Every time this is mentioned, the Lancet report springs to mind and the one that sticks out like a sore thumb to me is ecstacy, class a supposedly dangerous stuff sat below lighter gas in the danger stakes. Why is that?
All I can imagine is that should it ever become legal, a few policticians may well not be getting their golden handshakes from Mr Carling and Mr Heineken possibly because they’d be out of business when people realise that getting drunk sucks. Volvic I feel wouldn’t object 😆

sbob – Member

No, really dude, you sound like you need help.
There’s a lot of anger there, I’m sure you have some issues that need resolving.

😆 Jesus Muslamic Abraham! If that can be considered as anger issue we are all maggot zombies.

dabble – Member

There are a lot of Slipknot fans in the world chewkw

Who? I am no fans of anything to be frank. Karen Carpenter, ABBA or Bee Gees perhaps but I get bore with listening to people singing. 😆

@dazh Heroin’s actually quite safe given a clean product and the knowledge of how to use it

In the 90s a lad/addict who lived below me was prescribed diamorphine (heroin) as his treatment etc he was dead within 6 months. You develop an incredibly quick tolerance to heroin within weeks he had to double his dose plus the effects of heroin are very short lived. The upshot was he was outside the chemist at 8.30am waiting to ‘score’ and the circle continued till he died. All his veins eventually collapsed he virtually stopped eating and his weight was about 7 stone.
The policy of prescribing of drugs to addicts as a way of harm reduction is now changing as it’s been judged to offer the addict very little hope as in effect the state just becomes the dealer the end is still the same jails institutions & death.

used responsively, massively enlightening

thats where I disagree with you. drugs arent enlightening, they just make everyday mundanity seem interesting.

used responsively, massively enlightening

They just stop your brain from functioning correctly. What is enlightening about that?

Well, off the top of my head; I’ve broken a lot of personal barriers, solved lots of previously-unfathomable problems, learned about my own mind (and it’s limitations) and have learned to see the world around me in a broader, less narrow-minded way.

good idea, make up a political party with that as the main driver and see how many votes you get.

Clearly that would never work. But the first party to step up and make a serious call for legalisation would get my vote. The ‘war on drugs’ is a losing battle and not doing anyone any good, in fact quite the reverse. We often hear critics holding those who use drugs responsible for the harm done to lives in the supply chain, I see it the other way, it’s not the user it’s the law that creates this misery. Look at booze, there’s no problem in the supply chain, the problem is that it’s one of the worst drugs to make legal. Legalise pot, E and Coke and I recon you’ll see booze become less of an issue. Not so sure about Heroin, Meth, Crack, they’re just too dangerous.

People will always want to get high and we need an effective mechanism to support them, not push it into the criminal underworld. Don’t get me wrong drugs are not good, but they are good fun. Let people have there fun, put a legal framework in place, tax it, make sure you can test for it (driving etc) and provide a legal alternative to alcohol.

They just stop your brain from functioning correctly. What is enlightening about that?

Semantics! They make your brain work differently. You see things from a very different perspective and that is very enlightening. Subtle but profound.

Some people want to get high. I was in that stage of life in the early 90’s.
I partied hard using hash,speed, acid, mushrooms,extacy, coke. I had a great time and loved it. I did realise I was virtually dependant on drugs, no matter what,so managed to wean myself off over a couple of years. I haven’t had anything since 1993.
I am now suffering from severe mental health issues. Are they connected? Who knows?

Must have been one hell of an evening.

Look at booze, there’s no problem in the supply chain, the problem is that it’s one of the worst drugs to make legal. Legalise pot, E and Coke and I recon you’ll see booze become less of an issue. Not so sure about Heroin, Meth, Crack, they’re just too dangerous.

And just make everyone currently involved in the supply of pot, E and Coke move into Heroin Meth and Crack? If your legalising to prevent the problems with a war on drugs and the illegal drug trade then it’s got to be all or nothing.

Considering the cost/health implications of legal Tobacco and Alcohol use opening up more routes for drug taking will have it’s down sides.

Not so sure about Heroin, Meth, Crack, they’re just too dangerous.

