19 ms·

Why the war on drugs has been made redundant

46 points by _delirium 13y ago

bayesianhorse 13y ago
I'm not so much into chemistry, but shouldn't the number of production-viable cannabinoids with psychotropic effects be quite limited? Can the producers just run out of possible drugs? Or is that limit too high? On the other hand, I don't think that this finding will change drug policy. Too much has been invested in the war on drugs, there is not going to be a 180° turn anytime soon. Especially not when the upturn in designer drugs does not come with an increased mortality...
- refurb 13y ago
  To answer your question, the limit is just too high. There is actually quite a lot of "flexibility" in terms of chemical structure for most drugs. You can replace a methyl with an ethyl, propyl, i-propyl and the activity is usually comparable. Aromatic rings can be replaced with other variants. There are probably several thousand different structures that would acceptable psychotropic effects, if not tens of thousands.
  - ippisl 13y ago
    I haven't got chemistry knowledge, but isn't the effect of say a THC analog is based on binding between THC and a certain receptor? Wouldn't it be possible to offer kits or services for chemical manufacturers, to test the level of binding of their chemicals, and define that above a certain level of binding , you're chemical have to be regulated in some way?
    - Nursie 13y ago
      I think this is what the latest iteration of UK law attempted to do, or at least something in this sort of direction. IIRC earlier this year they made any substance which is known to be a CB1 or CB2 receptor agonist a regulated substance. I think. My understanding of the legal changes may be lacking here.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Keep in mind that those receptors do have a non-recreational purpose in your body. Your body produces chemicals that bind to those receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system
    - shabble 13y ago
      It is perhaps possible, but currently neither quick, reliable nor cheap. You'd need to check that: (a) it's not immediately toxic, (b) there's no immediate metabolisation that renders it inactive, (c) it can enter the bloodstream, (d) it can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and (e) it can either substitute for a particular neurotransmitter, act as a releasing agent, act as a reuptake inhibitor, or several other proposed and known methods of actually causing 'mind-altering' effects. This is essentially the 'drug-discovery pipeline' that big pharma spends hundreds of millions on when developing new medications.
      - ippisl 13y ago
        I think you're taking it a bit too far. If say i sell bath salts, which aren't supposed to be consumed, why would there be a need to check metabolism/toxicity and such ? But if metabolism can transform said chemical , then sure, you've got to take it into account. But many of those drugs can be detected by pre-metabolism binding, i think.
        shabble 13y ago
        Metabolism can go either way, for instance Codeine is thought to be mostly a prodrug[1], which is converted to morphine in the liver. So it's only really effective when taken orally, because it relies on the first-pass metabolism for its action. Morphine itself, on the other hand, is quite significantly converted into inactive metabolites when taken orally. So you end up with IV morphine being ~3x more active as the same oral dose, because it bypasses the first bit. Other drugs are exclusively one route because they rely on other processes for transformation or absorption. This matters because it's not really appropriate to schedule chemicals which happen to trigger a response in a test-kit, but are not plausibly drugs of abuse due to side-effects, or lack of any reasonable mechanism of getting to the sites where they'd be active. The "intended for consumption" is a convenient fiction for the head-shops and dodgy websites that sell such things, but actually having to test things which aren't intended for use in certain ways would be a massive imposition on, well, everything that uses chemicals[2]. There are heuristics that cover a lot of ground, and that's basically what the Analog Act tries to preempt, but there are still huge numbers of potentially active compounds we have no idea about. In-vitro binding studies are perhaps the next filtering step, but you still ought to have to demonstrate actual demonstrable plausibility of action for it to be a crime[3]. In addition, if you have something that feels like cocaine, but rapidly metabolises into a lethal neurotoxin or whatever in the same dose, it's not going to be a drug of abuse, except perhaps in suicides. In terms of banning/restricting sale of things, maybe binding data would be sufficient, but I'm not sure just what the implications for testing & compliance for everyone involved would be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug [2] Despite some TV adverts to the contrary, this would be everything. [3] Leading to (IMO) the utterly bizarre world of fakes/illegal placebos, for which in many places you can be convicted for the same degree crime as the drug you purported to be selling, rather than say, fraud.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >> I'm not so much into chemistry, but shouldn't the number of production-viable cannabinoids with psychotropic effects be quite limited? I've been following this lately but not from the beginning. AFAICT the number of cannabinoids that were created in labs, tested in-vitro and documented in research papers is in the hundreds. Most/all of these are now illegal in places like the UK where they ban chemicals, and may already be illegal in the US due to analog laws. In response to this the cannabinoid producers have now gone totally off the map and are creating previously unknown variants of these. It's hard to say if these are more dangerous than previously studied chemicals because we've been in the realm of "somebody once made this and looked at what it did to some animal neurons" for a couple of years now. >> Can the producers just run out of possible drugs? Or is that limit too high? It's really, really hard to know. But there always seems to be a new one on the horizon.
