The internet: too much or not enough?

[Tronica]

Is there information on drugs you would like to be easier to get? If yes, what type and through what source?

I wanted to open up this question to all of you here.

It's interesting that on the one hand, there seems to be so much information about drugs available online - think of how many hits you get on google searches for particular kinds of drugs. However, it's not so easy getting credible information - some more practical questions about drug taking won't be addressed by official sources (eg. instructions on safer snorting or smoking techniques, pill content reports), hence the existence of sites that aren't government sponsored, like Bluelight, Erowid, Pill Reports, etc.

You are probably more aware of what info is available online if you are reading Bluelight. But what kind of info do you think is lacking and would be useful... and would you prefer this info to be delivered online or in some other way?

PS. This question is part of my online survey about drug discussion. I'd love you to participate if you have 15 minutes spare sometime. Just click here!

 

[Splatt]

I was thinking about the other day collecting all the good threads with good info and putting them in a thread so people can find info easily.. its been done in numerous other forums, while we only have a few links on the forum header in here. Would be a lot of work though to go through it all and pick the best. There would be a lot of archived stuff that people may want to respond to as well so it makes it hard.

Theres not much else anyone can do other than what erowid has done, got other peoples information and made it for easy to view and find.


BL is severley lacking in FAQs though, it had a lot more but something happened, they were shifted to other forums as they were proibably outdated ands then got pruned because I cannot find a lot of FAQs that used to be around where everyone put a bit of everything into the FAQ and then it was formatted nicely. I guess gather mods, experienced people, people with knowledge, professionals and find spair time to compile the data thats already on BL so certain questions aren't always asked. I'd be willing if anyone else would.

 

[swilow]

^I'm working on basic psychedelic FAQ's atm- LSD, mushrooms, mescaline and DXM as simple questions relating to these substances always pop up....

 

[peaked]

I've always been able to find the answers I needed from Bluelight or a small selection of other sites (PillReports, Erowid, Shroomery etc). In terms of the information provided by "official sources" however, I have a lot to complain about.

Based on drug education at school, and the countless anti-drugs ads I've seen, I always felt that there is a lack of information regarding just what exactly a substance will do (i.e. the "positive" effects of the drug and why people would want to use it). Much of the public information is geared towards an anti-drugs prospective. Generally they will harp on about the most extreme negative side effects anyone has ever experienced and then try and make the public believe that everyone is going to receive similar effects from even a single use of the drug.

I've often seen lines to the extent of "the effects of ecstacy include dehydration, jaw clenches, eye wobbles and even death". By beating around the bush and not addressing specifically what the drug does, people are left to make guesses as to what the enjoyable effects of MDMA might be. There is a general perception amongst the uneducated that ecstasy is a drug that will make you dance all night. So these people may consider a speedy pill to be "ecstasy" and conversely think an MDxx pill is some kind of downer, due to the overwhelming feeling and lack of energy from some particular pills. I've also seen people that choose to try and deny the empathetic properties of MDMA while on it, and it makes me wonder just why they want to use it in the first place. Ultimately if they knew specifically what MDMA does, they may choose not to have it at all.

Though some substances leave a fairly large margin for error when dosing, others are potentially harmful at doses only a fraction over what the standard dose is. For this reason I've always felt that information should be made easily available regarding what dose levels people should use the substance at.

Factual information regarding the harm caused by the substances (i.e. not the usual scare tactics that we always see) would also be highly beneficial, as well as detailing how best to minimize the harm caused by use of the drug.

I've also found it quite hard to find the exact laws relating to drug possession. Specifically I'd like a run down on each state, with what levels of what drug are considered for personal use, what warrants a criminal offense and what the charge will be for a particular amount of a drug (from a small personal amount to a larger quantity). On the times I've tried to find this information in the past, I've often been presented with conflicted reports from different sites, both of which I suspected were outdated. It also took much looking and many different search strings before I found something even slightly useful.

In regards to the medium for broadcasting this information - the internet is very effective, since so much information can be stored on a single webpage, and displayed in the most efficient way. However, people have to be able to find the site first. If people don't know it exists, they won't bother looking for it. Ultimately, to reach the mainstream audience, advertisement would need to be setup on other mediums, such as radio or television, to make people aware of the website where all the information is.

