Slashdot Mirror
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.""
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?
Deconstruct the State
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.
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.
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.
Kittens don't come with warnings. Does that mean they are safe to huff?
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kitten_huffing
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.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
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.
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.
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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 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."
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.
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.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
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.