Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: BlueFlames on July 13, 2014, 10:56:09 pm
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How do you do that? If you're a woman about to give birth, don't seek medical any sort of attention. Why wouldn't you seek some sort of medical attention? Let me introduce you to my home state:
In Tennessee -- particularly rural east Tennessee -- we have a huge problem with methamphetamine. It's been the state's defining social welfare problem this decade. An especially emotionally-charged part of this issue is that when a pregnant woman takes meth, the unborn fetus is likely to become addicted, even before birth.
Here in Knoxville, East Tennessee Children's Hospital has been operating beyond capacity, for years, treating drug-addicted newborns. When they cannot take anymore in, newborns are sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. When UTMC is full-up, I don't know where they get transferred, but it's pretty often that they get sent on to wherever that next destination is, because the NICU is constantly full.
When you're a politician, and your constituency faces a social welfare problem that is this severe and this emotional, you have to do something. So what do you do? Community outreach to high-risk populations to get them into treatment programs before they get pregnant? Subsidize treatment programs to make them less expensive than feeding a meth addiction? Anything else that's remotely sensible?
Not if you're a politician in Tennessee. If you're a politician in Tennessee, you wield the stick. At the end of April, our state legislature passed and Governor Bill Haslam signed into law a bill (http://www.capitol.tn.gov/Bills/108/Bill/HB1295.pdf) that amends the simple assault misdemeanor to include taking illicit drugs, while pregnant. Simple assault is punishable by up to a year in jail.
Carting new mothers off to jail was all very theoretical, until last week. This past Tuesday, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department separated a new mother from her infant and hauled her off to jail (http://www.wate.com/story/25979914/monroe-county-arrests-mother-of-drug-positive-infant-under-new-law), where she has languished, unable to pay bond, pending her trial.
In the coming weeks and months, we will see how far the state will take the execution of this new law, but the potential consequences seem dreadful. Modern medicine makes childbirth a relatively safe procedure. In a hospital setting, only ten women per hundred-thousand births die from complications in the childbirthing process. It makes us forget that childbirth was quite dangerous in previous eras and in less technologically-advanced regions. Without any medical care at all, childbirth claims the lives of 1,500 women per hundred-thousand births. My fear is that drug-addicted, expectant mothers in this area will avoid drug treatment, avoid prenatal care, and avoid medical assistance during childbirth, in an effort to avoid being implicated for violating this new law.
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*headdesk headdesk headdesk*
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Wow, political masters degree in dumb.
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Just when you thought politicians couldn't get any dumber... Isn't this violating the constitution or something, though?
And of course, the simple, not-outrageous solution didn't happen to anyone. Legalize and regulate the bloody drugs!
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Your link code is malformed.
Anyway, this was also said:
However, the new law does allow entering a treatment program before the birth and successfully completely it afterwards as a defense.
The grammar didn't make sense, but if that means that entering a treatment program before the birth and successfully completing it gets you off the hook then that's pretty reasonable.
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Just when you thought politicians couldn't get any dumber... Isn't this violating the constitution or something, though?
And of course, the simple, not-outrageous solution didn't happen to anyone. Legalize and regulate the bloody drugs!
marijuana yes. crystal meth, **** no, that **** is dangerous (unless of course you are lemmy, in which case its an elixir for immortality). the reason that marijuana has a reputation as a gateway drug is because when you go try to get some weed, the dealer will always try to push something stronger. eliminate the dealer and eliminate the problem.
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I definitely agree in principle, taking teratogenic drugs while pregnant is the same a worst child abuse and such women deserve punishment. Either abort, or dont do drugs. That mother is morally a criminal and there should be no right to take dangerous drugs while pregnant. If my mother took drugs while pregnant with me I would be pissed off. I am all for legalisation of drugs but only if you harm yourself, not children along with you.
But reality is not black and white and this could have an effect to discourage pregnant junkies from visiting hospitals. That is a fair point, and I am not sure I would support the actual law in practice. We will have to see what the effects are. Some kind of a warning or treatment program may be a good idea before applying this law.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions....
