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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

New Scientist on Psychoactive Substances Ban

Evidence? We've seen enough from the 'legal highs' market to suggest that any further liberalisation of drug laws (other than perhaps cannabis, to a limited extent) would be utterly disastrous. The NHS is still dealing with the fallout from mephedrone et al. Do we throw amphetamines, LSD and the rest into the mix and reap the inevitable harvest of shame a few years further down the line? I think not.

Let me tell you I am closely coordinated with the consultant psychiatrists and junior doctors that deal with the frontline problems affecting people who have fell into trouble with drugs - the only answer is more funding for the NHS, more research, and more tolerance, less stimagisation of drug users and an approach that is caring, compassionate and multifaceted.

What is your solution to this problem? Noone has the answers, it is a difficult, complex issue and dealing with it in broad daylight and the sunshine of honesty & truth is the only way forward.
 
I didn't create that exception, but from a realistic point of view, we must accept the obvious; that alcohol has a special position in our culture, for better or worse (frequently the latter). Any attempt to place it into a restricted category overnight would create a huge backlash, and perhaps have the unintended effect of giving alcohol a rebellious cachet associated with illegal drugs, thus undermining any efforts at education.
 
I would not be happy with my kids smoking 'black mamba', or any other unidentified chemical for that matter. However, I am totally fine with my daughter smoking organic cannabis, and she does it with my blessing (though I do insist upon a reasonable cut of course ;) ).

The main problem with the legal highs market is its' grey area legality. To stay within the law, suppliers are not allowed to give vital information such as dosage, effects, side effects, ROA etc. It is the lack of this information which causes the majority of issues.
 
It's a dumb article full of false equivalence.
What did the world expect to happen? Many folks here have been able to use RCs somewhat responsibly, and at least had some knowledge of the risks involved...but the packets of unlabeled random shit at gas stations and head shops sold by and to the ignorant? A fucking disaster, esp spice and benzos.
The state is retarded when it comes to policy, but it always has been and this is what it does when it can finally be arsed to deal with a problem.
Doctors are not much better, until they have to deal intimately with a situation many, many times and see the wreckage of their bad decisions....which they often don't, lots of confirmation bias there.

Going to be a lot of extreme benzo addicts going cold turkey, I hope they all make it with or without help but I'm not holding my breath.

Also, ewww....can we quit saying "Black Mamba" oh the loaded symbolism.
 
The main problem with the legal highs market is its' grey area legality. To stay within the law, suppliers are not allowed to give vital information such as dosage, effects, side effects, ROA etc. It is the lack of this information which causes the majority of issues.
QFT.

This riduculous situation, where vendors cannot provide harm reduction information, is still a consequence of prohibition. I was going to say "an indirect consequence" but really, it's not actually all that indirect, even.
 
Suppliers are not allowed to give vital information such as dosage, effects, side effects, ROA etc. It is the lack of this information which causes the majority of issues.

My own views exactly.
"The dose makes the poison" is a perfectly pertinent summary. Picomolar concentration acute exposure to Cyanide, Sarin, gaseous Sulphuric acid, MPPP+, 4-CA and countless others is unlikely to cause anywhere near the disastrous and easily fatal effects that such compounds retain infamy for.
Excessive consumption of even simple sterile water will kill you through pissing out the chemical keys to biological functioning.

The RC era was and is an absolute perfect storm with consequences far surpassing the consideration of even the most adventurous thinkers - less than 50 words given cyberspace permanence through a single Hive contribution in the first few years of the 21st century laid the foundations for the Mephedrone mass market. Shulgin's superb substances may have remained available under the radar long after legislation was filed and Schedules filled, but the Cathinone craze is what put the RC industry on the front pages rather than the periphery of public perception. The then obscure legal loophole of mass marketing a psychotropic substance with consumption specified as misuse and a wink-nudge pitch to the public being licit via the same means as peroxide cosmetics and biotoxic bleaches was exploited in inevitable capitalistic fashion, as publicised through redundant rhetoric and societal scare-mongering by the papers and mass media. The consequential cat and mouse chase fueled our journey down the rabbit hole of "research", economic necessity to the industrial few drove the synthesis of compounds that had existed only in the ether of pharmaceutical possibilities prior. The stubborn and undeniably simply stupid stance of "providing public information equates to promotion of use in the population" by the political parties was an undeniable contributing factor in every accidental overdose by those who could source the substance but not the information needed to make an informed decision. As the list of compounds grew to accommodate the laws prohibiting the predecessor the effects became even more unpredictable the need for adequate information grew even larger. With every misinformation shaped mishap, from the simply worrisome to the totally tragic, the fallacious conclusion of "all drugs are inherently dangerous and their use is the only thing responsible for deaths" became even easier for the uninformed to hold and promote without even a single doubt or innate curiosity leading to independent research.

