Non-profit produced MDMA 'ecstasy' and psychedelics
indiegogo.com
indiegogo.com
It's easy to show how terrible the War on Drugs has been. I'm still against legalizing the worst of drugs like meth and heroin. But marijuana and LSD, other plant-based psychedelics, I'm mostly for.
Keeping drugs under ground and in the shadows funds Mexican drug cartels and puts the lives of millions at risk, while causing medical patients continuous, unnecessary suffering. Legalization and good QC is the best thing we could hope for.
It's funny you're against legalizing those two drugs. I take it you're not aware that both of the "worst" (whatever that is supposed to mean) drugs are actually legal in one form or another. Methamphetamine is available with a prescription and heroin/opioids are generally available with a prescription as well.
I have a hard time believing that you were serious about the latter two examples, given what I found.
Nutmeg is a psychoactive substance at the right dose and at around 7-8 times that dose it can be lethal. That is more dangerous than alcohol.
With dextromethorphan the ratio of a dose that gets you high to the dose that kills you is about the same as alcohol.
How many people have died of a nutmeg overdose? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11343860 seems to suggest that it's rare.
> Paracetamol isn't my cup of tea either and discourage its use
Why? When taken at the correct dose it's a safe, effective, pain killer. People do need to be careful to avoid overdose, which means that packets should probably be a bit clearer when they include paracetamol / acetaminophen.
Likewise, it's disingenuous to compare heroin to morphine or oxycodone, even if they're chemically similar. Look, I'm on your side (the de-criminalisation side) but we need to use real arguments to win our case, not easily debunked or up for debate sophisms that our opponent easily can (and will) turn against us.
The difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine is largely in the effective dose needed by weight, because the extra methyl group lets the drug cross the blood-brain barrier more easily. It doesn't change the actual receptors it activates or the metabolic process of the drug, however.
The real difference between Adderall and "street meth" has more to do with the means of ingestion (smoked vs oral) than the actual chemical compounds themselves.
No. Methyplphenidate is as different from methamphetamine as methamphetamine is from amphetamine, which is to say that yes they're chemically different, but have similar effects that are different in the margins, like MDMA and 2CB, for example.
"The real difference between Adderall and "street meth" has more to do with the means of ingestion (smoked vs oral) than the actual chemical compounds themselves."
Which is exactly what I said.
He gave a Google talk in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdsN_vYZ3w8
Morphine is used in the US, but diacetylmorphine (aka heroin) is used in the UK and several other countries.
I'm not being disingenuous...
If your issue is with smoking vs. other methods of ingesting, we can talk - but that doesn't make them 'different drugs' any more than Nodoz is a different drug to Caffeine in coffee - Desoxyn being smokeable too, of course, though I'm not sure who would bother.
No it's not. As a matter of fact, both MDMA and amphetamine available in the underground market in Europe the last years are more pure than they ever were.
I'm arguing against prohibition, I guess all the downvoters didn't bother to read past my first sentence. My point was that the GP was trying to say 'oh meth is just as dangerous as other stimulants and you can get it with a prescription' - uh no it's not, and no you can't.
"I'm not sure where you got the idea that "Crystal meth is a lot more addictive", I'd be interested to learn more if that is in fact the case."
It's widely documented (see e.g. http://www.cmaj.ca/content/178/13/1679.full , from which I quote "Apart from the generic risks associated with all forms of methamphetamine, the special public health concern with crystal meth is that this form can cause more overall harm to the public than other forms, because it rapidly achieves a high drug concentration with a correspondingly high potential for drug addiction and other toxicities."; see also the references to that article and everything you will find from there) that smoking methamphetamine causes a much quicker dopamine release, and fading effect, than ingesting or snorting it. This causes a user to want to repeat smoking much faster.
>This causes a user to want to repeat smoking much faster.
I didn't see where they made that conclusion. I did see this:
>>Despite much research data from animals in the literature,17 the areas of the human brain and the key neurochemicals that are responsible for the pleasurable effects of methamphetamine and for the transition from drug-liking to drug-craving are still unknown.
>>"Research into the pharmacologic treatment of methamphetamine addiction has largely been limited to studies in animals. Surprisingly, there are very limited data from clinical trials of new therapies to prevent methamphetamine addiction relapse.24,33 Although animal studies are essential to the development of new medications, given the public health importance of this worldwide problem and the existence of potential drug targets, it is obvious that the very slow pace of clinical testing of new therapies in methamphetamine addiction needs to be accelerated. "
Being the big soppy that I am, I didn't fire her immediately and tried to help her get out of it.
