Quite smart. From the headline I thought this was going to be officially sanctioned sources of drugs. (Drugs must pass thru some quality-control system set up by the government before being sold?) Which is clearly just the “high end” market, and the cheap many-times-cut drugs sold on the black market remain on the “low end” side.
Rather, it seems like this is setting up testing for CONSUMERS, that can come in, and ask if their sample meets new standards set by the government for the drug they want tested. A bit more formal than the music festival drug test tent.
The English title here on HN is kind of confusing. “Germany wants to introduce free analysis of drugs nationwide“ might be better than “quality control” (which implies factory production to me)
(Reading a translation, so take my opinion with a grain of bath-salts)
I’m not sure if that’s the case. I just saw the news about the state of berlin performing this free analysis with the only condition to attend a talk about safe consumption
Agreed. Anecdotally, my buddy's wife had a really bad experience, because her weed was laced with something. This is the main reason I would love to see some regulation of drug trade ( edit: some clarification may needed; legalize and then ensure it is clean and it is what it says on the container ).
Not that it is panacea. Anecdotally, IL has legalized weed and edibles are extremely inconsistent in terms of what they contain ( it says it should x, but it can easily be 2x or .05x -- it is infuriating given really high tax on those ).
Assuming that 'IL' means US-Illinois, not sure if Israel has legalized.
On the case of US-IL, the problem is that there's no competition (after 3 YEARS), because of the obvious corruption in the process from the beginning. But I wholly expected this considering how Illinois politics works. I live in a central Illinois college town (2 full Universities) and we have 2 dispensaries, both owned by the same company. A comparable city in Colorado, Boulder has 8.
Sounds interesting but not sure if it holds under scrutiny. How does this work to shrink the black market? It feels to me that it would just help boost it.
I see that but they have to consider all the consequences. Harm reduction on its own is nice but a big problem with drugs is organized crime.
Plus, I don't believe that harm reduction without rehab efforts is good because it simply encourages addicts to keep using. I think it needs to be combined with another effort to help get addicts clean.
> , I don't believe that harm reduction without rehab efforts is good because it simply encourages addicts to keep using.
This is serious misunderstanding. Less than 50% of users are addicts. Usage of LSD, Magic shrooms and MDMA is usually for occasional entertainment, like at raves and festivals. People don't get addicted to shooms, and people dont generally consume 'party drugs' alone at home.
This is just more political gymnastics that only serves to ensure the continued dominance of black markets and all of the violence and death those black markets bring.
Any substances widely consumed by people should be regulated and tested before they are sold to the public. Even the substances some people don't like other people consuming.
> Any substances widely consumed by people should be regulated and tested before they are sold to the public. Even the substances some people don't like other people consuming.
I suspect this is the beginning of reform. Politics moves slowly. At least my translation of the article implied that further steps towards decriminalization will come in the future.
In the US, states often pass laws that undermine federal laws. I'm less familiar with EU and German politics.
I always wonder how we as a society could legalize "hard" drugs. Do we sell them like alcohol / tobacco, with minimal restrictions? (Just age limits.) Or, do we require obtaining a license, or only allow taking hard drugs in a controlled setting? I don't have the answer; but it's an important discussion to have as drugs are decriminalized and legalized.
It’s also widely understood how to dose and consume it — the commonality of it makes it less dangerous on a micro level. And also much harder to convince people to ban it when the majority of people consume it.
Alcohol has existed and been consumed since before humans existed. It’s also trivially easy to produce alcohol yourself, naturally manifesting out of a sugary liquid, meaning that prohibition is ~impossible.
If you mean just from an effects standpoint than yeah alcohol is absolutely top tier dangerous. But unfortunately/luckily, society operates on more than just statistics. And trying to take the human emotion element out of decisions is hopeless.
> The societies that drank liquor clearly dominated for this to be the case.
Wasn't LSD banned in the US because it got super popular and became a great "poster child" for the war on drugs? Not because it was not popular enough.
AFAIK caffeine, nicotine and alcohol are legal at this point mainly because they've been normalized. As in, people generally perceive them to have minimal risk, so there's not a lot of opposition.
Yes the risk is not actually minimal for any of those three. Even caffeine can be dependence-forming. But most people either don't know this or don't care.
> The societies that drank liquor clearly dominated for this to be the case
You didnt think this through, Europe was a mongol raided, plague infested, dark-age shitshow untill they discovered tea and coffee. Id we are gonna go by 'drugs drive history' then caffeine is a top tier drug, and alcohol is crap.
But this has all the historifal rigour of "white people won, therefore everything white people do is the best'
What would a few examples of "stoner societies" be? The only possible one I could think of (and it's a stretch) would be Jamaica, but I'm pretty sure the issues they've had are more related to the whole slavery thing.
How would you realize this about alcohol, but not about psilocybin? Or lysergic acid? Etc etc.
So the answer is not the age of the substances, nor the natural occurrence in nature. It's something more irrational. I propose that it's regulatory capture by massive industrial interests. See also: scaremongering against weed vapes by the tobacco industry, or the classic Reefer Madness.
At very least, it makes sense to regulate it more in line with other drugs that have significant effects on GABAA receptors, like barbiturates and benzodiazepines. Not only does alcohol cause physical dependence, like other GABAA targeting drugs, chronic use lowers the seizure threshold making them physically dangerous to discontinue without tapering or medication.
> On the scale of drug hardness, alcohol is near the top.
That's a very subjective statement. Many animals seek out alcohol in the wild. For example, bears will seek out fermenting berries and get "drunk."
> drug hardness
There really is no objective distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs. For example, spend a minute skimming https://www.gatewayfoundation.org/addiction-blog/hard-vs-sof.... "These arbitrary categories have no clear criteria or definition, and they also have no scientific basis"
> Many animals seek out alcohol in the wild. For example, bears will seek out fermenting berries and get "drunk."
I am not clear how this proves or disproves anything. Deer seek out mushrooms that are poisonous to us. We seek out coffee beans, whoch are poison to insects but caffeine is fine for us in small doses. Etc.
Schedule 1 also requires that there is no medical use for the drug, which IIRC ethanol is an effective treatment for someone who has consumed methanol.