rwmj 13y ago
Designer drugs show why a proper system of regulation is needed to replace the irresponsible "war" on drugs. But it's dangerous to think that the law cannot attempt to make whole classes of chemicals illegal and so we don't need to worry about the war on drugs any more. The law can do that, and cause even more massive damage when it does so. Designer drugs are also likely to kill a whole lot of people, bolstering politicians who want to keep the status quo.
- aidos 13y ago
  Indeed. How about just making sure that the drugs people take are safe, of a high quality and available without feeding a criminal underbelly? Nah, that'd just be silly.
  - freyr 13y ago
    There are already pharmaceutical drugs for that , which are abused at epidemic levels in regions of the U.S. They're safe and of high quality, though they might still feed a criminal underbelly. Of course, people who get addicted to synthetic opiates often have their lives ravaged to the same degree as people who get addicted to regular old street heroin, despite the safety and quality of the drugs.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      Pharmaceutical drugs are too inaccessible to really remove the criminal element from recreational drugs. What is really needed is for regulated, high-quality drugs to be sold over the counter, with loads of warning labels, to any adult who wants them. It make sound crazy, but we already do it with two of the most dangerous drugs known to man: alcohol and tobacco. Nobody is claiming that there will not be issues with dependence or abuse of these drugs. The point is that people should not have to deal with dangerous criminals, nor should they be afraid of jail time for admitting their drug use.
      - epochwolf 13y ago
        I don't think it's really fair to label tobacco as "dangerous". It's definitely toxic and it will shorten your lifespan by a number of years but it's not "dangerous". Tobacco doesn't make people do stupid things like alcohol does.
rdl 13y ago
Our Glorious Leader Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to keep us safe from consuming these drugs through the Protecting Our Youth from Dangerous Synthetic Drugs Act (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2ffa01a7-a73c-4016-aec7-07da34d9f230 http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...). I'd say something about voting her out of office in 2016 (for this and for running intelligence committees which rubber-stamp NSA spying, among many other things), but she's already said she won't run again.
- s_q_b 13y ago
  I do want to note that some of these drugs have dramatically worse side effects than the illegal drugs for which they substitute. MDPV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks. Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property. To me, the designer MDPV and PCP would be the poster drugs for this category.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    "MPDV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks." Can you cite more than anecdotes to support this? For what it's worth caffeine can also induce psychosis, like any other stimulant (which is what MDPV is). "Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property." We already have a model for that: alcohol.
    - s_q_b 13y ago
      I'm not sure you could regulate these drugs in the same manner as alcohol, because they really are significantly worse in terms of both biochemistry and societal harm. (As an aside, certainly alcohol causes far worse damage, but only because it's far more prevalent.) Let's start with the biochemistry. MDPV is both a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor and a dopamine releaser. For most users, it provides a short and intense cocaine-like high lasting several hours before abating. However, in a significant minority of users, the dopamine receptors seem to get stuck in the "on" position. The resulting flood overwhelms lower behavioral centers and results in intense hallucinations of danger, psychomotor agitation, and uncontrolled aggression. See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/ As to the attacks, here's a few, just from my hometown: "Man Who Stabbed Priest Was High on Bath Salts" http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/police-man-who-stabbed-priest-was-high-on-bath-salts-1.1116514 http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/police-man-who-stabbed-prie... "Bath Salts Suspected in Head Gnawing Attack" http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/da-bath-salts-suspected-in-hawley-head-gnawing-attack-1.1373101 http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/da-bath-salts-suspected-in-... "Scranton police have witnessed several incidents in recent months, however, and found that abuse of the disguised salts leaves a user with feelings of constant and extreme paranoia, imminent danger including threats on their lives, and hallucinations that have kept some hospitalized for up to five days. In one case, a man in a third story apartment believed to be using bath salts heard a knock on his door, according to Klein. He thought he was under attack, jumped out the window and shattered his ankle. “Previously, we had a guy that was injecting it at his house (on West Elm Street) in West Side, and he had his elderly mother and father locked in a bathroom,” Duffy said. “We had to have our negotiators come out, and he was actually injecting it as he was coming out of the door to talk to police.” “Two days ago, a complainant asked officers, ‘Can you see the two males across the street?’” Scranton Police Capt. Carl Graziano said Thursday. “He’s seeing them, and there’s nobody there.” On Wednesday, March 9, alleged bath salts abuser Ryan Foley, 25, of Scranton, was charged with breaking into St. Ann’s Basilica and stabbing and bludgeoning the Rev. Francis Landry. In a message to parishioners dated March 13, Landry wrote that he suffered “12 stab wounds and lacerations and at least six bruises” in the attack."
FrankenPC 13y ago
