Hello:

There was a drug bust on the San Diego campus yesterday. It was mostly pot with some coke and some ecstasy thrown in..... It was just your normal bust...

I saw the coverage on CNN headline news (that's all I got these days). What surprised me, was the surprise of the announcer. He was just shocked that this took place. I mean, he was REALLY, REALLY shocked!! He asked whether the correspondent thought this was going on on other campuses in the country....

What???????

He evidently, thinks the drug war is working. He is living in la la land. Do YOU think the drug war is working too??????

excon

tomder55

There are 10 drugs that were legal that have been pulled from the market in the last decade .
Rezulin: Given fast-track approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Rezulin was linked to 63 confirmed deaths and probably hundreds more. "We have real trouble," a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) physician wrote in 1997, just a few months after Rezulin's approval. The drug wasn't taken off the market until 2000.

Lotronex: Against concerns of one of its own officers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Lotronex in February 2000. By the time it was withdrawn 9 months later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received reports of 93 hospitalizations, multiple emergency bowel surgeries, and 5 deaths.

Propulsid: A top-selling drug for many years, this drug was linked to hundreds of cases of heart arrhythmias and over 100 deaths.

Redux: Taken by millions of people for weight loss after its approval in April 1996, Redux was soon linked to heart valve damage and a disabling, often lethal pulmonary disorder. Taken off the market in September 1997.

Pondimin: A component of Fen-Phen, the diet fad drug. Approved in 1973, Pondimin's link to heart valve damage and a lethal pulmonary disorder wasn't recognized until shortly before its withdrawal in 1997.

Duract: This painkiller was taken off the market when it was linked to severe, sometimes fatal liver failure.

Seldane: America's and the world's top-selling antihistamine for a decade, it took the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 5 years to recognize that Seldane was causing cardiac arrhythmias, blackouts, hospitalizations, and deaths, and another 8 years to take it off the market.

Hismanal: Approved in 1988 and soon known to cause cardiac arrhythmias, the drug was finally taken off the market in 1999.

Posicor: Used to treat hypertension, the drug was linked to life-threatening drug interactions and more than 100 deaths.

Raxar: Linked to cardiac toxicities and deaths.

Others like ephed as you note are restricted because the drugs were being abused . By the logic that is being proposed here there is no drug that should not be available to the consumer. Should the 10 items above be permitted back into the market ?

Synnen

The drugs you mention, that were pulled from the market, were NOT being abused. They were being used for the purpose for which they were made. I doubt anyone went out and tried selling those drugs for a quick feel-good high on the black market.

I'm basically saying, really, that if stupid people want to pull THEMSELVES out of the gene pool (I mean, come ON, already--who DOESN"T know that Crack Kills or that Meth is BAD juju?) then let them. Fewer stupid people in the end, imo.

I'm not saying that people should just be able to go do whatever the heck they want--there would still be restrictions on HOW those drugs could be used. For example, with no redeeming features whatsoever, Crystal Meth would only be available to those who already show an addiction, and then only in a place where they could not hurt anyone else. You could STILL regulate the illegal sale of drugs. Selling liquor without a license is a federal offense, too--and so is selling to the wrong clientele, like, say--you can't sell cigarettes to 5 year olds.

But you wouldn't be wasting tax dollars trying to hunt down every guy with a pot plant in his apartment, and every idiot smoking crack in the comfort of their own home.

Honest to god--how hard is it to think of recreational drugs like you do alcohol? Yes, alcohol ruins some peoples' lives, but other people use it responsibly. You can be prosecuted for the illegal activites you do while intoxicated--like driving, or stabbing someone with a pen, or whatever. You can do that with other drugs too!

YES, there would be an initial surge. But I doubt that marijuana would continue to be a "gateway" drug if you didn't have to buy your marijuana from someone who was pushing you to buy the more expensive, more addictive drugs.

The drugs you bring up, Tomder, are something of a different topic. Do I believe that ALL drugs should be legal? Probably not. There are a lot of things constantly coming on the market from pharmaceudical companies. Do I think that doctor's getting kickbacks from those same pharm companies should be highly suspect? Absolutely. But, as I said, that's something of a different topic entirely.

excon

Hello tom:

Obfuscation won't help you win this argument.

Yes, of course, the federal government should remove ANY harmful product. Maybe if the FDA had done it's job to begin with, we wouldn't have to remove them...

But, that's not the conversation we're having here.

You know what's silly about you drug warriors, is that when faced with the fact that the drug war isn't working, you always say, well, let's get tougher... Let's really crack down.... Not working yet??? Well, we're not tough enough yet....

