The victim complex of prohibitionists

[Thoreau72]

Yes but those also have less impact on society and the individuals. The impacts of nicotine that society has focused on...which is reasonable for society...are the ones that do cost society: health care and 2nd hand smoke...treating the individual's addiction seemed/seems secondary to me.

In recent years, and without resorting to the criminal sanction against use or possession of tobacco, the use of the product has been significantly reduced. Most today do not remember when new recruits into at least the US Army, and probably the other branches as well, were given 2 cartons of cigarettes. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em" was a common slogan on break in the infantry.

Progress in reduction of tobacco (nicotine) use has likely been stopped or even reversed by the modern phenomenon of vaping. Though not as dirty, with no dirty ashtrays and cigarette butts, I think the long term health consequences of vaping are yet to be documented.

How society deals with addiction of any sort can be rational or irrational. The laws we make can be rational or irrational.

All things considered, prohibition is utterly irrational, except from the bureaucratic perspective. Far more harm is done to society by prohibition than is done by the drug use itself.

Tobacco and caffeine addicts do not overflow our prisons, because our approach to the phenomenon is so different. The criminal sanction is a mistake.

 

[OldFatGuy]

Sorry, its a disease, you are so wrong. If it was just someone's decision, why do addicts have withdrawals and do whatever they can to get a fix, even stealing from loved ones? People who were A students or really good people until they got addicted? There is a physiological reaction in the brain, release of brain neurotransmitters that bind to receptors in the brain that leads to addiction. People are genetically susceptible to addiction. There are drugs being developed that work by blocking the receptors in the brain that are linked with addiction, and it can prevent addiction. How is any of the moral? It's physiological, its biology.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/preface

The only moral choice here is ever taking the drug in the first place or seeking help to overcome addiction, but once they are addicted, its physiological. And many people are addicted to other things besides drugs.

You can say BS all you want, but you are dead wrong. And its so incredibly stupid, why would someone who's life is being ruined continue to do drugs and kill themselves willingly?

I missed this earlier, so I'm responding now. You're type of thinking about this problem keeps people in the seductive embrace of drug abuse with an excuse, "it's not your fault." Yes, it is your fault, because you made an immoral decision, and elected to abuse yourself with a substance known to cause harm to the self. You entrapped yourself with an immoral decision. Abbie Hoffman said "you are what you eat." He was right, and unfortunately he failed at taking his own advice and died prematurely from an overdose.

The physiological manifestations you speak of come after the decision to use has been made. No negative decision, no physical manifestations.

Suggesting behavioral patterns subsequent to addiction have nothing to do with the initial immoral decision. Again, you are giving the addict an excuse. "Stealing, mugging people, prostituting yourself, whatever you do to get a fix is not your fault." That conflation makes you an enabler. You are doing nothing to help the addict control him or herself. And you can't. The addict's decision to fight the addiction must come from within.

Street drugs are cut, with all sorts of compounds, to increase the profits for the drug dealers. Kicking a heroin addiction is no worse than kicking the flu. But you only need kick the flu once or twice per season, if at all. A heroin addict may have to kick the habit, between fixes, between 3 to 12 times per day or more. Imagine what kicking the flu multiple times per day, day after day would do to your body. And your sanity. Only god and the dealers know what other compounds your body is fighting with those cut drugs.

Don't talk to me about neural pleasure centers, how drugs seduce the user, or new drugs to block the pleasure centers. Heroin was created to save the laudanum (opium and alcohol) user from addiction, Morphine was invented to cure the Heroin addict, Codeine was invented to cure the Morphine addict, Methadone was created to cure the Heroin addict, gets you just as high and itself is addicting. We don't need new drugs to become addicted to.

Babbanol was created to cure alcoholism. It worked. It killed the alcoholics who took it. Six months later they were dead from massive coronary infarctions because the electrical system which controls heart rhythm was destroyed. You take those new drugs before you recommend science's other wonders to people with enough problems.

Show me where the BS is and I'll show you a fool in the mirror. A fool who knows nothing from substance abuse or the morality we each must develop for ourselves so as not to become an addict at all.

