[Lemmy]

saturn_656 saturn_656:

You missed the point. Just because laws are violated doesn't mean you scrap the laws for being "ineffective". That is Curtmans logic, and it's seriously flawed.

You're the one missing the point. Both speeding laws and narcotics laws get broken. But speeding laws are effective. Narcotics laws are not. They get broken for different reasons. And you're making an illogical presumption. You're implying that a law is effective when it doesn't get broken. If it's not getting broken, you don't need a law at all!

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Lemmy Lemmy:

Most HARD drug users have jobs and pay taxes and don't break any other laws than the possession law. So why do we want to put folks doing every other thing in their lives by the law in prison?

Most HARD drug users are otherwise completely law abiding middle/upper class Canadians?

Yes, and I was as surprised to learn that when I did, a few months ago, as you are know. But it's a fact.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

You know many coke, meth, heroin, etc. users?

I know a few coke users (used to know a lot back in the day) and a couple of meth users, yes. A handful that I know of; not friends, but acquaintances and people I know in different circles or about town. But in general, no, I don't think I know a lot of hard drug users. I bet I know more hard drug users than I think I know, and I bet you do too.

But I have read a fair bit of research on the topic in the past year, professional academic research, and it's really dispelled a lot of incorrect assumptions I'd held. I just finished Dr. Carl Hart's "High Price" this weekend. You should it read it.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

I don't buy this. Not for one second.

Neither did I. I was of a similar opinion to yours not so long ago. But I was misinformed. Read "High Price" and get back to me.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Lemmy Lemmy:

So while it makes a nice headline, the navy boys should have just brought the shit home and given it to the addicts on the streets of Vancouver. At least they wouldn't have to break into anybody's homes this week to get high.

The Navy boys should have brought it back, hung it from a crane 20 feet off the ground, and seen how badly they wanted to cover that 20 foot gap to get their next fix.

Wonder if they'd cooperate to get it or kill each other over it.

I've seen that same experiment when they open the doors to Future Shop for the next playstation. You could run that same experiment withholding all sorts of things from people, especially things kept in short, restrictive supply, and get similar results.

[Curtman]

Lemmy Lemmy:

saturn_656 saturn_656:

You missed the point. Just because laws are violated doesn't mean you scrap the laws for being "ineffective". That is Curtmans logic, and it's seriously flawed.

You're the one missing the point. Both speeding laws and narcotics laws get broken. But speeding laws are effective. Narcotics laws are not. They get broken for different reasons. And you're making an illogical presumption. You're implying that a law is effective when it doesn't get broken. If it's not getting broken, you don't need a law at all!

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Lemmy Lemmy:

Most HARD drug users have jobs and pay taxes and don't break any other laws than the possession law. So why do we want to put folks doing every other thing in their lives by the law in prison?

Most HARD drug users are otherwise completely law abiding middle/upper class Canadians?

Yes, and I was as surprised to learn that when I did, a few months ago, as you are know. But it's a fact.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

You know many coke, meth, heroin, etc. users?

I know a few coke users (used to know a lot back in the day) and a couple of meth users, yes. A handful that I know of; not friends, but acquaintances and people I know in different circles or about town. But in general, no, I don't think I know a lot of hard drug users. I bet I know more hard drug users than I think I know, and I bet you do too.

But I have read a fair bit of research on the topic in the past year, professional academic research, and it's really dispelled a lot of incorrect assumptions I'd held. I just finished Dr. Carl Hart's "High Price" this weekend. You should it read it.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

I don't buy this. Not for one second.

Neither did I. I was of a similar opinion to yours not so long ago. But I was misinformed. Read "High Price" and get back to me.

saturn_656 saturn_656:

Lemmy Lemmy:

So while it makes a nice headline, the navy boys should have just brought the shit home and given it to the addicts on the streets of Vancouver. At least they wouldn't have to break into anybody's homes this week to get high.

The Navy boys should have brought it back, hung it from a crane 20 feet off the ground, and seen how badly they wanted to cover that 20 foot gap to get their next fix.

Wonder if they'd cooperate to get it or kill each other over it.