 

[Tronica]

Thanks for your considered post, peaked - I agree with your assessment.

Based on drug education at school, and the countless anti-drugs ads I've seen, I always felt that there is a lack of information regarding just what exactly a substance will do (i.e. the "positive" effects of the drug and why people would want to use it). Much of the public information is geared towards an anti-drugs prospective. Generally they will harp on about the most extreme negative side effects anyone has ever experienced and then try and make the public believe that everyone is going to receive similar effects from even a single use of the drug.

The last time I encountered this was when I decided to open the recent government publication "Talking to your kids about drugs". This is a resource that is supposed to help parents have a dialogue with their children (and some of it was written well for this purpose). But other parts of it were just so inadequate - especially the information about effects of drugs.

Surely half the problem is that a parent may not understand why their child would want to take a drug like Ecstasy. If they read this booklet and just watch Today Tonight, they'd think their child was just plain crazy. No mention of any of the enjoyable, positive effects - the reasons why individual drugs might be attractive to their child! only the negative and often extreme effects were mentioned. I shouldn't have been surprised given the stance of our current government - but I guess I was hoping for something that could actually assist a frank discussion between parent and child....

I've also found it quite hard to find the exact laws relating to drug possession. Specifically I'd like a run down on each state, with what levels of what drug are considered for personal use, what warrants a criminal offense and what the charge will be for a particular amount of a drug (from a small personal amount to a larger quantity).

Yes! This info is very difficult to find, especially across states. I think this is a fine project for Bluelight; something we could all add to. A more ambitious project could be to collate a world comparison of drug laws, though this would be a bit harder to keep up-to-date.

In regards to the medium for broadcasting this information - the internet is very effective, since so much information can be stored on a single webpage, and displayed in the most efficient way. However, people have to be able to find the site first. If people don't know it exists, they won't bother looking for it. Ultimately, to reach the mainstream audience, advertisement would need to be setup on other mediums, such as radio or television, to make people aware of the website where all the information is.

One of the threads running through your response is the need to provide specific information to make drug use safer for people who choose to use drugs. The problem with making this information more widely accessible is that it is politically untenable to broadcast info which can be seen as 'instructing people on how to do an illegal activity'. People get around that by distributing information less publicly - more directly to people from a specific population, eg. people who are highly likely to be using or use drugs in the future. It's a fine line to tread...

The question to ask is whether the gains to public health made by making this information available outweigh the potential to "encourage drug use". If the topic wasn't so politicised, this would be the central question to answer and would determine the best response... IMHO.

 

[swilow]

Surely half the problem is that a parent may not understand why their child would want to take a drug like Ecstasy. If they read this booklet and just watch Today Tonight, they'd think their child was just plain crazy. No mention of any of the enjoyable, positive effects - the reasons why individual drugs might be attractive to their child! only the negative and often extreme effects were mentioned. I shouldn't have been surprised given the stance of our current government - but I guess I was hoping for something that could actually assist a frank discussion between parent and child....

I think its largely because negtaive statistics (hospitilastions, mental health problems, deaths, drug seizures) are easier to quanitfy that that is all we hear of in a way. Its hard to, for example, measure the poistiive impact of a mushroom trip on someone (even though several studies have shown that they do induce mystical experiences)... Its a definite pity.

I really don't like the scheduling system for drugs- I have been prescribed diazepam for anxiety NOT related to drugs, and trying to get off this is near impossible- well, very diffiuclt to say the least; one of the harder aspects is the fact tht I am precribes these drugs frequnetly by a doctor who constantly admonishes me not to use illegal drugs....However, dimethyltrypyamine (DMT) has given me nothing but positive ways of coping with this wretched addiction and distancing myself from something that is, in effect, simply inevitable occurring in my body. That I don't understand- why DMT is on the toughest sheduling and diazepam isn't (if we were trying to have any consistnecy between drugs laws then) when diazepam clearly has very high potential for abuse and addiction (I never really binged on diazepam- so simply taking the drug for a period of several months under medical supervision is enough to get one hooked IMO) and negative psychological side effects then DMT has ever demonstarated.

