An excellent article. Another demonstration of how Canada is on the front lines as far as saner approaches to drugs goes, while the US remains comparatively draconian and repressive (despite a few research studies looking at therapeutic psychedelics being officially allowed).

I didn't know Terrence McKenna's bro Dennis, has been a Vancouverite for some years. Wade Davis, of course, is a "homey".

I don't know what nightbloom's on about with regard to "promoting hard drugs". The article, for one thing, is suggesting the use of non-addictive psychedelics therapeutically to help get addicts off hard drugs! I wonder if nightbloom is blaming
the wrong drugs for the harm he has witnessed, by lumping together quite disparate substances. I believe the drug causing widespread damage in the gay community is the very addictive crystal meth, not ecstasy and ketamine, or other psychedelics. Funny he doesn't even mention by name the drug that most deserves his acrimony (methamphetamine).

The article is not advocating the frivolous recreational use (as in partying) of psychedelics. Quite the contrary.

I have had a few psilocybin experiences deep in the wilderness of BC, some years back, which I will always cherish because of their eye opening spiritual value. I gained something...a perspective...an awareness of a connection to life, which remains with me to this day.
Nightbloom appears to sneer at such experiences, but much depends on where and how such drugs are taken. "Set and setting", as Leary said, is most important.

a brilliant strategy . . using drugs to fight drugs.

Better living through modern chemistry.

Wonder if I could get the taxpayers to fund my program of using Cabernet Sauvigon to combat the blues ?

I have known about using psychedelics to cure drug and alcohol addiction since the 1960's. The approach does seem to be effective, but I can not see the rulers allowing it to proceed. They NEED the present set up of illegal drugs, addiction and crime. Where would the CIA be without the drug trade? Where would the banks be without drug money-laundering? Where would the police industrial complex be without the number of prisoners generated by illegal drugs? Where would the pay-offs come from? Where would right-wing politicians be without the fear-of-crime tactic?

A personal relationship with God is the only drug anyone ever needs.

Does that mean evangelical Christians are all on drugs?

It would explain a lot.

anarcho:
Peyote is actually legal in both Canada and the U.S. for members of the Native American Church to use ritually. Such use predated nartcotics laws.Courts upheld the right to use it, but only by these church members. As the article says, many natives credit peyote rituals for having cured them of alcoholism.

Religious use of peyote spread like wildfire, in the mid to late 19th century, from the southern US, up through the plains and Canadian prairies.

It's been speculated that this occurred
in response to the Buffalo being wiped out. The Buffalo represented the central focus of myth and ritual for the natives
who depended on it for food, clothing and shelter. When this tangible expression of the sacred disappeared, peyote offered
another way to access the sacred: focussing on inner experience and healing, now that the outer had become devastated and spiritually bankrupt for them.

So, how come peyote's legal for some in Canada, but not others? Sounds like discrimination!

What arnarcho said!

Certainly I too agree the US drug war is an industry, a make work project employing thousands of cops, agents, prosecutors, and prison guards, as anarcho touched on.
This industry rewards those in the judicial system while it persecutes users.

Organized crime and the judicial system both prefer to have drugs illegal. Both are ruthless competitors in the same industry, broadly speaking. One is on the "tails" side (interdiction), the other on the "heads" side (actively marketing).

Just as alcohol prohibition made the US Mafia rich and powerful in the '20s,
Hells Angels (and others) have become rich and powerful in Canada. The drugs black market created by our drug laws allows them to easily make fortunes.

But notice how, in Canada, psychedelics that came onto the scene after our narcotics laws were written, are not being targeted (the article mentions ibogaine and ayahuasca). New laws are not being written to ban them. This is another welcome sign of growing tolerance of psychedelics. On the hard drugs front, safe injection sites, and drug maintenance pilots show the drug war industry does not control the agenda in Canada, the way it does in the States...despite supposed drug moralist Stephen Harper (so far).
I'm glad to see Emerson's now lobbying Harper and cabinet to continue safe injection sites in Vancouver.

Bobb999
For an interesting, comprehensive - and too long - history of the Drug Wars in the US, it's hard to beat this online resource:

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/prologue.htm

from Edward J Epstein

Read again. I said crystal meth, which is methamphetamine. A rose is a rose...

Any E now available in the gay community in Vancouver, Montreal and T.O. is almost always cut with meth, a practice that became widespread around 2000-01. I actually can only think of two occasions when the E I had wasn't didn't contain some amount of meth. You can feel the difference. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or doesn't know what they're talking about.

Ketamine is also usually cut with meth now as well - we call it "trail mix". Mixing meth with other drugs is how they hook you. Pure K is hard to get in Vancouver, and almost as hard in Montreal. T.O. is still fairly "clean" in that regard, however.

And no, it isn't just the Tina, it's the whole drug sub-culture that's gone rotten (although Tina had a lot to do with that). The hard-core drug sub-culture is what is fueling not just the meth epidemic among gay men, but the steady resurgence in the HIV transmission rate over the past 5 years. It has also contributed to a shady social environment in which few gay men are ever more than two degrees separated from organized crime at any given moment in "gay space", and in which non-users are ipso facto potential liabilities and therefore unwelcome in their own social space.

Progressive liberals in the drug debate need to stop whitewashing this stuff. E brings about nasty mood swings for days and weeks afterwards, sometimes bringing on full-blown suicidal tendencies. How that is supposed to help those seeking responsible medical or psychiatric treatment is beyond me. We've got tax-funded agencies now promoting recreational usage full-time in the gay community under the guise of "harm reduction" (originally intended for the most down-and-out cases, harm reduction is now the meaningless buzzword used to justify casual drug experimentation in the mainstream). Their websites even tell you how to locate a "good dealer" - they never ever ever address the downside, the side-effects or the organized crime issue.

Don't get me wrong - this is a good, well-written article. I just think the issue itself needs to be expanded a bit beyond the standard liberal pro-drug see-no-evil take on this issue.

Good points about Canada, Bobb999. I agree. Trouble is our masters to the south of us don't like it. Remember what happened to the Liberals tiny step at pot decrim? But I do think, if there was some kind of mass movement against treating drug addiction as a criminal problem and decriminalizing harmless drugs like pot, we could probably pull it off even though the seig heil gang that controls the USA would object strongly.

