Can I hear those calls to legalize drugs again?

[Nightshade]

...because another "victimless" drug is coming.

‘Flakka,’ the new killer drug, is spreading across the country

It’s a new drug. And it’s a killer.

Known on the street as “flakka,” the synthetic concoction is hitting hard in Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and other parts of the country. It’s causing a rash of emergency room visits and overdose deaths.

In one highly publicized Florida case, a man reportedly high on flakka gnawed on and disfigured another man’s face before he was shot to death by police. Another user tried to break down the door of a police station in Fort Lauderdale, and a few weeks later, a man impaled himself while trying to climb a fence around the same station.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/cr ... 30234.html

[callmeslick]

who is calling to legalize all drugs? Maybe a handful of more extreme libertarians, but the vast bulk simply wants the legal list expanded to cannibis from the current single item of alcohol.
This ★■◆● has been on the radar of toxicologists for a little while now. Bad, bad stuff.

[Nightshade]

Sorry...just too angry, but I have to say it.

I wish idiot people that insisted on taking "recreational drugs" would just F*****G DIE on the spot and let the rest of us live in peace.

[callmeslick]

I wish people would stop lumping everything into one category such as 'recreational drugs'. There is a VAST difference between pot and cocaine, between heroin and psilocybin. In this case, the culprit is a known danger. It was sold for years as 'bath salts' around the nation. A lot of northeastern and midwestern states banned it, but for some reason, the deep South didn't bother with that. Right now, you can do serious jail time in Delaware for possessing Alpha MVP(the active ingredient), but not so in Florida, Kentucky and some others. From the academic studies I was involved in, and general street experience in my misspent youth, true hallucinogens are pretty benign. In that category, I'd put cannabis, hasish(derivative), mushrooms, peyote, mescaline and LSD. The chemicals(latter two) do produce the risk of bad manufacture creating poisonous byproducts. Opiates are a massive problem, far worse than 'flakka' will ever be. Partly due to overuse of pharmaceutical opiods, and thanks to an unstable Afghanistan and Mexico, I'm hearing of $30 bundles of quality dope. To the less streetwise, that equates to 10-12 doses of heroin for 30 bucks. Think that over. Any one of those bags can kill, within seconds. Cocaine, when it was just powder, could be an addiction problem, but making it into a smokable product(crack, freebase) turned it into a monster. Amphetamines are known killers, and virtually impossible to break the addiction cycle. So, just calling stuff 'recreational drugs' and condemning them wholesale is, sorry for saying, kind of idiotic. When one steps back, the most dangerous, pervasive and societally damaging 'recreatiional drug' we have is ethanol, and they sell that stuff on every block down here........especially, in the city.

[Vander]

I just want to be able to walk down to 7-11 and buy a dime bag. Is that too much to ask?

[Tunnelcat]

You can't even do that in Oregon and Washington, where maryjane is legal.

[Ferno]

I just want to be able to walk down to 7-11 and buy a dime bag. Is that too much to ask?

You and your common sense.

[Jeff250]

If recreational drug use were legal, then no one would be creating all of these dangerous synthetic drugs to try to skirt the law in the first place.

[callmeslick]

very fair point, Jeff, but there should be some limits as to which are fully legalized for recreational use. I do think some drugs should be treated differently as to addiction control, with dosing to diagnosed addicts under controlled situations being legal.

[Lothar]

Talking about "recreational drugs" as a single category is kind of like talking about "chemical-laden foods" as a single category.

What makes something a chemical-laden food? Foods that are sprayed with pesticide? Foods that are cross-bred to resist pests? Foods that naturally produce chemicals that are hard to pronounce? Foods that are engineered in a lab? There's a big difference between a twinkie and an apple that needs to be rinsed.

And there's a big difference between marijuana (which is very close to harmless), alcohol (which is harmless, potentially even beneficial, in moderation but hugely dangerous if abused), and meth (which will ruin you.) There are also chemicals we get "high" on all the time like caffeine. The way we've chosen to designate "recreational drugs" doesn't make sense. Weed should be just as legal as caffeine and more legal than alcohol; certain chemicals should only be used in a supervised setting (where you won't accidentally operate a motor vehicle while trippin'); certain drugs are so bad for us that they just shouldn't be near humans ever.

And we should re-engineer our cultural stigmas to more accurately reflect that. Nobody should care if somebody casually smokes weed or drinks alcohol or coffee. We should care if somebody is an abuser -- a drunk, a total pothead who can't function in society, or a nodoz-poppin' stay-up-all-night corporate exec. And we should care if people are using "requires supervision" type drugs without supervision. And we should definitely care about the life-wrecking stuff.

[Nightshade]

If recreational drug use were legal, then no one would be creating all of these dangerous synthetic drugs to try to skirt the law in the first place.

Talk about being naive...

[callmeslick]

he isn't, really, TB. What do YOU think the driver behind selling bath salts as 'Flakka' is? Now, I don't agree that all recreation usage should be legal, for essentially the reasons that Lothar laid out, but your position is utterly indefensable. Mankind has been using mind-altering substances since it discovered fermentation, and other natural products.

[snoopy]

he isn't, really, TB. What do YOU think the driver behind selling bath salts as 'Flakka' is? Now, I don't agree that all recreation usage should be legal, for essentially the reasons that Lothar laid out, but your position is utterly indefensable. Mankind has been using mind-altering substances since it discovered fermentation, and other natural products.

Can we meet in the middle? I think there are some people who will do pot and stop there. There will be others who will continually move from one thing to another. I think making pot legal and more accessible would probably reduce the number of people who get messed up on crazy stuff... but you're still going to have people (just hopefully fewer people of you legalize pot) going nuts on something and eating another person's face no matter what you legalize.

[callmeslick]

exactly right, Snoopy. Moderation is the key, and some people simply are incapable of that with ANYTHING. I've known career dope fiends who shoot the stuff daily for decades and hold down very good jobs(VERY good jobs, in some cases). On the other hand, I've seen folks who cannot control themselves around pot, and alcohol cripples far too many people with its easy availability.

[Tunnelcat]

Those are the ones who are always the problem for society. The ones who have no self-control whatsoever. They may be in the minority, but they cause the biggest problems for everyone else.