Where Do You Draw The Line On Drug Legality?

[abraham]

Drugs would be dirt cheap without prohibition, people wouldn't have felony drug convictions that make them unemployable without prohibition, overdoses from black market products with unknown contents and dosages, etc.

Not sure I believe the dirt cheap idea. Plenty of medications that seemingly should be cheap aren't. And yes I get that qc/qa is really important for things we consume but that's not the entire reason for the price discrepancies.

I'd think for some drugs it would tend towards the painkiller/heroin structure that exists where it was easy to get a prescription or buy from someone who had one. Assuming you have enough money, but if not you go into the second tier. Also it might be harder to get painkillers than it was, I've stayed away from friends in that scene for a while so my exposure's pretty limited now.

[liv2ski]

Well, we have *decades* of strong evidence that prohibition doesn't work... so...

That would be my take. Look at Portugal. Crack down on dealers and the distribution of illegal substances and offer support/counseling to those who will eventually want it. Not saying CPS will not show up at your house to check on your kids if your purchases are obviously off the deep end, but make good choices, don't bring harm to others and do whatever the fuck you want in the privacy of your home is my opinion.

[Kevo]

For DTM- I came away from IV morphine with serious respect for heroin.

I haven't done drugs often, but I have done a large variety of different substances. I usually tend to dislike uppers and prefer sedatives and psychedelics.

I loved morphine, to the point where I could easily see myself being addicted if I ever casually dabbled in heroin. It was like some kind of siren song that tried to keep me around. It felt like home.

I was on narcotics for something like 12 weeks after a major injury and orthopedic surgery. I got fed up and quit cold turkey and didn't sleep for 3 days while going through mild withdrawal symptoms.

On a kind of related note- I have a personal measurement for whether a substance should be legal- I envision an entire sports stadium or concert venue full of people on the same substance. If it would be a good scene, fucking legalize it (weed, shrooms, ketamine, MDMA, acid, etc all fit into this category). People would mostly just chill and have a good time together.

Other drugs like cocaine, alcohol and meth would be a disaster at said stadium. People would be getting into fights and generally being assholes. Heroin would turn said stadium into an opium den. Those drugs should stay illegal in my book.

[Timberridge]

On a kind of related note- I have a personal measurement for whether a substance should be legal- I envision an entire sports stadium or concert venue full of people on the same substance. If it would be a good scene, fucking legalize it (weed, shrooms, ketamine, MDMA, acid, etc all fit into this category). People would mostly just chill and have a good time together.

So like a Grateful Dead concert?

[MakersTeleMark]

So like a Grateful Dead concert?

Don't forget the nitrious. Today it would be xenon.

[RootSkier]

So like a Grateful Dead concert?

More like Phish these days, but yeah.

[mtnjam]

still waiting for a SE state to llegalize. Sigh.

Yeah, you're telling me, I live in Idaho....so there's that. We're even further behind on cannabis than Utah thanks to the cult of the magical underwear people here in Idaho and our moron legislator C. Scott Grow who is pushing a bill in Idaho that no illegal drugs ever could be legalized in Idaho, because he wants to keep Idaho values and families safe.

Yeah, D.A.R.E. programs just taught the youth of the '80s what drugs looked like, what they did and made us all curious about trying them, not trying to scare us. Yes, I remember some cop in my junior high school in Wisconsin burning "fake" marijuana so we could know what that smelled like. Sure smelled a lot better than the cigars and cigarettes I was immersed in when my family went out to eat, but in the non-smoking section of the restaurant with the ceiling fans circulating the air above the smoking section and permeating the all the air in the VFW or other family restaurants with cigarette smoke.

[Dantheman]

For DTM- I came away from IV morphine with serious respect for heroin.

Well, drugs are always a YMMV situation.

I was on narcotics for something like 12 weeks after a major injury and orthopedic surgery. I got fed up and quit cold turkey and didn't sleep for 3 days while going through mild withdrawal symptoms.

If you've been taking opioids for an extended period of time, for medical reasons or otherwise, you should always taper off. Cold turkey is stupid.

Other drugs like cocaine, alcohol and meth would be a disaster at said stadium. People would be getting into fights and generally being assholes. Heroin would turn said stadium into an opium den. Those drugs should stay illegal in my book.

Alcohol should *stay* illegal?

