[lifeisstillgood]

Yes ... But absolutely everything you say could apply to alcohol during say Prohibition. Look people taking the moonshine to be tested, people enjoying booze sensibly ...

We have a legalised and fairly sane alcohol policy in most countries, we can hardly hope to have a better policy and set up for any other drug, and yet alcohol is still a devastating blight on many lives.

Yes, stop this crazy war on drugs, but don't expect some nirvana to appear - people with a variety of mental and personality problems are not going to "grow up". They still need to be dealt with - and we are unforgiving of mental illness and have barely moved past the "cut it off and cauterise the wound" phase of treatment.

The war on drugs is mostly masking a war on mental health.

[coldtea]

>We have a legalised and fairly sane alcohol policy in most countries, we can hardly hope to have a better policy and set up for any other drug, and yet alcohol is still a devastating blight on many lives

You don't just need to have a "sane policy".

You need to have a sane culture.

For one, a culture that doesn't treat alcohol as something necessary for having fun (e.g binge drinking on weekends, etc), but as something social you can have while eating with friends, etc.

Second, a culture (society) that doesn't cripple people, produce mass stress and depression, etc so that they take it to alcohol and drugs.

As long as you don't have those, there will always be people taking it to alcoholism. Heck, even with those you'll still have some people (but much less). But then again people can destroy themselves in 200 other ways too, if they are so inclined (from over- and under-eating to straight suicide).

[lifeisstillgood]

Yes policy is not the right word, but we have many cultures around drinking alcohol, and sayin that some of them are the wrong culture and this the cause of trouble is either just labelling those of that culture as "troublemakers" which just leads downwards, or a more enlightened question is why are those cultures toxic - which tends to lead back to mental illness, depravation, lack of opportunity and lack of ... A culture that values more ...

And we are back again. Humans are a problem.

[untothebreach]

Couldn't agree with this more. It seems that too often we look to policy to solve problems that really need to be addressed at a lower level. The problem with that is that changing the law is easy, when compared with changing the culture.

[lukifer]

I'm reminded of the story of Rat Park: http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/

[innguest]

I thought I was the only one that knew about that study. I use it often when arguing that the word 'addiction' is biased and we should just use 'habit'. Addiction makes it seem it's the substance's fault, that it has something that makes people addicted to it, when in fact it is people that sometimes have a predisposition to forming habits when taking certain substances.

Crazy people can't buy guns, but guns aren't illegal for everyone. It should be the same for drugs, at least. If you have this predisposition to habit forming around drugs then you can't have them, but most of us don't.

[codeshaman]

I would have to disagree with you on alcohol. Alcohol is a very addictive and destructive substance and can cause personality changes which lead to aggression and domination (ego enhancer) and is very harmful to health if abused. A large chunk of problems in our society comes from alcohol abuse.

Some of the substances which are generically called 'illegal drugs', however, are much safer and self-limiting and many have virtually no harmful physical effects on the body (based on decades of clandestine use and research).

I'm refering to psychedelics and marijuana, drugs which I'm familiar with and have studied extensively through literature and some self experimentation. Apart from being much safer, some of these drugs have major upsides, when used therapeutically and can cure illnesses that modern medicine is unable to cure.

And if used by brilliant people to start with, they have the power to transform society in unbelievable ways: the tech revolution was started by young, brilliant people who've been inspired by psychedelic trips or psychedelic music/art/culture, produced by the counterculture of the '60s.

Some drugs, like heroin or cocaine have both a big abuse potential and can be harmful to the body, although none are as destructive as alcohol. Rational and sensible recovery and detox programs, combined with unrestricted access to safer drugs (like marijuana) can reduce the risks associated with these 'hard drugs'.

Portugal decriminalized drug use due to the alarming rates of addiction to opiates among youth in 2001. As a consequence, the opiate addiction problem is pretty much under control there.

Nicotine is another extremely addictive substance, yet sensible policy and access to valid information has led a lot of people to quit using it due to health concerns in developed countries, although developing countries have seen a rise in nicotine use.

On the other extreme - countries which ban all kinds of drugs (including alcohol) are seeing strong religious domination, which leads to extremism and terrorism, so total prohibition of altered states of consciousness is also bad.

There is a great book, called 'Animals and Psychedelics' in which it is reported that most animals, including insects are using various plants to intoxicate themselves, even though those plants are not suitable as food. They just like to get stoned or high or drunk and go to great lengths to find their intoxicants.

We should accept once and for all that human beings seek and require altered states of consciousness and not treat drug use as a 'societal cancer', but rather try to understand - why do we do it ? Why do animals do it ? Is there a evolutionary benefit in it ? Are there good parts in getting high, besides having fun ?