"accepted medical use" is the actual phrasing I believe. But yes, it's definitely not based on actual medicine, moreso on the whims of the DEA and lawmakers.
"Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote."
The key phrase is "currently accepted medical use". That is an arbitrary definition that is set by the regulator. A drug must have a medical use that is accepted by the DEA who defers to the FDA for such definitions.
Hell, even meth can be prescribed by a doctor; I believe the brand for it's called Desoxyn and it's usually prescribed for severe overeating disorders, not usually ADHD.
There was an article I read on here years ago that outlined a plan to the legalization of all drugs, but I've sadly never been able to find it again. It was such an old article that it thoroughly addressed the legalization of marijuana.
It basically put all the drugs into a tiered system. Weed would be grouped with alcohol, regulated but basically available everywhere. Non addictive but more powerful drugs like MDMA and shrooms would be available at pharmacies with a consultation from the pharmacist, basically just making sure users planned ahead and knew the risks. It went all the way up to to intravenous heroin use at specific facilities with on site nurses, where users had to consult a doctor every so often.
If anyone knows the article or something similar, I would like to reread it just to see what the author got right and to review their ideas going forward.
> Any substances widely consumed by people should be regulated and tested before they are sold to the public
Even after marijuana legalization, many states still have thriving underground marijuana markets.
Many people who consume a lot of a substance over time will inevitably seek out cheaper sources. The sources complying with regulation and testing requirements, however light, will be more expensive than someone growing some plants in the back of a spare building somewhere.
The problem is exacerbated for more expensive and addictive drugs. The few people I’ve known who became addicted to opioids were spending significant amounts of money to maintain their habit and traveling to increasing dangerous situations to get better prices.
It’s optimistic to declare that everyone should have access to well tested drugs, but the reality is that it’s not a magic bullet. I also have some serious doubts about the narrative that increasing availability of drugs won’t contribute to more widespread addiction problems.
> The sources complying with regulation and testing requirements, however light, will be more expensive than someone growing some plants in the back of a spare building somewhere.
That is not the case here in Seattle. The shop near my house sells a vast array of marijuana products at prices the old black market could never have touched. Economy of scale works! The testing requirements add real value - very few people will choose to buy some sketchy black-market grower's mystery weed when they can select from dozens of strains with measured cannabinoid percentages at a legal shop instead.
Here's an article explaining why Washington has been more successful than California in moving its marijuana industry aboveground:
While onerous regulation is probably a significant contributor, the continued existence of California's black market is probably helped by the fact that a lot (by some estimates ~60%) of the cannabis in the country was coming from California pre-legalization, the vast majority from a couple counties on the rather remote northern coast.
The culture there is the intersection of hippies and libertarians (of both the left and right varieties), a conglomeration basically joined exclusively by their general disdain towards government oversight. A lot of farms went legit, but it's not exactly surprising that others didn't.
A lot of states have made legal marijuana prohibitively expensive. The only black markets for weed in Oregon are for minors, because you can buy an ounce of pretty good quality stuff for $70.
Politicians who lost the war to keep a harmless drug illegal try and price out people from consuming it.
As a resident of Colorado, I can confirm this. In Colorado, medical marijuana is taxed differently from recreational marijuana sales. Even generally recreational users are always trying to figure out a way to get a medical card, because the taxes are extremely high. Colorado charges a 15% excise tax for sales from cultivator to retailer, and then an additional 15% tax at point of sale. Additionally, for various reasons, recreational shops tend to charge more as a base rate than medical shops. The outcome is that on average recreational products are actually 50-60% higher in cost by the time the customer pays vs medical products, for identical underlying goods (e.g. same strain, weight, quality, producer).
The flip side is that taxation of recreational usage in Colorado has been very good for the state budget. I remember several years where the taxes collected were high enough that the state increased income tax refunds, and in one case to 100%, because Colorado has tax income caps and must return tax income overages. The reality though is, if you're dependent on a drug and there's a cheaper way to get it, you'll do that. And in fact, a lot of people in Colorado still home-grow and trade/sell with friends, because purchasing the product through a dispensary is too expensive.
The average price in Colorado for an ounce of high quality marijuana is about $100 /before tax/, which makes it around $115 after tax vs Oregon's $70 at point of sale, that's a significant difference in pricing.
A lot of people desperately want a magic bullet for addiction, but I think it takes a healthy dose of humility to admit that there is no one perfect answer that will just solve it. Human nature is tricky, biology is tricky, and economics is tricky. Even someone eminently brilliant in all three subjects would have a difficult time coming up with a “solution.“
> The sources complying with regulation and testing requirements, however light, will be more expensive than someone growing some plants in the back of a spare building somewhere.
Avoiding police raids costs money too. But lets imagine you are right.
When you go to the bar, do you buy the cheapest boose they sell? No, you don't. Do you choose wine for w party by selecting the cheaperst crap they sell?
When I speak to people who use sibstances recreationally, they are discussing who has good stuff, who is dishonest, etc. They aren't just buying the cheapest white powder they can find.
> The sources complying with regulation and testing requirements, however light, will be more expensive than someone growing some plants in the back of a spare building somewhere.
The cost of dodging regulations can easily exceed the cost of compliance.
That's a lot of hemming and hawing with no solutions, which leaves us once again with a status quo that guarantees a violent black market, guarantees impure drugs and associated deaths, fails to make drugs less available (and makes youth access easier than for alcohol or tobacco) and costs an unfathomable amount of taxpayer money.
> This is just more political gymnastics that only serves to ensure the continued dominance of black markets and all of the violence and death those black markets bring.
It's progress and it's pragmatism, because it's either this or nothing. There is no meaningful amount of political support for what you describe.
I suspect it isn't that they merely "don't like" other people consuming. They also probably think that increased access (supply) may result in increased demand. I'm not sure, but I do feel that if hard drugs were available at every 7-11 for example, there might be more junkies. Every addict is an incredible waste of human potential.
Is anyone suggesting hard drugs be available at 7-11? I believe all drugs should be legal, but that there should of course be checks and regulations on who has access to the harder drugs that research has shown can ruin people's lives.
