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On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:32:12 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 7/28/2010 4:08 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 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.
Fair enough, but are you certain you're not falling to confirmation bias?
>>>> * 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.
So basically, people need to be protected from themselves? I don't buy
that. Making mistakes is part of life, and not something people should
be insulated from. Experience is one of the best teachers out there.
> 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.
I'm presuming nothing. I meet about once a month with a representative
of the SLC police department, and he and I have very interesting chats
about how police work is actually done and how effective it is.
One of the things I take away from the conversations time and again is
that if they didn't have to spend so much time dealing with non-violent
offenders, they might actually be able to catch more people committing
crimes against people & 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.
Nobody every said life was safe. Or fair.
Jim
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On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:53:20 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> What I am
> talking about is taking less than half an ounce, and, depending on your
> personal biology, having to have a full ounce **of the same thing**, a
> few years later, or having to take it several times a day, or "both". I
> am talking about people taking stuff where the withdrawal can kill you,
> without proper controls, and not being on it makes you more dangerous
> than being stoned, but you are useless in "either" condition.
And as a controlled substance, access would be significantly harder now
than it is on the black market. But again, personal responsibility is
key.
>> It bothers me greatly that people think there should be no consequences
>> for what they do.
>>
> The problem here is, making them take responsibility doesn't solve the
> damn problem.
So, if the person who sticks their foot in the wood chipper takes
responsibility for their stupid mistake, they're going to repeat it? I
don't buy that - if they do, they didn't learn the first time, and maybe
the lesson needs to be repeated. I'm not a fan of protecting people from
themselves.
> They did it. Now they are stuck with the problem, and no,
> the consequences *may* extend beyond their immediate family. Lets say it
> was loss of hearing, or blindness, or some other thing. Its not about if
> there are consequences. Most people have no damn clue how *big* the
> consequences can be, figure that most of what people are telling them
> are lies, since they can't imagine it being as bad as described, they
> may have the perception that others are doing it, so they should, and a
> whole host of other things.
Yep, life can suck that way. Nobody said life was safe. I used to ride
my bike as a kid without a helmet - and I went over the handlebars more
than once. Then I learned not to ride in a way that was dangerous, and I
stopped going over the handlebars. Imagine that - a member of the human
race learned that to be safe, one has to act in a manner which is safe.
> Even the ones that try to get off it,
> because they realize they made a mistake, are stuck in a situation where
> they are **permanently** wanting to stick their foot in the wood chipper
> again. Their brain chemistry has changed, and they can't **stop**
> wanting to *ever*. I would say that *that* is a pretty damn big
> consequence, in and of itself, without all the other garbage people drop
> in their laps, including the, often, complete destruction of their
> lives, which just make it all that more tempting to give in to the need
> they can't ever get rid of.
Yep. Sucks, don't it? At the point where they're wanting to continue,
someone certainly can intervene (and many people do). But consider this
as well - that person who's so hooked they're going to get their fix
however they can is going to break some other law in order to do so, and
land themselves in jail. They don't allow drugs in jail (and the types
of drugs we're talking about, they shouldn't allow), so they get a chance
to be rehabilitated.
> It is, on some level, right up there with cutting someone's hand off, as
> punishment for stealing a single fig from someone's fruit cart. People
> are not willing to stop at punishing them for what they *did* do, or
> recognizing that the consequences are *already* more than they can
> imagine, they feel they have to keep punishing these people, even to the
> point of refusing to help keep them from falling back into using, based
> on one, single, initial mistake. And that is just idiocy.
No, that's life. People who don't learn lessons from life are going to
have the lesson repeated until they do learn. The idiocy is in not
letting people make mistakes in order to learn from them.
Look at all the people like me who have decided drugs aren't for them.
We didn't have to make a mistake to learn that lesson. We just had to
learn from others' mistakes. Some people can learn that way. Some
people refuse to believe that anything bad can happen to do them, and
will not believe so until something bad *does* happen to them. Sucks for
them, but eventually they'll learn.
> The whole point of the "lost a foot" analogy is to point out that, once
> the choice is made, it doesn't matter what help you give them, or how
> often, etc., they live with the consequences, every single day of their
> lives, forever, short of finding a way to cure the actual chemical
> dependence, which never goes away. You can either treat them like
> someone worth help, or you can treat them like shit. Which solution do
> you imagine will help them avoid losing control again?
