This is the effect of drug prohibition in our modern age. You can attack the supply chain, but not the demand. Savvy entrepreneurs, internet marketing and a cornucopia of untested synthetic drugs will continue to satisfy the demands of a largely youthful consumer base.
We've made the safest drugs illegal, only to open up a vast market in utter unknowns. Better the devil you know.
This is the problem.. They've also made alcohol, which is supposedly more dangerous than, for example, cannabis or MDMA, legal. Nicotine is also dangerous and legal.
Sugary water will catch wild yeasts from the air and spontaneously ferment into alcohol [1]. It's incredibly difficult to prevent its production. AFAIK, 5-MeO-DMT or "Meow Meow" don't magically appear just because you forgot to put a jug of apple cider in the fridge.
Generally, the safety of a given substance can be determined through its therapeutic index. The therapeutic index for a substance is calculated by taking the amount of the substance that will induce toxicity in 50% of a population divided the dose that will induce the effect of the drug in 50% of the population. In short, the ratio of how much will be (acutely) toxic to how much will make you high.
Here are some therapeutic indexes for common drugs [0]:
Heroin - 6
Alcohol - 10
Cocaine - 15
MDMA - 16
LSD - ~1000
THC - > 1000
Alcohol has very dangerous acute effects and it's very possible to overdose on alcohol. Compare to THC where a toxic dose is on the level of 15g. Assuming that THC is approximately 5% of the content of the cannabis [1] this would mean smoking 300 grams of cannabis (with 100% absorption by the body). That would make for ~600 joints (with a joint having about half a gram of cannabis) to get to a level of toxicity.
So relatively speaking, Alcohol (at least in the short term) is quite dangerous.
Those are great statistics for judging the likelihood of overdosing (although, I'm not sure it's the only factor to consider - the physically small amount of cocaine needed to OD probably mitigates its higher therapeutic index).
If you want to evaluate danger there are other factors that need to be considered -- i.e. people "safely" high on MDMA may dehydrate, and people "safely" high on LSD may jump off of a bridge.
people "safely" high on LSD may jump off of a bridge.
Sober people may jump off a bridge too. Should we outlaw sobriety? The "man on LSD thinks he can fly and jumps out of window" myth is largely that: a myth. If I recall, it was inspired by a real story of LSD experimentation on some kind of federal agent, who was given a good dose of LSD without his knowledge, thought he was going mad, and threw himself out of a window to make it end.
Long story short, a student took LSD on a class trip, which involved a visit to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. The student didn't jump off the bridge, but climbed a railing on an observation deck and fell.
I am completely against prohibition of any drug, however, I can speak from experience that LSD can genuinely drive you temporarily insane, even at relatively small doses.
More than once I have been convinced (even though I knew I had put a little piece of paper on my tongue) that what was happening to me was outside of the context of 'tripping.'
One time I would have committed suicide had I been convinced that it would have worked. I was completely under the impression that it would only be painful and not really do anything but sort of hit a 'reset' button into what was at the time essentially hell.
I'm categorizing distilled alcohol (i.e., liquor) differently than beer and wine, as I think the former is significantly more dangerous. I could be wrong, though - I wonder where it would end up on that scale if the different forms were rated distinctly.
Alcohol isn't dangerous? Compared to what? I'm a pretty conservative individual, and I've come close to dying at least three times in my life before I realized how lethal alcohol was. Luckily I had friends around me at the time - but I could easily have either overdosed or died choking on my own vomit. Many, Many others haven't been so lucky.
And, have you seen what a lifetime abuser of alcohol looks like around 50 (if they, or their liver, survive that long).
Seriously - anyone who argues for legalization of alcohol because it's "safer" than something like marijuana doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.
The last sentence there originally said 'until', rather than 'unless'. I meant that distilling alcohol (i.e., liquor) makes it quite a bit more dangerous, that's all.
"The maximum possible harm score was 100 and the minimum zero. Overall, alcohol scored 72 – against 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. The most dangerous drugs to their individual users were ranked as heroin, crack and then crystal meth. The most harmful to others were alcohol, heroin and crack in that order."
Although, I feel these scores are somewhat dependent on the relative prevalences of these substances. If we had as many meth addicts as alcoholics in the UK the picture could be somewhat different. Yet there's no denying that alcohol is a relatively evil drug.