I wonder how progressive thinkers vic toews and stockwell day are going to rule on the fate of vancouver's safe injection site.

nightbloom, I think McKenna put it well by saying we need a strong community. These people perhaps understand the “evil” more than anybody else. They’ve been to Central and South America and witnessed the tragedies of the drug war firsthand. none of these people are recommending recreational usage and while there's probably a certain amount of ritual-seeking in any drug-taking experience, at least at first, these people are talking about using these drugs and substances for therapies and in ceremonial/ritualistic settings. most people who’ve tried MDMA over the past decade or two have probably never had it in its purified non-trail mix form (unless they’re friends with Shulgin?) so have no clue what an E experience is like. I wonder where the MDMA clinical people are getting their tabs and where the cleaner brews of E cause less paranoia and the cripplingly depressive e-over, or none at all. If so, there wouldn’t be such a vicious cycle of shoveling more uppers and downers to try to achieve some semblance of chemical balance.

Wade Davis et al underline the importance of “set and setting” and Davis once told me: “I was seeking in my own clumsy way, revelations. I wasn’t doing it to enforce a sense of alienation … The role of these substances are not about reinforcing the alienation of an individual from the collective.” This is a key point. how does the alienation factor effect or drive the drug situation in the gay community? To use the old psychedelics cliché get the message and hang up the phone, if the chronic use of crappy street drugs weren’t wreaking havoc on their minds and bodies, they might be able to take a couple of doses of clean drugs or plant substances with a sitter and move on. if taking prozac for ten years is worth the shot (and htere have been no long-term clinical trials for that), why not something else?

I agree with anarcho that this stretches across all levels of culture and cranks the big economies but it’s defeatist to say that we have to perpetuate this by prescribing to divide and conquer alienation. Mckenna's been plugging away for about 30 years and he hasn't given up.

G West:
Gee, that link you posted with its first story brings back memories of when my girlfriend and I were similarly wrongly subjected to a VPD swat team raid at our apt. 11 years ago. I'll spare Tyee readers the details. No apology was forthcoming from Vancouver's finest for their little error. Anyway, the site looks to be a good resource, GW.

anarcho: I like to think (and hope)Canada doesn't care that much what the US thinks when it comes to issues like approaches to the drugs situation - Harper notwithstanding - but I'm hopeful his days are numbered. But if Harper does get a majority (shudder), it could get a bit dicier.

The US used to complain about all the BC bud flowing south and made noises about making border crossings more cumbersome - well we're getting that anyway, but for terrorism prevention more than drugs.

I was pleased by a recent Cdn. Supreme Court ruling making it unlikely Marc Emery will be extradited.
What can the US really do to us if our drug laws become more lax? They need us as trading partners. they're addicted to our resources. How can they penalize us, really?

nightbloom: Yes I see now you did mention crystal meth/methamphetamine. I missed it
'cause you didn't actually include it in your paragraph about how drugs affect your community.

If street E and other drugs are questionable due to adulteration , that may say more about the problems stemming from the illegality, rather than about problems with Ecstasy itself, for instance (as Danielle says).
If such drugs were legal and regulated, you'd be better assured of purity and dosage. That sounds like an improvement.

I think many of the worst health and social problems associated with illegal drug use, are mainly due to their illegality, rather than due to the substances themselves.

We'd have a healthier, happier society if
all drugs were legal. The taxes derived from their sale would more than cover the costs of social services: detox or psychedelic drug therapy for those who want to kick addictions,counselling, safe injection sites, drug maintenance, etc.
Organized crime would lose a main source of money and power. Addicts would no longer be forced into lives of desperation (property crime,prostitution), and would stand a better chance of living normal lives.
And as a Vancouverite who's been B&Eed a few times, I sure would be pleased to see property crime decrease.

I agree with Bob999.

Somebody shoot these controlling ruling class fuks who set themselves up as the guardians of public morality. They have their own agenda.

I like a shot of whiskey now and again, I've been known, truly, on rare occasion, whenever it's in the room, to drop the odd tab. sup upon the odd "magic mushroom", snort the odd line and especially, my favourite, take the odd toke on the Devil's Weed. Let it go you ruling class fuks and sanctimonious twits and minions of "ruling class law and order".

It's you who create the problems. Otherwise folks work it out.

It not quite that simple, calling people fuks and advocating shooting them does not help. If we had a happy, healthy society now, then no problem legalising all drugs. But we don't, some use illegal and legal drugs to self medicate because they are unhappy. I think if cociane was legal and priced at a litle above its cost to produce, say $5 a gram, I wouldn't be here. I have never done meth., but after hearing how it makes coke look like nothing, it scares me. I know what using coke can do, I really don't think we should go there, pot and opiates yes, meth. no way.

Thanks for the food for thought Danielle - Yes, setting is indeed important - Context is everything - And some of these substances could have medicinal and psychiatric value, quite apart from personal unsupervised recreational usage.

Bob999:

I'm open to being convinced - I'm not a prude on this issue - but none of your points have been proven or demonstrated, not even in the Netherlands. Drugs in themselves (let alone "recreational" ones, particularly the harder chemicals like cocaine, crack and meth) bring neither health nor happiness in and of themselves. Even relatively clean E comes with a mood-screwing hangover and a whole lot of post-high shittiness. And Organized Crime would still control the supply side unless Big Government were made the #1 Dealer, which would still require legal coercion by law enforcement to ensure 'legitimate' supply (as with the current legal pharmaceuticals, albeit likely on a much more extreme scale). Moreover, addicts will still have to pay (likely more in order to underwrite the 'legitimate' overhead involved in generation a legal supply) and therefore still have to resort to desperate means of getting money (prostitution, property crime, etc.). And in the end, we'd still be conributing to their long term deterioration and flight from reality (and loss of productivity) no matter how clean the stuff is.

I'm familiar with the more trendy documentaries covering the Dutch experience with legalization. What's puzzling is that none of them admit for a moment that there are bad scenarios in the mix. They present a rose-coloured fantasy of legalization without acknowledging the personal deterioration and the criminal activity which still abounds in their libertarian drug-utopia. Legalization is made to sound like a panacea, but its promise is nevertheless a yet unproven myth.

Nightbloom, for reasons known only to you, you use such phrases as, "trendy documentaries," "rose-coloured fantasy," "libertarian drug utopian," to describe aspects of the legalization-decriminalization movement.

I doubt if there's many naive daydreamers among the legalizers.

But to your credit you promise that you are, "open to being convinced."

So here's my best shot:

SFU grad student, Michael Brandt did some research into heroin deaths a few years ago and came up with the conclusion that such deaths are not all they are cracked up to be, and that at least 70% of overdoses attributed to heroin were, in fact, caused by other factors--most notably, those due to the illegality of the stuff.

Go here for this: http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/sfnews/1996/Sept5/heroin.html

When you've had a look at that try this: "Measuring Global Drug Markets."

