How the Web Makes a Real-Life Breaking Bad Possible

gallifreyan99 writes "The real revolution in drugs isn't Silk Road—it's the open web. Thanks to the net, almost anyone with a basic handle on chemistry can design, manufacture and sell their own narcotics, and in most cases the cops are utterly unable to stop them. This piece is kind of crazy: the writer actually creates a new powerful-but-legal stimulant based on a banned substance, and gets a Chinese lab to manufacture it."

Comments

Oh my god, it's full of information

[wonkey_monkey]

The internet has information on it. We'll bring you the latest as this story unfolds.

Re:Oh my god, it's full of information

[xaxa]

The internet kind of has information on it. We'll actually bring you the latest as this story unfolds.

FTFY, kind of in the style of the actual summary.

(Apologies, kind of. Poor writing style actually annoys me.)

Re:Oh my god, it's full of information

[wonkey_monkey]

I am so like totally with you on that one.

Re: Oh my god, it's full of information

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of like you, actually.

Re:Oh my god, it's full of information

[wonkey_monkey]

I got +5 Funny for that? Yeesh. Easy crowd.

Federal Analog Act?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Obviously enforcement of every bespoke chemical being synthesized to order is impractical even by the standards of the drug wars; but are substances such as the one described in the article actually 'legal'? My (admittedly layman's) understanding of the Federal Analog Act was that it was a fairly blatant blanket ban on 'absolutely anything that looks like something illegal and has some recreational potential'. A rather expansive law; but one that you can't just wiggle past on a technicality (though, obviously, you can wiggle past on sheer logistical impracticality; but so can ~40 billion dollars worth of cocaine, so that isn't really a legality test...)

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Opportunist]

The problem I personally have with the analogue act is the other side of it: Considering that pretty much anything that you can somehow introduce to your body and that doesn't kill you outright has some kind of psychological effect on it. If only it simply eliminates your feeling of hunger, i.e. food. Now, considering how similar from a chemical point of view many things are, especially when it comes to things that contain benzene- or furan-rings, according to that catch-all act you can essentially outlaw whatever you see fit.

Half of the E-numbered additives should actually be on the banned list according to that rubberband law.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Oh, it's an egregiously sloppy law, leaving the power of selective enforcement right in the hands of people who really shouldn't be trusted with safety scissors, much less discretionary state force; but that's part of why I'm skeptical that this exercise in analog production is 'legal'. No way is the multinational-supply-chain-chemical-industry going to approve of meddling DEA agents getting in the way of business, so it's probably pretty low risk; but it would take some serious doing to come up with a psychoactive variant of a banned substance that doesn't fall within scope, if somebody notices.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[stenvar]

Brilliant! It won't actually do much to reduce recreational drug use, but it will mean a lot more restriction on companies developing legal drugs. Big pharmaceuticals should love that, because in the end, only a few of them will be left who are actually able to pay for the licenses and security associated with drug development under such restrictions. Crony capitalism at its best!

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[lucm]

You don't read the right kind of websites. The reason why the coke business is thriving is that it has the blessing of the Secret Government who has agents in South America injecting a DNA marker in the raw product so drug users can be detected and prevented from joining the Secret Government. This strategy was inspired by the bomb-sniffing dogs who actually can't detect bombs but rather are sensitive to a specific compound injected in the explosives for the purpose of detection.

As for designer drugs (aka the generics of the illegal drug trade): they are a shameful byproduct of greed and are standing in the way of chemical innovation by depriving mainstream drug labs from a large proportion of the revenue they should get. Like the Goophone.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[sjames]

That's why they always claim 'not for human consumption'.

There are many things normally used for perfectly legitimate purposes that will also act as a drug if 'misused'.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Obviously enforcement of every bespoke chemical being synthesized to order is impractical even by the standards of the drug wars; but are substances such as the one described in the article actually 'legal'?

In Australia where the story is based, maybe (Designer Drugs Legislation), but would it be enforced? No. Sythetic Cannabis analogs are illegal here under the same legislation, but before seizing them they have to be run through Lidcombe labs where there is a long waiting list, in the meantime the distributors are making a lot of money - and have legal heavyweights that can and have stalled the process.

One of the things the sensationalised story overlooked is that the same compound could be manufactured to order almost anywhere in the world - China just happens to give the story more zing.

It should also be noted that these and other "designer" drugs are not very enjoyable. The reality is that all the "good" drugs (relatively harmless, few unpleasant side effects) are either illegal or heavily taxed and subject to production and distribution monopolies.

In New South Wales they have laws in place that can make possession of a length of garden hose and a milk bottle illegal. The laws against drugs have a purpose and it's not to stop people taking them. Good luck banning them - I studied organic chemistry and pharmacology, everything on your spice rack, even your lawn itself has non-amine precursors. But that'd involve a bit of work and an outlay. Give me a truck, a woodchipper, a chainsaw, and malicicious intent and I can actually get paid big money to legally collect large amounts of (very) rich *amine* precursors for Alpha Methyl PhenEthyl Amines (MMDA and speed/Ice etc) - as could any number of people who likewise have no motivation to get rich from recreational drugs - or compete with very competitive existing marketers, and the host of "officials" who live off them. By rich I mean 5 - 8% and in semi trailer loads. Continuously.

The drug industry, the other industry that calls their clients "users".

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, the Federal Analog Act doesn't apply outside the USA (yet).

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret government is aware of your post. Please do not provoke us!

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Hatta]

It should also be noted that these and other "designer" drugs are not very enjoyable. The reality is that all the "good" drugs (relatively harmless, few unpleasant side effects) are either illegal or heavily taxed and subject to production and distribution monopolies.

We've only scratched the surface of what's possible. You're right, many of the current "research chemicals" are worse than their natural counterparts. JWH is absolutely less fun and more harmful than THC. Whatever they're passing around on blotter these days is no match for real LSD.

But for that matter, LSD was an unknown research chemical once. And it's at least as good as any natural psychedelic. I have it on good authority that MXE, discussed in the article, is more enjoyable than Ketamine. At this point we don't know what the side effects are, but it's possible that it's safe.

There are receptors in our brain that we don't even know what they bind. The receptors that we do know the ligands of, have allosteric sites that could bind novel chemicals. The drugs we know of could be improved upon, we don't know until we try.

So yes, don't take "spice" or bath salts. But don't be surprised if something new and amazing comes out of these basement labs either.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Patch86]

Cooking up your own drugs probably can't be outlawed, any more than drinking household cleaners can be outlawed- it's impossible to legislate for every little thing a person could do to themselves.

On the other hand, it would be eminently possible to outlaw "supplying a substance to a person with the intention or knowledge that they would consume it without having been through the proper licensing and testing authorities", which essentially deals with Breaking Bad style home-cook drug dealers.

That's probably what the law you quoted is trying to achieve in your jurisdiction, and could be easily legislated for in others. Basically- if it looks like drug dealing, it probably is.

Incidentally, (while I'm a complete non-drug user- too square for any of that, I think) I'm generally for the legalisation of most milder recreational drugs, but still all for the kind of law specified above. Why? While I think that recreational drugs should be legalised, one of the main reasons for that is I think that they really need to be brought under a centrally managed quality control and safety testing regime, in the same way as tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and all food stuffs in general. There are few things more dangerous than narcotics which have been cooked up incorrectly or cut with something dodgy- it is possibly the singularly worst thing about current drug-taking culture. Amateur chemists cooking up narcotics and selling them to unsuspecting folks without having a good handle on what the effects and dangers will be is incredibly dangerous territory.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[sudon't]

Look, it's just a fancy, science-y way of (preemptively) saying, "anything that gets you high, anything enjoyable, is illegal." That is the basis of all of our drug law. They came up with all this "safety" jive when racism went out of fashion, and because they can't say what they really mean, which is that, "we don't want to see people enjoying things we don't enjoy." It's the puritan ethic.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[triffid_98]

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Abraham Lincoln

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[triffid_98]

Hmm...apparently that's a fake attribution. (sadly). This quote actually. originated in 1922, not that it makes the statement itself any less factual.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Dr. Sheldon Cooper]

as if the secret government would say, "Please."

IMPOSTER!

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Whatever they're passing around on blotter these days is no match for real LSD.

Grinding teeth, stomach gas, lack of open eye hallucinations? (hallucinogenic) Amphetamines. See your spice rack :)
No matter what "Uncle Fester" might have you believe - LSD is not simple to make (though it is very cheap), and very hard to ticket (the damn stuff fumes like hell and just dissolving it into workable amounts from eye-dropping onto a blotter is tricky). Additionally it isn't a party drug.

I have it on good authority that MXE, discussed in the article, is more enjoyable than Ketamine.

Ketamine doesn't fit my definition of safe (too low a margin of safety). I don't know about MXE - nor am I ever likely to try it. Every native culture on the planet used a number of psychoative substances - world travel changed that, and while many of the indigenously used substances are still legal their use was generally discontinued because the currently illegal ones were safer to use, more predictable in effect, and have less undesirable side-effects.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

Grinding teeth, stomach gas, lack of open eye hallucinations?

If you're grinding your teeth it indicates that your Acid has a bunch of Strychnine in it. Same with leg/back cramps and the gas, although in most cases the bowel trouble comes from the common practice of mega-dosing vitamin C in order to "get better visuals". The "lack of open-eye hallucinations" is pure BS, good Acid does not want for those at all. So I can only conclude that whatever you've been taking has either sat for too long and broken down to the point it's mostly just Rat Poison, or was heavily cut to start with, and it's the non-LSD shit that's giving you a bad time.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[Opportunist]

Personally I think it's more an economic angle. Let's be honest here, one of the biggest pharma market is mood stabilizers. And the main problem here is that the really "good stuff" has already been invented, patented and that patent has even already expired ages ago. It's not like you could make any kind of revenue on the crap you can get as prescription meds today if any of the far more potent and effective drugs were legal.

If you look at the timeline of invention of drugs, their patent run time and when they get outlawed, it's kinda hard to keep believing in a coincidence.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I hardly suspect drug companies of goodwill toward men, as a rule; but there are a couple of factors that probably make legal blugeoning tricky at best and useless at worst (for any compound with a history in medicine that isn't told purely as a 'horror stories from the old days' anecdote).

If you shove something to Schedule I, nobody inside the law gets to make a penny on it (barring possible tiny-batch stuff for the occasional research project that somehow fills out all the paperwork the DEA throws at them). If something remains Schedule II or lower, access gets substantially more difficult for people too poor to have a doctor write them a prescription; and less convenient for everyone; but the barriers to entry, and prices, of off-patent generics, especially common and relatively simple ones, are low, and as long as the assorted bottom feeders don't really piss off the FDA through shoddy manufacturing practices or outright falsification of test data, you can't schedule drugs differently by brand. Even for the company with the original brand name, logo, and coloration, margins suffer; but anybody who isn't actually losing money at least gets to move product.