It's funny how people still imagine the government plays by some rule book. They only pretend to. If they so choose, they will make it illegal to design or produce ANY mind altering substance without an express license. Of course, only big pharma will be able to afford such a license. Watch and learn how the fascists work and play in the fields of the lord.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Illegal to produce - easy. Illegal to design - that is almost impossible to enforce and way too vague to be of any use. Can we kinda stay away from jailing people for thinking? I want to delay 1984 or Minority Report a few more years.
- shabble 13y ago
  How do you know it's mind-altering ahead of time though? They're sold as "bath salts" or "incense" for plausible deniability. Actually banning any abusable chemical in any form would have a massive impact on a whole range of industries. Even heavy regulation of precursors and otherwise important chemicals hasn't stopped novel ways of doing without them. So you're still playing catch-up, even if you make sure your analytic lab gets the sample on day 1, and presents you with firm evidence of both (a) what's actually in the thing, GC/MS/NMR etc, and (b) how & why you think it's "mind-altering". Sample $z acts as a dopamine releasing agent in the homogenized rat neural tissue[1]" is enough to publish a pre-clinical study on it, but I'd at least hope it could be challenged if it came to a court. And of course, it doesn't have any impact whatsoever on abuse of pharmaceuticals, which is already on track to beat out most other drugs in terms of accidents & fatalities in the (near) future. According to [2], it may even have happened already to the USA. [1] brain soup. [2] http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pages/Reports/PDMP_Full%20and%20Final.pdf http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pag... (not read it yet, although there's a press release/summary at https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescription-drugs-now-kill-more-people-in-the-us-than-heroin-and-cocaine-combined/ https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescripti... )
lukifer 13y ago
There is an evil hack that would get around this: pass a law which changes drug scheduling from a black-list to a white-list, with only FDA-approved substances allowed. I'm uncertain whether this could be successfully passed, though. Support for the War on Drugs is on the bubble as it is.
- s_q_b 13y ago
  Blanket prohibitions against have run up against legal infirmities. It's the reason the drug laws are drafted the way they are. A whitelist law violates the requirement that the statute must be on its face clear enough that a defendant could know whether his conduct was in violation of the law. Most such blanket prohibitions are ruled void for vagueness. Other statutes that run up against this problem frequently are the low level but extremely broad harassment and terroristic threat statutes.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    There is the "I know it when I see it" standard for pornography, which is equally dubious. If it was drafted as "knowingly consuming an unapproved substance for the purpose of intoxication", I could see that slipping through. But again, I'm not sure the support is there, but it would be another win for state power. The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous than the real thing.
    - s_q_b 13y ago
      The obscenity ruling was a bizarre sideways move for the Supreme Court, given their usual intense protection of the First Amendment. The "I know it when I see it" was even said almost tongue-in-cheek. > The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous than the real thing. That, to me, is the real tragedy. These drugs are dangerous, and only going to get more dangerous as the "good" compounds are quickly banned, leading chemists to use less tested and more unusual compounds.
- Nursie 13y ago
  A white list of everything that's for sale in every shop in every part of the economy? That seems both authoritarian and highly ambitious.
DanBC 13y ago
Here's a story about a grandmother selling "Bath Salts". She was arrested for selling some kind of drug. Even though the products she was selling contained the illegal chemicals she avoided a conviction because, well, who knows. It feels a bit random. (http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-nightmare-arrest-selling-bath-salts/story-19546383-detail/story.html http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-nightma...) Some things that aren't obvious from that article: Her shop sells a wide variety of drug paraphernalia (scales, pipes, bongs, cannabis seeds, items with cannabis logos, cannabis magazines and books, etc etc.)
dalke 13y ago
The fear of designer drugs existed already in the 1980s. The comic strip Doonesbury even covered it - Uncle Duke hosted a designer drug conference in his 'medical university' in Haiti. There already exist several ways to handle derivatives and analogues in drug prohibitions and restricted compound sales. Quoting from Wikipedia: "This then led the Health Committee of the League of Nations to pass several resolutions attempting to bring these new drugs under control, ultimately leading in 1930 to the first broad analogues provisions extending legal control to all esters of morphine, oxycodone, and hydromorphone."
venomsnake 13y ago
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." So after 30 years we have replaced stuff with known effects that we knew how to cope with, with stuff that is more dangerous with lots of side effects, untested and people are getting high all the same. Where should we put the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner?
- angersock 13y ago
  Into your pipe and smoke it.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
I have no idea why people would want to mess with this stuff. Here's an interesting article I came across a few years ago, when spice was starting to get popular. It convinced me never to touch the stuff: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-shouldnt-smoke-synthetic-weed/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-shouldn...
- Nursie 13y ago
