The Reason Pot Is Still Illegal | Hacker News Reader

The Reason Pot Is Still Illegal

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41 pointselleferrer49 comments

I'll bet the reason why the drug companies are funding anti-drug organizations are simpler than what the author is suggesting. They aren't doing it because they think marijuana will steal all their market share.

Companies like Purdue produce prescription drugs that can be easily abused. Purdue pulled some really stupid moves that made it a whole lot easier for abuse of their product. They are funding the anti-drug coalition because it makes for good PR.

"What is Purdue doing about drug abuse??"

"In addition to encouraging the appropriate use of our pain medicine, we are also funding community programs to help stop our children from using illegal drugs."

Making pain relievers "a whole lot easier for abuse" is a good thing. Many people would like to obtain IV solutions, but due to monetary/legal restrictions, have trouble doing so. Instead, they must use other products and convert them into a IV solution. By removing the "anti abuse" parts, Purdue can ensure less people are harmed performing an improper injection.

The reason pot is still illegal is because public opinion just shifted in favor of legalization last year, and the attitude among likely voters (skew older than the general population), probably is still against. See: http://www.people-press.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports...

The real reason isn't lobbyists. The real reason is soccer moms and dads and baby boomers, who vote in droves, who are convinced that pot will make their kids sit around and mastrubate all day. The ones that hold monthly anti-drug assemblies in school where they shriek "just say no!" at the top of their lungs.

I think this is an important point. Though it is worth considering where they get convinced of those things (and the answer to that is still more complex than "follow the money").

Voters don't decide anything. They don't vote for laws, they vote for politcians which after being elected have very little incentive to serve the voters and all the incentives in the world to serve the corporations. It's almost unseen for a politician to lose his job, and it's easier and more profitable for him to lie throughout his term than to do good for his voters.

However you wanted it to be otherwise, politics still obeys economic laws, and the incentive for a politician will always be in the wrong place.

The marijuana situation is a great example of precisely why that assertion is wrong. Public opinion shifts, and within a couple of years, places all over the country are decriminalizing. You think the corporations have let up in the last couple of years? What's the more rational explanation of the data?

And how long did it take? And how many staes is it legal in? Surely, at some point politicians have to bend in and go with the voters, but it takes such a long time and so many people suffer in the process, that you start asking yourself, is this democracy thing worth all the people to rot in jail for victimless crimes?

The US has a population of 318 million. We would expect change to be slow.

Tell this to people in jail. Anyone can change rather fast. You don't need government or political authority to change. The only thing a society has to change together is to realize that (quote from Leo Tolstoy): "without Authority there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions... it [anarchy] will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power."

Read the Pew poll I linked. The attitude among the population as a whole only crossed over last year, and already its being legalized in several places. Moreover, remember, voters aren't the same demographic as the whole population. They skew older and more conservative. So its quite likely that even though 51% or something of people support legalization, the majority of voters in most places don't. My mom, my wife, and I all are registered in VA. My wife and I support legalization. My mom thinks pot will destroy your life. We don't vote. She always votes.

From TFA:

> Prescription opioids, a line of pain-relieving > medications derived from the opium poppy or produced > synthetically, are the most dangerous drugs abused in > America, with more than 16,000 deaths annually linked to > opioid addiction and overdose.

But, that's wrong.

http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm

"There are approximately 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States.1 This makes excessive alcohol use the 3rd leading lifestyle-related cause of death for the nation.2 Excessive alcohol use is responsible for 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) annually, or an average of about 30 years of potential life lost for each death.1 In 2006, there were more than 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive drinking.3 The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion.3"

And of course cigarettes are far more dangerous health wise than alcohol. With the cigarette being the drug delivery method, as an beverage is the delivery method for the alcohol.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/healt...

"More than 480,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke)"

"Life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers"

What a terrible, lying, article.

"Prescription opioids ... are the most dangerous drugs abused in America"

That's patently untrue. Alcohol is far more harmful, as is smoking. Their opiate death counts probably also include deaths from combinations of drugs. And, the antidote for opiate overdose (Naloxone) is difficult to obtain.

The article goes onto say that painkillers are "overprescribed". What does that even mean? Sounds like they're simply disagreeing with somebody else's choice to use opiates. Which is thing they're arguing against with pot.

The article further spins Zohydro as some terrible thing, when it's really just the removal of a denaturing agent from hydrocodone tablets. But the article states it as "ten times stronger than OxyContin", which is a nonsensical fabrication.

Many Americans do not consider alcohol or tobacco a "drug", while this is patently illogical, this may be more of a poor use of language than an outright fabrication.

