Alcohol and Tobacco worse than illegal drugs? - Page 3 - Politics and Economics

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Alcohol and Tobacco worse than illegal drugs?

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12-28-2012 , 03:34 AM

#51

Regret$

burnt out

Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 12,124

Propaganda? Yes, a very effective tool.

12-28-2012 , 03:34 AM

#52

DRRTDOGG

journeyman

Join Date: Sep 2012 Posts: 274

Marijuana.

12-28-2012 , 04:42 AM

#53

Howard Beale

Formerly red

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22,190

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regret$

Propaganda? Yes, a very effective tool.

Gets 'em every time.

12-28-2012 , 06:08 AM

#54

solsek

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 6,004

Imagine our country with everyone buying legal speed. What a great country we would be again.

12-28-2012 , 06:23 AM

#55

tomdemaine

Just tries harder

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 20,065

Quote:

Originally Posted by solsek

Imagine our country with everyone buying legal speed. What a great country we would be again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate

12-28-2012 , 01:10 PM

#56

Wamy Einehouse

rack 'em

Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 4,653

Quote:

Originally Posted by zikzak

The last thing this country needs is to be legalizing the "weed" and "poppers" for young hooligans so they can run around our cities spray painting train cars and blasting that rock and roll from their boomboxes. Of course tobacco and liquor are legal, as they should be. These are products with noble histories and long association with proper gentry society. It is ludicrous to compare an evening at the club with fine Cuban and a glass of single malt with hobos huffing from their crack bong in some dingy alley.

12-28-2012 , 06:25 PM

#57

ruo42

banned

Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 2,581

This is a no-brainer.

12-29-2012 , 12:06 AM

#58

Slighted

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 16,765

i don't know the scientific facts of whats more dangerous drug wise, nor do i really care what idiots put into their bodies in the efforts of having a good time.. but if any of it is legalized it should be taxed at a very high percentage to pay for education or other social programs.

12-29-2012 , 03:19 AM

#59

Howard Beale

Formerly red

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22,190

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slighted

It doesn't need to be highly taxed to pay for anything. Googling 'How much does it cost to house a prisoner' gets somewhere between $20K and $30K/yr and there are who knows how many non-violent drug offenders in prison. Add in the Court system and the humongous law enforcement apparatus and there'd be enough money for 24/7 treatment on demand, fully funded child protective services w/ plenty of money left over for other things.

Plus destroying the street gangs and reducing murders/burglaries/robberies.

I don't know why Mexico didn't legalize drugs a long time ago and ended their mini-war.

Yeah, I know: U.S. pressure. I'd still do it if I were them.

12-29-2012 , 09:20 AM

#60

ChrisV

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 40,336

Not to mention the opportunity cost of having people who could be doing useful things in jail.

In before prison labor makes stuff, etc etc.

12-29-2012 , 02:55 PM

#61

sangaman

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 9,883

Quote:

Originally Posted by Howard Beale

This is a good angle to use to persuade people to consider legalizing drugs.

"End the war on drugs because its immoral, racist, ineffective... Blah blah" only goes so far with many people.

"End the war on drugs because we're spending X gazillion dollars imprisoning non violent drug offenders and Y gazillion more on police to catch them when we could spend that money on tax cuts, social programs, etc..." and I think you'll catch the ear of a lot of people especially considering all the attention on the debt and deficit these days.

12-29-2012 , 07:05 PM

#62

ruo42

banned

Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 2,581

^ except this doesn't have that great of an effect when prison systems are privatized. but that's another argument I suppose... the above is still much more valid.

12-31-2012 , 04:54 AM

#63

metsandfinsfan

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Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 158,840

Quote:

Originally Posted by sangaman

Most people against legalizing drugs won't 180 because of the economy

01-01-2013 , 04:02 PM

#64

gayguy12

banned

Join Date: Dec 2012 Posts: 34

way worse

01-02-2013 , 03:55 AM

#65

Howard Beale

Formerly red

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22,190

Quote:

Originally Posted by metsandfinsfan

Most people against legalizing drugs won't 180 because of the economy

I think that the only way to convince people to support legalizing drugs (note: I don't want some drugs legalized such as PCP, but I think that's one of the 'lesser' drugs anyway) is to convince them that while drugs may be bad the war against them is even worse. It's a war waged on an ocean of blood, it puts the average citizen's life and property at greater risk than if the drugs were legal, it kills innocent bystanders, it costs an enormous sum of money both for the war and increased costs for security and insurance. Opponents cry up 'The Children!', thinking children abused by parents on drugs or children having easier access to drugs but it should be pointed out that there is not enough money for drug treatment and family intervention services largely bec of what's spent on the drug war. Additionally, little is mentioned of the decreased motivation to sell drugs if there's not so much money in it and the cliched 'pusher giving a taste' to get somebody hooked will at least be dampened.