  Most of those reasons are bunk. One of them seems to be "if you smoke it when you're driving, the cops might stop you and won't know what you're smoking is legal". If you smoke it when driving you are an asshole. Whether it's legal or not, whether it's real weed or not. Get off the road, get baked in your living room and stay there you dangerous, selfish prick. Also his 'hell' experience? Oh My God he took an unfamiliar substance along with TWICE his usual dose of dextromethorphan. I'm not f*cking surprised he had a hard time. Most of the other reasons he gives there are to do with people purchasing 'blends' of unknown amounts of unknown chemicals on unknown plant matter. People who want to know what they're dosing themselves with buy the pure powders and measure carefully. That all said, it's true that there's far more known about the safety profile of the 'real' stuff, and you probably shouldn't touch the synthetics. But not because of that huge pile of toss.
  - shabble 13y ago
    I've never really understood why drugs are often considered as mitigating factors in crimes, rather than (IMO) aggravating ones.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      Do you have that backwards? Has drug use ever been considered a mitigating factor? If so, where and when? In the USA, alcohol intoxication is a strong aggravating factor in motor vehicle crimes.
      - Nursie 13y ago
Fizzadar 13y ago
Despite the fact that legalisation would not only make drugs safer while simultaneously cutting funding to organised crime (lets not forget the tax revenue as well) the UK Gov still believes prohibition is the key. I'd love to see them give a detailed reason as to why alcohol is legal while cannabis is not - it's pretty damn obvious which is 'healthier'.
badman_ting 13y ago
Oh, you can still get high? Great! I guess it's not such a bad thing that we're throwing so many people in prison, then!
diego_moita 13y ago
This use of the term "redundant" is either ignorant or irresponsible. It implies that the author either doesn't understand the meaning of the word redundant or doesn't understand the public health implications of substance abuse. By definition, redundant describes something that is not necessary, that can be removed without loss. That is definitively not the case in fighting substances abuse. We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we need to worry about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco. Would someone call "redundant" the fight against teenage alcoholism? Would someone say that we should stop paying attention the epidemics of obesity? Worrying about these issues is not redundant and worrying about drugs also isn't so. There are things society must forbid (e.g. murder), there are things that it must discourage (e.g. driving without safety belts) and others that it shouldn't bother. I can accept that we move dangerous drugs use from the first to the second category. It is irresponsible to move it to the 3rd. The proper term should be ineffective, not redundant.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >> By definition, redundant describes something that is not necessary, that can be removed without loss. It's possible the author thinks (as I do) that it could be removed without loss, and in fact could gain us a lot because it is counterproductive and causes more harm than it prevents.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we need to worry about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco" The war on drugs is not even remotely similar to the regulation of alcohol and tobacco. Soldiers do not invade your house because you are suspected of growing tobacco. What is needed is for the war on drugs to end, for the DEA to be disbanded, and for a system that regulates quality to be introduced. If an adult wants to buy recreational drugs, nothing should prevent them from doing so. Mixing public health and paramilitary police is far more dangerous than any drugs people might consume (my Godwin senses are tingling...).
  - jksmith 13y ago
    DEA is a jobs program, just like the TSA. You will never, ever convince any politicians to do anything about this because they're part of the program themselves. Just pay your taxes, live with it, and stay out of the way.
kiwidrew 13y ago
New Zealand is preparing to introduce new legislation specifically to address the "whack-a-mole" issue that the article talks about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill It will basically set up a regulatory regime whereby any recreational drug which can be proven "low risk" can be sold to anyone over the age of 18. Not really all that different from how "regular" pharmaceutical drugs are tested and approved, actually.
- Nursie 13y ago
  It's a shame it doesn't cover things we already know are pretty safe (THC!), but baby-steps I suppose...
  - trentmb 13y ago
    And what about the other compounds found in marijuana?
    - falk 13y ago
      Because marijuana is a schedule 1 drug it's rather hard to study. Not that it should matter because any adult should be able to put whatever they want in their body. http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-scientists-study-pot http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-sc...
- mason55 13y ago
  The US enacted something similar to the NZ bill long, long ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act There are questions about its Constitutionality due to vagueness but so far it's been upheld.
  - nazgulnarsil 13y ago
    how is this similar?
- 13y ago
VladRussian2 13y ago
typical story of disruption through innovation. Old, entrenched interests feel like the foundation gets washed away from under their feet while they try to apply more and more force (laws).
beat 13y ago
The war on drugs is "obsolete" (or some other variant of fail) only insofar as we assume that the purpose of the war on drugs is to reduce or eliminate drug use. But if you put its purpose into indirect terms - enforcing class distinctions, providing minor harassment charges to apply to social undesirables, encouraging the militarization of police forces, providing a funding firehose for certain government agencies, and making a convenient and simplistic boogieman for cheap politicians - it's a spectacular success.

