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Harm chart

That chart is not quite right. Heroin causes no physical harm in moderate doses, though an overdose or dirty needles can kill you.

Keith Richards has been a heroin addict since the 60's.

Patrick says

That chart is not quite right. Heroin causes no physical harm in moderate doses, though an overdose or dirty needles can kill you.

Keith Richards has been a heroin addict since the 60's.

Heroin is highly addictive.

So much so that I’m not sure that there’s much point in talking about moderate doses.

I wonder where Coca Cola and M & Ms belong on that chart. The government doesn’t regulate either of those, they permit selling them to children of any age, and they certainly account for far more (frivolous) healthcare expenditures than Cannabis, even if you include all the harm that the police cause to innocent citizens in the name of Cannabis Prohibition.

I know it’s a silly argument when you consider that Cannabis use accounts for virtually no healthcare costs.

The contrary is true, that ending Cannabis Prohibition and allowing domestic production and consumption would likely offer an alternative to incalculable amounts of wasteful healthcare expenses. We’ve identified the enemies to freedom before, but it’s probably time to add pHRMA and the healthcare industry to the list. A lot of money may be at risk in that industry.

As expensive as they’ve made it to die in this country, it would be a much more palatable and cost effective alternative to have a hospice type facility where people were allowed to die in peace, and heavily medicated with Cannabis

I would probably put cannabis higher in physical harm and lower in dependance. The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. Also, cannabis that is free of pesticides and industrial contaminants would be less harmful. I would also put alcohol higher in physical harm.

Narcotics can be physically sparing to some extent if clean drugs and needles are used, albeit wrecked and scarred veins. However, if you have ever known junkies, they are never the same. They spend every waking hour dreaming of the high and are effectively zombies. Even recovered junkies act like they are living in "borrowed flesh" as William Burroughs would say, something is gone from their affect and ability to enjoy life.

Ceffer says

I would probably put cannabis higher in physical harm and lower in dependance. The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. I would also put alcohol higher in physical harm.

Narcotics can be physically sparing to some extent if clean drugs and needles are used, albeit wrecked and scarred veins. However, if you have ever known junkies, they are never the same. They spend every waking hour dreaming of the high and are effectively zombies. Even recovered junkies act like they are living in "borrowed flesh" as William Burroughs would say, something is gone from their affect and ability to enjoy life.

So to clarify, you wouldn’t put Cannabis higher up the chart

You would put smoking cannabis as harmful, but unrelated to Cannabis itself, rather that smoking anything is harmful. I agree

Patrick says

Alcohol (more than 2 drinks) makes me wake up at 3am.

Fixed:
Alcohol (more than 2 drinks) makes me wake up at 3am to go and pee.

Drugs that are short acting and intense create higher levels of craving and physical dependance. Cannabis has a gradual onset and gradual withdrawal due to it's being stored in fat and gradually metabolized from the body. That would make it lower in dependance compared to things like alcohol, narcotics or crack. Also, many of the metabolites of cannabis are active to different extents, making the withdrawal touchdown easier.

Unsmoked cannabis has harm more along the lines of prescription tranquilizers, which can make people crazy or just zonked but are not as physically harmful. However, nobody really knows harm profiles because dependance also re-wires the brain after a while and varies from individual to individual. The dependent are not the same people they would be if they weren't dependent, physically healthy or not.

Not everybody is susceptible to addiction. It is estimated that 40 percent of the population don't drink or do drugs, not out of moral purity, but simply because they just don't like them. These would be the "wallflowers" who may carry a drink around forever but never sip. I guess you could call them humanity's ready reserve of sober individuals, or permanent designated drivers.

Of the 60 percent of the populace, who may drink, one out of five are on some progression to alcoholism, which can be fast or slow. Another one in five can be heavy users, who experience harm, but can stop or cut back if they see the necessity.

For other substances, dependance is more or less severe in term of percentages. Crack cocaine and nicotine are about one in two users go on to dependance. For snorting cocaine and heroin, about one in three go on to dependance and addiction.

Physical dependance does not always mean total, helpless addiction. There are "casual" users of all substances, including cocaine, narcotics and nicotine who never become either physically or psychologically dependent, it's the luck of the draw. There are individuals who use to the point of physical dependency, but can stop if they see the harm. True addicts never stop, whether they see the harm or not. They are basically on the path to death, but in full view of society in one way or another.

The addicted are just the tailing byproduct of permissive use. They are the ultimate 'losers' in the using/drinking game. Society marginalizes all users in one way or the other, but the truly addicted are in a downward spiraling limbo until they die from it. The homeless plague in California is the picture window of the results.

I would put cannabis in the "low lethality" category. Dependence and addiction are very unlikely to result in death, barring intoxication related accidents. However, tobacco is also low lethality. Nicotine causes withdrawal related personality disorders, but lethality tends to be more related to the physical harm i.e. lung disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, cancer etc. Nicotine users tend to bear the greater brunt of their own using (if you don't count second hand smoke), whereas alcohol, speed, cocaine and narcotic users (and to a much lesser extent cannabis users) are more likely to harm others as well as themselves, mainly through accidents and societal dysfunction.

HEYYOU says

I don't need drugs! I'm high on life.
Went cold turkey from alcohol!
Went cold turkey from cigarettes!

It's none of anyone's business about my Killer Weed use. ;-)
Plausible deniability.

I thought you lived in one of those bigtime Liberal states where the liberals fought back yuge to defeat the Failed Loser Republican War on Drugs?

