quote:Writing in an academic journal, Professor David Nutt said taking ecstasy was no worse than the risks of "equasy", a term he invented to describe people's addiction to horse-riding.
Prof Nutt is the chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which next week is likely to say that ecstasy should be downgraded to a Class B drug.
quote:He said he wanted to compare the risks of horse-riding with the drug to open a debate about drug abuse and risk taking.
Prof Nutt told The Daily Telegraph: "The point was to get people to understand that drug harm can be equal to harms in other parts of life.
"There is not much difference between horse riding and ecstasy."
quote: "This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates – indeed encourages – certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others, such as drug use."
There were plenty of other "risky activities such as base jumping, climbing, bungee jumping, hang-gliding, motorcycling" which were worse than which "many illicit drugs".
So, what's the deal? Ecstacy's not so bad, let's make it legal, yea? Plus it makes you feel soooo good and makes you happy and love everyone and want to dance. And what's wrong with that?
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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Yea, ok, so a few more deaths in the old ecstacy use, but in fairness to the good Proffesor, it doesn't say if the amount of regular horse riders is more or less than the amount of regular ecstacy takers. In terms of ratio, they may be the same.
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The ratio would seem to make horse riding significantly less lethal. I have no idea how to find out how many injuries each activity caused annually. And what I'd really be curious to know is how dangerous would ecstacy be as a pharmaceutical instead of a street drug? Is it dangerous on its own, or is it dangerous because of all the extra junk thrown in?
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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pure ecstasy is ridiculously unlikely to kill you.
The vast majority of deaths with ex is due to intended or unintended mixture with other drugs. Usually its unintended, involving the pills being a laced cocktail featuring addons like ice and k.
I guess hyperthyroidism + ex is apparently also an unhealthy combo?
But for the most part the biggest health risk from ex is .. I don't know, getting shot because you tried to hug the wrong guy? Seriously, it's very unlikely to kill you.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I thought the biggest health risk was overheating? The first couple sites I read said it'll raise your body temperature even if you're sitting by yourself. Apparently, dehydration is also a problem as a result.
They didn't say how often those concerns are lethal, though, so you may still have a point.
[Edit to add] Rutgers has also seen permenant brain damage in monkeys they administered MDMA to. No word on if the smaller amounts in Ecstasy will do the same.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I've heard it causes brain damage, of the subtle now-you-have-even-worse-emotional-problems variety. (Dr. Drew) Not something I personally would mess around with.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
i thought it turns your brain to a sponge?
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It's far more dangerous than that, but considering Hatrack's pro-drug stance lately (or at least that is how it seems with the current crop of multi-posters) trying to convince people that is wasted time.
Talk to a local nurse of ER doc and ask THEM. They see quite a few people in distress due to X.
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Ecstacy is linked to a great deal of low level and limited chronic deficiencies, but is in and of itself relatively harmless, even in an acute stage. There is simply no definitive and clear cut data on the issue currently.
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We've had this conversation before. MDMA is safe. Ecstasy may or may not be, depending on what's in it.
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quote:We've had this conversation before. MDMA is safe. Ecstasy may or may not be, depending on what's in it.
Thanks Juxtapose. I made a post before yours about the relative safety of MDMA and then deleted it, realizing we'd gone down this road before and I wasn't particularly interested in fighting that fight again.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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I find it more interesting to compare any of it to nicotine use. We know for a fact that nicotine costs the health care system enormous amounts of money. It's easy to target compared to, say, the effects of obesity on health costs. The positive effects are minimal, the addiction enormous. Yet it remains legal year after year.
Why do we let the tobacco industry pay us off? Why don't we let other chemicals be sold like cigarettes? We seem to be stuck in an illogical spot (speculation of course including lobbyists), offering a deadly drug with few positive effects to anyone 18+ but not a number of less deadly drugs with more positive effects. I'm including currently prescribed medications along with future 'performance enhancing drugs' (NPR segment recently) and illegal drugs.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Yeah, I think history will judge poorly an age where tobacco and alcohol (two dangerous and highly addictive drugs) are perfectly legal, but MDMA (a safe and much less addictive drug) is a felony.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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imo outside of the controversy over whether or not it's a good thing to legalize drugs, I think that three drugs stand a good shot at being legalized: pot, ex, and shrooms.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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About X - It doesn't turn your brian into a sponge. Much like the guy who made up the autism-vaccination data, the guy who made this claim was using meth and claiming it was X.