 

[Thoreau72]

I missed this earlier, so I'm responding now. You're type of thinking about this problem keeps people in the seductive embrace of drug abuse with an excuse, "it's not your fault." Yes, it is your fault, because you made an immoral decision, and elected to abuse yourself with a substance known to cause harm to the self. You entrapped yourself with an immoral decision. Abbie Hoffman said "you are what you eat." He was right, and unfortunately he failed at taking his own advice and died prematurely from an overdose.

The physiological manifestations you speak of come after the decision to use has been made. No negative decision, no physical manifestations.

Suggesting behavioral patterns subsequent to addiction have nothing to do with the initial immoral decision. Again, you are giving the addict an excuse. "Stealing, mugging people, prostituting yourself, whatever you do to get a fix is not your fault." That conflation makes you an enabler. You are doing nothing to help the addict control him or herself. And you can't. The addict's decision to fight the addiction must come from within.

Street drugs are cut, with all sorts of compounds, to increase the profits for the drug dealers. Kicking a heroin addiction is no worse than kicking the flu. But you only need kick the flu once or twice per season, if at all. A heroin addict may have to kick the habit, between fixes, between 3 to 12 times per day or more. Imagine what kicking the flu multiple times per day, day after day would do to your body. And your sanity. Only god and the dealers know what other compounds your body is fighting with those cut drugs.

Don't talk to me about neural pleasure centers, how drugs seduce the user, or new drugs to block the pleasure centers. Heroin was created to save the laudanum (opium and alcohol) user from addiction, Morphine was invented to cure the Heroin addict, Codeine was invented to cure the Morphine addict, Methadone was created to cure the Heroin addict, gets you just as high and itself is addicting. We don't need new drugs to become addicted to.

Babbanol was created to cure alcoholism. It worked. It killed the alcoholics who took it. Six months later they were dead from massive coronary infarctions because the electrical system which controls heart rhythm was destroyed. You take those new drugs before you recommend science's other wonders to people with enough problems.

Show me where the BS is and I'll show you a fool in the mirror. A fool who knows nothing from substance abuse or the morality we each must develop for ourselves so as not to become an addict at all.

Ipecac also worked to "cure" alcoholism.

If only you were as rational in your assessment and understanding of drug policy, of the laws implemented by man that cause so many problems for all of society.

 

[OldFatGuy]

Ipecac also worked to "cure" alcoholism.

If only you were as rational in your assessment and understanding of drug policy, of the laws implemented by man that cause so many problems for all of society.

You are making an assumption and you are mistaken.

I firmly believe that the substance abuse problems wouldn't exist as they do if our prohibition period survival of paranoid interdiction laws had been dismissed with the same legislation that ended alcohol prohibition. The interdiction laws were based on lies and only sufficed to develop a subculture of forbidden fruits and great profits. In essence the interdiction laws created the problem issues, expanding them from minor to major.

For 10% of the cost of interdiction, we could have purchased the entire world's annual opium harvest, kept enough for real medical needs, supplied existing addicts for their needs at no cost to them, and then burnt the rest. No one would have continued selling black market heroin for lack of profits, and new addicts would have become an extreme rarity. All those expensive police necessary to deal with cultural aberrations, associated crimes, and all the expensive prison cells would not have been needed.

Ipecac is an opiate. During the 1950's through the mid 1960's it was common to soak cigarettes in ipecac, dry them and smoke them with cocktails made from codeine containing cough syrup, to get high. Ipecac never cured alcoholism, it replaced one addiction with another.

 

[Thoreau72]

You are making an assumption and you are mistaken.

I firmly believe that the substance abuse problems wouldn't exist as they do if our prohibition period survival of paranoid interdiction laws had been dismissed with the same legislation that ended alcohol prohibition. The interdiction laws were based on lies and only sufficed to develop a subculture of forbidden fruits and great profits. In essence the interdiction laws created the problem issues, expanding them from minor to major.

For 10% of the cost of interdiction, we could have purchased the entire world's annual opium harvest, kept enough for real medical needs, supplied existing addicts for their needs at no cost to them, and then burnt the rest. No one would have continued selling black market heroin for lack of profits, and new addicts would have become an extreme rarity. All those expensive police necessary to deal with cultural aberrations, associated crimes, and all the expensive prison cells would not have been needed.

