Came across an article this morning about a future book by David Nutt, the psychiatrist who was relieved of his duties to the British government due to the fact that one "cannot be be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy". Nutt has been a strong supporter of research-backed drug policies, and this book illuminates and discusses the fact that the overwhelming majority of drug policies in Western countries lack rigorous scientific backing.
You can read the article on the book here.
Personally, I'll be picking up this book, not because I am some crazy drug user who wants everything to be legalized, but because I like to think that taking the pragmatic road, is, well, pragmatic and effective. I was also under the impression, this due to my ignorance, that drug policies in the UK, though strict, are less crushing as they are here in the United States. After reading about this stuff a little more, I quickly found that the UK recently moved marijuana into the same class as amphetamines, so my suspicions about leaner policies in the UK were expunged.
I think at one point or another, if you're someone with a background in Econ or Finance and not a raging zealot against drugs like marijuana, you've thought about all of the results that "just make sense" through legalization. Tax revenues, dramatic decreases in pot-related crimes, effects on the Drug War, the list goes on and on and on.
But this isn't about marijuana, or any drug in particular. It's about the problems associated with paying less heed to research and science at the societal level. Opinions shift so quickly based on one person "crying wolf" or one person having a negative experience that even the gamut of scientific analysis and research fails to cause a shift in public opinion.
We live in an era where this is true for far more than certain illicit substances. Prescription drugs, for example, often pass FDA tests because the drug companies "cook the books" during trials, so that their product's effectiveness versus placebo is egregiously inflated. But that doesn't really matter -- people see ads on TV about the next great drug, they must keep up with the Joneses so they go pick it up, and a few years later it could be discovered that the drug has irreversible "X" symptoms, and...oops!
Understandably, drug companies pay a lot of people a lot of money to either turn a blind eye or pass something without the most rigorous scientific backing, but I would imagine also to prevent the proliferation of scientific research that would support the legalization of current criminalized substances.
But as Nutt points out, if Britain's drinkers hewed to the recommended drinking levels, total industry revenue would fall by 40% -- and the industry has shown no willingness to regulate super-cheap, high-alcohol booze, nor alcopops aimed at (and advertised to) children and teenagers.
How is that just okay? What do you guys make of this information? I was really quite shocked when I read the above sentence. Similar to what we've seen with Philip Morris and RJR here in the States...
I'm confused by your last statement. Are you concerned that the industry doesn't want people to drink less? I've always looked at what cigarette companies have done as a stroke of genius. They've made their industry so regulated there are so many barriers to entry there will be no more competition, the users of their product traditionally stay users (obviously) and people seem to have a resilience towards continuing smoking despite outlandish health warnings and bevies of studies. People do irrational stuff regardless of whether you try and regulate it or otherwise. People will drink too much to cope with whatever and kids will start drinking early because it is 'exciting' and 'cool'.
I personally think the system is completely hypocritical, as it underplays the risks of some legal drugs while completely over-stating the dangers of illegal ones.
Taxing the stuff will help raising the much needed cash to governments.
I just love this picture:
I'd be curious to know how someone decided that tobacco is more harmful than most of the psychedelics, or are chemical imbalances in your central nervous system not considered "physical harm"?
The health risks from tobacco products manifest in a much higher percentage and are more lethal than chemical imbalances among psychedelic users.
Just four random PHD professors from oxford and bristol which article got published in the Lancet ;)
Here's the academic article if you are interested http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60464…
You mean the drug war hasn't been an overwhelming success?!? /sarcasm
Psychedelics have an incredibly low lethal dosage. You would need about 120 hits of acid (if each dose was 100ug to die, and I think that's on the very low end). A rat would have to eat 1600+ grams of mushrooms to die. Not saying the trip would be fun, in fact there is nothing worse than a bad trip but you certainly would pass out before you died.