We all have to live with our choices every day. I may choose to play
football rather than to be working on studying for a test. If I fail the
test, I may not get the job I want. That's my choice, and it could be a
choice that affects me for the rest of my life. That's what life is:
making choices. Some people make good choices, some people make bad
choices. Some people who make good choices have bad things happen as a
result; some people who make bad choices do very well. No guarantees in
this life about fairness.
Jim
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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rrcom> wrote in message
news:4c50ac45$1@news.povray.org...
>A little rabbit is running happily through the forest when he stumbles upon
>a giraffe rolling a joint.
>
> The rabbit looks at the giraffe and says, "Giraffe my friend, why do you
> do this? Come. Run with me through the forest! You'll feel so much
> better!"
>
> The giraffe looks at him, looks at the joint, tosses it and goes off
> running with the rabbit. Then they come across an elephant doing coke.
>
> So the rabbit again says, "Elephant my friend, why do you do this? Think
> about your health. Come. Run with us through the pretty forest, you'll
> see, you'll feel so good!"
>
> The elephant looks at them, looks at his razor, mirror and coke, then
> tosses them and starts running with the rabbit and giraffe. The three
> animals then come across a lion about to shoot up.
>
> "Lion my friend, why do you do this? Think about your health! Come. Run
> with us through the beautiful forest and you'll feel so good!" The lion
> looks at him, puts down his needle, and mauls the rabbit.
>
> The giraffe and elephant watch in horror and look at him and ask, "Lion,
> why did you do this? He was merely trying to help you."
>
> The lion answers, "That little bastard! He makes me run around the forest
> like a f'ing idiot every time he's on ecstasy!"
LOL!
Cheers Dre
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On 29/07/2010 5:13 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Yep. Making them legal doesn't mean make then uncontrolled. Today if I
> want to buy cough syrup with codeine in it, I have to provide information
> to the pharmacy (even for stuff that used to be over the counter) because
> large quantities of codeine can be used to make crystal meth.
>
> That's a perfectly reasonable control.
>
Yes, my doctor has given me a prescription for 200 paracetamol. Not that
they can be used for recreation purposes but so a pharmacist will sell
them to me in that quantity. Because of the danger of overdose
pharmacists can only sell about 30 at a time to one person.
>> BTW Just a minute starts on Monday
>
> :-)
>
My pleasure.
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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On 29/07/2010 9:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Others.. would be addicted by something as mild as caffeine.
Caffeine is quite addictive and a lot of people are addicted but it is
easy to withdraw from.
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:56:13 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> On 29/07/2010 9:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Others.. would be addicted by something as mild as caffeine.
>
> Caffeine is quite addictive and a lot of people are addicted but it is
> easy to withdraw from.
Indeed, though I think it was Patrick who said that, not I. ;-)
I've had caffeine addiction before, but like you said, it's pretty easy
to withdraw from. I sometimes go months without any and then it's time
for a Coke. :-)
Jim
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On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:49:56 +0100, Stephen wrote:
> Yes, my doctor has given me a prescription for 200 paracetamol. Not that
> they can be used for recreation purposes but so a pharmacist will sell
> them to me in that quantity. Because of the danger of overdose
> pharmacists can only sell about 30 at a time to one person.
Yeah, I know it's similar here for larger doses of Tylenol.
Jim
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On 7/25/2010 12:53 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I've heard of drugs that give you energy, make you calm, numb pain or
> make you see plastercine porters with looking-glass ties. But I've never
> heard of a chemical which actually makes you feel *happy*.
Stimulants. OK, well... it won't make you happy... but it will make you
energetic.
--
~Mike
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On 7/29/2010 1:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:32:12 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> On 7/28/2010 4:08 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> 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.
>
> Fair enough, but are you certain you're not falling to confirmation bias?
>
How is, "Taking there chemicals does X, and we can test people that take
it and *show* that it does. Not to mention it never goes away, and every
medical professional says that the people they treat never lose the
addiction, they just learn to avoid every place, person, or thing that
helped trigger it.", qualify as confirmation bias? That is the point of
medical science, versus all the woo cures people shovel, you are
***required*** to show that its true, and verify the facts you are claiming.
>>>>> * 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.
>
> So basically, people need to be protected from themselves? I don't buy
> that. Making mistakes is part of life, and not something people should
> be insulated from. Experience is one of the best teachers out there.
