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| Thread: Drugs and governmental stupidity: Case in point: - Ibogaine |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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blizzardboy
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posted August 01, 2010 10:57 PM |
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Some of the harmful substances can seriously mess you up with addiction & stuff and addicts aren't exactly known for being law abiding citizens who do not do all sorts of nasty things to get their fix.
Except their fix could be acquired legally (thus far cheaper and safer) and/or they could go to clinics. That's less dangerous than getting them from Jesus and Lorenzo down the street.
Most drug laws are merely another poor and primitive fruit of unnecessary intervention that will eventually die and join the long line of other dumb and extinct establishments.
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JollyJoker
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posted August 02, 2010 07:21 AM |
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Of course that is nonsense, blizzard, and you should know it.
As a society, you can't simply allow every substance that hits the street to be legal. That way any legal corp could sell and market everything they wanted. The rules valid for medical drugs are aabviously valid for recreational drugs as well.
Which would mean, even if recreational drugs could be legal, they would be illegal after development, until they were made legal.
Which would mean, there were always illegal drugs.
What you mean is, drugs should not necessarily be illegal, which isn't quite the same thing.
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Keksimaton
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Talk to the hand
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posted August 02, 2010 11:34 AM |
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You can use a knife for enjoyment, you can use a knife to harm yourself, or you can use a knife to harm others. Both in the case of drugs and knives, it is the action that harms others that should be punished, not the source of harm itself.
Really, you just made my argument for me. The distribution of drugs is an action that harms others where as the distribution of knives gives great utility.
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del_diablo
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posted August 02, 2010 02:14 PM |
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Alcoholic beverages is drugs.
Ok, now I have said what i wanted 
We should legalize drugs, even if the sole reason to do so is:
*Get rid of the illegal drug dealer marked(did i mention it is so profitable they earn loads of black money)?
*Getting rid of "tainted/unpure" drugs
*Getting rid of the ridicules black marked prices
If we get rid of 2 and 3 by having a viable options(akin to commonly sold alcohol in most countries), the drug barons falter due the lack of income.
With drugs having reasonable prices we might even see addicts that get proper jobs instead of stealing since the pricing is viable.
There will be backfires, but it is at the least partially better than the current situation most places.
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Keksimaton
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posted August 02, 2010 02:17 PM |
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And that's pretty much the sensible angle from wich to look at this issue. (As opposed to mvass's musings)
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JollyJoker
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posted August 02, 2010 02:41 PM |
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That's debatable.
The first step is to decriminalize the USER.
There is nothing wrong with criminalizing the dealer - there are new drugs coming onto the market every day, and it makes no sense to let everyone and their dog sell their cconcoctions unchecked.
But the GENERAL drug policy is another issue completely. The issue here is a drug with neither addiction potential nor well-feeling, but in fact the opposite effect: an addiction-breaker, so-to-speak, that isn't made available only in a very few selected countries.
The question is basically not why the stuff ain't legal - the question is, why it's not used or at least researched.
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Doomforge
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posted August 02, 2010 04:41 PM |
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I never understood the prohibition on drugs. All it does is to make local druglords rise. Blood money, gangs, finally drugs themselves being a scam, filled with things that shouldn't be there, much more harmful than drugs themselves.
You can drug your butt with pretty much legal substances anyway. So what's the fuss? What prevents you from sniffing gas from a lighter that is like 10x worse than depressants? What prevents you to buy medicine like Acodin, Tussipect or similar and make an extract of them to drug yourself with codeine?
seriously,wtf?
Alcohol, a drug, is not only legal, but also encouraged. People treat you like an idiot if you don't drink (some), there are advertisements everywhere. The same people who get high on alcohol every few days will say drugs are bad and call people taking LSD or MDMA or similar a junkie. Snowing hypocrisy.
According to WHO raports, alcohol is among the most dangerous drugs, together with nicotine, if we consider long-term damage to the organism and addiction rate. And what do we see? Alcohol and cigarettes are advertised around every corner. In Poland, roughly 1/3 people are smokers, and pretty much over 90% drug themselves with alcohol occasionaly. Why the heck do we stand for this hypocrisy?
