Top medical experts say we should decriminalize all drugs (2016)

It's not nearly the same thing. We know that there are plenty of self-serving scientists that would absolutely love the notoriety of debunking global warming if it was actually false. To believe that scientists made it all up is utterly insane if you actually have worked with real scientists. The number of physicists I've worked with that daydreamed out loud at lunch about having a law or parameter named after them is astounding. If they wanted money they could easily go into a quant job and make double or triple what they've been making and no longer have to drive their shitty 20 year old cars.

The issue you're proposing as a liberal conspiracy is purely an issue of he said, she said nonsense. We have the input and the output. Republicans yet again made life worse for the lower classes. Big surprise. Why doesn't matter and it's naive as an adult to even care about intent.

We have a problem now that we need to fix. We don't need to dwell in the past or blame people. We're more knowledgeable now - so we need to use that knowledge to fix the problems - or at least work with / around them to the betterment of people.

I don't know about other countries but the real push for harsher penalties in the US came in the 1980s after basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine overdose:

>...It became the sole focus of legislative activity for the remainder of the session on both sides of the aisle. Literally every committee, from the Committee on Agriculture to the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were somehow getting involved. Suddenly, the Len Bias case was the driving force behind every piece of legislation. Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get a piece of the action

http://www.salon.com/2011/06/19/len_bias_cocaine_tragedy_sti...

>...(and this still applies here in Sweden, it's not only illegal to buy, sell or possess drugs but also to take them, if it's detected in a urine or blood test [mandatory tests if you are caught by the police] you have committed an offense)

This sounds like an internal issue in Sweden - I am not really sure how much you can blame the US for this. Certainly other countries near Sweden have more reasonable drug policies and the US doesn't try and stop that or punish the countries that I know of.

>...and then the Convention on Psychotropic Substances happened in 1971, very influenced by the US and UK stances on drugs.

The 1971 wasn't the first treaty on drugs. For example, the International Opium Convention that adopted restrictions on the opium poppy's psychoactive derivatives was in 1912.

According to wikipedia:

>...The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 is a United Nations treaty designed to control psychoactive drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and psychedelics signed in Vienna, Austria on 21 February 1971. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 did not ban the many newly-discovered psychotropics,[1] since its scope was limited to drugs with cannabis, coca, and opium-like effects.

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

>...So as much as he tried to only "look tough", Nixon has fomented one of the worst problems in modern society,

I don't think that Nixon was the first politician who tried to look tough on drugs in the US (or in other countries). Anti-drug propaganda has been produced since before "Reefer Madness" and politicians have been ranting about drugs for a long time. A difference really was that Nixon was one of the first to try to greatly expand drug treatment and reform sentencing at least in a small way:

>...the mandatory minimum sentence in a federal prison for marijuana possession was 2-10 years until Nixon slashed it to 1 year with a judicial option to waive even that sentence. No federal mandatory drug sentence would be rolled back again for 40 years (in the Obama Administration).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

Alcohol and tobacco consumption might go down a bit though; mostly because the drugs would be free in comparison. (/those/ lobbies would be completely against this experiment)

Focusing on the increased use segments of the population and figuring out why they're in to drugs instead of 'healthy' outlets would probably reveal deep social and societal dysfunction caused by a complex and interacting set of self-enforcing patterns.

Maybe changes in zoning, public goods funding, and worker rights would actually start to happen on a scientific basis trying to address the identified issues.

At the very least though, this would be THE MOST EFFECTIVE means of fighting criminal and terrorist organizations; by cutting off their funding at the source.

So you say, well in that case someone will make them dirty and available for a price. Punish the illegal seller and prosecute all suppliers who knowingly sold to someone not registered. Prosecute any and all corruption related to making and distributing the product illegally.

Do people get their coke from Coca-cola imported leaves? No. They know the consequences and take appropriate precautions to ensure they are not subverted by greedy employees.

As far as I'm aware, junkies still need money to eat/sleep/drink and very few have a reliable source of income. All gun battles aren't over drugs, and would still occur. And not all overdoses are caused by tainted drugs.

- Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725093536/http://www.idt.pt...

No, not true at all.

Supply and Demand.

The 'cost' of doing drugs in society right now is pretty dam high. Social stigma, the possibility of going to jail, various professional licences lost.

