
‘Flakka,’ the new killer drug, is spreading across the country - eplanit
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article31130234.html
======
dalke
The drug warriors always like to have bogeymen lurking in the shadows.

A few years ago it was krokodil. Yet see
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/01/10/krokodil-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/01/10/krokodil-
crock-how-rumors-of-a-flesh-eating-zombie-drug-swept-the-nation/) points out
that it's a lot of hype, with no substance.

Or how 'bath salts' caused a man in New Jersey to kill a women, leading NJ
lawmakers to ban the substance, only to later have a toxicology report be
unable to find traces in the man's body:
[http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/cranford_man_indict...](http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/cranford_man_indicted_for_murd.html)

Or warnings issued by our drug warriors about crack cocaine is immensely more
addictive than regular cocaine, and requires much higher criminal penalties
... that just happen to disproportionately affect the black and poor. Yet as
the opinion piece at [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100900751.html) and others point out,
"the 20-year-old crack laws are based on myths."

Going back even further, PCP in the 1970s was said to be this rage inducing
drug, yet "Studies by the Drug Abuse Warning Network in the 1970s show that
media reports of PCP-induced violence are greatly exaggerated and that
incidents of violence are unusual and often limited to individuals with
reputations for aggression regardless of drug use" and "reports of physical
violence on phencyclidine have often been shown to be unfounded" (quotes from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine#Effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine#Effects)
).

Or how marijuana was pushed as this horrible drug which was destroying the
minds of Americans and "causes white women to seek sexual relations with
Negroes, entertainers and any others."

After nearly a century of lies, why should I believe this one is something to
worry about?

~~~
bediger4000
I could not have written this better myself, but you did forget about the
tidal wave of Heroin that was going to cause the US to fall apart in about
1970 - we paniced about PCP in the late 70s, "angel dust" was the name. Also,
where are all the babies with lobster-claw hand birth defects that LSD was
going to give us in the 70s, too?

------
omginternets
This testimonial on erowid paints a terrifying picture:
[https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=104449](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=104449)

(Take with a grain of salt, as it were)