I use DMT and mushrooms as mere examples; but I do see psychedelic drugs as being in a different class to stimulants and depressant/hypnotic/sedatives drugs, but thats a purely subjective categorisation I would say. Either way, I know many peple that pop 2 mg of xanax to sleep each night, but treat me as if I have 6 arms and horns when I mention something about acid; perhaps I'm interrupting their coked up K-hole....The point I'm making HERE is that the perception of harmful and not harmdful is deeply ingrained in the community- my closest mate consumes a lot of meth- daily- yet berates my mention of using of psychedelics.

My parents (I am 24) have been concerned about my drug use- but they know I am willow11 and I've got them to read my posts in PD etc. simply because I no longer wanted to hide anything from them- we have discussed mushrooms, LSD, DMT and cannabis at length (sometimes arguing ) and interestingly the only time they had been truly stressed about drug use was years ago when they found several e pills in my room. They didn't remove them, but were deeply frightened. Which is strange, seeing as they accept my psychedelic use; however, I haven;t lived with them for years so that has something to do with it I'm sure. In terms of generations there seems to be a discrepancy; my parents are accepting of 'natural' drugs as they would see it (my mum used to grow datura stramonium) but frighened of synthetics, whereras the oppoiste occurss as illustrated in the example I gave above.

Sorry about a rambling post, I hope it is of some use. I am very interested in drug education in Australia at least, so this is a good topic. Thanks for raising it Tronica (btw I have done several f your surverys).

Take care

 

[Tronica]

A feature article, "Connect and stay safe?", has just been published which explains a bit more about the project and the ideas behind it.

I'm interested in your comments about the article or the project!

Willow - thanks for your support of the research projects over the years. That's amazing that you have that kind of relationship with your parents - makes me hopeful! And yes it's true that the concepts people have of what is harmful / safe are often not based on any evidence as such. This is one of the big problems with implementing harm reduction programs - people's attitudes are so often based on inaccuracies, because they are all around us in relation to drugs (eg. mainstream media, etc).

 

[Numeron]

I've also found it quite hard to find the exact laws relating to drug possession. Specifically I'd like a run down on each state, with what levels of what drug are considered for personal use, what warrants a criminal offense and what the charge will be for a particular amount of a drug (from a small personal amount to a larger quantity).

I think this is a great idea, an probably a surprisingly large task. should something like this be put together Id also like to see exactly what my rights are at each stage and some general advice on which of these rights to exersise and to what extent (for example if you're found with one or two pills using your right to shut the hell up might not work as much in your favour than if you explained they are for personal use etc etc)

As far as neutral factual rundowns for each drug is concerned I believe it to be a very difficult thing to find. Government or anti-drug sites have, as discussed, a horrible tendancy to point out the negatives and not much else. Having said that however Im aware to a small degree that sites like bluelight and erowid can *sometimes* focus too much on the positives of drugs and not the negatives. I hope I dont get flamed for saying that, because these sites are also fantastic for the harm reduction purpose they were made for, and at least have evidence to back up all the claims made about the positive or negative effects they describe. I dont think this is the fault of the sites themselves, its just that a large percentage of posters are users and users are more often than not pro-drugs.

One more thing i'd like to see is an area by area rundown of street level prices for every drug people can come up with. Im aware that there is a big no prices thingy on the main aus drug discussion page, so i dont want to go against the rules or anything... but I do think it would be useful for tracking price trends over time and would help people who are interested in trying something new to not get ripped off (i guess you could call that harm reduction if you put it under that light and kind of squint your eyes ). Within a forum though, this can be difficult because it means trawling through entire threads to find your area and even then its just what one person can get and may not reflect the actual prices of the area. What id like to see would be multiple people from every major city and rural hub submit what prices they get everything for, compile all the results and then get something like this when you look it up (only probably better formatted):

EDIT- Romoved prices. Please read the guidelines. lil angel15

 

[Tronica]

As a compromise Numeron, one thing you can do is check out the annual NDARC reports for their drug market information.

National reports

You can see the average prices for Australian cities for different drugs. At least 100 people from each city give responses to these questions. If we were able to do this compilation on prices on BL (would contravene guidelines so we shouldn't) - but if able, there may be differences in pricing, or maybe not. It would be interesting to find out, but perhaps not as easily identified as harm reduction - more like, making it easier for people not to get ripped off

 

[Mr Blonde]

^ There is a price thread on Bluelight specifically for the purpose of allowing prices to be somewhere on the site, but there aren't too many Australian postings there.