As for opioids and their over prescription I ask you to look into the case of Florida and the "Pill Mills". You don't see drug companies lobbing to shut these down, nor do you see them refusing to sell their products to these obviously corrupt organizations.

It's not patently illogical, it's just a matter of where you draw the line. People rarely call sucrose or fructose drugs, yet they're chemical compounds that you put into your body to alter your mood.

Not many people take sucrose to get impaired, the intent of an alcohol drinker (despite the protestations that they "like the taste", "are a wine connoisseur" or "drink socially") is to get drunk.

Tobacco users are simply addicted, and use the drug to return to a state of normality.

> Tobacco users are simply addicted, and use the drug to return to a state of normality.

So do coffee users, ice cream users and chocolate "users".

Anything you consume in any way could be a drug depending on how you classify it. Typicaly the term drug implies some thing negative while terms like nutrition and medicine implies some thing positive. Its all politics though.

You say "obviously corrupt" like it's a bad thing. I say they're helping circumvent terrible laws that are actively harming people.

If corporations are the primary influencer in cannabis public policy, why aren't they taking to the airwaves to influence public opinion? That's what corporations do when they want to influence other public policy issues; they ran commercials all through the health care debate.

This is complicated as usual. There are quite a few people who gain power (think police) and/or wealth (think private prisons) from the War on Drugs.

Hell, it's a public jobs program at this point. There's a lot of good-paying work in saving people from themselves.

This isn't the only country where pot is illegal and I doubt it's "big pharma" behind every country where the drug is prohibited.

But when other countries have tried to loosen their drug enforcement policies it is the US that has historically leaned against them very hard with the big sticks of trade sanctions and development aid.

"Overall, we find that the impact of decriminalization is concentrated amongst minors, who have a higher rate of uptake in the first five years following its introduction."

http://scitr.com/a2a

"Early initiation of cannabis use and regular use during adolescence are particular risk factors for later problematic cannabis and other drug use, as well as mental health problems, delinquency, loss of cognitive capacity and educational achievement, risky sexual behavior and criminal offending."

http://scitr.com/a29 http://scitr.com/a2b

any TL;DR?

RTFA.

tl;dr: Pot is illegal because of the money coming in from big Pharma companies to keep it down, since they will lose money once legalization occurs. Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America (CADCA) is hypocritical in it's war against marijuana while choosing to ignore the dangers of opioids and related prescription drugs.

Also, law enforcement is lobbying hard to keep the status quo since property seizures from pot activities are a major source of income to law enforcement since the Reagan administration.

"Legalizing marijuana could, however, hurt the bottom line of drug companies that make money off drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin."

I find the "bottom line" argument to be pretty weak. Marijuana is not going to replace pain killers like Oxycontin or Vicodin.

Not as prescribed, no, but as an alternative recreational drug is less far-fetched. What surprises me more frankly is that no large corporations appear to be gearing up to enter the legal pot market (think BT developing solar power; can't hurt to diversify...).

If that were true, that legal marijuana leads to less abuse of "harder" drugs like opioids, then the drug companies should be happy about that.

They might have been able to make more money off their drugs when people abused them, but not really anymore. It's a pretty big social issue now and companies are trending pretty lightly in this area.

While Marijuana may have uses for medicine. As a recreational drug, I think the in ability to easily check when you consumed it, or to have a high as a result of just burning off fat. (it is fat soluble, and you can end up high even years later if you burn enough calories) Makes it harder to enforce responsible use than say alcohol.

I don't think we want pilots, surgeons, or police doing their jobs while high, and since the buzz could come quite a long time after consumption that would always be a risk.

Hemp is often promised to be this miracle product that will solve all of our problems, but visiting places where hemp is legal we don't see massive quantities of it.

We import cotton, and bamboo, but you don't see many hemp t-shirts.

We even import paper, which is one of the things Hemp is pretty decent at. But we don't see much Hemp paper. Turns out ink doesn't stick to it as well as it does to Wood pulp and cotton blends.

The real reason Pot is still illegal is that it is dangerous to those who aren't consuming it. A stoned Doctor might not smell of it, might not have any real outwards signs, and then could get the giggles when he nicked an artery.

Edit: Years may have been a stretch. Looks like 7 days has been shown in a lab, and the CDC thinks weeks. http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/17/one-toke-many-hits-exe.... http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001143.htm

Is the fact that alcohol use is easily detected in a field-administered test all that keeps surgeons from doing surgery drunk?

No, but easily defined rules about how long between a drink and the surgery is.

Just like pilots. You can drink and be a pilot, just not 8 hours before. How long you have a high varies wildly, and under stress old highs can come back.