Here's a bit: "According to a l994 study, the farm gate price of opium originating in Pakistan was about $90.00 (ninety dollars) per kilogram, the wholesale price in the US was $80,000 (eighty thousand dollars) per kilogram and the retail price in the US was $290,000 (two hundred and ninety thousand dollars for a kilogram at 40% purity) equivalent to $725,000 for one kilogram of pure heroin.(seven hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars)

I'll let you do the research into how much of that markup from $90 to $725,000 could be rolled back if the gangsters and killers were taken out of the market, and a naturalized, legal industry with greenhouses in South Surrey and Delta was developed.

Disregard for the moment the fact that it just ain't happening anytime soon.

If your suggestion that the addicts would pay MORE, under this new utopia,is correct, then you are correct in believing that legalization wouldn't change anything, but I think if you do a bit of fair-headed research you might change your opinion.

Wow, I thought this subject that would bring out a lot of passion.
Folks don't always "work it out".
Drugs aren't a good thing. You wouldn't want to add an additive to the gas you put in your car. The extra expense, and hassle or procurement? You would curse your car as a useless piece of crap.
Why would you want to be a useless piece of crap that needs extra chemicals, in order to exist?
I have empathy for those addicted, and I agree we are doing a inadequate job of offering treatment, designed at offering the addicts a safe alternative detox center.
I am a Libertarian with a problem. Because as a Libertarian, I should say that every person is responsible for their own actions. Don't expect anyone to bail you out. Government should be bare bones except for defence, immigration, fair elections, international trade, justice, immigration, public safety, finance, if we need the help for the addicts, I think it should be a Provencal responsibility.
BC should be the leader in dealing with this. We have a lot of junkies.
Why should BC be consulted, when we have more drug use than anywhere else in Canada?
Way more attention by Gov BC is required.
It's our problem and, we need to pay for it and fix it.

"Because as a Libertarian, I should say that every person is responsible for their own actions.Don't expect anyone to bail you out."

That ideal could only work where people have the ability to be responsible. This requires a society where there is a great deal of economic equality, where community has been re-established, where no important decisions are made without input from the people involved, where racism, misogyny and authoritarian child rearing habits are absent. Since we are no where near to that glorious state of affairs, indeed thanks to the neocons we are actually regressing, you have to have some level of government social services. This is the price you pay for corporate capitalism. Take the social services away, yet keep the corporatist, class-dominated authoritarian system and you have utter barbarism. A consistant libertarian has to be opposed to all forms of authoritarianism most especially corporate capitalism.
If you think you are a libertarian, IAMC, I suggest you check out this site and you will find what real libertarianism is all about. See: http://www.mutualist.org/

Mutualism, what is that?
I read it. It was not very interesting.
I am a strong believer in the Libertarian view, that if everyone took care of their own matters, none of us would need help from anyone else. We would all be able to run our own lives.
The right to the pursuit of happiness.
Wal*Mart is now in favour of unions. Not in Canada. But it;s fine for the employer of over 1 million workers, to suck up to China. Can you imagine how Wall*Mart must be salivating to get into the China marketplace?
Imagine, they wouldn't even face the shipping charges.

So Ron, what are you? A libertarian, a conservative, a neo con or a turnip? Having a littly trouble figuring out where you fit in lately eh!

Well keep reading little green footballs and small dead animals and the drudge report; keep listening to that racist David Horowitz and the drug addict Rush Limbaugh, keep reading and believing the lies in world net daily - you'll figure it out.

But above all, don't read or listen to anything that requires you to actually think or understand something you haven't been told by someone else.

Better yet, have another drink and go to bed - it's all too confusing for you.

Alcibiades says I don't read or listen to anything that requires me to actually think or understand something. I certainly am not confused Alcoholic.
Maybe you are.
Rush knows a lot about the NFL.
What do you know? Mot much, as far as I can see.

You admit you're an alcoholic then. That’s the first step to a cure I'm told - now get with the 12 step program. But don't backslide into drugs like Rush did. You may end up in jail with him.

Rush thinks he knows a lot about a lot of things, in fact, he is nothing more than a gasbag - half a show on a doctored Reuters photo – what a joke!... Killing a gnat with a howitzer - I've forgotten more than you will ever know and I know more than you can imagine little Albertan.

The NFL is nothing but a spectacle for a dying civilization...the modern equivalent of the Circus Maximus.

Truman - Yes, I'm open to being convinced, as I said. Your point on the destructiveness of corrupted street-level substances is well taken. However, an overdose is an overdose, whether its clean or dirty, and from what I understand from a friend who did his internship in the VGH morg, overdoses of every kind occur, and they're a dime a dozen in Vancouver.

Even clean drugs will contribute to the users' long term deterioration. These aren't vitamins they're taking after all. I'm open to the legalization argument(s) on a substance by substance basis, but not all the caveats have been effectively addressed by the pro-legalization supporters.

For example, it still has not been convincingly demonstrated how legalization will remove Organized Crime from the equation (rather than simply obliging it to adapt to a new enforcement environment). This is a huge blindspot in the pro-legalization argument.

In addition, I find the pro-legalization side to be totally unrealistic on the question of the role of government under a legalization regime. Government would have to assume an even more involved and invasive role than it currently fills. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind about that.

Sure, there are positive uses for diligent medical application of heroin. A former boss of mine was given a shot of H when she delivered her first daughter - it was from the last of the wartime army stock left over from WWII. She said it worked like nothing else they gave her for her subsequent childbirths.

But let's not pretend legalization would solve the drug problem, or even resolve the "drug war" (in case you haven't noticed, there's a "drug war" now over legal pharmaceuticals as well).

Speaking of which, it would be interesting how Big Pharmacy would adapt to the opening up of this whole new marketshare. It won't be good - even the libertarians have to concede that point.

Legalization is simply one of many policy options that comes with a boatload of caveats. And it won't bring a happier, more enlightened or spiritual (or productive) society, so let's drop that baby-talk from the argument.

Whether you legalize or not, you're still going to a Downtown Eastside and phenomena like it. The personal deterioration, prostitution, property crime and Organized Crime groups are not going to go away.

IAMC muttered beerily, "Mutualism, what is that? I read it. It was not very interesting."

I doubt that you read it. It challenges everything you stand for. You are no libertarian. You are not very interesting either, as you are an empty-headed apologist for corporate capitalism, war and empire. I think your real name is Ron Irwin

-so said nightbloom.

No one here's yet mentioned the hypocricy with regard to drugs demonstrated by our current legal system (and by our social conservative moralists).

-Long term deterioration?
A Health Canada report http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/16-2/c_e.htmlestimated that 30,359 Canadians died from smoking related causes in 2000. A US study estimated 435,000 Americans died due to smoking in the same year!
A U. of T. study http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/16-2/c_e.html estimated 6,701 alcohol related deaths in Canada in 1992.