I figured that showing her some of the joys of life might do, but it didn't.
I got her a new laptop, and she sold it to buy meth. At least she had the creance of formatting it, so eventually I got back the Steam credit.
I got her an electronics kit, and she sold it to buy meth.
I got her a small sailboat (only cost me $400 on craigslist, but I spent quite a few hours getting her seaworthy again) and she crashed it on the first outing after declaring that she had to come back to get a fix.
Eventually I told her to leave when I discovered that she was stealing from the "go to rat shack and grab a bag of resistors" prepaid card.
(Full disclosure: I don't do drugs because my brain chemistry is all over the place already, but am in favor of legalizing weed and shrooms - declaring an organism illegal only takes legitimity away from laws, and there are no hyperconcentration issues that way)
Your employee was not any less addicted due to the criminalization of drugs.
If you have a better solution please share it. Getting stoned on weekends is fine, but I got to see the whole "faces of meth" before and after thing in person over a year, and it was not pretty.
You have to realize the big picture, which is that there will always be a fringe of society doing the worst drugs available. Accepting that and coming up with alternative solutions like just giving them their drugs in controlled environments can be far cheaper for society.
It's the same as prostitution, it will always exist. Either underground or above ground.
In order for legalization to be effective, the legal drugs have to be equally potent, equally priced, and easily accessible. The fear of associating with a toxic culture, and of being arrested is part of what prevents more people suffering loss and other stress from turning to analgesics, I fear that the legalization of such drugs would result in more people addicted, albeit with a somewhat more manageable addiction.
I think I still support full legalization, but it's much easier to legalize low addiction substances than the "bad drugs".
People are treated with terrible shit like Haldol, lithium, and Zoloft, but we don't mock those users, calling the medication a toxic addiction and an escape. Even when those medications are very damaging to the body (lithium requiring regular checkups to make sure it hasn't actually accumulated to toxic levels). Those users don't get stigmatized beyond being mentally ill in the first place. In fact, the opposite is heard, with "he's off his meds again", or stories of responsible users that reliably take their medication.
High-purity opiates are necessarily expensive. The street price is inflated because they're illegal, and pharmaceutical companies have to jump through some hoops to avoid legal issues, and because of patents, but an addiction will always be expensive.
Some addicts can continue to function as a part of society, but others can't. Many of them only become addicts after they are already unable to function, either due to mental health issues or overwhelming stress. I don't mean to imply that these people are morally lesser because of their inability to perform as society expects them to, just that it's a tragedy.
The drugs prescribed for mental health problems are scary, and probably over-prescribed, but they can also help. Lithium can be toxic, and it often quells the patient's personality, but when used correctly it can improve the patient's quality of life.
We might find that one day we prescribe opiates for short-term emotional pain, but they will never be appropriate for chronic issues. Even well-trained doctors make the mistake of prescribing analgesics for chronic pain like arthritis. If that's the case then how can we expect untrained individuals suffering emotional pain and probably some mental health issues to make a good decision about buying opiates from a dispensary. And if it's any harder for them than just going to a corner store and picking up the drugs, the illegal market will still thrive.
[1]: Really, it's inappropriate to mock anyone for substance use, but I take by the tone of your comment that you agree with that.
Citation? In palliative care, dosages can become incredibly high. The bit of info I've read has not talked about a maximum dose, nor have I heard stories about reaching such a level. (There probably is such a dose, just as there is for water, but I'm not sure it's been much of a hindrance to actual patients.)
An addiction has no reason to be expensive. Without being rude, I think you're just making that up. Using GoodRX, I've found that methadone is under half a cent per mg. So for a one-gram-a-day morphine equivalent (120mg methadone) that's a grand total of $18 a month. As comparison, 30mg methadone could (would?) kill a non tolerant user. If that's the current pricing, under all the extra regulatory work and reduced production due to legal limits, we'd expect it to drop. And spending just $200 a month, or 10x of the current price for 1G MED a day, seems not that bad, really.
You go from saying a dangerous, toxic, element such as lithium is OK because it improves the patient's life... to opiate treatment is bad because of addiction. That's it?
