Cocaine for instances http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/2 ... ostpopular

Well I once used cocaine and I've never felt remotely compelled to seek it since. Guess my brain must be even more hardwired to keep ahold of my money....

freeman3 wrote:Cocaine for instances http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/2 ... ostpopular

PCP?

Ecstasy?

LSD?

I've seen what those drugs do. They should never be legalized.

As for cocaine, one of my army buddies told me he tried it once. He said not doing it a second time was the hardest thing he ever did.

Ecstasy is nowhere near as damaging as it's made out to be, and in the right circumstances it can be a positive thing. In Switzerland they use it to treat chronic depression and severe PTS. Millions of ecstacy pills are taken every weekend and yet the number of cases where it leads to harm for the user are miniscule, and in almost all of those cases it tends to be caused by using ecstasy in conjunction with other substances. The biggest risk associated with that drug is the fact that it's illegality means that most of the pills on sale tend to be cut with all kinds of other nasty substances that really are damaging to your mental and physical wellbeing.

Personally I think society would be much better advised to end the war on drugs and devote a fraction of the funds we spend on enforcement into much better health provision and education programs. It would save an enormous amount of money, eradicate the vast black market profits that benefit the criminal classes, slash the prison population and allow us to really do something to tackle the cycle of deprivation in our poor communities. This is an idea whose time has come.

I've seen what alcohol and a life-long addiction to nicotine can do. I'm pretty sure the whole thing about most drugs is that they affect the brain in some way.

From the article (my emphasis):

"The frontal cortex regulates decision-making and, as we grow up, we make decisions in an increasingly habitual manner," she said. "But the brain can rewire, and it is rewired by lots of experiences. So even though it was so much more rewired by the exposure to cocaine than it usually is, it can return to normal. I see this as evidence that recovery is possible."

danivon wrote:I've seen what alcohol and a life-long addiction to nicotine can do. I'm pretty sure the whole thing about most drugs is that they affect the brain in some way.

Tell you what. Let's line up three men. We'll have one get drunk, the second can chain smoke a pack of cigarettes. The third? Yeah, he'll be on PCP.

I'll wrestle the first two, you take the third. The first one to get his suspect(s) in handcuffs wins.

You're such an idiot on too many occasions.

I think perhaps you are arguing against a case I did not make.

The original post was about an article showing that cocaine (note: not PCP) affects the brain in a certain way. All drugs have different effects, and so if that is the basis for a ban (freeman's case, not yours), then we need to look at where we draw the line.

That need not be an adversarial debate.

danivon wrote:I think perhaps you are arguing against a case I did not make.

The original post was about an article showing that cocaine (note: not PCP) affects the brain in a certain way. All drugs have different effects, and so if that is the basis for a ban (freeman's case, not yours), then we need to look at where we draw the line.

That need not be an adversarial debate.

Let's start by legalizing / regulating pot and then we can reconvene in 5 years and assess.

Ray Jay wrote:Let's start by legalizing / regulating pot and then we can reconvene in 5 years and assess.

I would agree that legalising and regulating marijuana is a strong option (not either-or, the 'decriminalisation' idea seems a halfway house and regulation in line with tobacco or alcohol seems to me to be the place to go as minimum.

Cocaine, though, I am not sure. Crack cocaine is a different beast to the 'standard' stuff.

A lot of the problems with some drugs is quality control (and what it may be mixed with), which means people do not really know what they are taking, how strong it is, etc. Legalisation and regulation could be used to deal with that, for some drugs.

Recently we've seen an exposion in the market for so-called 'legal highs' as a consequence of drug prohibition. I remember back in the day when I was a young student and dabbled in drugs these were a joke, pathetic herbal substances that didn't actually get you high and that nobody had any interest in. Nowadays it's a whole different ballgame. Chemists have analysed the structure of the illegal drugs and managed to create a bewildering variety of chemical substitutes that by all accounts really do get people high but which are sufficiently different chemically that they manage to evade the laws prohibiting the substances they were originally based on. The authorities try to keep up but it's difficult to do, because no sooner have they banned one category of new drugs than another one comes on the scene, which is disseminated over the internet and taken in nightclubs across the land. Legal highs are much more dangerous than old-fashioned cocaine and ecstasy because they're not subject to stringent quality testing and their effects are not widely understood. You're taking an enormous risk every time you take any of these substances into your body. The risks of the traditional highs are much lower because their effects are widely understood and have been extensively tested. It strikes me as perverse that the law is effectively forcing young people to go with such a risky option when there would essentially be no market for them if cocaine and ecstacy were legally available.

You see the same effect right across the spectrum of recreational substances. In the UK these days it's to all intents and purposes impossible to buy any mild form of cannabis, the only thing that's available on the streets (and it's widely available of course) is the super-strong 'skunk' derivatives that are hyproponically grown by criminal gangs. This stuff has much more profound effects on your state of mind when you smoke it than the milder weed of years gone by used to have, and while I haven't seen any studies into the subject I find it hard to believe that it doesn't also exacerbate the risk of mental illness through long-term use. This development was largely responsible for my decision many years ago to give up smoking weed, but I suspect I may be atypical in that regard. Again, I tend to think that this unwelcome development is a product of criminalisation.