It does cause a seratonin dump, leading to warm fuzzy feelings and a system overheat. The downside is that you then suffer seratonin deficiency and spend the next few days feeling depressed. AND any subsequent X use will never be as good as the first time.
And as of two years ago, the only death I had heard of resulting from X was a girl who drank too much water because of the overheating thing. If someone could point out other deaths, please do.
Also, Most illegal drugs are illegal for a reason. I have never met a heroine/meth/coke addict who was a productive member of society.
Posts: 86 | Registered: Feb 2009
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Ive had friend who've done it. It is very bad, it deserves to be illegal. This whole argument is ridiculous, if something is bad without enough benefits to make it legal it will never be legal, and should never be socially acceptable. From this argument people tend to argue that alcohol and nicotine (and dare I say it caffene) are legal, but that's because it would be impossible to illegalize them, no matter how many people would wonder if banning ciggarettes whould help the US. And obviously alchol has enough benefits to society that it should never be illegalized. I know most of us are just joking but ecstacy is aweful for what it does to your mind in the PRESENT. no matter what long term effects it has or doesn't have it's dangerous and will cause much more problems if itbecame legal, because teens who usually ony break the law to drink would definatley take some "happy pills" if the were legal for anyone over 21. I listen to a lot of electronica music and I'm a teen. I could ge some if I wanted to, but I dont want too. I have some friends who do, but I don't talk to them so much anymore. Ecstasy makes you stupid and when somebody is on it they will be more likely to take oter drugs and overdrink. The reactions of these with ecstacy is what hurts you in h long term. Pot is so common at high schools that if ecstacy became slightly more acceptable it would cause deaths, evenif it doesn't really do much now. Rant ended. agree to disagree with anybody with an agument for it because this is hatrack! the best internet community ever Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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quote:And obviously alchol has enough benefits to society that it should never be illegalized.
I don't find that to be obvious, provided you're talking about alcohol intended for recreational consumption. I do agree it shouldn't be outlawed though.
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Organized crime not raking cash in by the barrelful seems like a pretty big social benefit to me. Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Druglords have been known to provide support, whenever possible, to candidates and parties which have strict anti-legalization policies, as they provide the best long-term security for the black market.
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quote:And obviously alchol has enough benefits to society that it should never be illegalized.
I don't find that to be obvious, provided you're talking about alcohol intended for recreational consumption. I do agree it shouldn't be outlawed though.
I mean adults who drink responsibally it wouldn't be fair to them for alcohol to be banned. A lot of very good law abiding people i know would start riots of Wine was illegalized I'm not talking about recreational drinking which lets face it, is probably here to stay, but see where it might of seemed that I meant that.
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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Fewer teenage girls end up getting pregnant while horseback riding, than end up pregnant while on E.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:I mean adults who drink responsibally it wouldn't be fair to them for alcohol to be banned. A lot of very good law abiding people i know would start riots of Wine was illegalized [Wink] I'm not talking about recreational drinking which lets face it, is probably here to stay, but see where it might of seemed that I meant that.
I know people who use illegal drugs in an otherwise responsible manner. These people are all law abiding citizens in every other respect. Also, I think "recreational drinking" covers pretty much all non-religious drinking. That includes a beer with dinner, or a glass of wine afterwords. If I'm misusing the term, I hope someone will correct me.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Alcohol and tobacco are not illegal because they got grandfathered in, basically. We care a lot more about individual deaths in our society than we once did.
For instance, most bridges, dams, and large buildings built before maybe WW2 or thereabouts had a number of deaths associated with constructing them. Nowadays we're far less tolerant of a half a dozen or a dozen workmen (in those days they were all men) biting the dust. Mainly, I think, because their widows and orphans now sue to be compensated, and the companies who want to make money have to make safety a primary concern.
