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

An interesting topic. No drugs are illegal, just controlled, classified to avoid misuse, abuse or overdose/addiction. Our own bodies have biological receptors for certain controlled substances, hard wired and built in by nature - the question would ask why?

Good luck with the war on drugs!

In the US, at least, there are some drugs that can not be prescribed even by a doctor. These include Heroin and LSD, there are probably others. On a federal level also Marijuana, although as I said some states have decriminalized this, either by prescription, or just on demand.

Heroin addicts are treated by methadone, a synthetic form of heroin. My wife's father was given THC a refined pill form of marijuana on an experimental program in the late 1970's.

F S

Very interesting FS

I personally think the Rev. Nick was entirely apt in post 17.

Of course, some of the horror comics were still around when I was a kid.

I suppose one can take the history from the early post Napoleonic era, the slave trade on the high seas outlawed.

This left a lot of people with vessels and large inventories of narcotics formerly used to keep the slaves in submissive states that they no longer had any immediate use for.

They hit upon the idea of using those vessels and narcotics to open the China trade and the opium wars were on.

The next great watershed moment in the history of the drug wars csme in the 1870s with the introduction of the first modern synthetic drugs, things like heroin and chloral hydrate.

The era of the shanghaied sailors succeeded the age of the press gangs.

Christian Science arose in reaction and succeeded in legislating prohibition, with an unfortunate paradoxical effect.

These days, the illicit drug traffic is tne economic foundation of world terrorism.

So the result of drug prohibition is world terrorism. Which costs the most lives, terrorism? If so on pure economic grounds it seems prudent to legalise drugs?

Well, the Afghanistanian economy is said to rely heavily on the byproducts of its poppy crop. This s, of course, counterintuitive, given that he country could easily be insanely wealthy just by using the trillion dollars' worth of rare minerals in its rocks.

thanks FS that was interesting.

Sorry, can't remember your name up there - there are most definitely some drugs that are illegal and can't be obtained legally at all (although my guess is that government agencies could, à la Walter White make some lovely blue crystal meth, for example)

So here's the thing. The War on drugs as started by Nixon (although there is a history of narcotic prohibition and things like the opium wars from before then) is an interesting study for me because it turns (illegal) drug use into a security issue. Worldwide as it happens. But there are those, some states and plenty of NGOs who say that all drugs should be decriminilised and the "War" on drugs should be desecuritized.

Plus - the war on drugs morphs into the war on terror - and as we know, that generally means that a government wants to do things that a lot of their general population find... hmm, too controlling, shall we say?

Speaking personally, the main reason I'm opposed to the War on Drugs is because I believe that, like Prohibition before it, it's causing a lot more problems than it's solving.


Mind you, I don't have any statistics on hand to back that up, but as I understand it an awful lot of those NGOs do.

My point was that ONLY THE scheduling and regulation of controlled substances place them in the 'illegal' spectrum. MDA offences would not exist without these governmental lists. Even the definition of a controlled drug DEA and DOJ has no mention of the illegality of possession or use, merely the category each drug is placed into with regard to its medical usage or inherent health implications. Legislation merely enforces the control nothing more. Criminalisation of all aspects of narcotic production, possession and usage varies massively throughout the world.decriminalisation does not remove the drug from the controlled category but simply removes the relevant statute.

FWR...

There is a strong racial element to drug prohibition. Here's an article written by a US Federal judge (promoting a book he wrote on the subject).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judge-frederic-block/war-on-drugs_b_2384624.html

Internationally, the US pressured many countries into signing treaties agreeing to likewise prohibit various narcotics and illicit drugs. Now the US is struggling to deal with many of these treaty restrictions as the public warms to the notion of legalizing certain substances, most significantly cannabis.

Another aspect to this to look at is the current power of the prison industry in the US that is actively lobbying against decriminalization. This also touches on the racism of many drug laws. Notable is how possession of crack cocaine carries significantly stricter penalties than possession of the powder form of cocaine.

The drug laws often remind me of the way the Teutonic knights enforced their amber embargo during the early rennaisance.

Sometimes, prohibitionary measures are very potent means of forcing price increases, meanwhile creating a de facto tax shelter.

Its dirty, its dishonest, but some people are just naturally that way.

Meanwhile, there is nothing new about drugs being used to enslave.

This is an important key issue in context of American legal usages on narcotics, whether one wants to take the idealistic or cynical point of view on the question.

Usually the truth is somewhere between opposing extremes of univalent viewpoint, but people given to univalent outlook are not usually very capable of being concerned about a truth founded in authoritative integration of opposing viewpoints, let alone an analysis predicated not only in left-right perspectives, but also in pronomial versus antinomial outlook.

" there is nothing new about drugs being used to enslave" [ITIWBS]

I think of tobacco as the Native Americans' revenge on the European settlers. Having an addiction is a lot like being enslaved.

Not that I've had either [addiction or slavery]. Just sayin'.

'Cept they were all addicted to it too, along with massive alcoholism, depression, and poverty....

Which is just the tip of the iceberg.

Awww sheet, is this something else that I have to feel guilty about? Massive numbers of the world are inherently addicted or addictive because I was born an anglo, caucasian male? The load just gets heavier and heavier for what people did 2, 12 and 42 generations ago.

"Cept they were all addicted to it too, along with massive alcoholism, depression, and poverty...." [Mr. X]

Did they have alcoholism before Columbus came along? I thought the Europeans introduced alcohol to them.

"It should be noted, however, that most of these beverages were relatively weak, presumably no stronger than wine (which typically runs from 8-14% ABV). Whiskey, on the other hand, is usually 60% ABV, and grain alcohol (e.g., moonshine) is often 95% ABV. As a result, when Europeans introduced these stronger drinks, Native Americans were in for a shock."
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/11/native-americans-introduced-alcohol-europeans/

So, apparently the native Americans were receptive, not realizing that the new drinks were much stronger than what they were used to.

'Firewater', as used to poison native Americans by illegal arms dealers during the era of the wild west, was compounded of 'white lightning', illegal distilled alcohol, 1 gallon, boiled together with a pound of tobacco and a pound of soap.

The soap was homemade lye soap, where the lye comes from in the kind of 'cheap rotgut' whiskey that nearly killed, among others, Charles Darwin, during the voyage of the Beagle.

The illegal arms dealers, 'gun runners' were among the targets of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the USA when the ATF was first created.

http://www.atf.gov/

Re: post 27
Many people misunderstand the Opium Wars, they were not fought to stop the trade, but to force China to allow the trade http://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars I thought of mentioning that in my earlier post.



A big part of the Native American alcohol problem comes from the policies of providing food and goods to keep them on the reservations and not letting them hunt and fish as they had for many centuries. When you have nothing better to do, there is a tendency to drink to excess. Many tribes try to focus on jobs and industry to help improve the lives of their people.

F S