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| Drugs. Substances. Controlled, or Not. | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 16 2010, 11:57 PM (2,692 Views) | |
| nathanielandbartimaeus | Oct 18 2010, 10:03 AM Post #16 |
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Marid
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That. Good post. |
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"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination ... no more men!" - Einstein "I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you." - Studs Terkel. <@Ximenez> Sentynel: But i have a life? No. Qed. | |
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| indie2 | Oct 18 2010, 12:36 PM Post #17 |
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Foliot
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true, i agree with the educating part, but the problem is what will they be told, we already know that they harm us, that they can kill us, what more can they tell us that we don't already know, surely the specifics can't change the fact of the basics. I still believe if most of them were made illegal it would be a detterent. them not being illegal is like saying they aren't actually dangerous and it's ok to take them. I'm not the world best encyclopedia on drugs, i don't know what they do other than that they make you high and can also harm you badly and maybe kill you. the specifics of each drug i have hardly any idea of. I only know the basics but it's still taught me not to take them. what's the point in giving them medical help for what they've done to themselves when the goverment told them it was ok by legalising it. i don't want to pay for people who are addicted to dugs to get treated, i live in england which has a NHS funded by our taxes. It would take money from vital areas of the NHS that need more funding (like cancer treatment and wasting deseases etc). I'm not saying they shouldn't get treated or should be treated like criminals some are just kids that were influenced by their mates and wanted to look cool and got hooked (like what happens with cigarettes), They should be helped. But some are also chavvy idiots who do it because they have nothing else to do and those people i really don't want to pay to get treatment (these types are the druggies i know most where i live). and I'm pretty sure that's not the case where i live or in most parts of america, most people are mostly clean when they leave prison here, those hooked on drugs get a limited supply which is cut down over time until they're no longer dependant. (Of course that doesn't stop them going back on them when they get out.) I don't see what good legalising them will do to help anybody. and educating and legalising them sends mixed messages. One person will tell them they are bad for you and the law will be telling you they're OK. Sure it'll probably be less drugs-are-bad and more drugs-do-this-this-and-this but theres still the mixed message (and look at sex ed, what good has that done anybody). And all of this talk about education and helping these people doesn't change the fact that there is no good reason for legalising drugs. we can educate them all we want give them as much help that we can possibly give but none of it is a reason for legalising them. sure maybe they'll get treated less like crimnals and more like people with problems but thats a pretty poor reason for legalising something that could kill you, whether it'll make a difference or not. Edited by indie2, Oct 18 2010, 12:55 PM.
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| Sentynel | Oct 18 2010, 01:08 PM Post #18 |
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Nothing But The Rain
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Most people will be exposed to others taking drugs around them at some point in their lives. They will also likely see that said drug-taking people spectacularly fail to drop dead in a variety of exciting ways the instant they do so, and quite rightly conclude that drugs are not, in fact, like little packages of cyanide. The best example of this is probably ecstasy - our education relating to ecstasy consisted solely of the case of Leah Betts, who took some ecstasy (I believe it was suspected to be mixed with something rather less pleasant, as well, another problem legalisation would fix), drank too much water, and died of water intoxication. That was all. "Ecstasy is a horrible class A drug that will cause you to DROP DEAD." In its heyday in the 90s, it's estimated the number of people taking it ran to over a million, and it's still wildly popular. The number of deaths linked to ecstasy are *tiny* - about 30 a year, and most of those can be attributed to contaminated pills or interactions with other drugs (certain anti-HIV medication is particularly bad, and there have also been cases linked to MAOI-class antidepressants). The government allows us to do any number of things that are potentially dangerous - driving cars is the big one, but everything from playing sports to legal drugs to stepping outside in a thunderstorm have their associated risks and are entirely legal. We're trusted to make our own decisions on the risks we take because it is not the government's place to lock us all up in padded cells for our own safety. So why is the same not applied to drugs? Why can we not be given accurate information and trusted to make our own decisions on drugs? (For instance, about 1 in 250 people will be killed by their cars, or about 1 in 5 motorcyclists by their bikes. Professor David Nutt, the bloke evicted from the Drugs Advisory Board for advising, points out that '"acute harm to person" occur{s} in approximately 1 in 10,000 episodes of ecstasy use compared to about 1 in 350 episodes of horse riding.') This is an example of the problems with the current educational system. You're the kind of person to decide not to take drugs based on what you've been taught; that's fine (and probably eminently sensible). The problem comes when people discover that everything they've been taught about soft drugs like cannabis and ecstasy is, frankly, a blatant lie. It doesn't take a genius to go to a club or something and observe the number of people taking ecstasy without keeling over. Then you get problems when they extrapolate this to all drugs. After all, ecstasy, heroin and cocaine are all Class A. If ecstasy is that obviously safe, and we're taught much the same about the dangers of it and coke/heroin, then surely heroin and cocaine are just as