I say this as a formerly-active heroin addict: the hardest part of my time as an active addict was not having heroin. I was almost entirely functional, I had a full-time job the entire time, but if I was unable to get any for a couple of days it sent me completely spiralling.
If had a doctor's note showing I was an active heroin addict which would allow me to purchase heroin OTC at a chemist it would have improved my life immeasurably and made it much easier for me to quit. After all, it was only ever a day or two before I could buy more, and I know even now I could buy some heroin illegally online and have it drop through my door in less than 24 hours.
Personally I'm unable to consume any psychoactive substance as I've learnt by now it sends me down a path that gets harder to return from every time, but I believe all drugs should be made legal, and all drug problems should be handed over to the health system rather than the justice system.
To add to your point, I’m on the Buvidal once-monthly shot. I get the mood boosting effects (albeit in a much subtler fashion due to buprenorphine being a partial agonist of the mu opioid receptor) of my previous heroin addiction, without all the downsides. Super neat tech too, though the injection stings something fierce.
I never even got offered substitutes, I was habitually taking several substances and the addiction help offered where I live basically said they wouldn't give me anything unless I could quit everything except heroin. Ended up doing it Trainspotting style at my mother's house.
Glad they work for you though. Is your plan to stay on them indefinitely or to try and get off them entirely?
Ah that’s a shame. The government run addiction clinic here in QLD Australia is brilliant and are even doing a clinical trial right now for mirtazipine as a meth addiction treatment which is super neat.
Not sure! I might come off it in the future, but it does have some upsides, costs me nothing, and keeps me on the straight and narrow. Playing it by ear basically, I just bought my first home which is quite exciting :) so maybe in the future I’ll come off it, which is a lot easier to do from the injection than it is the sublingual strips or tablets
The notion that legalisation would increase access is one of those things that looks logical on the surface but is completely the opposite in practice.
After having the displeasure of visiting Frankfurt and having to spend about a month using the main train station... I have to agree. I didn't really understand why junkies would line up at pharmacies until like the 3rd day... until I realized "oh, they get clean needles here". I used to be fairly libertarian on drugs, but having experienced the state of it in the U.S and Germany, and comparing with Asian countries like Singapore and Taiwan, I prefer the latter. I'd rather not see it. I'd rather the streets be clean. I'd rather feel safe going to the metro and having it not smell like urine and feces. If these are the two paths I have to choose, then ban the damn things.
This is the fallacy that the majority of people suffer from: if I don't see it, it doesn't happen.
There are tons of functional, contributing people using drugs, but you don't know about it. All you saw are the people who have hit rock bottom and developed serious issues with them, and you've assumed they must be the only ones using dreugs and that drugs inevitably lead to that. It's a common error, but a big one nonetheless that leads to wildly unscientific conclusions. To then make or support policy based on those conclusions is extremely irresponsible.
>This is the fallacy that the majority of people suffer from: if I don't see it, it doesn't happen.
My reply will be brutish. I know it happens. I just don't want to see it. I don't want to watch mothers with toddlers be solicited for change in the checkout line at drug stores, or young couples be harassed outside a coffee shop. I hate that I can't eat a meal a terrace without some drugged out beggar trying to hustle me for change.
I don't care who or what does drugs. I don't care about the functional or dysfunctional drug users. It's mental gymnastics at this point. I just don't want to see them.
Whatever you do in the privacy of your own home that's fine. But that's not happening. We just can't have nice things.
What you are essentially saying is that the right of certain people to access public spaces should be curtailed because they annoy you. Begging is a right und German law and does not have to happen silently. If that annoys you, how about you contribute to a solution that leads to less people having to beg, instead of advocating for the (clearly illegal and amoral) "solution" of confining people "out of sight"?
So you’re saying it’s a fallacy because Singapore and Taiwan are filled with high functioning heroin users?
Draw a line on a bellcurve, the people on the right can use drugs safely without destroying their lives the people on the left cannot. GP is saying that for hard drugs, that line is a little to far to the right to sustain a clean and safe society so we should ban them all together. That might not be a reasonable option for western countries but lets not act like acknowledging that is a fallacy.
> So you’re saying it’s a fallacy because Singapore and Taiwan are filled with high functioning heroin users?
No, I'm not saying that at all. I have no idea the makeup of Singapore and Taiwan.
I am saying that you can't take a heavily biased sample and make conclusions about the entire population. This is a well accepted reality in statistics. It's deeply unscientific and can lead to horrendously incorrect conclusions. Then making policies on those conclusions that can lead to death and/or imprisonment of people is at best grossly irresponsible.
Those drugs are already banned. It doesn't prevent the abuse. The addicts will be there, if you see them or not. So the solution in Frankfurt is to connect with the addicts, and help them in some ways, to make it less bad for them, and thus in response make it less bad for society. Because Frankfurt was already worse in the past, far worse. And it became bad again in the last years because of the pandemia and a shift in politics, which should give an impression on how bad it will get without proper support.
>Those drugs are already banned. It doesn't prevent the abuse.
In Singapore if they catch you with heroin, you hang. I think in Taiwan they give you 10 years for weed. I wasn't solicited for drugs. I felt safe at night. In both cases their metro was clean. It seems to work for them. At least to my apparent superficial standards.
You either go full measure or decriminalize it. The West has never gone full measure. We are slowly decriminalizing it.
You'll probably get solicited for drugs sometime in Beijing Sanlitun if you look like a foreigner. So Asia isn't completely clean, even if the penalties for drugs are high in China. Still feel safe at night, however.
> U.S and Germany, and comparing with Asian countries like Singapore and Taiwan...
I'd rather the streets be clean.
Surely you must realise that US will not become clean like Singapore just by adopting it's drug policy?
You must realise that other policies that keep singapore clean will have to be adopted too, like massive fines for littering, community, and among them an aggresive 'socialist' housing policy?
"Remarkably, Singapore has achieved a home ownership rate of over 80 per cent among its citizens. This is through three policy pillars operating since the 1960s
Housing for over 80 per cent of residents is the ubiquitous high-rise public housing blocks built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB)"
It's political gymnastics because getting a majority for legalization is much harder than getting a majority for quality control. Germany is now legalizing cannabis, but that's still very far from legalizing heroin or cocaine. Remember that about 60% of German voters are over 50, and may be less open to radical changes.