Further, if it remains at Schedule II or lower, mostly-law-abiding drug companies can sometimes get a cut (probably at lower margins than they would really prefer; but above zero, and check out that volume!) of the action that would otherwise go to dealers of chemically similar Schedule I compounds. Perhaps most notably, Purdue Pharma(and, amazingly, even a few of their individual executives!) actually ran into a nasty little bit of legal trouble for their effort to downplay the addictiveness and abuse rates of Oxycontin in an effort to continue selling as much of the stuff as possible. Especially in the heyday of the Florida pill-mill scene, the legality of Oxycontin and some other all-fancy-and-medical opiates allowed the legal players to take a sizeable bite of a market that would otherwise be left to heroin pushers.

I do suspect that they'd prefer people stop self-medicating with booze and weed, and face their problems like healthy, functional, adults, with the prescription drugs recommended by TV commercials, preferably choosing patented or name-brand formulations wherever possible; but as a more general strategy, I'm not sure that prohibition, as currently implemented, offers enough flexibility to be a truly good tool for profit maximization.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I have no respect for the FAA (not the one for airplanes, I'm not an expert on them but they seem to do a decent job); but given that it has been in force since 1986, I suspect that the DEA and friends know the value of discretion and selective application of the law. If they started going after respectable companies in the chemical industry and other established industries, they'd probably have some nontrivial lobbying firepower on their asses (for an example of how this works, watch what happens when OSHA tries to timidly consider updating the Permissible Exposure Limit for some chemicals. Let's just say that there's a reason why they still use the original ones they set in 1971 and have not managed an update, despite additional epidemiological and toxicological research obviously being done since that time, and new chemicals introduced. That is what it looks like when you fuck with somebody who matters' chemicals.)

Unless somebody unbelievably stupid gets their hands on the levers, very selective application, more or less only to whatever we are moral-panicking about the damn kids doing these days, is the rule.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[stenvar]

I suspect that the DEA and friends know the value of discretion and selective application of the law.

I'm sorry, I can't figure it out: are you really so incredibly stupid that you believe that? Are you being sarcastic? Or do you really believe we should destroy our democracy for a Soviet-style all powerful central government?

Unless somebody unbelievably stupid gets their hands on the levers, very selective application, more or less only to whatever we are moral-panicking about the damn kids doing these days, is the rule.

Unbelievably stupid people have their hands on the levers, and they do use selective application of the law to undermine our democracy and checks and balances, and instead reshape our society according to the will of technocrats and rent seeking corporations. People like you put them there. Whether you're simply too stupid to understand what that means or whether that's what you actually want, it's time it stop.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not entirely sure how my comment ended up being interpreted as a compliment to the DEA. Selective application of overbroad laws is about the most corrosive form of arbitrary power that can still be dressed up to look like rule of law. Being an enthusiastic user is not a virtue; but it can be an effective strategy.

If the Analog act were enforced consistently, it would almost certainly be taken away, whether through legislation that removes it or litigation that modifies its interpretation to the point of irrelevance. People don't like having their toys taken away. So they don't do that. Nothing virtuous about it, just the pragmatic cunning that keeps you from making more enemies than you can handle.

Re:Federal Analog Act?

[stenvar]

I'm not entirely sure how my comment ended up being interpreted as a compliment to the DEA.

You suggested using selective enforcement as a policy. That is so much against the rule of law that it is offensive.

The DEA has most likely been treading lightly on applying this law because they risk having it rules unconstitutional if they go too far; they've already lost a case in court where the court condemned the law as unconstitutionally vague.

(Somehow there was a muddled and sarcastic anti-corporate statement in your posting as well, but that doesn't make up for it.)

Sew my eyes shut to save the children!

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can't see the internet, it can't hurt us!

Synthetic THC delivered to my door since 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

http://phatpugs.3dcartstores.c...

and nobody can stop them

Why wait?

[Krneki]

Legalize everything and fight abuse with proper education, not the duck and cover shit!

Re:Why wait?

[kesuki]

"Legalize everything and fight abuse with proper education, not the duck and cover shit!"

that fails to satiate the power grab of being able to arrest dissenters at any time for having a tiny bit of drug planted on or near them by the Powers That Be.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I think that technological advances should force many governments to start dealing with issues rationally. Otherwise they are going to be overwhelmed by these advances.

Re:Why wait?

[girlintraining]

that fails to satiate the power grab of being able to arrest dissenters at any time for having a tiny bit of drug planted on or near them by the Powers That Be.

They can just plant a pirated movie. Stiffer fine. Point is, the arguments for criminalization are based on a lie: Properly regulated, there wouldn't be any more harm from most of these drugs than what you can do getting piss drunk.... which is legal. Until they ban alcohol, anything less dangerous than that is a disengenuous argument; It's hypocricy.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but they have so many other options now for what to plant: child porn (even remotely), "pirated" movies, national security documents, guns, etc. Surely they can give back drugs.

Re:Why wait?

[Opportunist]

The whole legislative around drugs is selective and by no means in any way coherent. Drinking alcohol is legal, smoking cigarettes is legal. Smoking marijuana is not. And why are Oreos legal?

Ok, that last one was more a joke than anything. But there simply is no rhyme or reason in laws concerning sex, drugs or copyright.

Not to mention that "Alcohol, tobacco and firearms" is more a name for a store than anything else!

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this include nuclear weapons? Should we legalize personal nuclear weapons and count on "proper education" to fight abuse? how about we legalize murder and count on "proper education" to fight abuse?

what effing naivete. im not saying "make everything illegal", but i AM VERY MUCH saying that your theory is not worthy of somebody out of junior high school.

Re:Why wait?

[geniice]

One of the issues these new drugs throw up is that there is no way to properly regulate them. They make 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol look well documented. Probably the closest you could get is "we have no idea what this chemical does if you do decide to take it please let us know what happens".

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

that's not true

meth, heroin, and coke are for more addictive than alcohol

so it's as hard to quit as nicotine, but as inebriating as alcohol. meaning you can't quit, like nicotine. but unlike nicotine, which actually enhances concentration, on meth/ heroin/ coke, your focus is for shit. so you can't hold a job/ maintain a relationship

that's why society outlaws drugs

not because society is hysterical killjoys. but because highly addictive hard drugs really do destroy lives. just the drugs: not social attitudes, not personal psychological, the actual chemicals. no one is immune to basic biochemistry, no willpower is stronger than the pharmacology of addiction

marijuana, the hallucinogens, etc., they should be legal: not highly addictive + highly inebriating at the same time like hard drugs

and addicts should get treatment, not jail

but legalize meth? heroin? coke?

no, never

because even with the negative prohibition effects (funding drug cartels, etc), drug addiction itself to highly addictive HARD drugs, is still more harmful to society than prohibition

the war on hard drugs is not new. and will never end. it's just a maintenance function of civilization. no, we'll never get rid of hard drugs completely. but that's not the point. the point is just to minimize the negative social effects of drug addiction by minimizing the addict population. we're also never going to completely stop rape, murder, robbery. so we give up fighting that too?

we just need better tactics: portugal for example has a better attitude than the usa. but the war on drugs still goes on in portugal. dealers are still criminals in portugal. in fact, addicts are still criminals: they just get treatment instead of jail, as it should be in the usa

it didn't start with reagan. and the war has been going on every since we noticed droog would spend all day eating fermented fruit at the caveman campsite instead of helping with foraging and hunting. why does islam prohibit alcohol? too many useless wasted human shells on the street. why did the usa even experiment with prohibition? it wasn't just busy body prudes. because alcohol really does destroy lives

study the opium wars:

http://www.sacu.org/opium.html

the drug dealing british weakened and defeated china, and won hong kong, just so it could keep pushing drugs on china, destroying chinese society. something which china is still humiliated about, and gave rise to the boxer rebellion and the revitalization of modern china against imperialism. but the foundation of the rebirth of chinese pride and nationalism was a reaction was against imperial and colonial enforced drug addiction by british drug dealers. like fire water on native americans. drugs themselves are the actual problem. drugs are the tool of destruction

it was a problem then. it's a problem now. it always will be a problem. like war, slavery, racism, etc., drug addiction is just one of those timeless tragedies of the human experience

how we handle hard drug addiction? yeah, we need to change that. we need better tactics, absolutely

but the war on hard drugs will never end

it's just a maintenance function of civilization

Re:Why wait?

[symes]

Exposure is an important predictor of misuse in a population. If you legalise (which decreases the costs of use) then there will be an increase in those using and therefore an increase in those suffering harm. Just like alcohol - the more bars there are in an area, the cheaper the alcohol, the more accessible the alcohol the more people drink. I am not against legalisation. But at the same time it is a policy that will probably reduce the criminal side of drug use (e.g. theft to support an addition) but also increase the number of those suffering harms because of drug use. It is hard to know what the best course of action is.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'd rather the idiots of the world killed themselves sooner rather than later, and the best way to accomplish this is to let them smoke, snort, or shoot anything they damn well want.

Uh, that shit didn't work when we drove the country into obesity with the infectious fast food industry.

Seems we still have armies of idiots waddling around.

Re:Why wait?

[khallow]

So why should we buy that "hard" drugs are bad enough to ban them, based on the experiences of the Opium war? Wouldn't instead the conclusion be that the harsh ban caused more problems and societal weakness than the drug use did?

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you should try the drugs you write about first.

More or less everything you write about nicotine, meth, heroine and cocain (I asume that is what you mean with coke) is: wrong.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

... your theory is not worthy of somebody out of junior high school.

Your bad analogies are not worthy of someone out of grade school.

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

right

the simple biochemistry of addiction and inebriation to substances like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine is a lie

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

the problem was the drug addiction. the policy was a reaction to that. then the drug merchants force it further on your society, and steal some of your land

again, i simply don't understand people who think the social reaction the drug addiction, however malformed, is somehow worse than the drug addiction itself

the addiction is the root of the problem. not the social policy

Re:Why wait?

[khallow]

then the drug merchants force it further on your society, and steal some of your land

So the ban didn't get rid of the monopoly on opium production or the technology advantages of the opium dealers either.

again, i simply don't understand people who think the social reaction the drug addiction, however malformed, is somehow worse than the drug addiction itself

It's simple. We can compare.

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

How do you conclude that? I did not claim that. Nearly every substance causes addiction if abused, simplest example: sugar.

Read the nonsense my parent wrote ... my comment refers to him.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can just plant a pirated movie. Stiffer fine.

The 'beauty' of certain charges is the social stigma that goes with it.

Person A: Charged with Reckless driving (Road rage like swerving and brake checking intimidation at 110MPH)
Person B: Charged with possession of cocaine (let's pretend the quantity is whatever one hit of cocaine is)

In our society if you had to pick a charge, which one do you think would carry more social stigma?

Re:Why wait?

[Procrasti]

The drug war leads to the cartels in Mexico being stronger than the government. When the mexican drug cartels start overtaking the US, the way the British drug dealers overtook China... then you will wish that they had have been defeated by the simple economics of regulation.

The drug war leads to children having easier access to illegal substances like meth and heroin than legal substances like alcohol. Drug dealers don't check ID, and have there is no disincentive to sell to them... they're already breaking the law. The three drug addicts I know all started these drugs when they were 15 or younger.

Drug wars cannot work, because drug demand is inelastic. This simply means that demand does not change very much with regards to price (including other costs such as legal consequences)... Where there is demand, there is supply... All the drug war does is line the pockets of violent criminals. Drug use does not decrease significantly as price increases, and conversely, does not increase significantly when it decreases... You would not expect everyone to start using heroin if it was made legal. Only an hypocritical idiot like you would claim you would begin using heroin if it was legal. Truth is, I really doubt you would.