Ipecac is an opiate. During the 1950's through the mid 1960's it was common to soak cigarettes in ipecac, dry them and smoke them with cocktails made from codeine containing cough syrup, to get high. Ipecac never cured alcoholism, it replaced one addiction with another.

Ipecac is not an opiate. If you really believe that it is, your false belief explains much of your nonsensical views regarding drugs and drug policy. Ipecac makes a person vomit, and frequent use would result in frequent vomiting.

If we were to buy the world's production of various drugs, it would mean only that some government agency would end up in control of that supply, rather as the CIA has been doing since it was created in the 40's.

Are you a DARE graduate?

 

[OldFatGuy]

Ipecac is not an opiate. If you really believe that it is, your false belief explains much of your nonsensical views regarding drugs and drug policy. Ipecac makes a person vomit, and frequent use would result in frequent vomiting.

If we were to buy the world's production of various drugs, it would mean only that some government agency would end up in control of that supply, rather as the CIA has been doing since it was created in the 40's.

Are you a DARE graduate?

Ipecac is obtained from the dried rhizome and roots of Carapichea ipecacuanha. Of the Rubiaceae family, which in turn is the only native flora related and part of the opiate family. You are not a botany expert.

It is used as an expectorant in syrup form, overdose can cause vomiting by some users but not all, and because of abuse by patients with eating disorders it is a controlled substance today. Making things worse, up and through the mid 70's paregoric syrups sold in the US included codeine, the same codeine found cough medicines for both children and adults. For how this was put to use by unscrupulous drug abusers I suggest you give Richard Farina's seminal novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me." Our protagonist, Gnossos Pappadopolous returns to his frat house at Cornell after being MIA for a number of years to continue his 7 year long, thus far, undergraduate career. Having recently completed a paregoric and ipecac cigarette smoking binge, and suffering the binding effects thereof, Gnossos drops the largest scat ever to have been known to mankind in the upstairs bathroom of his frat house, shows it off to his frat brothers who decide to have it bronzed after indulging in the last of Gnossos' supply of paregoric and ipecac cigarette. Thus ending Chapter 1, which alone inspired Richard Brautigan, beat poet of the west coast, to write his first successful novel "Abortion," which in turn has nothing to do with Roe vs Wade. Farinia's novel presents a plethora of pseudo intellectual competitor characters competing with Gnossos' for the longest undergraduate career at Cornell. You'd fit right in with the competitors. Unfortunately, on his way to a publishing party for the novel in Saratoga NY, Richard died in a motorcycle accident, leaving his grieving widow, the beautiful and talented younger sister of Joan Baez, Mimi in despair.

Never went to school in Ireland, but I did contribute programming to the DARE Database for the Disabled. You are not good at insults, either. And no one cares about your CIA conspiracy theories. They aren't known as "the agency who couldn't spit straight" for nothing.

 

[Thoreau72]

Ipecac is obtained from the dried rhizome and roots of Carapichea ipecacuanha. Of the Rubiaceae family, which in turn is the only native flora related and part of the opiate family. You are not a botany expert.

It is used as an expectorant in syrup form, overdose can cause vomiting by some users but not all, and because of abuse by patients with eating disorders it is a controlled substance today. Making things worse, up and through the mid 70's paregoric syrups sold in the US included codeine, the same codeine found cough medicines for both children and adults. For how this was put to use by unscrupulous drug abusers I suggest you give Richard Farina's seminal novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me." Our protagonist, Gnossos Pappadopolous returns to his frat house at Cornell after being MIA for a number of years to continue his 7 year long, thus far, undergraduate career. Having recently completed a paregoric and ipecac cigarette smoking binge, and suffering the binding effects thereof, Gnossos drops the largest scat ever to have been known to mankind in the upstairs bathroom of his frat house, shows it off to his frat brothers who decide to have it bronzed after indulging in the last of Gnossos' supply of paregoric and ipecac cigarette. Thus ending Chapter 1, which alone inspired Richard Brautigan, beat poet of the west coast, to write his first successful novel "Abortion," which in turn has nothing to do with Roe vs Wade. Farinia's novel presents a plethora of pseudo intellectual competitor characters competing with Gnossos' for the longest undergraduate career at Cornell. You'd fit right in with the competitors. Unfortunately, on his way to a publishing party for the novel in Saratoga NY, Richard died in a motorcycle accident, leaving his grieving widow, the beautiful and talented younger sister of Joan Baez, Mimi in despair.