Physical harm I would define as dosage needed for death. Check the chart out.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Drug_danger_and_depe…
[quote=ScoobyDoobie]Psychedelics have an incredibly low lethal dosage. You would need about 120 hits of acid (if each dose was 100ug to die, and I think that's on the very low end). A rat would have to eat 1600+ grams of mushrooms to die. Not saying the trip would be fun, in fact there is nothing worse than a bad trip but you certainly would pass out before you died.
Physical harm I would define as dosage needed for death. Check the chart out.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Drug_danger_and_depe…]
That chart is insane ! Who would have through LSD was less "dangerous" than caffeine. Where does this chart come from ? I love how cannabis has a category of its own...
FreezePops: Physical harm is not about causing physical harm to others, it is how dangerous the substance is on the body, and likely hood of overdose. For example, the reason nicotine is so high on the list is because if you smoked 30-40 cigs at time you would probably die.
Any idea why ectasy is low on the physical harm chart and quite high on the active dose/lethal dose chart? Also, nicotine really isn't the same thing as tobacco. Are the charts describing the effect of nicotine or tobacco itself? The effects/health risks don't seem like they would be the same.
Agreed. I only really commented about the charts as they appear at first glance to give a particularly narrow minded view of the effects and harm caused by the drugs.
The discussion really shouldn't be about the degrees of harm caused by the drugs. All drugs cause physical harm. There are plenty of illegal drugs that cause less harm than legal ones. The real problem with drug laws and enforcement is that IT DOESN'T WORK. Prohibition has never worked, all it causes is black markets and crime.
The goal of the drug war was to reduce and stop drug use. The US has spent mind numbing amounts on the drug war. Guess what, drug use hasn't decreased at all. All that has happened is criminals have gotten rich via the black market and innocent bystanders have become victims to violence (take a look at Mexico over the last 10 years).
Instead of recognizing the facts that the drug war hasn't been effective at all and that the money has essentially been pissed away, politicians and lawmakers put their heads in the sand. When a business pumps money into a project to achieve a goal and it doesn't work, they change strategies. This is what the government needs to do in this case.
All I do is smoke weed
Politicians and lawmakers know exactly what they are doing, the amount of money spent to "eradicate drugs" is nothing compared to how much profit is being made by continuing it. They want as many (profit from raids i.e. take all assets) addicts and drug users as possibly because of the trillions of profits from prisons, dea type organizations , and pharmaceutical companies. If you would legalize marijuana tomorrow the prisons would be empty, a vast majority of prescriptions wouldn't exist (pain meds, anti depressants, anti-anxiety, blood pressure meds etc.. and tobacco and liquor companies would lose vast sums of money. In fact tobacco companies are buying huge properties in California to start growing herb when/if marijuana becomes legal. It's like saying that mental health professionals, weight trainers, and doctors want healthy patients, if everyone was healthy their job wouldn't exist.
double post
-
People in the DEA profit off the raids (they wouldn't have jobs if the raids/enforcement weren't going on), prison owners and guards profit off overflowing prisons, prosecutors etc. etc. The tax payers are flipping the bill. They're the ones losing money from all this.
What the fuck is with all the open-ended parentheses on this thread? It's just shift+0, people, c'mon.
I've heard the profit comes when the prisons hire people out for a minimum wage that is the same as federal minimum hourly, except it's paid monthly. Like, $5.32 or whatever for a month's work instead of an hour.
Also, the for-profit prisons get paid by cities / etc for holding prisoners, but draw up contracts with the cities that require a minimum occupancy of 90% or some shit, thus creating a huge cost incentive for cities to put more people in jail/prison, even if their crimes are light, just because paying for that extra occupancy will save them the fees in the contracts.
Basically, I feel for-profit prisons are a pretty horrible thing, and that many of our legal stupidities stem from the fact that it's cheaper for a city to make more laws and arrest more people than give people more freedom.
That's all just amateur talk, though, so refer to the professionals if you want a more complex explanation.