To be clear, I fully acknowledge that drugs carry risks, and those risks are higher for some drugs than others. The question is whether the fiscal and social costs of prohibition outweigh the fiscal and social costs of the drugs themselves. 50 years into the Drug War I think we have ample evidence that the cure is worse than the disease, even for heroin, et al.

[mtnjam]

50 years into the Drug War I think we have ample evidence that the cure is worse than the disease.

That is unless the purveyors of the drug war are gaining financially from it.

[Bunion 2020]

This means little to nothing but I do believe that many more people die from legal drugs than illegal drugs, especially if you count Alcohol and Tobacco.

Yeah, D.A.R.E. programs just taught the youth of the '80s what drugs looked like

Ya should have been there for the early 70s. I look back on the bullshit I was fed about the dangers of Drugs and have to say WTF?

[SkiBall]

I’ve thought about this.

It would require a secure locked drug dispenser with the ability to program. Someone else would keep the code or key.

You only get 1 gram of cocaine every 3 days.

Another machine to dispense my heroin and another for my Xanax.

3 locked, pre programmed machines.

Tamper proof and tough as nails, because boy I’ll take a hammer to it

https://www.walmart.com/ip/e-pill-Co...-day/865244635


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With that kind of thinking, you could never be a junkie.

[stealurface831]

still waiting for a SE state to llegalize. Sigh.

that makes two of us, brother.

it is basically legal in boone and asheville though.

[CarlMega]

Is it even possible to abuse MDMA? Fucking up with that drug is shooting your serotonin wad on Friday and then having to wait for the recharge while the real party was happening on Saturday.

[MakersTeleMark]

Is it even possible to abuse MDMA? Fucking up with that drug is shooting your serotonin wad on Friday and then having to wait for the recharge while the real party was happening on Saturday.

I've watched folks boof grams and just be pissed that they couldn't hug.

It's a great drug because it just triggers your own body chemistry.

And we were not built like a nuke reactor.

Then they just take some k and L and say fuck it.

[SmokinRox]

The only lines I draw is so I can snort them shits.

I’m down for all day access to a smorgasbord of illicit substances right fucking NOW!!



Anyone holding?


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[Dantheman]

Is it even possible to abuse MDMA? Fucking up with that drug is shooting your serotonin wad on Friday and then having to wait for the recharge while the real party was happening on Saturday.

It's possible to abuse just about anything. ABC's 2004 special Ecstasy Rising interviews a few supposed MDMA addicts: https://vimeo.com/185203177

If you've never seen that video it's pretty dated but worth watching and not what you'd expect. There's some interesting history about the early days of MDMA and they even interview Alexander Shulgin. The best part is probably Gene Haislip making a complete ass out of himself starting around 14:20. Considering that it was 2004, it was a pretty bold move on ABC's part to run a primetime drug special whose conclusion was that the DEA's position on MDMA was bullshit fearmongering.

[tgapp]

Is it even possible to abuse MDMA? Fucking up with that drug is shooting your serotonin wad on Friday and then having to wait for the recharge while the real party was happening on Saturday.

i'm not sure if you mean abuse in the sense of "taking too much" or "taking too often", but if you mean the latter category of abuse, i certainly know people who fall into that trap - rolling becomes a prerequisite for any sort of good time, especially one involving sex or intimacy. in my personal list, mdma is a drug whose habit forming potential is strong enough to be taken seriously (like heroin, cocaine, or amphetamines - thought likely lower than all three in severity).

[Boissal]

i'm not sure if you mean abuse in the sense of "taking too much" or "taking too often", but if you mean the latter category of abuse, i certainly know people who fall into that trap - rolling becomes a prerequisite for any sort of good time, especially one involving sex or intimacy. in my personal list, mdma is a drug whose habit forming potential is strong enough to be taken seriously (like heroin, cocaine, or amphetamines - thought likely lower than all three in severity).