46 points by _delirium 13y ago

I'm not so much into chemistry, but shouldn't the number of production-viable cannabinoids with psychotropic effects be quite limited? Can the producers just run out of possible drugs? Or is that limit too high? On the other hand, I don't think that this finding will change drug policy. Too much has been invested in the war on drugs, there is not going to be a 180° turn anytime soon. Especially not when the upturn in designer drugs does not come with an increased mortality...

refurb 13y ago
To answer your question, the limit is just too high. There is actually quite a lot of "flexibility" in terms of chemical structure for most drugs. You can replace a methyl with an ethyl, propyl, i-propyl and the activity is usually comparable. Aromatic rings can be replaced with other variants. There are probably several thousand different structures that would acceptable psychotropic effects, if not tens of thousands.
- ippisl 13y ago
  I haven't got chemistry knowledge, but isn't the effect of say a THC analog is based on binding between THC and a certain receptor? Wouldn't it be possible to offer kits or services for chemical manufacturers, to test the level of binding of their chemicals, and define that above a certain level of binding , you're chemical have to be regulated in some way?
  - Nursie 13y ago
    I think this is what the latest iteration of UK law attempted to do, or at least something in this sort of direction. IIRC earlier this year they made any substance which is known to be a CB1 or CB2 receptor agonist a regulated substance. I think. My understanding of the legal changes may be lacking here.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Keep in mind that those receptors do have a non-recreational purpose in your body. Your body produces chemicals that bind to those receptors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system
  - shabble 13y ago
    It is perhaps possible, but currently neither quick, reliable nor cheap. You'd need to check that: (a) it's not immediately toxic, (b) there's no immediate metabolisation that renders it inactive, (c) it can enter the bloodstream, (d) it can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, and (e) it can either substitute for a particular neurotransmitter, act as a releasing agent, act as a reuptake inhibitor, or several other proposed and known methods of actually causing 'mind-altering' effects. This is essentially the 'drug-discovery pipeline' that big pharma spends hundreds of millions on when developing new medications.
    - ippisl 13y ago
      I think you're taking it a bit too far. If say i sell bath salts, which aren't supposed to be consumed, why would there be a need to check metabolism/toxicity and such ? But if metabolism can transform said chemical , then sure, you've got to take it into account. But many of those drugs can be detected by pre-metabolism binding, i think.
      - shabble 13y ago
        Metabolism can go either way, for instance Codeine is thought to be mostly a prodrug[1], which is converted to morphine in the liver. So it's only really effective when taken orally, because it relies on the first-pass metabolism for its action. Morphine itself, on the other hand, is quite significantly converted into inactive metabolites when taken orally. So you end up with IV morphine being ~3x more active as the same oral dose, because it bypasses the first bit. Other drugs are exclusively one route because they rely on other processes for transformation or absorption. This matters because it's not really appropriate to schedule chemicals which happen to trigger a response in a test-kit, but are not plausibly drugs of abuse due to side-effects, or lack of any reasonable mechanism of getting to the sites where they'd be active. The "intended for consumption" is a convenient fiction for the head-shops and dodgy websites that sell such things, but actually having to test things which aren't intended for use in certain ways would be a massive imposition on, well, everything that uses chemicals[2]. There are heuristics that cover a lot of ground, and that's basically what the Analog Act tries to preempt, but there are still huge numbers of potentially active compounds we have no idea about. In-vitro binding studies are perhaps the next filtering step, but you still ought to have to demonstrate actual demonstrable plausibility of action for it to be a crime[3]. In addition, if you have something that feels like cocaine, but rapidly metabolises into a lethal neurotoxin or whatever in the same dose, it's not going to be a drug of abuse, except perhaps in suicides. In terms of banning/restricting sale of things, maybe binding data would be sufficient, but I'm not sure just what the implications for testing & compliance for everyone involved would be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrug [2] Despite some TV adverts to the contrary, this would be everything. [3] Leading to (IMO) the utterly bizarre world of fakes/illegal placebos, for which in many places you can be convicted for the same degree crime as the drug you purported to be selling, rather than say, fraud.
Nursie 13y ago
>> I'm not so much into chemistry, but shouldn't the number of production-viable cannabinoids with psychotropic effects be quite limited? I've been following this lately but not from the beginning. AFAICT the number of cannabinoids that were created in labs, tested in-vitro and documented in research papers is in the hundreds. Most/all of these are now illegal in places like the UK where they ban chemicals, and may already be illegal in the US due to analog laws. In response to this the cannabinoid producers have now gone totally off the map and are creating previously unknown variants of these. It's hard to say if these are more dangerous than previously studied chemicals because we've been in the realm of "somebody once made this and looked at what it did to some animal neurons" for a couple of years now. >> Can the producers just run out of possible drugs? Or is that limit too high? It's really, really hard to know. But there always seems to be a new one on the horizon.