"When drunk in excess, alcohol damages nearly all organ systems. It is also connected to higher death rates and is involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin."
Also, alcohol generally isn't that dangerous, unless people are driving and/or concentrating it via distillation.
In the case of alcohol, besides what others have said, it also causes (IMHO) much more severe social problems than cannabis and mdma do: a lot of people die from alcohol related causes every year (accidents, overdose, etc), a lot of people are injured every year because of alcohol (street fights, domestic violence, accidents, etc), a lot of property damage is caused by drunk people.. Alcohol is, in my opinion, much more damaging than at least cannabis and E.
I personally know one person who died because of long-term alcohol abuse. A friend of my brothers died of alcohol poisoning not that long ago. An old school friend almost died of pneumonia a few years ago because he passed out on the street after drinking. Countless people I or my family knew have died in alcohol-related car accidents over the years. I've seen more than a handful of peoples family or work lives be destroyed because of alcohol. I'm sorry, but I cannot agree that alcohol generally isn't that dangerous. For the record, I also know or have known people who regularly abuse or did abuse both cannabis and mdma and not one of them or their families have suffered any lasting negative effects due to it. In my opinion (and I won't hold it against you if you disagree, but theres no way I'll change my mind), alcohol is much worse than thc and mdma. (I don't mean to say that they're not bad, just that alcohol, which is legal, is much worse).
I phrased that poorly. The 'unless' in the last sentence was originally 'until'; I meant that distilling alcohol (liquor) makes it significantly more dangerous than non-distilled (beer, wine, etc.).
I encountered a lot of drunk street people while working at a public library for several years, including a guy who had to have his stomach pumped because he (initially, discreetly) drank way too much vodka on a bench outside. I know that hard liquor can be very destructive, both in the short and long term.
(My main point was how difficult it is to control alcohol production, that was just an aside.)
Fair enough. I'd argue that they're doing a pretty bad job controlling production of illegal drugs too, though. Hell, some illegal drugs (ie mushrooms) can be found walking around the countryside (if you know what you're looking for, at least).
Too late for the edit window: I phrased the last sentence poorly, I meant to say, "Also, alcohol is probably made quite a bit more dangerous when concentrated via distillation (into hard liquor), or when people are driving."
The distillation is also where organized crime comes in, whether it's the mob or moonshiners and rum-runners. Making hard cider is easy, but running a still and distribution ring is probably beyond most people, and cider, beer, and wine aren't concentrated enough for smuggling.
5 methoxy dimethyl triptamine IS NOT "Meow" (Mephedrone!) They are not anything like each other in effects or chemistry. Please check your facts, childrens lives are at stake here.
I know they're different, but I can see that being ambiguous since I didn't use three nouns and a serial comma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Ambiguity). I meant that to read like, "AFAIK, X, Y, and Z don't magically appear...".
That's what I get for posting just before bed, I guess - too much ambiguous phrasing.
Nicotine and the increased cholinergic activity it causes have been shown to impede apoptosis, which is one of the methods by which the body destroys unwanted cells (programmed cell death). Since apoptosis helps to remove mutated or damaged cells that may eventually become cancerous, the inhibitory actions of nicotine may create a more favourable environment for cancer to develop, though this remains to be proven.
Also women who use nicotine gum and patches during the early stages of pregnancy face an increased risk of having babies with birth defects, according to a study of around 77,000 pregnant women in Denmark. The study found that women who use nicotine-replacement therapy in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy have a 60 percent greater risk of having babies with birth defects, compared to women who are non-smokers.
Nicotine is a very powerful constrictor and decreases the flow of blood to the periphery of the body. It has been measured and found that there is a 29 percent blood-flow decrease to the thumb after smoking two cigarettes.
Cigarette smoke has a number of carcinogens in it. While nicotine itself is not known to be a carcinogen [0] it does inhibit programmed cell death [1]. Thus, nicotine promotes carcinogenic activity in the lungs and in other bodily tissues.
Interestingly, THC seems to have the exact opposite effect promoting programmed cell death rather than inhibiting it [2]. This may lead to a low risk of lung cancer when smoking marijuana as compared to a high risk of lung cancer when smoking cigarettes [3].