What illegal drugs are as deadly as tobacco and alcohol?

It's sheer hypocricy to tolerate legal substances as dangerous as those 2, while demonizing and persecuting users of illegal ones which are arguably less harmful! How is this justifiable? It's unjust and unconscienable.

If heroin, for instance, is legalized, is it likely to kill at the rates these legal drugs kill? Not likely.Our legal drugs are often more damaging,more deadly.

Vancouver had a huge spike in heroin OD deaths briefly, some years back, when
ultra pure heroin would often show up on the street. Apparently, some dealers at the time were novices who didn't know to cut their product to normal potency levels. OD deaths are now way down from then,partly because the ultra pure stuff isn't around much now. Illegality had caused uncertain and dangerous dosages resulting in scores of OD deaths that otherwise would not have happened.

If heroin was legal, none of those deaths due to uncertainty/variability of dosage
would occur.Fewer users would die.

Yes, some drugs have long term health risks. Crystal meth probably can do some permanent damage to some users - just as alcohol and tobacco can do.

Heroin, on the other hand, in proper dosage, does not harm the body or brain in any way, beyond the addiction itself. I've seen no evidence to the contrary.
Addicts get hepatitus, AIDS, abcesses, etc. from dirty needles, not from heroin itself. Compare that to alcohol and tobacco related illnesses (those 2 are much more damaging).

I believe natural opium to be less problematic than heroin (OD risk is much less, for one thing), yet opium is not typically available on the street the way heroin is. Similarly, relatively harmless coca leaves are unavailable. Only coca in its worst forms (coke, crack)are available.

If drugs were legal, people would have the opportunity to make more responsible drug choices: they could choose opium over heroin, coca leaves over cocaine.

I also believe if opium was legally available, some self medicating alcoholics would be able to happily switch to the less harmful opium and receive even greater self-med. benefits, so to speak. Jean Cocteau smoked opium
as a habit for most of his life (apparently it didn't hurt him or his prolific life as a muti-disciplined artist). He said
"opium and alcohol are mortal enemies".
An opium user can lose all desire for alcohol.

...On the Netherlands: Cannabis use actually decreased after the drug was made quasi legal. This challenges conventional "wisdom" suggesting legalization promotes usage.

As Truman says, those arguing for legalization aren't naive daydreamers.
There will still be many social and health problems after legalization, but the problems will be fewer than the ones we have now in our current unjust,indefensible system.

The sane approach, in my view, is to treat drug problems as health and social
ones, and NOT as legal/criminal problems.

[On the relative harmlessness of non-addictive psychedelics and psychoactives. Exhibit A: Taking such drugs has evidently not harmed Coyote at all...Case closed!]

Been there, done that (not the suicide bit, though). And what I do know is that using 5-HTP and other serotonin rebuilders works - my implication being that the "Education" part of the Four Pillars Strategy is part of what's needed in any scenario, legalization or otherwise. "Wise use" and being able to access information/help without fear of (a) legal consequences and (b) social opprobrium/judgement. And Lord knows Vancouverites like to judge others, and make them know it, too.

And other than such after-high self-treatments, a really big one is responsible co-use, i.e. if you party with someone, stay with them; it's loneliness that increases the depression; lack of physical contact and personal presence. In other words, a little bit of T.L.C. - someone to hang onto - is de rigeur to avoid the Big Bad Low. But this is a non-touch, non-affection culture. In fact, I'd venture that a lot of drug use and the depression/anxieties that underlay it are partly due to the non-touch etiquette/lifestyle in BC. Canadians touch each other 30% less than the world average, even less than stuffy Olde England. Here, it seems casual affection is considered a precursor to sex and so is social anathema.

No one's ever correlated the lower heart disease rates and the like in warmer countries with the touch rate, but I'd venture there's a connection. One reason? Don't have the cite handy, but apparently interpersonal touch - not clinical touch, the cold-hands treatment of a physio/GP - causes the body to generate oxycondon, which is similar to oxycontin. In other words, affection/love is an opiate/opioid - but one produced naturally within the body. Makes a lot of sense, when you consider how you can feel after a good hug, and also how crazy love can make people when they're deprived of contact with the significant other (or that contact is cut off suddenly, as with breakup or death).

Point is, that shirt "hugs not drugs" might have a lot to do with it. But "drugs" in that context should also mean the very dangerous SSRI family and all the other crap the medical/pharmaceutical establishment is pushing these days (while being completely immune from the rhetoric and gunfights of the War on Drugs).

As long as things are kept in the shadows, a lot of people aren't going to know what to do when the post-E crisis hits; but people should consider their partying partners that day or two later; not calling or coming by on Bad Tuesday is pretty cruel/selfish, especially if someone got someone else high.

More on impurities later; the bit on post-E depression caught my eye.

Bobb999, you are a voice of sanity in a world gone mad! Thank you for your intelligent, informative postings

Good debate except for the simplistic approach many people have. Like all the "all you need is god" approach or
"Drugs aren't a good thing. You wouldn't want to add an additive to the gas you put in your car."
There is a debate about the chemical properties of certain things labeled drugs in a negative context here. A simple plant can be labeled a "drug" and right away it is bad.
Foxglove (digitalis) is a plant, a chemical from it helps heart patients if the plant is eaten it can kill but the benefits from researching the chemical properties have helped people with heart conditions. The plant itself is not a drug the isolating of chemicals in the plant are used to make a drug. People are helped by foxglove so it has a positive image. But if Foxglove were a "narcotic" the plant itself would be labeled a "Drug" with the "Bad Drug" connotation. Then the long process of undoing the negative drug propaganda attached to a plant that might have a helpful benefit to people is faced. If a plant is not a narcotic it is just a plant if it is a narcotic it is a bad drug. We need to get beyond simplistic views of plants as drugs. May plants are dangerous when used wrong but the same plants are immensely beneficial when researched properly. The ironic thing is lots of plants that have narcotic properties are the plants that when researched can solve addiction and for some that is a hard concept to fathom.
To just say a certain plant is a bad drug or drug addicts need to find god and they will all be saved or throw more police and money at the problem is just a reactionary response. We have to listen, read and be informed not react in fear based upon bad drug propaganda caused by the "War on Drugs" view. To me there is no "WAR" just a multi faceted problem that needs to be solved. "We can solve it" but getting over and understanding the fear created by propaganda is one of the first problems we have to face before we can constructively approach the subject.

Thanks. You too, anarcho!