Edit: And if you think you can come up with a combination where you didn't die an hour after your drinks and are still drunk 8 hours later, here is a calculator

http://touchcalc.com/calculators/bac

The rules are --very specifically-- exactly as easily defined for marijuana.

There is no test that can determine when someone last had a drink. The results of a blood alcohol test for someone who had a beer 7 hours and 30 minutes ago will be wildly different than those of someone who skipped dinner and crushed a fifth of whiskey 7 hours and 30 minutes ago...

Any source for the calculations that calculator uses? A quick search says alcohol can be detected in blood up to 12 hours[1].

How many doobies does it take to stay high for 8 hours?

[1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojp/181103.pdf

Do you have any links to actual studies that find you can get high by burning fat "even years later"? Everything I've read has said that some of the metabolites of THC can be stored in fat--and those are the actual compounds tested by "marijuana" tests, but THC itself isn't stored in the human body after the initial processing even if it is fat soluble itself.

Lengths of high vary, but so do lengths of being drunk. And lengths of undergoing caffeine or nicotine withdrawal or being high on them.

Years may have been a stretch. Looks like 7 days has been shown in a lab, and the CDC thinks weeks.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/09/17/one-toke-many-hits-exe...

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001143.htm

You're going to have to post some citation on the whole "getting high from burning THC-laden fat" point. Just because it's fat soluble doesn't mean you can get high enough concentrations in your bloodstream from exercise alone to cause impairment, or even be noticeable.

[0] wild conjecture

Even if your claims are true, the harm caused by imprisoning users is much greater than the harm caused by allowing use.

Remember, these are adults, not little kids. If I can't trust them to be professional and cautious of risks, I wouldn't bother with their services, and likely neither would their employer.

Personally, i think sleep deprivation is a much bigger issue for pilots and doctors than weed. Please, do leave careless speculation and personal vendettas by the door.

This is completely ridiculous and written by someone with absolutely no experience with marijuana. The idea that you "could end up high years later" is laughable, and has absolutely no basis in scientific fact.

"A stoned Doctor might not smell of it, might not have any real outwards signs, and then could get the giggles when he nicked an artery."

Marijuana does not cause a significant impairment in regular users. Even if that were not the case, if a doctor chooses to be intoxicated when they are responsible for someone else's life, they are already making a terrible choice, regardless of the legality of the substance in question.

I'll preface by saying that I used to smoke a lot of weed, but I haven't in quite some time.

> it is fat soluble, and you can end up high even years later if you burn enough calories

Please cite this extensively. Many bioactive molecules are fat-soluble. Just because a substance is fat-soluble doesn't mean it can be stored indefinitely and readily metabolized.

> The real reason Pot is still illegal is that it is dangerous to those who aren't consuming it. A stoned Doctor might not smell of it, might not have any real outwards signs, and then could get the giggles when he nicked an artery.

I disagree with you 100% here. I can tell when someone is stoned, regardless of physical side-effects, changes in mentality or demeanor, etc.

Regardless, in my opinion, your argument crumbles if we clarify stoned to be under the influence of well-concealed alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates, barbiturates, excessive stimulants, or, hell, maybe even ketamine, methaqualone, etc.

I (unfortunately, I suppose) have had experiences with pretty much every drug and RC under the sun, and I personally think it's very easy to detect when someone is under the influence of marijuana compared to any of the substances thereof (well, maybe except the dissociatives or excessive alcohol).

it is fat soluble, and you can end up high even years later if you burn enough calories

You are confusing pot with one of the presumed mechanisms for LSD flashbacks.

Wow. I had no idea people believed stuff like this. Cannabis appears not to have a large negative effect on people in at least some elite performance situations, like musical performance and freestyle snowboarding. What's particularly hilarious is the debate of whether cannabis might be categorized as a performance enhancing drug.

Marijuana is the easiest drug to test for. The metabolites (READ: the byproduct of use, not the active chemical that gets you high) can stay in your system for up to 90 days in chronic use cases. While heroin is out in 4. Alcohol is out in 2. So if anything, Marijuana is the easiest drug to enforce.

That said, I don't want to continue feeding the troll, or the chronically misinformed.

http://www.passyourdrugtest.com/timetable.htm

You reiterate the point. It stays in the system longer.

Also, length of time and ease of test is not the same. Breathalyzer's are under $5 to produce and use just breath. No test for THC exists that doesn't require a more substantial "contribution" to the test. (hair, urine, blood)

Drug tests look for 11-nor-9-Carboxy-THC, not Tetrahydrocannabinol. The amount in your system days after use is so minimal so that it has no effect. I'd like to see a case study of someone getting measurably impaired days after use.

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