On 7/28/2010 4:08 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> They have no medical use, their effects require you keep taking higher
>> doses to get the same effect, due to how they mangle your brain
>> chemistry, they often do serious long term damage, and they create a
>> danger to the public that, even more than alcohol, which you need to
>> drink a fair amount of first, even a single dose causes for the drug.
>
> PMFA, but where did you get your medical degree from?  If you're going to
> make assertions like that, I'd like to see them backed up by some sort of
> credentials that show you have some expertise in the field.  (And before
> you ask, no, I don't have such expertise).  Or a cite from a reputable
> source would suffice as well.
>
You don't need a medical degree to read articles on the effects of these 
things, and no, I don't have, or remember, the specific magazines, or 
which issues.

>> Worse, more than half of the
>> "treatment" we respect in this country isn't medical, but bullshit like
>> AA for druggies, which **doesn't work**, because it doesn't stop them
>> wanting the drug, or even accept that it *is* medical, not religious, or
>> cultural, or 100% about whether someone "chose" to do it. Imho, the
>> idiots, like the moron pushing his, "Read the Bible and you will be
>> cured of everything! Addictions have nothing to do with biology or
>> science, or medicine!", types should be the ones in fracking jail.
>
> "Frakking".  Derived from "Frak".  We've been over that before.<scnr>
>
> Seriously, though, I would tend to agree up to the "put the religion
> pushers in jail" bit.
>
I use it as an example, since the number of high profile wackos pushing 
cures for everything from drugs to homosexuality, none of which actually 
really work, who use religion as the "corner stone" of their supposed 
cure is pretty high. It could just as easily be people pushing 
acupuncture cures, or fake medicines, or Reiki treatment, or gluing 
magnets to your body, or what ever. The difference is, most of those 
later ones do not a) have national TV ads pushing their, "Don't listen 
to the medical people, they don't know nothing, buy my book!", while 
ignoring the dismal 95% failure rate they get (same as the number that 
fail to quit without buying their stupid book), or, worse, actually 
convincing entire groups of people to reject medicine entirely, like the 
ones in Oregon. I think they are now up to something like 15 dead kids, 
with one just recently reported in the news as having somehow actually 
ended up in state custody, unlike all the others, which where dead 
before the state had any chance to intervene... These people don't just 
have a quirky idea about how the world works, they are a danger to 
others, including anyone who might, say, end up in an accident some 
place, and only have a bunch of these morons there to "pray over them", 
in instead of calling an ambulance. Frankly, even most of the other con 
artists, and altie-med types are not *that* disconnected from reality. 
But, they still lie about their products, and only get by with it by 
calling it either "suppliments", thus bypassing the FDA, or "religion", 
thus placing it in a privileged category, which no one is allowed to 
challenge. Imho, they are all criminals, or mad, which means they should 
be jailed, or given mental health treatment, not patted on the hand and 
told, "Don't listen to the mean old person that doesn't believe you." 
Anyone in the "real" world tried to sell the stuff they do, or push the 
"cures" they do, without mislabeling it, to keep it out of the feds 
hands, or claiming that the great and mighty Thor bless it first, they 
would be seeing jail time.

>>>    * Prices can be standardized and normalized, potentially reducing
>>> violent crime from people who can't afford to get their 'fix' today
>>>
>> No it won't. As I already said, 90% of the drugs out there make the
>> person need more, and more, and more, the longer they use them, its the
>> nature of the chemical process they work by. This, short of a treatment
>> like Ibogaine appears to provide, is **permanent** and **cumulative**.
>
> Depends on the drug.
>
I did say most. And, as I pointed out, it also depends on the person's 
own biology. Some people seem to be damn near completely immune to 
addiction. Others.. would be addicted by something as mild as caffeine.

>> The guy breaking into someone's house to steal their TV, sell it for
>> $10, and then break into 2-3 other places, to make up the remaining
>> amount needed to buy their "fix", isn't some guy smoking pot, and they
>> are not someone that is going to a) be off the drug when at work or b)
>> smoking pot. They are going to be someone taking crack, who paid $2 for
>> their first hit, $5 for the next one, $10 for the next, $20 for the
>> next, and now, at this point, is robbing 4-5 people a day, so they can
>> get 3-4 hits a day, because one hit won't do it any more. Purer product,
>> as you suggest earlier, does nothing but make the initial hit worse, and
>> escalate this process **faster**.
>
> And you arrest the guy breaking into someone's house to steal their TV
> for burglary/larceny.  Lock 'em up, put 'em in jail.  They've done
> something that actually affects someone else.  Same for the guy tweaking
> out who assaults someone.  The guy sitting in his home stoned off his ass
> on LSD, mushrooms, or pot isn't.  Hell, even the guy doing crack who
> isn't out committing crimes against other people isn't harming anyone but
> himself - until he needs to get his fix and he can't afford it so he
> steals a car.  Then you book him on grand theft auto.  Simple.
>
Sound all well and good, but you are presuming that the criminal system 
always catches these people, and no one that is sitting at home doing 
that didn't do anything wrong to get their hit. This is almost like the 
goofy libertarian idea of the "invisible hand" you always get, which 
goes like, "Its wrong to have laws, regulations, and standards in place 
to **tell you** a company what it can and can't do, without proof it has 
or will do any of those things, but you damn well better step in and 
stop it **if** they do, even though by getting rid of all those other 
things, we just stripped the government of any right or ability to stop 
them, when a company does do something wrong." It can't work that way. 
You look at the statistical reality of the situation and conclude that 
those seeking something have a high odds of being the ones to take 
criminal action, and, if it constitutes something that could endanger 
others as well (unless you suggest locking their doors, from the 
outside, so they don't get the idea to stop tweaking in their house, and 
wander into the street, or try to drive, stoned, to the mall), you need 
to prevent the conditions that lead to the dangers, not just wait until 
they actually *do* injure someone, or steal property.

Any other way of looking at it only appears *sane* if you assume neither 
you, nor anyone you know, will *ever* be the victim. Which one could 
argue is either arrogant, or stupid.

> Jim


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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