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[Levi]

The only drug I know of that I'd rather see stay criminalized is Crystal Meth.  Its not only addictive but it destroys who you are and your brain.  And frankly its easy enough to make that I don't think drug dealers are getting very rich off of it.

There are other drugs that are also pretty damn addictive and/or destructive with very little legitimate benefit: See heroin and PCP, for example.

I'm not sure about PCP, but Heroin really isn't as bad as it seems.  Its mostly destructive simply because its so expensive and dangerous to get.  If doctors could prescribe for cheap a person could probably live quite fine addicted to it as long as they have a safe place to inject.

Of course being addicted to anything obviously isn't good and you can overdose on heroin, but these are somewhat manageable things if the healthcare industry steps up.  The safe injection site in Vancouver has been doing wonders for Vancouvers addicts.

[penguinofhonor]

Yeah, a lot of the dangers of some drugs are mostly because of how sketchy the illegal market can be.

For instance, anyone taking molly/ecstasy has to be worried about what their drugs are cut with. That can be way more dangerous than any of the drug's effects on its own.

[penguinofhonor]

Also how you take them, yeah. Snorting and injecting are typically bad for your body no matter what you're doing.

[palsch]

Regarding drug policy in general, I tend to view it as a public health issue. Specifically I approach it according to the principles in this article;

    First, the overarching goal of policy should be to minimize the damage done to drug users and to others from the risks of the drugs themselves (toxicity, intoxicated behavior and addiction) and from control measures and efforts to evade them.

    That implies a second principle: No harm, no foul. Mere use of an abusable drug does not constitute a problem demanding public intervention. “Drug users” are not the enemy, and a achieving a “drug-free society” is not only impossible but unnecessary to achieve the purposes for which the drug laws were enacted.

    Third, one size does not fit all: Drugs, users, markets and dealers all differ, and policies need to be as differentiated as the situations they address.

    Fourth, all drug control policies, including enforcement, should be subjected to cost-benefit tests: We should act only when we can do more good than harm, not merely to express our righteousness. Since lawbreakers and their families are human beings, their suffering counts, too: Arrests and prison terms are costs, not benefits, of policy. Policymakers should learn from their mistakes and abandon unsuccessful efforts, which means that organizational learning must be built into organizational design. In drug policy as in most other policy arenas, feedback is the breakfast of champions.

    Fifth, in discussing programmatic innovations we should focus on programs that can be scaled up sufficiently to put a substantial dent in major problems. With drug abusers numbered in the millions, programs that affect only thousands are barely worth thinking about unless they show growth potential.

I'd recommend the whole article along with much of what Mark writes at Reality Based Community on the subject (some specific essays on cannabis legalisation here, mostly looking at the uncertainties involved), but I believe those principles hold up even if you reject most of the rest of it.

One of my biggest gripes with the legalisation side is that they abuse claims of health benefits, usually without understanding them. Take cannabis and cancer. Most studies involve using refined THC or other designer cannaboids in very high doses delivered directly to in-vitro cells. The concentrations of chemicals involved in these studies are impossible to reach in any street drug, let alone deliverable from smoking, making the medicinal uses utterly irrelevant to the question of getting high. Yet you see them get trotted out time after time when discussing legalisation.

My gripes with the prohibition side should be obvious.

[FearfulJesuit]

Dragging this from the drunk fortress thread, not sure if wellincollin will read this, but meh.

-UBERSNIP!-

gonna have to interject, here. Marijuana causes far, far worse psychological effects over time, contains more nicotine than tobacco (and so, is more addictive) and, like regular smoking, fucks up your lungs. Beer can fuck up your liver and cause internal haemorrhaging, but you need a lot of that to suffer the ill effects. Evidence has been found that suggests alcohol may decrease heart disease, too.
If alcohol was worse than cocaine, I think it would have been banned already.
And Alcohol is organic. it's C2H5OH, which is an organic chemical. Also, yeast makes alcohol, not machines, so it comes from an organic source. I don't think much more evidence is needed to prove it's not organic.