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Just keep in mind that if the woman is punished while still pregnant, it could hurt the child further. I agree that taking drugs (drinking and smoking too) while pregnant should be punishable, but only after the child is born. Indeed, it should be forbidden to send a woman to jail while she's pregnant. As soon as she gives birth and recovers, though, it's off to the big house with her. This would ensure only the guilty party is actually punished.
marijuana yes. crystal meth, **** no, that **** is dangerous (unless of course you are lemmy, in which case its an elixir for immortality). the reason that marijuana has a reputation as a gateway drug is because when you go try to get some weed, the dealer will always try to push something stronger. eliminate the dealer and eliminate the problem.
Ah, right. The article indeed mentions meth addictions specifically. Well, in that case, legalizing pot could also help, since it'd strike a major blow against drug cartels and mitigate the "gateway drug" effect somewhat.
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God Damn the Pusherman...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN6eTXA0VlI
Edit : Damn you, youTube tags...
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Your link code is malformed.
Clearly, it's been a while since I've posted links. That's fixed now. Thank you.
Just keep in mind that if the woman is punished while still pregnant, it could hurt the child further.
There's also profound developmental consequences to separating an infant, especially a newborn, from its mother, which is exactly what the Monroe County Sheriff has already done. There really isn't much of a way to punish a new mother without also punishing her child. If you jail the mother, you necessarily have to separate her from her child. If you fine her, then you take away resources she may need to care for her child, especially considering the economic demographic most affected by meth use--and remember in this specific case, the mother cannot make $2,000 bail.
I agree that taking drugs (drinking and smoking too) while pregnant should be punishable...
That's another problem with the law, though. It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal. A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences. Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy. I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.
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Great Scot! What a mess!
This seems to me like one of those Hydra problems. The current policy is down right stupid, no disagreement there. But simply ending said policy doesn't really solve the problem, because women will still try to take meth. The only approach I can see that would help would be a severe crackdown on the meth trade, which in turn would be expensive, difficult, and would take a long time to improve the situation (still worth it though).
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Yes, that's why it's not easy to implement a policy that would work in that case. Separating a child from it's parents, especially mother, is always traumatic, even if it's a horrible, abusive mother. The younger the child, the worse it is. The problem is, you're between Scylla and Charybdis in this case. You either separate the baby, which means it'll likely have psychological problems (not to mention finding somebody who'd adopt such a baby might be hard), or you can not do this, leading to the baby growing up addicted to drugs and probably with access to it. Either way, it'll be harmed in some very serious way. I think the lesser evil is to separate, if done right, it might work better than growing up as a meth addict.
The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America. If it was as simple as blowing up a few plantations or assassinating a few drug barons, MARSOC or some other SpecOps team would've done it long ago. They have to be eliminated by other ways, such as making them lose their profits by legalizing certain kinds of drugs and fighting corruption that leads to dealers slipping through the police's fingers.
That's another problem with the law, though. It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal. A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences. Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy. I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.
Indeed, this is another thing I loathe about these laws. I can agree to a lot of things, provided they're implemented consistently and reasonably. Hypocrisy is one of the worst things that we have in the laws today. I can live with a harsh, but consistent rules, but I detest laws that are hypocritical, illogical and contradictory. People should, generally, obey the law, but how are they to do so if they don't understand it? Government (even, bah, especially, my favorite kind; the monarchy) and laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of their people, not the other way around. Unfortunately, politicians don't care about such little things as honesty and consistency.
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The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America.
I just don't know what you're on about here. It sounds like you're confusing one drug problem for another. What's at issue here isn't so much drugs that are being imported from South America, like cocaine or heroin, but stuff that's produced and cheaply available locally, particularly methamphetamine. Cracking down on supply is actually a viable option, which could be effectively combined with increasing the availability of treatment options, so that you can get people out of their addictions, by means that don't involve separating mothers from their newborns.
But that's not what we've done. The state government has decided to impose stiffer punishments on a specific catagory of user, and when stiffer punishments are imposed on people addicted to a drug, they don't suddenly become unaddicted; they go to greater lengths to avoid the punishment. Hence my concern about pregnant women avoiding medical care before and during childbirth.