More prisoners more tax dollars. If I had the cash I would open up a prison. When your house gets raided and drugs are found, they can take your cash, house, cars, freeze bank accounts. There really is no limit to what they can take as long as they contend that it was bought with drug money. In fact, this one lady goes to pay for bail, she brings the cash to the police station and the cops bring a drug dog to smell the money. The money from the bank mind you had cocaine residue on it (~80%+ of all money does). The cops take all of the bail money as forfeiture.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/20/asset-forfeiture-wisconsin-bai…
Where and how can you buy land for Marijuana growing?
I know Marijuana will be legal one day and I wouldn't mind getting some land in CA for growing. Not sure how saturated this market is (Being in LA, seems like every corner has a medical marijuana place in it), but if getting a permit to grow early gets me in the game..... I would buy up now.
If someone uses psychadelics once a week, it will be no less than one to two years before they wind up in a mental ward. It's an unrealistic comparison between the two, though, because cigarettes have been around for ages; cause second-hand effects; are highly addictive; provide a buzz lasting only a minute, if at all; and cause tangible physical symptoms that may lead to death. Psychadelics are used by a fraction of the population, and are infinitely harder for the average person to get their hands on (especially enough to use it multiple times daily, as is often the case with cigarettes), and to my knowledge, don't direcly cause physical symptoms other than weird fucking behavior/irrationality. The definition of "harm" is subjective.
I still think the midwest has the most fertile soil, although slightly shorter growing season. The reason that cali is known for growing weed is because of its medical laws are the oldest, as the laws get more lax Cali won't be number 1 anymore. In fact Colorado has the cheapest dispensary prices ($160-220 per oz).
As a person who recently assisted/helped a person while they were OD'n I can personally say that cocaine belongs right where it is on the first graphic.
Addiction had no discretion, it can take hold of anyone...which is why I don't typically support the legalization of any drugs. The person that I was forced to help above is a well educated, type A, recreational user of coke and who knows what else. His use turned from recreational to habitual in the blink of an eye. He nearly lost his job last week which I have no doubt would have lead to his death.
At any rate, my thought is most people that use drugs are playing with fire. Some folks can play for a lifetime and not get burnt while others feel the heat the first time around.
I realize that marijuana doesn't have the harmful physical effects that some of the other drugs do, but it can be equally damaging to a person's life. There are a number of people I know that used pot recreationally but unknowingly allowed it to take over their life. They stopped going to school and never graduated, stopped showing up to work and were eventually fired and just sit around and smoke whenever they get the chance.
Again, I realize this isn't everyone and some folks have much more control than others, but because I've been exposed to these various situations, I sympathize with the government a little more than most. The government isn't here to turn a profit, so I don't think they should always be compared to private entities. There are some things, like the military or the war on drugs, that are going to be expensive and not have a positive ROI...let's face it, if it did, just as many people would be angry that we are profiting from wars or drugs, etc.
The government has drawn a line in the sand and said that the use of certain drugs will not be tolerated. Some people will agree with that and others won't. We know the government isn't super rational and I realize that is hard for many people here to accept, but it just is...so learn to deal with it, at least until that mentality has changed.
The basis for whether or not something should be legal should have nothing to do with it's ability to generate revenue. The federal government could also make a bunch of money from legalizing prostitution and states could make a boat load of money by legalizing every type of gambling, but people in power feel there is a real opportunity cost for legalizing things of that nature and many of them are not willing to turn a blind eye to the morality of the issue. Again, I realize this doesn't make sense to many because morality often flies in the face of rationality, but it's just the way it is right now.
For those that think crime would disappear overnight after the legalization of drugs, I truly think you are being naive. There will always be crime and much of it will surround the drug trade. Just look at the theft and robberies that have to do with prescription medications...or ask Ryan Leaf...those drugs aren't illegal, but they somehow manage to be connected to countless crimes throughout the United States. There will always be an element of people that will try to make money through what they feel are the easiest ways, robberies, burglaries, theft, etc. There will always be people that need something that they can't quite afford and, in my opinion, drugs will always fall into this category.