I watched a pro legalization pundit suggest that those in favor should only concentrate on marijuana for now and when Americans see that it doesn't cause a disaster we can go on to discuss the other drugs. I think I agree w/ that.

01-02-2013 , 04:16 AM

#66

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

Quote:

Originally Posted by Howard Beale

Stossel v. O'Reilly. We need a better rep than the inelegant Stossel, imo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3zd6jsjKuA

Quote:

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I've had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word 'crazy' to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: 'did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.' When high on cannabis I discovered that there's somebody inside in those people we call mad.

When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

http://boingboing.net/2009/10/07/car...spaced-ou.html

- Carl Sagan

01-02-2013 , 04:44 AM

#67

Howard Beale

Formerly red

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22,190

Very nice, but not the 'elegant' I was thinking of since it's way too dreamy and not spoon-feadable. Stossel admitted at the end of the segment that he had to work on his answers. We need somebody quick of mind. For example O'Reilly pulled the old schtick 'the addicts will just go get a scrip for $240 saying that their toe hurts and then sell the pot to kids.' I'm paraphrasing from memory here. Stossel doesn't know enough to answer that the marijuana market 'for kids' isn't huge enough to feed a lot of $400+/day drug habits, the addict couldn't get enough 'toe hurting' marijuana/day to sell even if there were a large market , and that even if there WERE a large market the law of supply and demand would soon flood the market w/ the cheap 'fraudulent med marijuana' supply, drive down prices, and the addict selling pot to kids easily making $$$$$$ in the smug O'Reilly, empty headed way, is not possible.

Instead we get Stossel, who might be a great guy for all I know, and who at least gets his say on Fox, but who speaks in a whiny way looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

Last edited by Howard Beale; 01-02-2013 at 04:51 AM.

01-02-2013 , 05:06 AM

#68

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperSwag

They aren't worse in moderation.

It depends on the illegal drug, but alcohol and tobacco are certainly more harmful to your body than marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, opium, morphine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperSwag

Pretty sure injecting heroine into your arm will effect your life in a more negative way than alcohol and tobacco.

As phrased, you're probably right. Heroine is probably more addictive than alcohol, but it's important to keep in mind heroin is nothing more than a delivery mechanism for morphine.

Quote:

If heroin is just morphine that has been slightly changed chemically, what advantages does it have? In fact, once heroin enters the brain, it is converted back to morphine. However, the improved fat solubility does serve a useful purpose - it gets heroin into the brain faster. many physicians are lobbying for its use in terminal cancer patients, as this difference means faster pain relief. The government is weighing the balance between this medical benefit and heroin's long and unpopular legal history.

Buzzed: The Straight Facts About The Most Used And Abused Drugs From Alcohol To Ecstasy
- Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, Wilkie Wilson

However, if you would have said heroin is more damaging to your body than alcohol, well then, it depends on variables. But given excellent purity and sterile conditions and exact dosages for heroin, alcohol is bad for your body and unsafe, and heroin/morphine is not bad for your body and is safe.

I think everybody knows that alcohol kills brain cells and is toxic to your liver. But as I said earlier, heroin is just a delivery mechanism for morphine, and aside from breathing suppression, and damage that can be done to your throat from regular vomiting, morphine is essentially harmless.

Quote:

While the user is in a dreamy, pleasant state, breathing slows, pupils are constricted, and he typically experiences nausea and perhaps even vomits. Although the effects on breathing can be quite dangerous, the other physiologic effects are fairly benign. For example, opiates do not produce big changes in blood pressure in healthy individuals. Most of the effects are caused by the way opiates act on the brain, specifically on opiate receptors in the parts of the brain involved with the control of breathing and other involuntary functions. For example, opiate users vomit because morphine stimulates a center in the brain (the chemoreceptor trigger zone) whose job it is to cause vomiting in response to ingestion of a toxic substance.
...

What pattern of use clearly indicates addiction? The National Institute on Drug Abuse has accumulated statistics about "addiction careers," or the typical drug use pattern of someone who is addicted to opiates. Usually, use begins with occasional experimentation, often with snorting or skin popping first, or weekend use, and then gradually accelerates over a period of months to continuous administration at intervals of four to six hours. The surprising part about opiate addiction careers is that they end. Many opiate users follow this pattern for about ten to fifteen years and then quit, often without prolonged treatment. The reasons are not entirely clear, but probably include a host of social and physical factors.

