can and will do it with or without chemical help.

The VAST majority of people that use chemicals...alcohol (actually one of the more dangerous ones), pot, coke..what-have-you do not go out and harm other people. If that were the case, the world would be a smoking, smoldering pile many decades back.

The majority can and often does use these chemicals recreationally with no harm to anyone, except possibly themselves. It isn't the governments job to protect someone from their own actions, is it? If so...where is that in any of the state or federal constitutions as an enumerated function of said governing body?

Re:Legalize it all.

[DarkOx]

it hurts a lot of people a lot when a user ODs.

Maybe but it does not have to do. Those hurt people make a decision to give love and continue an emotional attachment to others who are undeserving of it have only themselves to blame.

Re:Legalize it all.

[rubycodez]

no, let's NOT concern ourselves with your two extreme examples that are hardly typical. that's just foolish.

We have killed far more people in Afghanistan protecting drug lords and their fields and shipping. we kill and incarcerate our own citizens for victimless crimes and pump up the innates in the prison system for profit. we fight both sides of the "war on drugs", it is a scam and farce by our government at our expense.

Get a clue, the biggest problem with the "war on drugs" is the government that gets you to fund and support its fighting of it (again, both sides if you haven't been paying attention to mainstream news the past three decades)

Re:Legalize it all.

[sjames]

I don't know about the plastics companies, but as for the others, YES! Try to run on a legalization platform and see how quickly the various law enforcement fraternal organizations back your opponent and shout you down.

The drug dealers most certainly do NOT want competition from CVS.

Re:Legalize it all.

[rubycodez]

idiot, that's just one non-typical instance that proves exactly nothing. People have been killed and eaten by cults with no narcotics involved, so should we ban freedom of religion?

Re:Legalize it all.

[ewieling]

So I tried THC for the first time in my life last week a few weeks leading up to my 30th. (To go along with my "Try everything once" mantra since I was raised a very picky eater having never tried some vegetables before 25).

Holy fark have I (we) been lied to. Jesus Christ, that's illegal? I want to go back and cock punch every single cop and DARE presenter I ever had.

This War on (some) Drugs undermines people's faith in our government. Once someone realizes they were lied to about marijuana they start to wonder what other lies they were told. It is easy to think the the government lies about stuff, but seldom do people have direct experience proving it. You have now had one of those experiences.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Sperbels]

You really should just stop pretending weed is ever gonna be legal in the usa. IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

I don't agree. I see tremendous progress being made politically and socially. Word is finally getting out that Marijuana is not the bogey man the government has been telling us it is. Hell, Pat Robertson said legalize it. Medical Marijuana? That would have been laughed out of the room 20 years ago. Now, it's actually happening.

Re:Legalize it all.

[gstrickler]

However we should follow New York city and find ways to Ban the consumption of sugary sodas.

No, we shouldn't

Black Market sell products that you cannot legally get or get at the price close to what supply and demand can tolerate. It is a natural part of the economy.

No. Black markets exist only because you can't get it legally, or because you can get it cheaper on the black market. Make it legal and you kill most of the black market.

In New York the biggest black market item is unpasteurized milk.

Demonstrates the above perfectly. Black market didn't exist until they made it illegal.

The reason why something is illegal, is the combination of two things, 1. It is overall more dangerous then it will help.

Incorrect. Marijuana is less dangerous than tobacco. Many illegal drugs are safer than many prescription drugs.

2. People want it anyways.
Prohibition didn't work because the Demand was much too high. The other drugs do not have as much of demand and are not part of our culture.

Demand for drugs is at an all-time high. Making it illegal hasn't decreased demand, it has increased demand (and costs). If it's something that people really want, making it illegal won't decrease demand, and it doesn't matter what percentage of the population wants it.

Before anyone runs off on a tangent of absurdity, no, that does not mean we should make everything legal. Just because there are psychopaths who enjoy killing people doesn't mean we should make murder legal. When an activity starts to infringe on the rights, life, liberty, etc of another, it must be curbed. But there is no reason to make something illegal if in normal use/practice it doesn't affect another's life, liberty, property, or rights.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Anonymous Coward]

e.g. a child or an uninvolved passerby, as opposed to say a dealer, supplier or someone else in the criminal chain who doesn't have clean hands with respect to the drug trade.

You're missing the point.

A member of the illicit drug trade is still a person, and the killing of said person is still just as bad as killing a child or an uninvolved passerby.

Obviously, you don't care if "they" go around killing each other, as long as they don't kill any of "us". But the division is arbitrary -- "they" are defined by the laws "we" impose, not by their trade. It is not necessary for drug dealers to kill each other. Do brewers go around murdering the competition? They did during prohibition, but now they are far more likely to share recipes. The law makes violent crime a better tactic than the peaceful negotiation found in every other industry.

Consider: a major corporation is found to be colluding with a rival to exercise market power. The penalty? Probably a fine.

Contrast: a drug supplier is found to be conspiring with another. The penalty: mandatory minimum sentences in the dozens of years. Murdering the associate pays off -- even if caught, you are still not much worse off than you would have been if they had testified against you.

It's cold. It's cynical. And it's our fault for marginalizing businesses providing services society obviously wants.

Re:Legalize it all.

[stochos]

I don't think anyone has ever eaten some guy's face after smoking a cigarette or filling up their car with gas, so no... the same reason shouldn't be used to ban cigarettes and fossil fuels.

There are rational arguments for why you might want to ban either (and arguments for why you shouldn't), but the one you're presenting here makes no sense whatsoever.

The only evidence that the face-eating zombie guy was on bath salts is speculation by a police officer, who was previously quoted in the Miami Herald as saying that the cause of the attack was "cocaine" and "a new form of LSD" time.com. They're just pulling it out of their rear ends to fit an anti-drug agenda. In fact, no drugs were found on the suspect, and no toxicology reports have been released proving he was on ANY drugs. The other high-profile murder attributed to bath salts was the murder of a New Jersey student that led to the passing of Megan's Law, criminalizing possession and sale of bath salts. Well lo and behold, the murderer turned out not to have any bath salts in his system. What a shock! I wouldn't be surprised if the same is the case with the face-eating zombie. Why is it so hard for people to accept that people can commit horrific acts without the aid of drugs or demons? Some people are just mentally ill.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Amouth]

thank you, someone else who gets it

Re:Legalize it all.

[Amouth]

you missed my point, but lets try this another way.

It is fine if someone gets drunk and kills the bartender, or the sales person at the liquor store, i mean they aren't "innocent"

It is fine if someone who smokes kills the truck driver for Marlboro, i mean is just the trafficker and ins't "innocent"

It is fine if a pharmacist goes and kills the one store next door, i mean they are just both dealers and aren't "innocent"

Again, using "innocent" is just so people can get a reaction out of others by making them thing this outside element is going to affect their lives, when in reality they are people too and either everyone is or no one is "innocent".

Re:Legalize it all.

[sociocapitalist]

All of it.

Some junkies will kill themselves... but that will taper off quickly. Some kill themselves. Some don't. Some never touch the stuff. If people want to destroy themselves... let them.

...and when they use it as a (legal) gag on their friends or their sister's friends?

The only way to really beat this is to educate children / people of the dangers with honest, graphic information.

Re:Legalize it all.

[GrumpySteen]

You called me an idiot, then made the exact same argument that I made and provided a similar example to the one that I provided. Nice.

Re:Legalize it all.

[FiloEleven]

A lot of the change you are experiencing may be due to selection for THC over other cannabinoids in a lot of breeds. It's not necessarily that it's more potent, it's that the ratio of THC tends to be higher because THC is erroneously thought of as "the active ingredient." There are a lot more incidences of paranoia in people who take THC pills for pain relief than there are for medical marijuana users who smoke or ingest the plant. The "mellow luvving feeling" is a result of a more balanced bouquet.

Re:Legalize it all.

[GrumpySteen]

Note that I didn't claim that bath salts were found (or anything even close to that).