Of course you know when people my age (50) were kids, we had all sorts of dangerous toys, were allowed to ride in pickup truck beds with no restraint at all, played all day in the woods or fields or city streets of our neighborhood with minimal adult supervision, etc. People tended to have more kids back then, and the ones they did have were more expendable. It was just considered part of life to have risks like that all around. Now we care more.
So drugs that were legal in the olden times, drugs that everyone got used to having around, that society accepted, were just grandfathered in. If a new drug were invented with the same risk/benefit ratio of nicotine or alcohol, it would totally be extremely illegal. And since we're preemptively outlawing new psychoactive drugs these days, I don't think new drugs ever will be legalized, or not for a long, long time.
I'm one who thinks all drugs should be legal to everyone. And then we should be taught that it's very stupid to use them in non-theraputic ways or doses. I think it would be best if drug use were left up to the individual, including all pharmaceuticals. The current monopoly on legal drugs that doctors hold is not a good thing, in my opinion.
Of course, I don't know what I would say to the families of the additional addicts that we would get from making drugs legal. Their lives are trashed, too bad? It seems sort of inadequate, you know?
After enough generations go by, though, the tendency to use or enjoy recreational drugs will be bred out of the population, the same way it has for alcoholics in some populations (southern European, for example) over the last 10k years or so, while it's a particular problem with other populations who have been more recently exposed, (Irish, Native American, etc.)
Any way you look at it, it's sordid and ugly and there aren't a lot of good choices. But I think legalization, along with limits to liability for the makers, is about the least evil approach. (If we don't limit liability for the makers, then any drug that people decide to abuse would be pulled from the market because of liability issues, and unavailable for use to treat illness.) Also, of course, keep age limits intact or even raise them to 25. (At what age do kids gain sense? It seems to keep going higher the older I get. ) Also, have a lot of education about the correct use of drugs to treat illness, and the bad effects of recreational use. And keep it illegal to drive or work while under the influence. Lower legal barriers to employers requiring drug tests from their employees. Help society deal in those ways. Increase funding for addiction rehab programs.
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The current social norms in the US do not favor non-addictive personalities to have more children than those with addictive personalities. Therefore it would be hard to say whether or not the 'tendency' would breed out.
If I had to pick one class of medications which probably shouldn't be legal without a script it would be antibiotics. It's worth more to society to keep antibiotics working as long as possible than to let people buy all of them off the shelf.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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dabbler, it's sort of hard to think of this, but drug addicts' kids have much higher infant mortality rates, and much lower success factors throughout life. They can be brain-damaged at birth from exposure to drugs in the womb. They are at far higher risk for abuse and neglect. And on and on. Finally, they tend to use drugs themselves at higher rates than the general population. It's also true that addicts' marriages are at risk and they often have fewer children for that reason. For all these reasons, addictive tendencies for particular substances tend to die out of populations after several generations.
That's why some populations, for instance southern Europeans who have been exposed to alcohol for thousands of years, have a lot lower alcoholism rates than other populations like Native Americans or the Irish. My family is Irish (my mom's side) and alcoholics in her family number about 1 in 3 or 1 in 4.
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posted
I honestly can't figure out why on earth people feel the need to legalize this type of thing. Do you honestly want your children taking this stuff? Do you honestly feel your life would be less meaningful without it?
I mean, it's not like horseback riding is really all that safe! In fact, if you participate in it without any of the safety equipment, then it does have a rather high incidence of injury. I personally know quite a number of "experienced" individuals who were injured by horses, though luckily no deaths. While I'm not saying we should make horseback riding illegal, I don't think that equating the safety of a drug to the safety of riding a horse is particularly satisfying.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Jun 2006
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For me, the difference between drugs and equally dangerous non-drug activities is that non-drug activities like horse riding may have the same kind of mortality rate but have far fewer other non-mortality related effects.
And, plus, dangerous non-drug activities often have positive effects that reach beyond the actual activity, such as skill or strength or health. Very few drugs have positive effects that last beyond their usage.
For me, the mortality rate of the users is certainly not the only reason to keep drugs more difficult to acquire. If a teenager was going to take up drug use OR horse riding I would go for the horse riding even if it was more dangerous than drug use, because survival* looks a lot prettier and it's much more useful in the long run.