The 'free market price' of synthetic heroin and other drugs would be as cheap as sugar. Walk down to the local store and buy 1Kg of meth for $20. Jesus no.

People are really un-pragmatic about this issue.

I've had my exposure to it: a friend OD'd while in SF, another friend drug related suicide, and a third friend just fell in to a 'crack whole' for 20 years and now he lives full time in a clinic. Another - friend of a friend - has a 'weed' addiction (I know it's not common, but it exists) and he lives in a home as well.

These people were ruined long before they ever passed away or went into a home.

Selling crack or opioids in the corner store would instantly yield a massive public health crises.

'Legal' drugs - i.e. prescription drugs are already a major, major driver of the problem.

Here in Canada - doctors are not required to give out the 'absolute minimum' of opioids after operations etc. You don't get 'a bottle' with 'refills' - you get like 3 pills.

Why? Because there was a public healthcare crises developing even with legal substances.

That's how strict they need to be, because that's what's on the line.

If 'legal drugs' did not cause problems, then I suggest the massive amount of 'doctor shopping' and 'fake prescriptions' all over the US would not be resulting in serious problems, but they are.

It's just one of those things - some people can handle their drugs - most people can't and fall down the slippery slide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervention_(TV_series)

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...

Vietnam could be considered the war on drugs.

If what I've read is correct, US soldiers were given amphetamine pills "like candy".

1. A word, especially seen as a test, to distinguish someone as belonging to a particular nation, class, profession etc.

2. A common or longstanding belief, custom, or catchphrase associated with a particular group, especially one with little current meaning or truth.

Well said.

"It's fine to speak for science on purely scientific matters."

The thing about science is that one high-quality study is often all you need to have a lot of confidence. They don't need 100 experiments confirming the Higgs boson, they just needed one really good experiment.

And bad studies can be summarily ignored for the purposes of fact finding. 100 bad studies are no better than one or zero. The only thing they tell you is an area that may be interesting to conduct a good study later.

If there are a hundred high-quality studies saying one thing, and one high-quality study saying something else, then something very interesting is going on and everyone should pay close attention and get ready to learn something new. But this is very rare and is certainly not a situation where you want to inject politics.

So the only time when it makes sense for science and politics to intersect is when you have one good study concluding something relevant to the policy decision, and no high-quality studies to the contrary. And in that case you only need to cite one study and be done with it -- you don't need to "speak for science".

There is room to argue over the quality of experiments and studies, of course. And that's where the sparks should fly -- not over signatures on a report. If the results of one study are contended, it could go through some kind of extreme peer review that can re-analyze the results or question the data collection methods. The great thing about this is that laypersons will back out and wait, and the scientists and statisticians can argue in peace among their peers. When the smoke clears, then you can take those facts to the bank.

This doesn't for scientific fields where study quality is a major problem (social sciences are hard and don't usually have nearly enough funding to produce quality studies -- or have funding from overly-interested parties). But in that case, you definitely should not lend undue weight to the claims by speaking for science.

Yeah, a naturalistic fallacy will take something good (e.g. a firm and objective grasp of biology) and turn it into a crime against humanity (e.g. negative/mortal eugenics campaigns).

I suspect that the biggest influence big oil has had is in making overblown, unconvincing, scaremongering communications which ultimately make people more suspicious than convinced.

That's not how it works. There are many potential triggers for psychosis in general (and schizophrenia in particular), and there are reputable studies which show that cannabis consumption is one of them.

> but - of course - any psycho active substance can and will impair the mind of somebody consuming it irresponsibly.

I think it's safe to say that even responsible use can have negative effects for some people.

Likewise, the claim that micro dosing is not going to cause issues at all is unfounded and dangerous. We simply don't know enough about it to make such claims (enabling scientific research is a big argument for legalization!).

That observation, by itself, does not say anything about what's cause and what's effect. It may very well be that cannabis causes all these things. It may also be that the sort of people who have psychological problems are drawn towards smoking weed either because of these psychological problems (i.e. seeing cannabis use as a relief for mental stress) or because of a common cause of both desire for cannabis and psychological problems.

I'm not saying which is true (not an expert on the subject), just that you cannot deduce it from your observation.

They would be a great example of a person who acts "too safe" all of his life not realising that it's his own fear that basically keeps him in his sandbox, when there's a whole world out there (BTW, I am not speaking about anything related to the New Age, as that could be interpreted - just the risks one could possibly take in general).

