
Why the war on drugs has been made redundant - _delirium
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jun/16/designer-drugs-legal-highs
======
diego_moita
This use of the term "redundant" is either ignorant or irresponsible. It
implies that the author either doesn't understand the meaning of the word
redundant or doesn't understand the public health implications of substance
abuse.

By definition, redundant describes something that is not necessary, that can
be removed without loss. That is definitively not the case in fighting
substances abuse. We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we
need to worry about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco. Would someone call
"redundant" the fight against teenage alcoholism? Would someone say that we
should stop paying attention the epidemics of obesity? Worrying about these
issues is not redundant and worrying about drugs also isn't so.

There are things society must forbid (e.g. murder), there are things that it
must discourage (e.g. driving without safety belts) and others that it
shouldn't bother. I can accept that we move dangerous drugs use from the first
to the second category. It is irresponsible to move it to the 3rd.

The proper term should be ineffective, not redundant.

~~~
betterunix
"We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we need to worry
about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco"

The war on drugs is not even remotely similar to the regulation of alcohol and
tobacco. Soldiers do not invade your house because you are suspected of
growing tobacco.

What is needed is for the war on drugs to end, for the DEA to be disbanded,
and for a system that regulates quality to be introduced. If an adult wants to
buy recreational drugs, nothing should prevent them from doing so. Mixing
public health and paramilitary police is far more dangerous than any drugs
people might consume (my Godwin senses are tingling...).

~~~
jksmith
DEA is a jobs program, just like the TSA. You will never, ever convince any
politicians to do anything about this because they're part of the program
themselves. Just pay your taxes, live with it, and stay out of the way.

~~~
trentmb
What's stopping the DEA from becoming a regulatory organization?

~~~
dfc
The Food and Drug Administration.

------
kiwidrew
New Zealand is preparing to introduce new legislation specifically to address
the "whack-a-mole" issue that the article talks about:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill)

It will basically set up a regulatory regime whereby any recreational drug
which can be proven "low risk" can be sold to anyone over the age of 18. Not
really all that different from how "regular" pharmaceutical drugs are tested
and approved, actually.

~~~
Nursie
It's a shame it doesn't cover things we already know are pretty safe (THC!),
but baby-steps I suppose...

~~~
trentmb
And what about the other compounds found in marijuana?

~~~
falk
Because marijuana is a schedule 1 drug it's rather hard to study. Not that it
should matter because any adult should be able to put whatever they want in
their body.

[http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-
sc...](http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-scientists-
study-pot)

------
rwmj
Designer drugs show why a proper system of regulation is needed to replace the
irresponsible "war" on drugs.

But it's dangerous to think that the law cannot attempt to make whole classes
of chemicals illegal and so we don't need to worry about the war on drugs any
more. The law can do that, and cause even more massive damage when it does so.
Designer drugs are also likely to kill a whole lot of people, bolstering
politicians who want to keep the status quo.

~~~
aidos
Indeed. How about just making sure that the drugs people take are safe, of a
high quality and available without feeding a criminal underbelly? Nah, that'd
just be silly.

~~~
at-fates-hands
You have to consider what the Mexican drug cartels would do if you regulated
these drugs and essentially put them out of business. How do you think they
would react??

~~~
MichaelGG
I'd suspect if you gave a 15-year exclusive license to a few companies,
Mexico'd get cleaned up really fast. Dealing with the DEA and what not is one
thing; but dealing with Monsanto?

~~~
shabble
Since they're already dousing the place with herbicides anyway[1], they just
need to release Roundup-Ready Coca plants!

[1]
[http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Drug_War/Monsanto_DrugWar....](http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Drug_War/Monsanto_DrugWar.html)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Roundup-ready Coca is old news.
[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html)

------
rdl
Our Glorious Leader Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to keep us safe
from consuming these drugs through the Protecting Our Youth from Dangerous
Synthetic Drugs Act ([http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-
relea...](http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-
releases?ID=2ffa01a7-a73c-4016-aec7-07da34d9f230)). I'd say something about
voting her out of office in 2016 (for this and for running intelligence
committees which rubber-stamp NSA spying, among many other things), but she's
already said she won't run again.

~~~
s_q_b
I do want to note that some of these drugs have dramatically worse side
effects than the illegal drugs for which they substitute.

MDPV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including
psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks.

Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the
wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users
to behave violently toward persons or property. To me, the designer MDPV and
PCP would be the poster drugs for this category.

~~~
Nursie
Not to be picky but I think it's MDPV, not MPDV. Could be wrong of course.

IIRC most of the so-called cannibalistic attacks that were attributed to bath
salts turned out not to be. For instance the famous Miami face-eating attack
turned up no evidence of anything but pot in the guy's system -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack)

~~~
s_q_b
Quite right on MDPV.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenedioxypyrovalerone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenedioxypyrovalerone)

The Miami incident was unrelated, but a casual googling will give you plenty
of bath salts horror stories.

In the town where I grew up, bath salts became a large problem. At one point,
a man on a two day binge broke into a local monastery, got into bed with one
of the priests, and held him at knife point until morning. Just a month ago,
the federal government busted a producer in a nearby house holding seven kilos
of the stuff.

From work with community outreach and through relatives in law enforcement, I
can tell you that one minor shift in the drug market radically altered the
enforcement landscape. It was getting very bad for a while before the drugs
were banned.

I don't know whether our experience was unique or rare as a community. I
suspect our experience was simply an accelerated version of what would have
happened elsewhere. For some reason, we had little enforcement, wide
distribution, and a burgeoning market in the stuff. We were among the first
areas in the country to pass a municipal ordinance to ban the substances, and
request help from the Federal government.

I suspect that, as an area with harsh drug laws and strict enforcement of
marijuana and cocaine, the balloon effect drove up interest in the designer
chemicals. But that's just a hunch.

~~~
Nursie
>> I suspect that, as an area with harsh drug laws and strict enforcement of
marijuana and cocaine, the balloon effect drove up interest in the designer
chemicals. But that's just a hunch.

I think you're probably right.

Imagine what we could do in a non-prohibitionist atmosphere, where mainstream
labs could research into stuff that gives people a buzz without being
addictive or harmful...

~~~
ippisl
since all brain receptor become less sensitive as you expose them to their
target chemical, doesn't it means that drugs will always cause some damage and
be addictive ?

~~~
Nursie
Not necessarily. Yes (AFAIK) receptors become downregulated when frequently
exposed to drugs, but there are some drugs (LSD is usually cited) seem to be
non-addictive, people don't typically use them chronically, and as a result
damage is unlikely.

Addiction and habituation are not just down to this effect either. I know a
variety of people who have been both daily pot smokers and daily tobacco
users. The tobacco use was far harder to stop. (I'm not going to pretend pot
doesn't have some addiction potential, and in fact it does seem to have minor
withdrawals, just not anywhere near the level of tobacco, opiates etc).
Receptors also recover after varying amounts of time.

So I don't see why we couldn't research things that are fun, don't compel
people to chronic use, have minimal impact with occasional use, etc etc. It
may not be possible to make the 'perfect' drug, but it may be possible to
eliminate many of the harms. Particularly where some drugs are toxic over and
above their primary effect, have toxic metabolic products etc

------
beat
The war on drugs is "obsolete" (or some other variant of fail) only insofar as
we assume that the _purpose_ of the war on drugs is to reduce or eliminate
drug use. But if you put its purpose into indirect terms - enforcing class
distinctions, providing minor harassment charges to apply to social
undesirables, encouraging the militarization of police forces, providing a
funding firehose for certain government agencies, and making a convenient and
simplistic boogieman for cheap politicians - it's a spectacular success.

------
bayesianhorse
I'm not so much into chemistry, but shouldn't the number of production-viable
cannabinoids with psychotropic effects be quite limited? Can the producers
just run out of possible drugs? Or is that limit too high?

On the other hand, I don't think that this finding will change drug policy.
Too much has been invested in the war on drugs, there is not going to be a
180° turn anytime soon. Especially not when the upturn in designer drugs does
not come with an increased mortality...

~~~
refurb
To answer your question, the limit is just too high.

There is actually quite a lot of "flexibility" in terms of chemical structure
for most drugs. You can replace a methyl with an ethyl, propyl, i-propyl and
the activity is _usually_ comparable. Aromatic rings can be replaced with
other variants. There are probably several thousand different structures that
would acceptable psychotropic effects, if not tens of thousands.

~~~
ippisl
I haven't got chemistry knowledge, but isn't the effect of say a THC analog is
based on binding between THC and a certain receptor?

Wouldn't it be possible to offer kits or services for chemical manufacturers,
to test the level of binding of their chemicals, and define that above a
certain level of binding , you're chemical have to be regulated in some way?

~~~
shabble
It is perhaps possible, but currently neither quick, reliable nor cheap. You'd
need to check that: (a) it's not immediately toxic, (b) there's no immediate
metabolisation that renders it inactive, (c) it can enter the bloodstream, (d)
it can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and (e) it can either substitute for
a particular neurotransmitter, act as a releasing agent, act as a reuptake
inhibitor, or several other proposed and known methods of actually causing
'mind-altering' effects.