The US and Europe alone use about 100 tons of oxycodone, annually. Where is that all going? Yeah yeah, diversion is a "big deal", but even if it's massive, like 50%, most of it is going to the intended target. I'm not sure how production tonnage converts to personal usage, but at 40mg/day, that's about 6 million users. Total annual US prescriptions for opiates is in the quarter billion range (divide by 12 to get a rough estimate of users?) Yet oxycodone only created 175K hospital visits in a year. So we're at a hospitalization rate of only ~3% ? I think that destroys the idea that most users suffer tremendous damage from it. So what about the other 97%? The guy that did your taxes. The person who wrote the backbend of the next app you use? The old friend that just sits around in bliss? We should tell them to sod off because, hey, not all y'all is productive enough, and I don't like your living in an escape?
That 97% could be misleading. Massive over a 3 year usage cycle it's a different 3%, so perhaps 10% of users end up with a hospital event.
I knew people that died from OD. Perhaps because they couldn't get things together, and opiates were too big a call. Or maybe because they bought random quality shit and had no way to properly dose, plus their tolerance wasn't a nice chart due to constant pressure and stigmatization of their usage forcing them into period "rehab". Scenarios that would mostly disappear with proper production and social acceptance.
I also know many more people that have been opiate addicts for presumably a long time. Otherwise fine citizens, you might thing. Most people aren't willing to talk about their usage. But keep your eyes opened in meetings; look for the people with pinned eyes. Opiate addicts are everywhere. (6 million+ oxy users alone would be 2% of the US population.)
1: http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-related...
Use, or dispense?
I've had two Achilles tendon surgeries, and for each surgery I was prescribed a fair-sized bottle (30?) of oxycodone. So that's about 60 tablets that were dispensed to me. I've taken probably less than five. Why not just dispense five? Because it's a bureaucratic rigamarole to dispense oxycodone, so they just dispense more than you require and let it go at that.
>> I'm still against legalizing the worst drugs like meth and heroin...
These statements are incompatible. The "worst" drugs are all sold in massive quantity by drug dealers. Psychedelics afaik have never been a big money maker. If you want to essentially defund businesses that settle disputes with chainsaws, vats of acid, and the taped torture deaths of your friends and family, you'll need to legalize the use and sale of all the drugs.
I find your assuredness amazing. The truth of the matter is that nobody has the slightest idea how the legalization of cannabis is going to play out. The coming few years are going to be very interesting. Your prediction is that pot shops will end up on High Street. My prediction is that pot shops well end up in poor neighbourhoods.
It's also been pseudo legal in California for a decade. Dispensary owners haven't been slaughtered, and cannabis is the biggest illegal drug market.
Americans won't tolerate people being dipped in vats of acid. You cannot compare our system of law enforcement to Mexico's, they're vastly different. Our police will stop that. We've dealt with exactly that sort of organized crime before. Alcohol was once controlled by violent criminals, as were casinos. There are a number of reasons why violent organized crime is able to take hold in an impoverished region like Mexico but won't here.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/02/us.mexico.marij...
Steroids abuses are rampant in the Bodybuilding world already. Hell, they talk about it so casually in BB forums and in the subreddits as if it's common.
This just highlight the fact that even if it's a ban substance they're still going to use it regardless.
(A 'steroid' is just a type of molecule; other examples of steroids are Vitamin D and estrogen.)
Also testosterone is used in anti ageing procedures ( http://fusion.net/story/42619/why-testosterone-is-the-drug-o... )
While for most other "drugs", both possession and trafficking is illegal.
I myself used to see it as a "slippery slope", but many laws and rules exist as gradients. Using "slippery slope" is reductive - it forces everything to black and white.
Drug prohibition has been poisonous to social harmony, civil rights, and the rule of law since its inception. It was never a good idea; and it is time to admit that and move forward.
Many drugs can be used safely, but there are very few drugs that cannot be used dangerously. There are even medicines that cannot be used safely that are nonetheless used in situations where they offer better odds than the alternative.
All drugs are either excreted renally (by the kidney) or metabolized (and possibly excreted) by the liver. Both of these can cause damage to the organ involved if the cumulative load of chemicals that need processing exceeds safe limits; the former is especially serious. In some cases with the latter, there can be cascading consequences due to the toxic nature of the metabolic products (as is dramatically illustrated by the metabolization of methanol).
This is why recreational drug use poses a quandary for regulation. If one is placed in the position of being responsible for determining that a substance is "safe enough" for unregulated use, it is very hard to determine a standard for making that decision. Ethanol, for instance, is clearly not "safe enough" for unregulated use. It is toxic, addictive, socially destructive, and causes thousands of deaths a year. Articulating a standard whereby one should, on one's authority, permit that people should be able to get themselves killed using some chemical one has never heard of: this is a difficult task. A regulatory structure that leans too heavily on authority --- rather than precedent, tests of merit, and community consensus decisions, for instance --- is destined to produce extremely conservative results.