Two of my smartest friends are one who doped every day for a few years and the other one who practically never did drugs. Both are considered quite weird by the general population, and both know that and they know how they could manage others (but not vice-versa).

Now quite frankly I find that most of the people will never realise that drugs work well when they're done in balance with the other things in life. And the fact that occasional stressing of your body is quite beneficial in the long term, simply because it works just like training your physique.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-...

Highlight from that article:

>There have been two meta-analyses published within the last year or so. The first reviewed 20 studies, including almost a million people, and the second included 17 studies containing more than a million people. Both found that drinking coffee was associated with a significantly reduced chance of death. I can’t think of any other product that has this much positive epidemiologic evidence going for it.

I don't understand how you can claim coffee is bad for your heart in good faith if you have read _any_ of the research... for example, this meta-analysis of 36 studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24201300

> A nonlinear association between coffee consumption and CVD risk was observed in this meta-analysis. Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day, and heavy coffee consumption was not associated with elevated CVD risk.

I think any doctor worth their salt would tell you that there is a strong scientific consensus that drinking coffee is not only completely safe, but it has preventative effects towards cancer, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's, and Type-2 diabetes.

Here's a bonus review of 112 meta-analyses: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-nutr-07...

> Of the 59 unique outcomes examined in the selected 112 meta-analyses of observational studies, coffee was associated with a probable decreased risk of breast, colorectal, colon, endometrial, and prostate cancers; cardiovascular disease and mortality; Parkinson's disease; and type-2 diabetes.

Not even one doctor I've talked to has said this to me about coffee. Several have remarked on the interesting results of recent large studies. (See moozilla's comments here, in particular one study said: "Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD [cardio-vascular disease] risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day.")

And it's only bad for your teeth if you load it with sugar.

I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm talking about the ravages of drug addiction on society. It's not about protecting you, it's about protecting society from you.

Yes you can. But the evidence shows that crime related to supporting a drug habit actually exists compared to a Facebook habit.

Addiction comes in many flavors. Gaming addiction don't add substances to your body that your body cannot produce and regulate by itself.

I do not support legalizing drugs, decriminalization yes.

I am afraid that capitalism and greed, lobbying and 'free market' will be given a chance to make big profits from it. And put more people into addiction in result.

That's probably true. I doubt it's more addictive than heroin though, which was why I used that as my example for the other end of the spectrum. If alcohol was as addictive as heroin, I'm quite confident it would be just as illegal.

There are more than one party involved here.

You think plain heroin is toxic, wait until you see the engineered drugs that are created by big pharma in comparison.

Do you think I should be able to purchase any drug, re-engineer it myself and consume it? I'm not selling it...

Say I'm not even a scientist, I don't know the dangers of what I'm doing, should I be allowed to have access to those chemicals just because they exist?

Do you agree also with the statement above?

My view is that most of the externalities of drug uses should be managed by taxation, not forbidden. But there are some externalities that require more brutal coercion than just taxation.

There should be a good middle ground here: one where people have access to drugs, but there's some accountability (or at least a speed bump) to prevent people from causing harm to themselves or others.

I think we all agree that dishing out jail time for getting high doesn't work.

Maybe there might be an argument for people to be able to choose to obtain drugs like the ones mentioned by GP, but not without some kind of control-mechanism to at a bare minimum ensure they have been presented with the risks and have given some level of demonstration that they understand them.

E.g. I quite like the mechanism now in place for online pharmacies in the UK, where you can buy prescription drugs like Viagra, or OTC but restricted products like Daktacort (combination anti-fungal and steroids), but need to convince a doctor (for the former) or pharmacist (for the latter) in writing that you've at least bothered to read what they've written about the drugs (since nothing stops you from just faking the symptoms, but you at least need to describe relevant symptoms free-form semi-coherently, or they'll do additional checks before selling to you).

It has weaknesses, and certainly won't stop people from abusing abusable drugs, but it at least makes it possible to pick up on the most idiotic attempts at misusing drugs they don't even understand.

