USA - What needs to be done.

[Cakes]

What we need is a review. All of our projects should undergo periodic review. just as we check our child's grades to see if the teacher is happy with him. just as we change building codes after witnessing a meltdown like 9/11.

The engineers of the Twin Towers are not to blame for the meltdown of the steel cores that led to their collapse. but we would be to blame if we did not review that incident and alter our future guidelines accordingly.

We always build for strength but new information comes to light.

So it is with drug laws and possibly a lot of other safety guidelines. We, as public guardians, must implement modern review practices into our system. or be guilty of the harm that comes from not doing so.

[FuBai]

Yes...I think almost all of us here are for a review and public debate of the drug laws, and are annoyed that whenever one is promised or announced it is subsequently ignored or forgotten about. The trick is making reform stick. I'm not quite sure what your post is entirely about - are you simply advocating something most of us already want, or do you intend to expand upon how this is to be achieved? Anyway, why are we any more public guardians than any other member of the public, or are all the members of the public public guardians?

[Cakes]

Y'all are right, it appears I may be beating a dead horse, but the other day it just seemed like an insight that instead of trying to make an argument in favor of herb, it seemed more direct to simply call for the old law to be rejustified. Since there is no way that marijuana could legally be outlawed if it were a new drug just coming out on the market, I envisioned that it was all backward for us to be trying to prove it's health benefit or it's fuel value.

the only way a law gets reviewed is if I start a politically powerful lobby? or if i am sitting behind a defendant's table faced by a man who has a case "against" me?

The situation we are faced with is a totally irresponsible one for a society that has seen the value of, and practices, periodic accounting as a standard operating procedure.
not only would integration of modern tech bring god knows what benefit, but the war on drugs is taking civilian lives and at our last accounting, that was called a war crime.

fastidious dead-head... right wingers...

I think I might be one of these people.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Very insightful and thoughtful information

[chrisn]

The government's idea of reform: hmm, our current strategies aren't working as well as we'd like them to. Let's do the same thing, but more of it! Increase penalties! Increase money being wasted on a war against ideologies!

[Samadhi]

if the world was run by people with the intelligence of decent human beings then it would be a much better place to reside... but unfortunately it is run by bible-thumpers and fastidious dead-headed right wingers...

swim likes the idea of reform but it will never go in the favor of the ones who are of a higher intelligence.

[Mint boi]

The problem, in my mind anyway, is that governments are by and large afraid of drugs. To them drugs are some monolithic threat, which has resulted in not only criminalization, but overcrimialization.

Drugs are regarded, because of a definitive addictive potential, as harmful to the individual, the family, and society. Using drugs is seen as morally wrong and drugs are blamed for rises in crime and the formation of vicious criminal gangs.

Because of all this, strict drug law are regarded as self evidently necessary and the notion of legalization would be seen as some kind or surrender.

The biggest obstacle in the way of legalization, is that a large majority of the public subscribe to these same notions. This is a huge ideological triumph for the policy makers and allows them to enforce laws that have never really been subject to any logical analysis.

The first step to legalization can't be to petition the law makers, but to change the opinions of the normal people.

... my 2 cents anyway...

[cra$h]

want to know why marijuana is illegal? propaganda. in the mid 30's someone seen a lucritive career in the dea, and decided to put a war against marijuana, using NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE. now, 80 years later, the drug is still illegal, and no one is really sure why. that's why I think that drug acts should be revised every 15-20 years minimum. and the only thing I think is keeping drugs on the street and not in safe stores is that it's a major revinue to the local police department for every drug bust. and i just thought of this now, but stores will be robbed not only for money, but drugs.

Reputation Comments on this post:

u r right. it is wrong to climb by stepping on others.

[Cakes]

Pharmacies are already a pretty popular target.

[Metomni]

I am pretty sure that the taboo and beliefs that come with the herb are also significantly contributing to it remaining illegal. The thoughts and opinions that people who are not properly educated on it have about the plant are just ridiculously biased and exagerated. I'd say the best chance we have at legalization is simply education, but it's hard to get people who are against the plant to listen enough to become educated.

[Felonious Skunk]

Listen, attempts have been made for almost 40 years by some fairly influential and well-funded organizations to repeal Draconian drug policy and replace it with sensible legislation. It just doesn't work.

It took the murder of a 92-year-old woman in Atlanta just to get the local and state governments down there to review and begin to change the ninja invasion practices employed by the city's corrupt narcotics squad.

So forget about the letter-writing campaign, forget about emailing your senator. Forget about forming a "We Don't Like Mandatory Minimums Committee" and forget about joining a million-sheep-march on the nation's capitol.

That shit has been going on for 40 years and nothing has gotten any better, in fact things have gotten worse.

Now if the policy reformers can find a way to have a bunch of old ladies get set up for some "no-knock" warrants by some sleazy "confidential informants" and killed by government goons in Shaolin Temple outfits, then positive change will actually occur.

But the idea that elderly citizens have to be murdered for correct political decisions to be made is, here in Amerika, a very very very very sad thought indeed...

