Weird News

[jinx]

Originally Posted by DanaC

[eta] it always amazes me that the country that purports to want small government that keeps out of your personal life, also wants that government to regulate what you put into your mouths and veins. It doesn't get more personal than that. It is not the state's job to decide what I eat, smoke or inject.

Yes, as you're such a raging libertarian I can see why this would wind you up. It's just the state's job to feed, clothe, house, medicate, and educate you - otherwise they need to butt the hell out of your life, man!
You sound like a teenager.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by jinx

Yes, as you're such a raging libertarian I can see why this would wind you up. It's just the state's job to feed, clothe, house, medicate, and educate you - otherwise they need to butt the hell out of your life, man!
You sound like a teenager.

Ok. I see we've stepped away from pleasant and into downright insulting.


My point still stands: a country that favours small government that has no responsibility to ensure health care for all, and considers such a thing an abuse of of its role at the same time has some of the most illiberal drugs laws (not in all states I know) in the western world. I see that as conflicting.

[jinx]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Ok. I see we've stepped away from pleasant and into downright insulting.

We? Speak for yourself.
I'm trying to have a conversation about whether it makes sense to legalize opiates and you start shouting about the evils of my government, as if I'm in charge. Get over yourself and try to follow the plot.

[jinx]

Just as quite a few clinical alcoholics can and do hold down jobs. Some can't. They have a disease and need medical treatment. The questions are; are opiates more addictive/more destructive than alcohol, which is legal. Would it be more harmful if made legal and more available than it is now*.

I saw a program about China in the 1830's a while back. It made me rethink the whole everything should be legal and it'll work out great idea I was thinking before.
I'm still listening for a good argument though, I just don't think personal anecdote carries much weight. I've quit every drug I've tried/used. Doesn't mean I don't believe that addiction exists.

Originally Posted by *

Poisoning is now the second leading cause of unintentional injury death in the U.S. While several recent high-profile Hollywood celebrity cases have brought the problem to public attention, the rates of unintentional poisoning deaths have been on the rise for more than 15 years, and in fact, unintentional poisoning has surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death among people 35-54 years of age. In a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers in the U.S. have increased by 65% from 1999 to 2006.

[squirell nutkin]

I have a friend who used heroin and smoked cigs. He held down a job, pissed away most of his money but managed to keep just above water. He finally cleaned up and said it was a walk in the park to kick Heroin in comparison to quitting cigarettes.

I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about why cigarettes are so much more addictive than H.

Wm. Burroughs has a chapter in Naked Lunch where he discusses why the war on drugs will always fail and he advocates for making it legal at the cost of probably losing a generation to people going wild until the novelty wears off and then people decide if it is something they are interested in after seeing the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix,

[jinx]

I thought quitting cigs (twice) was a walk in the park compared to pot.

[squirell nutkin]

Originally Posted by jinx

I thought quitting cigs (twice) was a walk in the park compared to pot.

I didn't realize one could quit pot...

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's easier if you're pregnant, so that leaves you out.

[DanaC]

Since I am in a more reasonable frame of mind, I'll post a piece from 2002:

This was from Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, speaking at a conference in Wales on how we deal with drugs and calling for a different approach:

Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom was speaking before today's landmark conference at Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold, in which he will again call for a major review of the drugs laws.

He said: "Methadone is as addictive as heroin and is clearly more dangerous. Head for head, more people die from methadone abuse than heroin abuse.

"It is not popular with users because it is not as much fun to take it and medically it is no better than heroin, so how on earth did we get into a situation where we are happy to give people methadone when it doesn't work very well and it certainly doesn't cure them, and we have created another black market in second-hand methadone."

[snip]

"The two most dangerous substances which are misused are tobacco and alcohol and they are freely available," he said. "They kill many more people than all the other illegal drugs. More than 50pc of all people dying from drugs die from tobacco, just under 50pc die from alcohol. Five or six per cent die form all the other drugs put together.

"Our drugs laws are illogical, they are unethical, they are counterproductive because they make the situation worse and they are untenable.

"I am arguing for a complete review of our drugs laws to put them on some rational basis. Why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal?

"How on earth did we get into a situation where tobacco is freely available, although lightly controlled, and ecstasy is completely and utterly illegal? If you look at the death rate there is no comparison. It is difficult if not impossible to sustain an argument that heroin is more dangerous than cannabis or that cannabis more dangerous than tobacco."

If addicts are treated properly then Mr Brunstrom is convinced crime will drop as the need to fuel their habits through expensive drug dealers disappears.

"Heroin is not an inherently dangerous substance in its pure form. The real impact heroin has on society - unlike tobacco, which is killing many people, heroin doesn't kill hundreds and thousands of people each year - is it causes you to have to steal to feed your habit and that has an enormous impact on society which is not currently catered for."

But Mr Brunstrom does not believe there should be stricter controls imposed on alcohol or tobacco. Nor does he believe penalising drug addicts is the right way to solve the drugs issue.