What does organic have to do with, well, anything? Pot's organic. Heroin's organic. Coke's organic. I think PCP's organic!

Depends on your definition of organic, of course- by the strict chemical definition, just about anything that'll interact with you in any way more sophisticated than simply poisoning will almost certainly be organic, because it'll have carbon in it. (Is there any more nuanced definition? That's the definition I've heard, of course- for example, table sugar (C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁) or formaldehyde (CH₂O) are obviously organic, and I'm pretty sure about CO₂, but what about weirdos like boron carbide (CB) or zirconium carbide (ZrC), which are just a carbon attached to a metal or a metalloid with no other nonmetals like a few hydrogens or oxygens floating around?)

[penguinofhonor]

I have not found a single source saying that marijuana contains nicotine.

[Scelly9]

I have not found a single source saying that marijuana contains nicotine.

I think he's confusing nicotine for tar.

Know what else is organic? Deadly Nightshade, I'm sure that's good for you.

[LordSlowpoke]

Dragging this from the drunk fortress thread, not sure if wellincollin will read this, but meh.

-UBERSNIP!-

gonna have to interject, here. Marijuana causes far, far worse psychological effects over time, contains more nicotine than tobacco (and so, is more addictive) and, like regular smoking, fucks up your lungs. Beer can fuck up your liver and cause internal haemorrhaging, but you need a lot of that to suffer the ill effects. Evidence has been found that suggests alcohol may decrease heart disease, too.
If alcohol was worse than cocaine, I think it would have been banned already.
And Alcohol is organic. it's C2H5OH, which is an organic chemical. Also, yeast makes alcohol, not machines, so it comes from an organic source. I don't think much more evidence is needed to prove it's not organic.

What does organic have to do with, well, anything? Pot's organic. Heroin's organic. Coke's organic. I think PCP's organic!

Depends on your definition of organic, of course- by the strict chemical definition, just about anything that'll interact with you in any way more sophisticated than simply poisoning will almost certainly be organic, because it'll have carbon in it. (Is there any more nuanced definition? That's the definition I've heard, of course- for example, table sugar (C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁) or formaldehyde (CH₂O) are obviously organic, and I'm pretty sure about CO₂, but what about weirdos like boron carbide (CB) or zirconium carbide (ZrC), which are just a carbon attached to a metal or a metalloid with no other nonmetals like a few hydrogens or oxygens floating around?)

The strict chemical definition is that organic compounds are hydrocarbons or functionalized compounds thereof. (Methane, for example, is organic. Carbon dioxide is not.) Source is IUPAC.

And no, I weren't specifically waiting to nitpick, it's just that I'm trying to be constructive with my PTWs.

[scriver]

Why does being swedish make you more socialist? If anything, you would think that having some socialist policies would make people less extreme, not more.

It doesn't. I mentioned it because it means I have experience with socialized health care and thus wouldn't think "death boards" exist.

Also how you take them, yeah. Snorting and injecting are typically bad for your body no matter what you're doing.

Don't forget about smoking!


quote author=Scelly9 link=topic=115001.msg3541915#msg3541915 date=1345490439]

I have not found a single source saying that marijuana contains nicotine.

I think he's confusing nicotine for tar.

Know what else is organic? Deadly Nightshade, I'm sure that's good for you.
[/quote]

Could possibly give you one hell of a kick, though.

[G-Flex]

I have not found a single source saying that marijuana contains nicotine.

I think he's confusing nicotine for tar.

Which would still be silly, because smoking is by far not the only way to take marijuana. It's probably the worst way (that anyone sane would actually do). Not to mention "tar" isn't addictive.

[alway]

#3 Wouldn't matter since I think that the author doesn't understand how memory works (admittedly, I don't either, but I do know it doesn't work like that).

sorry, but I have to interject, NOBODY knows what memory acts like, whether we just struggle to recall it, or it gets overwritten or what.
He may be right, for all you know. but I also highly doubt anyone will live forever, so...

