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Remember: Don’t do drugs. If you do drugs you go to hell before you die. … please.
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Yeah. The whole idea behind giving power to the government over anything is that it’ll be any good at it, which the practice shows - to put it generously - is not always the case.
Or you could forget about regulation and have the free market elevate hard drugs to just as much a staple of polite society as smoking used to be.
A dilemma for sure.
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
well, I’ll agree to an extent, but which guy gets absolute power over what we’re allowed to buy and sell? what if these quality control people start claiming everyone’s product besides their buddy’s is poisonous? should they be able to force us to buy only from certain people, even when we know they’re malicious sellers?
the trick with stuff sold “as beverages” is not whether they’re allowed to sell it. it’s whether they’re allowed to lie. both cookies and rat poison are on store shelves, and stores are free to mix the two together. why don’t they? because they’re not allowed to lie about it. nobody would buy cookies that advertised “will make you bleed internally until you die.”
compare that with prescription drugs, where organized crime is written into law, ignorance is enforced with violence, and totalitarian control over people’s lives is the norm. when you talk about substance regulation, never forget that sending someone to jail for lying about their their product not being rat poison is a lot more just than sending them to jail for selling rat poison honestly.
Oh. That.
Honestly that’s fine. Some idiot wants to brew something out of rubbing alcohol and drain cleaner, that’s his life wasted. The important part is that actual beverages that are sold and advertised to be drinkable aren’t allowed to be just as toxic as homebrew poison because, without quality control, they often are.
It’s, you know, someone wants to cook cookies with rat poison, that’s their business. Not the same as cookies on market shelves being sprinkled with it.
considering what alcohol addiction can do to (some) people, I honestly might be in support of killing (some of) them instead of getting them hooked, but boy is that a fucking dark line of reasoning
I would like to see them too, I think I need a refresher. Or maybe I remember it wrong.
Sounds interesting. I know very little about nicotine itself. Only the general outlines.
Seems like a general observation. Getting your shit together is always going to be mentally taxing, that’s nothing new. To that end, that’s what makes nicotine withdrawal so insidious: with hard drugs or alcohol, you’ll be dealing with the shakes for maybe a week or two, but - as past smokers say - you might never get over the desire to smoke.
…That can’t be real.
I mean, in many countries - either dirt-poor countries or Russia in particular - even with government regulation, counterfeit alcohol still makes up about 50% of shelf space. Some if it simply more toxic than the “clean” stuff, other outright deadly. Putting a stop to this kind of bullshit would be very much a point in favor of regulation. Again, if it actually is regulation and not skimming tax dollars.
Edited because: Fuck.
wow, really? I’d like to see those studies. could swear I saw one on the neurological alterations of the nicotine reward cycle, ruining your giveafuck receptors, but I’m coming up with nothing now.
also, having rational control over your actions isn’t black and white. psychologist mentioned studies recently to me about how they can measure people’s finite capacity for self discipline before they need to rewind it and compulsively cut loose.
poison’s useful.
Edited
The drop in nicotine levels fucks your body sideways in ways even most hard drugs are incapable of. But it doesn’t make you seek out the source, you just have a rational knowledge that taking another hit will make the shakes go away. You still have the rational control over your actions, and that’s how people actually quit.
I don’t remember the studies, but I think it’s predominantly accepted now that the driving force behind smoking is the force of habit developed over years of use, no different than what you get with gambling.
Yeah. My point is that psychological addiction is the biggest factor of addiction, to the point where addiction to games or gambling or - well, any other activity, given the right circumstances - can be indistinguishable from drug addiction. Well, save for your liver not shutting down from playing too much Candy Crush.
Sorry. I mean that: a)regulation imposes certain quality standards onto the drug producers, which you don’t have with either illegal producers or free-for-all market system; b)the rate of addiction and health problems and fatalities is at the lowest in a regulated market (regulated > unregulated > prohibited).
Like you say, it’s more important how exactly this “regulation” manifests. If it’s imposing health safety and discouraging unhealthy consumption, then it’s doing its job. If it’s trying to skim extra tax revenue and nothing else, it’s worthless.
A good idea can easily be ruined in execution.
Not my area of expertise. But I hope at least they made it illegal to sell poisonous beverages? If so, then that’s at least one large improvement over the illegal or unregulated markets.