[FuBai]

The best way to get drugs legalised is to normalise them via the media. Marijuana is currently the drug closest to legalisation in most countries due to wide spread use and this is not because it is the safest drug - ecstasy is far safer -, nor because it is the cheapest (it isn't in most places) but it's the drug that everyone sees on TV as being normal and acceptable to use. Programs like Skins, Weeds, Cheech and Chong etcetera all normalise the use of the drug to the point where it's not even commented upon as being odd, it is simply a normal part of the show. Campaigning along side helps, but the strongest factor is conventional media making the drug seem normal and acceptable.

[Felonious Skunk]

^^^^ I'm curious as to what standard of safety you're using when you say MDMA is safer than cannabis.

Because from a toxicological perspective that's not true.

However, if you factor in collateral effects on mental health and the "ability to operate heavy machinery," a case might be built...


Agreed on the media angle, though. That would include bad press about bad drug policy as well as good press about responsible people using drugs responsibly.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Felonious Skunk

^^^^ I'm curious as to what standard of safety you're using when you say MDMA is safer than cannabis.

Because from a toxicological perspective that's not true.

However, if you factor in collateral effects on mental health and the "ability to operate heavy machinery," a case might be built...


Agreed on the media angle, though. That would include bad press about bad drug policy as well as good press about responsible people using drugs responsibly.

I was going on Professor Nutt's evidence presented March 2007 to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, where he ranked 20 common recreational drugs in terms of the harms they caused. I think it has stood up reasonably well to peer review, placing heroin and cocaine at numbers 1 and two, alcohol at 5, tobacco at 9, cannabis at 11, LSD at 14th, ecstasy at 18th and Khat at 20. Perhaps if I replace Ecstasy with Psilocybin you would agree more with the comparison?

Reputation Comments on this post:

	kudos!
	"incurably insane mind" <<<any dude with 4 tees in his name knows it's just wrong to dot an i on the...

[Cakes]

where was caffiend on that list? because i have heard that deaths are related to people not getting their's perhaps that is why mary was outlawed the congressional committee did not get their coffee that day .

[Felonious Skunk]

Originally Posted by FuBai

...Perhaps if I replace Ecstasy with Psilocybin you would agree more with the comparison?

No no no...it was just a minor point, but now that I see what chart you're using, it makes more sense. That chart doesn't do too bad a job in lining up the usual suspects with their practical harm potential, really.

Carry on, comrades...

[FuBai]

Interestingly he missed caffeine off - even though he included 4-MTA, Khat and Buprenorphine which I'm pretty sure are reasonably uncommon recreational drugs In Britain at least.

EDIT: I found the relevant graph:


^^ It has Ketamine down as "no class" but it is now a Class C drug (as of last year I think, but before this report was commissioned)

Reputation Comments on this post:

Awesome graph

[Metomni]

SWIM believes that graph is a bit wrong, at least on a personal level. As a Psych major he is interested in the what the rest of the experiment was like and what the different methods of measuring the variables were.

[FuBai]

They used a harm matrix system - it's reasonably complicated. You can read the presented evidence and the inarticulate squirming of Vernon Coaker under fire here on the House of Commons website. It's huge and goes on for a long time and, as Danny Kushlik noted on the Transform blog, a lot of it is a repeat of an old report from last year (the graph was made before ketamine was made a Class C) but it's amazing how poorly Coaker comes off, burbling, repeating himself and generally being obviously evasive - sort of a "how not to answer a select committee" exemplar for years to come.

[dr ACE]

the only way cannabis and other harmless drugs that are stigmatized will become legalised if the majority of people realizes that tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine are drugs as well and they cause as much if not more problems to society on a whole compared with THC,cocaine and herion.education is the only hope for a sane solution to this nonsense

[Cakes]

Perhaps, but to reach that consensus, I must cross the same line that should never have been crossed in the first place >> I must impose unrequested thoughts upon others and require their response.

not only would the imposition of all this drug info be rude and an academic burden, but i believe it is unreasonable to expect consensus. Consider the response i get if i post that SWIM is going to shoot ice instead of smoking it. i will be told SWIM is on an unavoidable road to ruin. but if i say SWIM is going to smoke instead of snort, then i will be told SWIM is certain to suffer debilitating lung crystalization. But if i say that SWIM is going to snort meth instead of snorting coke, i will be told that unnatural drugs are the devil.

no, i don't believe the debate on these things will ever end. Indeed, an end to humanity's proclivity for generating (and sharing) contrasting input may well be our demise. <<<and that is why the drug laws are harmful to all instead of just to SWIM.

[Coconut]

I've noticed some comments here accusing the people who run the world as being unintelligent right-wingers. I disagree with this: I propose that those who control things are, in fact, extremely intelligent. Completely out-of-their-heads insane, but they know exactly what they're doing, and that's bad.

Whereas some government officials may genuinely believe that drugs such as THC, LSD and psilocybin are dangerous, the puppet-masters want these substances banned because they let us see past the veil of complacency and obedience that has been pulled over our eyes.

Reputation Comments on this post:

very enlightened posts

[dr ACE]

Originally Posted by c0c0nut

Whereas some government officials may genuinely believe that drugs such as THC, LSD and psilocybin are dangerous, the puppet-masters want these substances banned because they let us see past the veil of complacency and obedience that has been pulled over our eyes.

very enlightened post you deserve some good rep.swim thinks that pretty much sums up the whole problem. Its not a free country and its not going to be in the foreseeable future, because there will always be sadists who want to control people