safe as ecstasy, right? Newsflash for you: You pay *enormous* amounts of money for the treatment of alcohol-related problems (from short term alcohol poisoning and getting into fights to long-term problems like liver damage), tobacco related problems, and the medical effects of people already addicted to illegal drugs. (You pay for all the people doing the horrifically risky act of driving. You pay for every idiot who slips with a knife because they weren't using it properly, who proverbially or literally runs with scissors. Again, it's where you draw the line.) Isn't it better to pay to encourage people not to take drugs and to get off them if they are, than to pay to clean up the results? I reiterate that making them illegal plainly does not stop usage. Do you know that for sure? I can't vouch for every prison everywhere, and certainly some provide rehab programs, but I know that drugs in prisons are acknowledged to be a huge issue by the prison services, and I've read more than one discussion on the subject by ex-prisoners. |
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Sentynel - Head Ninja, Admin, Keeper of the Ban Afrit, Official Forum Graphics Guy, and forum code debugger. A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns - the rising of the Milky Way | |
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| indie2 | Oct 18 2010, 01:59 PM Post #19 |
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Foliot
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OK, maybe you're right or wrong and maybe i'm right or wrong on the prison's debate. I don't know if all of prisons are like i say so it's probably a mixture which means we're both right so lets agree on that one as it's not the issue. cars, playing sport and stepping outside in a thuderstorm is something thats nessary, to get to work, to keep fit and healthy or just having to get home from work and the weather just happens to be bad. Drugs have no use in this world other than to either help people with illness (and dying people with pain) which i agree with strongly, if you're dying and are in absolute agony usually illegal drugs should be available legally but other than that they are useless other than to make people high and whether they kill them or not they damage people in some way like alcohol, information on this is easily found on the internet, i don't know whether i can link a site here but the site i went on was reliable. and yes, you could say this is also true for alcohol but alcohol is not addictive unless you let it be. sure people can make their own minds up, but drugs can often take people's minds from them, they affect people's mentality and the decisions people make. people get addictied to it and that therefore takes their decision on whether to use it or not away from them. just because they are incontrol taking it the first time and can make that decision doesn't mean they get that chance the second or third, they might not even be down from the first high before taking it again. and just because it happens rarely doesn't take away from the fact that it happens. and when it doesn't it still hurt's people in some way whether mentally or otherwise. all of which is for no benefit other than the feeling it gives you. |
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| Sentynel | Oct 18 2010, 05:15 PM Post #20 |
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Nothing But The Rain
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Oh, right, so we shouldn't let people do things for fun, only if it's necessary? Ban motor racing, since that sport doesn't provide exercise benefits and is dangerous? Hell, ban all sports - a gym is a much safer way to get fit? Or maybe ban video games, books, movies, TV, because after all, people only do them for fun, and while they're not actively dangerous people could be doing something necessary instead! Pubs, alcohol, clubbing, they're definitely all out. People do dangerous stuff all the time for no reason other than that it's fun. It's not the government's place to say "no, you can't do that, it's too dangerous", especially such arbitrary criteria. If they're going to set a threshold at which things are too dangerous for the population to be allowed to do, then set a consistent threshold and stick to it. At the moment? They're making it up as they go along and pretending like they're being all logical about it. The amount of damage done by different drugs varies hugely; for example, take magic mushrooms - also Class A - which are almost entirely harmless - LSD's only real negative effects are possible bad trips, and shrooms aren't as strong an effect and much less likely to trigger them. No drug is addictive unless you let it be. The problem is people *do* let it be, for whatever reasons, and whether it's legal or not. Some drugs may form physical dependencies more than others (tobacco compared to alcohol, for example) but at the root a "psychological" dependency is just a chemical feedback loop in the brain; it's not all that different from a physical dependency. Again, this is why you provide honest and accurate education on the effects, and provide whatever support necessary to get off them. Again, I don't want everybody running around off their tits on drugs. I am simply observing that current education and legal methods are blatantly not working, and looking for better methods. Life is full of pain. The world is big and cruel and painful. You can't fix that, and even if you could, do you think banning fun things on the grounds they might be dangerous is a good way to go about it? We're straying into philosophy here, but what ultimately is the point of life if you don't enjoy it? You can sit down and minimise every risk you take, live your life never doing anything fun because it's too risky, and in the end you'll die just like everybody else. It's your personal choice where you draw the risk line, but is it right to extrapolate your choice to the rest of the population? I don't think it is. |
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Sentynel - Head Ninja, Admin, Keeper of the Ban Afrit, Official Forum Graphics Guy, and forum code debugger. A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns - the rising of the Milky Way | |
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| Captain Internets | Oct 18 2010, 06:36 PM Post #21 |
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Marid
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I think the world would be a better place if everyone got high.