I think it’s worth mentioning that nicotine makes the force of habit much stronger, and takes away your ability to give a fuck about changing it. it’s not like people who go cold turkey are in the same mental landscape as someone who’s never touched a cigarette. it’s also worth mentioning that video games are horribly addictive, some of the most heavily researched psychological manipulation, and have consumed people’s lives in playing them, so no it’s not easy to “even get over” clash of clans.
and uh…
I don’t think the toxicity matters so much though, as much as the sale of it. “regulated” is worthless if people still buy and drink vodka, and all the regulation does is send part of the profits to a government agency. “unregulated” is worthwhile if the danger of alcohol is overinflated by the regulators, and we lose more by being banned from operating distillers for any reason without permission, than we gain from less people getting drunk.
generally I think that some regulation is worthwhile, but making it a felony to boil liquid in a chamber is going a bit too far. mandatory education would be nice, and forcing people who are hooked to get treatment instead of forcing them to attend “freemason lite” meetings. what the usa currently has is woefully ineffective, just funnels booze money to government schills, doesn’t stop people from drinking themselves to death, and pretty much set the nation 10 or 20 years behind in the development of ethanol based fuels, thanks to the machinations of rockefeller the most evil man in history.
but that’s just my unbiased opinion.
Oh yeah. I’m thinking, thanks to copyright and patent laws, the drugs we’d see in that scenario would actually be NEW! and Improved Formula! synthetic drugs that companies can have personal monopolies over. So, basically, krokodil. Probably in the form of vaping, because that’s what the kids like nowadays.
It’s a fair conclusion that regulation of hard drugs would curtail abuse because we already have the example of alcohol to go with: sure it’s still poison, but it’s less horrible than it was during prohibition. Tobacco was very successfully stigmatized out of existence in some countries, too. Regulation does work.
IF it’s implemented. An important factor to consider is just how eager businesses are to abolish or subvert any regulations imposed upon them and with a wholly new hideously addictive and hideously effective substance to play with… oh boy.
@Vinyl Fluff
Worked in advertising, can confirm. If there’s a person who knows what they’re doing at the helm, they can sell you anything and you’ll love it.
See: Torches of Freedom
@redweasel
More of a personal problem than a medical one. The physiological addiction is, contrary to all propaganda, the least effective aspect of addiction.
Hell, ordinary cigarettes have one of the longest and harshest withdrawal periods, and there’s literally nothing stopping anyone from quitting cold-turkey except for overcoming the force of habit. That’s how most smokers quit.
From a physical perspective, you can always quit and never come back. From a psychological one, however, a lot of people can’t even get over Clash of Clans.
The bigger picture is always more important.
The way I see it, drug addiction - along with suicide and depression - is just a major indication of the fact that people ultimately aren’t happy living in our wonderful 21st century society, not a separate problem that arises on its own.
Edited because: Just one last time, alright.
I think drug abuse should be a medical issue rather than a criminal issue. putting users in jail is just a bad idea. dunno about blanket legalizing it, but that at least has to happen. and I agree it is important to learn just how dangerous marketing is, and make wise decisions about when to allow profit from lies and deceit.
but the only way to change it is to take away rich people’s power. it’s not that we can prove they earned it unfairly or illegitimately, but it’s just too dangerous to have a few so much more powerful than the majority. we’re all screwing ourselves over because we’re in the employ of (ultimately) a very few, purely on the hope that it’s only fair. fix that, and pretty much all your advertising and drug problems disappear. leave it unfixed, and well… you’re powerless to do anything, and they are powerful.
might not be fixable, but… that’s the solution I see. arguing over stuff like the legality of drugs is just a pointless distraction from it.
I’m not personally in favor of legalizing drugs, because I don’t think it would solve much. Look at tobacco and alcohol. Two perfectly legal drugs but still cause all kinds of problems, and the latter still has a thriving bootleg market.
What I do agree on is marketers. It’s insanely annoying how we get barraged on a daily basis with “buy our crap!”, and it gets even worse when you realize how deep these people get into psychology to screw with people and encourage sales.
well, to be fair, movie stars work long hours of intense labor, and the industry is so hopelessly competitive that you can go from the top to zero over the slightest mistake. many if not most actors are in debt up to their eyeballs, or under exploitive contracts. not to mention the existing stereotype that people expect you to conform to of sex, drugs and rock&roll.
but there are only a teeny tiny amount of actors in the world, so there are only a teeny tiny amount hooked on drugs. the vast majority of drug abusers are uneducated people from low income families. it’s just hollywood grandstanding that makes you think about the “she had everything and lost it all to the drugs” stories. they’re certainly not typical scenarios.
@Draco_2k
I think we should legalize all drugs, and make it illegal to push shit advertising that tries to make us stupid, so you could replace all the druggies in prison with marketers who make that marlboro cowboy stuff and those ads about cars driving down mountain roads.
It’s not entirely right to assume someone has a nice life just because the papers say they do. Depression is very often masked behind smiling faces and an outgoing personality. In the end it’s hard to know everything about other people’s lives to use them as data.
Plus, as a counter-point, a lot of celebrities openly discuss using drugs and never suffering from addiction or ill effects. Again, we just don’t know what the circumstances are for that.