Philip K Dick wrote most of his books high on amphetamines... Your statements about these drugs destroying focus are provably false.

The problems of addiction are merely exacerbated by the legal environment, the high cost and illegality leads to greater crime, mostly acquisitionary. You understand that addiction, once satiated, is no longer the concern of an addict? You are addicted to food, for example, if food was hard to come by, you will do anything to get it, including theft and violence... when it is easy to obtain, you have the ability to focus on other things. This is why the Swiss harm reduction experiments (giving heroin addicts heroin) seem to work so well... Addicts were able to return to work and function once their addiction was satiated.

There is no drug that is safer under prohibition. There are no gangs that are weaker under prohibition. There are police less corrupt under prohibition. There are no fewer victims of theft and violence under prohibition.

No one should be denied the right to do with their own body as they desire... until they harm another. If you don't regulate the supply side, you still deny that right... Portugal is only a step in the right direction.

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

you really should educate yourself before you register an uneducated opinion on a subject

you really wish to represent your opinion that all substances have the same addiction potential? or inebriating effects? there's no difference? you think this intellectually dishonest know nothing approach tells us anything except something about you?

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

we can of course compare and find bad tactics in fighting drugs, and we should

but what we can't do is say there should be no fight

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should try the drugs you write about first.

More or less everything you write about nicotine, meth, heroine and cocain (I asume that is what you mean with coke) is: wrong.

Right... because personal anecdotal evidence will add SO MUCH to the current discussion. Recommending people should go try hard drugs... go fuck yourself.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the ban didn't get rid of the monopoly on opium production or the technology advantages of the opium dealers either.

That's a of result of might makes right. The British government and her allies had more military might than China.

I find it hilarious how people who are against government force used against drugs is defending the British government using MORE government force and violence to enforce a monopoly for itself (bonus points if you're an American, as you're cheering for the monarchy your forefathers fought with their lives to break away from... then again, the US by the 19th century was also quite happy to join in on the imperialism, and helped the Brits in the opium war)

It's simple. We can compare.

You can, but you don't actually do it.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing you are fighting against is your fear you can't control yourself if the government doesn't tell you how to live. Your problem isn't your fear of addiction for society. It is for yourself. Your weakness is yours alone.

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

I did not talk about this stuff ... my parent did. And I was mainly reffering to the effects he claimed, not to the potential of adiction.

And yes: used in a normal way most drugs he mentioned are not adictive. Abuse (dose and frequncy, lifestyle and purity) makes addiction, not _use_. And for a matter of fact I'm pretty educated about this. Huge deal of people I know in person used heroine and cocaine a while, no one of them ever was adicted.

The highest addiction potential btw. has nicotine

Re:Why wait?

[ausekilis]

The least you could do is provide some references. I just dug up Chemical dependency on Wikipedia. I don't see sugar in their list, but I do see that heroine, cocaine, barbituates and tobacco are all more addictive than alcohol. Granted that's a somewhat subjective list.

Just to round it out, I looked up sugar addiction too. Which at first read doesn't strike me as quite the same as the other substances. It releases dopamines, but it doesn't fundamentally change your brain chemistry like another drug, caffiene. A little more reading on physical dependence, and another rebuttal. It looks to me like sugar takes advantage of a natural biological response, trigging your brain to produce more dopamine. As opposed to drugs, which go after neuro-receptors or otherwise interfere with normal brain function. I'll end with this quote from scienceblogs: "Sugar may be mechanistically similar to crack in terms of addictiveness, but I have never heard of someone stealing a car radio to get a Twinkie."

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

"fear you can't control yourself if the government doesn't tell you how to live"

hard drug addiction is a real biological effect. i am not afraid. i am simply apparently better educated than you on this subject

"Your weakness is yours alone."

i was not aware the pharmacology in all of those textbooks was just about my biology alone

why are you so blatantly ignorant on this subject yet still registering an uneducated opinion on it?

Re:Why wait?

[Procrasti]

> every single problem you can find with fighting hard drugs is smaller than the negative effects of hard drugs themselves (heroin, cocaine, meth)

Every single problem with hard drugs (heroin, cocaine and meth) is smaller than the negative effects of fighting them.

You actually think that bloggers murdered by mexican drug cartels are worse than an individual who chooses to take heroin... That is stupidity of the highest level.

> we can of course find bad tactics in fighting hard drugs, and we should

There are of course negatives associated with being addicted to drugs, even if they were medically pure and provided free of charge... We should help those addicts who chose of their own free will to seek help.

> addiction to hard drugs destroys lives. this is the primary and ultimate problem. if you don't understand that problem as the root cause of everything else, you're an idiot on the subject matter

My experience has been that being forced into prostitution and being controlled by criminal gangs with no morality to obtain your drugs to be far worse than the addiction itself.

My property being stolen to fund prohibition prices is worse than addiction.

This is worse than addiction.

> no, the hard drugs are the real problem

Again... if you start with the axiom that addiction is the worst thing in the world, you will always end up with result that anything addictive is the worst thing in the world. Once you realise that addiction is easily satiated, then where are the real problems?

Remember, addiction simply means being willing to do anything to satiate that desire. You simply want addicts to crawl over more broken glass, then point to all the cuts and blood to prove the problems of addiction. Remove the glass and the problems of addiction become far less.

Some of my best friends are drug addicts, heroin, meth and crack... Their problems appear to come entirely from the current legal environment, that their suppliers are all criminal gangs, and the inflated prohibition prices requiring prostitution and theft to fund. When they have their drugs, they harm no one. If their drugs were available at pharmaceutical prices and purity, their problems would be diminished a thousand fold.

On the bright side, keeping drugs illegal keeps the illegal prostitutes desperate and cheap... This is what you want, right?

Re:Why wait?

[circletimessquare]

the drug itself, not psychological factors, not social factors, nothing else except the chemistry of the drug itself, is the causative effect of the addiction

why are you so ignorant about this subject yet still speaking on it?

Re: Why wait?

[DigiShaman]

You can't will the laws of physics to go away anymore than you can will the neurological effects of chemistry to provide complete sanity. If you think doing bath-salts in public is ok, then so is the expectation of law enforcement putting a round through your zombified sorry ass. Normal folk should have to suffer because of your bad decisions.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are of course negatives associated with being addicted to drugs, even if they were medically pure and provided free of charge... We should help those addicts who chose of their own free will to seek help.

I'd rather that we left those addicts that chose to do drugs to do them and follow the inevitable decline that follows from it. Let them remove themselves from the gene pool. Perhaps we'll never get away from the let's stick it to the man by getting out of our head attitude that appeared in the '60s but we can but hope.

In case I'm not being clear here. That's no help to drug users, at all. No medical help. No housing help. Nothing.

I've seen the affects on family members. The destructive nature of it on lives and relationships. I want the harsh realities of addiction to be brought home to society. Not the current approach where we try to help people if they overdose, but leave them free to do the same again.

People aren't forced to start taking drugs. Its a choice. A choice made in the full knowledge that our society will help them out if things get too bad. Take away the safety net and perhaps people might be more responsible with their choices.

Re:Why wait?

[Lodlaiden]

It takes a lot longer to kill someone with a cheeseburger. Paitence padawan.

Re:Why wait?

[mevets]

If you discount those factors, how do you resolve the varied reactions of the different substances? Not every heroin user becomes dependent; though a great many do.
I didn't think the jury was in for chemical dependence wrt nicotine and cocaine.

Re:Why wait?

[Procrasti]

You might have a point, except, that at the same time the current system actively attempts to destroy them, by forcing them into the black market, and threatening their freedom... sometime even their lives... independently of the drugs themselves.

So, if you wanted to advocate that approach... to leave them to their own devices, then remove the negative forces on their lives as well.

Finally... if it were to be legalised, it would be possible to tax them at a rate to cover their social costs, the costs for those who seek rehabilitation and costs associated with emergency help for overdoses and the like.

Mind you, in a legal context, substances like nalaxone would be available, which instantly neutralize the effects of heroin and overdosing would not be a problem (in a supervised setting).

Basically... if you advocate a personal responsibility point of view, you cannot also advocate a prohibitionist point of view. The 'free market' with pigouvian taxes covering rehabilitation could go a long way to improving people's lives.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I found your longer post above rather insightful and overall worth reading.

However, when you say something like "nothing else except the chemistry of the drug itself, is the causative effect of the addiction", you sound like an idiot to anyone who's ever observed a non-addict using what you call 'hard drugs'. Meanwhile, people can and do become addicted to everything from nicotine to caffeine to specific types of food in literally completely life-destroying ways.

Addiction is about the addict more than it is about the object of addiction, has many roots, and is a far, far more complex problem than our society has evolved to remotely effectively address. I wonder if we ever will. To blame the substance - let alone to go off on some unscientific woo about molecules inducing addiction (and implying that everyone is susceptible, whether you intended to or not) - is foolishness and will never help addicts in the long run.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

The truthiness is strong with this post.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can have my Oreos when they pry them from my cold, dead, fat fingers!

Re:Why wait?

[Procrasti]

> the drug itself, not psychological factors, not social factors, nothing else except the chemistry of the drug itself, is the causative effect of the addiction

This is a statement of scientific fact, I presume? There are many animal models that prove this, correct? And the Rat Park study confirms your point of view? Hmmm... guess not.

> why are you so ignorant about this subject yet still speaking on it?

Good question... ask yourself.

Re:Why wait?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Not to mention that "Alcohol, tobacco and firearms" is more a name for a store than anything else!

Deer camp or a good weekend works as well.

Re:Why wait?

[whoever57]

I'll end with this quote from scienceblogs: "Sugar may be mechanistically similar to crack in terms of addictiveness, but I have never heard of someone stealing a car radio to get a Twinkie."

Perhaps that has more to do with the legal status of sugar (legal and cheap) than its addictiveness?

Re:Why wait?

[Pseudonym Authority]

I've yet to see any cases of sugar addicts selling their children for sex in exchange for a gram of light brown granulated.

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

My references are more personal experiences of people I know. Most of them working as social workers or psychiatrists.

The addictiveness is often subjective as well, ask an alci how hard it is to get rid of it.

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

except the chemistry of the drug itself, is the causative effect of the addiction
That is nonsense. Perhaps you should talk to one who has a clue? E.g. a psychiatrist?
As I said before I literally know 100ds of people who took heroine or cocaine for years FOR FUN and no one ever got addicted to it (from those people I know, I also know ABOUT people that got addicted). Crack is however something totally different ...

why are you so ignorant about this subject yet still speaking on it?
I know more about the topic than you do, so the ignorant is obviously you.

Re:Why wait?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sugar is freely available and cheap ... so you will have to wait a while I guess.

Re:Why wait?

[girlintraining]

that's not true...meth, heroin, and coke are for more addictive than alcohol

And in the first sentence, you completely lost all your credibility. Did anyone say it wasn't true? Did I say those things were less harmful than alcohol? No. Nothing like that was said. What I was saying was the drugs that are equally or less harmful than already legal drugs should not be illegal. That's it. That's all. I never said which drugs.

