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tl;dr: To put it one last way: if drugs were legal, the pharmaceutical industry would be free to iterate on making recreational drugs, that don't have the drawb
by ep103 9y ago
tl;dr: To put it one last way: if drugs were legal, the pharmaceutical industry would be free to iterate on making recreational drugs, that don't have the drawbacks of the things people currently make in back alleys.
The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun, and people want the drugs that are fun to do, and don't have negative health consequences. Many drugs are relatively safe to do (in small quantities) (or at least moreso than things like skydiving), provided drug purity.
Drugs that seriously harm health, are by and large things that people either get suckered into via the black market, or are things people turn to when they do not have access to safer alternatives.
And many of the negative health consequences and horrors of drug use, come from unpure drug quality, which in turn is a result of the illegal nature of drugs.
Let me put it this way: If it were legal to buy a non-addictive opiod and heroin, nearly 100% of people would choose the opiod. Out of pure self interest, people wouldn't choose the addictive substance, given a safer alternative.
Similarly, if people could choose between pure mdma, and meth, meth would nearly cease to exist.
But if you decide to use an opiod today, you're going to get a mix of heroin and all sorts of awful junk that you're going to pump into your veins. And if you buy mdma today, there's a huge chance there's going to be a lot of meth in there. Etc, etc, etc
- shmolyneaux 9y agoSkydiving is actually fairly safe, see http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety for stats. There were 0.0061 fatalities per 1000 jumps in 2015 .
- pm90 9y agoYeah and there is very little risk of getting addicted to skydiving :). At least for most people.
- base698 9y agoThe people that get into it usually lose years of their life to skydiving. Many quit their other hobbies and stop hanging around friends from their old life and even quit their jobs. More similar than you'd think :)
- _acme 9y agoWhat is it that you mean by a 'non-addictive' opioid? They're all roughly equivalent in their addictive potential. Even those that are used to treat addiction, such as buprenorphine, cause physical and mental dependence.
- kortex 9y agoThere are a few ways to make opioids less addicting. The most common strategy is to slow down absorption rate, which reduces the conditioning associated with drug-taking behavior. This can be done mechanically (sustained release pills or polymers) or chemically ("tie" the active molecule with a deactivating group which the body hydrolyses) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702116000304 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702116...
- _acme 9y agoDo you mean to suggest that OxyContin (extended-release oxycodone) is less of a problem, or less addicting, than Percocet (instant release oxycodone + APAP)?
- mgce 9y ago> The taboo truth is people do drugs because they are fun I don't agree with this. This is true for some cases, yes. But it's just as common if not more common for people to take drugs to mask pain. It's not about the drug being fun, but about the overwhelming pain of life being temporarily numbed. Some drugs start off as fun before becoming something more severe. Others are never fun - they're just coping mechanisms.
- pixl97 9y agoErr, you mean you only partially agree with this. Of course my views my be slight jaded by the BS programs like D.A.R.E spouted off during the 80s. "Drugs are bad" "Use drugs once and die" "This is your brain on drugs". This propaganda pretty much ended any realistic talk about legal and illegal drug use. Some drugs are fun. Some people have to cope with massive amounts of pain in their life. Others do drugs because of a genetic predisposition to addiction. Now we're just left with a massive mess with bad outcomes for everybody.