Heroin is barely harmful at all – if you are able to get a regular clean supply with known purity etc. Read the bit about the war on drugs in Flat Earth News.

Edit:

Start with the allegation that heroin damages the minds and bodies of those who use it, and consider the biggest study of opiate use ever conducted, on 861 patients at Philadelphia General Hospital in the 1920s. It concluded that they suffered no physical harm of any kind. Their weight, skin condition and dental health were all unaffected. ‘There is no evidence of change in the circulatory, hepatic, renal or endocrine functions. When it is considered that some of these subjects had been addicted for at least five years, some of them for as long as twenty years, these negative observations are highly significant.’

Check with Martindale, the standard medical reference book, which records that heroin is used for the control of severe pain in children and adults, including the frail, the elderly and women in labour. It is even injected into premature babies who are recovering from operations. Martindale records no sign of these patients being damaged or morally degraded or becoming criminally deviant or simply insane. It records instead that, so far as harm is concerned, there can be problems with nausea and constipation.

Or go back to the history of ‘therapeutic addicts’ who became addicted to morphine after operations and who were given a clean supply for as long as their addiction lasted. Enid Bagnold, for example, who wrote the delightful children’s novel, National Velvet, was what our politicians now would call ‘a junkie’, who was prescribed morphine after a hip operation and then spent twelve years injecting up to 350 mgs a day. Enid never – as far as history records – mugged a single person or lost her ‘herd instinct’, but died quietly in bed at the age of 91. Opiate addiction was once so common among soldiers in Europe and the United States who had undergone battlefield surgery that it was known as ‘the soldiers’ disease’. They spent years on a legal supply of the drug – and it did them no damage.

We cannot find any medical research from any source which will support the international governmental contention that heroin harms the body or mind of its users. Nor can we find any trace of our government or the American government or any other ever presenting or referring to any credible version of any such research. On the contrary, all of the available research agrees that, so far as harm is concerned, heroin is likely to cause some nausea and possibly severe constipation and that is all. In the words of a 1965 New York study by Dr Richard Brotman: “Medical knowledge has long since laid to rest the myth that opiates observably harm the body.” Peanut butter, cream and sugar, for example, are all far more likely to damage the health of their users.

http://www.flatearthnews.net/footnotes-book/page-28-heroin/whats-wrong-war-against-drugs

I am now suffering from severe mental health issues. Are they connected? Who knows?

Could be – or you could have been prone to mental health issues anyway (and possibly ‘self-medicating’).

Good question, which would require a long answer. One answer could be that some westerners lives, having been reduced to a deeply unsatisfying self-perpetuating cycle of work and consumption, require the instant relief provided by the use of mind-altering substances.

FTFY.
Out of my wider circle of friends I can only think of one person who regularly used drugs.
I don’t see too many who go out and get shit-faced, either.
A sweeping generalisation, in other words. I don’t need drugs, never have done, and yes, I have, on a couple of occasions, got completely off my face after chewing a lump of resin. Saw some extraordinary things in the illustrations in a book about Gáudi, which did have me wondering what he was on when designing his buildings, but I hated the feeling of being out of control, so never bothered again. Don’t smoke, and it drink moderately.
That, however, could change if I had more money, but it’s more about the flavour than getting pissed.

Good question, which would require a long answer. One answer could be that some westerners lives, having been reduced to a deeply unsatisfying self-perpetuating cycle of work and consumption, require the instant relief provided by the use of mind-altering substances.

I think that most advertising (and there’s a hell of a lot of advertising-led content in the media) is pretty much designed to make you feel unsatisfied with your current lot, and be constantly aspiring to a better, sexier life.

http://www.flatearthnews.net/footnotes-book/page-28-heroin/whats-wrong-war-against-drugs

Thanks for that, pretty much sums up my opinion. Question is, how do we resolve this?

People will always want to get high and we need an effective mechanism to support them,

Not everyone does, most who do grow out of it !
Those who do not are either selfish or stupid or both. Why support them ??
If the current legal status of certain drugs is preventing greater use then the drug laws are having an effect, if they are not working then why bother wasting parlimentary time and tax payers money creating what would be a huge and costly state department for the selfish and stupid ??