As for drug cartels, they do a ton of business overseas, so legalizing drugs in the US isn't going to shut them down overnight. Additionally, the term 'drug cartel' has become a bit of a misnomer. These guys are, for all intents and purposes, sophisticated criminal enterprises that not only traffic drugs, but traffic people and guns. They operate murder for hire teams, run prostitution rings and dabble in extortion, racketeering, illegal gambling and document and currency forgery. Legalized pot or no legalized pot, they aren't going anywhere, anytime soon.
Regards
You've completely missed the point. The war on drugs hasn't decreased use, prevented use, or lowered OD rates. The sob stories that you describe above still happen all the time. If the money spent on the drug war clearly hasn't accomplished anything, why continue it? When the tactics used to accomplish something clearly fail, you need to change tactics.
And saying people should just accept that the government isn't rational is quite dumb and dangerous.
The fact is there is no possible way to know with 100% certain the impact of the war on drugs. Since there is only one outcome when you put a plan into place and you don't have access to a time machine you can't say with complete confidence that the program has been a failure.
If drug use is the same maybe it would have been worse without the program...you don't know. Maybe the OD rates are lower than what they were, but are lower than what they would have been. I for one know the war on drugs has had some positive impact because I have never done any drugs, so to say it hasn't prevented any use is naive and wrong...sorry if that doesn't fit your agenda.
I'm not sure what sob stories you are speaking about, because I'm not attempting to gain sympathy so much as understanding. When some people look at drug use and see the results, like poverty, unemployment, physical damage, psychological damage, it's hard for them to just throw those images out of the window. As I previously mentioned, I know of a guy that could have very well died (or so he believes) had I not been present. Yeah, granted that doesn't mean anything to you, but it certainly does to his family and friends, so to pretend that drugs are harmless is silly.
And I'm only saying 'accept the government' because it's just a matter of time before their rationale changes. If that isn't good enough, you can go have your sit ins and occupy whatever street you want, but you really aren't doing anything positive for your cause...that's my point.
Regards
Consectetur voluptatem maiores incidunt temporibus. Consequatur atque est aut magnam eveniet laudantium perspiciatis non. Officiis adipisci earum rerum. Culpa accusantium odit labore soluta accusamus. Facilis incidunt est consectetur quidem rerum.
Occaecati aut atque non sit unde magni. Aut ratione voluptatem a. Aliquid ipsum culpa libero necessitatibus ea labore nesciunt. Autem autem facere est cumque sed. Dicta doloribus consequuntur nihil laboriosam sed possimus. Illum eveniet corporis culpa voluptatem dignissimos reiciendis voluptates.
Ea et expedita nihil rerum itaque. Soluta natus et ipsum non laudantium. Repellendus eum numquam repudiandae quisquam eius quas qui. Qui exercitationem nostrum ipsum. Delectus tenetur unde hic iusto optio. Dignissimos qui possimus aut quis voluptates aperiam. Dolor soluta unde quaerat est qui delectus.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Deserunt laboriosam animi sapiente ab. Odit suscipit non dolorum exercitationem consequuntur. Quidem quo mollitia ipsa nihil enim. Reiciendis necessitatibus quasi consequatur dignissimos sint optio eveniet.
Quo asperiores officia suscipit qui eaque. Molestiae vero ea harum sunt. Provident placeat et esse est eius excepturi.
Itaque aperiam quis facilis ullam repellendus mollitia et quasi. Eum quaerat non quis a perferendis repellat. Labore perferendis debitis saepe quia aliquam ipsam.
Et excepturi beatae praesentium voluptates cumque. Placeat sunt ut aut nihil ut. Dolorum enim dicta fuga voluptatem quis. Assumenda voluptatibus qui earum qui non dolores.