[quote]orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Big Pharma would have us all be addicts if they could.
Cocaine does help with toothache and novocaine, and I do not know if it is still used by dentists ,is very similar to it.
The very fact that society had no inner city slums with dealers on street corners at the time of that advertisings speaks volumes.
of course it did. The dealers were just allowed to advertise but they were ther as well as the slums and the problems.
So you´re saying it really makes no difference, if you do not count the crimes to finance drugs and the millions of people in jail?
So why have prohibition at all?
[/quote]
Where did I say it makes no difference?
We should prohibit the most addictive drugs otherwise our problems will be worse. We should loosen restrictions on the less harmful drugs, that way we could spend less money and jail fewer people for silly things like pot while still preventing a large portion of society from becoming addicted to the more dangerous drugs.
I thought I said this a couple times. Perhaps you should reread the thread and try doing your own thinking instead of trying to fit things to your libertarian philosophy.
[quote]new2training wrote:
After giving this topic some more thought I believe that if recreational drugs were made legal its entirely possible that drugs like meth would probably become obsolete.
Big corporations (pharma)would of course throw millions of dollars into R&D to develop some pretty high grade stuff, patent it and mass produce it.
If you look at the alcohol prohibition as an example there was probably a tremendous amount of home brewed “gut rot” floating around. The alcohol equivalent to meth.
Once alcohol became legal again, distilleries and breweries became huge corporations and the quality available to the general public skyrocketed. No need to buy radiator brewed shine anymore to catch a buzz.
What do you think?
[/quote]
Back in the 60’s and 70’s they had Black beauties at $.50 to $.75 each . They lasted 16 hours and unless you went nuts there were no bad effects , unless you considered Mr. Happy did not want to work while you were speeding.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s they had Black beauties at $.50 to $.75 each . They lasted 16 hours and unless you went nuts there were no bad effects , unless you considered Mr. Happy did not want to work while you were speeding.
[/quote]
Sounds like fun except for the “unless you went nuts” part. You can hardly buy a gumball for .50 cents nowadays. Damn inflation has taken the “cheap” out of “cheap thrills”
It would probably be a good thing if Mr. Happy didn’t work while under the influence. That could prevent some problems. Of course HIV wasn’t around during that time period.
I got screwed, in my reckless years (90s) we had mandatory sentencing and HIV. Added a lot of anxiety to having a little fun.
[quote]Sounds like fun except for the “unless you went nuts” part. You can hardly buy a gumball for .50 cents nowadays. Damn inflation has taken the “cheap” out of “cheap thrills”
It would probably be a good thing if Mr. Happy didn’t work while under the influence. That could prevent some problems. Of course HIV wasn’t around during that time period.
I got screwed, in my reckless years (90s) we had mandatory sentencing and HIV. Added a lot of anxiety to having a little fun.
[/quote]
Sorry about your sentence. The black beauties did little more than pick you up. It did not effect your judgement, it gave you an endless amount of energy. They sold them as diet pills .
I think the worst abuses I saw were House wives under a doctors care for weight loss. They were jittery and basically strung out. I would keep a couple around in case I had to work and did not have time to sleep. I would also use them when I had a lot of driving to do.
Make the laws the equivalent of alcohol-cigarette laws.
Alcohol is legal, but you can be arrested for public intoxication, having an open container in your car or on your person, driving while intoxicated, working while intoxicated, ect.
You can also buy cigarettes, but in my state and many others, you can not smoke indoors.
You could legalize certain drug usage, but make the laws tough as hell.
Recreational drugs, including cocaine and heroin, are responsible for an estimated 10,000-20,000 American deaths per year [1,2]. While this represents a serious public health problem, it is a “smokescreen” for America’s real drug problem. America’s “war on drugs” is directed at the wrong enemy. It is obvious that interdiction, stiff mandatory sentences, and more vigorous enforcement of drug laws have failed.
The reason is simple. Cause and effect have been reversed.
The desire to solve problems by taking drugs is a product of our culture. When a child is taught by loving parents that the appropriate response to pain or discomfort is taking a pill, it is obvious that such a child, when faced with the challenges of adolescence, will seek comfort by taking drugs.