Opiate Overdose And Toxicity

SHORT TERM EFFECTS

The other downside to taking opiates is that there are many physical side effects of stimulating all opiate receptors in the body simultaneously. Death by overdose is a major possibility. The most dangerous thing about the opiate drugs by far - and the usual cause of death - is the suppression of breathing, which can be fatal within minutes after an injection. It's not the result of cumulative toxicity, but can happen with a single dose. Usually at this point the patient has become so sedated and sleepy that he is in a coma, and he has pinpoint pupils. The most common reason for overdose with opiates is that the user has received a dose that is much higher than expected.
...

If breathing continues after an opiate dose, there is relatively little else to worry about. The other side effects of opiates are uncomfortable but not dangerous: nausea and vomiting, constipation, difficulty urinating. Sometimes opiates cause a flushing of the skin and itching. This happens because morphine probably releases histamine, one of the molecules that causes allergic reactions in the skin.

LONG TERM EFFECTS

What are the long term effects, and which of them are dangerous? The answer might surprise you. One of our teachers, a wise and ancient British pharmacologist named Frederick Bernheim, was fond of getting up in front of the medical school class and saying that if you didn't mind being impotent and constipated, opiate addiction really wasn't too bad. He probably wouldn't be so blithe about it today, but there is some truth to this assertion.

The long term consequences for your major body systems of taking opiates every day are, as our teacher implied, somewhat benign. Yes, addicted men can become impotent, and sexual and reproductive function can be impaired in men and women addicts. Women often stop having menstrual cycles, and in men sperm production falls. The people who use opiates over the long term are also chronically constipated, as he described. Users typically lose weight because they spend so much time chasing down the drug, they don't eat well. Otherwise, the opiates themselves are not damaging to organ systems, in marked contrast to regularly ingested alcohol. The death of Jerry Garcia of the rock group The Grateful Dead is a case in point: he was a longtime opiate addict, but he died from complications of his diabetes, not from the heroin. Even more dramatic was the quite amazing long life of William Burroughs, from whose books we have quoted extensively. He died at the age of eighty three of natural causes, despite living much of his life addicted to opiates.

Buzzed: The Straight Facts About The Most Used And Abused Drugs From Alcohol To Ecstasy
- Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, Wilkie Wilson

In short, people die of opiate overdoses because their breathing suppresses so much, they just quit breathing, not because the drugs are toxic to their body, like alcohol.

As far as tobacco, some of the chemicals in the smoke are Benzene, Formaldehyde, Ammonia, Acetone, Nicotine, and Carbon Monoxide, all of which are toxic.
http://www.stop-smoking-programs.org...igarettes.html

Last edited by LirvA; 01-02-2013 at 05:33 AM.

01-02-2013 , 05:26 AM

#69

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

Regarding marijuana, it has an insanely high therapeutic index, meaning it's incredibly safe.

Quote:

The therapeutic index (also known as therapeutic ratio) is a comparison of the amount of a therapeutic agent that causes the therapeutic effect to the amount that causes death (in animal studies) or toxicity (in human studies).[1]

Quantitatively, it is the ratio given by the lethal or toxic dose divided by the therapeutic dose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_dose

Quote:

Advocates of medicinal marijuana use point out that the estimated ratio of lethal dose to therapeutic dose is about 20,000:1.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/1999/1201/p2583.html

Compare that to Tylenol, which is legal and attainable without a prescription.

Quote:

Acetaminophen has a narrow therapeutic index. This means that the common dose is close to the overdose, making it a relatively dangerous substance.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Acetaminophen

If the government actually prohibited drugs on the basis of their safety, marijuana would be legal and Tylenol would be banned.

01-02-2013 , 05:30 AM

#70

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

Quote:

Originally Posted by Howard Beale

I think you might be losing sight of the fact that Stossel isn't the only public marijuana advocate.

Marc Emery is pretty eloquent I think, but he's currently in prison for selling seeds from Canada. When he gets out in a couple years I'm sure he'll be all over television.

01-02-2013 , 05:41 AM

#71

tomdemaine

Just tries harder

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 20,065

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIL5454ltQ&t=17m58s

01-02-2013 , 05:44 AM

#72

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

Hi tom

01-02-2013 , 05:45 AM

#73

LirvA

banned

Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 43,574

I've seen interviews with that doctor on different shows imo.

01-02-2013 , 05:47 AM

#74

tomdemaine

Just tries harder

Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 20,065

Quote:

Originally Posted by LirvA

Hi tom

Hi.

01-02-2013 , 12:56 PM

#75

Howard Beale

Formerly red

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 22,190

Quote:

Originally Posted by LirvA

I think you might be losing sight of the fact that Stossel isn't the only public marijuana advocate.

However, Stossel is the one on Fox with his own show and guesting on O'Reilly and which reaches our target audience and is therefor very important. NM the law enforcement agencies and politicians that are coming forward bec atm their message isn't spreading much beyond the already interested community.

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