Those who do not are either selfish or stupid or both. Why support them ??

Your son/daughter goes to a party. They drink a crazy amount of vodka. A “nice guy” dealer offers them this amazing thing to make them feel better. He doesn’t charge for the first time. Next time he cahrges. Your offspring is hooked-selfish bastards.
They need as much help at this time as possible.

Or as per cheekyboy line them up against a wall and shoot them

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8yYJ_oV6xk&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Makes a lot of sense to me.

cheekyboy – Member

Those who do not are either selfish or stupid or both. Why support them ??

Even if that were true, which of course it is not, it would still make sense to help them purely on financial grounds- the cost of supporting someone with a drug problem is less than the cost of not supporting them, in terms of lost productivity, medical attention, connected crime etc. So if you’re not open to compassionate arguments presumably you’re open to greed based ones?

Or as per cheekyboy line them up against a wall and shoot them

[quote]

Never mentioned anything about summary execution, the use of a made up scenarios, emotionalised by bringing my children into the argument is pretty poor form.

[/quote]Even if that were true, which of course it is not, it would still make sense to help them purely on financial grounds- the cost of supporting someone with a drug problem is less than the cost of not supporting them, in terms of lost productivity, medical attention, connected crime etc. So if you’re not open to compassionate arguments presumably you’re open to greed based ones?

So you refute my argument that not everyone wishes to get off their face, and that getting off your face is not in fact an act of either stupidity or selfishness ?

People with drug problems will not go away becaused drugs are legal, people who become unproductive because of drug use are dealt with and do cost the health service and therefore the tax payer a massive amount and therefore must by their existence deprive other needy services of cash.

The myth that regulated and taxed legal drug use would pay for the safety net required to allow this must have been dreamt up by a pot head.

Are you on drugs now cheekyboy? That might explain the bizarre inverted quoting and arguments completely lacking in logic or evidence.

There is an increasing consensus amongst experts that the current strategy is a devastating failure. Blithely sticking to it because ‘drugs are bad mmmmkay’ is moronic.

Thanks for that, pretty much sums up my opinion. Question is, how do we resolve this?

I think it will happen eventually but I have no idea how we could speed it along. I think the media have a lot to answer for.

Try watching the video, if you haven’t cheekyboy. The retired police dude covers a lot of ground and makes a lot of very sensible points about why it would be a good idea.

Regardless of what you might think not every one who wishes to get off their face is stupid, selfish or reckless. With proper education and knowledge and the right environment it’s perfectly possible to choose to use drugs as and when safely and without destroying your life or other peoples. That’s not to say everyone manages it, but in a regulated system it would a lot easier if that’s what you wanted to do.

The myth that regulated and taxed legal drug use would pay for the safety net required to allow this must have been dreamt up by a pot head.

Have you seen how much tax revenue would be generated by a regulated drug market? Or how much tax has been collected on pot in Colorado? How would it cost to put in place proper controls and education?

Are you on drugs now cheekyboy? That might explain the bizarre inverted quoting and arguments completely lacking in logic or evidence.

Too much caffiene

Dont see how the inverted quoting really matters but did think that my logic is not that too hard to understand, I am of course voicing an opinion not offering any factul evidence.
Opinions are derived from thought, evidence is gathered, compiled and presented to prove a vested interest.

Recieved thought and theories are often presented as evidence.

The ex copper on croens link hit the nail on the head,who do we want to run the market place because drugs aren’t going away.

The problem with graphs like the one on the first page showing alcohol and tobacco being “more dangerous” than Heroin or Pot is they often only focus on one number (e.g. deaths per year, which alcohol will always win as more people abuse it, or theraputic index which again alcohol loses on as most people would say 3-4pints is a ‘theraputic dose’ but the recomended dose to avoid side effects is half that) .

It’s very difficult to consume alcohol or pot to a point where it results in acute problems leading to death, both will cause you to pass out well before that happens, unless you consume them in some ridiculously concnetrated form (neck a bottle of vodca, or a whole tray of hash brownies).