My biggest concern with MDMA isn't the addictive potential, it's the consequences of repeated massive drops of serotonin/norepinephrine on emotional well being. Sure it's a ton of fun in the moment but the next day can be savage. And intentionally embarking on this emotional roller coaster can have some real bad consequences. Fucking with brain chemistry is a serious roll of the dice but some of the substances we now have access to are very severely loaded dices. There's a reason MDMA is being used to induce long term emotional frameshifts (treatment of depression and PTSD). There's a flipside to that coin and it is not good.
The concept of full legalization relies on individual responsibility which, in the US at least, means do whatever the fuck you want, let nobody tell you what to do, and as a consequence deal with whatever fuckery you bring onto yourself. People are real good at #1 and #2 but I'm not seeing anyone properly dealing with #3 because it will require some outside intervention which will not be built into the system. So people will continue to self-destruct, in a legal manner, while none of the underlying issues ever get addressed. Maybe it's better? I'm still not sure where I land on that one.

[stapes]

Might be of interest to some of you guys. Documentary on Shulgin. Fascinating stuff.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jP3hUS84cAs

[AK47bp]

With that kind of thinking, you could never be a junkie.

Let’s be honest, 1 gram of coke every 3 days means you bang out the 1 gram on day 1 and have 2 days to detox before your next gram.

Nobody can break a gram into thirds and space it out over 3 days. Nobody! I tell ya.


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[Dantheman]

but some of the substances we now have access to are very severely loaded dices.

Fun fact: "Dice" is plural, "die" is the singular.

There's a reason MDMA is being used to induce long term emotional frameshifts (treatment of depression and PTSD). There's a flipside to that coin and it is not good.

Yes, there are risks involved. But, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people use MDMA without issue (watch that Vimeo link, at one point in the '80s almost the entire population of Dallas was rolling) and report that it materially improved their lives.

The concept of full legalization relies on individual responsibility which, in the US at least, means do whatever the fuck you want, let nobody tell you what to do, and as a consequence deal with whatever fuckery you bring onto yourself. People are real good at #1 and #2 but I'm not seeing anyone properly dealing with #3 because it will require some outside intervention which will not be built into the system. So people will continue to self-destruct, in a legal manner, while none of the underlying issues ever get addressed. Maybe it's better? I'm still not sure where I land on that one.

Self-destructing legally seems preferable to having the criminal justice system involved on top it. If we were legalize everything I don't think most people are going to rush out and start using hard drugs, decades of propaganda and social stigma doesn't just disappear.

Also, education does work. When BC skiing was growing in popularity in the '90s and early '00s and deaths were rising fast we didn't decide to outlaw BC skiing, we undertook a major avalanche education push and deaths/user-day are a fraction of what they used to be. Sure, some people still push the envelope and die, and some people still do not grasp the risk or remain willfully ignorant and die. But, it would be considered insane to suggest that we should shut down the sport because deaths still occur, and that we should impose severe criminal penalties on people who continue to pursue the sport illicitly.

Similarly, in America at least, we're not allowed to infringe on the rights of "responsible gun owners" just because crazy people occasionally mow down a few dozen innocent people. People are legally allowed to purchase all kinds of seriously dangerous shit (i.e., Tannerite). Drugs are just about the only dangerous thing I can think of where society has decided that because a minority of stupid people can't handle their shit no one should ever be allowed to have them.

It makes no sense...until you remember that the War on Drugs was never about public health in the first place:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

-John Ehrlichman, former Nixon domestic policy chief

The political and racist underpinnings of the drug war go back way further than that (https://timeline.com/harry-anslinger...x-fb5cbc281189), but no one in modern times has ever laid it out quite as explicitly and succinctly as Ehrlichman.

[Dantheman]

Might be of interest to some of you guys. Documentary on Shulgin. Fascinating stuff.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jP3hUS84cAs

Thanks!

[riser4]

Let’s be honest, 1 gram of coke every 3 days means you bang out the 1 gram on day 1 and have 2 days to detox before your next gram.

Nobody can break a gram into thirds and space it out over 3 days. Nobody! I tell ya.


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Nobody. A gram isn't even really worth getting excited for. An 8-ball is worth getting out of bed for. At least that's what a friend told me.

[XXX-er]

https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/323...with-something

kind of a funny title , of course all drugs are cut

[ötzi]

From that article:

"From the results of the tests, Larson says that about half the time people who are trying to buy heroin end up with fentanyl. Those who are trying to buy fentanyl could end up buying a deadly dose of benzodiazepine".

Well, what if you want to buy benzos? Do they give you heroin? This seems like mainly a labeling problem, let's get the FDA on that.

My long-held take (I'd be surprised if I didn't say it somewhere earlier in the thread) is they should ban alcohol and legalize everything else.