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The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America.
I just don't know what you're on about here. It sounds like you're confusing one drug problem for another. What's at issue here isn't so much drugs that are being imported from South America, like cocaine or heroin, but stuff that's produced and cheaply available locally, particularly methamphetamine. Cracking down on supply is actually a viable option, which could be effectively combined with increasing the availability of treatment options, so that you can get people out of their addictions, by means that don't involve separating mothers from their newborns.
Don't drug cartels control meth trade, too? Yes, it can be made locally, but ultimately, I've had the feeling that the criminal underworld doesn't take kindly to any "independent" illegal activity. The reason I mentioned South America is the bosses generally seem to be based there, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be connected to this issue, too. I don't know how it works in the US, though.
Though if most of the suppliers really are small-scale ones, that might be even worse. Where there's demand, there's supply, and if even if there was a state-wide crackdown, what'd stop dealers from smuggling the drugs from another state? Or addicts from driving to another state and buying their meth there, for that matter? There are no checkpoints on state borders, AFAIK.
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You've been watching to much Breaking Bad. Local production of methamphetamines generally outstrips "imports", especially in certain areas. Independence, Missouri had the nickname "meth capital of the US" for a good while simply because of the sheer number of labs that would explode or get raided every year.
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The reason this law came to be is also the reason why it will be difficult to fix the problem.
As far as fixing the problem, I bet legalizing marijuana would reduce how many people start meth, if not also allow current meth addicts to transition off of it onto something less addictive.
But the reason laws like this are getting passed is because there's a private prison industry in the US, and they (through ALEC) are (one of?) the biggest lobbyists for harsh penalties for drug related offenses. They don't care about protecting babies, they care about having as large a prison population as possible, since they (effectively?) get paid per prisoner. Protecting babies is just the excuse they use to sell the idea to dumb voters.
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Double-post because dammit this is a big deal.
I tried to confirm whether ALEC had their hands in this, but it seems my Google-fu was too weak. I kept getting stuff about Alec Baldwin :mad: I couldn't even find the name of the law.
Still, ALEC and the private prison industry are relevant to this discussion even if it turns out they didn't have their hands in this particular law, because they're (one of?) the main obstacles to fixing US drug policy in general.
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Yes, that's why it's not easy to implement a policy that would work in that case. Separating a child from it's parents, especially mother, is always traumatic, even if it's a horrible, abusive mother. The younger the child, the worse it is. The problem is, you're between Scylla and Charybdis in this case. You either separate the baby, which means it'll likely have psychological problems (not to mention finding somebody who'd adopt such a baby might be hard), or you can not do this, leading to the baby growing up addicted to drugs and probably with access to it. Either way, it'll be harmed in some very serious way. I think the lesser evil is to separate, if done right, it might work better than growing up as a meth addict.
The problem with cracking down against meth is that you're going against drug cartels, and they have a long history of avoiding those. They'd go under for the duration of the search, then re-emerge. The logical thing to do would be to strike against their command structures, but that might be hard without ending up in a war with half of the South America. If it was as simple as blowing up a few plantations or assassinating a few drug barons, MARSOC or some other SpecOps team would've done it long ago. They have to be eliminated by other ways, such as making them lose their profits by legalizing certain kinds of drugs and fighting corruption that leads to dealers slipping through the police's fingers.
That's another problem with the law, though. It only targets use of drugs that are already illegal. A woman can get blitzed on a few bottles of wine every night that she's pregnant and face no legal consequences. Likewise, if she has a crooked doctor, who will keep prescribing opiate pain-killers (the big drug problem of the previous decade, in Tennessee), then she can keep taking those straight the way through her pregnancy. I find the prospect of scaring pregnant women away from medical care to be the most disgusting aspect of the law, but the inconsistancy is pretty appalling as well.