I said you can't argue that cigarettes and gasoline should be banned as a result of the effects of some other completely unrelated drug.

Re:Legalize it all.

[nedlohs]

Because it's impossible for more than one entity to benefit from something without them all conspiring to keep that something?

Re:Legalize it all.

[FiloEleven]

Don't fall prey to the fallacy of the single cause. There was also Dupont, who wanted nylon to replace hemp. There were also racist motivations: making marihuana illegal was a good way to deport the Mexican laborers who were "stealing our jobs" and the Negro musicians who were "corrupting our youth." I'm sure there are a number of other fringe reasons for making it illegal.

Also, it actually started with the Marihuana Tax Act, in which farmers could only grow hemp if they bought stamps to do so from the government. The government didn't sell any stamps. The scheduling came later.

Re:Legalize it all.

[ColdWetDog]

If we're going to rag on drugs, we should start with alcohol. Ask any policeman, fireman, EMT, ER staffer. We have entire ER wings devoted to that one particular drug.

Since we, as a country, decided that it was OK to pickle ourselves into oblivion while simultaneously plastering bystanders to the concrete, then getting all high and mighty about pretty much any other 'recreational' substance is the height of hypocrisy.

Re:Legalize it all.

[roman_mir]

If other drugs were legal, this 'cannibal' wouldn't be taking the synthetic stuff.

The only way that one drug leads to somebody taking another drug (gateway) is because the client already had to approach a pusher rather than going to a store to get some pot or blow or crack or other similar known substance.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Splab]

People will get high, period. Some are lucky enough to be able to cope with just sugar, alcohol or cigarettes, but others need that extra rush.

The reason why some idiots have resorted to bath salt in your fine country or Krokodil in Russia, is the "healthy" illegal drugs are so hard to get your hands on you go for the dirty and *rotten* crap.

(Go look up krokodil on google images, safe search off and lunch well and truly digested, that is some nasty shit).

Re:Legalize it all.

[Splab]

Welcome to the enlightened population.

I prefer weed over alcohol hands down, after I turned 30 going out drinking means at least one day of recovering. Going out high, means I'll be up the next day with no side effects.

Also, noticed how you are not having trouble remembering? Go nuts drinking and you will black out, smoking weed has never given me any problems with performance during or after the fact. In fact, I tend to work better the days after a high than I do otherwise. Fun fact, most of those ill side effects people tend to use as counter arguments to weed are based on FUD and hearsay. Not a single proper done study has shown smoking weed is bad; in fact quite the opposite.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Internetuser1248]

I remember seeing a story in the UK news recently: Some guy had taken a 'legal high' so called ecstasy substitute, and died from it. His parents were out for blood. Their position was that if the government was more aggressive in prohibiting new recreational drugs their son would still be alive. Even disregarding all the completely obvious flaws in their argument (mainly the impossibility of regulating these substances as discussed in the OP), it was a massive facepalm moment for me. I felt like grabbing them by the collar and shaking them and saying "If ecstasy were legal he would still be alive".

I have taken a few untested analogues myself, only after extensive research. Personally I thoroughly recommend tryptamine analogues especially 5-methoxy Di-isopropyl Tryptamine, that stuff is the bees knees. But the fact remains, lsd, ecstasy and marijuana are relatively safe, there are some deaths from ecstasy, maybe one or two from lsd, and exactly 0 from marijuana. Experimental analogues on the other hand are dangerous. Yes I know that the war on drugs is not there to prevent user harm, but I want everyone else to know that too and start asking why we don't start reducing that harm.

Re:Legalize it all.

[noobermin]

I personally think the answer lies in the middle. Shocking I know.

Certain drugs and behaviors can lead to threats to the public good, essentially the harder drugs. Legalizing these perhaps isn't the wisest thing to do. However, psychedelics themselves tend to be harmless as long as they are taken with care. For example, as has been quoted here, weed and LSD are among the least addicting of all substances. There is no reason that they should be illegal.

Still, allowing people to be "weeded out" while taking others with them because they are under the influence is not fair to everyone else whose safety is in danger. I guess libertarians can't understand that people too have a right to live safely and not have their face chewed off, for example. Saying "it'll just happen anyway" is silly. Just because something can happen doesn't mean it is likely or less likely. You can slip on a bath rug and crack your neck but the likely hood of that happening is less than if you do extreme sports, for example.

source: may be not reliable :/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

Still, allowing people to be "weeded out" while taking others with them because they are under the influence is not fair to everyone else whose safety is in danger.

Society has already fixed this problem by revoking driver's licenses and prison time for people who drive under the influence.

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

Show once incidence where alcohol has resulted in someone eating someone else's face off.

Alcohol seemed to play a role in serial killer Jeffrey Dalmer's murders. Even if he didn't eat faces, he engaged in comparable, loathsome activities while under the influence.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

No... I was making distinctions.

There are junkies that will kill themselves.
There are junkies that won't.
There are non-junkies that won't touch it at all whether legal or not.

Let the chips fall where they may.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

Or let him die.

What exactly is the point of keeping him alive.

Sorry for sound harsh here. But stop for a moment and explain LOGICALLY why we should keep this person breathing?

I'm not saying we kill him. I'm saying we limit our aid to such an extent that without some proactive move on his part to save himself... he'll die.

I don't believe in stopping people from commiting suicide. If he won't do anything to save himself. Then that's his problem. If he wants to save himself, then I'll help him.

The treatment centers for example... don't force anyone into them and don't prevent anyone from leaving. They can go whenever they want. If that means they OD on drugs, that was their choice.

I have no problem with forcing children to stay in such programs. But Adults must choose and lie and die by those choices.

We are a free people or we are not. And that means taking responsibility. Do you take responsibility or are you a child. Point blank.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

I suspect much of the drug culture will kill itself if the drugs are legalized. So there will be your public service message right there. A few corpses on a regular basis from junkies that got everything they ever wanted.

Re:Legalize it all.

[0100010001010011]

If he shows up into the ER the doctors took this little oath to treat him.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

There are many ways to achieve the same end.

All I'm saying is that if he cares more for his drug then to live... let him have his drug and die.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Sabriel]

Currently, the government has taken responsibility. For certain values of taken, anyway.

Re:Legalize it all.

[retchdog]

yeah, it's really safe to get scheduled substances posted to you. (yes, you can use a private carrier but i've heard that that's even worse.)

sure there are various tricks to make the shipping safer, but for plain old pot, i think you'd be crazy not to just go with a trusted neighborhood supplier. pot dealers aren't exactly dangerous people, and they have zero incentive to turn on you (law doesn't go after the demand end very much).

silk road is for the weird stuff, but yeah if you're a basement-dwelling maladjust who can't bring himself to talk to anyone, i guess you can use it for pot too. just, please, think about the logistics for two minutes, and for the love of god, don't give your home as a shipping address...

Re:Legalize it all.

[retchdog]

you probably know this, but it's worth telling slashdot that mdma was once used in psychotherapy for more-or-less exactly this reason, until some enterprising assholes spoiled the party by selling it on the street. nonetheless, very limited clinical trials continue even today and support the pharmaceutical use of mdma for ptsd among other disorders.

taking what you say as true, i must admit that i'm impressed that you managed to navigate today's system on your own and come out, not only not worse for wear, but improved. congratulations.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Karmashock]

Possibly... but should it? And constitutionally does it have any place to assume those responsibilities? Do we care? And if not, then consider that not only does the constitution limit powers it also grants every power the government has in the first place. Invalidate it and the government's whole legal existence is debatable.

This is not a question of having compassion for people. By all means, help people that want help and are willing to take SOME step to get it. Lying dying in the street to be collected by medics is not a step. That's lying there like a lump of meat. How we work it out is debatable. I'm open to ideas. But you can't just keep people alive that aren't going to make any effort on their own.

It's like dealing with people in permanent comas. Do you keep them alive for the rest of their lives on life support? Wash them. Feed them. Etc?

At some point, you have to turn the machines off. Those that are going to live will live. Those that won't... won't.