I'd like to reinforce Skookum's citing of the value of natural neurotransmitter regulators such as 5HTP (available over the counter in any good supplement store). It's a form of tryptophan, from a natural source (an african plant). I've not used it as Skookum suggests, as a treatment to come off recreational drug indulgence. But it makes perfect sense that it could be useful for this purpose.

I use it as an ongoing antidepressant.
I'd also recommend SAMe, which stimulates
production of several neurotransmitters, including dopamine and seratonin both. 5HTP affects seratonin only. I alternate: 5HTP one day, SAMe the next.
I find the standard doses are too high for me, causing overstimulation/anxiety. So,I take just half a cap of 5htp, and a mere one eighth of a tablet of SAMe.

I don't need much, but without it I don't feel right. My brain isn't firing on all cylinders. These supplements work right away. You don't need 2 weeks before your body adjusts to them (like with St. John's Wort). And they don't have the side effects of SSRIs such as Zoloft, Prozac, etc.
I only wish I'd discovered these earlier in life. I went a few decades with frequent low-grade depression I could have avoided, if only I'd known...

An excellent suggestion, Skookum, about their value to users of recreational stimulants.

As far as touch and affection stimulating
natural opioids. Sounds sensible to me.

I wonder if some opiate addicts, beyond just receiving insufficient natural opioid (endorphins)stimulators, may have a biochemical imbalance, where their bodies simply cannot easily produce sufficient (normal) levels of these substances. They may be self medicating,
trying to restore an opioid/endorphin balance they otherwise would lack. In such a case, it's not so much a hedonic high they're after. It's more like they're trying to feel the way normal people feel: not overcome by anxiety, negative moods and negative self perceptions.

Brain: Your insight about medicinal plants and the perils of labelling sparks a few thoughts.
The dreaded "narcotic" opium poppy produces the most effective class of pain
relievers we know: opiates, and have been a blessing to millions of pain sufferers.

Propaganda and perception:
It's ironic to compare, say, Iranian views to western views:In the West, alcohol's accepted, recreational opiates use demonized.
In Iran, alcohol is often viewed as the evil substance (forbidden by the Prophet), while Iranians I've met tell me that although opium is technically illegal in Iran, virtually every Iranian home possesses some opium, not just as a home remedy for pain, diarreah, etc., but as a recreational drug, just as alcohol is used here. A guest to an Iranian home might be offered a pipe of opium after a meal, instead of a liqueur or beer!
Different strokes...

Oh good, Bobb's here.

So let me get this straight. Those plants, Iboga and peyote are OK and Opium is NOT?

Please, let the plants remain and take the synthetics and throw them away.

Quit moralizing a very simple thing: Nature's beautiful remedies.

Make them available to all and tax them. End of story.

OWA:
Wasn't it nice of the Tyee to give us another platform again so soon , to voice our "subversive agenda for Canada"?!

Bob999 - Lost me on the "Heroin = cigarettes" nonsense right off the bat. Lemme guess: sugar additives = crystal meth, too. And ditto for E = aspirin. Crack cocaine = a glass of chardonnay. The boyz down at The World (816 Granville) are adept at such ridiculous rationalizations for their drug use.

Heard it all before. And no way.

As for 5-HTP, sure that's a stop-gap measure than will take the edge off while leaving you too zoned out to care. It has its uses - and its limitation too. If you're gradually getting hooked on club-powder then bottles of 5-HTP aren't going to do you a bit of good in the end. You're avoiding the question: why are you doing it in the first place? Why do you require an altered state of consciousness to feel at home in your own skin, truly "yourself"? Why does community "membership" require it--?

Also, you're using one drug to counter the ill-effects of another so you can keep the cycle going. Does it ever end? Instead of whining about our hugless dysfunctionality of Western culture, what is it about your own life tht is depriving you of the hugs the rest of us find in such abundance...?

For all users of any substance that alters mood, cognition, spatial perception, clarity and speed of thought (namely the rate and directness through which Alpha becomes Omega), creativity, inhibitions, etc. and all or any combination of the above:

It is all a matter of moderation, isn't it? And a matter of content (of the drug itself) and context (of your social, cultural and psychological space, your sense of psychological cohesion within and without, if you will)

I have little doubt that treatment of certain conditions, including that of addiction to other drugs, could be successfully treated with hallucinogenics -or for that matter, another narcotic of any number of classes. Hallucinogenics seems intuitively sensical by the effect of the drug itself. I believe that if any treatment with them is going to be successful it's certainly not going to be slap-dash take these shrooms follow with ibogaine, contemplate your life and voila kind of shit. Clearly the use should be therapeutic and guided by a "professional" (problematic ol' can o' worms that term is) and must inevitably -for most people in such straits- be engaged with over a long-ish period of time and sensibly spaced "sessions".

In my experience, hallucinogen classed drugs have given me major "eye-opening" and life-changing experiences. I cannot say the same for e or other amphetamine based drugs, which have always left me simply having fun or bummed.

Nightbloom, I certainly understand where you're coming from with your measured cautions against legalization of, treatment with/by "street drugs". In the end though I think you have a serious hang-up and broad stroke with reactionary doubt the efficacy (with regards to crime reduction -both violent and benign- and reasonableness and justness of legalization (with regard to the illegitimacy of state sanctions and punishments against an individual's chosen path)

You have spoken eloquently and with solid experience in reference to purported epidemic in the gay community. However, even if I were to take your troubling anectdotes and their equally troubling implications at face value, you still have not made any convincing argument as to the moral and social scourge of drug use in general. As you say, they are not vitamins. No shit! Vitamins don't get you high. I guess, what I'm saying, Nightbloom, is you're heavy on rhetoric and I suspect you have been personally affected by drug abuse of friends, etc. But don't hang your hat on that post.

There is an incredibly large industry/ies that have incredible amounts of dollars riding on the continued criminalization of certain drugs. This is undeniable. And the truth is that it's not only $ at stake, but our minds and will and sense of self. This issue of drugs is only one amongst many fields of battle. I'm not intending to be dramatic but the fact is we are living, have lived, have always lived in an hierarchical power structure. Nearer the top, nearer the bottom, whatever. Nightbloom willfully obfuscates and rationalizes. This is no radical, whining lefty speaking, Nightbloom. I appreciate your proclaimed open-mindedness to the issue.

I beg you to point out the faults of legalization. And the faults must outweigh the benefits -in $, in social cohesion, in a just society, a better world, etc., etc.

I also ask:

If there is in fact (which I don't necessarily doubt) a major problem with amphetamine use in the gay community of Van., (and presumably in other gay communities or gay culture in general), Why is that?