"This may lead to a low risk of lung cancer when smoking marijuana as compared to a high risk of lung cancer when smoking cigarettes"
Many people roll tobacco and marijuana into joints. So this probably isn't true in many cases. It would be true if marijuana were to be smoked on it's own in a joint.
Additionally, people tend to hold the marijuana smoke in a lot longer than they do tobacco, so (while I don't have any evidence), I imagine that also makes it more dangerous.
Nicotine demethylates when heated into nornicotine. This reacts with saliva to form the carcinogenic N-nitrosonornicotine -- which is also found in any variety of cured tobacco.
While not itself carcinogenic, it is incredibly hard to separate nicotine from cancer, unfortunately.
From memory, I believe one line of thinking is that vasoconstrictors (of which nicotine is one), in the course of chronic exposure / activity, promote rigidity aka hardening of blood vessels.
I see now what you mean, although I think the brevity and nature of the comment made it easier to do so. Upvoting your comment (I did not downvote it, before).
Also, alcohol is both dangerous and good for you, depending on how you use it. A recent study showed that moderate drinkers outlive heavy drinkers, but heavy drinkers outlive non-drinkers. As with all drugs, the key is dosage control, cost versus benefit, and personal responsibility.
But that's not good enough for some people. They want to incarcerate those who produce or use anything that might be harmful when used irresponsibly. Either that or they want a piece of the action.
It's quite possible to use ordinary food and vitamins irresponsibly, with great physical and psychological harm. So naturally some people want to play the "give me a cut or go to jail" game with those substances as well.
It seems that these people won't be happy until every human activity is either prohibited or mandatory. Freedom is not an option with them.
So now you have the insane situation of bureaucrats racing to ban new things, and "meta-chemists" racing to devise new things that haven't been banned yet. What a waste.
(I'm not saying it is safe, but...) It's worth noting that all studies on the long-term effects of illegal drugs have to be done (by necessity) on people who generally, due to their lifestyle, are exposed to a myriad of products that are (potentially) harmful to their bodies, and for hardcore users, have other aspects of their lifestyle that expose them to risks (plainly put, drug users often use different kinds, drink, party and smoke a lot, and addicts are prone to being homeless and/or in prostitution, exposing them to various medical dangers). So it's very hard to isolate what effects are to be ascribed to the MDMA (or variants) and what to other factors.
I know that article is talking specifically about MDMA, but I think the dangers of ecstasy are more due to the fact that in recent years it doesn't actually contain much MDMA and instead uses much less understood chemicals, which are probably more dangerous than MDMA would be.
You're mistaken. The metabolites of seratonin, in excess, are neurotoxic. MDMA works a vesicular releaser, flooding the space between cells with the neurotransmitters that make you feel good. As the brain metabolizes the recently released flood, waste is produced. The brain can healthfully handle a certain level of waste, but beyond a certain level and you risk cellular death. However, this suggests that low doses of MDMA may not pose a significant risk.
This is how it was explained to me during my "Drugs and Human Behavior" class 5 years ago at Drexel.
This was going on at least back in 2000-2001; I still have a "poisonous non-consumables" catalog in my basement somewhere (I have friends who are into this kind of thing).
Read the forum posts about this stuff online; it's funny, there's a backlash of enthusiasts calling vendors like this guy "slash and burn" outfits for popularizing chemicals and getting them banned.
Meh, this has been going on since MDMA was put on banned substances lists across the world in the 1980's. Up until a few years ago, so-called 'smart shops' (in the Netherlands selling drug paraphernalia, 'coming down' products like vitamin pills and magic mushrooms before they were banned) would sell 2C-B which has been synthesized by Shulgin in the 1970's already, and documented along with MDMA, MDA, MDE etc. in PIHKAL.
Drug legislation that I am familiar with (all of them Western European) is designed to cope with this process. There is usually a 'drug act' which prohibits all materials on a secondary list, and this list is then to be adjust by 'the minister' or similar, which in practice means that there is a ministry that can fairly easily (within a few weeks) add substances that are banned. It's cat and mouse, true, but the 'war' (between chemists and the government) had largely calmed down by the late 1990's. I guess when new forms of drugs come into vogue, that variations pop up, but these too will be driven into the margins in a few years. (typically after a while the processes for manufacturing become so difficult or dependent on expensive/hard to get precursors that it get out of reach for amateur chemists, at which the police call it 'good enough'.)