*By survival I mean minimal or no injuries. By minimal, I mean up to a broken limb. Brain injuries, back injuries and severe trunk injuries count as "non-survival".
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: I honestly can't figure out why on earth people feel the need to legalize this type of thing. Do you honestly want your children taking this stuff? Do you honestly feel your life would be less meaningful without it?
Often the question of legalization is about a bigger picture than the drugs themselves. One may dislike the drug in question -- even quite strongly disapprove of it -- and still believe it is better in the long run to legalize it.
For example, the re-legalization of alcohol after Prohibition had a good deal to do with addressing how its illegal status made it more popular and fueled the growth of organized crime to (at that time) unheard of heights in this country.
I'm not interested in debating the merits of any given drug right here and now, be it legal or illegal. Others are welcome to do so, of course. But I certainly think reducing arguments about legalization merely to the question of whether one approves of a given drug on its own merits is far, far underselling the concerns. Simplicity is good in many ways; in this, though, it can further naiveté.
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Edited to add: There is a plethora of information online about the connection between organized crime and Prohibition. This online text is from a student at the University at Albany in fulfillment of a course requirement, back in 2005. I can't vouch for accuracy of all the details, but it certainly falls in the scope of what I else I have read about the topic:
quote: "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."
Reverend Billy Sunday delivered this quotation during a speech at the beginning of prohibition. Many people believed and hoped that prohibition would make the above true. However, as they watched and waited, they realized that nothing was improved, and somehow, things had gotten worse.
The following are statistics detailing how much worse crime got:
* Police funding: INCREASED $11.4 Million * Arrests for Prohibition Law Violations: INCREASED 102+% * Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct: INCREASED 41% * Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81% * Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9% * Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13% * Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561% * Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366% * Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions: INCREASED 1,000%
"Not only did the number of serious crimes increase, but crime became organized. Criminal groups organize around the steady source of income provided by laws against victimless crimes such as consuming alcohol or drugs, gambling and prostitution. In the process of providing goods and services those criminal organizations resort to real crimes in defense of sales territories, brand names, and labor contracts. That is true of extensive crime syndicates (the Mafia) as well as street gangs, a criminal element that first surfaced during prohibition."
The picture is more complicated than it may look, and there are nuances not covered in any given thread or paper. But it is because the issue is complex and particularly because even the most innocent and well-intended of actions may have nasty unintended consequences that discussions of legalization cannot be well summed by sound bites.
I don't know whether legalizing Ecstasy would make things better or worse in the long run and in the big picture of things. I don't know about the same question for marijuana. Neither of these are issues I'll be spending much time thinking about this morning. In good part that's because the real substantive issue is a lot bigger than "do I like it or not?"
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Often the question of legalization is about a bigger picture than the drugs themselves. One may dislike the drug in question -- even quite strongly disapprove of it -- and still believe it is better in the long run to legalize it.
Exactly. It actually applies to a great number of different controversial issues, but there are a great number of things that I would like to see being legal in the world (or kept legal) that I greatly dislike.
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: After enough generations go by, though, the tendency to use or enjoy recreational drugs will be bred out of the population, the same way it has for alcoholics in some populations (southern European, for example) over the last 10k years or so, while it's a particular problem with other populations who have been more recently exposed, (Irish, Native American, etc.)
I admit that I'm a bit dubious about this theory but curious enough that I'd like to ask to see your sources to see what kind of case could be made for this effect in regards to alcohol.
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Barring accidents, with proper precaution, horse-riding doesn't do any lasting harm. I do not know that the same can be said of Ecstasy.
EMPHASIS: I do not know.
I don't know that the occasional, recreational use of Ecstasy is anything to get up in arms about. And it's possible that legalization and regulation could have positive effects with regard to keeping it out of the hands of the very young and lessening the availability of "street versions" with harmful contaminants.
But as for me, no thanks.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: I honestly can't figure out why on earth people feel the need to legalize this type of thing. Do you honestly want your children taking this stuff? Do you honestly feel your life would be less meaningful without it?
The argument for legalizing it more or less comes down to the pointlessness of keeping it illegal. It's taxpayer dollars wasted just to keep a market open for criminals, that at the same time prevents effective regulation of the contents of the drug allowed for sale.