[pionar]

> drugs which I'm familiar with and have studied extensively through literature and some self experimentation.

Sorry, a sample size of one does not make a drug "safe". The fact is, there's no such thing as a safe drug, as everyone's body reacts differently to each one.

> although none are as destructive as alcohol.

Really? Are you really saying that heroin, which is one of the most addictive drugs in the world, is not as destructive as alcohol? While there are more alcoholics than horse heads, that's because there's more people that drink alcohol as a whole. Are there any studies for the ratio of abusers/users for heroin and alcohol?

> Nicotine is another extremely addictive substance.

The difference being, nicotine's psychoactive effects are minor compared to hard drugs. People don't die from a nicotine overdose.

[duncanawoods]

>> Are you really saying that heroin, which is one of the >> most addictive drugs in the world, is not as destructive >> as alcohol?

In terms of the chemicals themselves, this is generally considered to be true.

The risks of heroin are in unsanitary IV injections, OD from impure/variable product and the lifestyle of a street addict. Aside from addiction, similar pharmaceutical preparations of opiates (codeine, morphine etc.) is widespread.

However with alcohol, we have the short-term effect of injury and 100s of longer term conditions including cirrhosis and alcoholic dementia. It may be less addictive but the irreversible physical damage of the substance itself is much higher. AFAIK there is no medical benefit to high levels of blood-alcohol and only harm.

In terms of societal harms, we get extensive petty theft of heroin addicts but UK A&E and jail cells are dominated by the violence and injury fuelled by alcohol use.

>> People don't die from a nicotine overdose.

The number of smoking related deaths is truly shocking so I wouldn't trivialise it. Recovered heroin addicts often report breaking smoking addiction to be even harder.

[Xylakant]

>> although none are as destructive as alcohol.

> Really? Are you really saying that heroin, which is one of the most addictive drugs in the world, is not as destructive as alcohol? While there are more alcoholics than horse heads, that's because there's more people that drink alcohol as a whole. Are there any studies for the ratio of abusers/users for heroin and alcohol?

Your parent poster is right here. Heroin (and opiates in general) are pretty safe substances in pure form. That's one of the reasons that opiates are still among the preferred potent pain killers in hospitals: Little side effects, extremely potent, a very big window between effective dose and overdose. If you're in really bad pain, at least in germany, you'll get a morphine drip.

The "drug" effects you see in documentaries about drug often are no effects of the drug itself, rather than the stuff that the dealers mix the drug with, the use of unclean needles (infections and stuff) and the conditions that the addicts live in. Overdoses are typically either on purpose or most of the time the result of extreme variations in the potency of the drug. There was (or still is) a medical trial that gave clean, controlled heroin to hard addicts in Hamburg, Germany and from what I read that trial was very successful: The people in the trial were basically able to function in a normal day live with a regular job. Obviously no driving, no handling heavy machinery, but otherwise a major step up from living on the street.

[JoeAltmaier]

But all those side effects are the direct result of using morphine, right? Splitting hairs to say 'so morphine is safe'. It like 'this knife is safe; its just the cuts that hurt you'.

Still, alcohol is more destructive overall since so many more people abuse it.

[tych0]

No, those are side effects of using morphine (heroin) that you got from a shady drug dealer network, instead of something more pure from a regulated corner store.

[win_ini]

> The difference being, nicotine's psychoactive effects are minor compared to hard drugs. People don't die from a nicotine overdose.

Correction- People have died from Nicotine - and with e-cigs there;s concern that it may become more common:

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

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in report released today that the number of phone calls to U.S. poison control centers related to e-cigarette use has increased from just one call per month on average in 2010 to nearly 200 calls per month in early 2014." http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2014/04/03/e-cigarette-po...

[elsjaako]

Nicotine overdose would be more common if people injected it. Smoking heroin isn't actually that dangerous (though admittedly, more dangerous short term than smoking tobacco). Why don't people smoke it then? Because the illegality makes it really expensive, and injecting is more effective.

[tbrownaw]

On the other extreme - countries which ban all kinds of drugs (including alcohol) are seeing strong religious domination, which leads to extremism and terrorism, so total prohibition of altered states of consciousness is also bad.

And here I thought the causality went the other way; that is that religions like to ban alternative (ie, non-religious) means of altering your state.

Silly me.

[zo1]

"The war on drugs is mostly masking a war on mental health."

It's a war on people's right to enjoy and/or destroy themselves. All under the vague pretense of a social-good.

It's to keep control over a populace that could very quickly come to the realization that it is free to do as it pleases. Unfortunately, the more we suppress people like this, the worse off it will be when the milk and lies finally run out and they're stuck with nothing but their anger and dependance.