In principle I agree that many drugs should be legal, and we should instead spend more resources on mental health and support for addicted people. But if all we can get a majority for is the latter part that's still an improvement.
You're confused. Cheese can be regulated not because it's practical to block it from being distributed. It isn't, and if you prohibited it you will create a black market.
Only after you've created the black market through prohibition, does regulation then become impossible.
Every single bad thing you can think of about drugs isn't caused by the drugs at all, but by the prohibition. And the few exceptions to this that someone might find... those rare bad things not caused by prohibition itself aren't actually reduced by prohibition. They still happen anyway. The junkie who is ruining his relationship with family still does so today.
People sell bootleg alcohol which may be adulterated with methanol, and it's usually bought on the basis of price. The majority of alcohol is bought from reputable, quality-controlled sources, such as bottle-shops, supermarkets, and bars.
Similarly with drugs: if they're available from reputable, accessible, legal sources, the number of consumers ready to buy from black-market sources will be significantly reduced.
They don't need to block it, people will block it themselves if you give them the information they need. Virtually nobody wants to overdose and die because they thought they were taking oxycodone but got fentanyl instead. These things happen because the user has no way of knowing what they were sold, and because of the ddrug war the only people left selling are the most ruthless.
That's actually you doing a lot of mental gymnastics to promote full legalization of everything.
Most people think you HAVE to forbid stuff sometimes. If it's forbidded it's because it's dangerous and it kill people. What you are advocating is a bit like saying "oh it's forbidden to stab people in the streets but if you do it we should teach you to do it the proper way to minimize pain". This makes 0 sense.
And I do take drugs recreationally..
People are getting into dangerous territory, let them be responsible of their actions. It's not like you can't test your stuff first or do risk reduction anyway if you make half an effort to inform yourself. Now saying the gov should organize or sponsor while he decided to forbid it is nonsense of the highest level. If they had more money to do that they would use it to actually fight more the cartels
The mental gymnastics come when we pretend illegal drugs aren't widely available today to anyone who wants them, with no quality control and via markets governed by violence. We already legally sell all manner of drugs up to an including various types of speed and opioids. The only difference is that for certain drugs, you have to go to an illegal dealer instead of a pharmacy.
The fact there are problems in the american Pharma Industry (which is a legalized cartel thanks to lobbying) doesn't mean you have to legalize everything.
The fact that we waste endless billions failing to stop the drug trade, while simultaneously enriching violent gangs and ensuring overdose deaths IS a good reason to legalize widely used drugs that we have proven we can't ban.
In the U.S. the venue, performers, and promoters of an event where testing is performed are presumed guilty of distribution of illegal substances and subject to a civil penalty of at least $250,000 and up to 2x their gross receipts (income) for the event.
Thankfully the official policy of the U.S. Department of Justice has been to not enforce this law since 2018, largely due to the Opioid Epidemic becoming a top public health crisis.
It argues that all drugs should be decriminalized. Written by a philosopher who spent many years working on this subject. Briefly: anyone who is going to jail deserves to know why, and there is no satisfactory answer that can be given in the case of drug possession or use.
This is a myth that is endlessly repeated and will apparently never die. If you are caught possessing illegal drugs in Portugal, you are required to go in front a disciplinary tribunal that can mandate drug rehab and impose fines. If you refuse to attend rehab, they can jail you. They can impose a whole host of other legal consequences, including loss of professional license, passport, they can mandate that you're not allowed to hang out with certain people, etc. Drug dealing is still 'lock you up in jail' illegal.
Saying drugs are decriminalized in Portugal is like saying speeding everywhere is decriminalized. They moved legal sanctions to an administrative court, but they're still sanctions. I invite you to read this whole page
I think your misunderstanding stems from the definition of "decriminalized". Decriminalized does not mean legal. As it is commonly used "speeding everywhere" is, in fact, decriminalized, in that you will not land in prison for it, and the penalty is merely a fine, and maybe some driver's school if you're a repeat offender.
We have a working model that has provided stunning results for decades. Even back in 2001, there was a strong scientific basis for decriminalization, and treating drug use as a public health issue rather than a moral one.
With the sharp rise in opiate and fentanyl recently, it's alarming how backward the conversation still is. It's almost as if shadowy powerful forces are real content with prohibition...
Radical measures are necessary, now, just as they were in 2001 in Portugal. People are dying, families are being torn apart, and it's all so heart-breakingly unnecessary.
It's crazy that cannabis users can't have their drugs tested to ensure purity, safety and to confirm they aren't laced with other drugs. But mainly to ensure people aren't smoking dried plant matter with mold or other common problems.
a while ago I saw a short documentary about German drug dealers spraying their weed with artificial cannabinoids to increase potency. the pseudo-codename they used for it was "haze". in the UK it's very common for dealers to sell two strains of weed, a generic "haze" and one other strain, often "stardog". whether this "haze" is the same thing or not, I do not know, but it's a health concern. it's a hard one to test for as well, because the testing kits I've come across cannot distinguish between artificial and natural cannabinoids
That's just some specific scumbags jumping on a legit weed name - there are lots of haze strains, called things like "amnesia haze", "lemon haze", etc and the haze in their name has nothing to do with anything being sprayed on or anything dodgy at all, they're just normal strains of weed that happen to be very popular.
For years, possibly still now but I don't know, Amnesia Haze was the most popular strain in Amsterdam, and for years now in the UK various hazes are the most popular, and because there's a few similar ones (generally not Amnesia Haze but the milder ones) end dealers often aren't sure which haze they've got but have been told it's a haze and they know the common features/tastes between the common UK hazes they can tell it's one of them but it's hard to guess which.
Go back ten years and the situation was the same with cheese - there were 4-5 cheese-related strains circulating in London for years, and 3 times out of 5 a dealer wouldn't know which kind just that "it's some sort of cheese it's really great" (ofc it's always the absolute best when being sold!). I'm sure if some asshole decided to spray their weed ten years ago they'd have considered calling that stock "cheese" as their code name since nobody hearing them talk about it would think anything. Same with haze now.