Never went to school in Ireland, but I did contribute programming to the DARE Database for the Disabled. You are not good at insults, either. And no one cares about your CIA conspiracy theories. They aren't known as "the agency who couldn't spit straight" for nothing.

You seem to care enough about CIA stories that you chose to post a comment.

I happily accept your botanical statements regarding ipecac. I worked as a pharmacist assistant for a number of years in the 60's and 70's. My boss was an alcoholic, and had many tales to tell about the use of ipecac as "therapy" for alcoholics.

Paregoric isn't a syrup. In those days sold over the counter the label said "Tincture of Camphorated Opium", and had a pleasant scent. Yes, it could be allowed to evaporate, and the residue contained some form of opium, and it was abused. It was also a very good agent for toothing issues, maybe generating young opium eaters.

My children were both subjected to DARE, its curriculum organized by LAPD Chief Darryl Gates. I ended up studying the material and books brought home. I also heard the tales of the police officer instructors passing around to the class a glass sealed box with a variety of illicit drugs inside. Talk about playing to the 'forbidden fruit syndrome'!

Thank you for the honest statement. I thought I recognized the DARE propaganda in your posts.

 

[OldFatGuy]

You seem to care enough about CIA stories that you chose to post a comment.

Enough for some mockery.

Paregoric isn't a syrup.

Wrong again. Was and still is. Today sold in minimal solutions, to prevent the intensity needed for getting high.

During the 1950's Bayer Paregoric Syrup was a best seller at pharmacists near American colleges everywhere. It was OTC, sold right next to codeine cough syrups.

 

[Thoreau72]

Enough for some mockery.



Wrong again. Was and still is. Today sold in minimal solutions, to prevent the intensity needed for getting high.

During the 1950's Bayer Paregoric Syrup was a best seller at pharmacists near American colleges everywhere. It was OTC, sold right next to codeine cough syrups.

A tincture is not a syrup. In the drug store where I worked in the 60's and 70's, we poured small bottles out of a gallon jug bulk supply. I cannot remember who produced it, but we kept the small bottles under the counter and out of sight. In those days a signature was required under Florida law when a bottle was sold. Yes, eventually the product was no longer available to the public.

Having poured many dozens of those smaller bottles, the labels said "Tincture of Camphorated Opium". Whether you understand or believe that matters not to me. Tincture involves solution with alcohol, syrup involves sugar.

 

[OldFatGuy]

A tincture is not a syrup. In the drug store where I worked in the 60's and 70's, we poured small bottles out of a gallon jug bulk supply. I cannot remember who produced it, but we kept the small bottles under the counter and out of sight. In those days a signature was required under Florida law when a bottle was sold. Yes, eventually the product was no longer available to the public.

Having poured many dozens of those smaller bottles, the labels said "Tincture of Camphorated Opium". Whether you understand or believe that matters not to me. Tincture involves solution with alcohol, syrup involves sugar.

No one mentioned tinctures until you muddied waters. Not all syrups require sugar. Florida is not the nation of states, each having its own laws and customs. Your limited experiences do not speak for other in other locales. You are beating a dead horse.

 

[Thoreau72]

No one mentioned tinctures until you muddied waters. Not all syrups require sugar. Florida is not the nation of states, each having its own laws and customs. Your limited experiences do not speak for other in other locales. You are beating a dead horse.

No pun intended, but my plus or minus 15 years working as a pharmacist assistant trumps your immersion in DARE propaganda.

 

[OldFatGuy]

No pun intended, but my plus or minus 15 years working as a pharmacist assistant trumps your immersion in DARE propaganda.

