Alcohol, Marijuana,...which drug should be legalized next?

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

Drugs like alcohol and marijuana seem like distraction drugs, that try to make you less of a human being.

I would agree that alcohol does this, but not cannabis.

From my personal experience: 5 years of horrible alcohol abuse (at least a bottle of vodka a day, sometimes more) all in the name of trying to turn off my brain from issues going on in my life. It definitely fell under the "making me less than a human being" category.

The past year I have hardly drunk anything (occasional beer at an office Christmas party or similar event...probably less than 6 drinks the entire year), but I use cannabis between 1-2 times a week (always on the weekend, always after my kids go to bed, and always when my wife knows).

Cannabis does the opposite for me: it turns on my brain instead of turning it off. I could not imagine trying to hide cannabis use as I hid my alcohol abuse because my mind wouldn't let me do that when I'm high. I am more connected with my wife, with my feelings, and with my thoughts when I use cannabis. This is, again, the opposite of what I experienced when I abused alcohol.

I love cannabis and my wife loves that I use it because of the person that I have become. Rather than a drunk who hides a bunch of sh*t (both in terms of lying about actions and in terms of my feelings), I am now more connected to her and at peace with myself than I ever have been.

joedirt wrote:

LSD? It can have long term effects:

https://luxury.rehabs.com/psychedelics-abuse/long-term-effects-lsd/

Plus people who take LSD are more likely to take pretty much everything else once their sense of reality has been altered. It was the drug my cousin started on and eventually led him down a road of drug and alcohol use that ended in death at the age of 30.

Here we go again. Dirtman throwing around his baseless propaganda.

Dirtguy: anything can have long term effects. Eating meat, staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day, driving a gas guzzling car, eating sugar, using a cell phone, biting your nails, pushing too hard when you poop, etc., etc.

Long term effects do not equal prohibition.

HGH.

Or are we only talking "recreational" here? If so, probably some sort of antidepressant... but don't know much about them, tbh.

Runningart2004 wrote:

How many deaths are caused by Heroin?

How many deaths are caused by Cocaine?

The deaths due to the business of dealing Heroin and Cocaine don’t count.

Alan

Per-user deaths from heroin are an order of magnitude higher than from alcohol. Cigarettes probably approach it, but longevity is much higher.

Im not philosophically opposed to legalizing the majority of drugs and either taxing them like crazy or limiting sales somehow. Put massive penalties for skirting the system. Impose huge fines for using any drug and driving, much higher than currently imposed for DUI. Increase the length you lose your license much longer than it currently is.

nicotinekills wrote:

Cocaine? Heroin?

Oh good. It’s you.

FFF wrote:

The medical uses are huge, but overall, they're just like marijuana.

Weed acts on cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 resulting in the release of dopamine. LSD acts on Seratonin receptors. So pharmacologically speaking they are quite different. Both act on neurotransmitters, so in that way they are similar. Messing with brain chemistry is never a good idea. It is why people that smoke weed a lot are typically depressed when they are not high and tend to be more suicidal. Unless you have a legit condition that requires drugs, you should not be taking them. Drugs should not be taken recreationally as they all have undesirable side effects. As for the Lancet "study" it was very subjectively done with people expressing their opinions. If as many people were using LSD as are using alcohol on a daily basis, the number of auto accidents would climb to levels never before seen.

Drainthefecesswamp wrote:

Runningart2004 wrote:

How many deaths are caused by Heroin?

How many deaths are caused by Cocaine?

The deaths due to the business of dealing Heroin and Cocaine don’t count.

Alan

Per-user deaths from heroin are an order of magnitude higher than from alcohol. Cigarettes probably approach it, but longevity is much higher.

Im not philosophically opposed to legalizing the majority of drugs and either taxing them like crazy or limiting sales somehow. Put massive penalties for skirting the system. Impose huge fines for using any drug and driving, much higher than currently imposed for DUI. Increase the length you lose your license much longer than it currently is.