Wow that’s frustrating! Here in California the growing and distribution of cannabis is legal (with strict legal requirements for distribution) and there’s all kinds of testing and labeling done for product sold in dispensaries. You can have a lot of faith in those products! It seems far superior to buying some totally unknown products made in a foreign country and illegally imported. I know California is ahead of the curve but it seems so dangerous to continue to force users of these products to go to illegal markets.
Are you sure that is correct for the German market?
I have seen articles about cheap Hungarian weed sprayed with Chinese synthetic "canabis" being sold as spice. Apparently it's stronger and more addictive.
I would love to see the source, I don't think this is a common phenomenon anywhere in the world.
Nor does it particularly make sense to me... why not just spray on delta THC-8 or 9, the whole point of synthetic cannabinoids is they don't show up on drug tests.
Synthetic has different (but similar) effects. Synthetic might be cheaper than THC-8 or 9 for some buyers. I think it's plausible a good amount of users will prefer some synthetics in a blind test.
It is relatively easy to grow, but depending on your climate there’s all sorts of environmental factors that could affect your plants and will persist beyond harvest if not properly remedied. Harvest can be adjusted to increase quantities of CBD, CBN, CBG at the expense of THC. Then there’s terpenes.
Having grown a few runs now as a mere gardener, I’d like to be able to send a sample in the mail for testing to a lab without violating federal (US) law.
It’s not like anabolic steroids don’t have side effects which is why they’re controlled substances, not because of a conspiracy to keep people from getting strong masculine and attractive.
> In other words, you couldn't defend your first response to my comment, so now you've got to pull the conspiracy card even though none of what I said necessarily implies conspiracy or points to anyone in particular.
You asked why would anabolic steroids, specifically, would be illegal if not because they make people look more masculine, muscular, and attractive according to you. Like that would be the only reason: keeping people from looking more masculine, muscular, and sexier.
Anyway, I see your original comments have been deleted so that’s kinda moot and I have no interest in arguing about this further with you.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments? You've unfortunately been posting like that repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
The planned Cannabis legalization by the same health minister also kind of goes in the same direction. From what I understand only homegrown Cannabis can be sold and that only by privately organized clubs with very limited permanent member numbers. Also the number of plants one can grow is limited.
It is designed to keep professionally produced Cannabis out of the legal market. If this legalization can shut down the illegal market is doubtful in my opinion.
According to the plans (not actually law yet):
- private citizens will be able to grow a limited number (I think 5?) of plants, with the produce used only for their own consumption. Passing it to others will still be illegal (though consuming it with others on private property would be very unlikely to be prosecuted).
- non-profit "Cannabis Clubs" can grow a limited number of plants per member (again, I think 5). Membership is limited to max 500 and members have to be 18+ years old. Clubs can't be near playgrounds/schools/etc. and can only hand out a limited amount (I think 30g) per month to each member, who can't consume it on or near the club's property. The weed also is limited to a max THC and the club's properties have to be secured to a high standard.
There are valid considerations at play regarding keeping weed away from minors. There is also a legal issue because Cannabis is still classed as a controlled drug by the European Union and all-out legalization is not something that the German government can actually decide without corresponding EU-wide legalization. And that won't happen, because there are still a number of EU-member states that firmly oppose legalization.
What's the reasoning behind that approach? If the drug is considered dangerous, why is it less dangerous when I grow it myself rather than have a professional do it?
1. Before the election the now ruling parties promised legalization. Now they're under pressure to do it but fear the backlash, so they make a law but sabotage it at the same time.
2. They want to separate the legal market from the illegal market to avoid any situation where the new law could support professional producers. In principle this is a good idea but probably futile.
I don't understand the second point. Wouldn't the legal market quickly kill the illegal market? We don't have an illegal market for chocolate or beer because the legal market fills the need. What am I missing?
Not if the rules make the legal market cumbersome to access. Especially since you have only access to the legal market by becoming a member of a club you'll give up completely on privacy. And if the legal market will have better prices is yet to be seen, again with all the additional restrictions I hardly see that happen in the medium and long run.
This is one of the flaws with prohibition... you lose all effective authority to regulate the prohibited product.
We'll see how well it works in Germany, but in the United States, such a program would plainly be nothing more than an intelligence asset for cops. For that reason dealers would order their customers to refrain from using it, and would exact retribution upon those who did.
Besides, trailer park meth cooks aren't really capable of producing a safe, unadulterated product in measured doses. They don't have the competence or the resources to do that. But addicts still need the product regardless. Do you even get to keep your meth if the state-run quality control lab says that it has too much rat poison? Why would an addict risk getting it confiscated for their own safety?
Just legalize the crap and sell it out of liquor stores in plain retail packaging manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations who have some cap on the profits they're allowed to earn over cost.
This is my reply to a comment that was deleted here:
As always, the article is somewhat biased by the journalists and their misguided perspective: as in that they are probably using the term "drug abusers" to mean anybody using any drug, and not for what we think of as drug abusers, such as crack heads, meth heads etc.
This is not some social program from the government to help homeless use more drugs. It is simply lifting a ban on lab testing of recreational drugs. What it means is that people who illegally purchase drugs can now have them tested to verify what they contain - without the lab breaking any law. Maybe it's a software developer buying some LSD on the darknet. Maybe it's a salesman buying cocaine on the street.
There are already people and companies offering these drug quality testing services, so the law would allow them to operate in the open - as far as I understood the article.
This is actually pretty great both for recreational users of things like cocaine and heroin, but also for people looking to use cheaper illegal drugs to manage a mental health condition - I'm thinking specifically of ecstasy and ketamine (for depression) and amphetamine (for adhd). To have a trusted test of quality would take away a lot of the terror from people already dealing with hard-to-manage emotions.
Note to english speakers, "recipe" is "prescription" in German. You may be talking about amphetamine? They don't prescribe it, afaik, and I don't think ketamine is legal (for humans).
People are reporting that if you bring a bunch of substances they only at best check 1 if you are one of the first and that there's an absurd limit of only 12-40 (I believe) total samples checked per week across all users for Berlin which is nearly nothing.
I hope this gets expanded, and the inability to check drugs or to get e.g. naxolone in Germany is absurd, but as far as I can tell this might be so far just for P.R.