Your claim of being a clerk at a pharmacy in Florida will not get you a job here in NYC. Dare to use your mind instead of political agendas and apologies. Life is what it is, not what you want it to be.

 

[Thoreau72]

Your claim of being a clerk at a pharmacy in Florida will not get you a job here in NYC. Dare to use your mind instead of political agendas and apologies. Life is what it is, not what you want it to be.

It's a good thing I'm not looking for a job in NYC, eh?

Do not DARE to think critically or as an individual. Follow the mob, and you won't be disappointed, because your government has your best interests at heart.

 

[OldFatGuy]

It's a good thing I'm not looking for a job in NYC, eh?

Do not DARE to think critically or as an individual. Follow the mob, and you won't be disappointed, because your government has your best interests at heart.

Whatever your anal obsession with dare has nothing to do with me. You are the mob, as fickle and feckless as always.

 

[JasperL]

I agree totally with the quoted portion. Addicts seem to be some of the most self absorbed, self centered assholes out there.

That's true, but not every "drug" user is an addict. My wife is a drug user, but she only has about 1 drink a week, often less than that. Should we have a war on drugs and make use and sale illegal because I was an alcoholic, and a self absorbed, self centered asshole while actively drinking, pretty much all day every day at the end? Seems to make more sense to treat addicts, instead of incarcerate them.

 

[JasperL]

Really? What about the people they live near? It's not a commercial zone, people dont want constant traffic by their homes, much less of losers like meth heads. It makes puts property even more at risk of theft, accidents, violence, etc.

True enough but a good part of those negative consequences are a direct result of the War on Some Drugs. Essentially we HOPE the War causes prices to go up by drying up the supply - that's the goal. Higher cost, more crime to feed the addiction. So we kind of hope, I guess, that most addicts just get better on their own somehow - cold turkey it or whatever.

And of course by making the sales illegal, all sellers are by definition bad guys who don't respect the law. So the War predictably has these terrible side effects for users and dealers.

 

[JasperL]

Addiction is not a disease. It is the result of a moral decision. Show me any child above age 8 who isn't aware of the perils of substance abuse. It is personal moral decision with that knowledge in hand, to indulge in that first drink, first snort of smack or crystal, whatever, and endure what follows. Reality, kicking a heroin habit is like kicking a case of the flue, only it happens 4-12 times daily. Same with meth, oxi, whatever. No one forces anyone to have their first alcohol. No one forces anyone to sniff some meth or smack. Yeah, once you've been seduced its harder to do without. But don't call it a disease, diseases never give their victims a choice the first time around. Calling addiction is a disease precludes and excuse a condition from being resolved by the individual, it provides an excuse and pity me the poor victim. BS.

If it acts like a disease, and addiction does, it's not clearly in error to label it a disease. Addiction is at least in part a physical 'condition' that is in part genetically based. We don't have to guess about it - the changes in the brain, brain chemistry, your brain's ability to produce certain chemicals, have been studied, the genetic links established, the withdrawal symptoms real, that can be in fact be deadly in the case of alcohol, and life threatening in other cases in the presence of other health risks.

We also call various cancers "disease" and people get treated for them, even when they're the result of personal decisions, such as tobacco use, or bad diet. Diabetes and heart disease are often the result of 'that first ice cream cone' or 64 oz of soda per day, with fries and a hamburger, instead of eating fruits, vegetables and healthy proteins (genetics play a role as well!). So those clear "diseases" gave lots of their victims a "choice the first time around" to not exercise, eat poorly, become obese and fall victims to disease that are lifestyle based or where lifestyle increases the risk of those diseases.

And to label it a disease doesn't excuse anyone from dealing with addiction. It doesn't excuse a diabetes patient from addressing his condition, such as by losing weight and changing diet, so why would it excuse an addict? What labeling it a disease does is ACCURATELY describe the nature of the condition, and what's likely needed to overcome it, which isn't friends and family calling them losers and to get over it, just quit drinking/drugging.

 

[JasperL]

Having walked away from hard drugs, I agree with him. I did not do rehab, I made a simple choice and decided I was no longer willing to live that way. At one point, I was as out there and strung out as it gets.