Drugs are Dangerous Whether Pushed or Prescribed
While approximately 10,000 per year die from the effects of illegal drugs, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than two million suffer serious side effects. [3]
An article in Newsweek [4] put this into perspective. Adverse drug reactions, from “properly” prescribed drugs, are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. According to this article, only heart disease, cancer, and stroke kill more Americans than drugs prescribed by medical doctors. Reactions to prescription drugs kill more than twice as many Americans as HIV/AIDS or suicide. Fewer die from accidents or diabetes than adverse drug reactions. It is important to point out the limitations of this study. It did not include outpatients, cases of malpractice, or instances where the drugs were not taken as directed.
According to another AMA publication, drug related “problems” kill as many as 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28% of hospital admissions. [5] If these figures are accurate, only cancer and heart disease kill more patients than drugs. Has the situation improved since the publication of this information? Hardly. Null [6] et al have published the most comprehensive and well-documented study I have seen of deaths associated with medical practice. In this report, their research revealed some shocking facts. The findings are summarized in the abstract:
"A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251."
Drugs Number One Killer
The authors conclude: “When the number one killer in a society is the healthcare system, then, that system has no excuse except to address its own urgent shortcomings. It’s a failed system in need of immediate attention. What we have outlined in this paper are insupportable aspects of our contemporary medical system that need to be changed – beginning at its very foundations.”
A recent article in Archives of Internal Medicine [7] stated that in the seven year period from 1998 through 2005, reported serious adverse drug events increased 2.6-fold, and fatal adverse drug events increased 2.7-fold. The authors noted that reported serious events increased 4 times faster than the total number of outpatient prescriptions during the period. Another study concluded that the majority(86%) of the adverse drug reactions for which patients were admitted to a medical intensive care unit were preventable. [8]
One proposed solution to the illegal drug problem was encouraging potential users to ignore peer pressure and “just say no.” Interestingly, this strategy is not being recommended for prescription drugs. Bruce Pomeranz, MD , one of the authors of the JAMA paper, said he is not warning people to stay away from drugs. “That would be a terrible message,” he said. Lucian Leape, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health said, “When you realize how many drugs we use, maybe those numbers aren’t so bad after all.” [4]
Does that mean that the number of deaths due to illegal drugs, suicide, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, accidents, and drunk driving “aren’t so bad” either? Does it mean that we shouldn’t discourage drunk driving or unsafe sex?
The folly of such double standards should be obvious to all. It is time to address the real drug problem – the cultural notion that the first solution to seek for relief of life’s problems is a drug. That’s the drug culture we need to address.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
new2training wrote:
For the across the board legalizers…
What age should you be allowed to buy meth?
Should you be allowed to get cranked while hanging out with the kids?
What if your just sitting in an alley minding your own business?
How about when you’re driving?
Hell, I can’t have 3 or 4 beers w/o risking losing my licence for a year.
What did you get sent up for?[/quote]
I didn’t. Sorry if I left that impression. By the grace of God, I managed to stay out of any major trouble despite doing a lot of stupid shit.
I was just reflecting on the fact that we grew up in very different time periods. Talking to people who partied then, it sounds like the 60’s and 70’s were pretty wild and free times. I guess the 80’s and 90’s were too in some circles but there was a lot more risk with mandatory sentencing guidelines. Knowing you get jail time for possesion of certain things definitely curtails their use with many people.
That’s why I don’t understand the idea put forth that people are either going to do it or their not whether it is legal or not. Consequences definitely factor into it for many people.
Whether they should be legal or not is a legitimate discussion.
[quote]new2training wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
new2training wrote:
For the across the board legalizers…
What age should you be allowed to buy meth?
Should you be allowed to get cranked while hanging out with the kids?
What if your just sitting in an alley minding your own business?
How about when you’re driving?
Hell, I can’t have 3 or 4 beers w/o risking losing my licence for a year.
What did you get sent up for?