We are but a biological computer system suspended in primate physiology, we share the instinctive desire to alter our perceptions with all higher organisms, we are driven by electrochemical impulses that release monoamines far more than we are by comprehension of social perception. We will always use drugs, no matter the consequence. It is not rational, it runs far deeper in our genome and unconscious than words can express.
Like goats scaling the all but vertical concrete faces of dams just to lap up the particularly salty water that pokes their physiological pleasure buttons, humans will always use psychoactive substances that induce simple chemical reactions interpreted as pleasurable or interestingly novel even if such use obliterates everything we are but the squishy organic matter in our heads that drove us to do it in the first place.

Disasters resulting from violating all information, recommendation and independent data formed conclusions is a failure of the individual to research, deaths from instinctive and innate psychotropic consumption as a result of outright refusal to fully investigate the causative agent while espousing dated rhetoric is a failure of society and of humanity.

golemgolem said:
Going to be a lot of extreme benzo addicts going cold turkey, I hope they all make it with or without help but I'm not holding my breath.


Which makes works such as this NPS BZD presentation even more necessary to promote.

Also, ewww....can we quit saying "Black Mamba" oh the loaded symbolism.


Just as easily as we can stop saying "Spice".
Marketing towards the masses and snazzy product names are no substitute for intelligent discourse regarding a specific compound which may or may not ever have been in the ludicrous packaging.
 
QFT.This riduculous situation, where vendors cannot provide harm reduction information, is still a consequence of prohibition. I was going to say "an indirect consequence" but really, it's not actually all that indirect, even.
How can 'vendors' (dealers) be relied upon to produce comprehensive safety information for compounds which are in many cases virtual unknowns? In any case, you're assuming that these 'vendors' have a sense of responsibility and culpability - they don't. They're interested in making a quick buck selling to desperate drug users, and safety be damned. That isn't the fault of prohibition, it's the fault of greedy dealers who know that they'll get away with it. Simple as.
 
How can 'vendors' (dealers) be relied upon to produce comprehensive safety information for compounds which are in many cases virtual unknowns? In any case, you're assuming that these 'vendors' have a sense of responsibility and culpability - they don't. They're interested in making a quick buck selling to desperate drug users, and safety be damned.
Agreed.
That isn't the fault of prohibition, it's the fault of greedy dealers who know that they'll get away with it. Simple as.
Prohibition makes greedy drug dealers more dangerous by keeping the market - but removing all regulation and/or inspection of the product. Think of how much worse big pharma would act without goverments keeping tabs on them.
 
Prohibition makes greedy drug dealers more dangerous by keeping the market - but removing all regulation and/or inspection of the product.
Oh, undoubtedly. I was just querying the notion that the dealers are somehow without fault, and that removal of prohibition would somehow make the use of these substances entirely safe.
 
Standardised doses and written instructions on how best to take a drug would greatly reduce their harm.

Then again very few drugs would be commercially attractive if all drugs were made freely available. Within a short period of time the current alphabet soup of unknown chemicals would be whittled down to less tha a dozen.

Why drink moonshine when you could have a gnt?
 
Would the harm really be dramatically reduced if the users were so informed? Just a glance at the number of deaths among this community of 'informed drug users' shows that even those who consider themselves to be paragons of safer drug use can be caught out by these cheap and nasty compounds, with lethal consequences. Ultimately, anybody hawking these wares should be held to account.
 
You would expect the RC game to be its last legs anyways, real drugs for right money on the DNMs, and the vendors are way out of the swing of of any retributive baseball bat, good bless em.
 
Darknet markets are a hydra-headed evil which can only be tackled through cooperation and infiltration. Thankfully both are well underway, but it may take a concerted effort to eliminate the dangers entirely.
 
Instead of successfully deterring people from doing drugs and trafficking across borders, the war on drugs has instead resulted in violence, mass incarceration, death, corruption and overspending. By intensely criminalizing illicit drugs across the board, a precedent was created for a thriving black market of drug production, smuggling and usage. Not to mention many drugs including cannabis actually got cheaper and more potent over the past decade, demonstrating that wherever there is a demand, there will be a supply, regardless of law crackdowns.

The U.N. report found that global drug use remains relatively stable, clearly an indication that the war on drugs has been ineffective in deterring drug use and trafficking. While use of opiates as a whole has decreased, the UN found that there has been an increase in use of cannabis, especially in Western and Central Europe and North America, as well as pharmaceutical opioids.

your approach has been failing for 40 decades even when backed by the full might of international law enforcement and militaries behind it, what you are proposing is just a microcosm of an already proven failure of a strategy.
 
No, you're quite wrong. Do you think the so-called war on drugs is actually happening in the way in which governments, corporations and their media puppets portray it? You're even more deluded and foolish than I realised.
 
Of course corruption is rife, there are bigger geostrategic games being played, look at the CIA and its history in south america for example.

But acting outside of the law with no accountability makes you a common criminal, regardless of how you frame your motives in moral terms.
 
Being accountable to your community is a huge responsibility. Besides, where is the mention of criminality? You're joining some wild dots here.
 
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