And now, the drug JJ mentioned. it can be actually benefical, as you see. But nah. Let's just sell more vodka and cigarettes. Because they are sooo good for our health. And let's ban the drug that can actually help.
Governments are stupid as ****.
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posted August 03, 2010 03:14 AM |
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Frankly if people want to burn out their brains and die in their 30s, I say let them.
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JollyJoker
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posted August 03, 2010 08:02 AM |
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Yes, I can see how you explain that philosophy to those other parents whose children your son or daughter sold all the funny stuff they are now busy burning their brains out with.
I repeat, if you allow every street drug - why wouldn't you forbid a medical drug? Which would mean, there was no controlling of any subsstances anymore. Why, Ciba/Geigy and all the others might just market the stuff themselves: "Problems? Everything seems to crash down on you? No respite from the daily treadmill? People nag at you all the time? Relax, because now there is Hero/Ine(C)! Just give it a shot. After all, can things get worse?"
Anyway, the issue here is, for the umptieth time, for those people who started doing that - burn their brains ot, I mean -, get week knees midway through it and try to pedal back - Ibogaine seems to be worth a shot here, quite obviously, looking at it from the pov of the users, but it looks like you have to live in Canada for that one, and that seems to be a massive failure, a CRIMINAL failure even, not to pay more attention to it, and be it only to drop the public cost. Methadone isn't exactly cheap, and it isn't exactly a brilliant success.
Moreover it doesn't look like there's much hope for crack addicts either, so why not allow them a chance?
It's somewhat telling, isn't it, that the drugs NATURE provides are demonized, and that demonizing notwithstanding humans take them and "improve" them, making them infinitelyy more dangerous or develop their own drugs yet more dangerous. And that they forbid the drug that nature provides to get rid of all that stuff.
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Salamandre
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posted August 03, 2010 08:10 AM |
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Frankly if people want to burn out their brains and die in their 30s, I say let them.
I would say same, but in fact, they cost to the taxpayer huge loads of money before they die. Not that I really care about a junkie but paying for him comfortably staying in hospital for months is the last thing I want.
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Binabik
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posted August 03, 2010 09:12 AM |
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Except in rare cases, the idea of a "victimless crime" almost doesn't exist. A person doesn't live in a vacuum. Strictly from a libertarian point of view I think a person should be able to do whatever they want as long as they don't harm anyone else. But it's never that simple. People on drugs can, and do, harm other people.
The argument that making the harmful action a crime rather than criminalizing the drug that precipitated the action doesn't carry much weight in my opinion. When it's known that the use of drugs DO lead to other crimes, then decriminalizing the drug effectively causes those other crimes. When you decriminalize the drug, you create a set of circumstances that lead directly to other crimes (and putting in parenthesis that those crimes are illegal doesn't change that fact). Action A leads to Action B remains true whether the parenthetical statement exists or not.
If everyone obeyed the laws at all times, even under the influence of drugs, then the victimless crime argument might hold.
Another thing about legalizing drugs is that it legitimizes it. Regardless of the logic behind it, if the government legalizes a drug, there is a message sent that if the government legalizes it then it can't be THAT bad, right? And in my opinion that's not entirely faulty logic given the "mother knows best" government.
BTW JJ, one of your main complaints was that the US government doesn't allow research on ibogaine. That's not true, it does allow research and there has already been some research projects, although mostly lab research on the properties of the drug itself, or animal studies.
(I've spent several hours researching this now)
From what I've read, there may be some real help for addicts who use Ibogaine. However many of the sources are questionable and the motives behind those touting the drug are questionable. The site you linked to (I Begin Again) looked VERY HIGHLY questionable. That site stunk of just another new age site selling a very expensive product for material gain, while using pseudo-science and testimonials to sell their product. It sounds like he's selling an expensive "acid trip" just as much or more than treatment for addiction. Yay for Timothy Leary acid sessions to rebuild your soul.