For those interested, the Uncle Fester books (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Preisler) are readily available online and very interesting from a 'chemistry hacker' point of view (I don't know anything about chemistry but I still enjoyed reading them very much, for the 'underground glamour' aspect and the inventiveness. Don't take any of the legal advice in the books though, the guy may be a great chemist but on other things he has some strange ideas.).
As a side note, is this 'meow meow' really popular across Europe? I don't know much about it but it seems to me that it's only widely spread in the UK (then again I get all my information on 'the scene' from journal articles and government reports so I may just be lagging in information).
However, the Federal Analog Act has been notably tested twice in court to criminalize new substances and the Act was not upheld the first time and was upheld the second time. So it is not of yet well established and it is suppliers that are at risk of prosecution, not consumers.
A lot of designer drugs are synthesized in places like Israel, which has no law prohibiting drug analogs. Mephedrone started to become widely popularized in the Middle East and Europe because of an Israeli manufacturer/online distributor.
Quote from the pharma crime director of Israel's Ministry of Health: "Israel, to my sad dismay, is a major leader in designer drugs for this reason."
Isn't the federal analog act what they use to bust people who are selling fake drugs? The reasoning being, well you said it was the same as illegal drug x so we're busting you as if you were selling illegal drug x (even if what you were selling is perfectly legal oregano). It's a really kind of Alice in Wonderland war on drugs reality but it actually happens all the time. Just put into google news "busted for selling fake drugs" or something like that and you'll get tons of stories.
Not knowing enough about chemistry: what are the chances of people with medicine bought in another country being stopped as carrying something "substantially similar" to a drug?
European authorities blame mephedrone for the death of three young people in the U.K. and Sweden in recent years.
Except, at least in the case of the two teenagers who died in the UK, it was in the news a few months ago that autopsies later showed that they didn't actually have any mephedrone in their systems.
scare tactics induced by the media to try and cover up these drugs. I'm not defending drone, it's a horribly fiendish poison and it's certainly something which can kill you if taken in a large enough dose. But media corps lying about the facts on these drugs isn't helping us advance anywhere
By the way, I know a few people who have taken mephedrone and the general consensus is that its bad: side-effects appear to include not being able to sleep for the next few days, depression, agitation and loss of concentration. I would very strongly advize people to NOT take mephedrone.
Under current policy regimes consumers seek drugs which aren't illegal yet and don't pay much attention to their safety or lack of safety testing. This seems suboptimal. If these drugs were legal, consumers would prefer drugs that made them feel good and had a good safety record.
I think libertarians under estimate the good that can come from regulation. Regulation can protect people before the bad thing happens. If the drug kills you, your family can take that company to court and get them shut down, but you are already dead and that sucks.
On the other hand, I suspect that over regulation by the US FDA has killed a large number of people by making it too difficult for new medicines to get to market.
Any choice in the prohibition/regulation debate is going result in some dead people. The goal is to find the point on the spectrum with the least number of deaths. I don't know exactly where that is, but I do feel over regulation is destroying Mexico and other parts of South America and we should move towards less regulation.
Keeping the conversation within the domain of the current article, there is no policy goal to mitigate harm from recreational drugs. If a drug makes people feel good it will be outlawed whether it is completely harmless or very dangerous. This has the side effect of pushing some people from relatively harmless but illegal drugs whose effects are well understood to potentially harmful new drugs that are not yet illegal.
No lives will be saved by this policy, which isn't surprising since the goal is not harm mitigation (despite the rhetoric of government officials) but keeping people from consuming psychoactive substances that make them feel good.
Are far as FDA regulation vs. liability is concerned - you cannot outlaw the production of drugs which will kill some people. All you can do is provide incentives for drug makers to research the risks of their products as thoroughly as possible. Drugs are still approved by the FDA that kill people despite the fact that the FDA approval process is stupidly expensive.
There is no perfect world. The goal of policy should be to reduce risk in a cost-effective way. Harm reduction should be balanced with the corresponding damage regulation does to life-saving medical research. After we weigh various policies we may find that the status quo is suboptimal.
As rational people we should keep our minds on the right trade-offs and the right metrics. Many people are comfortable with the idea of a regulatory state regardless of its effectiveness - it makes them feel safe. We should not let these emotions of safety influence our thinking overmuch.