I didn’t. Sorry if I left that impression. By the grace of God, I managed to stay out of any major trouble despite doing a lot of stupid shit.
I was just reflecting on the fact that we grew up in very different time periods. Talking to people who partied then, it sounds like the 60’s and 70’s were pretty wild and free times. I guess the 80’s and 90’s were too in some circles but there was a lot more risk with mandatory sentencing guidelines. Knowing you get jail time for possesion of certain things definitely curtails their use with many people.
That’s why I don’t understand the idea put forth that people are either going to do it or their not whether it is legal or not. Consequences definitely factor into it for many people.
Whether they should be legal or not is a legitimate discussion.
[/quote
No apologies needed
Consequences do figure into the factor, but if I want a certain drug, all I have to do is look for it.
I wonder what percentage of people are dissuaded by the consequences, and to what dollar amount is attached to each percentage point.
I think a factor that would play in to the equation more than deterrent would be socio economic, jobs and the availability of jobs, education and so forth.
What do you think the war on drugs do for the price of drugs? Surely you do not think it best for the drugs on the street to have a value equal or greater than gold. What kind of crime is brought about because people can not support their habits?
[quote]orion wrote:
Illegal drugs tend to become more potent. That is a solution to a logistics problem, smuggling drugs is expensive, potent drug take less room.[/quote]
That only lasts during the smuggling after they arrive at their destination they are cut to shit and then sold over and over again getting cut each time til you aren’t getting very much of anything.
[quote]duncanidaho wrote:
orion wrote:
Illegal drugs tend to become more potent. That is a solution to a logistics problem, smuggling drugs is expensive, potent drug take less room.
That only lasts during the smuggling after they arrive at their destination they are cut to shit and then sold over and over again getting cut each time til you aren’t getting very much of anything.
[/quote]
This is not true, weed is three times more potent than it was 20 years ago and heroin as well as cocaine became purer and cheaper during the war on drugs.
The problem is also that 1 kilo of cocaine or heroin takes less place and makes more profit as one kilo of weed, making it the preferred drug of smugglers.
Cocaine prices in the United States have dropped and the drug’s purity increased, despite years of effort and nearly $5 billion spent by the U.S. government to combat Colombia’s drug industry, the White House drug czar acknowledged in a letter to a key senator.
The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine �?? hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600.
The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine – hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600.
[/quote]
And that doesn’t even take inflation into account. $600 in 1981 is the equivalent of $1,370 today. So the price of a gram then is the price of ten grams now, of allegedly higher quality product.
Putting it another way, an ounce of gold would not buy a even a whole gram of cocaine in 1981. Today, however, an ounce of gold will buy 6.5 grams.
The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine – hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600.
And that doesn’t even take inflation into account. $600 in 1981 is the equivalent of $1,370 today. So the price of a gram then is the price of ten grams now, of allegedly higher quality product.
Putting it another way, an ounce of gold would not buy a even a whole gram of cocaine in 1981. Today, however, an ounce of gold will buy 6.5 grams.
Weird.
[/quote]
Why?
We are talking about free market capitalism vs government bureaucracy.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I’m just trying to think of any other commodity whose price has fallen as its quality has risen, and demand for it has increased.
Computer technology is the only other thing I can think of that has behaved this way, but it’s not being prohibited by the government.
[/quote]
This is an industry, that due to the enormous speed of innovation was not heavily regulated either.
In a way the very fact that drugs are illegal make the production and distribution as free as possible.
Right.
Same reason the russians, for all their mathematic geniuses, would have never come up with anything like the personal computer revolution, videogames or even the internet.
I’m nowwhere near Orion’s diehard libertarianism, but I fail to see any compelling arguments here in this thread against his.
I don’t drink, smoke, sniff etc. , yet I am against prohibition of any form.
Most people I know who are pro do consume drugs in some form (although they surely say “It’s NOT drugs, it’s just a cigarette.Duh!”), which is kinda sad and bizarre.
You can hardly buy a gumball for .50 cents nowadays. Damn inflation has taken the “cheap” out of “cheap thrills”