thegipples/drugs

Please don't let marijuana get you in trouble.

From the page: "The present treatment of alcohol, which is to regulate and tax the product, is the right approach for today's illegal drugs. One could expect some increase in the use of the drugs in question, but also an enormous net reduction in the harms that they and the attempt to prohibit them cause. Adding the direct costs of prohibition (police and prisons) to the taxes forgone by the present system, the US could also expect a fiscal benefit of about $100bn a year.

Is an outbreak of common sense on this subject likely? Unfortunately, no."

From the page: "The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies."

From the page: "Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves, and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block responsible public-health policies.

And look abroad. At Afghanistan, where a third or more of the national economy is both beneficiary and victim of the failed global drug prohibition regime. At Mexico, which makes Chicago under Al Capone look like a day in the park. And elsewhere in Latin America, where prohibition-related crime, violence and corruption undermine civil authority and public safety, and mindless drug eradication campaigns wreak environmental havoc."

""The brighter side of Narco--a jam session by patients who formed their own orchestra." Drugs sent many jazz musicians to the Narcotic Farm, who often performed for fellow inmates, staff and residents of nearby Lexington, Ky.

In the book, former patient Stan Novick recalls: "You could go to a show and see some of the great, great jazz musicians of our time. They became legends. But at the time they were just more drug addicts.""

Diet's effects on drug addiction: "glutamine levels can be restored, and production of GABA boosted, by the consumption of an amino acid called N-acetylcysteine (NAC) that is found in nuts and seeds.

This is not just theory. A controlled study published last year in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Steven LaRowe, of the Medical University of South Carolina, and his colleagues, found that giving NAC to cocaine addicts reduced their desire to use the drug sufficiently for it to be recommended as a treatment. A different study found that NAC reduced the desire to gamble in more than 80% of those addicted to this pastime, compared with 28% of those who were given a placebo."

From the page: "the list contains both legal and illegal drugs.

The drugs were ranked by ratings which took into account a combination of their physical damage, social harm and addictive properties.

In rank order of harmfulness:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbituates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines (e.g. Vallium)
8. Amphetamines
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate (Ritalin)
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrites (poppers)
20. Khat"