We are getting a bit off track from the original question, but that is OK. Everything presented below is only from a US perspective:

The data are pretty messy here. Some reports include all opiods lumped together. Some distinguish heroin by itself, etc. The data isn't collected consistently everywhere.

Total death from all drug use in 2017 is reported as about 72,000 people.

There were around 16000 deaths involving heroin in 2017. Total opiod deaths were just over 49,000. Synthetic opiods, which mostly includes fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, involves about 29000. Opiod pain relievers accounted for 19,000. These numbers don't all add up cleanly because of double-counting (e.g. often both fentanyl and heroin might be involved in the same death and be counted in both categories).

There were approximately 14,500 deaths involving cocaine in 2017. This is up tremendously from ~2010 when the total deaths involving cocaine was 4000, but the deaths from cocaine alone are pretty close to the same (about 2000 deaths). The increase is driven almost entirely from the use of opiods in combination with cocaine. Those made up about 1/2 the 2010 total but make up about 7/8ths of the total in 2017.

Benzodiazepine overdose shows a similar pattern to cocaine, with deaths up substantially but that drive is driven almost entirely by the use of opiates in combination with benzos.

About 88,000 people die every year from alcohol related causes. This is not a directly comparable number because this is all cause compared just to overdose. But it does give some perspective.

Cigarette smoking is responsible for 480,000 deaths per year in the U.S.

Runningart2004 wrote:

The deaths due to the business of dealing Heroin and Cocaine don’t count.

Due to their addictive nature hard drugs like Heroine and Cocaine would never be legal. Recreational drugs like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, LSD are a different story.

Alan

So I wanted to make a couple of more points. Alan points her to differentiating deaths from drug use from deaths from the business of dealing heroin or cocaine. This makes some intuitive sense as being shot over control of a corner is different from taking a lethal dose. However, it is really difficult to dis aggregate the harms of drug use that is inherent in the drugs themselves and the parts that come from the effects of prohibition. It is really, really clear that prohibition causes or worsens many of the hazards of drug use.

Product purity: There is no way to assure that what you are getting in an illegal market is pure, or whether it has been cut, or how much it has been cut by, or what it has been cut with. Which leads to people being unsure of what they are taking, or how much they are taking.

Driving up strength due to prohibition: It is really clear that making something illegal causes people to smuggle the most concentrated form of it that they can. So drug dealers are increasingly smuggling in fentanyl instead of heroin because it is more concentrated. Smuggling in higher concentrations increases profits and lowers the possibility of detection.

Also wanted to point out that the addiction/problem use rate of cocaine is very similar to alcohol and long term problem use is lower. People have all sorts of mistaken ideas about addiction.

Anyway, it is really clear that it would be far better to take a harm reduction and public health approach to drug use. Prohibition does not work and it has failed. In many cases this would involve having a legal, safe, and regulated market. For heroin and opiods specifically I am in favor of medically supervised use for addicts, like they have in Switzerland, for example, instead of the decriminalization approach of Portugal, although either approach is superior to what we have now. Even Safe injection facilities seem like a cosmic leap forward from a US perspective.

aoxomoxoa wrote:

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

Drugs like alcohol and marijuana seem like distraction drugs, that try to make you less of a human being.

I would agree that alcohol does this, but not cannabis.

This has always been so strange to me as I feel exactly the opposite about cannabis. Every time I have tried the drug it simply leaves me feeling absolutely stupid. No idea how people can prefer to walk around, or sit around, feeling like this. And yet I am aware there are many millions of people who love it and function better on it than without it. I have or had several friends like this. They are energised by it, they think better, clearer, the whole deal.

It's strange that this one substance can cause such a wide discrepancy of sensations across different people.

Good post and I agree wholeheartedly about cannabis. Anyone who thinks cannabis use allows one to escape from reality/ problems is incorrect. This is the reason so many people can't handle cannabis, why it causes "paranoia" in so many, you are confronted with everything. How you deal with this reality often defines whether it's for you or not. Alcohol on the other hand numbs and distracts from everything real.

You are all out of touch.

The kids are all on N-bomb, M-cat, 2CE and Spice these days.