Indeed, this is another thing I loathe about these laws. I can agree to a lot of things, provided they're implemented consistently and reasonably. Hypocrisy is one of the worst things that we have in the laws today. I can live with a harsh, but consistent rules, but I detest laws that are hypocritical, illogical and contradictory. People should, generally, obey the law, but how are they to do so if they don't understand it? Government (even, bah, especially, my favorite kind; the monarchy) and laws are supposed to exist for the benefit of their people, not the other way around. Unfortunately, politicians don't care about such little things as honesty and consistency.
Ironically, I was just reading "Clear and Present Danger".
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any silver bullet here. To solve the problem you'd either need to make people stop taking meth, or cut off the supply of it.
On a side note, I find the idea of LEGALIZING the drugs downright terrifying.
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Yeah, it's one thing if you're talking about pot, but **** like meth is flat-out poison.
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I feel ignored.
I bet legalizing marijuana would reduce how many people start meth, if not also allow current meth addicts to transition off of it onto something less addictive.
Reasonable hypothesis or no?
And can someone with better Google-fu than me please check whether ALEC had a hand in this?
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It's.... not entirely reasonable, mostly because addiction/dependency doesn't really work in a way that it becomes feasible to transition to something else. Chemical addictions are formed to a specific chemical (hence the name), and the withdrawals kick in after a prolonged absence (for certain definitions of 'prolonged') of that chemical. Substituting another chemical to take the edge off would still get you high, but the withdrawals would still suck hard, and then they'd just go back to the thing they're dependent on in the first place.
Addition is an ugly monster.
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Addition is an ugly monster.
/me pictures a giant, ravenous plus sign
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Ok, and what about the first part?
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I can't speak to its validity or invalidity, mostly because I doubt any of us currently talking in this conversation have a good grasp of drug dynamics.
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if you do different drugs every day, then you will never get addicted to any of them.
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But if the number of legal non-prescription ways to get high goes from 0 to 1...?
Wait, isn't nicotine a stimulant? What's the difference between tobacco and cannabis then?
Edit: in case some asshole doesn't know what question marks mean: clearly I am acknowledging my ignorance here, someone enlighten me.
And while I'm editing this... I did a little more research, and found out that Tennessee is where the corporate HQ of "Correctional Corporation of America" (which works through ALEC). Still couldn't find the name of the law anywhere, or anything that definitely indicates they had a hand in it, but it seems even more certain they did now.
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But if the number of legal non-prescription ways to get high goes from 0 to 1...?
Wait, isn't nicotine a stimulant? What's the difference between tobacco and cannabis then?
Cannabis does a number on your brain including, but not limited to paranoia and memory loss, with prolonged use, especially with the stronger strains of the plant, these effects become permanent.
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FINALLY found it: SB 1391 / HB 1295 (http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=SB1391), which became Public Chapter Number 820 (http://state.tn.us/sos/acts/108/pub/pc0820.pdf). That will make researching whether CCA/ALEC had a hand in its origins easier, but I'm tired now.
@headdie: I meant why people choose it over tobacco. And idk if that info is right... I remember finding out that what they taught me in school was a load of horse****, but idr if that was part of it anymore :blah:
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if you want to learn about dope, the best way is to light up a dube.
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On a side note, I find the idea of LEGALIZING the drugs downright terrifying.
At least the drug discussed here, yeah. My bad that I didn't notice (at first) that they specifically mentioned meth, which is just as bad as they say that it is, if not worse. Pot is usually what people want to legalize, and usually what's being talked about when it comes to drugs. It isn't any more harmful than alcohol or tobacco, and even used as a prescription medicine (though this occasionally runs into legal problems, too...). There is, on the other hand, no doubt that meth and similar stuff should be forbidden and the dealers hunted down without mercy.
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Ok then. Are there any other non-prescription drugs that are legal, and can be used in a "recreational" manner, legally? (I say "legal" a second time because of stuff like household chemicals used as inhalants, since it's legal to own the chemicals, but it's illegal to use as an inhalant).
Else "legalize marijuana" seems like the best solution, because if marijuana were legal nobody1 would bother with meth. It also seems like, of the "recreational" drugs to consider for legalization, marijuana is afaik the one with the least deleterious side effects.