Edited by Captain Internets, Oct 18 2010, 06:40 PM.
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sentynel is gay
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| FuzzyLobster | Oct 18 2010, 07:57 PM Post #22 |
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Marid
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^And THAT one surprised no one I'm sure. ![]() Okay, I was just going to leave my comments at the one post but... I don't know what kind of education systems you've all got where you live but we're never told that by taking drugs you'll just drop dead over here (other than hearing about the occasional guy who thinks he's Superman, or the guy who started pulling out his intestines while on meth - sorry if you were eating). They mainly just focus on tobacco and alcohol, while explaining how illegal drugs work and about addictions and some side effects, etc. (plus never ending lists of different names for specific drugs for some reason - many of which sound made up). Also lots of "drugs + driving = evil." As they should. (speaking of which, what's with you and driving, Sent?) However there's no way in hell my tax dollars should pay for someone's medical treatment (unless it's rehab) if they use drugs with serious medical side effects and know the risk. There are some ways that drugs can be used for someone with certain medical problems though. Did you know they've started to try using psilocybin mushroom (which I'll use instead of magic, because it just sounds so much cooler) to treat OCD? *fun fact for today* Edited by FuzzyLobster, Oct 18 2010, 07:57 PM.
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![]() "Few injustices [can be] deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” ― Stephen Jay Gould FOUNDER OF THE SAM THE BARMAN FANCLUB: QUOTE IN YOUR SIG TO JOIN | |
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| Captain Internets | Oct 18 2010, 08:00 PM Post #23 |
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Marid
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Holy cabbage *exaggerates OCD considerably* |
sentynel is gay
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| Sentynel | Oct 18 2010, 08:45 PM Post #24 |
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Nothing But The Rain
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Maybe your system is better than ours. Like I mentioned, the sum total of our education on the negative effects of ecstasy was "here's Leah Betts, she took ecstasy and died horribly, don't take it or THE SAME WILL HAPPEN TO YOU". There was never any discussion of the actual usage or risk rates for anything. It was a brief look at the intended effects of the drug, and then HERE'S SOMEONE WHO DIED HORRIBLY, LET'S GENERALISE. It made me angry. (Oh, and we got the reams of "street names" too.) (I'm taking lessons outside term time. Need a few more before I can take the test, so it's gonna be a while.) |
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Sentynel - Head Ninja, Admin, Keeper of the Ban Afrit, Official Forum Graphics Guy, and forum code debugger. A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns - the rising of the Milky Way | |
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| Nero | Oct 18 2010, 11:43 PM Post #25 |
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The Canadian
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Yes, I will say that our system here is much more effective than many places. Mind you we still drink and do other cabbage. But I remember a police officer coming to our school once to talk about drugs. I forget at the moment what the policy was ( I just was thinking about it the other day too) but it wasn't cheesy, but very clear and effective. |
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| indie2 | Oct 19 2010, 08:10 AM Post #26 |
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Foliot
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whoa, what happened to the harmless debate? don't get angry at me just cause i have a difference of opinion, come on. I fully respect your opinion even though it's different to mine. ok say you have a point say all what you are saying is true and people should be free to take drugs, cause its their own life and they can do what they like with it and thats living life. say they don't effect you that much, don't kill that many people. say theres a lower death rate for drugs than car crashes and they should be legal . They're fun and its their life to live. but what happens when they do stupid things while high; get hit by a car, think their invinsible and jump off a building, rape and beat their girlfriend in the flat they share because they come from a mates house stoned and she hasn't done the washing up? who looks after them then? probably the doctors that have to scrape them off the blood soaked concrete or the police that have to question a broken and distraught woman about something she can't even bring herself to think about while having to hunt down and wrestle a violent, off his head yob to the ground because he won't co-operate before he can be arrested. how is that a person's own problem then? (it's the sames with binge drinking, which can't be banned because levels can't be regulated, but people are still able to chuck people out of pubs when they think they've had enough.) Edited by indie2, Oct 19 2010, 08:25 AM.