We are not gods. We don't have the power to fix everyone or the resources to take care of people that refuse to take care of themselves. That's another point. How many other people will you deny care to because you've wasted it on people that won't make any effort to save themselves?

Our society will not survive unless people take threats to it's survival seriously.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Deliveranc3]

Really it's about having a few mild mind altering chemicals available legally. Being able to manipulate your mind in a safe environment is a good idea. Having an increasing number of people selling dangerous chemicals because they're addictive and have a high profit margin isn't a good thing.

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

Dahmer was impaling dogs and cats on sticks at the age of 8, without any alcohol involved. You can't really argue that alcohol had much to do with him becoming a serial killer when all the signs were there in his childhood and he'd already started killing things long before he started drinking.

Sure I can. You asked for an example, I gave you one. Now, you're changing the parameters without considering whether the face-eating guy also exhibited similar aberrant behavior in his childhood. All I can say is that if you end up under a bridge taking "bath salts", then probably something in your past wasn't hunky dory.

Reading through the pop psychology on Dahmer, it is claimed that Dahmer also used alcohol to lower his inhibitions enough to kill. Something to think about, I'd say.

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

I said you can't argue that cigarettes and gasoline should be banned as a result of the effects of some other completely unrelated drug.

I guess you don't get it. The drug may be unrelated, but the excuse for banning it is quite related to everything else that can cause us harm. The bottom line here is that we don't have a consistent policy or coherent justification in this area for deciding when we can override a person's freedom to choose. Personally, I think the attempt was deeply flawed from the beginning.

Further, there is a bizarre amount of hypocrisy in this area. For example, the last three presidents of the US all admit to illegal drug use. How can we continue to jail people for acts that our highest leaders brush off?

Re:Legalize it all.

[__aaeihw9960]

you are falling into the media's fascination with only reporting bad things.

Exactly. The news story that I saw listed 'an outbreak of violent cannibalistic crime on the East Coast'. There were four or five instances ranging from upper New York to Florida. Now, I'm not a geographer, but I'm pretty sure that four or five out of then ENTIRE east coast isn't exactly statistically significant.

But it does make for good ratings. . . .

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

The system is merely reflection that... as it should. It would actually be scarier and worse to have a system which does not reflect humanity ruling over us. Such a system will claim superiority to "flawed" humans, and that would be the end for individual freedom: you are a "flawed" human, the system is not human and is perfect, you will obey.

Nonsense. I could claim the same of your next doctor's visit. Merely attempting to better our situation doesn't automatically imply that the resulting situation is going to "claim" superiority over us, flawed humans (or even realize sentience on the first go, it usually takes codes of law several decades to do so and they go through a chess-playing phase first). Second, how does crushing our freedoms through the glorious flaw of the war on drugs somehow keep us free?

I'm not looking for an optimal here, especially one that trammels over everything else. There is something deeply wrong with the war on drugs, not just its consequences, but the very idea that we cannot to a person be responsible enough for ourselves to be left alone in such important matters. Yet at the same time, the highest of the elite, the leaders who we have appointed to carry out this important task have frivolously broken these very laws.

It's only through luck (and maybe power) that any of our last presidents weren't caught and convicted of a drug possession offense. That would have destroyed their careers before they began. Yet few seem to remark on the capriciousness of this anti-lottery, the sad fate of the people who got caught versus the ones who didn't.

Re:Legalize it all.

[Bert64]

IF drugs were legal, then people wouldn't be breaking the law by taking... That was the whole argument, there would be no reason to seek alternatives if they could legally take the original substance.

Re:Legalize it all.

[0100010001010011]

Cops also see the dirty side of what they're doing.

LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Re:Legalize it all.

[khallow]

No you cannot. A doctor is not a system. A doctor is also a flawed human, so what he tells you is not perfect. You can go ask for a second or third opinion and ultimately the decision is up to you on who to listen to.

First, a flawed human is in itself a system. A doctor's office is a system and it's part of what's routinely called a "health care system". Those second and third opinions also come from systems.

Merely attempting to better our situation doesn't automatically imply that the resulting situation is going to "claim" superiority over us

Bettering your situation means improving yourself: building up your own wealth, increasing your own knowledge, etc.

That's not what you're asking. You want to change the system, to improve it. Improving a system - a system that supposedly would watch over a collective of individuals - is improving the system's situation. You're not better off. The system is better off... at ruling over you.

There's a deep flaw in that observation. What part of that system would monitor my recreational drug usage?

ME.

Hence, I'm not only part of the system, I am in its entirety the system. So all your touchie feelie bullshit about enabling human frailty applies as does an absence of trade off between "the system" and "me". It couldn't work out better, if I had thought this through myself.

Trying to get a system to fix human flaws is to force humans to change into something they are not. It robs the people's freedom to be a self-improving human being.

So why do you say that the war on drugs is somehow lower down this particular spectrum of bad ideas than my intent to end it? That is what you've been saying all along, right?

Whitelist

[Anonymous Coward]

Blacklisting is always going to be running behind the curve. I think whitelisting allowed recreational mood/thought-altering substances (currently: ethanol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fat, others?) might work better. Simply make it illegal to sell or distribute new substances to the general public without permission from the FDA.

Re:Whitelist

[camperdave]

Blacklisting is always going to be running behind the curve. I think whitelisting allowed recreational mood/thought-altering substances (currently: ethanol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fat, others?) might work better. Simply make it illegal to sell or distribute new substances to the general public without permission from the FDA.

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all.

The FDA is never going to whitelist anything potent for over-the-counter recreational use.

Re:Whitelist

[betterunixthanunix]

I think whitelisting allowed recreational mood/thought-altering substances

That is exactly what we have now. How does this help at all?

We should legalize drugs, and then apply truth in advertising laws to drug packaging. The FDA can evaluate the safety and risks of recreational drugs; the packages should include a summary of that assessment, and drugs which have not been assessed should have a big warning on them. Give people accurate information, not a jail cell, when they want to get high.

Re:Whitelist

[Curunir_wolf]

The FDA can evaluate the safety and risks of recreational drugs

That won't work, because the FDA works for the pharmaceutical companies, and they want to keep marijuana illegal (it presents them with competition, after all).

Re:Whitelist

[Anonymous Coward]

Pump money where they will but the end result is really the same... government control. The government could tell "big pharma" to screw itself and do the right thing for the citizens. Why not place the blame firmly where it belongs? If politicians allow themselves to be bought and sold we should blame those that take them up on their offer? Hell no. If you want reform and change you need to do it on the level the government. Otherwise you'll spend a few decades chasing big pharma... another few decades chasing big oil... another few decades chasing big [industry we've decided to vilify this week]... when all along we could have just went after big government and did for ourselves.
 
Don't blame industry for following the rules that the government has handed out (as unwritten as some of them may be). Go after the guys who ultimately wield the power.

Re:Whitelist

[Anonymous Coward]

They're never going to white-list anything at all. Just look at OTC drugs. There is all 10 of them and they are the oldest and generally the most useless drugs. Everything else is usually by prescription and the OTC guys get to re-package the same active ingredients ad-nausea, in shinier and shinier boxes.

Re:Whitelist

[couchslug]

Because old "drug" laws work so well, let's add more....

Re:Whitelist

[fustakrakich]

Don't blame industry for following the rules...

Industry (drug, entertainment, etc.) doesn't follow the rules. It makes the rules.

Re:Whitelist

[camperdave]

You realize your first link is about plant fibers being replaced by synthetic yarns, and not about drugs at all, right?

Re:Whitelist

[NotSanguine]

Simply make it illegal to sell or distribute new substances to the general public without permission from the FDA.

You mean like we do with tobacco?

when will we learn?

[wwwrench]

What this means is that the drugs which are legal, are potentially more dangerous than the ones which are banned. Marijuana, mushrooms, LSD have been around long enough that they've been well studied, and we know the risks are minimal. But the latest synthesised version of them has not been studied, and might be dangerous. When will we learn that the war on drugs is just making things worse?