Learn to read, bud.

Re:Why wait?

[hey!]

You needn't even legalized *everything*. You could legalize a reasonable cross section of relatively safe recreational drugs so that people could have the kinds of experiences they're seeking without having to become an armchair toxicologist.

Re:Why wait?

[Algae_94]

Crack is however something totally different ...

Oh crack cocaine, you make people do the darndest things.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard drug addiction is just nicotine/caffeine/alcohol addiction coupled with the fact that the addictive substance is illegal, artificially expensive, and difficult/dangerous to obtain. Hell, "hard drug" withdrawal won't even kill you like legal alcohol withdrawal will.

Addiction is a medical and psychological matter with studied and established treatments. Making it a legal matter only makes the damage to the patient and their family worse.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sugar may be mechanistically similar to crack in terms of addictiveness, but I have never heard of someone stealing a car radio to get a Twinkie."

Could that possibly be because anyone can legally and easily buy a Twinkie for a dollar from any store? I've never heard of anyone stealing a car radio to buy a cigarette or a cup of coffee, either. Does that mean that nicotine and caffeine are not addictive drugs?

Re:Why wait?

[kesuki]

with today's designer drugs synthetic analogues are easily ODed on because they are chemically pure, unlike street drugs which are cut with fillers, and not every drug addict realizes this once they read online how to order analogues how to dose properly. and synthetic drugs were not long ago being sold in a legal synthetic drug market but he was sloppy, and also sold real drugs which they found out after shutting the place down (local law had to be changed to catch him) the shop was in a way a cover for laundering drug money. but yeah prohibition is stupid you just make drug lords. i have been on addictive anti anxiety drugs and it literally had me just crazy desperate for my next dose, and then mellow nothing wrong in the universe. i guess it is good i have had a strong don't rely on drugs for most of my life because of drug education, though when i was touring the mental health industry i found drugs that were safe and don't create a craving for more drugs like the anti anxiety drug which they took me off of when they realized i was using it daily to get by. drug lords sell the addictive stuff education is better than a drug war.

Re:Why wait?

[QRDeNameland]

"Sugar may be mechanistically similar to crack in terms of addictiveness, but I have never heard of someone stealing a car radio to get a Twinkie."

I've never heard of anyone stealing a car radio to get alcohol or tobacco either, even though both are clearly addictive and are both highly regulated and quite expensive compared to sugar. Seems to me that legality is the main difference between drugs that people commit petty crimes to procure.

Just because a quote is on scienceblogs does not make it rational.

Re:Why wait?

[cas2000]

but unlike nicotine, which actually enhances concentration, on meth/ heroin/ coke, your focus is for shit. so you can't hold a job/ maintain a relationship

you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

1. meth, or methamphetamine, aka ice or speed is well known for its ability to enhance focus and concentration. it's focusing effects are far more powerful than that of the rather feeble nicotine.

2. many users with clean, reliable supplies of heroin and similarly poweful opiates have no trouble holding down jobs - even difficult jobs with lare amounts of autonomy and responsibility. many doctors, nurses, and paramedics have opiate addictions that have minimal or zero impact on their ability to do their jobs because they have a safe, clean supply and don't live the fucked up junkie lifestyle.

3. not all use is abuse. most people use their drugs with moderation and restraint, in the same the way that most people won't gobble down an entire chocolate cake by themselves or eat a block of chocolate every day. they'll have small amounts at appropriate times and places (i.e. on their time off on the weekend, and not halfway into their shift at work).

Your post should have been moderated Ignorant, not Insightful.
it's the same old half-truths, lies and prejudice masquerading as information.

Re:Why wait?

[khallow]

That's a of result of might makes right. The British government and her allies had more military might than China.

I ask again, did the ban actually improve China's position? No, because the fundamental problems never got addressed. It wasn't druggies that were ruining China's society, but a militarily superior economic monopoly which was doing so.

If instead, China had figured out how to grow opium locally, legalized it, and then initiated an education program about the dangers of opium use, I bet they would have gotten a lot further. They'd still have trouble with militarily powerful foreign powers, but at least those foreigners wouldn't be profiting (and funding their military) from an opium trade.

Re:Why wait?

[khallow]

we can of course compare and find bad tactics in fighting drugs

Ok, a good tactic - education. A bad tactic - making it illegal to the point that your property can be seized and sold off even if you had nothing to do with the drug crime that led to the seizure.

I'd go as far as to say that legalization works. It worked for alcohol which is roughly as dangerous a drug as heroin is (both in terms of harm to user and difficulty of quitting the drug).

Re:Why wait?

[Areyoukiddingme]

There is no drug that is safer under prohibition. There are no gangs that are weaker under prohibition. There are [no] police less corrupt under prohibition. There are no fewer victims of theft and violence under prohibition.

That was a great list, with great phrasing. Shame about the typo. I hope to see that list repeated a few more times, until it gets spread around (sans typo).

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask again, did the ban actually improve China's position?

Again, I answer: that's a result of might makes right. China's position didn't improve because they lacked the might to resist the British, not because of the ban itself.

It wasn't druggies that were ruining China's society, but a militarily superior economic monopoly which was doing so.

Exactly. All the more reason that a ban is the correct response. The problem was the foreign coercive force. How do you fight a foreign coercive force? Ask it nicely to go away? Go whine to some higher level of world government that doesn't exist?

Like it or not, when the other guy bullies you, you stand your ground, even if you might lose (which China unfortunately did)

If instead, China had

If instead, Britain didn't use its military to help their opium business, and didn't build its Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets, China wouldn't have had an opium problem in the first place. You're missing the forest for the trees.

It's worth noting that opium WAS legal in China for some time, as early as the 1400's. Chinese government didn't respond until after they started trading with the (Imperialist, happy to use government force) West.

Also worth noting, the initial bans only targeted sellers and opium den keepers, not users (so a looser policy than, say, marijuana in the US). The later bans also didn't target druggies, but the British importing the opium.

Looking at your response to another poster ("good tactic - education. A bad tactic - making it illegal"), I think you're judging China's bans back then based on your own experiences with the US's War on Drugs. The two are not the same.

Re:Why wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're conflating two different senses of the word purity. You're referring to purity in terms of the portion of the product which is the active compound(s). I believe the GP was using purity in terms of not having undesirable additional compounds mixed in (other than inactive fillers). For example, in places where marijuana is illegal, how do users know that the weed they're smoking wasn't grown over an old toxic waste dump so that they're inhaling harmful levels of Cadmium (or whatever - pick your poison)? Different kinds of purity. Legal, well-regulated marijuana shouldn't have this kind of problem any more than Lettuce does.

- T

Re:Why wait?

[khallow]

Again, I answer: that's a result of might makes right. China's position didn't improve because they lacked the might to resist the British, not because of the ban itself.

First, note you are saying that the ban didn't actually improve China's fundamental problem. I've been saying that all along.

And I already outlined a strategy of legalization and creation of a local opium industry that didn't require China to be militarily superior to the UK.

If you're concerned about novel chemicals

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to read up on Monsanto's novel organisms...

Re:If you're concerned about novel chemicals

[Opportunist]

Actually, I'm more concerned with those organisms than the chemistry.

I can avoid the chemistry, ya know...

Too many people willing to self experiment.

[Anonymous Coward]

A target rich environment for some product testing. After all, we trust the invisible hand of the market to keep us safe, right fellas?

Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the drugs war is about monopolising the production and supply of certain chemicals, as has been obvious since VIetnam and continues to be clear with Afghanistan.

In particular, it has nothing to do with protecting people from harm.

However! this doesn't mean that taking recreational (medical uses not included here) drugs is a positive experience. It can be relatively harmless, as with the occasional puff of cannabis, but ultimately it's about escaping reality. And, if you're trying to escape reality, it means you have some problem with reality. Deal with that.

And that's before you get onto the not-so-benign physiological effects that many drugs have, which in the case of new synthetic randomness is likely to be unknown. I know a few extremist libertarians are genuinely misled into thinking that any sort of drugs regulation is wrong, because "the market" will weed out those who kill too many people (let's hope you or your daughter aren't the ones killed, eh?), but we have society for a reason.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

However! this doesn't mean that listening to recreational (medical uses not included here) music is a positive experience. It can be relatively harmless, as with the occasional listen of Beethoven's 9th, but ultimately it's about escaping reality. And, if you're trying to escape reality, it means you have some problem with reality. Deal with that.

FTFY.

Seriously, you're clueless if you think recreational use of drugs is ultimately about "escaping reality". You're equating "fun" with "escaping reality".

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Opportunist]

As if there are not other ways to escape reality. There are enough legal means to get away from this hellhole if you really want to, so please don't tell me we need to ban drugs as long as we have Alcohol, Social Networks and MMOs.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to directly instruct your brain to have fun via chemical doping (recreational drugs) because you cannot enjoy it via the senses (e.g. music), like I said, you're escaping reality at the most fundamental level.

Goodness knows I'm not going to stop you - even when drugs are self-harm, banning self-harm rather than treating it as a social or medical issue is barbaric. But if you seriously can't find anything better than a short-term, direct hit of pleasure, which bypasses any interaction with the world (even computer games employ the senses, exploit cerebral skills, often require a level of social interaction, etc.), at least don't deny it.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

harm is very subjectively defined

especially with all the S&M out there

it is completely possible for people to have very different values and belief structures

save them all, and let god sort them out

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting argument. But listening to music causes chemical reactions. Playing vidya games causes chemical reactions. Eating food causes chemical reactions. Drinking coffee causes chemical reactions.

All of the above involve those wonderful little receptors that you're so adamant about existing only for escapism purposes.

Oh, and dropping LSD often involves a hell of a lot more cerebral skill than watching Duck Dynasty.. Smoking some weed causes chemical reactions, and generally involves a hell of a lot more social interaction than sitting behind a keyboard in a dimly lit room.

You really can't make the argument that drugs exist solely for escapism, unless you're willing to admit that the vast majority of things humanity does exist solely for escapism. That even includes eating, as the average person does it - there's plenty of completely bland food you can consume that will allow you to survive, without the reward centers of your brain lighting up like the sky on the 4th of July. Drop that chocolate, yo.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing my point: reality is experienced only through the senses, so it is in the most basic sense escaping reality to stimulate the brain without involving the senses. The ultimate action in any enjoyable process is a chemical reaction giving good feeling, but I am considering the journey (and implying that the journey tends to have value). Even eating chocolate involves sight, taste and smell - but, yes, if you're eating it in excess just for the chemical effect upon digestion, then it's worth asking what's up.

When people smoke weed socially, the smoking part shouldn't be necessary for the social part. Again, I'm not judging anyone for smoking it - people are welcome to enjoy themselves as they wish if they don't harm others in the process - but I wonder why some people are unable to enjoy each other socially without needing direct chemical stimulation.