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| nathanielandbartimaeus | Oct 19 2010, 09:09 AM Post #27 |
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Marid
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No, I don't think Sent is angry. =p He is just being a bit sarcastic on the "people must do things only if they are necessary" point. Well, about what people do while under the influence of drug is not pardoned off. I mean, if they hit someone while driving a car under the influence of alcohol, they get punished not only for hitting a person but for also driving under the influence of a drug (and rightly so). And yeah, I agree people are more likely to do violent things when on some drugs. And they get punished for it and nobody lets them off because they are stoned off their head . Which should make them realize even more how stupid it is to take drugs. But, like already mentioned, making them illegal won't stop people from taking it and they still go about hitting and raping people. So new ways must be thought of to make people realize taking drugs isn't cool. Nobody says that taking drugs *only* affects that person. Obviously it affects their families, it affects society. But many things affect society. Broken families are known to affect young children, and hence society. So should we ban divorce? Views affect society. Some people think it is okay to support certain extreme parties, so do we ban them and curtail people's freedom to vote for a certain type of party? Or perhaps, ban such people from voting because their votes could spoil a society? Women who suffer from certain heritable diseases or problems risk passing it on to their would-be children. So, do we prevent them from having children? Society is complex and many, many things can affect it. It definitely wouldn't be possible to solve the problems by just banning it. If you do that, people would end up with very limited freedoms and virtually no choice. Damn my internet connection. The connection went off and I didn't realize it. And I clicked "post reply". And my whole post disappeared. I had to type the whole thing again. Not to mention to get my internet to work. Edited by nathanielandbartimaeus, Oct 19 2010, 09:14 AM.
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"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination ... no more men!" - Einstein "I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you." - Studs Terkel. <@Ximenez> Sentynel: But i have a life? No. Qed. | |
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| indie2 | Oct 19 2010, 10:07 AM Post #28 |
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Foliot
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sorry about your internet connection. Its really annoying when that happens. the thing is none of those things affect your decisions and take your reasoning away from you. when people do things like what i said before they are not in control of their own actions. without these drugs most of them would be horrified thinking of themselves doing something like that. people who vote for the BNP or have a divorce under their belt and mothers who chose to have kids that they know will be disabled are in their right mind, they choose to live like that and take the consequences for it. It isn't fair on the children involved in a divorce or if the bnp get's more seats in parliament (i dunno whether they have any) but the people who made them decisions were mentally stable at that time to do so. and yes, people choose to take drugs but after taking them they aren't in control and in there right mind to make them decisions. sentynel (i think it was him) said eariler that legalising drugs won't make the drug use get any worse than it already is so why does that mean it won't work the other way round? why wouldn't making drugs completely illegal make young people at least think before taking them? now, i've got a brand new shiny copy of RoS to read thats just been delivered through my letter box. I'm impatient and I'm off. See ya.
Edited by indie2, Oct 19 2010, 10:07 AM.
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| Sentynel | Oct 19 2010, 10:45 AM Post #29 |
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Nothing But The Rain
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nj's right, I'm not angry. She also covered people still being held responsible if they're intoxicated pretty well, but I'd just like to add that your examples do not apply to the drugs I'm advocating legalising. I'll repeat the graph here to avoid switching back a page: There are precisely two drugs on that diagram equal to or lower than alcohol which are known to have effects even *vaguely* like those you're describing, and they are amphetamines and alcohol. This is a prime example of my point about the lack of honest, useful drug education. Once again, I am not advocating the legalisation of the really dangerous stuff. Decriminalisation for personal use, increased help for people using it, and a much bigger focus on going after the dealers, yes, but not legalisation. One other thing: "sentynel (i think it was him) said eariler that legalising drugs won't make the drug use get any worse than it already is so why does that mean it won't work the other way round? why wouldn't making drugs completely illegal make young people at least think before taking them?" I'm not entirely sure how you're coming to that conclusion. Looks to me like people aren't really overly bothered by whether or not things are illegal. If they were worried about the legality, then decriminalisation should have seen an increase in use, no? |
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Sentynel - Head Ninja, Admin, Keeper of the Ban Afrit, Official Forum Graphics Guy, and forum code debugger. A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400 billion suns - the rising of the Milky Way | |
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| nathanielandbartimaeus | Oct 19 2010, 12:04 PM Post #30 |
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Marid
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Only amphetamine has effects similar to alcohol, amongst the drugs which are less harmful than alcohol? Cool, I thought other slightly less-dangerous drugs could have that effect too. But addiction sometimes can be a bit dangerous too. I mean, people who are addicted to some drugs show violent/unreasonable behaviour if denied their regular dose (but hey, kids addicted to computers and video games are known to show that too =p) or known to steal to get their hands on it. |
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"If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination ... no more men!" - Einstein "I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you." - Studs Terkel. <@Ximenez> Sentynel: But i have a life? No. Qed. | |
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