Re:when will we learn?

[garcia]

When business and public safety unions cannot lobby politicians and they will be prosecuted, by death or indefinite jail terms not funded by taxpayers, for doing so.

Re:when will we learn?

[AngryDeuce]

All one has to do is look at the US drug schedules to realize that they have no realistic basis.

I mean, THC is ranked as having a higher abuse potential and danger than cocaine. Psilocybin is ranked higher than amphetamines. Peyote is ranked higher than opiates.

I'm sure it's just coincidental that all the intoxicating substances that grow wild with little human intervention, that have been used spiritually and medicinally for tens of thousands of years, are rated as being "more dangerous" than the opiates that make up the bulk of the pharmaceuticals in use around the world today. It's not like the companies selling the legal recreational drugs like alcohol and tobacco are putting money into keeping these things scheduled in this unrealistic way or anything. Oh, wait...

Re:when will we learn?

[khipu]

Opiates also grow naturally and have also been used medically for thousands of years.

Re:when will we learn?

[betterunixthanunix]

I mean, THC is ranked as having a higher abuse potential and danger than cocaine.

This is not 100% accurate; Schedule II drugs are supposedly drugs with a high potential for abuse, but which have legitimate medical uses; Schedule I are those with a high potential for abuse, but no legitimate medical uses. Cocaine has use as an anesthetic, and amphetamines have use in treating narcolepsy, ADD, and obesity.

The problem with these schedules, of course, is that things become political hotbuttons. Law enforcement officers want to be able to arrest anyone who possesses marijuana, without having to listen to a story about having a prescription; they view placing marijuana in Schedule II as conceding defeat. MDMA was put in Schedule I despite legitimate medical uses as well, because cops wanted to crack down on hippies, punk rockers, and other subcultures. The war on drugs is more about increasing and maintaining police power than about public health.

Re:when will we learn?

[kestasjk]

You're like, totally harshing my buzz man..

Re:when will we learn?

[AbrasiveCat]

All one has to do is look at the US drug schedules to realize that they have no realistic basis.

I mean, THC is ranked as having a higher abuse potential and danger than cocaine. Psilocybin is ranked higher than amphetamines. Peyote is ranked higher than opiates.

I'm sure it's just coincidental that all the intoxicating substances that grow wild with little human intervention, that have been used spiritually and medicinally for tens of thousands of years, are rated as being "more dangerous" than the opiates that make up the bulk of the pharmaceuticals in use around the world today. It's not like the companies selling the legal recreational drugs like alcohol and tobacco are putting money into keeping these things scheduled in this unrealistic way or anything. Oh, wait...

Wait up a minute. Look at all the people that spirituality (religion) has killed and and tell me that religion is harmless.

Past that I agree that "do gooders", "business", and "governments" aren't necessarily out for the general peoples good.

Re:when will we learn?

[khipu]

Sure it has been grown in the US. Opium use was very widespread (laudanum, paregoric) in the US in the 19th century, and it was legal. The opium used was produced from US farms, including in California and the tobacco states. It was legal to do so until the late 30's.

Re:when will we learn?

[sjames]

So much for that then. I guess there just isn't much rhyme or reason the the scheduling at all then.

Re:when will we learn?

[DMUTPeregrine]

The poppy is even the state flower of California.

Yes Please

[JamesP]

Let's ban synthetic drugs while the tradicional/crime financing drugs are still around

Let's make more difficult for people to have their nicotin fix in a less harmful way by banning all 'less harmful' alternatives.

The drug traffickers and tobacco companies are grateful for your cooperation.

If they were Realy serious

[drewsup]

Why not pass a law that just bans any drug that has the potential to be used recreation-ally? Or is that too easy?

Re:If they were Realy serious

[AngryDeuce]

Why not pass a law that just bans any drug that has the potential to be used recreation-ally? Or is that too easy?

Because that always works so well...

Humanity was getting high since the dawn of time. At some point people are going to have to confront the fact that humanity enjoys altering their consciousness for recreational purposes.

Re:If they were Realy serious

[betterunixthanunix]

You mean like alcohol and tobacco? People use caffeine recreationally, despite the danger in doing so. There are a number of ornamental plants that can be used as a drug.

We need to go in the other direction, and stop banning drugs. We also need to stop letting a law enforcement agency dictate the laws it is charged with enforcing (see: emergency drug scheduling). While we are at it, let's stop having paramilitary police, stop attacking civil rights, and stop having the largest prison population on Earth.

Re:If they were Realy serious

[Phrogman]

If you can determine a way to make it outrageously profitable for the rich, and big corporations without threatening the profits of Big Pharma and other key financial interests that hold all the power at the moment, then legalization might have a chance, but until those who control^H^H own the reins of government are satisfied they aren't missing out on a potential money source, it ain't gonna happen.
Prohibition doesn't work, that has been made very obvious, but its going to continue until it suits the rich and powerful to change it.
Personally I would like to see Marijuana legalized, so that the authorities can try to enforce restrictions on more hazardous substances. I don't smoke it, but I recognize the fact that many people under 40 seem to do so, and nothing is going to stop it when a vast majority think its harmless. Its certainly far more harmless than alcohol.
As for the new chemical drugs being developed, I don't know what you can do about that other than offering a simple and legal solution (like legalized pot) and hoping that people will choose that instead to remove the demand for the harsher and riskier stuff like Bath Salts etc.

Re:If they were Realy serious

[gestalt_n_pepper]

You mean like breathing too heavily? Banning oxygen may have unintended consequences. Or that first cup of coffee in the morning? Or alcohol?

So...YES, too easy. Like most simple easy answers, they are just dangerous and wrong.

Re:If they were Realy serious

[sjames]

Do you really want to have open heart surgery under a local?

Perhaps you'd like to be the one to explain to chronic pain sufferers that they're just going to have to suffer living hell because otherwise someone might do something stupid (or have some illicit fun)?

What about things that are 'not a drug' like paint thinner, GHB or bath salts?

Re:If they were Realy serious

[blindseer]

I went through my own suffering because of this war on some drugs. I was injured in the military and as a result I now have chronic pain. I went from one drug to another over the course of years. Each drug had their own side effects, which at some point caused me more suffering than the pain they were intended to relieve which meant a switch to try something else. It took YEARS before I finally got something that both relieved the pain and didn't cause more suffering.

I was ultimately prescribed codeine. I have to wonder why it took them so long to prescribe something that I found to be so effective, simple, and cheap. I didn't care so much about the cost since the Department of Veterans Affairs was paying the bill so it wasn't money out of my pocket, at least not directly. All tax payers in the USA are going to be stuck with paying for my care to some level so all tax payers should be upset that the VA was wasting their money on expensive drugs that did not work instead of the cheap one that does.

The DEA has been cracking down on "pill mills" that are trying to treat pain in the most medically effective and cost effective means. Opiates are probably the cheapest, safest, and most effective means to treat pain. We, as in all of humanity, have been using opiates to treat pain since the start of recorded history and likely for a very long time before that. We have literally thousands of years of history to show how safe and effective these drugs are. How we ended up with an effective ban on its use just baffles me.

Since being prescribed codeine I have started to wonder why this stuff is not available over the counter.

Re:If they were Realy serious

[sjames]

The most common excuse I hear is fear of addiction, but in the case of chronic pain it's not as if the person can just stop taking them anyway, addicted or not and when there is genuine need for the drug the addiction seems less likely and less severe if it does happen.

The propaganda would have us believe that addiction to opiates necessarily turns you into a street junkie but evidence from after WWI when a lot of otherwise functional people became involuntary addicts to heroine due to battlefield treatment suggests that a heroine addict can be otherwise a perfectly normal, happy, and productive member of society. 'Junkies' weren't functional before their addiction and unsurprisingly didn't get any better after addiction. They do get less dysfunctional if they have access to clean and inexpensive heroine.