Just sell the drugs from the government. Make it super lame, and medicalized. Cut off the funding for the glorification of drug use in art and music, and make it like the junkie DMV. Sell perfectly pure, precisely diluted, heroin/coke/whatever and then make the addicts stay in the room until they're presentable. Don't let them take needles etc out.
Anything else is a half measure that keeps all of the problems with the black markets and all of the social impact of addiction.
We have that in Austria, at least at Vienna. You can bring your pills and powders to an organization called CheckIt! and they will inform you of what exactly was in your samples. They are also sometimes at big parties and raves where people can immediately get tested what they bought, with them announcing unexpected or dangerous results via the loud speaker system.
Not just not offering this, but keeping it illegal, is shameful.
tl;dr: The German minister for health wants to an existing law that bans the provision of quality control service for illegal drugs. This would allow federal states to offer "drug checking" services to consumers of illegal drug, reducing risks of accidental overdoses and similar side effects of drug usage.
I’m sure some enterprising DA will find a way to put dealers away for longer by convicting them of violating product safety and fraud i.e. you can’t sell something as heroin if it’s less than 75% pure
DAs in major cities don't enforce drug laws anymore. It's supposed to be compassionate but is destroying the Tenderloin and areas like it.
Just have the government distribute the drugs directly. These little hacks around the system are stupid and harmful. Treat public drug use outside of your shitty government office as a crime, and drug use inside as 100% legal and a medical issue.
If an addict test their drugs and the results come back fail are they going to shrug and throw them away? I don't see an addict throwing away any drug they have in hand no matter what the test says.
Frequently yes, because the people consuming illegal drugs are actual human beings rather than stereotyped zombies, and in many cases aren't even addicts.
> Firstly, no “addict” wants to die from their addiction
addicts destroy their own lives and the lives of people around them and even anonymous members of the community because of their addiction. No test is going to overcome an addiction.
As for recreational users, I went to plenty of raves in the 90s and if a test result said I should not take the hit of X or acid i'd been looking forward to all week i'm not sure what i'd do.
> Second, “addicts” is a tiny subset of “drug users”
Tiny? Does not sound believable, especially since they are explicitly excluding marijuana. If I was to give my totally uneducated guess I would give something like 40-50%
I'm not an expert by any stretch, but it probably varies greatly by drug. I know a lot of people who have done LSD, shrooms or MDMA. Those aren't even all physically addictive and are more like experience drugs. Probably totally different for heroin or meth.
In the Hacker News bubble, it might be natural to think LSD, shrooms, MDMA, ketamine, etc. are very common drugs, but they have nothing on cocaine, opioids, methamphetamine, etc. - especially in North America, but also globally.
The vast majority of people who use drugs use the latter ones and a large amount of that use is by addicts.
Just looking at the stats for the US, significantly more people have opioid use disorder than have ever reported using MDMA in their entire lives and using MDMA once in your entire life is a pretty generous definition of a drug 'user'.
> Do you go to clubs? Parties? Raves? Backs of offices? etc?
Do you live in Europe? Your description of drug use seems decidedly European to me.. America doesn't have the same MDMA use culture as in Western Europe outside of some raves, more of an opioid & amphetamine use.
But I live in San Francisco so I have plenty of experience dealing with populations of habitual drug users. There are millions of Americans that are addicted to opioids and even more addicted to stimulants (illegal & legal, if you have withdrawal it is a dependence).
I'm from the west coast and have lived in SF and Seattle, and now live in Germany. I still disagree with your assessment having worked in a lot of night clubs, bars, etc.
What drugs are we talking about? I would say someone who has used a drug in the past year is a user, someone who compulsively uses or would experience withdrawal if they stopped using is an addict.
I am not sure where you are getting these 'vast majority' numbers from - if you look at publicly available stats it is evidence that there is a significant proportion of people who are addicted. Look at cocaine - 4.8 million American users in last year, 1.4 million addicts - ~30% [0]. For opioids, the proportion who is addicts is even higher. We explicitly are not discussing tobacco/weed/alcohol, which have much higher non-addict uses.
I guess I didn't count anabolic steroids, I am not sure what 'addiction' really means in that context.
I mean, I’d consider 70% to be the vast majority, and I also suspect there’s more than 4.8 million cocaine users in the US in the last year.
Excluding commonly used drugs like alcohol, weed or tobacco doesn’t seem very useful, but I can see why. Tobacco being included would massively spike the addict numbers, alcohol and weed would drop them.
Most drug use in America is opioids and meth both of which have higher rates of addiction.
Colloquially I don't think most people would refer to 70% as a 'vast majority' or 30% as a 'tiny subset.' But if the GP meant 30-50% (when factoring in other drugs) as a 'tiny subset', then I guess we don't disagree :)
A quick search shows my personal definition of "vast majority" and "overwhelming majority" may be reversed. I would consider overwhelming>vast, so 70% is fine for vast but apparently I'm wrong.
to me "addict" is someone who is prioritizing getting high over every other aspect of their life. Addicts eventually lose jobs, families, stability in order to get high. When getting high is the highest (no pun intended) priority in your life and remains without external intervention then you're an addict.
it's one thing to be willing to test it's quite another to watch a hit go down the toilet while you're sober and don't know how long until you can get another hit.
Only in Germany could they find a way to create rules for illegal activities. Their love for Fußball doesn't come close to their love for rules and regulation
I wish our governments would spend time and effort to educated and try to dissuade people from ingesting toxic chemicals in the first place. Maybe use their power to influence positive change by encouraging healthier living.
Legalizing this stuff needs to come with robust required therapy. The idea that you just legalize it and all of the sudden things improve is pure myth. Leave it to politicians to take the easy way out though.
The proposed change is not about legalization of these drugs. They will remain illegal. It simply allows federal states to pass laws and regulations governing publicly accessible (and presumably free of charge) test facilities where consumers of certain illegal drugs can test them for unwanted ingredients. The idea is that this will limit the number of accidental overdoses and poisonings and put pressure on the black market to reduce potentially harmful and undesirable ingredients. It is a public health measure and I don't see a real downside to it.