Maybe you'll get it when everybody is in jail except you. But, even then, I doubt you will.

excon

tomder55

I'm just responding the the fallacious argument that says since some things are legal they all should be.

michealb

I'm actually okay with those drugs being on the market. Of course I'd expect the FDA to label them as non safe drugs and require that the packaging says so. If a sound minded adult wants to take those drugs for some reason I don't see why the government would stop them. I suspect you wouldn't be able to get those drugs anyway because the drug makers would probably stop making the product anyway once it got a warning label.

Synnen

EXACTLY!!

They could do that for ALL drugs! And require a sign off at the pharmacy stating that you understand that the drug COULD kill you!

Perfect!

Skell

Good argument from both sides. Not sure where exactly i sit. I definitely agree that what we are doing now isnt working, and simply saying "we'll get tougher" wont work either.

I've been thinking though. To those who advocate legalising drugs but with 'restrictions', do you not think that as soon as you put the 'restrictions' on the use, people will feel the need to break them? I mean a junky isnt going to be happy with these restrictions. He might not want to shoot up in the safe house provided. He might prefer to do it in the comfort of his own home or in his car. Saying "legalise but with restrictions" is like saying "we'll get tougher". Seems half ar$ed to me. We've got injecting rooms down under here and they certainly dont keep users off the streets or from stealing from the local 7-11.

Are police in your country actually trying to "hunt down every guy with a pot plant in his apartment, and every idiot smoking crack in the comfort of their own home"? Ot is that an exageration? If not then no wonder the drug war is being lost. That is senseless.

love is abby

Obviously not, some people just decide what they would like to see and don't open their eyes to whats really going on.

jillianleab

I think the overall intent is to go after the "big boys"; the people bringing 300lbs of heroin into the country, for example. But local cops aren't the ones looking for those guys - that's the gubment.

The local police bust people for drugs all the time. It might be during a traffic stop, or during a noise complaint, or a domestic disturbance. If a local cop sees a bong on your living room table while he's telling you to turn your music down, and then he ends up finding a few grams of coke in your sock drawer, it's off to jail for you.

So in a way it's exaggerated, but in a way it's not. You still hear of cases (like the one I posted earlier, Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage) where the gubment officials go a little kooky, but there aren't DEA officials busting doors down of home-smokers on a regular basis.

For me, I'm all for legalization, with the reservation that there's no street intoxication test for heroin, coke, pot, etc. I know, I know, there's no street test for prescription drugs, but at least those are prescribed and not OTC. I just don't like the idea of someone all hopped up on meth driving down the highway next to me and there's no way to prove he's intoxicated.

Synnen

Nope, there's no way to prove it.

But...you can be brought in for a drug test if you fail the sobriety tests, as far as I know. You can certainly get a lawyer and fight it, but most people aren't going to do that.

Frankly, the kids texting while they drive scare me more than the possibility of a meth-head driving.

And yes, it was an exaggeration--but seriously, look at it this way: If you went home at night, had a couple beers while watching the game, and went to bed, and got up for work in the morning, that's not that bad, right? I mean, unless you show up visibly drunk, you're not going to lose your JOB over it.

You CAN lose your job over recreational use of drugs. Okay, I get that you shouldn't do that on the job--but I can tell you that the entire McDonald's kitchen I worked at in college was high as a kite every flippin' day at work. Frankly, a little pot makes a bad job go over a little better, not that I condone it in the least. But...unless you are in the military, in a high security position, or working with machinery that could hurt someone else (or the company, financially), random drug tests are a crock of crap. A temp, working in an office, filing papers, shouldn't be randomly tested for drugs. what the heck are they gonna do? Misfile? HOLY GOD, NO! Not misfiling! (for reference here--stupid people do more damage to filing than high people ever have. I have seriously worked with people that don't know their alphabet without singing it who are filing). And I don't know many professional people that would bring drug use to the office, any more than they'd drink in the office. But where's the harm in toking up the night before while watching the game? You're sober in the morning for work---yet you can lose your job because of what you do on your OWN time, and you're doing something that isn't hurting anyone.

/shrug

I know that too many of our generation have been indoctrinated into the "unless it comes from your doctor it's BAD" idea about drugs. And honestly--I don't know if we'll ever see legalization of drugs. Too many people are making money off of it for them to shut down the narcotics section of every other police station in the country, not to mention the drug testing companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the companies making money off of things like nylon rope (because hemp rope is now MORE expensive than nylon rope), and the liquor companies who may or may not lose a section of their customer base. And really--anyone pushing for legalization is liable to be arrested, tested, and sentenced. There just isn't a powerful lobbying group out there (aside from NORML) for the legalization of drugs.

What it will come down to, in the end, is someone showing they can make more money in tax dollars for the government while keeping a fairly tight control on the drugs themselves. And open-minded people in Congress. The Moral Majority has got this country by the balls, if only in the fact that anything "immoral" might lose someone votes, and god forbid THAT happen.