Alternatively, I've used PushDoctor a couple of times - a UK service that connects you with an actual GP via video chat; the last time it took me 10 minutes from I scheduled an appointment until I'd uploaded pictures of a rash, had a conversation with the GP and had the prescription passed to a local pharmacy electronically; even if one were to consider taking away their "gatekeeper" role in terms of letting them deny treatments they don't think are necessary, I don't think it'd be unreasonable to still at least require a consultation like that for the most dangerous drugs to give an opportunity to at least inform.

I'm aware of the harm. But it is the start of therapy programs in several nations, Australia, New Zealand, France, United States of America, among others.

> Do not use brief psychological interventions of less than 3 months.

Precisely, but the therapy with the most proven effectiveness, dialectical behaviour therapy, has little support from the government programs. In fact, CBT has proven to be harmful for those suffering from BPD, but is a requirement when you first begin treating a patient in some of the above nations.

> Drug treatment should not be used specifically for borderline personality disorder

However, it is commonly used to start treatment, and supplement ongoing talk therapy, with the ultimate goal of removing it.

> What Alice probably needs is a long form talking therapy

Which is not available to her.

Similarly, consider the option of regulations like those in place for pharmacies in some countries, that e.g. requires the pharmacist to ensure you are aware of certain risks, but doesn't prevent you from buying.

Consider the way some countries now requires tobacco to be out of view and with health warnings all over or no branding.

In other words: There are mechanisms you can put in place that legalizes drugs fully, but still heavily restricts commercial entities ability to try to take advantage of peoples weaknesses.

Personally I believe even drugs like heroin should be legal, on the basis of harm reduction, but at the same time, I don't see a problem with e.g. restricting where it can be sold and ensuring that it's sold in plain packaging, no advertising is allowed, and to e.g. have a pharmacist inform you of the risks before selling it. I don't think that threshold will be high enough to make people go to a dealer, but it may still reduce abuse.

In the UK there are restrictions on how many pills of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and ibuprofen you can buy at a time, for example. In pharmacies you can buy up to 32 of each at a time, while elsewhere only up to 16 of each at a time. Those restrictions were put in place because of overdose deaths, and they appear to have saved hundreds of lives so far, while being lenient enough not to drive anyone to a black market.

So while I think we should be allowed to buy pretty much whatever drugs we want, we can combine that with making it sufficiently unattractive that you're not buying them on a whim.

The bullet points:

    1. Cannabis prohibition is broken and can’t be fixed.
    2. Cannabis is an abusable drug, and the rate of
       problem use has been soaring for two decades.
    3. Legalization on the alcohol model is likely to make
       cannabis extremely cheap.
    4. Cheap cannabis is a threat to public health.
    5. The interests of the industry conflict with the
       public interest.
    6. There are many alternatives to current laws, and
       the differences matter.

For opiates, especially people injecting, it is very inportant to get clean drugs, and actually opiates are not particularly harmful to the body if used correctly. They also don’t really present a threat to society if given the drug. Holland has provided addicts with heroin with great success, as a form of treatment.

Also, you say that "I think x,y,z." But you do not say why. Do you have some expertise that informs your decision on safety or is your opinion purely philosophical (based on personal freedom or even Darwin Awards)?

How does decriminalization of the possession and use lead to increased money for addicts that they will no longer have to resort to illegal acts to fund addictions?

Less jail/court fees = more money in pocket to buy drugs?

The opioid crisis isn't the only crisis. America hovers around being the 1st or 2nd worst incarceration rate in the world, and it's predominantly non-violent drug offenses. Friend of mine just lost a job offer they had provisionally because of a tiny marijuana possession charge from years ago, and that's happened to them over and over again.

If your best argument in favor of continuing to ruin people lives over something so petty is "big pharma will make money off of opioids", I call bullshit.

edit: I would also argue that in your analogy, there is almost no water built up behind that dam, and getting rid of the dam would hardly be noticeable downstream. We can't even keep drugs out of prisons very well. I live in a town that hasn't had a single case of violent crime in 13 years, and yet I know exactly where I could go and buy some heroin right this very minute if I wanted to. I know where in the Bay Area I could buy some meth if I wanted to. And these are locations that have been repeatedly raided by the cops, but the selling of drugs at those locations doesn't stop, because someone else who recently finished their sentence will just take over while the person who got busted servers theirs. I was in a concert venue last night with cops, and weed, everywhere. Freaking out about the weed, but no one caring about people having 6 or 7 beers and then getting in their cars to drive home drunk at 1am. The dam makes zero sense to me.