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> Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concent

> Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concentration. > Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Mushrooms are not a hard drug. Fentanyl/heroine and crack are. > Does it matter that someone did a couple of lines of coke saturday rather than be drunk and high from Friday to Sunday? IMHO the second is worse.

netizen-936824 5y ago
There is no such thing as a "hard" or "heavy" drug. These terms are not in pharmacological literature and are not defined by any property of the chemical or their pharmacological action.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  Nevertheless it is rather easy to tell them apart. Hard drugs quickly cause heavy addiction in almost everybody who tries them, destroy their health and can even kill them easily. Psilocybin does not, it can actually be used to improve neural health and cure addictions (just search it here on HN, there are many papers to reference). There are things which are hard to define precisely nevertheless easy to distinguish intuitively.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    I guess we can consider alcohol a hard drug then. Time to make it illegal? I don't know anybody who uses it responsibly, therefore those people don't exist right?
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      I know many people who use alcohol responsibly and even people who use meth responsibly (it's great for heavy ADHD if you have enough willpower to only use tiny doses occasionally) but I seriously doubt there are many who use crack responsibly.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        Believe it or not I have met people who use cocaine, in both salt and base (crack) forms, responsibly. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. Same with methamphetamine and heroin. Do you think Dr. Carl Hart uses heroin irresponsibly? You may want to look him up.
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concentration. That concentration depends on the person: A person with more fat will show a higher concentration for a longer amount of time. If you don't smoke often, you might find that you get it out of your system rather fast. In short, tests aren't all that helpful with pot, and you won't realistically be able to tell if they smoked last night after work or last saturday during off time. > Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Mushrooms are not a hard drug. Fentanyl/heroine and crack are. Mushrooms and LSD are classified that way by many folks, though - including the US government. Fentanyl isn't instantly addictive - if it were, they wouldn't use it in hospitals. People do heroine occasionally without being addicted, too (most folks don't shoot up). Same with cocaine. I don't know as much about crack, but there was a time when folks did meth on a more recreational basis instead of all the time (I've never personally done it, no desire). And that's the issue. "Hard" depends on some combination of use, effect, and what frequent use does. Regardless, plenty of people do "hard" drugs occasionally and you'll never know. And if it is better to you that someone do some cocaine - generally accepted as a hard, addictive drug (through propaganda) - than be drunk all weekend, in some ways, you already know this. A drug test isn't gonna help most of these, though.

netizen-936824 5y ago

There is no such thing as a "hard" or "heavy" drug. These terms are not in pharmacological literature and are not defined by any property of the chemical or their pharmacological action.

qwerty456127 5y ago
Nevertheless it is rather easy to tell them apart. Hard drugs quickly cause heavy addiction in almost everybody who tries them, destroy their health and can even kill them easily. Psilocybin does not, it can actually be used to improve neural health and cure addictions (just search it here on HN, there are many papers to reference). There are things which are hard to define precisely nevertheless easy to distinguish intuitively.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  I guess we can consider alcohol a hard drug then. Time to make it illegal? I don't know anybody who uses it responsibly, therefore those people don't exist right?
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    I know many people who use alcohol responsibly and even people who use meth responsibly (it's great for heavy ADHD if you have enough willpower to only use tiny doses occasionally) but I seriously doubt there are many who use crack responsibly.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Believe it or not I have met people who use cocaine, in both salt and base (crack) forms, responsibly. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. Same with methamphetamine and heroin. Do you think Dr. Carl Hart uses heroin irresponsibly? You may want to look him up.

Broken_Hippo 5y ago

I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concentration. That concentration depends on the person: A person with more fat will show a higher concentration for a longer amount of time. If you don't smoke often, you might find that you get it out of your system rather fast. In short, tests aren't all that helpful with pot, and you won't realistically be able to tell if they smoked last night after work or last saturday during off time. > Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Mushrooms are not a hard drug. Fentanyl/heroine and crack are. Mushrooms and LSD are classified that way by many folks, though - including the US government. Fentanyl isn't instantly addictive - if it were, they wouldn't use it in hospitals. People do heroine occasionally without being addicted, too (most folks don't shoot up). Same with cocaine. I don't know as much about crack, but there was a time when folks did meth on a more recreational basis instead of all the time (I've never personally done it, no desire). And that's the issue. "Hard" depends on some combination of use, effect, and what frequent use does. Regardless, plenty of people do "hard" drugs occasionally and you'll never know. And if it is better to you that someone do some cocaine - generally accepted as a hard, addictive drug (through propaganda) - than be drunk all weekend, in some ways, you already know this. A drug test isn't gonna help most of these, though.