It doesn't just apply to currently illegal drugs either. Ever wondered why so many of the old bluesmen from the early part of the 20th century had names like 'Blind Willie' ? It's because they spent so much time playing music in illegal speakeasies during the prohibition era and drank huge quantities of illegally distilled liquor that contained all kinds of impurities, and this eventually cost them their eyesight.

Sensibly regulated legal markets are far better for society than uncontrollable black markets.

danivon wrote:I think perhaps you are arguing against a case I did not make.

The original post was about an article showing that cocaine (note: not PCP) affects the brain in a certain way. All drugs have different effects, and so if that is the basis for a ban (freeman's case, not yours), then we need to look at where we draw the line.

That need not be an adversarial debate.

Hmm, so it's a coincidence that I wrote:

PCP?

Ecstasy?

LSD?

I've seen what those drugs do. They should never be legalized.

and you wrote:

I've seen what alcohol and a life-long addiction to nicotine can do.

???

You were not being "adversarial?" That's a remarkably similar structure, wouldn't you say?

Coincidence? No. That didn't make it 'adversarial'. Just bringing a wider selection of drugs into the mix.

Sassenach wrote:Recently we've seen an exposion in the market for so-called 'legal highs' as a consequence of drug prohibition. I remember back in the day when I was a young student and dabbled in drugs these were a joke, pathetic herbal substances that didn't actually get you high and that nobody had any interest in. Nowadays it's a whole different ballgame. Chemists have analysed the structure of the illegal drugs and managed to create a bewildering variety of chemical substitutes that by all accounts really do get people high but which are sufficiently different chemically that they manage to evade the laws prohibiting the substances they were originally based on. The authorities try to keep up but it's difficult to do, because no sooner have they banned one category of new drugs than another one comes on the scene, which is disseminated over the internet and taken in nightclubs across the land.

This is something I have noticed. When I was younger, we'd have turned our noses up at 'legal highs', apart from amyl nitrate.

Mind you, the only guy I knew who took cocaine just became even more boring than he was with out it (he was less boring with his normal drug of choice - speed).

Legal highs are much more dangerous than old-fashioned cocaine and ecstasy because they're not subject to stringent quality testing and their effects are not widely understood. You're taking an enormous risk every time you take any of these substances into your body. The risks of the traditional highs are much lower because their effects are widely understood and have been extensively tested. It strikes me as perverse that the law is effectively forcing young people to go with such a risky option when there would essentially be no market for them if cocaine and ecstacy were legally available.

Unfortunately, escstacy and cocaine aren't really subject to any stringent quality testing either, as they are illegal and can be mixed with any old rubbish, and come via all kinds of routes due to their illegality.

Sensibly regulated legal markets are far better for society than uncontrollable black markets.

Generally, yes. But there will be some substances that we don't want to be publicly available, and will end up being illegal - however desirable they may be to obtain. It is a question of balance, and we appear to have the balance largely wrong at the moment.

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:I think perhaps you are arguing against a case I did not make.

The original post was about an article showing that cocaine (note: not PCP) affects the brain in a certain way. All drugs have different effects, and so if that is the basis for a ban (freeman's case, not yours), then we need to look at where we draw the line.

That need not be an adversarial debate.

Hmm, so it's a coincidence that I wrote:

PCP?

Ecstasy?

LSD?

I've seen what those drugs do. They should never be legalized.

and you wrote:

I've seen what alcohol and a life-long addiction to nicotine can do.

???

You were not being "adversarial?" That's a remarkably similar structure, wouldn't you say?

Then again we can add caffeine to that list. You can have my coffee when you peel the mug from my cold dead finger.

Generally, yes. But there will be some substances that we don't want to be publicly available, and will end up being illegal - however desirable they may be to obtain. It is a question of balance, and we appear to have the balance largely wrong at the moment.

Well yes, of course. I certainly wouldn't advocate legalising heroin or crack cocaine for example. I don't actually know what PCP is or what it does to you so I can't really comment on that, but from what I've heard it's pretty nasty stuff. Powder cocaine is relatively harmless though, it's a very overrated drug.MDMA in its pure form without all the nasty additives is fine, there are very few if any studies to show that it has a seriously damaging effect on the user unless they heavily abuse it over a prolonged period of time (which is the same for pretty much any substance). Cannabis has been speculatively linked to a slightly increased incidence of schizophrenia among heavy users but this isn't necessarily a causal link and it's still a very small risk relative to the enormous numbers of users there are. I don't think that risk alone is sufficient justification for it remaining illegal, it's more of an excuse applied retrospectively by people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. These three drugs are far and away the most popular substances around, if there were a sensibly regulated legal market for them I tend to think it would crowd out the other, riskier substances.