"I am not persuaded that making drugs and alcohol illegal and penalising people through the criminal law is ever going to be successful and whether it is right in principle," said Mr Brunstrom.

"If you wish to abuse your body to the extent that you make yourself ill and kill yourself, I am not sure that society ought to deal with you as a criminal. We might want to say that you are a victim or a patient, we might say that you don't seem very capable of looking after yourself, but do we really want to put you in prison?"

I'd say that articulates my opinion somewhat.

I don't think heroin is 'safe'. I don;t think opiates are 'safe. But I also don't believe the current laws are in any way effective in stopping people using heroin. They simply make the social and personal cost of doing so much, much higher.

[ZenGum]

I second pretty much everything Dana has said (and said quite well, I thought).

In response to Classic:

Not if what you do on in the comfort of your own home affects what you do on company time. What i f you are a doctor on call and you're high as shit when "the call" comes?

This applies just as much to alcohol.
It is part of a doctor's duty, if they are on call, to stay capable of responding. So it is not connected to the "privacy of my own home" argument.

On that topic, this is a well-explored problem with the liberty principle. Suppose we consider the liberty principle as: you can do what you like to yourself, provided that you don't harm others.

The obvious problem is that no person is an island, and virtually everything everyone does affects others. Recall that woman who wanted to reach 1,000 lbs? Well, the *main* harm falls on her: she'll die early. But there will be many other effects: her child will receive less parenting from her than otherwise, she will be less economically productive and contribute less socially, and incur extra health care costs.

So the liberty principle needs to be reformulated. In social philosophy, that debate is still underway.
In the meantime (and as part of the debate) what we can do is look at lots of examples that we generally agree on.
People are allowed to be obese or very underweight; even deliberately so. People are allowed to go skydiving (1 in 4,000 chance of chute failure), fishing (kills about 50 Australians per year) or do boxing (causes brain damage). We're allowed to drink and smoke, binge on cheese and chocolate, and sit on our increasingly increasing posteriors and guzzle mass-media.

In all of these cases there is harm to the individual and some cost to society. Most are in some sense addictive.
Yet an individual is "allowed" to make decisions about doing these things.
Can anyone tell me a good reason why recreational drugs should be treated differently?

[squirell nutkin]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Can anyone tell me a good reason why recreational drugs should be treated differently?

I think it was Terrence McKenna's book, "Food of the Gods" where he makes the argument that the only drugs that are sanctioned by society, are what he calls "industrial drugs." That is, drugs that make you a good industrial worker.
Caffeine to get you going in the morning and keep you going all day,Nicotine to keep your mind sharp, Then booze to take the edge off the caffeine and help you forget what a miserable shitty job you are enslaved to, sleeping pills to help you sleep so you are ready to get up and go again and even regular speed is tolerated as diet pills or to help you stay awake. The penalties for speed are lighter than for narcotics.

He posits that narcotics and psychedlics are not tolerated because they do not enhance your value as an industrial worker. Psychedelics especially since they encourage questioning of the status quo.

[Shawnee123]

Yeah. When will the government start legislating food, for people who are addicted to food and weigh 5000 pounds...and cost society in much the same ways as alcohol addiction in terms of being a productive member of our society or being a drain on resources and not contributing.

I would rather a person get home from work and relax by smoking a hoo-haa than lay around all day eating potato chips, buckets of chicken, and McDons by the truckload.

So, where does it end? When do we put shame on those with food addictions the way we put shame on smokers or drinkers? It's not nice to make fun of fat people. It's hilarious to make fun of smokers.

[SamIam]

Hold that thought, Shawnee. The military now considers school lunches to be a matter for national security.

WASHINGTON – School lunches have been called many things, but a group of retired military officers is giving them a new label: national security threat.

That's not a reference to the mystery meat served up in the cafeteria line either. The retired officers are saying that school lunches have helped make the nation's young people so fat that fewer of them can meet the military's physical fitness standards, and recruitment is in jeopardy.

A new report being released Tuesday says more than 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too overweight to join the military. Now, the officers are advocating for passage of a wide-ranging nutrition bill that aims to make the nation's school lunches healthier.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/...lunches_threat

[Shawnee123]

Ha! Yeah, we need 'em healthy so they can go get shot. Well, if anyone can influence the country, it's the military and the fear they inject into people whenever anything is a question of "national security."

[Shawnee123]

Wait a gawdam minute. Teh gubmint should be feeding and clothing and housing me?

THAT's what the fuck I've been doing wrong all this time. Those people always seem to be sitting pretty: no worries about gas costs or car payments or rent or the rising cost of groceries.

*runs to quit job and apply for gubmint assistance and to eat until I qualify for fatass pay*



It's funny because it's fucking true.

disclaimer: not about any of you, just my disgruntled and disgusted opinion from someone who's worked their ass off their whole lives and never seems to get out from under it.

Now, smoke 'em if you got 'em. Cause, fuck it.