Ceffer says

The physical harm is lessened by not smoking and just ingesting, which would make it not particularly physically harmful. Also, cannabis that is free of pesticides and industrial contaminants would be less harmful.

I don't know that smoking using hemp wick is particularly harmful. I will never inhale butane, but I was never a stoner. Butane and pesticides are not products of cannabis though, they are separate from the plant and what it produces. My grow is always 100% natural, from the soil, to the seeds(not feminized, local), to the nutrients. The only thing I've ever sprayed is BD, which is natural, and I lay off it before harvest.

Patrick says

That chart is not quite right.

Agreed. Aren't anabolic steroids what wrestlers use to make their hair fallout, enlarge their internal organs, and give themselves heart attacks? Not exactly left side of the harm chart...

Lower legal blood alcohol levels for drivers are needed to eliminate drunk driving deaths in the United States, according to a new report.

All states should lower legal blood alcohol levels for drivers from 0.08 to 0.05 percent blood alcohol concentration (BAC), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reported.

The report also calls for significantly higher alcohol taxes and tighter restrictions on alcohol sales.

While progress has been made in recent decades, more than 10,000 drunk driving deaths still occur each year in the United States. Since 1982, drunk driving has caused one-third of all traffic deaths on average, the report authors said.



https://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/drunk-driving-and-riding-health-news-219/reduce-legal-blood-alcohol-limit-to-cut-drunk-driving-deaths-report-730226.html

Cannabis users are more likely to feel deceived and alienated by others, study finds.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals.

People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found.

Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

Link between cannabis and mental health.

Dr Cameron Carter, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, where the study was published, said: 'These brain imaging data provide a link between changes in brain systems involved in reward and psychopathology and chronic cannabis abuse, suggesting a mechanism by which heavy use of this popular drug may lead to depression and other even more severe forms of mental illness.'

People who used cannabis at least two-to-three times a week at 17 years old are more likely to experience hypomania in their earlier 20s, according to the first study of its kind.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279825/Cannabis-users-likely-feel-deceived-others.html#ixzz54Ycqs491

Reefer Madness! It turns nymphets into voracious, nymphomaniacal cock hounds!

The evil weed causes excitatory states of gyrating madness induced by decadent music!

I'm still looking for the "bad news", wait, I think I almost found some.

anon_10ddb says

Cannabis users are more likely to feel deceived and alienated by others, study finds.

Cannabis users are more likely to experience negative emotions, particularly feeling alienated from others, new research reveals.

People who use marijuana are significantly more likely to feel that others wish them harm or are deceiving them, a US study found.

Brain scans also reveal the class-B drug increases signal connectivity in regions of the brain that have previously been linked to psychosis, the research adds, which is associated with severe depression.

Link between cannabis and mental health.

Dr Cameron Carter, editor of the journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, where the study was published, said: 'These brain imaging data provide a link between changes in brain systems involved in reward and psychopathology and chronic cannabis abuse, suggesting a mechanism by which heavy use of this popular drug may lead to depression and...

People who have lived their whole life during Prohibition, what else would you expect?

They have to constantly worrying if a unionized Government employee will gun them down 24/7

It’s not paranoia, it’s a healthy fear of getting fucked up by the Government.

https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/01/29/california-pot-stockpiles-go-smoke-whats-next/97719/
California marijuana demand greater than legal distribution network can handle

Will a supply shortage result in a situation similar to Nevada, where the government has to Declare a State of Emergency?

I prefer beer over weed. That said, I'm going to Montana this summer and can fly pretty much anywhere Southwest flies for free on points. I choose Denver because I can load up on weed and then head towards Jackson, WY for a few days. Then finish the drive up to Bozeman, MT area.

Would have done Spokane, WA but those smaller regional airports eat the shit out of SW points. I could have saved 4 hours RT on the drive and loaded up in Washington, but alas, it didn't work out. A lot easier to check out Grand Teton coming in from the south, so I guess that's a benefit to a bit longer of a drive. For some reason, SLC is also pretty close pricing wise to Spokane. I guess in the summer maybe it's not a busy or worth flying to.

If I lived in a legal weed state I'd reduce alcohol consumption to the tune of 50%. At least. Let me just say beer companies love me, they would hate to see me move. At least IL appears to be making a move towards legalization. God knows we could use the tax revenue assuming our politicians don't piss it away. Ha, lol, what am I thinking. They'll piss it away regardless.

It’s beyond time to remove Cannabis from Federal scheduling altogether, and move Alcohol to a Schedule 1 drug

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are:

heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote

No way, NyQuil is what let’s me sleep when I have a nasty cold or something! Knocks me out and I feel better the next day. Miracle drug!

Agree with most of this. A true conservative puts personal responsibility and liberty at the top. They should abandon the war on drugs. Even heroin and ecstasy have good use cases, just not for shooting up or partying dehydrated. They should focus research on safer and/or more effective (for the medicinal use case) formulations instead of banning the drugs and research on them. Cocaine has interesting short and long term effects on NK cells for example.

Don't legalize Heroin.

Legalize Laudanum, the Alcoholic Tincture of Opium.

Far better to have people drinking Poppy Tea (tastes like licking a corroded battery) or a dozen drops of Laudanum in a glass of water, than injecting themselves and sharing dirty needles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum

And it kicks Nyquil's ass.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says

Make all this shit legal and sell M134 at 7/11s and belt-fed ammo.

Finally you've seen the light!

Legalize all of it. There is only upside, and it is gratifying that our government will have more tax revenue to implement the Great Socialist Paradise.

Gateway drug to kids fucking their lives up. This is killing our kids. Should shoot drug dealers on sight.