It's the same idea. You're allowing addicts to continue being addicts while claiming testing centers using up tax dollars are a fix. They're not. IF they're allowing this they are not enforcing anything that will stop dealers.
This is just as ridiculous the safe shoot up spaces that only ruin the area they're in and make it unlivable for anyone but addicts who just die from overdoses anyway.
Allowing someone to live slightly longer without helping them overcome the addiction isn't compassionate, it's lazy enabling of the addiction. It's something politicians use to get votes and pat themselves on the back.
This is such a nihilistic, fucked-up view of the world. Is this proposed policy the silver bullet to stop addiction and drug abuse? No, clearly not. Will it help alleviate some suffering? Almost certainly so.
Just to point out some of the more obvious rebuttals to your "arguments":
- not all drug users are addicts. Not even heroin is instantly addictive. Recreational, non-addicted users of illegal drugs benefit extremely from "drug checks," as does the public health system which would have to deal with accidental overdoses and poisonings otherwise.
- Not all drug addicts have dysfunctional lives. Plenty of people live decades with their addiction while also holding down jobs, having families, etc. Is that ideal? No, most certainly not in most cases. Would "drug checks" lower the risk of these drug users? Yes.
- Not all drug addicts that experience dysfunctional lives as a consequence of their drug use will die from overdosing. In fact, drug checks would make that more unlikely.
- Drug check facilities would be a venue for drug users to get into contact with the public health care system and to find ways out of their addiction.
Again, it will not resolve the problems associated with the misuse of drugs, which has existed literally forever (even animals get purposely drunk on fermenting fruits). But that is neither the point of the proposed policy and you have so far contributed nothing to this discussion.
Yeah my view of wanting them to get OFF THE DRUGS is nihilistic. Not your view that enabling their horrible habit by making it easier for them with no therapy to correct it.
Haven't been in a long time. And as I've written above, drug checks are part of a public health approach that makes it easier to treat addiction, including by offering opportunities to engage in therapy.
This screams late empire to me. The whole liberalization idea is extremely regressive. The high functioning and rich bathe their brain in some nice chemicals while others OD or become homeless zombies because they can’t self-regulate.
Does no one else find it a little weird that durning the period of harm reduction, decriminalization, and legalization drug deaths have increased each year without fail?
Regarding Portugal (which decriminalized all drugs in 2001), according to the Drug Policy Foundation, a pro-legalization advocacy group, drug deaths initially dropped (2003-2010) but have since returned to pre-legalization levels(2015+).
Of course there are several US specific factors that contributed to the 5x increase (prescription opioids -> fentanyl), but if you allow yourself to imagine that not everyone can set sensible limits for themselves - then liberalization reveals itself as rather selfish.
From your first source, directly contradicting your interpretation of what it says:
"In the first five years after the reforms, drug deaths dropped dramatically. They rose slightly in the following years, before returning to 2005 levels in 2011, with only 10 drug overdose deaths recorded in that year. Since 2011, drug deaths have risen again but remain below 2001 levels (when there were 76 recorded deaths)."
The point of de-criminalization is that people that "can't set limits for themselves" are treated as patients, not criminals.
We all know how to read a graph. In fact, I noticed that the deaths graph cuts off earlier in this article than all of the other time-year charts which is indicative of cherrypicking. Looking at their source data [0], looks like deaths are now ~2x those at 2001 levels (~1 death per million).
The source you link says that Portugal had a total of 68 drug-induced deaths in 2019, corresponding to 10 per million. In 2001 there were 76 deaths, corresponding to about 7.3 deaths per million. So overdose deaths rose slightly relative to the total population (they did not double).
But for this to be a valid argument about the merits of Portugal's drug policy, you'd have to control for other factors like the types of drugs being used, comorbidities, age, etc. You are accusing a source (which you originally cited to support your own point) of cherrypicking but you are doing a lot of that yourself. What would be helpful would be an actual peer-reviewed study on the effects of the policy (which by the way has evolved and became quite a bit more restrictive after ca. 2015).
You're right - I was mistakenly counting from year 2000, not the high point year 2001, and from 2000 it effectively doubled.
> which you originally cited to support your own point
I was not the original commentator. I agree with your second point that graphs like these are not enough to disentangle the impact of the drug policy, but it is also just not as simple a story as 'drugs legalized, overdoses went into a lower regime.'
My guess is the real story is that drug legalization does lead to fewer drug ODs, but it is simply swamped by fentanyl.
> drug deaths have increased each year without fail
So circling back to my original claim, it's certainly true in the US (see NIH source above). As for Portugal, it appears to be technically wrong because even though drug deaths are now above the 2001 pre legalization level, first there was a period of decline.
However, I think my larger point stands even if it's unpopular, which is that legalization is empirically quite a selfish policy that is today masquerading as humanitarian.
I don't see any "empirical" evidence for your claim. I think it also betrays a fundamental misunderstanding, of the policies that are implemented by most countries.
While "legalization" is the popular term for what is happening, professionals tend to talk of "harm reduction," because that is what is what is intended and also better describes what is actually happening in most cases. Most drugs are still illegal in Portugal and will remain so in Germany. I don't think there is a single country where Heroin is legal, Cocaine is legal only in a small number of South/Central American countries and even Cannabis is only legal in about 6 countries (and de facto parts of the US) worldwide. There is no broad movement that advocates a low-regulation distribution of all/most drugs in any country that I'm aware of.
What is happening is that more and more countries treat drug use not as a criminal matter, but a public health issue. With the possible exception of Cannabis (where the risks seem so comparable to alcohol that it makes intuitive sense to many people to treat it at least broadly similar), the debate is not about legalization per se, but about how to effectively reduce consumption and the risks associated with it. This is where needle exchange programs, "drug checks," injection spaces, come from: They drastically reduce the harms associated with the use of certain drugs by improving the health outcomes of drug users. Combined with de-criminilization policies, they also provide the basis for health professionals to engage with drug users and start interventions.
I really don't see anything "selfish" or "late empire" in that approach, maybe except that it will reduce my payments to the public health system long term.
You’re ignoring the HIV/AIDS pandemic that was happening amongst drug users in PT. That was dramatically lowered.