This is essentially the 'drug-discovery pipeline' that big pharma spends
hundreds of millions on when developing new medications.

~~~
ippisl
I think you're taking it a bit too far. If say i sell bath salts, which aren't
supposed to be consumed, why would there be a need to check
metabolism/toxicity and such ?

But if metabolism can transform said chemical , then sure, you've got to take
it into account. But many of those drugs can be detected by pre-metabolism
binding, i think.

~~~
shabble
Metabolism can go either way, for instance Codeine is thought to be mostly a
prodrug[1], which is converted to morphine in the liver. So it's only really
effective when taken orally, because it relies on the first-pass metabolism
for its action. Morphine itself, on the other hand, is quite significantly
converted into inactive metabolites when taken orally. So you end up with IV
morphine being ~3x more active as the same oral dose, because it bypasses the
first bit. Other drugs are exclusively one route because they rely on other
processes for transformation or absorption.

This matters because it's not really appropriate to schedule chemicals which
happen to trigger a response in a test-kit, but are not plausibly drugs of
abuse due to side-effects, or lack of any reasonable mechanism of getting to
the sites where they'd be active.

The "intended for consumption" is a convenient fiction for the head-shops and
dodgy websites that sell such things, but actually having to test things which
aren't intended for use in certain ways would be a massive imposition on,
well, everything that uses chemicals[2].

There are heuristics that cover a lot of ground, and that's basically what the
Analog Act tries to preempt, but there are still huge numbers of potentially
active compounds we have no idea about. In-vitro binding studies are perhaps
the next filtering step, but you still ought to have to demonstrate actual
demonstrable plausibility of action for it to be a crime[3]. In addition, if
you have something that feels like cocaine, but rapidly metabolises into a
lethal neurotoxin or whatever in the same dose, it's not going to be a drug of
abuse, except perhaps in suicides.

In terms of banning/restricting sale of things, _maybe_ binding data would be
sufficient, but I'm not sure just what the implications for testing &
compliance for everyone involved would be.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug)

[2] Despite some TV adverts to the contrary, this would be _everything_.

[3] Leading to (IMO) the utterly bizarre world of fakes/illegal placebos, for
which in many places you can be convicted for the same degree crime as the
drug you purported to be selling, rather than say, fraud.

------
FrankenPC
It's funny how people still imagine the government plays by some rule book.
They only pretend to. If they so choose, they will make it illegal to design
or produce ANY mind altering substance without an express license. Of course,
only big pharma will be able to afford such a license. Watch and learn how the
fascists work and play in the fields of the lord.

~~~
shabble
How do you know it's mind-altering ahead of time though?

They're sold as "bath salts" or "incense" for plausible deniability. Actually
banning any abusable chemical in any form would have a massive impact on a
whole range of industries. Even heavy regulation of precursors and otherwise
important chemicals hasn't stopped novel ways of doing without them.

So you're still playing catch-up, even if you make sure your analytic lab gets
the sample on day 1, and presents you with firm evidence of both (a) what's
actually in the thing, GC/MS/NMR etc, and (b) how & why you think it's "mind-
altering". Sample $z acts as a dopamine releasing agent in the homogenized rat
neural tissue[1]" is enough to publish a pre-clinical study on it, but I'd at
least hope it could be challenged if it came to a court.

And of course, it doesn't have any impact whatsoever on abuse of
pharmaceuticals, which is already on track to beat out most other drugs in
terms of accidents & fatalities in the (near) future. According to [2], it may
even have happened already to the USA.

[1] brain soup.

[2]
[http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pag...](http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pages/Reports/PDMP_Full%20and%20Final.pdf)

(not read it yet, although there's a press release/summary at
[https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescripti...](https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescription-
drugs-now-kill-more-people-in-the-us-than-heroin-and-cocaine-combined/) )

------
venomsnake
_" The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip
through your fingers."_

So after 30 years we have replaced stuff with known effects that we knew how
to cope with, with stuff that is more dangerous with lots of side effects,
untested and people are getting high all the same.

Where should we put the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner?

~~~
angersock
Into your pipe and smoke it.

------
lukifer
There is an evil hack that would get around this: pass a law which changes
drug scheduling from a black-list to a white-list, with only FDA-approved
substances allowed.