I am not sure that merely dropping LSD requires any cerebral skill. It might alter your thinking patterns, but again, it's more interesting to ask what's constraining you from widening your perspectives without dropping LSD? I don't have an answer to that question, but it seems like it's worth asking.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are missing the point here. I am one of the 'psychonauts' mentioned in TFA. By day I am a highly specialized IT worker. But in the weekends I enjoy experimenting with unknown substances. I meticulously document everything. Where I bought a substance, what weight it came in. smell, structure, duration, everything. I don't just 'put shit into my body' - I am very precise about which classes of chemicals I will administer to myself, know all about the (expected) metabolism of said compounds and I consider this to be 'drug use 2.0'. Never before in history has such a small percentage of users died from drugs as currently in the designer drug scene. This has nothing to do with wanting to escape reality. It is all about the exploration of the brain and its functions. In 50 years time we will have amazing medications whose development will have been accelerated by all that is experimented with today. You don't have to believe me. Just don't make me illegal.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's more interesting to ask what's constraining you from widening your perspectives without dropping LSD? I don't have an answer to that question, but it seems like it's worth asking.

It is simply not possible to have the same kind of thought patterns which psychedelic drugs such as LSD causes, by just being sober.You cannot compare these drugs to other drug classes such as benzodiazepines or opiates because those just cause a simple high.Psychedelics can be compared to a rollercoaster ride. It may not always be enjoyable while under the influence, but afterwards you have this whole reborn feeling. This is why half of the new designer drugs are psychedelic in nature.

Re:Capitalism allows profit from harm: news at 11.

[boristdog]

It can be relatively harmless, as with the occasional puff of cannabis, but ultimately it's about escaping reality. And, if you're trying to escape reality, it means you have some problem with reality. Deal with that.

Really?

10 years ago (when I was 40) I had brain surgery and a small, slightly damaged part of my brain was destroyed (intentionally) to keep it from killing me down the road. Unfortunately, it was the part of my brain that tells the rest of my brain to go to sleep.

For 8 years I had to take sleeping pills every night. And the effects of the sleeping pills got less every year, so I was taking either more or different prescription drugs every year.

About two years ago someone introduced me to marijuana as a sleep aid. That night I slept like I hadn't slept in years. It was wonderful. I started doing it just on weekends to help catch up on sleep, but I took the officially prescribed medicine during the week. I got SO MUCH more done on weekends that last year I started smoking just a couple puffs of weed an hour before bedtime during the week. I cut out the prescription pills entirely, except when I travel.

Since then I have slept well nearly every single night and my productivity at work (and home) has doubled, even with screwing around on the Internet like this. My health is better, my blood pressure is lower, my sex life is way better, my stress levels are laughably low and people say I'm much more fun to be around.

So tell me doctor: Is the reality of poor sleep, low productivity, health issues, stress issues, etc. something I should just "deal with" or should I continue my "escape" of smoking a little weed every night?

The lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Use blotters, not powders.

this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[stenvar]

The "traditional" drugs are known risks with known treatments; we should simply legalize them and offer support and treatment to those who want it. There would be less suffering and as a society, we'd be a lot better off.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[TubeSteak]

The opinion of the "chief of operations" at the DEA on decriminalization
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dea-operations-chief-decries-legalization-of-marijuana-at-state-level/2014/01/15/17af548a-7e38-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

"Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again."

This is why we're not going to offer support and treatment.
This is why there will not be less suffering in our society.

It's not just enough for there to be a change in public opinion, there has to be a change in political will and a massive bureaucratic upheaval to push out everyone who has invested decades in being afraid of the public's consumption of drugs.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again."

He's lying ... to help maintain the status quo.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[Anonymous Coward]

The opinion of the "chief of operations" at the DEA on decriminalization
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dea-operations-chief-decries-legalization-of-marijuana-at-state-level/2014/01/15/17af548a-7e38-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html

"Every part of the world where this has been tried, it has failed time and time again."

This is why we're not going to offer support and treatment.
This is why there will not be less suffering in our society.

It's not just enough for there to be a change in public opinion, there has to be a change in political will and a massive bureaucratic upheaval to push out everyone who has invested decades in being afraid of the public's consumption of drugs.

I would strongly disagree.. Your going to believe an agency, that by the way, wouldn't exist or be sufficiently reduced if drugs were legal, the same goons who continue to taboo marijuana with this 'it is a gateway drug', and all the other BS they continue to come out about with marijuana or any 'illegal' drug? There probably so delusional and confused if they watched Cheech&Chong movies they'd completely miss the irony of those movies, which makes fun of the taboos, to them they'd believe this is how and why marijuana should remain illegal.

Amsterdam legalized marijuana feeling that in doing so it would drop the abuse of Heroin and Cocaine, and while the DEA and other US agencies laughed it off waiting for failure it had an immediate impact on getting people off hard drugs, the other thing Amsterdam foresaw and warned the US about was the impending Meth epidemic, particularly labs popping up everywhere, which became another reason for them to legalize marijuana, figuring it would divert people from producing meth and growing marijuana, which worked, but if a person has the means and supplies there going to go another route..

And more to the point of 'legalize everything'. They also have clinics for Heroin users to acquire medical grade heroin, while it isn't country wide 'legal' it is legal to an extent, which is designed to teach users ways of getting off heroin, but should they feel the need to do it they can go to the clinic and be safer. Or get more personal care to get off of it completely.

There are ways to make it 'legal' without it being legal in the sense your thinking, hopefully you read this and realize it can be done, IF it is done the right way.

And to the /. article itself...... Which I must warn!! I cannot confirm it to be linked to the internet, as far as these people learning how to make this drug, but I will search it, I know a handful of sites where I can get the formulas for anything illegal, or 'prescribed'.

Here in western PA, we are seeing heroin OD's from the addition of fentanyl, not prescription grade either, this is real "Breaking-Bad" [in the sense Walt created a pure form of meth, compared to the mediocre shed lab grade] type fentanyl being made in a some underground lab. Most people can take 5-7 "bags" of the, usual, run of the mill heroin, even dealers are warning users not to do more then one bag of this stuff which has the stamps of "Theraflu" "BudIce" on them, but I seriously doubt that the suppliers are going to keep stamping the bags with those names.

Ironically this is a double edged knife, on one hand the State authorities came out and went public, after debating the fact that by publicly coming out, hardcore users are going to try and seek out this heroin, on the other hand a number of users going into rehab has risen because they fear this batch of heroin is going to be distributed in unmarked bags.

An instance where prescription drug formulas are causing just as much harm if not more so then illegal street drugs, in this case it is being mixed in with Heroin, but black

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[MMC Monster]

There are certain drugs that should be made legal and have supervised usage. Like marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol.

Then there's bad stuff which has little to no use in society, where drug rehab programs should step in. Like PCP and heroin.

Then there's crazy shit, where society in general would benefit if it was uninvented. Like krokodil.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Krokodil is a direct product of the war on drugs. It's made to be low-cost and based on substances easy to find on the street. Drugs are expensive because since it's illegal, the only source of drugs are criminal organizations, that work with huge margins on every step and with little concurrence. Drugs like krokodil can be done by anyone who's not in the criminal circle of hard drugs and sold easily on the street.

That's a basic offer and demand economic problem, and war on drugs encourages it. Lack of proper infrastructure and support for desperate drug users is also source of the problem.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[meta-monkey]

Which is bald-faced lie. Case in point: Portugal. Other cases in point: the dozen-plus states that have medical marijuana laws on the books. It's too soon to declare Washington and Colorado's legalization experiments a success, but I would hardly be surprised if these states did not descend into anarchy.

He lies to protect his job, and to protect the powers that be. Without criminalized drugs, the prisons would be half-empty, and we've gotta keep those private prison contracts satisified. Also, we need to turn poor, stupid 18 year olds who make a mistake with drugs into felons so they will either be trapped in minimum wage jobs when they get out, or will become hardened criminals who will then scare the white middle class enough to justify the taxation required for the police state. Mexico might not be a blood-drenched narco state, and then why would their honest, hardworking people flee north to pick our tomatoes and clean our houses for cheap?

Just like every other war in history, the war on drugs is a racket. The poor suffer and die, the middle class pays for it, and the rich get richer.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[meta-monkey]

Nobody would do shit like krokodil if they had cheap access to the drugs they actually want, like marijuana and cocaine.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[whoever57]

Also, we need to turn poor, stupid 18 year olds who make a mistake with drugs into felons so they will either be trapped in minimum wage jobs when they get out, or will become hardened criminals who will then scare the white middle class enough to justify the taxation required for the police state.

Let's not forget that we also need to deprive those people of their votes.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[stenvar]

Then there's bad stuff which has little to no use in society, where drug rehab programs should step in. Like PCP and heroin.

Why should society "step in"? As long as people don't hurt anybody, let them take whatever they like. If they can't take care of themselves anymore, then institutionalize them, not before.

Then there's crazy shit, where society in general would benefit if it was uninvented. Like krokodil.

Krokodil is just desomorphine prepared under unsanitary and improvised conditions. If people could just buy desomorphine, there wouldn't be any krokodil or any of the harmful effects from it.

Re:this is your brain on anti-drug policy

[stenvar]

Let's not forget that we also need to deprive those people of their votes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop losers from becoming president.

Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[DNS-and-BIND]

See, there are two sides to this story and they always talk past each other. One side says drugs are cool, and everyone should do a little, just to see what it's like and if it's not your thing then it's OK. They only see the positive effects. The other side works in emergency rooms and treatment centers and only sees the negative effects, and warns everyone to stay away, don't even try drugs once because we hear that story everyday of the guy who tried it once, liked it, and ruined his previously promising life.

What do these two views have in common? Fucking druggies. People who are wholly incapable of controlling themselves so they ruin it for everyone. There is a certain kind of person that freaking loves drugs. They'll structure their entire lives so that they can do drugs, and they don't care about who they harm in the process. They will steal from and hurt people they love. Hunter S. Thompson said, "You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug," and he knew what he was talking about. Other people don't care for drugs at all. I've known veterans who have been prescribed the best sorts of opiates for legitimate medical reasons, and all they do is complain about how their minds "feel fuzzy and can't think straight". This fuzzy feeling is exactly what pleases druggies the most.

So, what do you do? Legalize drugs and let druggies run wild? Put them all on an island where they don't pay rent, eat for free and get all they drugs they want? Hell, why should I work for a living when I can just do that? Keep drugs illegal and scare away most of the good people? Who knows, maybe I've been looking all my life for methamphetamine and just don't know it yet because I've never tried it because I'm scared of going to jail. The main problem that both sides have is the fucking druggies. If it weren't for them, we could have safe, legal drugs and it wouldn't be a goddamn problem.

Re: Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Um.. Ok. But that's part of reality. So, here in the real world, your choices are free will and coercion. So what will it be? Free will with all of the attendant negatives, or society will -as delineated by the chosen- with all of its attendant negatives?

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

" They only see the positive effects "

Bullshit, your two-party line of thought system is absolute bullshit.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it's so easy to blame it on 'druggies'. What do you do then with people who get injected against their will with heroin (which gives them instant addiction)? Dismiss their rehab stories as druggie self-justifications ... then dismiss the police corroboration of their stories as well? You see, there's money to be made from drugs, so forcing some people to become 'customers' is good for business in some parts of this world.

If you're going to blame some people for 'addiction prone personalities' then you've got to lay some of the blame at the feet of those addicted to money and power as well. These are stronger drugs than most. Then you might want to take a step back and look at human nature and perhaps climb down from your high horse for a spell.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you do then with people who get injected against their will with heroin (which gives them instant addiction)?