rwmj 13y ago

Designer drugs show why a proper system of regulation is needed to replace the irresponsible "war" on drugs. But it's dangerous to think that the law cannot attempt to make whole classes of chemicals illegal and so we don't need to worry about the war on drugs any more. The law can do that, and cause even more massive damage when it does so. Designer drugs are also likely to kill a whole lot of people, bolstering politicians who want to keep the status quo.

aidos 13y ago
Indeed. How about just making sure that the drugs people take are safe, of a high quality and available without feeding a criminal underbelly? Nah, that'd just be silly.
- freyr 13y ago
  There are already pharmaceutical drugs for that , which are abused at epidemic levels in regions of the U.S. They're safe and of high quality, though they might still feed a criminal underbelly. Of course, people who get addicted to synthetic opiates often have their lives ravaged to the same degree as people who get addicted to regular old street heroin, despite the safety and quality of the drugs.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Pharmaceutical drugs are too inaccessible to really remove the criminal element from recreational drugs. What is really needed is for regulated, high-quality drugs to be sold over the counter, with loads of warning labels, to any adult who wants them. It make sound crazy, but we already do it with two of the most dangerous drugs known to man: alcohol and tobacco. Nobody is claiming that there will not be issues with dependence or abuse of these drugs. The point is that people should not have to deal with dangerous criminals, nor should they be afraid of jail time for admitting their drug use.
    - epochwolf 13y ago
      I don't think it's really fair to label tobacco as "dangerous". It's definitely toxic and it will shorten your lifespan by a number of years but it's not "dangerous". Tobacco doesn't make people do stupid things like alcohol does.

rdl 13y ago

Our Glorious Leader Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to keep us safe from consuming these drugs through the Protecting Our Youth from Dangerous Synthetic Drugs Act (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=2ffa01a7-a73c-4016-aec7-07da34d9f230 http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...). I'd say something about voting her out of office in 2016 (for this and for running intelligence committees which rubber-stamp NSA spying, among many other things), but she's already said she won't run again.

s_q_b 13y ago
I do want to note that some of these drugs have dramatically worse side effects than the illegal drugs for which they substitute. MDPV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks. Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property. To me, the designer MDPV and PCP would be the poster drugs for this category.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "MPDV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks." Can you cite more than anecdotes to support this? For what it's worth caffeine can also induce psychosis, like any other stimulant (which is what MDPV is). "Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property." We already have a model for that: alcohol.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    I'm not sure you could regulate these drugs in the same manner as alcohol, because they really are significantly worse in terms of both biochemistry and societal harm. (As an aside, certainly alcohol causes far worse damage, but only because it's far more prevalent.) Let's start with the biochemistry. MDPV is both a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor and a dopamine releaser. For most users, it provides a short and intense cocaine-like high lasting several hours before abating. However, in a significant minority of users, the dopamine receptors seem to get stuck in the "on" position. The resulting flood overwhelms lower behavioral centers and results in intense hallucinations of danger, psychomotor agitation, and uncontrolled aggression. See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/ As to the attacks, here's a few, just from my hometown: "Man Who Stabbed Priest Was High on Bath Salts" http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/police-man-who-stabbed-priest-was-high-on-bath-salts-1.1116514 http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/police-man-who-stabbed-prie... "Bath Salts Suspected in Head Gnawing Attack" http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/da-bath-salts-suspected-in-hawley-head-gnawing-attack-1.1373101 http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/da-bath-salts-suspected-in-... "Scranton police have witnessed several incidents in recent months, however, and found that abuse of the disguised salts leaves a user with feelings of constant and extreme paranoia, imminent danger including threats on their lives, and hallucinations that have kept some hospitalized for up to five days. In one case, a man in a third story apartment believed to be using bath salts heard a knock on his door, according to Klein. He thought he was under attack, jumped out the window and shattered his ankle. “Previously, we had a guy that was injecting it at his house (on West Elm Street) in West Side, and he had his elderly mother and father locked in a bathroom,” Duffy said. “We had to have our negotiators come out, and he was actually injecting it as he was coming out of the door to talk to police.” “Two days ago, a complainant asked officers, ‘Can you see the two males across the street?’” Scranton Police Capt. Carl Graziano said Thursday. “He’s seeing them, and there’s nobody there.” On Wednesday, March 9, alleged bath salts abuser Ryan Foley, 25, of Scranton, was charged with breaking into St. Ann’s Basilica and stabbing and bludgeoning the Rev. Francis Landry. In a message to parishioners dated March 13, Landry wrote that he suffered “12 stab wounds and lacerations and at least six bruises” in the attack."