In general, there seems to be a bias towards using the newer more expensive drugs even when they haven't proven to be any better than the older, cheaper, and better understood drugs. That and a lot of doctors have absolutely no idea what drugs actually cost.

Innovation

[Chemisor]

And they say there is no innovation in America...

Re:Innovation

[AshtangiMan]

Sugar is a mind altering drug. In fact most foods do affect brain chemistry. What you suggest is not only abhorrent for human rights (pursuit of happiness, liberty) but likely impossible. Not that there won't be lobbyists and politicians and evangelical preachers who won't try something like that. Also I'd like to second what your previous replied said.

Re:Innovation

[Curunir_wolf]

Why not ban all mind-altering substances except for a whitelist? Say alcohol, caffeine, nicotene are legal. Everthing else illegal. IANAL but that would seem to solve the legal problem.

They already do that. Oh, wait, were you talking about people NOT in prison?

Re:Innovation

[gestalt_n_pepper]

And what do you whitelist? Alcohol and tobacco remain the most damaging legal drugs. Want to try prohibition again? Good luck. It hasn't worked for pot, cocaine or heroin. It didn't work for alcohol. There's no rational solution that bans the chemicals. Your best options are treatment for those willing and able, and non-treatment for those unwilling or unable (i.e. letting those bent on suicide accomplish it in a humane manner than endangers nobody else). I'd rather have the meth users in a hospital room until they kick off rather than letting them run around loose. Heck, they won't even be paranoid. We'll *tell* them we're trying to kill them.

Re:Innovation

[FiloEleven]

Why not ban all mind-altering substances except for a whitelist? Say alcohol, caffeine, nicotene are legal. Everthing else illegal. IANAL but that would seem to solve the legal problem.

...prozac, ambien, adderall, ritalin, aspirin, tylenol, zyperxa, effexor, xanax, vicodin...

Re:Innovation

[Imrik]

This is already the way it works, however this does not apply to things that are not intended to be consumed.

Re:Declare the compounds

[geoskd]

Make it illegal to sell drugs without declaring the exact compounds and forbid driving or operating dangerous machinery under the influence of any drug.

What about Prozac? What about caffeine, or sugar for that matter. These are all psychoactive chemicals, and quantifying the difference between them and ... say cocaine... is extremely subjective.

-=Geoskd

States are taking a new approach

[Anonymous Coward]

In my state (Georgia), they just banned synthetic pot, and not by chemical name. They actually banned anything that is sold "as a replacement for pot," or something equally vague.

The law says head shops had to either stop selling immediately, or come to court within 30 days and "prove" their product is not a public danger (or something equally vague).

This law seems too broad to be enforceable, but from what I can tell, it has worked. I've heard all the head shops sold off their stock and dont carry the products anymore.

Re:States are taking a new approach

[sjames]

That will fail quickly enough. Someone will repackage it as a refreshing herbal tea, complete with a label warning that it is not for smoking (nudge nudge).

The war on drugs is a stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The war on drugs is just as stupid as the Prohibition. If drugs were legal, but warned against, like tobacco and alcohol, you'd get rid of a huge number of drawbacks with the present policy. The financing of criminal networks would go away. The prisons wouldn't be so full of petty criminals. There would be no development of new synthetic drugs. The users/abusers would be safer, because they would be buying quality assured substances.
Experience from countries like Portugal and the Netherlands show that harm reduction is much more effective than the war on drugs.

Re:The war on drugs is a stupid idea

[betterunixthanunix]

Without the war on drugs, how would we justify giving the police assault rifles, body armor, grenades, tanks, helicopters, etc?

Outsourcing is the problem!

[methano]

If the pharmaceutical industry had not moved so much of it's research off shore, the industry would be doing much better, vast hordes of US and European chemists would not be out of work and if someone made this kind of stuff, we could just arrest them. No need to involve Interpol or whoever that international police force is.

Harness it

[pubwvj]

Time to harness the creative research being done by these chemists. They have so many test subjects volunteering that we're getting large scale field studies. Don't lose all that data!

"Analogue" extremely misleading

[NCatron]

Working in drug discovery, I'm still amazed at how often a small change of sometimes even a single atom of a molecule can take an pharmacologically active molecule and make it near-worthless - or even worse take a (relatively) safe molecule and turn it unacceptably toxic. I'd stay FAR away from any "analogue" being created with the sole purpose of rounding a ban without having any sort of safety and probably minimal efficacy testing.

I'd say this kind of story gives even stronger evidence for why illicit drugs (the less-toxic at least) should be legalized & controlled - if this article is not overly sensational and there really is an escalating war of chemistry we could get into some pretty nasty stuff being marketed to consumers who do not know any better.

Propoganda

[Zero__Kelvin]

I've got news for you. If the guy beat his adoptive mother and brother to within an inch of their lives on K2, then they should thank their lucky stars he was on K2, or they would be dead right now.*.

Disclaimer:I've actually tried K2 and know what I'm talking about.

Perhaps you were unaware of this, but when the government wants to make something illegal, they are often not truthful. Furthermore, correlation doesn't equal causation. If one smokes a joint and then goes and kills someone, they didn't kill someone because they smoked a joint; they killed someone because they are a murderous person.

Re:Propoganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer:I've actually tried K2 and know what I'm talking about.

I've got news for you.

You're a fucking idiot for trying that shit. Stick with real weed.

Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act bans "Cannabis, its preparations, derivatives and similar synthetic preparations".

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-38.8/page-24.html#h-27

Re:Canada

[Dunbal]

Cannabis, like all plants, contains clorophyll. Therefore under this law, preparing a THC analogue synthetically should carry the same penalty is preparing synthetic clorophyll, since they are both cannabis derivatives.

Re:Canada

[vux984]

since they are both cannabis derivatives.

Corophyll is not a cannabis derivative.

I call BS

[wbr1]

'That's the crux of the entire problem. The scientific community does not agree on what "analogue" essentially means.""

The crux of the problem is our crazy war on drugs. The fact that a person cannot smoke a joint at home legally, but can drive to the bar, get hammered, get in an assaultive fight, then drive home drunk possibly killing people is simply ridiculous.

Instead of allowing a real market, with the safest possible standards, we have a black market with adulterated crap, and chemical 'analogues' with unknown long term effects.

Instead of simple stores and methods of purchase, we have gang wars, and prisons filled to bursting, many with low end crimes. As a society can we focus on the sociopaths and rapists please? And quit with this stupid shit?

The War On Some Drugs exists because...

[couchslug]

...religion hates spiritual experience and even simple pleasure it doesn't ration.

Note the level of Bible Thumper influence which not only drove Prohibition, but anti-"narcotics" (cannabis is not one) laws in the same era.

Taliban must control sex and control other pleasures, and to accomplish that goal must define disobedience as "sin" then punish it.

The cost of WOSD is spectacular, and it fuels the wave of immigration from the narco-states it creates (though the Christian Taliban are completely incapable of connecting the disruption of civil society with flight to the US!).

Re:The War On Some Drugs exists because...

[couchslug]

"Excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco is also a contributor to the impoverishment of the lower classes. Look at how the tobacco companies prey upon the people in developing nations."

Imprisonment and fines for having illicit substances are arguably much more destructive of the lower classes, branding them with a "scarlet letter" for their "sins" in the form of a criminal record which keeps them from being employed thereby making "more crime" their only viable way of making money.

They are punished for "sin" then coerced by circumstance into more "sin" which feeds the whole "virtuous master/sinful slave" dynamic.

Instead of flat-earther nonsense, how about we use CRITICAL THINKING and SCIENCE to mitigate the damage done by (some) bad choices made by (some) people instead of burning down the house to (not) kill the mice?

Prohibition fails, again

[Rambo Tribble]

Any prohibition creates a profitable black market, but technology has added a profitable, front-counter venue for these "illicit" products, as well. At this point the only thing that could provide a shred of control or containment is legalisation.

Of course, legalisation carries a political risk not often noted; unemployment figures would sky-rocket, should the jailed be liberated.