Actually, we have a pretty decent idea of how it works, at least in a general sense. And that author is wrong. Memory isn't like computer memory; it isn't a discrete thing of storage of data; our brains don't work like that. How 'memory' exists in the brain varies by what sort of memory. Short term stuff is effectively a sort of loop of neural activity of some sort or another; the neurons essentially have a feedback of some sort along the line, keeping the impulses in a semi-stable state. Long term memory is based more on changes in the brain's layout due to neuroplasticity; both a strengthening/weakening of synaptic connections resulting from brain activity. Similarly, it isn't concentrated in a single region, but these changes take place throughout the brain. You also don't remember full events; you remember attributes or elements of those events (the smell of grandmothers house, navigational information of how to get around in it, etc), and then your brain works out the details in a manner it deems plausible. That's the gist of it anyway; there are details and differences in parts of the brain, but this is the general thought on how it works.

However, neuroplasticity does decrease as we age; it is an issue which will need to be sorted out for a non-aging form of immortality to work. More research is needed in that regard as to a fix for that, but honestly, it's probably one of the lesser concerns related to non-aging immortality as far as difficulty. It's also the least pressing, as first we need to find a fix for Alzheimers; at this point it's a much bigger issue than neuroplasticity issues which probably wouldn't become too problematic until people are living well over a century.

[Hanslanda]

Mushrooms I've only done once when I was camping and I didn't really get any hallucinations, but I did notice my ability to focus on a task was completely shot.  I was going to watch Dr. Who on my tablet in my tent, but I couldn't figure out which actions I should take to complete that goal.  Find my flashlight?  Get my Tablet?  Drink some water?  Close my tent flap?  Took me like 5 mins to get myself focused enough to accomplish those few tasks.  Kind of an interesting experience.

Huh. I definitely hallucinated a bit. Not visually, but I felt like there was a needle in my left arm for a while. I guess that's a tactile hallucination? It still wasn't anything like a pop culture trip.

The biggest effect I noticed when I did them is that I sorta blacked out for like three hours. I don't remember anything that happened around me but I remember everything I was thinking the entire time. It wasn't like an alcohol black out where you just don't remember anything.

Also whenever mushrooms are mentioned I like to bring up this study. I doubt anyone needs to be convinced that some illegal drugs have positive health effects, but I don't think this gets mentioned as often as things like medical marijuana do.

I definitely visually hallucinated from taking mushrooms. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is a pretty extensive list of different psilocybin mushrooms out there?

[Levi]

Maybe.  I did get a couple visual quirks where the moon/trees twitched a bit, but that was it.  I also enjoyed looking at the wallpaper of my tablet for reasons I couldn't explain.

Mostly though I lost my ability to plan things and my whole body felt full of nervous energy.  Maybe if I try it again I'll take a higher dose, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy more of the "nervous energy" bit.  Any more and I think it might be unpleasant.

[Hanslanda]

Maybe.  I did get a couple visual quirks where the moon/trees twitched a bit, but that was it.  I also enjoyed looking at the wallpaper of my tablet for reasons I couldn't explain.

Mostly though I lost my ability to plan things and my whole body felt full of nervous energy.  Maybe if I try it again I'll take a higher dose, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy more of the "nervous energy" bit.  Any more and I think it might be unpleasant.

I would be extremely careful with psychedelics if I was you. They can be very... Fickle.

[penguinofhonor]

The needle-in-arm hallucination in that it manages to sneak itself into my perception every once in a while since then. It's weird, like a recurring dream. Even happens when I'm drunk sometimes. It's always the left arm, too, which is the one I've never had blood drawn from.

I definitely visually hallucinated from taking mushrooms. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is a pretty extensive list of different psilocybin mushrooms out there?

That could definitely be a possibility. Another could be the dosage, or just the inconsistency of psychedelics. I took two doses of shrooms, for reference.