I've seen that same experiment when they open the doors to Future Shop for the next playstation. You could run that same experiment withholding all sorts of things from people, especially things kept in short, restrictive supply, and get similar results.

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive ... er/viewall

$1:

After high school, Hart signed up for the US Air Force. He took university classes on the bases where he was stationed, primarily, he says, because his military buddies were troublemakers and he wanted a back-up plan if he got kicked out of the service. When Hart satisfied his commitment to the Air Force in 1988, he moved to North Carolina, following a girlfriend he had only just started seeing. Luckily for him, her stepfather was a professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who arranged for Hart to enrol there (though Hart and his girlfriend eventually split up). Hart had enjoyed studying psychology in the Air Force; now he became obsessed: it opened a window into the hidden world of human motivation. By the time he graduated with a double major in sociology and psychology, he had become a serious student and his work ethic had caught the attention of some of his professors.

One of them, Robert Hakan, invited Hart to work as a research assistant in his electrophysiology lab, studying morphine and nicotine in mouse brains. Hakan also introduced Hart to the man who had been his PhD adviser, Charles Ksir of the University of Wyoming. On Hart's first visit to Wyoming, Ksir took him to a basketball game. "You see those black guys out there?" Ksir asked. "That's the most black people you're going to see in Wyoming in one place." It wasn't an orthodox pitch to a prospective PhD, but the candid remark set the stage for hours of conversation, covering everything from race to neurobiology to politics. With Ksir as his adviser and mentor, Hart went on to earn his PhD from the University of Wyoming, studying the neurobiology of nicotine in animals.

Hart then took a series of post-doctoral places (at University of California, San Francisco, Yale and Columbia) working with human subjects. He met Marian Fischman, a renowned drugs-of-abuse researcher, who invited him to apply to Columbia's medical centre. Her pioneering work giving cocaine to humans made possible the studies Hart now conducts.

In the 60s, opiate dependence had been explained in terms of sexuality. The theory was that since opiates reduce sex drive, heavy use must be an attempt by homosexuals to resolve the neurotic conflict between the id's sexual desires and the superego's insistence on heterosexuality. Animal experiments, however, threw doubt on this theory. In the 70s, neuroscience and chemical explanations for mental disorders replaced the psychoanalytic approach. Everything from criminality to mental illness to drug addiction, it was believed, could be induced or eliminated by tinkering with the brain's chemical balance. The brain was no longer a sealed black box. It was machine-like and knowable.

By the 80s, drug-induced chemical changes could be investigated not only in the brain as a whole, but systematically in specific brain regions in animals. A particular system of interest was the mesolimbic dopamine pathway in the nucleus accumbens, the brain's "reward centre" -- a system responsible for causing animals (and, if we are to trust the animal model, humans) to feel good when they eat, have sex or get intoxicated on certain substances. Dopamine, it was theorised, was a reward used by healthy brains to encourage evolutionarily beneficial activities like breeding. Certain mental illnesses, however -- or drug use -- short-circuited the system.

The animal model enabled a neurobiological explanation for drug addiction that went something like this: drugs of abuse cause increased dopamine activity in the brain, which causes stimulation and euphoria; during repeated drug use an addicted brain rejigs its dopamine activity, perhaps even its structure, causing the brain's owner compulsively to seek out the drug to feel its pleasurable effects. The theory accurately predicted that dosing cocaine-addicted animals with a dopamine antagonist -- a substance that dampens dopamine receptor activity -- would also dampen self-administration of cocaine.

By the time Hart was a post-doc, a small group of researchers was trying to extend this treatment to cocaine-addicted humans. Several dopamine antagonists that had worked in animals failed completely when tried on humans. The reason, Hart suspected, was that the dopamine theory of drug addiction was a gross oversimplification when it came to humans, and he began pursuing this line of thought. In 2004, he gave cocaine users gabapentin -- a drug that blocks dopamine activity by pumping up levels of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA. Sure enough, when dosed with cocaine, the subjects in the study felt less than their normal euphoria and stimulation -- but they continued to self-administer the drug any way. Next, in the first study of its kind in a residential lab, Hart administered 400 milligrams a day of modafinil -- the "stay awake" drug marketed as Provigil -- to a separate group of cocaine addicts. In response, the study subjects decreased their self-administration of cocaine.