Instant addiction? People don't become addicted to heroin the first time they try it. If this was the case, then there would be a lot of addicts who have been given diamorphine in hospitals as part of their treatment.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

This so god damn much.

If it weren't for them, ecstasy would also be getting used to treat major negative emotion disorders like severe depression, anger, PTSD, etc.
It is only just NOW getting attention again because of trials that were being done by a bunch of random people anonymously due to fear of arrest.
The live tests on channel4 in the UK were a really good push for more research on it.
So many people have been clouded by the STREET uses of it, which are quite often mixed with a bunch of crap, or other people take other crap while doing it an think "oh, it is fine, they won't mix", what?!

These addictive personality types are some of the worst people in society, no ifs or buts about it, they are, it is a fact, not an opinion, numbers don't lie.
They ruin everything they touch and attack anyone that says anything against them, drug culture or supports drug companies or government. (admittedly I am more in favor or small government than large government. Large always leads to abuse over a small time period)

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[angel'o'sphere]

When drugs are legalized they cost nealry nothing and could be distributed via normal drug stores or medical stores.
Hence the "druggies" you are so afraid of don't have to "structure their entire lives so that they can do drugs" and they don't have to steal to get the drugs.
This fuzzy feeling is exactly what pleases druggies the most. That feeling comes from abuse, hint: overdose. Not from ordinary consumption of 'clean' opiates.

Bottom line with legalized drugs there won't be any "druggies" anymore or at least it would drop to a very low amount of druggies.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth pointing out that studies (and practical trials) have shown that it's cheaper to supply alcoholics with all the booze they can swill and free housing with nursing staff than to pay cops to arrest them, pay prisons to house them, pay insurance to restore the things they stole to get another drink...

Unless you just want to shoot them, you're going to be paying one way or another. As much as it might offend your sense of justice it might actually be cheaper to go with the island option.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Bob9113]

See, there are two sides to this story and they always talk past each other. One side says drugs are cool, and everyone should do a little, just to see what it's like and if it's not your thing then it's OK. They only see the positive effects. The other side works in emergency rooms and treatment centers and only sees the negative effects, and warns everyone to stay away, don't even try drugs once because we hear that story everyday of the guy who tried it once, liked it, and ruined his previously promising life.

Love it. To put it in a comparative context, I had the same experience with my fire art piece. People who have seen it at Burning Man, in a context that is extremely supportive of fire art, immediately want to build one without grasping that if you do it wrong it explodes and kills people. When I showed the video to my local fire chief he went on a five minute very serious lecture about how fire kills and only crazy people think fire should be used for entertainment.

Like so many things in public policy debate, it boils down to freedom versus safety. Me, I think our society is too safe. I'd rather have more freedom and more risk. I've done my best to reach that conclusion objectively, testing my views on risk with empirical data like this. Not saying I'm necessarily right, just sharing one of my methods for testing my preconceptions.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

What does you local fire chief being a moron have to do with drug policy?

Just last night I was entertained by eating a dinner cooked with fire. In a room warmed by fire. Oh my God! We were so CRAZY!!!

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[misexistentialist]

Develop an "ultimate high" that produces death after a couple of uses.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[sudon't]

Like a lot of people, you confuse the cause and effect. People steal and "hurt" others due to the artificial scarcity and the resulting prices created by prohibition. After all, no one thinks they will get hooked. But, once that happens, the symptoms of withdrawal are so unpleasant that one is motivated to do almost anything to avoid them. If a shot of heroin were a couple of dollars, available 24/7, where would the problem be? And it's worth pointing out here that the vast majority of drug users, like the vast majority of alcohol users, never become problem users - abusers, if you will. If the cost of heroin were not artificially inflated by prohibition (or excessive taxation), the hundred-dollar-a-day habit would be a four-dollar-a-day habit. Since opiates do not impair the user, (another common misconception), these people would have no trouble holding down jobs if heroin were cheaply and easily available. In short, the problem is not the drugs themselves, nor your so-called "druggies," but rather prohibition. A study of alcohol prohibition, and what went on during that time, is very instructive.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[sudon't]

Seriously? Why should the fact that some people like to get high have any bearing on other uses of drugs? Puritan attitudes are what's keeping certain drugs from being researched. If some people didn't have this deep-seated need to prevent others from enjoying themselves, this would be a non-issue. What you favor is small government when it comes to your concerns, and big government for these other people who just can't seem to conform to your idea of a proper lifestyle without a little coercion. And, uh, why exactly do you think street drugs are sometimes less than pure, or, as you put it, "mixed with a bunch of crap?" Since you seem to live in Britain, where alcohol prohibition is not part of its history, I'll tell you something you may not be aware of - during alcohol prohibition in the U.S., alcohol was "mixed with a bunch of crap" and sold to people. That's a rare problem nowadays, isn't it? Maybe it's time for people to change their attitudes, and for government to get out of the business of regulating which substances are politically correct, and which aren't?

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[sudon't]

What does you local fire chief being a moron have to do with drug policy?

He's pointing out that, if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Hope that's enough to go on.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[sjames]

It' a self-solving problem. If the drugs are cheap and readily available, the 'druggie' will soon fall down the rabbit hole. It won't matter that they could have free rent, food, etc since they'll be too out of it to be bothered to pick up their check. They'll die off soon enough.

Or we can do it your way and keep everything illegal. Same people I described above will get their 3rd strike by their early 20s and will cost a great deal of money to warehouse in a prison somewhere where he will spend his time still getting drugs and teaching 1st and 2nd offenders how to better get away with lying, cheating, and stealing to get drugs.

Asserting power over others is a powerful and highly addictive drug itself. Some people can't get enough of it. Others avoid it due to the way it turns it's users into degenerate power junkies. The big prohibition supporters frequently bear a striking resemblance to the druggies. The only difference really is that due to their position in society, they can afford a steady supply of authoritai.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[Sir_Eptishous]

Who the freek modded this up?

I logged in just to reply to your... let me clear my throat... WWWHHHAAAHHHHKK!!! (ahem) post.

Well, first off, you FAIL on a global scale in your assessment by making the black/white all/nothing argument.
EPIC FAIL

"One side says drugs are cool"
What?!?! Where did you hear that from?
It's obvious you have no knowledge of this debate or the reasons behind it.

Oh, and I'm a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan, but one area of expertise I would not trust his insight into is drug policy.

A persons proclivity towards drug "abuse" is almost completely attributable to brain chemistry.
You're scared to go to jail, and that stops you from doing meth!?!
Are you freeking serious?
Tweekers could give two shits about jail. Meth permanently rewires the brain and how it responds to pleasure. Fear of jail vs. drug "abuse" is a bullshit morality view of this issue and doesn't belong in a reasoned discussion.

Re:Fucking druggies ruin it for everyone

[DNS-and-BIND]

> "One side says drugs are cool"

Ever read erowid.org? Overwhelmingly positive.

The worst part about this entire thing is the flood of hatred from the pro-drug faction who read my comment and drew their own conclusions. That's not the way to help your side. For the record, I rather like drugs myself.

This is How the War on Drugs Ends

[mentil]

With designer drugs, scientists can't agree on what exactly a 'drug analogue' means, so an analogue law would be unenforceable. All drugs invented after, say, 1950 without FDA approval could be banned; but then trade of the drug wouldn't be prosecutable until it were proven that it's artificial and invented; if it were naturally occurring (say, from Psilocybin mushrooms) then it can only be discovered and not invented. The drug scheduling works as a blacklist, but could be reworked to only allow whitelisted drugs.

A law targeting artificially-created drugs or GMO-created drugs would be unenforceable. Many pharmaceuticals are mass-produced nowadays with genetically-engineered organisms (fungi, often) that secrete the target chemical. There's no way to always distinguish a GMO from a crypto-organism, or in other words, an artificially-created drug factory from a naturally-occurring drug factory. Therefore, there'd be no way to prove that a drug was made artificially rather than naturally. So White-listing could still stop trade, but that'd only work until...

Homebrew. As genetic modification tech gets cheaper and easier to use, there will be cheap DIY kits to make your own designer drugs and the organisms to produce them. Later, easily-obtainable underground apps will help you design drugs with certain target effects, based on (but sufficiently modified from) existing recreational drug molecules. Once the international effort to use supercomputers to model the human body's physiology gains open access, people can submit potential molecules to the system and see their effects (and side-effects). No 30-year studies with methodology errors mixed with decades of FUD and hand-wringing, just the truth in black and white for everyone to see. New molecules that aren't simply modified versions of existing chemicals can be brute-forced that have certain effects, avoiding any existing analogue laws. This will enable an explosion in the effectiveness and safety of designer drugs, as there's an uncomfortable (to some) overlap with the effects of medicinal pharmaceuticals, leading to the end of support for drug restrictions.

Re:This is How the War on Drugs Ends

[Demonoid-Penguin]

With designer drugs, scientists can't agree on what exactly a 'drug analogue' means,

Where do you get this shit? Or do you just make it up? We know exactly what an analog is, and how to design them to give fairly predictable effects. Replace the benzene ring with Sulphur etc.

PiHKAL

The rest of your argument sucks balls too - the government has no problems legislating against nature. Existing laws already hamper "medicinal" drug research, even with the recently enlightened changes to cannabis legislation in some States of the US, it's still extremely difficult to get funding or approval for research into non-recreational use of the "traditionally" illegal drugs (i.e. morphine, cannabis, cocaine). You might want to look up "reversal of onus" too, being sent to jail while you endeavour to prove beyond reasonable doubt you are not guilty as charged is just as bad as actually being proven guilty.

Re:This is How the War on Drugs Ends

[meta-monkey]

Not gonna lie, that sounds like an amazing brave new world. A shadowy underground data trade for illegal programs that let you synthesize all sorts of homebrew compounds to change your mental state for good or ill. Like the biotech version of Neuromancer.

Its people with addictive personalities

[Viol8]

Some become addicted to drugs, others drink or gambling or base jumping. They're part of the human spectrum and you'll never get rid of them. Some would argue (and I'd agree) that a healthy civilisation needs all types of personalities to function. However because of their type of personality they need to be protected from themselves when it comes to really dangerous stuff and drugs comes into this category. Whats the solution? I don't know. Complete prohibition never works , but then a free for all would be a disaster for all concerned too. *shrug*

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.

"A gambler tried to drive while in severe gaming withdrawal and swerved into incoming traffic"
"A man turned to robbery to support his base jumping addiction"
"Videogame addict jumps Gamestop clerk after being told he needs a prescri^Wpreorder to get GTA V"

PS: Alcohol _is_ a drug, with same problems as any other drug addiction.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[DNS-and-BIND]

I've never heard of a base jumper who robbed his mother to get money to buy a parachute.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Viol8]

If they had to buy a new parachute for every jump I suspect some probably would.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Viol8]

Plenty of gamblers have commited fraud and other crimes to feed their habit. You might want to read the papers occasionally. As for base jumping or video games , if those "addicts" had to buy new equipment every time they jumped/played then some would soon turn to crime if they couldn't afford it any other way. The addiction is the same - the method is different, nothing more.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of gamblers have commited fraud and other crimes to feed their habit.

You didn't address that part where if they failed to do that their body turns on them, making them unable to meaningfully do anything except for lying down shrivelling in pain.