Certainly few -with the exceptions of some in here- would boil it down to a genetically based naturally hankering. I would suggest that such widespread harm is connected to a number of social and cultural issues that have more to do with the historical marginalization of the other rather than a problem with "gays and amphetamines" simplicitor. The dots aren't connected so easily but, as with many other "sub-cultures" the dots and lines are there. I guess my point here is that if there is a problem in the Gay community with drug abuse then it is not simply the fault of drugs and their availability. Tightening or loosening the strings on that purse will likely not make a lick of difference. Drug abuse has not much to do with legalization or criminalization at all, in my opinion. The laws of men are but sign posts and stop-gaps. Some wear out there welcome and stop giving any meaningful guidance at all.

Oh but then maybe what I posted immediately above is too soft-touched, wish-washy, anti-libertarian or alternately not harsh or commie enough for some. Maybe I come across as too "mugwamp". but there you have it.

**** em if they can't take a joke, or is it joke em if they can't take a ****, =jtothemfk?, Anyways, yes hallucinogens can change you, in suttle ways forever. Very interesting, I was more into down when I used but glad I dropped, even if it wasn't the killer shit from the 60s, Owsley and all that. Hey, if someone is wired to the tits and a different view could help them resolve thier issues somewhat, great. I want to say legalise it all, but then, by the same token, if meth is ok, why can't I have an automatic rifle? I am responsible in safe usage, I would love one. Very interesting talk here, thanks everyone.

Why be so dismissive, Climber? You grew up, joined the race? Keep on truckin' if it suits ya. Just watch your tracks.

I don't know what you mean... does it pertain to my last post?

That's just pure rhetoric... "wired to the tits"... that's how one talks to their buddy after/during a bender (i.e. I'm f'n wired to the tits here, bro...stay with me) It really doesn't carry any meaning in a discussion about health and justice. I qualified my support of treatment with a few caveats, won't repeat them.

I'm not sure by what leap you connect one (meth) with the other (automatic rifle) but I'll take a stab and guess that you believe meth users are as dangerous as a guy with an automatic rifle? Or perhaps you're saying, "Well, let's just take that one step further and watch the world fall apart"? I don't know. I await your elaboration on the point.

It is completely non-sensical, nontheless, to equate or even to approximate the legalization of a drug with the same of a weapon of that type. One is used on oneself, the other is used on someone or something else (exceptions made for suicides)
The former is used by an indvidual and directly harms only the user (indirect harm to family, society, etc. notwithstanding) whereas the latter is used by an individual and directly harms others.

I think you might find some similarities between the two in that our need for these things is culturally constructed. You might also find that the purpose of use and effects of both are also culturally determined. But in the end game, an individual chooses meth, but does not choose to be shot by a rifle.

I can't give you sources at this time but it's a fact that those individuals that own a gun (whatever the country or warzone or suburb) have a life expectancy much shorter than those individuals who do not own a gun. But if your quality of life is increased by packing a fistful of steel, then who's to judge?

I'm not even advocating legalization of, for example, meth. I just think that our moralization of the matter severely limits us as a society in tackling very serious problems. As you all know, legal or illegal, people will use. Questions are: Why do people use? When? How? What do they do after? How do they get the $? Are they better after they pay a fine or do time or take counselling? Is society (you and me and all our neighbours) better off with draconian drug laws? How many employees of the justice system would be jobless should certain drugs be legalized? How many different jobs in the field would open up? How many Hells Angels would get commerce degrees? Blah Blah Blah.

Just saying, legal/illegal... there are serious questions to consider and they warrant much more than Climber's thoughtless dismissal and cynical side references to his halycon days of the 60s.

jtothemfk:

Thanks for the thoughful commentary. Re. drug use in the gay community, the collective marginalization argument goes a long way...and also happens to compliment the political goals and advocacy of the community (which should ring warning bells). But this is only part of the story. You have a very effective and lucrative enforcement bubble that has been erected around the larger urban gay male communities. And you also have a transient sub-culture that is highly receptive to messaging equating anarchic life-choices with personal freedom and liberation. On top of that, you have a profound and visceral craving to finally belong to something after a lifetime of non-belonging and rejection. It's a potent draw, and one which generates an almost cult-like devotion to the not-so-underground gay drug scene.

Re. your critique of my arguments, I sense you are trying to blanket the issue in the same fuzzy relativist non-distinctions which progressives use to blunt our sensitivity to the difference between reasonable constructive application of drugs in a medical context and the social pathology of chronic recreational escapist drug use and hard-core addiction. You've lumped it all together into the same amorphous bag of faulty reasoning:

How do you create a policy framework for "moderation"--? Legalization proponents have't presented a credible case.

As for my critique of legalization, it's much as I said above. Proponents haven't credibly demonstrated the truth of their claims that legalization would elimate the personal deterioration, the property crime, prostitution, addiction, the Organized Crime, and the appropriate place of government as the overseer of such a legalization regime.

No rhetoric there, just a lot of good questions on my part.

I should have typed "non-enforcement bubble". That's a little clearer.

Not a great deal of available time currently, but had to echo anarcho's comment about Bob999 being a voice of rationality and sanity on this subject . I've much enjoyed "quick reading" his stufff.

Though I also would like to acknowledge OneWomanArmy's brief comments immediately above.

Quit moralizing a very simple thing: Nature's beautiful remedies.

Make them available to all and tax them. End of story.

We really do have to get these goddamn Evangelical and fundamentalist Catholic Christians and their Neoconservative pals off all our backs on this issue. They are the real authors of the downtown east-side, the poverty and the prostitution here.

Their choice is that we should all be addicted dependant on "The Lord" and, of course, the big "legal" drug companies.

I agree with Bob999 and OneWomanArmy.

The BC Health Officers council report goes into choices for creating control policies around these criminalized substances.

an interesting comparison is ritalin. right now the dosages of all the kiddies taking ritalin are monitored as controlled substances. i understand that each time the parents walk into shoppers to re-new prescriptions that the info is sent to the authorities so that they can monitor the drug's usage. of course that doesn't prevent a parent from gobbling up Johnny's meds themselves instead! and who gets to monitor these records? ministry of children? the courts? and how does that reflect our cultural acceptance of putting kids on this incredibly powerful chemical?

BTW, A UK medical panel just released a report saying that booze is more harmful than illegal drugs:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17495608&method=full&siteid=66633&headline=booze-is-more-of-a-danger-than-lsd--name_page.html
http://iccoventry.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100localnews/tm_objectid=17498367&method=full&siteid=50003&headline=alcohol-is-more-harmful-than-lsd--name_page.html

Gee nightbloom ,your comment:

.
-strikes me as particularly goofy. As I posted earlier, tobacco killed 30,000+ Canadians and 435,000 Americans in the 2000 alone.