Is there a reason why nobody's addressing my comments about the probable involvement of CCA/ALEC in this legislation? :confused:
1Hyperbole
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tons of them. "synthetic marijuana" is one of those things. they are always coming up with new formulas to get it through loopholes in the law (my state has been cracking down on it). i dont exacty suggest anyone actually use it. its just plant matter laced with chemicals. there are other more "natural" things out there like shrooms or salvia (they were legal last i checked). these things are usually sold at hed shops, though you can order it online in some states. i haven't actually used any of those substances, weed is generally safer, even compared to things like tobacco or booze.
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Is there a reason why nobody's addressing my comments about the probable involvement of CCA/ALEC in this legislation? :confused:
What's it matter if ALEC originally drafted the legislation?
Think seriously about that question. Whether or not this bill was drafted by ALEC, does it change the (in)effectiveness or side-effects of the law? Are there different alternative solutions to the core problem of meth-use by pregnant women in Tennessee, if the bill was or wasn't written by ALEC?
Most everyone in the thread has taken to discussing the quality of this solution and possible alternatives. Any ALEC involvement in the legislative process is not particularly relevant. You're free to bring it up, of course, to see if anyone in the thread wants to run with that point, but apparently your interest is not shared by the other participants.
Honestly, I kind of understand why. Outside organizations write and lobby for legislation. That's neither new, nor necessarily bad. There's probably a good discussion to be had about the topic (seriously, start that thread; I'd like to participate), but not in another pre-existing discussion, where people are already drilling deep into the details of a specific piece of legislation.
To be clear, I'm not trying to backseat moderate. If the discussion does take a sudden turn to outside groups and how they influence the legislative process, then that's fair enough, and I'm perfectly happy to see it happen. I'm just answering Aardwolf's question by explaining why I feel that would be a big shift in the conversation and why that shift hasn't happened already.
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Mmm. I see. It's only relevant if you go along with my proposed fix, legalizing marijuana.
Well then:
Pros:
- People can get the same high, safer, and legally
- Therefore less new meth addicts
- Maybe help existing meth addicts quit
- Drug cartels dry up and vanish; Taliban & Al Qaeda opium trade as well
- Maybe police will become less militarized after the "War on Drugs" funding dries up
- Other stuff I could probably think of
Cons:
- ALEC will do everything it can to make sure it doesn't happen
How's that?
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You're equating a meth high with a marijuana high. They are not the same thing. Drugs are not merely different intake methods to experience the same sensation. The idea that legalizing marijuana significantly negatively impacts the drug trade (see my earlier explanation for why chemical dependency is complicated) is naive at best.
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Whatever. Unless I'm missing something, there's currently zero legal recreational drugs that are anywhere near as potent as the illegal ones. I don't care if it's not the exact same effect. If tobacco were "as good as" the illegal stuff, a lot fewer people would bother with the illegal stuff. But it isn't, right?1
I am not talking about an individual getting their fix for an existing addiction. I am talking about new addicts. That's why that line that said "Maybe help existing meth addicts quit" is prefaced with the word "Maybe" in italics; yes you indicated to the contrary, but I'm not thoroughly convinced. Specifically: can't you fight withdrawal symptoms with another stimulant, maybe one that's less addictive and has less misc. deleterious effects?1
I don't get how going from there existing zero safe, legal, non-prescription recreational drugs to there existing one could fail to cause to a marked drop in the demand for unsafe, illegal, or prescription-only2 recreational drugs.
Edit: And at the very least legalizing marijuana would negatively effect the illegal marijuana trade.
1Question mark.
2It should also be mentioned that another of the big backers of harsh drug policy laws like this is the pharmaceuticals industry; legalizing anything would break their monopoly on recreational drugs.
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I'm not at all happy with the idea of legalizing Pot. The idea that it's no more harmful than tobacco is just plain wrong. Not only that, it triggers destructive behavior in the user such that even those who don't take it are effected. Making Marijuana use legal, easy, and worst of all, social acceptable would open a Pandora's Box- and I'm speaking as someone who's had to live in close proximity to pot users for longer than I like to think about.