You also said it led to increased drug deaths. It very clearly has not led to increased drug deaths. It’s stabilised to a similar level as it was 20 years ago.
There are multiple factors to a successful drug decriminalisation and harm reduction policy. I’ve listened to several podcasts by the authors of the Portuguese drug policy on wha their targets were and how they were met (in the case of HIV they were spectacular). It’s not just decriminalisation, there are a lot of different factors at play here.
But the basic fact remains I don’t know if any major con to Portuguese drug policy while I do know a large number of pros.
Your statement - that decriminalisation leads to drug deaths - does appear thoroughly debunked by PT drug policy.
It's certainly true in San Francisco that many more people now are dying of drug overdoses & they have also implemented a number of harm reduction measures in recent years.
But of course there are plenty of confounders during that period.
You are not going to get a straight answer to this question online, the stats are currently being warred over.
The current winning narrative is that most homeless people are from the Bay Area because that is what the stats say is 'where they most recently became homeless' but if you drill down deeper and look at how long people have been here, you'll find most people came to the Bay to access homeless services or social services, became briefly not homeless (perhaps staying with a friend or in a shelter), and then became homeless again.
If they were instead to ask, where did you first become homeless or where were you born, the results would likely be considerably different.
Based on the evidence I have seen, it does seem like harm reduction works to some degree, but if it is only implemented by individual cities you get a tragedy of the commons where the city that implements the progressive policy pulls homeless people from the rest of the country. There needs to be federal action but they are way too afraid of backlash to do anything.
I see. I suppose there are different ways to define homelessness too. If i couch surf, I would say I am homeless but if i start tossing the owners $250/mo to let me crash, am I now a tenant? We need agreed upon ways to calculate these problems. "no long term permanent residence" doesn't work either because it would not be accurate to include wealthy nomads.
San Francisco also experienced a number of events that could have significantly impacted drug deaths, i.e. pandemic, recession, housing crisis, fentanyl, etc. etc. You'd have to carefully control for the impact of these events to make an empirical claim that harm reduction efforts lead to more drug deaths, especially because it makes on the face of it no sense that i.e. needle exchange programs would lead to more drug overdoses.
I will take the contrarian position here. This is bad policy and shouldn’t happen.
First, making recreational drugs illegal is a good policy. Drugs are addictive. They intentionally disrupt your normal brain function. Some people are more affected than others and commit crimes while taking drugs. They disrupt the normal functioning of society. The more people that take drugs, the worse it is for society. Look at the opioid epidemic for a recent US example.
Second, the government should not send mixed signals about drugs. It should not at once ban them, and also facilitate their “safe” consumption. People cannot understand this mixed message. If drugs are bad and shouldn’t be consumed, why is there an official channel for “safely” consuming them?
The result of this double think will likely be further moves toward legalization of drugs, their subsequent proliferation through society, and the further decay of society as a result.
Allowing drug users to legally and safely test their drugs results in more safety for individuals and less costs for society. In the Netherlands, private organizations have been testing drugs for users and helping the government track dangerous trends in the distribution of illegal drugs.
There’s a lot of recreational drugs like alchohol and (more recently in the US) weed that are legal to consume. The current system where drugs are only available through illegal means results in violence and huge amounts of organized crime, and a mixture of upper and underworld endangering citizens and politicians. We have huge issues with this in the Netherlands.
Personally, I find drug use abhorrent and I condemn everyone buying drugs illegally and propping up and enriching monstrous people, but I fully support legal drug testing.
> People cannot understand this mixed message. If drugs are bad and shouldn’t be consumed, why is there an official channel for “safely” consuming them?
Most people do seem to manage understanding such a mixed message with alcohol. They know it's bad for them, they consume it anyway in moderation, and they don't get addicted. That's the most common pattern.
I don't disagree with your core message: the more people drinking more alcohol, the worse off for society in general. We should very much wish to discourage it. But is prohibition the proper way to do that?
> Look at the opioid epidemic for a recent US example.
For anyone with even passing familiarity with the US opioid crisis, it sounds absurd to suggest it was a cause of societal problems rather than a symptom of them.
>Drugs are addictive. They intentionally disrupt your normal brain function. Some people are more affected than others and commit crimes while taking drugs.
This also applies to alcohol. How do you feel towards it?
So many people use the phrase "drugs and alcohol", which makes as much sense as saying "meat and beef".
The thing those people never want to admit is, they LOVE drugs (coffee, sex, TV, alcohol, tobacco, antidepressants, benzos, ...) but they don't want to acknowledge that they are first class drugs too, because they view "drug users" as losers, because they don't like those drugs in particular.
Alcohol is also bad. Unlike other recreational drugs, we have thousands of years of tradition in society in how to regulate its consumption and handle the negative effects. This includes social traditions, social pressures, and government rules. The rules go down to the specifics of the hours you can buy it, where, how you can carry it around, etc. Things like “alcoholic” are social tropes that are frowned upon and have been for centuries.
Maintaining the status quo is very different from changing it. This applies to drug consumption.
Every study under the sun shows drug criminalization causes more public health issues than it solves. It should be treated as a public health issue rather than a criminal issue. Portugal is a fantastic case study of how this succeeded.
"They intentionally disrupt your normal brain function"
So do lots of things: Art, advertising, roller coasters, sex. Pretty much anything worth doing "disrupts your normal brain function". And then there's the biggest, manipulation of brain function in history: religion.
Frankly, a life lived in stubborn abstinence is a life wasted, sacrificed on the altar of bullshit self-righteousness. Judging others is an easy way to get your kicks off, but it's not exactly the most healthy. Or in other words "Take a chill pill, dude".
Clearly not all drugs are bad, we use most of them in medicine.
What if eliminating addictive personality from society was beneficial to humanity as a species? No easier way than legalizing all drugs and letting people filter.
Rather, it seems like this is setting up testing for CONSUMERS, that can come in, and ask if their sample meets new standards set by the government for the drug they want tested. A bit more formal than the music festival drug test tent.
The English title here on HN is kind of confusing. “Germany wants to introduce free analysis of drugs nationwide“ might be better than “quality control” (which implies factory production to me)
(Reading a translation, so take my opinion with a grain of bath-salts)