FrankenPC 13y ago

It's funny how people still imagine the government plays by some rule book. They only pretend to. If they so choose, they will make it illegal to design or produce ANY mind altering substance without an express license. Of course, only big pharma will be able to afford such a license. Watch and learn how the fascists work and play in the fields of the lord.

venomsnake 13y ago
Illegal to produce - easy. Illegal to design - that is almost impossible to enforce and way too vague to be of any use. Can we kinda stay away from jailing people for thinking? I want to delay 1984 or Minority Report a few more years.
shabble 13y ago
How do you know it's mind-altering ahead of time though? They're sold as "bath salts" or "incense" for plausible deniability. Actually banning any abusable chemical in any form would have a massive impact on a whole range of industries. Even heavy regulation of precursors and otherwise important chemicals hasn't stopped novel ways of doing without them. So you're still playing catch-up, even if you make sure your analytic lab gets the sample on day 1, and presents you with firm evidence of both (a) what's actually in the thing, GC/MS/NMR etc, and (b) how & why you think it's "mind-altering". Sample $z acts as a dopamine releasing agent in the homogenized rat neural tissue[1]" is enough to publish a pre-clinical study on it, but I'd at least hope it could be challenged if it came to a court. And of course, it doesn't have any impact whatsoever on abuse of pharmaceuticals, which is already on track to beat out most other drugs in terms of accidents & fatalities in the (near) future. According to [2], it may even have happened already to the USA. [1] brain soup. [2] http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pages/Reports/PDMP_Full%20and%20Final.pdf http://www.pewhealth.org/uploadedFiles/PHG/Content_Level_Pag... (not read it yet, although there's a press release/summary at https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescription-drugs-now-kill-more-people-in-the-us-than-heroin-and-cocaine-combined/ https://generalstrikeusa.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/prescripti... )

lukifer 13y ago

There is an evil hack that would get around this: pass a law which changes drug scheduling from a black-list to a white-list, with only FDA-approved substances allowed. I'm uncertain whether this could be successfully passed, though. Support for the War on Drugs is on the bubble as it is.

s_q_b 13y ago
Blanket prohibitions against have run up against legal infirmities. It's the reason the drug laws are drafted the way they are. A whitelist law violates the requirement that the statute must be on its face clear enough that a defendant could know whether his conduct was in violation of the law. Most such blanket prohibitions are ruled void for vagueness. Other statutes that run up against this problem frequently are the low level but extremely broad harassment and terroristic threat statutes.
- lukifer 13y ago
  There is the "I know it when I see it" standard for pornography, which is equally dubious. If it was drafted as "knowingly consuming an unapproved substance for the purpose of intoxication", I could see that slipping through. But again, I'm not sure the support is there, but it would be another win for state power. The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous than the real thing.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    The obscenity ruling was a bizarre sideways move for the Supreme Court, given their usual intense protection of the First Amendment. The "I know it when I see it" was even said almost tongue-in-cheek. > The real shame is, many of those synthetic drugs are actually more dangerous than the real thing. That, to me, is the real tragedy. These drugs are dangerous, and only going to get more dangerous as the "good" compounds are quickly banned, leading chemists to use less tested and more unusual compounds.
Nursie 13y ago
A white list of everything that's for sale in every shop in every part of the economy? That seems both authoritarian and highly ambitious.

DanBC 13y ago

Here's a story about a grandmother selling "Bath Salts". She was arrested for selling some kind of drug. Even though the products she was selling contained the illegal chemicals she avoided a conviction because, well, who knows. It feels a bit random. (http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-nightmare-arrest-selling-bath-salts/story-19546383-detail/story.html http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Grandmother-s-nightma...) Some things that aren't obvious from that article: Her shop sells a wide variety of drug paraphernalia (scales, pipes, bongs, cannabis seeds, items with cannabis logos, cannabis magazines and books, etc etc.)

dalke 13y ago

The fear of designer drugs existed already in the 1980s. The comic strip Doonesbury even covered it - Uncle Duke hosted a designer drug conference in his 'medical university' in Haiti. There already exist several ways to handle derivatives and analogues in drug prohibitions and restricted compound sales. Quoting from Wikipedia: "This then led the Health Committee of the League of Nations to pass several resolutions attempting to bring these new drugs under control, ultimately leading in 1930 to the first broad analogues provisions extending legal control to all esters of morphine, oxycodone, and hydromorphone."

venomsnake 13y ago

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." So after 30 years we have replaced stuff with known effects that we knew how to cope with, with stuff that is more dangerous with lots of side effects, untested and people are getting high all the same. Where should we put the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner?

angersock 13y ago
Into your pipe and smoke it.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

I have no idea why people would want to mess with this stuff. Here's an interesting article I came across a few years ago, when spice was starting to get popular. It convinced me never to touch the stuff: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-shouldnt-smoke-synthetic-weed/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-terrifying-reasons-you-shouldn...