Re:Declare the compounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Caffeine is a non-selective adenosine antagonist. Prozac is an SSRI. Cocaine is an SNDRI. Sugar is indirectly psychoactive, at best. The pharmacology is far from subjective.

Religion is a minor issue in the war on drugs

[betterunixthanunix]

...religion hates spiritual experience and even simple pleasure it doesn't ration.

Thus explaining why Jews are required to drink wine every week and are required to drink four glasses (definitely enough for almost anyone to at least get a buzz) on Passover. You also forgot about the numerous religions that use psychedelic mushrooms as part of their ceremonies. Religion is not the problem here.

If you want to know why we have a war on drugs, I can think of the following more plausible explanations:

1. Racism. Congressmen were told that black men who used cocaine would becoming unstoppable monsters, that Philipino immigrants would bring their horrible opium habits with them, that white women who smoked marijuana would want to have sex with black men, that crack makes black people crazy, that PCP makes black people crazy, etc.
2. Police militarization. The war on drugs is a great excuse to give police officers assault rifles, body armor, and even military tanks and helicopters (see: 1033 program). The police can also use the proceeds from seized assets from drug arrests in their own budgets.
3. Expanding executive branch power. The Controlled Substances Act allows the attorney general's office to simply declare drugs to be illegal, without any democratic process.
4. Corporate profits. Alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, pharmaceutical companies, firearms companies, prison operators, companies that make surveillance equipment, petrochemical companies, and numerous others have all seen expanded profits because of the war on drugs.

Religion is really a minor issue here. There are a few priests who will pound on their pulpits about the evils of drugs, but their power in the drug war is limited at best.

Re:Religion is a minor issue in the war on drugs

[ClioCJS]

You're cherry picking. The religions you describe represent less than 5% of all religious people on the planet. The other 95% are exactly in line with what GP said.

Re:Religion is a minor issue in the war on drugs

[couchslug]

"Thus explaining why Jews are required to drink wine every week and are required to drink four glasses (definitely enough for almost anyone to at least get a buzz) on Passover. You also forgot about the numerous religions that use psychedelic mushrooms as part of their ceremonies. Religion is not the problem here."

You just confirmed my point regarding ____CONTROL____. Now note that CEREMONIAL use is ____CONTROL___, and note your reference to Jewish ___REQUIREMENTS___ in your post.

Stop defending religion. It's not defensible. It's superstitious nonsense designed for Shamans to CONTROL those who are not, and to EXALT Superstitionists above those not sharing their delusion.

Re:Religion is a minor issue in the war on drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, those are examples of drugs being administered for religious purposes, so that any enjoyment derived from them will be associated with the religion. The idea that someone could go off and get high on their own - that's what religions dislike.

Re:Declare the compounds

[circletimessquare]

lsd is a drug

caffeine is a drug

therefore, they are the same legal entity

no, this is just intellectual dishonesty, sophistry, or you're just stupid

marijuana should be legal, but there's drugs out there where the effects are so horrible, they should stay illegal. simply because the effects of those drugs being illegal, while bad, are less than the effects drugs being legal: screwed up lives

methamphetamine. what this shit does to you? permanently? this shit should be legal?

then we get into a discussion about how safe environments and how carefully monitored dosing prevents tragedies

what the fuck?

when did society get in the business of enabling drug use?

if someone has fallen through the cracks and is addicted to drugs, society should treat this person, not put them in jail. but this should be reactive, not proactively enable "safe" use of highly addictive substances that really fuck up your life. addiction is a REAL PROBLEM, not a vague idea that a little application of will power can get over.

of course, some treatment is ineffective. with more resources, they might be effective

well yeah, with inffinite resources, even the most helpless basically suicidal self-destructive addict can be saved

but we don't live in a world of infinite resources

there's a difference between recreational casual use, and a person that is basically trying to kill themselves in slow motion

highly addictive substances have probably destroyed more lives in the history of homo sapiens than all wars combined, by orders of magnitude. making it all legal really just enables a lot of us walking around with the seeds of self-destruction to go full blown self-destructive. there has to be a barrier in society against the use of really vile substances

you have to understand what chronic drug use really is: suicide. society is not interested in enabling suicidal tendencies. therefore, there will always be illegal substances. come to grips with this, naive idealists

don't engage in sophistry and reductive nonsense when you talk about drugs. it is one of the most if not most complicated issues ever to face mankind. there are no easy answers, and there is really just a lot of pain, no matter what the legal approach

all i can say about drug use with certainty is this: as soon as someone says the answer is simple, and that simple answer is complete legalization or complete prohibition, you are dealing with a fucking moron who doesn't understand drugs

There is also the other side of this

[durdur]

If someone discovered a new biologically harmless but mind-altering drug, it would be made illegal, too. They are banning these things not only, or even primarily, because they are dangerous, but because they get you high.

USPTO to the rescue.

[mevets]

Applying the precedent set by software patents, I should be able to get a patent for "... any substance which causes people to enjoy themselves...".
Then Johnson and Johnson could sick some sort of RIAA inspired analogue on these "pirates".
That would avoid implementation details like chemical formulae and such.

mmmm mojo...

Not Marijuana or LSD

[Doc Ruby]

These synthetic drugs aren't mimicking the effects of marijuana, or of LSD. They just change your perceptions or ideas. They aren't mimicking the effects of valium, either, but nobody ays that they are. Because "mimicking valium" isn't scary scary scary. Because the corporate mass media isn't trying to scare people about valium. Because valium is actualy Valium, a brand name drug sold by giant pharmacos that advertise on TV. Marijuana and LSD are sold by independent operators who don't pay TV corps $billions a year to make them sound friendly. That's why they're illegal. Even though they're not anywhere near as scary as valium, which is actually addictive.

But that doesn't stop Slashdot from saying these drugs "mimic marijuana", or the Miami cops telling the corporate mass media that bath salts are "a new form of LSD" when some idiot turns themself into a flesh eating zombie possibly by smoking some. Because there's no corporate PR pushback to protect the brand, any kind of inane lie will fly around the media if it appeals to fear of drugs.

The fact that in 2012 the mass media is quoting cops saying bath salts are "the new form of LSD", and Slashdot is pimping the idea that some arbitrary drug "mimics marijuana" shows that the only victory in the Drug War is the first casualty of any war: the truth.

Re:Not Marijuana or LSD

[Doc Ruby]

Yes there are. But bath salts aren't "a new form of valium", either. I didn't say people don't take valium recreationally. The point is that the cops and media aren't saying these synthetics are "scary valium scary". They're not even whining about the actual new forms of valium that some people are taking recreationally.

Re:A simple proposal

[Doc Ruby]

How about you just leave us alone with whatever we want to do with our protein receptors?

Criminalize actual acts that actually harm someone else, regardless of the cause. If you want to make an aggravated crime out of doing harm as a result of doing something else that's known to be risky, especially on a second or further conviction, that's got some merit.

But criminalizing people self-stimulating (or inhibiting) their own bodies is tyranny. It has failed over and again, every time, creating far more damage than the drug consumption ever has. While failing to stop the consumption. And destroying both justice itself and the people's ability to trust it, atop the rubble of everything else the prohibition touches.

This article is a failure in its-self

[kelemvor4]

while I might think it's an analogue, another chemist might disagree,' says Shanks. 'That's the crux of the entire problem.

The author seems to have missed the fact that the real crux of the problem and that is that the country has banned the relatively safe versions, causing people to seek out these dangerous copies.

Re:Declare the compounds

[Dunbal]

Yeah, that will stop it.

Re:Declare the compounds

[Dodgy G33za]

Agreed you should not put them in jail. But if society didn't ban things that didn't kill you, you would have a fair idea that getting something illegally would. After all, just because we have overpasses doesn't mean that people will jump off them.

As it stands I need to go to the same person to get a hit of grass, as I do a hit of H. And they probably get better margins on the H.

They already have it

[ArchieBunker]

Its called Salvia. Still legal in most places although nobody ever describes it as pleasant.