I'm uncertain whether this could be successfully passed, though. Support for
the War on Drugs is on the bubble as it is.

~~~
s_q_b
Blanket prohibitions against have run up against legal infirmities. It's the
reason the drug laws are drafted the way they are.

A whitelist law violates the requirement that the statute must be on its face
clear enough that a defendant could know whether his conduct was in violation
of the law. Most such blanket prohibitions are ruled void for vagueness.

Other statutes that run up against this problem frequently are the low level
but extremely broad harassment and terroristic threat statutes.

~~~
lukifer
There is the "I know it when I see it" standard for pornography, which is
equally dubious. If it was drafted as "knowingly consuming an unapproved
substance for the purpose of intoxication", I could see that slipping through.
But again, I'm not sure the support is there, but it would be another win for
state power.

The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous
than the real thing.

~~~
s_q_b
The obscenity ruling was a bizarre sideways move for the Supreme Court, given
their usual intense protection of the First Amendment. The "I know it when I
see it" was even said almost tongue-in-cheek.

> The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous
> than the real thing.

That, to me, is the real tragedy. These drugs are dangerous, and only going to
get more dangerous as the "good" compounds are quickly banned, leading
chemists to use less tested and more unusual compounds.

------
DanBC
Here's a story about a grandmother selling "Bath Salts". She was arrested for
selling some kind of drug. Even though the products she was selling contained
the illegal chemicals she avoided a conviction because, well, who knows. It
feels a bit random.

([http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-
nightma...](http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-nightmare-
arrest-selling-bath-salts/story-19546383-detail/story.html))

Some things that aren't obvious from that article: Her shop sells a wide
variety of drug paraphernalia (scales, pipes, bongs, cannabis seeds, items
with cannabis logos, cannabis magazines and books, etc etc.)

------
dalke
The fear of designer drugs existed already in the 1980s. The comic strip
Doonesbury even covered it - Uncle Duke hosted a designer drug conference in
his 'medical university' in Haiti.

There already exist several ways to handle derivatives and analogues in drug
prohibitions and restricted compound sales. Quoting from Wikipedia: "This then
led the Health Committee of the League of Nations to pass several resolutions
attempting to bring these new drugs under control, ultimately leading in 1930
to the first broad analogues provisions extending legal control to all esters
of morphine, oxycodone, and hydromorphone."

------
Fizzadar
Despite the fact that legalisation would not only make drugs safer while
simultaneously cutting funding to organised crime (lets not forget the tax
revenue as well) the UK Gov still believes prohibition is the key. I'd love to
see them give a detailed reason as to why alcohol is legal while cannabis is
not - it's pretty damn obvious which is 'healthier'.

------
VladRussian2
typical story of disruption through innovation. Old, entrenched interests feel
like the foundation gets washed away from under their feet while they try to
apply more and more force (laws).

------
at-fates-hands
I have no idea why people would want to mess with this stuff. Here's an
interesting article I came across a few years ago, when spice was starting to
get popular. It convinced me never to touch the stuff:

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-
shouldn...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-shouldnt-
smoke-synthetic-weed/)

~~~
Nursie
Most of those reasons are bunk. One of them seems to be "if you smoke it when
you're driving, the cops might stop you and won't know what you're smoking is
legal".

If you smoke it when driving _you are an asshole_.

Whether it's legal or not, whether it's real weed or not. Get off the road,
get baked in your living room and stay there you dangerous, selfish prick.
Also his 'hell' experience? Oh My God he took an unfamiliar substance along
with TWICE his usual dose of dextromethorphan. I'm not f*cking surprised he
had a hard time.

Most of the other reasons he gives there are to do with people purchasing
'blends' of unknown amounts of unknown chemicals on unknown plant matter.
People who want to know what they're dosing themselves with buy the pure
powders and measure carefully.

That all said, it's true that there's far more known about the safety profile
of the 'real' stuff, and you probably shouldn't touch the synthetics. But not
because of that huge pile of toss.

~~~
shabble
I've never really understood why drugs are often considered as mitigating
factors in crimes, rather than (IMO) aggravating ones.

~~~
jessaustin
Do you have that backwards? Has drug use ever been considered a mitigating
factor? If so, where and when? In the USA, alcohol intoxication is a strong
aggravating factor in motor vehicle crimes.

~~~
Nursie
I believe drunkenness has been considered under English law to be a mitigating
factor where intent is concerned, though not where the question of the crime
itself was concerned. However using drink in getting up the courage to commit
a crime is also not allowed -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intoxication_in_English_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intoxication_in_English_law)

I'm not sure how much this would fly now, as it all seems to have been debated
100 years ago.

------
badman_ting
Oh, you can still get high? Great! I guess it's not such a bad thing that
we're throwing so many people in prison, then!