LuckDragon wrote:

You are all out of touch.

The kids are all on N-bomb, M-cat, 2CE and Spice these days.

Jenkem FTW!

FFF wrote:

Drugs are OK, OK wrote:

Psychedelics will be the next class of drugs to be legalized. Starting in 2020 in Oregon with mushrooms. And MDMA, which may or may not be a psychedelic depending on who you ask.

Several psychedelics are in phase 3 clinical trials and have been granted breakthough drug status by the FDA. So those will be legally available, but controlled, soon.

But honestly these are some of the safest and least addictive substances out there. Should all be legalized. MDMA, mushrooms, mescaline, LSD. Legalize all of them.

I'm in favor of legalizing cocaine as well, but that is a much bigger step politically.

Ding, ding.

The only question is, which state will go RECREATIONAL with any of these psychedelics? The medical uses are huge, but overall, they're just like marijuana.

The growing research with psychedelics is intriguing. Look how long it's taken for cannabis to be regulated and "semi" accepted in parts of the country, and honestly though, we're still a ways away from this becoming the norm, even within the next decade, sadly.

I am more supportive of centers being open for psychedelic administration vs the freedom just to go and buy it at least initially to adventure with. Just because the level of overall toxicity is lower vs alcohol for example, the effects one could have, even from a small dose could become a very, very slippery slope. Even with cannabis, I've found a lot of people naive to the plant find themselves generally shook when a "high" creeps up on them, and suddenly anxiety and a lot of negative effects can come about, while not emergency type, very uncomfortable. Take that x10 for an inexperienced psychedelic user with mushrooms or LSD.

How many people even get pure, clean MDMA? Most of the time I've heard it discussed is in the party scene for festivals, so the couples therapy of the 1950s narrative is a bit of a stretch for a lot of modern use of the drug. I do believe it can have a positive effect on somebody who's endogenous chemicals are out of whack due to trauma and other past events, but the majority of the users I'd safely bet are for partying.

We're talking about a huge paradigm shift in acceptance, regulation and overall education about these substances. I am all for it, but if you believe it's going to create a utopian society overnight, let's take a step back and see all potential outcomes before chasing the unicorn.

devil's advocate wrote:

We're talking about a huge paradigm shift in acceptance, regulation and overall education about these substances. I am all for it, but if you believe it's going to create a utopian society overnight, let's take a step back and see all potential outcomes before chasing the unicorn.

"Creating a utopian society overnight" is not the criteria. The criteria is whether a system of regulation is better than a system of prohibition.

I haven't played with psychs, but I do know I've listened to podcasts with Sam Harris where he experimented a lot and now he won't touch them anymore. I know that's a sample size of one, but I respect Harris a lot more than any politician making policy for the nation.

I think he still advocates that everyone takes at least one trip, but for him personally, thinks the returns no longer justify the risks and/or costs.

For this reason alone, I would be against decriminalizing psychs over things that have proven long-term health benefits, like testosterone, HGH supplementation. And possibly metformin.

Just thought this was worth bumping in light of the former Yale runner going nuts with a knife. Have to wonder if Drugs are OK OK is that guy.

Yeah, alcohol isn't addictive.

What you guys that are missing when you try to say that people who use X go on to use Y is that it's not the drug, it's the person's tolerance for risk.

Very few people that smoke cigarettes don't drink alcohol, not because smoking causes one to drink beer, it's that person's risk tolerance. People that smoke are not as health conscience as those that do not.

If you surveyed people at a road race you would find a disproportionate number of people that do not smoke, you would probably find a higher percentage of people that do not drink alcohol either. These people are risk adverse.

Remember the ol "If she smokes she pokes." saying. If a girl smokes she is more likely to shrug off societal norms, she's a risk taker, therefore more likely to engage in casual sex than a woman that does not smoke.

Not me, but not at all surprised that you are willing to take on dubious anecdote and generalize it too all people and all situations...

joedirt wrote:

Just thought this was worth bumping in light of the former Yale runner going nuts with a knife. Have to wonder if Drugs are OK OK is that guy.