What is significant about these studies is that suppressing dopamine activity in the so-called reward centre of the brain may reduce the subjective effects of cocaine -- the stimulation and the euphoria -- without halting the drug's use (at least in humans). If the reward theory of addiction is correct, how is this possible? And how can a drug like modafinil, peculiar in being a stimulant that is not linked primarily to dopamine and euphoria, cause human addicts to ramp down their cocaine use voluntarily?


James Day
The crowd at Brooklyn's Union Hall whoops and applauds as Hart steps onstage and says, flashing a smile, "You make a scientist feel like a rock star." He's here to deliver a lecture at the monthly gathering organised by a group called the Secret Science Club. With his dreadlocks and sunglasses, Hart looks like a professorial Stevie Wonder. His talk tonight is entitled "Methamphetamine: A Good Drug Gone Bad".

After covering a bit of history -- including a 50s advertisement in the Journal of the American Medical Association promoting amphetamine use among bored housewives -- Hart summarises the conventional wisdom about meth: according to animal studies, it beats even cocaine in its ability to boost dopamine activity in the brain's reward centre. Meth's reward stimulus is so strong, the thinking goes, that its users will compulsively seek out the drug no matter the financial cost, damage to health or stated desire to quit. All this is backed by leading researchers and the US government itself. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) describes meth addiction as "a chronic, relapsing disease, characterised by compulsive drug-seeking and use, which is accompanied by functional and molecular changes in the brain".

But Hart is sceptical of a model that defines addiction as a neurochemically ordained mental disorder of impulsivity and faulty decision-making. Such a model assumes that drug use is always driven by the irrational desire for pleasure, even in the face of grave life consequences. The possibility that drug use may be fuelled by rational choices is never even considered. Could such a theory be as faulty as an earlier era's belief that opiate addiction is mainly a result of conflicted feelings about one's sexuality?

In quick succession, Hart shows the Union Hall audience a series of slides containing data from ResLab and MethLab studies. The sequence demonstrates that humans subjected to simulated shift-work show significant cognitive impairment when rotated between normal working hours and overnight schedules. In the next sequence, he discusses a study in which these participants were given small doses of methamphetamine, and their shift related cognitive impairment was significantly reduced -- they made fewer mistakes and completed cognitive tasks more quickly than when they were given placebo doses. Of course, says Hart, the military has known about this for years, which is why some pilots are offered dextroamphetamine for long-haul bombing missions.

Hart next tried offering these participants the choice between a low dose of meth and a small monetary voucher, at different times of day. The prediction was that, meth being a potent reinforcer, users would take it compulsively; what he found was that people would take it in the morning but not in the evening, when it would stop them sleeping -- using it to get through the day in the same way office workers self-administer caffeine; and if the monetary reward was large enough, they would pass up the dose. These findings call into question the notion that addiction is driven by the reward of a chemically induced euphoria and that meth -- legally prescribed to treat ADHD, narcolepsy and obesity -- is the destructive drug so maligned by the NIDA and the popular press. Hart's conclusion was that his subjects were indeed making rational choices about their drug use.

[Jabberwalker]

(back to the subject)

So, heroin use is just another "life style choice", then?

Heroin users are only junkies because of the prohibition and if heroin is freely available, there will be no more problems with it?

Help me to understand.

[Curtman]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

(back to the subject)

So, heroin use is just another "life style choice", then?

Heroin users are only junkies because of the prohibition and if heroin is freely available, there will be no more problems with it?

Help me to understand.

Prohibition makes it worse because the more successful it is, the higher the price goes. The higher the price, the higher the profit. The higher the profit, the more motivation to get these people hooked on drugs.

Evidence shows it has been unable to impact supply enough to effect the price. Its a complete waste of money that only compounds the problems with addiction.

[Jabberwalker]

Well, in the case of the seizure made in the title story to this thread, heroin is the Taliban's major export and source of operating monies and in the Arabian Sea, where it was seized and destroyed, it is quite likely that it came from there. Should we just "let it go" and let it arrive here in the West because prohibition has failed to stop young people from becoming drug addicts? All of the heroin in the World comes from shady origins and if you are not paying some terrorists or thugs for the stuff, you are supporting out-and-out criminals.