As for base jumping or video games , if those "addicts" had to buy new equipment every time they jumped/played then some would soon turn to crime if they couldn't afford it any other way.

And if my grandma grew a pair of balls, she'd be my grandpa. Don't you love them hypotheticals?

The addiction is the same - the method is different, nothing more.

I take it you've never seen a real junkie in your life, at least not close and personally.

I've known a gambler, a few alcoholics and a heroin addict - no, first one is completely not the same as the others. May be you should get out more. Or may be you're just lucky, and it's all good, but don't proselytise about things you only know because you've read about them on a forum.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Viol8]

"first one is completely not the same as the others."

Clearly this is all a bit complicated for you to understand but I'll try and make it simple for the hard of thinking such as yourself - they have the same personality type. Got it? A junkie doesn't start out as a junkie , the drugs change them, whereas base jumping - unless you die - generally doesn't change someones mental health.

"Or may be you're just lucky, and it's all good, but don't proselytise about things you only know because you've read about them on a forum."

My father was an alcoholic so get off your fucking cross.

Now run along sonny, I think your school bell is ringing.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Splab]

Get off yours...

The stuff that goes on in a base jumpers mind is exactly the same. They are addicted to the rush, they are willing to commit several crimes to get their fix and they will hurt their loved ones in the process.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Some become addicted to drugs, others drink or gambling or base jumping. They're part of the human spectrum and you'll never get rid of them. Some would argue (and I'd agree) that a healthy civilisation needs all types of personalities to function. However because of their type of personality they need to be protected from themselves when it comes to really dangerous stuff and drugs comes into this category. Whats the solution? I don't know. Complete prohibition never works , but then a free for all would be a disaster for all concerned too. *shrug*

Currently caffeine is a free-for all. Highly addictive. Should we be protecting ourselves from that? I find it horribly ironic that we continue to compare the number of cannabis dispensaries in a given area to the number of caffeine dispensaries, as if the java junkies aren't addicts themselves.

You bring up base jumping, and yet I can't find too many laws prohibiting me from partaking in that very dangerous activity.

You mean, all I have to do is study this comic book for a couple of hours and take a 5-minute driving test, and I get to drive 4,000 pounds of steel down a congested highway at over 70MPH!?! The sheer insanity that we don't protect ourselves more...

A free-for-all does work, in the same way that it's rather self-regulating now. There are plenty of people who choose not to do even legal drugs in which the legality of any drug has no effect on their decision to partake or not. And let's just stop with the gateway drug bullshit already. If you keep that up, I'm going to start campaigning to ban all carbonated drinks on the planet. Obviously they are all a gateway to beer, and bubbles are highly addictive.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[angel'o'sphere]

Most of tehm actully commit "crimes" by jumping at places where it is forbidden :D

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Splab]

My point exactly - there is almost no legal places to base jump from.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

We should ban base jumping then.

Also, everything else that can make anyone addicted to anything. /sarcasm

You can't seriously mean "The stuff that goes on in a base jumpers mind is exactly the same [as a heroin addict or alcoholic]. They are addicted to the rush, they are willing to commit several crimes to get their fix and they will hurt their loved ones in the process."

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[evil_aaronm]

Currently caffeine is a free-for all. Highly addictive.

Where do you get this? How do you define "highly addictive"? Are you reading stories of people sucking dick for caffeine?

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had to buy a new parachute for every jump I suspect some probably would.

Inversely, if a drug addict high was $1500 a pop, I promise you we would have far fewer drug addicts. Ironically at that point, only the 1% could afford it.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[angel'o'sphere]

Don't know where you live, but we have plenty of legal place. Like a cliff in the mountains. However jumping from a skyscraper is usually not legal.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[smallfries]

You know that you would and there is no point pretending otherwise.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[meta-monkey]

I dunno man. I'm on my third cup this morning, and if I were told I couldn't have my fourth without smoking some pole, I'd be tempted.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get caffeine from semen? Holy crap, how come nobody ever told me this before?

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[swillden]

Some become addicted to drugs, others drink or gambling or base jumping.

And some read and comment on slashdot articles, long after the site has become crap. Sigh.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[sudon't]

I've never heard of a base jumper who robbed his mother to get money to buy a parachute.

That may be because parachutes are legal. Let's ban them, let the black market gear up to manufacture them at exorbitant prices, and see how it goes. If nothing else, I'm sure we'll see headlines about poorly made illegal parachutes killing our youth.

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[bayankaran]

How do you define "highly addictive"? Are you reading stories of people sucking dick for caffeine?

Ban coffee and make brewing coffee a felony and you might actually see such behavior!

Re:Its people with addictive personalities

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Jumping from a mountain cliff will only get you the "E" in BASE jumping, though. The true addict will want to hit all 4 for the best rush.

The B-A-S, stands for Buildings, Antennas, and Spans. The Earth, E, is the "gateway jump", I guess.

Ban the internet!

[dimethylxanthine]

Joking. Interesting read. Clearly some drugs, by all means not all, should be legalised - better quality, increased safety, less incentives to invent untested and often hazardous chemicals and, last but not least, PROFIT for the country's budget! Old school politics and the WOD nonsense have caused enough damage already. Even the head of UK Police is saying it: End war on drugs, says Durham police chief Mike Barton

Market forces at work

[Demonoid-Penguin]

[sarcasm]

Obviously we need more legislation, not just against these insidious drugs, but also against bad weather and sharp corners on furniture. Zeus forbid we stop for a moment and consider why people throughout history take drugs. Cue King Cnut. Personally I'd rather see my tax dollars spent on a more productive excercise than pissing up a rope.

[/sarcasm the lowest form of wit... except for the witling fools (f* wits) it's aimed at]

Oh, and kudos and more funds to Caldicot, the man in the middle of this stupidity.

War on drugs = war on consciousness

[TractorBarry]

Trying to stop people altering their consciousness with chemicals is a waste of time. As long as people aren't driving around under the influence, or otherwise endangering third parties, who gives a shit ? If someone is stupid enough to get addicted to something that's their problem. Give it to them free and give them free treatment until they get clean (i.e. don't force them to become petty thieves to sustain a habit)

The real problem with drugs is that they can cause people to lose their societal conditioning and they will no longer play the game and act like a good sheeple.

Not forgetting that prisons and the court system are a great money spinner for the privileged classes.

Look at Victorian England. Laudenum, Cocaine, Opium, Heroin all available over the counter from the local chemist. High society parties where people would have a good dinner then sit around sniffing glue and ether. Did society collapse ? Did people spend all day high doing nothing ? No. A myriad of wonderful mechanical inventions came about, amazing stuff got built and people got on with their lives.

If that's what happens when people can get high in peace bring it on.

Re:War on drugs = war on consciousness

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure glue-sniffing high society nobs weren't the people inventing wonderful mechanisms and amazing stuff, and opium dens were places for broken souls, not temples of enlightenment.

I'm gonna apply your logic next, observe how many inventions and heart-rending art sprung out of World War II, and declare that a bit of good old genocide is awesome for civilizations - we should do it more often!

Re:War on drugs = war on consciousness

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Pretty sure glue-sniffing

The result of drug laws.

opium dens were places for broken souls

As are pubs. Oh wait.... maybe it's only a small minority that seek solace in continual inebriation. Like the lazy kid up the back of the class - he needs a little peer group pressure correctly applied and some coaching, don't hold the whole damn class back.

And your history "knowledge" sucks.

Re:War on drugs = war on consciousness

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with drugs is that they can cause people to lose their societal conditioning and they will no longer play the game and act like a good sheeple."

^^This. Although I wouldn't classify it as a problem since proper adult use can help a lot of people be creative, organize thoughts, and develop critical thinking skills. Better living through chemistry. Problems caused by drug abuse pale in comparison to the problems caused by social conditioning.

3D print the drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely, if we are close to a Star Trek replicator and can 3D print human organs (!), surely printing out a simple molecule as many times as is required should be trivial. Trivial! So please, 3D printing fans, show me where we can 3D print molecules.

Re:3D print the drugs

[Demonoid-Penguin]

So please, 3D printing fans, show me where we can 3D print molecules.

In a lab.

I learned a lot, good article.

[advid.net]

TFA is worth reading.

The part with the Chineese lab is in the middle, search "I decided to get one made myself"

Also:

A single gram of 25i-NBOME contains up to 10,000 doses; it is as potent as a chemical weapon in the wrong hands.
A typical line of a powdered drug might contain around one hundred milligrams—for Bjerk, that was enough for a thousand-fold overdose. He died quickly in the street.

I really don't get it: how people can trust anyone selling such drugs ?
Even when the dose is correct, pills can contain so many other unknown substances...

Re:I learned a lot, good article.

[Demonoid-Penguin]

A single gram of 25i-NBOME contains up to 10,000 doses; it is as potent as a chemical weapon in the wrong hands. A typical line of a powdered drug might contain around one hundred milligrams—for Bjerk, that was enough for a thousand-fold overdose. He died quickly in the street.

I really don't get it: how people can trust anyone selling such drugs ? Even when the dose is correct, pills can contain so many other unknown substances...

Ask yourself the same question when you pour yourself a bowl of CocoPops in the morning and add that permeated milk. 25i-NBOME, easier to dose by several factors than d-lysergic diethylamide tartrate. And, how much contaminants can there be in 100mg?

Legalise! (or should that be 'Regulate!)

[PeerWat]

It's only because drugs are all banned that the problems exist. If someone wishing to get high could take a drug which has been regulated, they would be less interested in taking any old crap their mate recommends, in what could be a completely incorrect dose.

Surely, as technology improves the number of drugs will increase? Just banning every single drug is barely feasible now, as the article makes clear, and the problem is just going to get worse. If society is going to tolerate the consumption of any kind of mind-altering substance, we will have to learn to investigate and regulate them.

PeerWat

Re:Legalise! (or should that be 'Regulate!)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not quite correct. Drug laws often ban chemical compounds with have certain cyclic rings - for example part of the classification of Class A Drugs in the UK:
"any compound (not being a compound for the time being specified in sub-paragraph (a) above) structurally derived from tryptamine or from a ring-hydroxy tryptamine by substitution at the nitrogen atom of the sidechain with one or more alkyl substituents but no other substituent."

Or conversely have a whitelist of 'approved' chemicals - and anything is illegal otherwise.

Food for thought.

Re:Legalise! (or should that be 'Regulate!)

[PeerWat]

I'm not an organic chemist, but "structurally derived from tryptamine" sounds to me like you have to start with tryptamine. If you fabricate your new molecule another way, it's not banned. This highlights the problems of lawyers telling chemists what to do....

In any event, banning groups of drugs with similar structures is a stop-gap solution; there does not appear to be a simple relation between structure and effect. It we could predict the effect that a compound will have on the human brain, then we may be able to formulate a reasonable approach to banning.

I imagine the pharmaceutical companies would just love the idea of having to get each new drug they manufacture unbanned and removing it from the whitelist.

Until we can predict the effect that a new compound will have on the brain, we may have to consider some form of regulation of new substances which are designed for human consumption, but whose effects are not known or understood.