...No,I wouldn't say heroin = cigarettes. I'd say cigarettes are worse, more deadly than heroin. Tobacco is also much more harmful to the body. Heroin, in proper dosage, and using clean needles, has no damaging effects on the body whatsoever, beyond addiction itself.Show me evidence to the contrary.

I tried googling for Canadian heroin death stats, unsuccessfully, but annual deaths in the low 100s I believe is likely, NOT in the tens of thousands like tobacco.
And remember, illegality means dose variability, which greatly increases OD risk. If heroin was legal, risk of OD death would decrease.

Tobacco kills many slowly, often painfully. Heroin kills few quickly, painlessly. Which is worse?
Is it that you believe few deaths by a bang (heroin) is worse than many deaths by a whimper(tobacco)?
That makes no logical sense.

...you have me wondering now if you yourself aren't perhaps a tobacco addict.
Your cavalier, irrational dismissal of such a stunning casualty statistic of smoking deaths leaves me suspicious.
If you are a smoker, your compartmentalized view of
drugs (one deadly, addictive drug is okay, another - a less deadly one - you demonize)appears irrational and hypocritical. Perhaps you're deep in denial. Even if you're not a smoker,
my above assessment of your view still applies.

I reiterate, it is the illegality which causes the majority of the health and social problems of drugs, much more so than the drugs themselves.

An example: Vancouver's (also Australia's, and Europe's) safe injection sites are a form of quasi legalization.
Vancouver requires special federal permission to override narcotics laws in order to operate the sites.

Every country that has tried SIS has found they reduce harm (disease and deaths). Vancouver's SIS regularly gets ODs but has recorded not a single death . The quasi legalization we see in SIS saves lives. These results give an intimation of what we might expect from a more complete, controlled legalization. Saving lives is unimportant to you?

BTW, I never said I use 5HTP to counteract effects of recreational drugs. Skookum mentioned that use.
I use it as an anti-depressant.

Another point: Why should Big Brother gov't have the authority to dictate to people which psychoactive drugs they're allowed to put in their bodies, and which they're not?

jtothemfk: You make some excellent rebuttal points to the "Dracos".

Well, pretty obvious for those who know that 5-HTP isn't going to help if that club powder is spiked with meth or pcp or ??? And that's the exact problem with illegalization - you can never know what you're buying (especially in the dark, with blurred-out eyes). This is what dancesafe.org was on about in the US - testing E on-site at raves; and of course they got in a lot of trouble for "aiding and abetting". But not only did it provide a useful health service for users, it also wound up compiling data on the spread of non-E surrogates. And without digging into the criminological details, one thing that's known is that the heavy crackdown on E in the late '90s pushed people looking for a high to harder drugs; and there, waiting in the wings, was crystal meth. Ironically the study which had been used to scare people off E - the one with the crazed baboons - turned out to have been using crystal meth instead of E.

The British had an interesting solution, which was brought into force sometime around 2000: E was legalized and made over-the-counter; all you had to do was ask a druggist. Use fell dramatically, as did its availability on the black market (or things claiming to be it); but errant youth being errant youth the club scene began to switch to DMT (dextroethorphan) and then, somehow inevitable, crystal meth. So while on the one hand a legalization scenario provides clinical authenticity of substances, unless everything is brought above ground, there's always a darker demon the underworld can produce.....

E was fairly innocuous relative to its evil cousins; it got shut down out of the same cultural/social/religious paranoia that demonized marijuana, and because it got shut down it spawned something much worse; just as marijuana's crackdown led to cocaine smuggling which led to crack. Oh yeah, it's a gateway drug all right - for law enforcement people looking for more drugs to hunt down; because one contraband inevitably begets another. If booze was illegal, it would be part of the same business, remember that....

That was my previous ponit; one reason drug use is rife is becuase the "hugs" are NOT in such abundance. And no, suggesting someone embrace their family or church isn't the same thing (families don't cure drugs, they cause drugs). This is a cold, material, ruthless culture, and although the drug problem is worldwide I submit that its intensity in Vancouver has to do with people looking for emotional content they don't get in ordinary society because ordinary society here is so dispassionate. Or cool or reserved or "laid-back" or whatever you want to euphemize it as: heartless, ruthless are closer to the mark. Oh, but also including FEAR, as generated by the tabloid-media's hysteria and the way the public here have bought into the "everyone is suspect" ideology. Smile and people think you're sick; touch an acquaintance casually when you're talking with them and, unlike Latin America, they'll think you're trying to come on to them, or maybe even want to tie them up and etc.

So my version of the "why are people using drugs", as also with the E generation, is because society/culture as manifested by the various forces making it - media, the "free market", marketing, and so on - doesn't provide the emotional or spiritual connection to life that's part of the organism.

Even music, one of the most ancient releases for the organism, is heavily controlled here, with forced canned music helping in the sale of goods and people conditioned to regard independent musicians as deadbeats or who just don't sound as good as overproduced schlock; why is this important? Because playing music, and/or dancing, has been shown to be TEN TIMES more effective than any anti-depressant on the market. But street music here is discouraged, live music venues are few and far between and heavily regulated by the city (other than top 40 cover bands, and even that's limited) and "public fun" is limited to idiocies like the Fireworks brou-ha-ha and the madness that is Granville on Friday nights.

People don't know how to have fun; and those that want to get looked at weird. I commented to someone (while pausing from playing guitar while waiting for the bus) that "trying to get this town to have fun is like poking a dead pig with a stick". He laughed - he was from somewhere else. The Vancouverites shifted uneasily where they stood, and tried to ignore the comment, just as they had been pretending to ignore the music (which wasn't bad music at all). Those that did look gave shifty glances, like I made them nervous (which apparently I did, either for my comment or because I was having fun instead of standing there like a zombie, as most of them were). No doubt when they got home they reached for the Xanax or Ativan or Valium or Prozac, plus a sleeping pill or two, and told themselves how glad they were they weren't junkies....

Skookum: You make some very good points on the follies of drug laws and enforcement, and how our current system can actually drive people to the worst,most problematic drugs out there, for instance. I made a similar point earlier about opiates and coca being easily available only in their worst forms.(Try finding simple opium or coca leaves on the street).

You make valid points about ill effects stemming from our emotionally cold, undemonstrative society.
But I think you overestimate affection and music as being panaceas... as in,in my own case, I could toss away my 5HTP and SAMe if only I was receiving more touch/affection and listening to more inspiring music! I wish.I believe brain chemistry is a bit more complicated than that however, and not everyone would necessarily respond to your simple "prescription".