I honestly think I would not mind if my kids took ex for clubbing any more so than I would mind them being recreational drinkers when they grew up. I would mind if they got into it too early. I would mind if they smoked, ever. I would mind if they drove drunk or drank to excess or binged on MDMA. I would mind if they took meth or coke or other such drugs in any way, shape, or form. The 'appropriateness' of each drug relates purely to the drug itself and the age and responsibility exhibited by those that take it.
"recreational drug use" is not in and of itself something that must be smote from the hands of our chiddrens, lest we most all of us become hypocrites for drinking, smoking, and partaking of coffee and tea.
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That's why some populations, for instance southern Europeans who have been exposed to alcohol for thousands of years, have a lot lower alcoholism rates than other populations like Native Americans
I can see how a population would evolve a resistance to addiction to a given drug with enough time and exposure to it, but note that in your first post you were arguing for more than that. You said that "After enough generations go by, though, the tendency to use or enjoy recreational drugs will be bred out of the population". I'm skeptical of that. In the populations you mention having an increased resistance to alcohol addiction, moderate alcohol use continues to be widespread, and I don't see any kind of evolutionary pressure being put on those populations that would cause them to tend to select for people who didn't enjoy alcohol use. I imagine that the same would be true for other recreational drugs that populations were to develop addiction-resistance to.
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quote:"recreational drug use" is not in and of itself something that must be smote from the hands of our chiddrens, lest we most all of us become hypocrites for drinking, smoking, and partaking of coffee and tea.
Don't forget your audience. There's a whole lot of Mormons 'round these parts. And while we may be hypocrites for many reasons, for most of us, that's not one of them.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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And Mormons aren't the only ones who decline drinking, smoking, etc.
If we are concerned with being hypocrites on drug use, I don't think the solution is to say its fine for kids to do any drugs that adults do. Rather, I think adults should stop doing the things they tell their children not to do.
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Noemon, it's true that I misspoke in that first post. I didn't mean that any use at all would be bred out of populations, just addiction. Because in my family so many ordinary users are addicts, and the line between the two is so fine, I sometimes confuse them in my mind. Of course, I believe in not using at all ever to begin with. That way you never find out if you were one of the ones who would have become an addict.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Don't forget your audience. There's a whole lot of Mormons 'round these parts. And while we may be hypocrites for many reasons, for most of us, that's not one of them.
Quite aware of the 'hot drinks' thing, just didn't find it pertinent to craft the argument around mormons (I could have mentioned 'vanilla coke' instead of coffee)
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Really???? a weird study buy Professor Nutt? couldn't get over that to even make an argument. Professor Nutt represented by the law firm of Dewey Cheatem and Howe.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Noemon, it's true that I misspoke in that first post. I didn't mean that any use at all would be bred out of populations, just addiction.
Ohhhh, okay; that makes a lot more sense.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:I could have mentioned 'vanilla coke' instead of coffee
I don't know. I'm dubious that the majority of Mormons refrain from drinking Coca-Cola.
I think the original point is that the majority of everybody doesn't abstain from some recreational drug use. Cola counts the same as smoking. (Which renders your suggestion that LDS might be exceptions moot. Heck, the reasoning against recreational drug use can be easily extended to recreational sugar use.)
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quote: "This attitude raises the critical question of why society tolerates – indeed encourages – certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others, such as drug use."
There were plenty of other "risky activities such as base jumping, climbing, bungee jumping, hang-gliding, motorcycling" which were worse than which "many illicit drugs".
I think the difference between those activities ought to be plain. Drugs are associated with a powerful physical and psychological addiction. There is a high induced by those activities, but they aren't purposefully designed, as drugs are, to hook people and keep them hooked until they destroy themselves. (I also don't see signs of society encouraging base jumping, motorcycling or any of the other activities.)
If ecstacy should be downgraded, I have no problem with that. But I think comparing drug use to riding a horse is unnecessary and irresponsible language that only fuels people to diminish the danger of drugs. That it's coming from something designed to combat the use of drugs is all the worse. No one who has had a friend or family member die under those circumstances would make that kind of comparison.
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Of course, I believe in not using at all ever to begin with. That way you never find out if you were one of the ones who would have become an addict.