I think that what these people are doing is great, and it is possibly a huge boon to large areas of psychiatric, neurochemical, and psychological research. It is clear at this point that some traditionally 'recreational' psychotropic drugs can have therapeutic effects in some situations. This will allow researchers to develop concrete evidence about specific protocols.
However, I am not sure that this is a first case for stepwise liberalization of drug policies: these are drugs that are medically interesting because of their specific effects, rather than due to the misrecognition of their actual harm. In my opinion, North American society is still at a point where we are just beginning to discuss marijuana seriously in term of harm, and the meaning of noticeable psychedelic & sensual effects are being mooted. There is already a cultural framework available for understanding and accepting recreational drug use, but it needs a lot of poking, prodding, and testing before it will be adapted by society at large. In order for drug policy liberalization to occur, there would need to be significant structural changes in policy, regulatory bodies, societal doctrines of use, and the social systems that deal with the social consequences of drug use, self-medication for dysphoric personal experiences, and non-self-supporting individuals.
For the record, have used and did enjoy psilocybin: based purely on the subjective experience, would use again, but it would be medically unadvisable for me at this time.
Palliative care, for one.
> Meth
FDA-approved to treat ADHD and obesity. Lots of people use amphetamines to great effect when working/studying.
> Cocaine
Used as a local anesthetic in nose surgery.
For example, cheap distilled spirits have little or no redeeming value. But it would be more harmful to make that illegal than otherwise. Methamphetamine (Desoxyn) is used to treat obesety and ADHD, and similar treatments for ADHD have similar potential for recreational use/abuse. But the whole Drug War is so harmful, it doesn't matter if there are therapeutic or harmless recreational uses of a drug. It would be less expensive, more effective, and more compassionate to treat addicts than to continue the Drug War, even if more people became addicted.
In addition, one might argue they pick a person up when they want to be up and relax them when they need to relax and abuse, not use is the problem. I'm not saying this argument is correct, but these drugs, like other drugs, have their uses. Which is why people use them.
The term "non-functional" has a pejorative connotation and implies humans have some teleological purpose beyond personal goals and desires. Recreation is subjective; it's not appropriate to call this a 'downside'.
I'm not saying it's not fun or worthwhile, just that hallucinogens leave you impaired in a way other drugs don't.
However, throwing out a statement like "drugs make you nonfunctional" does not help the discourse.
While not as physically safe as LSD, opiates have essentially no serious long-term health effects other than constipation. The major downside is the highly visible acute respiratory depression after overdose.
Edit: Speed is used by tons of people, and Paul Erdos said it gave him inspiration (though methamphetamine might have more downsides than other amphetamines, similar to how barbiturates are rather outclassed by benzodiazepines - but that's hardly reason to outlaw it). Many artists have used cocaine to their benefit. I'm all for psychedelics, but don't pretend that other medicines don't have plenty of value.
Perhaps another example is Keith Richards, who says heroin helped him and he doesn't regret it (and then, do we measure the positive impact such music has on other people?). Although dipping into artists for drug use is perhaps too easy of examples.
Goering was forcibly institutionalized for six months due to his morphine addiction. During his institutionalization he was strait-jacketed due to his violent behavior to the staff. He was already a leader of the NASDP that this time, having been injured during the Beer Hall Putsch.
He gained an enormous amount of weight and his behavior was viewed as increasingly bizarre and erratic over the course of his 'career'. He didn't quit until be was forced after his arrest and imprisonment at Nuremberg, where I believe he quickly lost 80-100 pounds.
It is really unclear how either of these individuals represent an example of the positive power of opiates. At best they seem to have managed to hang on despite their addition to opiates.
No comment on Keith Richards :)
Why is this so? By axiom?
Any parent will forcibly forbid her child to put any substance in his body. We make things illegal exactly because we recognize that a sufficiently large portion of the population is unable to handle a certain freedom. Now what exactly made you conclude that a sufficiently large percentage of the population can handle their use of drugs?
Making a person's diet a matter of law just goes against the values of many people. I'm well aware of the fact that some compounds lend themselves to addiction/habituation but so do many legal ones. You don't see people throwing winos and pack-a-day smokers in prison unless they otherwise break the law in a way that infringes the rights of someone else.
Likewise, if someone fails to use intoxicants or other recreational drugs responsibly and develops a debilitating habit, it makes more sense to do as we do for people who want to quit drinking or smoking, not as we do for people who rape and murder.