Edited because: Okay, last one. Honest.
And yeah, I was aware that drug usage for soldiers was insanely high during Vietnam.
Oh, absolutely. Some people just can’t be stopped from eating twenty cans of mayonnaise no matter how much it doesn’t make sense. It’s just what people do. That’s something you’d have to watch out for.
Hollywood is probably not a good example though. The life of famous people is, quite often, complete shit. A fancy house won’t help dull the pain of living a hollow life, after all. Among famous musicians at least, doing vast quantities of hard drugs has long been something between a common joke and accepted fact, whether from vanity or crippling depression. The exact circumstances and outcomes vary just as much as they do with us ordinary folks, I’d say. I don’t have the exact numbers on that. Not an insider.
I think the biggest point of data we have to go with to test that theory would be Vietnam. No one was happy about that. The rate of heroin addiction, I believe, was optimistically estimated at 1/5th of all soldiers. What’s remarkable is that almost all of them were freed from one of the most physically shackling addictions not by any social program or medical aid or prohibition of law, but by the end of the war. So at that time, at least, it would seem that that the cure to the drug problem was to airlift people out of literal hell they found themselves in, and nothing else.
Edited because: Last edit, honest.
I’d say you’d still have people who would try drugs just because they wanted to, or knew it made you feel good, and got hooked on them. Like many in Hollywood. You’ve got stories of actors and actresses who are in good positions in life. A well-paying job, maybe a fancy house, car, everything. And someone will introduce them to a drug, or they’ll try one because they’ve got the money and they’re bored. And then they’re hooked, and everything goes downhill for them as they feed that addiction.
Improving quality of life is, I think, the only effective way to combat drug use. That goes for any country. People who are even a tiny bit happy don’t need drugs to make it through the day. I don’t think you’ll find any cheerful life stories among people who resort to something that makes their limbs rot.
Exceptions to the rule would be drugs that don’t have any undesirable side-effects (caffeine) or drugs spread by either deliberate propaganda or social pressure (tobacco).
That last one is probably the only strong argument against legalizing drugs that I can think of; I can already barely walk down the street without ingesting 2.5 cigarettes worth of smoke, fuck off with shooting heroin during a lunch break.
Edited because: I can stop editing any time I want.
oh, you mean replacing meth as in, people who are already brain mush from meth are deciding that krokodil feels better so it must be a good idea. yeah, no I meant benzodiazepine as in actual doctors were trying to use it to treat meth addictions… patients ended up addicted to something way worse
you know, all those emails you get for cheap xanax?
benzos are one of those drugs that can save your life then ruin it.
it’s funny how nobody talks about how all this krokodil madness is because much of russia is such a shithole that people are already mentally traumatized, and it’s much more effective at reducing drug use to take away any horrible, crushing oppression than it is to ban substances.
No clue. It wasn’t to replace it that way, but simply “I need a high, and a quick/easy/cheap fix.” I got most of my info by reading an article on it a few years ago. It mentioned the rise of it in Europe where it was replacing meth in certain areas because the high it provided was far longer and stronger, and unlike meth it didn’t need to be cooked in a lab, it could be done in a house with simple, every day things in just a few minutes. Basically boiled down to “Available in most places, even if you couldn’t afford meth you could afford Krokodil, and if not on either count you could create it yourself.” And that so many users were so addicted to it that they didn’t care that it meant they were going to have horrible injuries or disabilities at best, death at worst.
I believe it also kicked in the fact that none of the ingredients were on a controlled list like some cold medicine is in the US now with respect to meth manufacture. You could purchase all the ingredients freely.
No drugs of this nature are without harmful side-effects, but Krokodil is some vicious, vicious stuff and the idea that someone would be completely OK injecting themselves with a substance they know not only contains literal acid, drain cleaner, gasoline and phosphorous but that it’ll also make their skin rot off is scary.
huh, well considering that meth is a radically different molecule, I can’t see that going well. wouldn’t you replace meth with just… regular amphetamine? or bupropion, maybe?
is it like people who try to treat a meth addiction by prescribing benzodiazepine?
benzodiazepine withdrawal kills
Oops, I meant meth not heroin. The article I read talked about its use in replacing meth for those people, being far, far easier to make and cheaper.
Yeah that’s what I said, the chemicals in it are what does the damage, especially the red phosphorous.
Not only does the drug damage the flesh if they miss a vein and inject it into flesh, but when injected “correctly”, it still damages veins, arteries, vessels, everything. And this affects blood flow which causes tissue death and decay.
From my readings, it produces a high ten times as strong and ten times longer than heroin and at a hundred times less the price. That’s what makes it so attractive to some people. And it can be made very easily. The cost instead is the rotting skin and life-expectancy of two years or less.