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i think the thing i tripped the most balls on were those 2 boxes of sleeping pills i took back in 2002 in an effort to kill myself. i was hallucinating and all kinds of ****.
a meth high kinds seems like just a heightened level of alertness. granted i didnt smoke that much meth. if it wasnt for the extreme amount of damage the stuff does to ones body, i wouldn't see a problem with it. it would be good for truckers, soldiers, airline pilots, and surgeons to take. anyone who needed to be alert for an extended period of time. it actually makes sense why they give the stuff to people with add.
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Edit: nevermind
Amphetamine could be distributed, it's methyl-ed cousin, not so much. Even still Amphetamine has some nasty side effects that can get you if you aren't careful. Plus it doesn't replace sleep, just makes you think you don't need it.
Sometimes the reason an individual starts experimenting with illegal drugs is because they are illegal. They, like cigarettes, have appeal because they're taboo. So I don't think potency is a good argument for why people would choose legal vs illegal. It really comes down to "It's not that simple"
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I'm not at all happy with the idea of legalizing Pot. The idea that it's no more harmful than tobacco is just plain wrong. Not only that, it triggers destructive behavior in the user such that even those who don't take it are effected. Making Marijuana use legal, easy, and worst of all, social acceptable would open a Pandora's Box- and I'm speaking as someone who's had to live in close proximity to pot users for longer than I like to think about.
Nope. Virtually all of the "bad stuff" they teach you about it in school is wrong. It doesn't permanently damage your brain cells, it's not super-addictive, and the "gateway drug" phenomenon is the result of drug dealers using it as the hook to get you to try their other stuff, not any property of the drug itself.
Triggers destructive behavior? What, you mean making stupid decisions while stoned? The same can be said of alcohol.
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Yeah, you're going to need to cite some sources on that one, InsaneBaron.
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http://unmaskingmarijuana.org/uploads/Brain_Regional_Abnormalities_Hippo_Aust_ArchGenPsych.pdf
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_1-7-2013-11-49-21
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/mentalhealthproblems/alcoholanddrugs/cannabisandmentalhealth.aspx
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=481834
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/12/marijuana-users-have-abnormal-brain-structure--poor-memory.html
Tried to avoid the sensationalist stuff, may have failed in some cases, but it looks like academically the jury may still be out, certainly needs more large scale trials to be undertaken as it looks like most of it recycles the same 3 studies
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I'm not seeing any corroboration of the idea that tobacco is healthier for you in any of those links.
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I know I once saw someone put together a 100-point scale of the danger levels of various drugs, based on a wide range of criteria including health effects, societal impact, and so on. By this scale, marijuana ranked somewhere down in the teens...while alcohol was in the mid-80s. Legality and safety don't necessarily go hand-in-hand.
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i dont doubt that smoking weed is a cancer risk. and the solution to that risk is vaporizers and brownies. vaporizer tech is going to greatly reduce the damage caused by smokables, reducing but not eliminating the risks.
when you compare weed to alcohol, there is just no contest. booze will **** you before weed ever does. i have done far stupider things on booze than on weed. i have been on the verge of alcohol poisoning several times. weed has never made me feel like my life was in danger. you just get so high you forget how fire works and you cant light your bong anymore, and you wake up the next day in a puddle of bong water with bits of weed everywhere. i hear doing brownies can cause a runaway high, because of the delayed reaction and positive feedback caused by the munchies, this is fixed by limiting the amount of weed you put in your brownies, so that even if you eat all of them, you wont die (i never put more than a bud or two into a batch).
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Whatever. Unless I'm missing something, there's currently zero legal recreational drugs that are anywhere near as potent as the illegal ones. I don't care if it's not the exact same effect. If tobacco were "as good as" the illegal stuff, a lot fewer people would bother with the illegal stuff. But it isn't, right?1
This is because illegal recreational drugs (for the sake of clarity of discussion leaving out marijuana) tend to have dangerous effects that are intrinsically linked with their potency. Meth is not dangerous solely because it's addictive, it's also dangerous because it produces vivid visual and aural hallucinations and psychotic tendencies. This is a trait it shares with most other highly illegal drugs. It's not necessarily the exact same effects, but their danger is not too terribly overblown by pharmaceuticals that want to stay in business.
tl;dr there's a good reason legal stuff is less potent than 'the good stuff' and making 'the good stuff' available through legal means is a Bad Thing.