Making someting illegal does not mean you have to put people in prison. You do understand that we can forbid a drug and try to stop the sale of drugs, and still provide support for people who develop drug habits?
Funny that you mention cigarettes. I'm quite sure that cigarettes will be made illegal at some point in the future.
Any punishment oriented consequences are simply going to either be too harsh, or too lenient.
Does your scheme involve coercion of any kind? If not, then why is not working already? People are already free to seek help for their drug addiction.
According to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, yes. The rights belong to the people, not the government. It's the government that gets the restricted set. One group of people shouldn't be able to tell another group what to do if it's not violating anyone's rights.
I'm not saying everyone can control themselves. I'm saying trying to prohibit is less effective and more destructive than education, rehab, and prevention. I for one do not want a society entirely engrossed in recreational drug use but prohibition is not the answer. When you prohibit heroine you get krokodil.
I do agree that education and rehab are of extremely high importance, but if we have that, ilegalizations stops making any sense.
It might well be a good idea to study the therapeutic applications of these compounds more, or to change the laws. But the bottlenecks are in laws and in actually establishing the medical utility, not in synthesis. If they want to solicit donations for advocacy, fine.. but there are plenty more noble causes worthy of support. Tying it to manufacturing drugs is just bizarre.
I am asking this seriously.
Looks like you can get a box "from the future" which indicates to me it's concept packaging so you can show you support the cause, not an actual box of drugs.
With the right paperwork (which you'd need to get access to this project's product), any researcher could just as easily get access to precursor and make exactly what they want (be it MDMA, MDA, MDME, or any other variation Shulgin described, or invented afterwards by others). Plus it's easier to get licensed for owning e.g. saffrole than it is to import MDMA!
So maybe he's saying that they can do it cheaper? I doubt so, or at least I doubt that the price difference would be relevant. MDMA available underground in Europe has been more pure and cheaper than it ever was before; a gram of pure MDMA costs 20 euros retail (that's about 10 doses) if you're buying from the most expensive guy you can find. If you buy by the 100 grams, you can get it for half or a quarter of that price. So we're talking less than a euro per dose here - at a worst case estimate. After taking everything into account, I have a hard time imagining cost being a factor here (the low price on the underground market being a fascinating topic itself here - how can these clandestine manufacturing gangs make real money on their operations, after counting for the high cost of doing business?) (and before anyone says that you don't know the quality of what you buy on the black market, these people are professional pharmacologists, they could easily check quality of a sample - until a few years ago, you could get your pills checked at raves for free FFS).
Now if they're looking for a million dollars to fund drug legalization work, then fine, that's a worthy goal in itself - but that's listed only in passing in the project. So the only conclusion left is that this project is a PR stunt, where they're using a headline grabbing project description to fund much less exotic advocacy work.
(my comments in this thread make it seem that I have first hand knowledge about these things, but it's been well over 15 years since I last used or even saw illegal drugs. I just have a an interest in the economics and law of underground (drug) markets, and I read case law, reports from our equivalent of the DoJ, papers from academic researchers and government drug monitoring agencies to keep up to date. Hey, other people collect stamps.)
First of all, creating an account just to submit a commercial link? That should be a bannable offense, unless we are cool with marketers selling their stuff here.
Second, I'm fairly sure this campaign goes against Indiegogo's term of use. I would expect an actual ban there.
Third, and more to the point: I could get behind such a campaign if the money went first towards legal access and second to production. The campaign may use as many nice words as they want, but ultimately, they are not putting their money where their mouth is. They "will support EmmaSofia's work to legalize recreational use"... after collecting a nice 300-600K, and only if people pay 400K extra for it. Call me skeptic.
And all of that without getting into the legal aspect of it, which I don't like either.
People replying to threads with a small comment then squeezing in the link to their site "and we are http://blahblah.com have done this...." then paragraphs about their product
If there's anywhere that should be okay with commercial promotion its here.
And that's what I like about the place. No where else on the internet can you find people at the ground level, promoting themselves and engaging in discussion. If you want to ask hard questions about the product, its hard to do it to a billboard in time square, but a lot easier to do against someone who's promoting it on HN.
More to the point: call me negative, but I think that fomenting a "post and run" style will lead to a situation in which you find it increasingly harder to talk to the actual creators. I'd rather not see "send link to HN" become yet another item on the self-promotion checklist.
To be fair, you're right post and run is a bad concept, but a lot of that happens already and its simply downvoted before it ever makes it close to the frontpage.