I know I am gonna stir up some controversy over this one, but here goes... Who decides (or rather decided) the Schedules placement for drugs? They are obviously out of date. I think they were made before the invention of the automobile, for they hardly placed alcohol in a suitable Schedule for all of the damage it has done, and to so many innocent people. No other drug kills as many people, yet what people really don't see is the fact that it kills about nine times more innocent people than it does actual users. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, opiates, cannabis, etc cannot even compete with this on such a horrible ground. Tobacco, also a very harsh drug for those who never intended to use it, is also sitting very close to nowhere on this preverbal list that makes many of the decisions about the drugs we discuss today. I think in this age of cars, people-filled restaurants, and so-on, the Scheduling system should be set up on basis of harmfulness to not only the user, but the friend or loved one of the user who so often has to live with the users mistakes, along with other factors such as predictability and usage. This, I think we will all agree, will make it harder for alcohol and tobacco companies to get into the mainstream of not only adults, but kids, too. I, myself, live in a county with the highest underage drinking rate of the south in Mississippi. Not something to be proud of. But the thing the most interests me about the law-makers of this state, is the fact they only care about things that society as a whole frowns upon and not the real issues for the district or county seat for which they were appointed. I will agree that all other drugs are morally and physically wrong, but at least they kill mainly the people that use them and not the innocent child you knew down the street or your loved ones you never saw again after they went to get some milk and ended up going to a trauma center. We need to work on the issues that make sense in that order before we tackle harder things. A wise man once said, "we must crawl before we can walk." And on a geek note, the only reason I am using a SCSI hard drive right now is because of the sheer fact that they process commands in the order that (generally) makes most sense. Maybe we could take this knowledge to the court room.
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I know I am gonna stir up some controversy over this one, but here goes... Who decides (or rather decided) the Schedules placement for drugs? They are obviously out of date. I think they were made before the invention of the automobile, for they hardly placed alcohol in a suitable Schedule for all of the damage it has done, and to so many innocent people. No other drug kills as many people, yet what people really don't see is the fact that it kills about nine times more innocent people than it does actual users. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, opiates, cannabis, etc cannot even compete with this on such a horrible ground. Tobacco, also a very harsh drug for those who never intended to use it, is also sitting very close to nowhere on this preverbal list that makes many of the decisions about the drugs we discuss today. I think in this age of cars, people-filled restaurants, and so-on, the Scheduling system should be set up on basis of harmfulness to not only the user, but the friend or loved one of the user who so often has to live with the users mistakes, along with other factors such as predictability and usage. This, I think we will all agree, will make it harder for alcohol and tobacco companies to get into the mainstream of not only adults, but kids, too. I, myself, live in a county with the highest underage drinking rate of the south in Mississippi. Not something to be proud of. But the thing the most interests me about the law-makers of this state, is the fact they only care about things that society as a whole frowns upon and not the real issues for the district or county seat for which they were appointed. I will agree that all other drugs are morally and physically wrong, but at least they kill mainly the people that use them and not the innocent child you knew down the street or your loved ones you never saw again after they went to get some milk and ended up going to a trauma center. We need to work on the issues that make sense in that order before we tackle harder things. A wise man once said, "we must crawl before we can walk." And on a geek note, the only reason I am using a SCSI hard drive right now is because of the sheer fact that they process commands in the order that (generally) makes most sense. Maybe we could take this knowledge to the court room.