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i think people who make drug laws should smoke it before they decide if they should ban it or not.
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@Scotty: ...in all cases except marijuana. So far you've largely avoided commenting on the crux of my argument though.
Going from there existing zero safe, legal, non-prescription recreational drugs to there existing one would cause a marked drop in the demand for unsafe, illegal, or prescription-only recreational drugs.
Agree or disagree? If you disagree, how?
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My answer to that is fairly clear, if you'd stop framing it in terms of what you want to hear instead of what I'm actually saying.
There is no currently legal alternative to high-potency illegal drugs.
What the rest of my post went on to say is that this is a good thing because high-potency drugs are Bad Things.
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I'm not at all happy with the idea of legalizing Pot. The idea that it's no more harmful than tobacco is just plain wrong.
Legalisation is debatable, but decriminalisation of personal use is a must. War on drugs does far more damage than drugs themselves ever could.
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@Scotty: So you are disputing the notion that recreational drugs can be both "potent" and "safe" at the same time? If so then yes, your answer was clear. Nonetheless I believe at least one counterexample exists, one which you have declined to contest.
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I think that we will legalize marijuana and when the massive weed corporations figure biogenetics all in and out, we will be debating *what* is marijuana and what isn't, and it will be legal mayhem. It will be hilarious to watch.
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@Scotty: So you are disputing the notion that recreational drugs can be both "potent" and "safe" at the same time? If so then yes, your answer was clear. Nonetheless I believe at least one counterexample exists, one which you have declined to contest.
Weed is not nearly as potent and does not have nearly the negative consequences as any of the drugs you're trying to meander around the point with.
You're absolutely welcome to delude yourself into thinking that legalizing a meth-equivalent drug might help things. Weed is not that drug. That drug will not be as positive as you want to believe.
EDIT: to be completely clear, I'm not saying marijuana cannot be a safe recreational drug. I'm contesting that it had any of the qualities that it must have in order to support your supposition.
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Yeah, you're going to need to cite some sources on that one, InsaneBaron.
Okay, I'll dig some up, but...
@Aardwolf: since as you stated you're arguing that the vast majority of health textbooks are inaccurate I'm curious to see your sources as well.
I thought the fact the weed has nasty permanent consequences (including brain damage) was common knowledge. Yes, tobacco's bad too, but if tobacco and weed are equivalent than tobacco must be worse than I had thought. (Note: unless I'm mistaken smoking normal cigars doesn't make people violent.)
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I've never seen weed make a normal person violent. If anything, my experiences with folks under the influence of marijuana is the exact opposite of that.
I really hope you're not confusing THC (chemical found in cannabis) with PCP (a dangerous dissociative hallucinogen).
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Indeed it is common knowledge, because it's taught in schools. It's also false. Want a source? Here's a Congressional report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Marihuana_and_Drug_Abuse). There are many more like it.
@Edit:
Weed is not nearly as potent
Well there we go. TIL quoted thing.
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Indeed it is common knowledge, because it's taught in schools. It's also false. Want a source? Here's a Congressional report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Marihuana_and_Drug_Abuse). There are many more like it.
@Edit:
Weed is not nearly as potent
Well there we go. TIL quoted thing.
Very interesting. I'm going to look into this further. While it would be surprising, it wouldn't be the first time standard educational material has been entirely wrong (Haeckel's Embryos and the Manchester Moths spring to mind.)
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I've never seen weed make a normal person violent. If anything, my experiences with folks under the influence of marijuana is the exact opposite of that.
I really hope you're not confusing THC (chemical found in cannabis) with PCP (a dangerous dissociative hallucinogen).
The only people I've ever heard of getting violent on marijuana are those who are fending off someone trying to swipe their Doritos / chocolate bars.
Marijuana has a number of negative health effects, but no worse (and likely better) than both alcohol and tobacco. Propensity to violence is not among the side effects.