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Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age from human hair test
- wellnessxyz 3y ago[flagged]
- yyyyttttvvvv 3y ago[flagged]
- anigbrowl 3y agoI always wonder why nobody has made an argument that drug laws are unconstitutional since the 9th amendment states clearly that rights don't need to be enumerated, and there's abundant evidence of people making their own drug decisions prior to the existence of the USA.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe Ninth doesn't mean "you can't regulate anything we didn't mention". It just says that any mere omission shouldn't be construed to mean anything. The lack of an enumerated right to privacy doesn't forbid the courts from deciding we have one.
- goodells 3y agoAgreed, and virtually anything not enumerated would fall under either the Elastic Clause[1] or the Commerce Clause[2] giving Congress power to regulate it. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_Proper_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_Proper_Clause [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause (technically an enumerated power, but the broadest and vaguest one by far)
- jl2718 3y agoCorrect. That is the 10th: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
- ceejayoz 3y agoRights and governmental powers are not the same thing. The Feds, States, and the People aren’t able /supposed to violate rights, even unenumerated ones. Hence things like the right to privacy. The Ninth is a reminder that the Tenth has its limits too.
- tmountain 3y agoWhat’s the basis of the argument for prohibition if someone isn’t hurting others?
- avsteele 3y ago"This thing is inherently too risky/dangerous to use ... like firing a gun off into the air"
- watwut 3y agoIsn't the whole objection that it might hurt others?
- metadat 3y agoThis is dead wrong, and an extremely ignorant take. Firing a gun into the air is ill-advised and illegal because such bullets have a tendency to randomly impact and maim or murder bystanders within the radius of a couple of miles. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/02/15/firing-a-gun-into-the-air-can-kill-someone/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/02/15/firi... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/03/can-falling-bullets-kill-you.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/03/can-falling-bull...
- Vecr 3y agoYeah, firing a gun into the dirt is much safer. If you have a giggle switch make sure you can handle the recoil, otherwise you might shoot yourself or someone else in the foot.
- avsteele 3y agoI'm telling you what the argument is. Not endorsing it. That's why its in quotes.
- Tao3300 3y agoIt usually boils down to someone's sky daddy not liking it.
- eurleif 3y agoTo oversimplify, that's why prohibition 1.0 had to be done via constitutional amendment; but since then, we had the Wickard v. Filburn ruling, which made virtually everything regulatable under the Commerce Clause with its extremely broad interpretation of the phrase "interstate commerce". In Wickard v. Filburn, a farmer grew grain on his farm. He did not sell this grain, whether across state lines or otherwise; he merely fed it to his own livestock on the same farm. SCOTUS ruled that this could be regulated via the Commerce Clause because, if he grew his own grain, he could be expected to buy less grain on the open market, which could indirectly affect interstate commerce. By that logic, virtually anything can affect interstate commerce, and be regulated as such.
- newZWhoDis 3y agoSuch an absurd ruling, but none of the current supremes have the stones to overturn it
- darkmarmot 3y agoClarence Thomas actually dissented on this and said it was crazy.
- kevviiinn 3y agoHe's right. Saying that the federal government can regulate how much a farmer can grow to feed their own animals because it would somehow impact interstate commerce is entirely unhinged It's the most incredible form of mental gymnastics in order to grab power
- mananaysiempre 3y agoLooking from the outside, US constitutional law has always seemed like this absurd tangle of kabbalistic reinterpretations, but it seems important to mention that AFAIK the federal ban on child labour (whether or not its products cross state lines) rests on similarly twisty reasoning. (Things like environmental protections as well, probably, but this looks to have been the first example.) “Let’s allow the federal government to regulate whatever” is a value-neutral weapon.
- autoexec 3y ago> I always wonder why nobody has made an argument that drug laws are unconstitutional since the 9th amendment states clearly that rights don't need to be enumerated, Probably because most people want regulations and enforcement around pharmaceuticals. If we decide that the government has no power to pass laws surrounding drugs we'd be hurting ourselves.
- Spivak 3y agoWe would? If the only laws on the books was that people who manufacture or sell drugs and pharmaceuticals had to faithfully represent their contents (covered under law's regulating commercial speech) and safe to consume (covered under negligence) but you couldn't tell people what they are and aren't allowed to sell, posses, or consume I think we would be a million times better off. The war on drugs would have never gotten off the ground. We would have whole above board industries for recreational drugs which would just be "agriculture" instead of black markets and cartels. Government couldn't touch birth control, PrEP, or whatever bs de jour they want to ban. People wouldn't have to worry about living with chronic pain because they get labeled as a drug seeker.
