farmergiles

Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack' | Society | The Guardian

Don Shenker, Alcohol Concern

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msicidron

i guess they also failed to link it to ..thier profits?

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AfroHorse

even taking into account that the "damage" ratings are based on "social, psychological and physical harms" (Alcohol Is Most Harmful Drug, Followed By Heroin And Crack) i still don't see why a few other drugs have been rated lower than cannabis, regardless, it doesn't take a genius to realise that alcohol is more harmful than cannabis any way you look at it

LEGALIZE111

The Rev

Hey Afrohorse! Good to see you around, mang.



The Rev

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kitch

legalize crack?

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SageTree

On a theoretical level when you legalize drugs and their production, what you would get would be a more pure and pharmaceutical grade product, one that would be predictable and safer. Safer because of the predictability, making a correct dose easier to figure out.

Do you remember that 'herion' in the ealy 90's that gave people Parkinson's like symptoms because of what it was cut with?

Back in my home state there was a report about some bad heroin going around near 2000, lots of "ODs"... I figured what that really meant was that somehow people were getting the best heroin of their life, perhaps the same price as their usual stuff, but way more pure.

Lots of harder drugs and their users could benefit from that.
This doesn't do much for the addiction itself, but at least people would know what they were dealing with when they used, which would prevent a lot of bad clams for sure.

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The Rev

Legalize it all, man! You can buy a gun legally, so arguing against the legality of anything else that you can kill yourself with is kind of a moot point.



The Rev

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kitch

ehhh the prollem becomes...

cocaine is so powerful it becomes the only resource users care about, therefore they allocate all their funds to it, then it's short lived so they run out of loot for anything else by the 5th of the month, then you give them food stamps so they can live and they sell those for 50 cents on the dollar to buy more rock. I think alcohol is so harmful because it's so common. You can bet that if as many people smoked rock as often as they drink it'd create more prollems.

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stoneric

What would change? I don't use crack because I don't want to not because it's illegal. I don't see a large increase in use, if legal, and organized crime would have one less source of income.

SageTree

Isn't this taking away from their chance to pull a Frank, and do it their way?

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Captain Cannabis

evidence based classification is a great idea in theory, but a more persuasive argument would be budget based

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farmergiles

You're talking about the Californian "legalise it and tax it" argument?

Or do you mean that legalisation would bring savings due to reduced prison and health service costs?

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Captain Cannabis

classification based on net costs

not necessarily in regards to cannabis explicitly. i mean costs of distribution, healthcare, social problems balanced against taxation, law enforcement and organized crime, etc.

you have to think about all kinds of crazy consequences, like sage was saying about purity and etc. if heroin were legal it probably wouldn't cause so many problems because organized crime wouldn't be in control of its distribution, price, and purity. but then maybe more people would do heroin, raising the medical costs of dealing with addicts. you can absolutely save billions of dollars through changing the status quo with regards to regulation, but you have to do so with the intention of minimizing harm AND cost. if it was made obvious that you could both minimize cost and harm by doing action x, then it would be irrational to argue against it.

edit: further, the "legalize and tax" argument fails to reduce harm in any meaningful or measurable way, so it is not a politically wise move to support this (for any politician who likes their job). if there are no provisions for reducing harm beyond theoretical organized crime reduction, then there is little incentive to move forward. it would in theory take away billions of dollars from cartels, but it wouldn't make them disappear completely. they will find other ways to make money and aren't concerned with reducing harm, so it could actually increase the amount of money required to police them.

obviously a complex issue

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farmergiles

Heroin used to be available on the NHS to addicts before the sixties. All you had to do was convince your doctor you were a junky and needed maintenance.

Smack wasn't fashionable back then so there were very few users- mostly people who had acquired habits through medication.

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Captain Cannabis

there are places that distribute legal heroin in canada.
Vancouver Coastal Health - Supervised Injection - Insite - Supervised Injection Site

the problem here is that not only does it not have enough funding to actually affect the problem, they are dealing with constant attempts by the government to shut down the FREE DRUGS CLINIC because DRUGS ARE BAD.

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SageTree

And let me say, over the lunch hour, 90% of the people walking in there have on neckties and 'good upper middle class' looking people...... I didn't take pictures so I have have 'evidence' like the thread says, but I used to pick up their recycling and see this happen any day of the week....

Just wanted to add a little evidence

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Captain Cannabis

yeah but conservative politicians in ontario say that its DANGEROUS based on their opinion of the drugs and not the science. nobody in the neighbourhood would let that place close. ever.

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