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[codezero]

'Cause they're not the rawest form of the drug, opium and coca-leaf.

[Siquo]

If processed materials count as natural then everything is natural. I mean, even oil is residue from what once was living matter, minerals are arguably a natural resource, so everything we synthesize from those materials must be natural as well...

So yes, natural means "unprocessed" (simple processes such as drying, picking, smoking and making tea not included).

[G-Flex]

Ah but there is something else: Natural products (shrooms, marihuana) can be inspected with the naked eye. If you get a powder or a pill from someone who couldn't care less if you died or not (eg: a drugdealer), you'll just going to have to trust him that it will not kill you. Trusting drugdealers to be beneficial to you can be fatal.

You can't trust a drug dealer who gives you anything. You can cut heroin and cocaine with foreign substances, and you can taint marijuana leaves with foreign substances that you also can't detect with the naked eye. So no, your naked eye cannot tell whether or not a supposedly-natural drug has other junk in it.

Nicotin is not deadly. I've been using it the last 16 years every day of my life and I'm still not dead. Unlike the promise on the package. I think I'll sue them. 
Besides, it's the tar and smoke particles that kill you, not the nicotin.

Anecdotal evidence consisting of one person's experience means absolutely nothing. There's a reason people speak in terms of risk and not certainty.

And as far as nicotine goes, it hasn't really been shown to be carcinogenic or anything like that, and I certainly wouldn't call it "deadly", but it still has long-term side effects on the central nervous system and is highly, highly, highly physiologically addictive in a way that's extremely difficult to get over.

[Siquo]

Oh yes, very addictive, but not very deadly.

And yes, you can put something in my marihuana, but I can still tell whether it is marihuana or not, with the naked eye, so the benefit of the effort to f me up is not there. The pills you sell me could be either placebo's or his grandma's heartmedicine that would kill me, and I won't be able to tell the difference. Yet you can sell them at a big profit, and there is a benefit to your efforts.

[Shades]

Nicotin is not deadly. I've been using it the last 16 years every day of my life and I'm still not dead. Unlike the promise on the package. I think I'll sue them. 
Besides, it's the tar and smoke particles that kill you, not the nicotin.

Actually nicotine is deadly, 60mg I think is the toxic level for humans, and is used as the basis for a large number of pesticides.

The levels you get in cigarettes would only kill you if your body actually absorbed it all. As it is only a small amount of the total in a cigarette is absorbed and so it is, as you say, the other things that lead to the medical issues.

[Siquo]

Concentrations are toxic, not substances. This was established a long time ago and still everyone calls certain substances toxic and others not. Fact is that any substance is deadly and toxic, in large enough amounts.

The drugs we're talking about are usually toxic in small concentrations, and the dose you need to take to get some effect is bordering on their toxic concentration, which is what makes them so dangerous.

[florian]

Nicotine has an LD50 of about 0.5–1.0mg/kg. Compared to other commonly ingested drugs (alcohol, cocaine, THC, LSD, caffeine) which all have LD50s at least an order of magnitude higher this is extremly deadly.

[Siquo]

... so what is your point?

Let me rephrase: Nicotine ingested in the normal manner of smoking tobacco is not deadly.

[Shades]

... so what is your point?

Let me rephrase: Nicotine ingested in the normal manner of smoking tobacco is not deadly.

No-one is denying that, however florain's orginal post was

For example, nicotin is completely natural but still incredibly deadly and addictive. LSD is not natural but one of the least harmful drugs.

Which is completely true but one which you refuted. It is an example, one of many, where natural chemicals are far more harmful than synthetic ones. LSD being the case in point here because it metabolises practically instantly.

[codezero]

But you don't smoke nicotine, you smoke tobacco.

[Shades]

But you don't smoke nicotine, you smoke tobacco.

You do both. Along with ammonia, arsenic, benzene, lead, cadmium and about 4000 other chemicals. Some of these are harmless binding agents, some for flavour enhancement (honey, chocolate, vanilla), others I have no idea

But you smoke more than just tobacco, and LSD is still less harmful

[Siquo]

LSD is still less harmful

That depends on your definition of "harmful".
LSD can trigger psychoses, can induce flashbacks much later on, and noone has ever jumped off of a building thinking he could fly while under the influence of nicotine.

[Jude]

LSD is still less harmful

That depends on your definition of "harmful".
LSD can trigger psychoses, can induce flashbacks much later on,

That's true, tripping is rolling the dice. You can't tell if it's going to fuck with your  brain until afterwards when it's too late. Still, these negative side effects are pretty rare - but psychedelics stil aren't toys, it's true.

Also, I've never heard of anybody going off the deep end from using psychedelics once or a couple of times, it's usually people who do it all the damn time that become space cadets. I can see why; those things seriously fuck with reality and if you did them all the time you could easily start to lose touch with the real world. 'Course, after I did shrooms, my reaction was "OK, I'm not doing that again for at the very least another year." It's been 3 years and I still haven't touched them again. I think you'd have to be a little off to start using them habitually in the first place.

[/quote] and noone has ever jumped off of a building thinking he could fly while under the influence of nicotine.
[/quote]
That's incredibly rare in general, and nonexistent if people did their homework before tripping

[Siquo]

if people did their homework before tripping

And that, my friends, is the best advice.

It still happens though. Shrooms are now illegal here (didnt used to be) since a year or so ago some stupid tourist jumped out of her hotel window while under influence... *sigh*

(Stupid? Yes, she had also mixed it with alcohol and other drugs)

[Osmosis Jones]

Have you guys heard of erowid? If you wish to talk drugs of ANY sort, it is by far the best place to go for information on effects, chemistry, history, legality, etc., and should really be mandatory reading before a discussion on the subject.

Also, seratonin antagonists such as LSD also have another advantage; they have a 'cooldown' period. The effect of acid taken a short time (say a day or so) after taking a greater than threshhold dose of LSD or similar compound is hugely reduced, to the point where you cannot trip on LSD twice in quick succesion unless you happen to have a bottle of saturated liquid LSD handy.