Lots of people do that, many more don't and need some structured treatment. You can't assume what's true for you is true for everyone. A friend of mine was CEO for a string of restaurants, worked 80 hour weeks, incredibly disciplined, and when he quit drinking he was thrown into severe clinical depression, and ended up eating a shotgun while his beautiful wife and daughters were out shopping. That's mental illness, an imbalance in the brain, and not a moral failing. It's common with addicts coming off drugs. It's one reason why quitting is so difficult - no drugs ==> clinical depression, cured instantly with more drugs. So people stay on drugs as a matter of survival. Doesn't make sense to the family but it makes all the sense in the world to someone suffering from mental illness, a disease. Over time my friend could have corrected his brain chemistry with treatment, but he decided to treat himself and it's a tragedy.

 

[JasperL]

OK, I should disbelieve my own experience? The disease model gives an addict an out, "it's not my fault, it is beyond my control".

I am sure if I had believed that I would still be spun out, or dead by now.

It really doesn't give an addict an "out" nor does it say to addicts it's beyond their control.

This point never made sense to me because that attitude doesn't work with any other disease. If you get cancer, is that an excuse for you not to go to the doctor and get it treated? Diabetes? Heart disease? "Hey, honey, Doc says I have diabetes. Nothing I can do. I'll have a hamburger with a coke and ice cream for desert and not see the doc again, cause it's a disease, guess I'll just die..." says no one ever.

And there is no one in the addiction or treatment community who'd ever say to an addict - you can't do anything, you're hopeless, you have a disease and you're powerless to get over it. The difference is, "You're a moral trainwreck, if you weren't such a f'ing weak, pathetic loser, you'd quit tomorrow" versus, "You have a disease, and you need to approach it like a deadly f'ing disease that WILL KILL YOU if you don't get some treatment and make getting through it your highest priority, over everything else."

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

By the way, quitting an addiction without rehab is like getting over a broken bone or damaged joint without physical therapy.
Alcoholics who quit without rehab are often known as "dry drunks" because despite quitting the excessive alcohol use that got them into trouble, they often continue to live as drunks, think like drunks and make the kinds of decisions a drunk would make.
This also applies to drug addicts as well.
Once the physical symptoms and the damage from drug addiction is healed, one must continue to make a consistent effort to heal the mind as well.

I'm speaking as a recovering drug addict with twenty-five years sobriety. My poison was cocaine, powder and then later, crack.

 

[JasperL]

He never said it was easy.

Unless accidentally hooked on opioids prescribed for pain, it's always the poor choice of the user and their consequences. We all make bad choices in life...so I'm not taking any moral High Ground here...but I'm not absolving drug addicts of their own responsibility in their decisions. And yes...every one can CHOOSE to get well. But no one implies it's easy.

First of all, the genetic link to addiction is pretty clear. So the "good choices" lots of people make with regard to drinking, for example, is they chose good parents without the genetic predisposition to addiction, same as others without heart disease chose good parents who lived until they're 100.

Second, our little charity that takes in the homeless treats about 100 vets at any given time, and about 70-90% depending on the population have dual diagnoses of mental illness and addiction, and the addiction is properly viewed as a symptom of the untreated mental illness. PTSD is common recently, but it's not confined to that. So our first job in treating them is getting their underlying mental health illness under control - if we don't do that, the addiction will NOT be controlled, period.

There's also a group of young women who I run into sometimes in the community, and some of them are 18, 20, 22, and they've been using drugs for years, but their big "poor choice" was having family that beat and sexually abused them starting as early as age 10, regularly, and the drugs were a way to get some sanity out of a completely f'd up life not of their making.

So, sure, there are lots of addicts who effectively "chose" to be addicts, but the stereotype is at least very often if not usually wrong in any fair analysis. I don't think any of us could walk in some of their shoes and conclude their big problem is their moral weakness. We wouldn't say that about soldiers who fought 3 tours and came back suffering with severe mental illness, but they're in that "addict" category because it's how they self-treat their mental illness. And soldiers aren't the only ones who suffer from PTSD - it's also common in some of the bad inner city neighborhoods wrecked by violent crime. Abuse victims, etc.