Re:They already have it

[FiloEleven]

I would describe it as pleasant. I've had it four or five times, and for me, if there are friends present, it results in a going-away feeling accompanied by uncontrollable laughter. The one time I did it by myself, the going-away feeling was there, and instead of hilarity I felt very still and tranquil. There are a lot of people who don't like the drug, and it is a psychedelic so set and setting play an important role. It's also not a party drug, not something to do to "have a good time."

Also, salvia has been prohibited by several US states, with legislation moving through a number of others to do the same.

Illegal drugs make too much money that...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

1) Finances the CIA and similar organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US)

2) Keeps banks and probably financial companies afloat via laundering: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade?newsfeed=true

3) Manages to roll its way into congressional campaigns (http://tomflocco.com/fs/FBILinguist.htm)

So... don't expect rational legalization anytime soon.

Let em!

[p51d007]

If someone is STUPID enough to: drink, snort, inject some chemical into their body, as long as they are in the confines of their own home, I could care less. It is when they interact with the public (go outside, drive a car) that I have a problem with it. In my youth, I NEVER experimented with any chemicals other than alcohol. I stopped drinking in my late 30's when it became apparent that it hurt too much the next day to get up and go to work, because I couldn't stop at just one. The problem with chemical abuse is when you have an addictive behavior pattern. OCD, ADHD or whatever you want to call it, if you have a somewhat addictive personality, and cannot stop at "just one", these new "chemicals" that are produced to get around bans on K2, bath salts, who knows what they will do to your brain cells, if you have any left. I just wish they would somehow chemically map these chemicals to render the user sterile, so eventually these dopes that snort the equivalence of drano, will take themselves out of the gene pool. As for marijuana, about the only time you hear or see someone get out of hand is when the police refuses to take the arrested individual by the taco bell before going to jail. LOL.

Reefer Madness-style exaggerations

[Osgeld]

eh I wouldn't say these synthetics are as harmless as the real deal, back when I smoked pot I could pretty much smoke it all the time and aside from munchies and not wanting to do much, there was little side-effects.

This shit on the other hand, when I did try some out of curiosity, 1 puff too many and the muscles in my neck clinched up, I started having what felt like a massive panic attack, and according to my wife turned ghost white, and were not talking smoking a lot here. So there's some bad mojo going on in this stuff, and it may or may not effect different people in different ways, while the Reefer Madness-style exaggerations are out there, they might not be as exaggerated as it first seems.

Of course Law enforcement wouldn't have a synthetic problem if they just legalized pot in a responsible manner, much in the same manner as booze ... but no, we couldn't ever have something reasonable that people wanted could we?

The problem is the concept of 'banning' things

[ghostdoc]

It's ridiculous for lawmakers to even engage in this whack-a-mole game.

Instead of banning substances, we should be banning behaviour.

If you want to get high in the privacy of your own home and eat a half-ton of Oreo's while watching the whole of Lord of The Rings extended expanded Director's Cut, you go right ahead, sir, have a nice day.

If you choose to attempt to drive while stoned/drunk/wasted/incompetent/texting then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Driving Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.

If you choose to walk through a public space shouting your arse off about aliens, then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Acting Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.

Equip all police officers with video cameras. Have them show the video in the trial and the magistrate decides whether the cop was right to make the arrest.

Re:The problem is the concept of 'banning' things

[AbrasiveCat]

It's ridiculous for lawmakers to even engage in this whack-a-mole game.

Instead of banning substances, we should be banning behaviour.

If you want to get high in the privacy of your own home and eat a half-ton of Oreo's while watching the whole of Lord of The Rings extended expanded Director's Cut, you go right ahead, sir, have a nice day.

If you choose to attempt to drive while stoned/drunk/wasted/incompetent/texting then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Driving Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.

If you choose to walk through a public space shouting your arse off about aliens, then you're guilty of a new offence called 'Acting Like A Dick' and can be prosecuted for that.

Equip all police officers with video cameras. Have them show the video in the trial and the magistrate decides whether the cop was right to make the arrest.

For number 2, most U.S. states already have that one covered with reckless driving.

Evolutionary conservatism

[John Guilt]

We bred the drug plants to be useful to us---I include 'recreation' as being very useful, note. This doesn't mean that they're perfect, or free of side-effects, or (Grid help us) 'A PLANT, not a DRUG, maaaaaaaaan,' but it does mean that some harm minimisation has been built into them and the rituals and morés associated with their use.

You can chew coca for a long lifetime to little or no ill effect; millions have, ever since the Spanish broke the nobles' monopoly on the leaf---and I guess you can use crack for a lifetime, but it doesn't sound like it would be as long or as net-pleasant as one I'd want, even were it legal. Similarly, I'd rather need my pipe of opium nightly to fall asleep and relieve the aches and stresses of the day than need to inject morphine or heroin in order to function at all.

I'm all for advancing our knowledge and abilities, but when we start using chemicals that have not stood the test of time, we're in greater danger than before. This is not limited to synthetic chemicals: some of the non-THC components of pot's seem to ameliorating effect in those individuals---and they do exist---for whom THC can be a contributing factor in the development of clinical schizophrenia...but the drugs laws have helped to shift the profile strongly toward THC. Tobacco was used by American Indians, but never constantly, and usually in combination with other plants that at least reduced the total nicotine intake (even as they might increase tars, for all I know).

Again, we should not limit ourselves to those things our ancestors developed, but we should maintain an healthy scepticism toward the untried, especially when we're hacking with our core wetware.

Re:Declare the compounds

[paiute]

They are not being sold as drugs.

Expand the Swiss Canton system

[barv]

The world has changed in the last twenty years. Online control by voter polling of our representatives' legislative acts has become a technical possibility. We can now go beyond the village and state level. We could set up a system whereby everybody would only need access to the Internet to securely vote.

No matter how many laws or constitutional changes we manage to have enacted, none would have such political impact as simply enacting an amendment allowing voters to repeal unwanted legislation.

Darwin

[barv]

I think that the single most important thing for human evolution is to maximize the individual's "liberty" where "liberty is the freedom to do everything which injures no one else" (rights of man 1789).

Enacting laws that limit an individual's liberty on the grounds that "they might injure someone else" is the slippery slope to perdition. We could use that reasoning to ban cars, fast food, electricity, sex....

Just legalize the lot. And let Darwin have his way. I am happy to help my brother if he asks, but I am not his keeper.

I'm so sick of this

[Mr.CRC]

Here's my plan:

1. Legalize marijuana and traditional hard drugs: cocaine, methamphetamine and amphetamine, heroin, morphine, ketamine, MDMA, etc. I have reservations about PCP, but heck, legalize it too--because my system will create strong but non-criminal incentives to not sell people PCP (which is one of the very few drugs that can actually cause drug psychosis--meth's propensity for this is WAY over hyped by propaganda, and more likely due to poor nutrition and impure drug anyway in the rare cases that it occurs. Now do this:

2. Do NOT regulate and tax the heck out of it. Just:

2a. Pharmacy is legally exempt from legal ramifications if buyer has an adverse reaction.

2b. Pharmacy is legally restricted to sell a modest "ration" to each buyer per week. Of course, addicts will try to get their friends to sell them their ration. This is OK. Remember--it's all legal. But...

3. Since ONLY a pharmacist is legally exempt from lawsuit for selling the regulated amount, and your friend or factory is NOT, your friend can choose to sell it to you or not. But many, such as myself, will tell you to go away because I have a life and a job, etc., and am not interested in the risk of a lawsuit because you blow your heart out snorting my weekly 0.5g of coke, for a measly $20. Some people will choose to take the risk and peddle their rations. That's Ok--but the incentive will be to not do this.

4. A free market for medical insurance to create financial incentives to not abuse drugs. The market may then evolve the following situation:

4a. Disaster insurance--covers hospital stays and serious medical bills that would financially wreck the typical person. Cheap to buy, but relatively high deductibles of several $1000. That will make most healthy young adults happy. Buy preventative care and small incidental care with cash--it will be much cheaper without the gov. mandating that doctors and ins. cos. cover everything. It cost me $7 for a doctor visit when I was a kid.