The difference occours after 6-months to a year or longer of heavy use when the person who’s got battered several times per week sobers up and gets on whith life as normal. The canabis user is far more lilkely to have pickled his brain. Anecdotaly my roommate in first year of uni (about as close to an open drug market as you’re likley to get in this country) went from studying for a Maths masters to working at the Co-Op. How does that level of lost productvity fit in with the increaced tax revenue of legalised drugs, even if he was paying VAT on his pot his lifetimes earnings are going to be about 30% of what they would possibly have been.

It’s very difficult to consume alcohol or pot to a point where it results in acute problems leading to death, both will cause you to pass out well before that happens

Alcohol is more dangerous than pot FULL STOP

There are many many recorded deaths where the cause was alcohol.
there is only one death recorded where pot was the cause [ and it is recent]

Alcohol is more dangerous , iuts a FACT

The canabis user is far more likely to have pickled his brain

Source – it it more anecdote

All things have some risk element to them the cannabis one is so low that we really should not make it illegal but it is high enough we should regulate it

You’re right about (as far as I know) the chart from the lancet not taking into account availability or general population usage. I don’t buy the argument that a legal market would suddenly mean that the entire country ends up on drugs.

We need to be careful to not use anecdote as evidence too. A lot of people will know someone who has wasted their talent or life while using drugs, but that’s not evidence of a trend or how the wider population would be effected.

Regardless of what you might think not every one who wishes to get off their face is stupid, selfish or reckless.

So what is getting off your face then ?

Sensible ?

Productive ?

Responsible ?

Its daft, why would you want to sanction, legalise, regulate and attempt to tax stupidity ?

For all those of a leftwing/liberal persuasion, do you really believe legalising drugs will help in your crusade for equality and egality ?

Will the underpriviledged on our sink estates be able to afford our new heavily taxed and regulated drugs ? or will they still keep it undrground.
The argument for legalisation is as futile as the one for heavier policing.

There is no solution for illicit drug use, only the hope that it will one day fade away.

This is what they did

Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance.

Usage criteria is not that relevant here hence why they did not consider it

We all know that if more people do something harmful more people get harmed. However the harmer is not more harmful/dangerous if 10 people do it or if 10,000 do it.

So what is getting off your face then ?

Sensible ?

Productive ?

Responsible ?

Its daft, why would you want to sanction, legalise, regulate and attempt to tax stupidity ?

It can be a fun and mind expanding experience. As a society we take loads of drugs for all sorts of reasons. You’re taking caffeine. Where’s the line?

Why wouldn’t you want to regulate and tax it? People are going to do it regardless as humans have been doing for thousands of years. It’s not going to go away.

There is no solution for illicit drug use, only the hope that it will one day fade away.

Are you on crack or having a crack here ?

What is your evidence over all human societies that drug use will just go away because you dislike it?

Prohibition sure stopped alcohol use in America eh.

There is no solution for illicit drug use, only the hope that it will one day fade away.

And there we have it in a nutshell – that kind of illogical, unrealistic nonsense is why we have an unworkable, destructive system in place. 🙄

Are you on crack or having a crack here ?

What is your evidence over all human societies that drug use will just go away because you dislike it?

Prohibition sure stopped alcohol use in America eh

Did you read what I wrote, did you actually think about what I wrote ?

Obviously not !

I said !

Only the hope that it will one day fade away !

The clue is in the word hope, yes I do hope that one day it will fade away, I do not think it will however.

The supposed benefit of a temporary high/state of euphoria does not counter the worldwide misery and destruction caused by drug use.

Has the abuse of the weed addled your brain ?

The supposed benefit of a temporary high/state of euphoria does not counter the worldwide misery and destruction caused by drug use.

The worldwide misery and destruction is largely caused by the fact that drugs are illegal. Did you read the article I posted the link to? The one that was full of actual evidence from proper studies and the opinions of experts (including senior law enforcement officials)?

No I bet you couldn’t arsed – because…. well…. drugs are bad aren’t they.

Could you please try and apply a tiny smidgeon of critical thinking to your opinions?

Calm down please

The clue is in the word hope, yes I do hope that one day it will fade away, I do not think it will however.