- toast0 3y agoBased on your proposed framework, the war on drugs people would just have to declare certain things unsafe to consume.
- zamnos 3y agoLooking at the supplement industry, we kinda do. There are some specific exemptions - can't put cocaine in coke - but redbull and the rest of them still were able to lean into the legal OTC stimulant category despite the war on drugs, and get to a $16b brand.
- autoexec 3y ago> We would? If the only laws on the books was that people who manufacture or sell drugs and pharmaceuticals had to faithfully represent their contents (covered under law's regulating commercial speech) and safe to consume (covered under negligence) but you couldn't tell people what they are and aren't allowed to sell, posses, or consume I think we would be a million times better off. I wouldn't be so eager to go back to the days of snake oil salesmen who can be fully honest about what something contains, while lying through their teeth about what effects it would have, or the research they've done. Where if you do take something that makes you sick, or a batch of bad drugs floods the US market you can't possibly track down the people responsible because there are countless people on the street and the internet selling medications, with new unlicensed and untracked sellers popping up and disappearing all the time and no way to trace a particular pill or formulation back to the maker. Where the people who are sickened or the families of those who have died will be required to have enough money and time to take massive corporations to court and prove that a specific company and their drug was responsible for the harm, and that it couldn't possibly have been any of the other totally unregulated drugs the victim had taken at any point in their lifetime. Where quality control is not mandated and there is no inspection or oversight of manufacturers. Where testing and clinical trials aren't required. Where there is no post-marketing monitoring for adverse effects. No rules against selling addictive substances to adults and children. Where it's perfectly legal for pharmaceutical companies to bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs to the sick and desperate and to sell them at any price. Where there are no limits whatsoever on advertising them. No rules on how drugs should be labeled or regulations requiring sellers or manufacturers to make people aware of a drug's side effects or contraindications ("Our drug is perfectly safe! It isn't our fault the dumb consumer took it with that other drug and it killed them! They should have done their research! Caveat emptor!"). No rules about drugs requiring a prescription leading to people buying and taking them inappropriately and nothing to stop people from stockpiling essential medications making them scarce. Over and over again we see how even our current regulations have been weakened and the regulators captured by industry and how and it's resulted in our regulations failing to protect people. We've already seen how totally ineffective those commercial speech and negligence laws you want to exclusively depend on have been at protecting Americans from cosmetics (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/harmful-chemicals-in-personal-care-products/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/harmful-chemicals...) and supplements https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/14/diet-pills-and-other-unregulated-supplements-send-thousands-hospital-each-year/7HG6mwrdujYCB7ZMo5RHuM/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/14/diet-pills-and-...) that are almost entirely unregulated. I'm all for the legalization of recreational drugs, but I want those drugs heavily regulated like any other pharmaceutical. Be careful what you wish for, and spend some time studying what things were like before the US had drug regulations before you go suggesting we throw away over a hundred years of progress. I promise that while things aren't great, they are much better now than they were before we regulated drugs.
- vkou 3y agoThe 9th amendment is, unfortunately, completely useless in the current political climate, because what is an 'obvious natural right' that can be 'discovered' by the courts, is completely in the eye of the beholder. And right now, the beholder is on the payroll of evangelical reactionaries.
- sidewndr46 3y agoMy understanding is in the US it's just regulation of commerce, there is no actual prohibition on the existence of a chemical compound in your bloodstream
- HideousKojima 3y agoBecause the 9th and 10th Amendments are effectively non-existent in jurisprudence for the last century or two.
- kortex 3y ago> Thus, opium alkaloids were detected in Late Bronze Age containers > different hallucinogenic compounds, mainly nicotine, tryptamines and tropane alkaloids have been chemically documented in Prehispanic artefacts from the Americas, and psychoactive compounds of Cannabis in archaeological wooden braziers from China. > The alkaloids ephedrine, atropine and scopolamine were detected, and their concentrations estimated [in human hair] > The results furnish direct evidence of the consumption of plant drugs and, more interestingly, they reveal the use of multiple psychoactive species. Basically, we have long discovered "drug paraphernalia" and other adjacent materials, suggesting drug use (namely cannabis, tobacco, various psychoactive mushrooms, opium, various stimulants like areca and ephedra, deliriants like Datura, and of course alcohol). But we haven't known for sure that these meant the drugs were consumed recreationally/medicinally. This gives direct evidence the drugs were in fact consumed deliberately. tl;dr - Homo sapiens got high.
