h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

PC: "Admittedly the proportion associated with (illegal) "drugs" would be greater if they were legal and freely available."

I don't think that's obvious, or necessarily true. How many deaths associated with illegal substances are due to lack of quality control, inadequade and propagandistic education, and people using these substances in less-than-safe circumstances because of the perceived need to hide? I don't know the answer, but it's some non-zero proportion of the total.

I don't think anyone can ever know the answer to that.

You could get some idea by studying a population where none of those restrictions apply. I wonder what the difference is between a heroin addict in, say, Amsterdam with a clean official supply and a job, and one from Britain with none of those priveleges.
or, at t'other end of the scale, Canada in a few years. Since they've just legalised cannabis.

<<...or, at t'other end of the scale, Canada in a few years. Since they've just legalised cannabis.>>

AFAIK, cannabis has never been blamed for any deaths at all. Or isn't that what you were getting at?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I think she meant that Canada is likely to legalise more drugs now they've started with cannabis. Starting at the shallow end, see?

No deaths attributed to cannabis? Hmm. Interesting. This does imply that is is less dangerous than water...

Not necessarily, just that it's less widespread...

<>

Oh I see.

<>

Yes, and one aspirin tablet is more likely to kill you than one ecstacy tablet, if you've never taken either before.

[Warning from the Sturgeon General: you *need* water to live, and aspirin provides pain relief. Recreational substances provide entertainment.]

MaW: <>

This *is* humour, right? A sort of statistical objective irony?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Well, if we assume everyone is exposed to water, then total water poisonings and drownings (perhaps pneumonia, too?) we get an impressive death rate...

100% of people who take water regularly will die...
100% of hard drug addicts have tried water...

Even if we just look at water poisoning, it's still a non-zero proportion and thus riskier than cannabis (if no-one has died as a result).

But if you're looking at it like that, chocolate is invariably fatal, as is anything else you care to name - orange juice, vitamin pills (although I don't agree with taking those unless you absolutely know you need to - like the doctor says so), beer, vodka or even tomato soup.

So it's meaningless really.

<>

Which is exactly the reason why "all heroin addicts started on cannabis" is a specious argument, yes?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

indeed

It might not even be true, anyway.

ayeaye.

sort of what I meant. Canada could be, in the future, an example of a society where usually illegal drugs are not and so the problems associated with illegality, if that is the cause, are removed, and effects can be studied without that obstacle.

That would be valuable, but social experimentation always seems a very risky business. If it goes wrong...

* shudders *

it seems to be working better than situations like the one we currently have.

Perhaps so. Didn't Portugal recently make all drugs legal? What were the consequences, does anyone know?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Did they???

I find that very hard to believe.

Ooops. I said "legalise" when I should've said "decriminalise" - - but it *did* happen, on July 1 2001. Check out http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcohol/story/0,8150,525037,00.html

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

That's not a very constructive difference.