>
We protect people from themselves all the damn time. Everything from, "
"Don't drive drunk, or we will arrest you.", to, "You can't swim in the
sewage pond, so we put big warning signs and a fence around it.", to,
"You vehicle **must** have working turn signals.", etc., are all about
protecting not just the rest of the people, but the moron doing it.
Experience, **a lot of the time** won't teach you anything, because in
most of those cases you will be either dead, or permanently disabled, by
experiencing it. So, don't give me the whole, "We shouldn't protect
people from themselves.", BS. This is only true for the things *you*
think we shouldn't do that for. I am certain there are plenty of things
that you do think we should, a whole host of laws and rules to do so,
and like most people that want to treat drug use as a "special" category
of, "Stupid things people do to themselves.", you just don't like *it*
being in that category, for no reason that I, personal, can see as rational.
>> 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.
>
> I'm presuming nothing. I meet about once a month with a representative
> of the SLC police department, and he and I have very interesting chats
> about how police work is actually done and how effective it is.
>
> One of the things I take away from the conversations time and again is
> that if they didn't have to spend so much time dealing with non-violent
> offenders, they might actually be able to catch more people committing
> crimes against people& property.
>
I don't dispute that, and have said so, but the problem is that you are
classing people that are, "not in their right minds", by choice or
otherwise, in the same category as, "non-violent", in some cases. We
also prefer to arrest someone who is intentionally acting in a way that
*could* cause someone else harm. As I said, people on certain drugs do
not just all, "sit around at home, being stoned", they go places, they
do it in public, they get into their heads, while in a state of mind
where they *can't* make rational decisions, to do things that get
themselves and others killed. By your logic, it would be perfectly fine
to let mental patients out, even if classed as, "potentially dangerous",
because that particular day they are not "acting" dangerous, never mind
that they could turn at any moment, due to their condition.
As for effectiveness.. Watched something a while back on the subject of
law enforcement and we have two **huge** problems - 1) forensic
techniques that are "assumed" to be scientific, but have never been
tested under those conditions, and 2) a tendency of far too many labs to
"focus", not on where the evidence leads, like on CSI, but on who the
district attorney says they "suspect" committed something, thereby
sidelining everything from the evidence collection, to evidence
examination, to the *much* sloppier, and less precise, piecing together
of that evidence, to form a theory on what took place, and who did it.
End result - lot of people never get arrested at all, and a lot more
than should end up jailed. Finger prints, for example, are not as
certain as most people figure. The human method of comparing *can*
produce flawed results, and the computer version assumes that every
print on 3 billion people, will have completely different
characteristics, on some 50 comparison points, or the like. Neither is
"certain", or logically plausible, especially when, in many cases, you
often only have one print, and it may contain less than half of the data
points.
>> 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.
>
> Nobody every said life was safe. Or fair.
>
> Jim
No, but one of the functions of society is to make it safer, and at
least try to make it fairer (even if some people still seem to want to
make it as unfair as possible, but that is a whole other issue..)
--
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();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 7/30/2010 2:56 AM, Stephen wrote:
> On 29/07/2010 9:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Others.. would be addicted by something as mild as caffeine.
>
> Caffeine is quite addictive and a lot of people are addicted but it is
> easy to withdraw from.
>
Which makes a huge difference. Mind, one of the things that makes it
easy to withdraw from **is** the fact that it doesn't have an effect so
massive that it permanently changes brain chemistry. Maybe we need a
different definition. Addictive means - you would have some level of
withdrawal from it. ??? means - You can't ever completely withdraw from
it at all, and your attempt to do so will be long, painful, and incomplete.
Part of the problem in many of these things is that we end up using the
same word to describe things that, while they make work similarly, can
have **drastically** different impacts. Its like someone with MS. I had
a teacher with that, and up until a few months before it killed him, he
*seemed* completely normal. There was a friend of the family who had a
kid with it too, and he was semi-normal, up until about 10-12, then, by
the time he was 15 or so he was in a wheel chair, barely able to speak,
etc. Same condition, completely different results. Addiction is like
that. All addiction works much the same, but *some* forms of it are
severely debilitating, and leave lasting scares, which someone opting to
drink soda pop, instead of taking crack, **doesn't have to worry
about**, even if, in principle, the result uses the same word to
describe it.
--
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();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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