What a gang of assholes

[drinkypoo]

There's a picture of the Beatles not even most of their fans have seen, which we will prevent you from saving conveniently through the RMB because although it's your culture, it belongs to us. Had to save the whole article just to get the images.

Re:What a gang of assholes

[turp182]

Use a screen capture utility, I recommend Greenshot (and and full featured).

I enjoy Medium articles, but don't like the "style" they bring to presenting information.

Re:What a gang of assholes

[drinkypoo]

Use a screen capture utility, I recommend Greenshot (and and full featured).

If you save the images then you avoid loss. I used to use scrapbook plus and then extract them from there, now it's gone I just save to a temp dir, and loot the images directory for the largest files. I also use an extension which saves straight to a directory, which still works when the context menu save image item is missing.

Re:What a gang of assholes

[turp182]

Thank you for the reply, ended up resulting in the funniest thing I encountered today.

The reply caused an email to my inbox with the subject:
[Slashdot] Reply to "Re:What a gang of assholes" by drinkypoo

After telling several people a writer friend of mine wants to write a book titled "What a Gang of Assholes" and use the fake name "Drinkpoo" as the author.

And the meta-comedy is that drinkypoo referred to a gang of assholes...

Holy Shit, Batman!

Barking up the blatantly wrong tree

[Anonymous Coward]

People who are wholly incapable of controlling themselves so they ruin it for everyone

Talk about a red herring. As long as those people don't employ coercion against others (meaning theft, fraud, or physical force), then they have done absolutely no moral wrong. The people doing the moral wrong -- quite contrary to what you've suggested -- are the people exploiting the misfortune of drug addicts in order to expand the business of drug prohibition. I understand you're too young to realize (or accept) the truth, but drug prohibition (and its circular justification, the black market) causes more violent crime in one month than drug use has caused in a century.

Re:Barking up the blatantly wrong tree

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but NOW you are wrong. Now that they get subsidized health coverage, and doing these drugs can cause medical issue, and I pay taxes, I get to have a say on the issue.

You don't get to have me pay for your treatment then say I shouldn't be allowed to have a say on why you can't ruin your life. You begged for me to pay your way, well I think if I pay your way I get a say.

Re:Barking up the blatantly wrong tree

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, but NOW you are wrong. Now that they get subsidized health coverage, and doing these drugs can cause medical issue, and I pay taxes, I get to have a say on the issue.

And that's yet another red herring. The leading causes of death are heart attacks, stroke, cancer, etc, most of which being associated with obesity (read, too high of a caloric intake) and cigarette smoking. Yet we don't ban or otherwise regulate peoples intake of certain foods or quantities of foods and we don't ban cigarette smoking (and the regulation is pretty minor). More the point, medicare/medicaid have resulted in an effectively subsidized health care system for decades, so it's not even a new fact that the tax payers are, directly or indirectly, helping to treat these medical issues. Finally, all the anti-drug laws involved in this predate any of the real medical coverage issues and focus on basically drug use as a social ill.

You don't get to have me pay for your treatment then say I shouldn't be allowed to have a say on why you can't ruin your life. You begged for me to pay your way, well I think if I pay your way I get a say.

Congratulations. You've just signed yourself up for a dictatorship that controls your every waking movement. But feel free to try to weasel out by claiming you didn't actually beg for certain components. I'm sure a druggie on their death bed would reject drug use too, until they're all better and go back to using drugs again. So, how many things of society paid by society would you really give up? And why aren't you giving them up now? Because, last I checked, government money was used to subsidize the internet, the government clearly has an agenda against anonymity (supposedly for terrorism reasons), and here you are partaking in internet and anonymity.

Re:Barking up the blatantly wrong tree

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, you're barking up the wrong tree. Regardless of whether or not drug addicts endorse using tax money to pay for their troubles, they didn't make the decision, and nor did they implement the plan. Once again, it is the business of government (coercive authority) that you need to direct your anger to -- not the excuses they use ("drug addicts need your money more than your own children do").

You might want to brush up on your objective reasoning.

from a career junkie

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks I don't want drugs that make my legs fall of in two years and turns me into Hannibal.

I'll stick with the Methadone Clinic I wish there was a better way to feel normal, unfortunately I never found out how without narcotics. People wake up and go hell yeah it's going to be an awesome day should be happy with that because I would. The first true happiness I experienced was at 8 when I woke up after having my tonsils removed pumped full of morphine. "and no I had a great childhood by most standards" The next more permanent came at 15 after 3 years of failed anti-depressant trials and extremely costly doctor bills and hanging myself which led to a 17 day coma "go figure I couldn't even kill myself correctly". It was in the form of powder "heroin" which led to me living pretty normal for a very long time without anyone knowing.
I heavily regulated my usage just enough to be happy so I could go on about my normal day and it went on like that for 11 years. I woke up, did my shit, went to work and worked my ass off for my family, hung out with normal "clean" friends, paid my taxes, and trying to be a good citizen.
Then I was busted which led to some hard times like losing my job, family, and pretty much everything else which is way too long of a story to get into. Luckily a few years ago I tried going to a clinic which I'm very glad I did because they gave me everything back and now I'm finally living a normal life again.

That said drugs are necessary for people like me and they can actually do a lot of good when carefully regulated.

My eyes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone actually LIKE websites like this? Can you even read this shit?

azaborines

[snoop.daub]

Tip of the iceberg. I'm waiting for someone to start taking advantage of azaborine chemistry to make new stuff. Just replace a C=C bond in a carbon ring with a N=B. It's recently been applied to indoles, which opens the door to a couple dozen psychoactive chemicals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1...

Hate this new dynamic scroll blog style

[__aasehi2499]

Whoever invented that method of reading a web page should be banned from the internet.

Picture available here...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

http://www.beatlesbible.com/fe...

What about just exploiting global supply chains...

[swb]

....for existing pharmaceuticals?

How difficult is it to create a series of shell companies in various third world countries in order to more or less legitimately obtain narcotics or precursors at wholesale quantitites through global pharmaceutical or chemical supply chains?

I imagine that the likely places of manufacture, like India, have pretty strong controls on domestic wholesale, but what about international sales? If you're a wholesaler in Nairobi buyng from India and reselling to Paraguay, how closely is that monitored and by whom? How do the exporters in India vet who they sell to as distibutors overseas? And how much vetting is done by distributors to overseas end users?

Given the level of corruption in most of these places, it seems like it wouldn't be very hard to see this exploited, especially if the USA or other first-world country wasn't part of the list of transaction partners.

Good ones taken you say

[Anonymous Coward]

No good RC's?
Very large part of the 2C-X family, and several other is Pihkal. Or look in Tihkal for tryptamines and you will find a bunch that don't have any real sideffects ( to anybodys knowledge ) and are incredebly well liked. Or why not things that have come out from Universties such as AL-LAD and LSZ. AL-LAD came out recently and is well liked by a lot of people and aren't showing any sign of being bad for the body. So that all the good drugs have been done is just rubbish.

And if you studied organic chemistriy you should have an understanding of the number of different drugs and the laws of probobility.

The author of PIHKAL feels quite differently...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

The legal definition of a "Controlled Substance Analog" hinged on the concept of "substantial similarity" to an already scheduled substance. Alexander Shulgin, the AUTHOR of the book you cite has made his feelings about the stupidity of the analog drug laws quite clear:

http://bitnest.ca/Rhodium/chem...

http://www.opendemocracy.net/c...

There is NO clear definition of "substantial similarity" that all chemists will agree on. And I certainly wouldn't want to have my freedom depend on a typical US jury being able to sort it out either (It must be an analog drug--it's made of the same types of atoms as heroin, cocaine, and meth!)

Can we *please* stop posting drug stories here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is for educated, intelligent people, not knuckle-dragging neanderthal potheads.

Can't we at least pretend to have a level of discourse suited for the average intelligence of Slashdot readers?

I can read this kind of crap in any NORML bulletin, High Times, or any magazine about counterculture. It doesn't belong here.

Re:Can we *please* stop posting drug stories here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerd talk isn't limited to technology. Most drugs are basically applied brain science. And there are a *lot* of drug nerds.

Timmy ruined recess for everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

"Drug addicts ruin it for the people who can use drugs responsibly"

Let's see. This sounds familiar. Oh, yes... let's go back to when I was in kindergarden:

"Timmy ruined recess for all of us with his bad behavior."

It probably sounds familiar to you too, because this kind of irrational, lazy thinking persists straight though adulthood for most people. The problem, of course, is that Timmy himself didn't cancel recess (the teacher did) -- just as the drug addicts didn't attack the responsible drug users (government did). In fact, Timmy is entirely powerless to the situation, just as the drug addicts are powerless to government policy.

The big difference between kindergarden and government (besides coercion) is that the teacher's punishment is motivated by revenge, while government's punishment is motivated by profit.

Re:druggies ruin it for everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Druggies are causing problems?
Well, I have a simple solution then: kill all the druggies.
Oh, wait... that's right... The drugs are already doing that for us.

Ahh... drugs have spared us from the necessity of embarking upon a genocide-like quest. Anyone wanna sellebrate by getting high?

Exposure is not...

[bayankaran]

Exposure is an important predictor of misuse in a population.

I don't think so. Exposure does not mean an automatic path to misuse or addiction.
The percent of the population who are truly alcoholics will remain the same whether alcohol is banned or available. If alcohol prohibition does not work, how do you expect banning/prohibiting drugs will work? Banning/prohibiting will help only the criminals and the LEO types who get their paycheck from 'drug war'...not anyone else.

Apples and Oranges

[Demonoid-Penguin]

There is NO clear definition of "substantial similarity" that all chemists will agree on.

Yes. But don't confuse that legal interpretation with "an inability of pharmacological chemists to agree upon what analog means". It's just an example of the inadequacies of the people who interpret legislation. "analog" != "substantial similarity". (simple is a synonym for ?) I stand by what I said

We know exactly what an analog is, and how to design them to give fairly predictable effects[*1]. Replace the benzene ring with Sulphur etc.

- we can predict the effects of an analog, but while the analog may have "substantial similarity" it's "specific similarities" that determine the "similarities of effect".
e.g. predicting the potency of methylthio-phenylethylamine using the principles of activity. [*2]

Perhaps you haven't actually read Sasha and Anne's work (PIHKAL, TIHKAL, etc), or simply lack a background in organic and pharmacological chemistry. Certainly you conflate legislative language with that of the science.

"substantial similarity" is an interpretation of

"A controlled substance analogue shall, to the extent intended for human consumption, be treated, for the purposes of any Federal law as a controlled substance in schedule I." ??

(emphasis mine). IANAL

And I certainly wouldn't want to have my freedom depend on a typical US jury being able to sort it out either (It must be an analog drug--it's made of the same types of atoms as heroin, cocaine, and meth!)

Agreed (absolutely), three-dimensional structure is unlikely to be properly considered by lay persons (let alone evaluate the coefficients of octanol-water partitions) - but then, the laws and not intended to protect citizens (votes and commerce). Particularly given my comments earlier in the main thread about non-amine precursors on your spice rack.

[*1] Much of that knowledge comes from the work of the Shulgins, Nichols, and Alles
[*2]A. Leo, C. Hansch, and D. Elkins, Chem. Rev., 71, 525 (1971)