On the other hand, one of my main concerns about the danger of Ibogaine was the devastating risk of triggering mental illnesses. I think all the sites I saw screened for a history of mental illness and would not "treat" those with a history. So at least they seem to make an effort to minimize that risk. However they can only realistically screen for someone with a history, not someone with a latent mental illness which could turn into a full-blown psychosis with the use of a drug like Ibogaine.
Still, as I said, it appears that this drug may help addicts and I think it should be researched. I'm skeptical of claims about any "miracle drug" (well I'm skeptical of pretty much everything). But then I would call penicillin a miracle drug also and it's legit. It's something to keep an eye on and see where it goes.
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Moonlith
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posted August 09, 2010 01:28 PM |
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Edited by Moonlith at 13:30, 09 Aug 2010.
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In all fairness, you might want to remove The Netherlands from your list of examples. Considering the kind of government we're gonna get I wouldn't be surprised if even Marihuana will be made illegal here. Idiots.
They already took an incident with a Frenchman going crazy on paddos to ban them.
Surprisingly, Alcohol is totally okay. Yay human rationality!
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DagothGares
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posted August 09, 2010 01:42 PM |
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Quote:
paddos
dutch word for shrooms
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Doomforge
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posted August 09, 2010 03:19 PM |
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Except in rare cases, the idea of a "victimless crime" almost doesn't exist. A person doesn't live in a vacuum. Strictly from a libertarian point of view I think a person should be able to do whatever they want as long as they don't harm anyone else. But it's never that simple. People on drugs can, and do, harm other people.
Why is alcohol legal then? Every day there are tons and hundreds of accidents, beatings and rape caused by alcohol.
Let's see... because your country tried it once (to ban alcohol) and we all know how it ended?
Well, drug prohibition ended up exactly the same. And who wants to get high gets high anyway.
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Another thing about legalizing drugs is that it legitimizes it. Regardless of the logic behind it, if the government legalizes a drug, there is a message sent that if the government legalizes it then it can't be THAT bad, right? And in my opinion that's not entirely faulty logic given the "mother knows best" government.
That may work on weak-willed people who need some sort of authority on a paper to deem something good or bad.
But who cares, they can drink till they drop every day, so it doesn't matter anyway. What's the use of partial prohibition? People just use substitutes.
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Corribus
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posted August 09, 2010 03:57 PM |
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Why is alcohol legal then?
Tax revenue, for one thing.
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1910
Known Hero
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posted August 09, 2010 04:03 PM |
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Well down in Australia, Alcohol and Cigarettes are legal because if they weren't, the Government would lose a massive amount of money based upon the amount of people that drink and smoke. I don't know if that's the same in other places around the world but that's how it is down here.
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del_diablo
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posted August 09, 2010 04:23 PM |
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Why is alcohol legal then?
Because everyone drinks it, banning it would lead to our current situation with drugs, EXCEPT that its 200% acceptable to drink and most of the population are already addicted.
More or less: Banning it would just lead to a skyrocket in black marked import.
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Doomforge
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posted August 12, 2010 03:25 PM |
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Tax revenue, for one thing.
Why are other drugs illegal then?
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Well down in Australia, Alcohol and Cigarettes are legal because if they weren't, the Government would lose a massive amount of money based upon the amount of people that drink and smoke. I don't know if that's the same in other places around the world but that's how it is down here.
Ditto. The government loses massive amount of money based on the number of people taking drugs and nobody seems to care.
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Because everyone drinks it, banning it would lead to our current situation with drugs, EXCEPT that its 200% acceptable to drink and most of the population are already addicted.
Which brings me to my original point: it's just hypocrisy. The way I take it, either you ban drugs, or don't. Picking some that "are ok" based on how many people get high on it every day is just plain stupid.
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More or less: Banning it would just lead to a skyrocket in black marked import.
I agree, but nobody cares about the black market skyrocketing when it comes to illegal drugs. And it is a massive problem, much bigger than gangs of the prohibition times I think: worldwide, powerful drug cartels.
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