[martin14]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

, heroin is the Taliban's major export .. All of the heroin in the World comes from shady origins and if you are not paying some terrorists

Heroin users / traffickers should be charged with treason and hung.

$1:

terrorists or thugs for the stuff, you are supporting out-and-out criminals.

That's ok, Curtie likes supporting criminal behaviour.

[Lemmy]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Well, in the case of the seizure made in the title story to this thread, heroin is the Taliban's major export and source of operating monies and in the Arabian Sea, where it was seized and destroyed, it is quite likely that it came from there. Should we just "let it go" and let it arrive here in the West because prohibition has failed to stop young people from becoming drug addicts? All of the heroin in the World comes from shady origins and if you are not paying some terrorists or thugs for the stuff, you are supporting out-and-out criminals.

Changing supply doesn't affect demand. But cutting supply does affect price and, in the case of inelastic goods, like heroin, cutting supply means increasing producer profits. So capturing the drugs, and shortening supply, actually makes the Taliban richer. The same principle is what made all the oil producers grossly rich when OPEC was formed.

Furthermore, the Taliban probably already got their dough for this shipment before it left Afghanistan, so it's not hurting them in the least by having it confiscated on the high seas.

martin14 martin14:

Heroin users / traffickers should be charged with treason and hung.

You're usually a pretty reasonable person. This is not one of those times.

[Jabberwalker]

There is so much heroin about in the world, it would take a lot of seizures like that one to impact the price, much.

Anyway ... inelastic ... yes, that is the nature of highly addictive substances. Unless the government wants a piece of the action (as they have with so many other inelastic commodities) it remains in the control of criminal and terrorist cartels that we shouldn't be supporting.

[Lemmy]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

it remains in the control of criminal and terrorist cartels that we shouldn't be supporting.

I agree. The question is "how do we best go about not supporting them"? Our current policy IS supporting them. That's why we need to change our strategies.

[martin14]

Lemmy Lemmy:

martin14 martin14:

Heroin users / traffickers should be charged with treason and hung.

You're usually a pretty reasonable person. This is not one of those times.

Me ? Reasonable ?

First I've heard of it.


As you said, constricting supply doesn't reduce demand.

So I approach it from the other side, reducing the demand.

I would concede locking up addicts permanently until they are sorted,
but anyone who moves horse is directly supporting terrorism, and enemies of the West.

That's treason, we used to hang people for that.


Singapore executes heroin dealers, they don't seem to have great problems with it.

Use it ? We will dry you out, the hard way.
Move it ? You die.


I usually don't post my opinion, knowing full well it won't gain much traction
amongst the bleeding heart brigade.
But reducing the supply doesn't solve the problem.

[Curtman]

martin14 martin14:

As you said, constricting supply doesn't reduce demand.

So I approach it from the other side, reducing the demand.

I would concede locking up addicts permanently until they are sorted,
but anyone who moves horse is directly supporting terrorism, and enemies of the West.

That's precisely how the u.s. ended up with a quarter of the worlds prison population, and managed to grow the demand at the same time, while turning non violent criminals into violent ones at a fantastic rate.. Its dumb on crime.

[Jabberwalker]

Let them have the heroin. Let the Taliban have their money. Let the old junkies teach the technology of "shooting-up" to the young. Freedom, man. It's all about doing whatever the hell you want to.

[Public_Domain]

[Curtman]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Let them have the heroin. Let the Taliban have their money. Let the old junkies teach the technology of "shooting-up" to the young. Freedom, man. It's all about doing whatever the hell you want to.

The Taliban, the cartels, the biker gangs.. It's prohibition that creates the lucrative market they thrive on. They wouldn't be producing it if they weren't making tonnes of cash doing it. It ought to be tax revenue instead of profit for them.

[Jabberwalker]

So, if we let the stuff in unencombered, all of the bad guys go away. Prohibition is over. No more junkies. No more Taliban.

Let's do it then. Get rid of prohibition and get rid of all of the evil.