Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
You’re not alone in thinking that, although you may be in a minority.
I surely am, if the people who think we're making progress on saner drug laws cite as their evidence all the drugs that are now banned, and all the difficulties making legal ones available. That's our measure of progress, that more things are against the law than ever before. Not measures of the harm it's meant to stop, not to mention the virtually unspeakable idea that reduction of another person's pleasure is a massive harm all by itself. That side of it doesn't even get a look in. What should be the biggest no-brainer of them all, that no one has the right to ban thousands of thousands of things just because they get challenged about whether they could. They need only cite a minor harm, and bang down goes the ban hammer. In the final endgame, they won't even have to do that, the onus will go on the manufacturer to prove no possible harm. The ban hammer will be "is it psychoactive?. Bang".
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
We clearly agree on that. But how does that fix the problem of every other novel psychoactive that comes along?
By outcompeting them. Yes, it's not a solution on the side of users of various kinds of uppers. But for those, the illicit versions are so much more likely to result in social harm, that the cost of the harm of the legal versions strikes me as worth wearing. Well, the formerly legal ones, anyway.
I find it hard to believe that pretty much resetting our drug situation to prior to the sudden explosion in alternate chemicals is a big improvement. We had massive harm issues then, and we will continue to have them. The focus should be on treating harm, not punishing it, not banning it. The more things that get banned, the more reason there is to take crystal meth instead. That's where I see all this heading.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
You’re seriously suggesting that regulated manufacturing standards, getting the products out of dairies, monitoring remaining retailers etc won’t reduce harm at all?
I'll wait and see on that one. So far, I've not been impressed.
It’s a bit early to be writing it off in favour of something else that we haven’t thought of yet.
The alternative has been thought of. Decriminalize cannabis. Or even better, legalize it. But we have instead to wait and see whether or not more or less kids are going to end up in A&Es, or maybe even dead. I'm really not impressed with the progress we've made as a society, considering the main instigator of the whole ridiculous schemozzle, the USA, has even worked it out.
It's like saying that taking the wrong turn in a massive maze is progress, because after walking down every stupid blind alley, we'll know that it was the wrong path. Yes, that would be progress. But there's a huge beacon over the right path.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Nah, it's not the density of the material that needs fixing, it's the speed of release. If you could pop slow release capsules, you could choose how drunk you wanted to be, and for how long, in advance. You could even set them not to kick in until after a desired delay.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Shulgin,
Still, to me it actually sounds more sciency and leads to the impression that we have some deep understanding of their pharmacology.
Word up.
What would a rational consumer do?
Buy dope, and smoke it if they're normal, vaporize it if they have a sensitive throat, or like doing it in the toilets at work.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think it’s a logical contortion to rule out all the things Ross listed as being only hypothetical goods.
The lion's share of what's good about them is hypothetical at this point. I don't accept that any of those things are even worth having at all, if they lead to no actual good that I can appreciate. Like actually bringing harm down. If they can't do that, they're a complete waste of time and money, and might even be worse, blocking more useful approaches by appearing to do something that they're not.
There’s a caveat in that the study only interviews people who already have access to illegal drugs, but it’s a pretty clear trend.
Correlation is not causation. My own anecdotal evidence is that people who used synthetic pot stopped doing so because it actually sucked. They made the sad but honest evaluation that risking getting busted for cannabis was a lesser evil than how that other stuff made them feel. I tried it myself a few times, and it ranged from average to horrible. Considering that the number of adults who might have made this rational evaluation absolutely crushes the number of new-entrant kids into the market, a correlation could easily be explained by "people got sick of it". Even if kids are actually using it more.
Which is what most of that article you're linking to goes on to say.
It showed that in 2012, even before tougher regulations were passed, synthetic products such as Kronic and K2 were far less popular than a year before.
and
Lead researcher Chris Wilkins, of Massey University, said synthetic cannabis's popularity may have fallen amid growing awareness of the negative effects, such as vomiting and seizure.
"I think initially people were curious but they misunderstood what synthetic cannabis is and underestimated the health risks."
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Unlikely that any research could have been done
In that case, it’s reasonable to withhold judgment about whether that’s actually a good. For a long time, until there are any useful statistics.*
It’s up to the user whether to avail themselves of such information.
There’s a point with information where it’s not really useful, though. When it’s a list of chemicals, I can’t really see too many 17 year olds in the legal highs shop Googling the chemicals in the various choices of high, so that they can make an informed choice about which of this week’s batch of drugs they want to do human trials on.
Certainly it’s good that these chemicals must be listed. But how good? I think it’s bugger all.
*ETA: And withholding judgment for a long time might even be the purpose to the puritanical. No one can prove that it's not working. Once the proof comes that it isn't, rinse, and repeat. Make a change, and once again, we're in a no-information environment, in which the choice about whether something is a good falls back on general principles, moral judgments. This could go on indefinitely.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
not getting additional criminal records for cannabis possession
Is there evidence for a reduction in this happening?
Reduced profits for “illegal” drug dealers
Is there any evidence that this is happening?
People getting an informed choice about what they put in their bodies
Is there any evidence that people are more informed? Or is it just that they could be, if they were inclined to care, but they aren't?
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Ross Bell,
I was asking about the practical good. Those are only hypothetical goods that might lead to a practical good. Or they might not, as seems to have happened. Kids still get all these drugs, they market them to each other in the most powerful kind of marketing, peer pressure, and they get frequently poisoned. And there are still all the other alternatives that are illegal which they can and do use.
Has the law change meant we've actually seen less of this?
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes, I meant to point out that this whole story really began with BZP.
Well, the BZP story began with banning all the things that BZP was meant to simulate.
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