- akiselev 3y agoA fascinating thought is that we might have been doing this since _before_ homo sapiens emerged as a species. We've got plenty of evidence that we had cultural propagation of knowledge among our early ancestors for over three millions of years via the Oldowan and Acheulean stone industries. Since hunter gatherers naturally passed along knowledge of the safety of edible plants, at what point did they figure out how to get high and start passing that along too? It's entirely plausible that our species and immediate ancestors have been getting high for millions of years! Since we have to eat anyways, we might have discovered our first high before our first stone tool! Kinda puts the war on drugs in an even worse light.
- calderknight 3y agoHow long have Homo Sapiens been around? More or less than three million years?
- stuxnet79 3y agoAnatomically modern 'homo sapiens' have been around for much less than that - 120,000 years
- dav_Oz 3y agoFor anyone interested in the kind of drugs involved here: >The analysis showed the presence of atropine, scopolamine and ephedrine in the three replicated hair samples (Fig. 5) at the following concentrations: 6.7, 9.2, and 10.7 (mean = 8.9) pg atropine/mg hair, 384, 423 and 504 (mean = 437) pg scopolamine/mg hair, and 295, 328 and 367 (mean = 330) pg ephedrine/mg hair. Drug use in the broadest sense. Atropine and scopolamine are no fun drugs as deliriants they require extraordinary skill. In this case the ratio of atropine:scopolamine could be indicative of Datura stramonium [0] growing in the region. Most recreational drug users who try to experiment with Datura et al. quickly realize after "waking up" ~ 24 hours or so totally disoriented in questionable disposition with little to no memory with what had happened that it is nearly impossible to put them into "good use" and leave it be at some point. Regular use is mostly documented by highly experienced shamans (i.e. experienced in different forms of altered state of consciousness). [As a note aside: In 1934 Bill Wilson a struggling alcoholic and later founder of AA had a transformative experience under the heavy influence of atropine and scopolamine ("Belladonna Cure") after which he became sober: >At Towns Hospital under Silkworth's care, Wilson was administered a drug cure concocted by Charles B. Towns. Known as the Belladonna Cure, it contained belladonna (Atropa belladonna) and henbane (Hyoscyamus niger). These plants contain deliriants, such as atropine and scopolamine, that cause hallucinations. It was while undergoing this treatment that Wilson experienced his "Hot Flash" spiritual conversion. While lying in bed depressed and despairing, Wilson cried out: "I'll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!" He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity.] [1] Ephedrine on the other hand is a stimulant (methamphetamine analogue with a hydroxyl group at the β position), now mostly used by bodybuilders in much higher doses (an order of magnitude higher than measured in the hairs above) to effectively burn fat. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Alcoholics_Anonymous#1934_Bill_Wilson_sober https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Alcoholics_Anonym...
- WheelsAtLarge 3y agoDrugs or herbal medicine? Is there even a difference when talking about early civilizations? We know that herbal medicine was a staple of many early civilizations. Even animals use herbs as medicine. It seems to me that we have known this information for ages.
- whalesalad 3y agoWhat’s the difference? Herbs and drugs are different labels for the same thing.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoDosage, and possibly method of consumption, which has an effect or people would never have invented freebasing or snorting. Herbs also have many other components, which may have pharmacological effect, while drugs do not have those components.
- yadingus 3y agoThat's a modern, western distinction tho. In many cultures plants, mushrooms, and other substances are considered straight up medicine, sometimes mixed with other things, usually surrounded by ritual.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoThe point I was trying to make is that a "drug" is typically highly purified and a standardized single component, or at most a mix of highly purified components. Herbs, as medicine, are complex and variable. Even with highly debased street drugs they're missing the additional herbal components.
- yadingus 3y agoIs it tho? It's not uncommon to mix weed with herbs, it's called a spliff. Ayahuasca is a combination of substances, would you not consider modern ayahuasca consumption as a drug? Mushrooms are often mixed with lemon juice. Plus what's the point of making the distinction? And you mentioned that people in the past wouldn't snort drugs, and that's false, there's native tribes that would make powder out of seeds and snort them.
- mannyv 3y agoIt looks like Graham Hancock's Supernatural may not be complete fiction after all! I loved his books when I was a kid - but with serious grains of salt, obviously.
- anonu 3y agoIt's human nature to want to alter our consciousness. This just proves we've been doing it for millennia. Whether it's via caffeine or opium.
- cafard 3y agoSome say that Helen mixes opium into the wine early in the Odyssey.