4b. More thorough insurance that covers stuff like child delivery, some prescription meds., etc. More expensive, but lower deductible, and guaranteed to cover things that are likely but not certain to happen, like child birth. Suitable for middle class folks when they get started on their careers.

4c. Steep discounts for healthy lifestyles. You take cocaine and heroin and it shows on your yearly insurance co. piss test, that's Ok. You just don't get the healthy lifestyle discount. Strong incentive for folks to not abuse drugs. Occasional users can just not use any for 2 weeks before their piss test.

4d. Charity hospitals for caring for the poor. To the extent that the charity system has the resources to treat. This was what worked, imperfectly, but better than bankrupting a whole nation which is going to happen with the present system. Then we will all get nothing. And how big a health risk is a civil war?

4e. Government clinics for preventative care, first aid, shooing away people with the common cold, vaccines, urgent care etc. I'm a libertarian, but life isn't simple. I'll make a compromise here. But no, we will NOT treat you with $500000 of care to extend your life 6 months when you are 77 and at the end of the road. We'll give you a bottle of morphine if you can't afford it and send you on your way to meet you maker. It's what we all much ultimately face. My neighbor should not be obligated to pay for my life extension with 1/2 of his lifetime earnings.

5. Pharmaceutical drugs should be similarly deregulated, so that folks with terminal diseases who are going to die anyway can take the risk of testing a new drug that has little risk data behind it, but which might just save them. And nonsense like this doesn't happen anymore... A final little anecdote:

GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyric acid) was banned because a handful of people were victimized by the "date rape" crime. One could argue that they took a large risk by hanging out with the nightclub trash where this happens anyway. Anyway, it u

Re:I'm so sick of this

[rock_climbing_guy]

In 4c, it sounds like you want to impose piss tests on the entire populace. That's not going to fly with a lot of people.

Re:I'm so sick of this

[couchslug]

"GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyric acid) was banned because a handful of people were victimized by the "date rape" crime."

If that's the metric for banning, buying jello shots should be a felony!

How is pot defined by current law?

[cvtan]

Need some info here. How is marijuana defined by current drug laws? Is it a plant of a certain species? A certain drug described by chicken wire? If there are 80 varieties of pot plants, do they all have to be individually made illegal?

How they solved this in Western Australia...

[jonwil]

They banned the synthetic drug with the first mix of chemicals then when the second mix came along, they seized it pending the outcome of tests to make sure it didn't contain the banned chemicals (i.e. if it didn't, they would return it to the people it was seized from). Of course, by the time the test was complete, whatever new chemicals were in it were already on the banned list.

I haven't heard any media reports since then so either they gave up (realizing that anything they tried to sell would be seized and banned) or its not being reported on by the media for some reason (maybe the cops dont want it reported on)

Re:Declare the compounds

[blindseer]

You mean like marijuana?

Whack-a-Mole?

[DinDaddy]

Surely that ought to have read Whack-a-Molecule.

Portugal

[Fned]

Decriminalized all drugs. No punishment for users; only dealers remained criminals.

Within a year or two, drug abuse rates for all previously illegal drugs fell by half.

Violent crime, in the meantime, doubled. Because the market contracted by half, and said market was populated entirely by criminal sellers.

Lessons learned:

1) Anyone who thinks drug abuse will increase due to legalization is probably wrong.
2) Anyone who thinks decriminalizing use, while keeping manufacture and sale illegal, is a good idea, is... what's a polite way of saying "mouth-breathing fucktard?". This is literally the worst "compromise" possible. You know how everything's gone full-bore apeshit in Mexico lately? They decriminalized small-scale drug possession in 2009...

Legalization is the only path to regulation. See: Alcohol.

Re:It's about regulating "pleasure"

[couchslug]

Pleasure must be rationed by religion, or it competes with superstition.

Religion is slavery.

Re:Declare the compounds

[geoskd]

Right. This republican attitude might work in certain circles of callous and selfish, but those actualy interested in a better society, anyone with a heart and a brain, will try to our darnedest to make sure tea party douchebags like yourself dont get to make policy decisions.

Its not a republican attitude or a tea party attitude. It is the only logical result of enlightenment. Before you start getting truly preachy, stop and ponder: Darwin always wins. In the battle that is evolution, you might win a few skirmishes, but evolution always takes the grand prize. Just because humans claim its noble to protect the weak, doesn't make it any less futile. In the long run, its self destructive. Better to just let the weak take them selves out now, and the let our collective children sleep a little easier not having the burden of carrying the weak.

The human organism has a circumstance where the "useless cells" are no longer actively destroyed by the organism. This circumstance is called cancer, and it will kill the organism.

-=Geoskd

Re:Declare the compounds

[geoskd]

no, this is just intellectual dishonesty, sophistry, or you're just stupid

Personal attacks aside that was the exact point fo the article you apparently didn't read.

all i can say about drug use with certainty is this: as soon as someone says the answer is simple, and that simple answer is complete legalization or complete prohibition, you are dealing with a fucking moron who doesn't understand drugs

Actually the answer is simple. Unless it can be demonstrated beyond a doubt that something the government does improves society, then the government should not be doing it.

Our war on drugs can at best be called a draw. As a consequence of the quagmire that it is, the government should get the hell out of it. Now if someone comes up with a program that can be demonstrated to help drug addicts become productive members of society and that program puts more back into society than it costs, then I'm all for it, but prohibition is not the answer it was supposed to be, so it should be ended.

-=Geoskd

Re:Declare the compounds

[geoskd]

Sugar is indirectly psychoactive, at best. The pharmacology is far from subjective.

Sugar is psychoactive. So right there, we have a disagreement as to the effect of a simple, everyday, legal drug. It is highly subjective.

-=Geoskd

Re:Declare the compounds

[DerangedAlchemist]

By every medical or fact based study, marijuana, shrooms and LSD are among the safest drugs ever known. Psilocybin and LSD are completely non-habit forming; as in they are much, much less addictive coffee.

Meth is not some new drug. It was the typical biker 'speed'. And there were many years when the US was producing massive quantities of amphetamines for prescription use.

The vast majority of heroin users are not addicts, but occasional users. Similar to how the vast majority of people who drink are not alcoholics. The brain damage levels of alcoholics are incredible and much more severe what a cocaine addict has. (I am not advocating cocaine use; the heart attack rate is very high.)

The medical facts are a VERY different story than is portrayed and then there are problems like the complete lack of evidence prohibition reduced alcoholism. Alcoholics made sure to get a dealer.

Re:Failed policies, guaranteed.

[rock_climbing_guy]

A double-CD release of the sounds of children banging pots and pans together while screaming incoherently for 143 minutes, with liner-notes written by a retarded monkey.

That sounds better than some of the crap that passes for music nowadays.

Re:The crux of the problem...

[couchslug]

"... is the abject lack of morality in modern society"

As contrasted with WHICH imaginary "Good Old Days" society where things were supposedly better and please supply citations?

Stupid United Nations, bannish them

[cheekyboy]

Its the UN who first said to all countries, to make pot illegal.

before that, there were no such laws, but the dick head mother fucker lawyers and pollys just listened to the UN like its god or something, and then made these laws.

To the sound of PE, FUCK THE UN.

Seriously, those bunch of crooks should be shutdown.

So you are the taliban

[cheekyboy]

They dont like something, ban it, then kill you.

Face it, life isnt easy, if a drugged up nut tries to eat your face, well, if the law allowed you to carry a gun, blow the fucker up with a round of 15.

Stop blaming K2, those canaboid type synths make you more hazy/lazy and weak.

He was probably a fucked up nutter any way.

You know bees kill more people than pot, so lets kill ban destroy ALL bees on earth.

Then you will see four years later human civilization drop from 7 billion to 1 billion.