So now we both agree it is here to stay what do you think is the best way that does the least harm – is it prohibition and the current war or some form of de criminalisation?

The supposed benefit of a temporary high/state of euphoria does not counter the worldwide misery and destruction caused by drug use.

Alcohol for example – your banning that then?
You have seen the misery of a nightimes euphoria in the police cells, the hospitals and the battered wifes [ 75 % of domestic abuse involves alcohol for example]
I do agree that all drugs to have a mixed bag of affects and we need to control for them and minimise the harm. I am failing to see how your approach achieves this though

Has the abuse of the weed addled your brain ?

Think what it would do to you then if this is your coherent thinking

In the 90s a lad/addict who lived below me was prescribed diamorphine (heroin) as his treatment etc he was dead within 6 months. You develop an incredibly quick tolerance to heroin within weeks he had to double his dose plus the effects of heroin are very short lived. The upshot was he was outside the chemist at 8.30am waiting to ‘score’ and the circle continued till he died. All his veins eventually collapsed he virtually stopped eating and his weight was about 7 stone.

So do we base drug policy on tragic individual anecdotal stories like this which are undoubtedly more complex than they seem on the surface, or do we look at it based on actual evidence provided by decades of experience of different system across numerous countries involving hundreds of thousands of people?

And if we’re talking anecdotal evidence, then Mrs Daz, who has been a drug worker for 12 years has seen about 5 times more alcoholics die in service than heroin addicts. She also used to prescribe diamorphine to some heroin users who did’t respond to methadone and subutex and had a very good success rate of stabilising their addiction so they could lead relatively normal lives.

And if we’re talking anecdotal evidence, then Mrs Daz, who has been a drug worker for 12 years has seen about 5 times more alcoholics die in service than heroin addicts

How many times more alcohol adicts does she see though? More than 5x?

A more likely scenario (IMO) is the people currently drinking to death would just switch drugs.

Alcohol for example – your banning that then?
You have seen the misery of a nightimes euphoria in the police cells, the hospitals and the battered wifes [ 75 % of domestic abuse involves alcohol for example

That (and others making the same point) doesn’t make sense, why would you legalise other (arguably worse) drugs just because alcohol is legal and bad? Put your sensible hat on and campaign to ban alcohol if that’s the case!

Alcohol is more dangerous than pot FULL STOP

And tobacco is safer (short term) than either, there’s no nicotine limit for driving or opperating heavy machinery is there? But smoking is certainly more dangerous over a lifetime than beer.

How many times more alcohol adicts does she see though? More than 5x?

She sees a lot more heroin addicts. The alcoholics deteriorate so quickly it’s difficult to get them in treatment before it’s too late, and in the cases of users who are addicted to both, the priority is often given to stabilising the alcholol addiction before the heroin addiction.

One interesting fact about alcholol addiction, which no one has mentioned, is that it’s one of the few drugs where the withdrawal symptons can kill you if you stop taking it.

That (and others making the same point) doesn’t make sense, why would you legalise other (arguably worse) drugs just because alcohol is legal and bad?

So you are arguing for alcohol to be banned then?
No- does that make sense?
I have the same position for both
Its rarely good if ever to do drugs but the least harm is to regulate it rather than have it illegal

I normally consider myself fairly right wing, but the war on drugs is clearly not being won and costing a fortune.

Several friends and relatives are coppers and social workers. Nearly all agree that it is not the drugs themselves that are the issue, it’s the crime around the drug scene from growers to end users that is the problem.

Legalise growing,farming and control distribution to end users seems a much better use of public money, taxing it to fund help users get off it and keep the stuff safe.

Alcohol, tobacco and sugar probably do more harm than illegal drugs, and I quite enjoy two out of the three, to prohibit controlled use of harder drugs strikes me as hypocritical

That (and others making the same point) doesn’t make sense, why would you legalise other (arguably worse) drugs just because alcohol is legal and bad? Put your sensible hat on and campaign to ban alcohol if that’s the case!

No-one is arguing alcohol should be banned, because prohibition doesn’t work – as evidenced by every attempt to introduce it ever.

This has already been pointed out at least once.