Nursie 13y ago
Most of those reasons are bunk. One of them seems to be "if you smoke it when you're driving, the cops might stop you and won't know what you're smoking is legal". If you smoke it when driving you are an asshole. Whether it's legal or not, whether it's real weed or not. Get off the road, get baked in your living room and stay there you dangerous, selfish prick. Also his 'hell' experience? Oh My God he took an unfamiliar substance along with TWICE his usual dose of dextromethorphan. I'm not f*cking surprised he had a hard time. Most of the other reasons he gives there are to do with people purchasing 'blends' of unknown amounts of unknown chemicals on unknown plant matter. People who want to know what they're dosing themselves with buy the pure powders and measure carefully. That all said, it's true that there's far more known about the safety profile of the 'real' stuff, and you probably shouldn't touch the synthetics. But not because of that huge pile of toss.
- shabble 13y ago
  I've never really understood why drugs are often considered as mitigating factors in crimes, rather than (IMO) aggravating ones.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Do you have that backwards? Has drug use ever been considered a mitigating factor? If so, where and when? In the USA, alcohol intoxication is a strong aggravating factor in motor vehicle crimes.
    - Nursie 13y ago

Fizzadar 13y ago

Despite the fact that legalisation would not only make drugs safer while simultaneously cutting funding to organised crime (lets not forget the tax revenue as well) the UK Gov still believes prohibition is the key. I'd love to see them give a detailed reason as to why alcohol is legal while cannabis is not - it's pretty damn obvious which is 'healthier'.

badman_ting 13y ago

Oh, you can still get high? Great! I guess it's not such a bad thing that we're throwing so many people in prison, then!

diego_moita 13y ago

This use of the term "redundant" is either ignorant or irresponsible. It implies that the author either doesn't understand the meaning of the word redundant or doesn't understand the public health implications of substance abuse. By definition, redundant describes something that is not necessary, that can be removed without loss. That is definitively not the case in fighting substances abuse. We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we need to worry about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco. Would someone call "redundant" the fight against teenage alcoholism? Would someone say that we should stop paying attention the epidemics of obesity? Worrying about these issues is not redundant and worrying about drugs also isn't so. There are things society must forbid (e.g. murder), there are things that it must discourage (e.g. driving without safety belts) and others that it shouldn't bother. I can accept that we move dangerous drugs use from the first to the second category. It is irresponsible to move it to the 3rd. The proper term should be ineffective, not redundant.

Nursie 13y ago
>> By definition, redundant describes something that is not necessary, that can be removed without loss. It's possible the author thinks (as I do) that it could be removed without loss, and in fact could gain us a lot because it is counterproductive and causes more harm than it prevents.
betterunix 13y ago
"We need to worry about the abuse of drugs in the same way we need to worry about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco" The war on drugs is not even remotely similar to the regulation of alcohol and tobacco. Soldiers do not invade your house because you are suspected of growing tobacco. What is needed is for the war on drugs to end, for the DEA to be disbanded, and for a system that regulates quality to be introduced. If an adult wants to buy recreational drugs, nothing should prevent them from doing so. Mixing public health and paramilitary police is far more dangerous than any drugs people might consume (my Godwin senses are tingling...).
- jksmith 13y ago
  DEA is a jobs program, just like the TSA. You will never, ever convince any politicians to do anything about this because they're part of the program themselves. Just pay your taxes, live with it, and stay out of the way.

kiwidrew 13y ago

New Zealand is preparing to introduce new legislation specifically to address the "whack-a-mole" issue that the article talks about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill It will basically set up a regulatory regime whereby any recreational drug which can be proven "low risk" can be sold to anyone over the age of 18. Not really all that different from how "regular" pharmaceutical drugs are tested and approved, actually.

Nursie 13y ago
It's a shame it doesn't cover things we already know are pretty safe (THC!), but baby-steps I suppose...
- trentmb 13y ago
  And what about the other compounds found in marijuana?
  - falk 13y ago
    Because marijuana is a schedule 1 drug it's rather hard to study. Not that it should matter because any adult should be able to put whatever they want in their body. http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-scientists-study-pot http://popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-its-so-hard-sc...
mason55 13y ago
The US enacted something similar to the NZ bill long, long ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analog_Act There are questions about its Constitutionality due to vagueness but so far it's been upheld.
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  how is this similar?
13y ago

VladRussian2 13y ago

typical story of disruption through innovation. Old, entrenched interests feel like the foundation gets washed away from under their feet while they try to apply more and more force (laws).

beat 13y ago

The war on drugs is "obsolete" (or some other variant of fail) only insofar as we assume that the purpose of the war on drugs is to reduce or eliminate drug use. But if you put its purpose into indirect terms - enforcing class distinctions, providing minor harassment charges to apply to social undesirables, encouraging the militarization of police forces, providing a funding firehose for certain government agencies, and making a convenient and simplistic boogieman for cheap politicians - it's a spectacular success.