And as to 'choosing' to get better, OK, no doubt it takes a commitment on the part of the individual, but the question is the best way to go about it. If it's your husband, calling him a pathetic, morally weak loser who just needs to be a man and quit might work, but the odds are going to be better by treating it as a disease, with treatment, to handle the depression that often follows coming off drugs, get the physical problems including the brain chemistry treated, by professionals, not nagging family members. It's a bit like saying to your diabetic cousin you can CHOOSE to get over your diabetes. No need for doctors - just do it! If it's considered a mental illness, aka a disease, the reasons why someone might not just do it are clear enough. No one responsible would tell someone suffering from severe depression to just FEEL BETTER YOU LOSER!!

 

[JasperL]

I asked about honest research of illicit drugs.

Alcohol Anonymous does not do honest scientific research about illicit drugs. In fact it's methods have proved false, but that's another story for another day. There is nothing scientific about sociological studies of 7 step indoctrination methods. Nor is sociology science. There is no point in studying the Flu without learning about the virus. We are not discussing addictions to lawful substances, poisons like sugar, psychotropics like nutmeg, or choose from a thousand herbs and spices that people use to enhance the tastes of food. You beg the question. And you won't save face with this trite nonsense.

Science gave us heroin to cure laudanum addiction (opium in alcohol, itself sold to cure the hysteria of menses), morphine to cure heroin addiction, codeine to cure morphine addiction, and so on, just as it today gives us oxys and fens. Science is the villain in this scenario, not the hero.

Science does not do honest research about illicit substance abuse "all the time," more accurately put as never.

Science is just beginning to learn about the chemistry and biologic effects of marijuana, yet marijuana use goes back to the dawn of human time, we know even less about that super drug which is legal, aspirin.

But why would the science of addiction necessarily vary. The drugs hit the same receptors in the brain. And alcohol is as harmful or more than other 'illicit' drugs to which people get addicted, so why exclude the legal one from the illegal, when the legal one causes the most damage to society, outside the harm we inflict on ourselves with the War on Some Drugs?

 

[JasperL]

We ended prohibition in 1933.

Today, 30% of Americans still abuse alcohol.

88,000 people last year died from alcohol related deaths.

So, please explain how making addictive drugs legal will make the problem disappear...….. and please try to avoid any more of your "Big Pharma" conspiracies.

No one alleges legalization will make any problem disappear. That's a straw man. The better question for me is what could possibly work worse than our War on Some Drugs? It's failed miserably for 50 years or more, so why would anyone think this War will be won anytime in the next 50 years?

 

[JasperL]

Sorry, but we control alcohol too, and we still have a mess on our hands with that substance alone.

You say that "Big Pharma" over produces their product. Well, the DEA controls what they can legally produce. The DEA has also cut back by 25% of what the pharma's could produce in 2017 and certain areas still had a increase in deaths from the substances.

https://patch.com/pennsylvania/roxborough/pennsylvania-opioid-overdose-deaths-increased-2017-cdc

Hello Fentanyl!

No ****. That's the problem in a nutshell. Win the War on Opioids and the illegal drug trade solution is the much more potent and easy to smuggle fentanyl with the bad side effect of also killing a bunch of people. So why again are we better off not providing addicts with heroin of a known strength produced by a reputable company, and treating those who want to be treated?

 

[JasperL]

If the harmful drug prohibition were repealed, there would be little need for a DEA.

If the fraudulent War On Terror were ended, there would be little need for DHS.

Bureaucracies loves the laws that created them and keep them growing. Great job security.

What I love is the asset forfeiture laws - just find a little weed/coke on someone, seize their car! Helluva deal for the state. There was a guy locally who went (he said) on a buying trip for used construction equipment, and the sellers like cash, so he had as I recall $30k in cash on him. Got stopped and no kidding the cash had traces of cocaine, which was enough for the local cops nearby to seize the $30k with no trial, no nothing, no proof at all he was a dealer or had anything at all to do with drugs.

In the end, after 2 years of legal battles, he got his cash back, but it cost him most of that in legal fees, and it ruined his little business.

Thanks War on Some Drugs!