" If a drug makes people feel good it will be outlawed whether it is completely harmless or very dangerous."
" ....the goal is not harm mitigation (despite the rhetoric of government officials) but keeping people from consuming psychoactive substances that make them feel good."
Supporting evidence? Those are some dramatic claims you are making.
I felt good with morphine in my system after an operation, and felt a lot worse without it once the effects wore off. Also, a nice cold beer is just the ticket after a long week. No danger of those being banned anytime soon.
Marijuana is safer than alcohol or tobacco, and it's certainly safer than whatever recreational substance some guy is cooking up in his lab. Why is it illegal? Have you seen "Reefer Madness"? Scientific piece of work, that.
A huge short-term risk from most recreational drugs is simply not knowing what is in them, especially if they come in a pill, powder, or liquid form. And that is an effect of prohibition, not the drugs themselves. Of course government officials will pontificate on the horrors of drugs every time prohibition kills another kid that doesn't know what is in his ecstasy.
These chemicals are already illegal under straightforward interpretations of US law, but they're not illegal "enough" to prevent them from being sold online and shipped Fedex.
This seems like the kind of "illegal" that mostly matters if you hang a sign out your window and start doing business.
It's worth noting though that there's really no intellectually valid argument in support of mephedrone or MDAI or whatever-the-hell-else they're selling --- if you're going to make meth, cocaine, and LSD illegal, this stuff clearly should be too.
MDAI and MDAT seem to me to be particularly suitable drugs for therapy. Whenever you blanket ban a group of chemicals you also make research on medicinal use practically impossible.
You can see the actual products the have for sale here: http://alchemylabz.eu/products.php. A little Googling on the listed analogues for sale reveals that most people in the usual forums for recreational drug use have long written these sorts of guys of as scammers. However, with this WSJ article, I'd say they are now verified as legit. I expect his business to pick up considerably...
Needless to say, this is quite an interesting game of cat and mouse and just goes further to illustrate the futility of prohibition.
There was a small cafe here in Montreal that used to sell legal highs but had to shut its doors due to pressures from law enforcement. I once tried Salvia Divinorum (which has no known negative side effects [1]) and I can testify it's definitely not a placebo as I first suspected with "legal highs".
I wouldn't call Salvia high a high. It's more like a very intense psychedelic trip, to my knowledge, comparable with DMT and stronger than acid or shrooms. People buying Salvia as a replacement for pot are in for a big surprise :)
Don't be fooled by thinking salvia is just a "legal high". It can cause profound ego-loss for upwards of ten minutes. The history is that it is what native american shamans used to chew on to see visions.
A common experience is one in which people say "I forgot that I was something, then I realized I was something but I wasn't sure what that was." They then had to figure out the world again as the drug wore off. I think it's foolish to group something this psychologically powerful within the same group as something that "just gets you high" like alcohol or pot.
You're right that it's much more powerful than alcohol/pot but the truth is that it is legal in most countries and states. The "upside" is that its effects totally wear off after ~15 minutes and there are no known long term or addictive effects.
The fact that some drugs are legal certainly doesn't mean they're not as strong or powerful than ones that are illegal. Salvia is, apparently, one of the strongest hallucinogens there is. The difference between it and, say, LSD, is that the Salvia "trip" only lasts ten to twenty minutes. I have personally tried Salvia some years back and have had some seriously bizzare experiences. I'd rather not post them online, but if you're interested, send me an email.
Mephedrone is horrible stuff, quite similar to methamphetamine in chemistry/effects on the body.[1] It was EXTREMELY popular in the UK when it was legal up until last year. This was due to the total and complete unavailability of the much safer, less addictive and much more well tested MDMA (ecstacy) from the summer of 2008 until mid 2009.
This has been speculated to have happened as a result of international co-operation to make sassafras oil, the main precursor of MDMA less available, and generally crack down on the production of one of the worlds most popular synthetic narcotic drugs. This almost certainly had a lot to do with the 2008 summer olympics in china, where a lot of production of precursors and final products occurs.
The law of unintended consequences rears its head again. Prevent the supply of one drug and the demand switches to a newer more dangerous drug, whose supply you have no ability to control.
We've made the safest drugs illegal, only to open up a vast market in utter unknowns. Better the devil you know.