An analogy: Some diabetics can successfully manage their condition entirely through diet and losing weight, etc. Others cannot. Many have bodies so out of whack re. insulin/blood sugar regulation that diet alone won't
do the trick. Though diet remains important, they will still die without daily insulin shots.

I believe a lot of people with neurotransmitter imbalances are in the same boat as serious diabetics.Things like music and affection may help, and may even be sufficient for many. But others have more serious biochemical conditions only supplements can adequately address. You may not need them but others may (...which reminds me, it's time for my morning SAMe dose!).

Of course, Tom Cruise and the Scientologists would disagree with my assessment, and would agree with yours, adding Scientology e-meter auditing to the list of "to-dos"
to replace all those evil, mind/soul warping antidepressants. 'Fraid I can't agree, although I'm a booster of natural antidepressants over pharmaceuticals.

I appreciate that you're making a sincere attempt to communicate your point of view. There are some who are able to dabble in hard drugs without lasting or debilitation or emotionally de-stabilizing effects. Perhaps you're one of them, and lucky you. But you have to remember that for a lot of people these substances can and do have a tremendously negative effect on their lives. I also get into the same sort of debates with people who have never seen the hidden side of the party scene, and therefore can't picture it (i.e. they can't acknowledge the existence of a malevalent network of people operating "behind the party" for whom the club-dealers are simply the retail help). They refuse to step outside of their own experience and suspend for a few moment the need to defend in idealistic terms their chosen religion.

My reservations are still much as I state at the outset (related to inevitably personal deterioration, escapism and loss of reality, Organized Crime, the the unworkability of a viable legalization framework that wouldn't exaserbate the existing problems). This is one of those debates wherein I am unlikely to convince you, just as you are unlikely the convince me.

Re. the coldness and alienation of Vancouver, I have a few theories. Part of it is the critical mass of searching people without a strong sense of self. Part of it are the large and self-contained minorities that are not well integrated - plus the fact that just about everyone is from somewhere else, and on their way to somewhere else. And, of course, a big part of it is the anti-social paranoid pot-haze the hovers permanently over the Lower Mainland. Widespread daily pot use by so many people has hardly made the social environment more engaging or friendly.

Re: the problem with Meth in the gay community. To ask this question most people are looking at the gay community as something outside the realm of the rest of society or their experience (unless you are gay and commenting on it). There is a heavy use of Meth in the gay community just the same way there is a heavy use of Meth everywhere. It is not limited to the gay community but I think this party scene and it's use of Meth intrigue people. It has nothing to do with being gay it is rampant everywhere or it would not be as big a problem. I could go into reasons why mainly gay men do it but that would start a whole other debate.

RE: 5-HTP, there was a comment regarding it's use as being

it is not like that at all infact I use it and the problem (or not a problem depending on how you view it) is. It does not feel like you are on anything until you ask yourself do I feel better and I would have to say "yes". It is so great to the point of not doping you up.
The other point to realize with Seritonin production in the body is the correct intake and even absorption of carbohydrates. High protein diets can cause depression. If you search "5-HTP" you can read more. It is a great plant extract that helps. If a plant will help people then they should be recognized. Maybe the drug companies probably are not interested in you looking into 5-HTP because Prozac and Zoloft are BIG money makers. But I have tried Zoloft years ago and talk about being doped up and no libido. There is no way I would take it again or anything related to it.
Well balanced diet is a key though.
Oooops there go those plants (fruit and veg) making me feel better and helping again.

jtothemfk, I'm sorry, I thought that your name was short for joke em if they....My use of the expression "wired to the tits" could have been "someone heavily addicted to hard drugs" I should have been clear, street phrases don't alway mean the same thing I guess. And I wasn't really around in the 60s, not to party anyways, I was born in '68. Not being dismissive at all, whatever works to help someone have a happier life. Let the people proposing this try it out these drugs on the addicted, soon. Now about automatic rifles, every house in Switzerland with a military age male has one, and they have a lower murder rate than us. Why would you think I would shoot people anyways? Skookum 1 is on the right path, people use in a negative way because they are unhappy. The only way to reduce supply is to reduce demand, this is a key point.

Nightbloom: thank you for your response. I take your understanding of the "gay community" and all that phrase entails to be well-thought and lived through and I agree with you insofar as my understanding of social groups and their behaviour in general go.

As to your critique of my reasoning and clarification of your own toward legalization:

The point I'd like to make very strongly here is that in general and in principle, in a democratic society, behaviours are only made criminal when it can be shown that proscribing a behaviour and punishing transgressions demonstrably make our society better (usually by looking at health, violence and similar measures). So I guess I'm turning your point on its head or turning the tables or whatever. The fact that removing the proscriptions on drug use will not necessarily (or perhaps even probably) better our society is, in the context of our legalistic democracy, no argument. For in principle, we only make illegal that which can be shown to make our society better than in the absence of such a law. That last bit's pretty muddled but I think you probably get my point.

Climber, no worries on the misunderstanding. It happens in these forums. But Switzerland is a very different society than urban Canada. Which points further to this problem of discussing a controversial issue (inanimate, soulless object such as a gun or a drug) without any indepth analytical reference to the culture in which it is used. I agree with Skookum's point as well.

Well, it's true that if a guy like me - 6'5", hulking and jock-appearing, walks into the Amsterdam looking for some reef, or even to look at pipes or buy papers, they assume I'm a narc or a cop or just a troubled yuppie. What cracks me up about latter-day so-called hippies is how clothes-conscious and judgemental they are. BUT that being said, I don't think the alienation prevalent in Vancouver is hardly the pot-user syndrome; it's not the pot-users that are doing the paranoid shuffle, it's the [I}Province[/I] readers and the like who think they are normal. Without knowing what "normal" is, as if there were such a thing. The alienation and fear that's built into this place is the tabloid syndrome; the aftermath of Clifford Olson and Michael Dunnahee and the media/police obsession with assuming everyone you don't know well is either a pederast or a gangster. There's something more than that too; like an inflictive psychosis that, if you don't take part in it, you become a victim of; the harsh looks, the stares, the judgemental comments. Someone above said too bad if "you" don't have hugs in your life, since "he/she" does; that's like the snotty "well, if you can't have fun mountain-biking and hanging out in coffee shops like the rest of us consumer drones, there's something wrong with you" (in reference to the No-Fun debate); the idea that those who don't love Vancouver are the problem, not that there's anything in Vancouver to NOT love. And oh yeah, is there ever (other than the weather, I mean). This city is bipolar, and inherently paranoid. You're right about the juxtaposition of separated cultures - and I won't get started again on my condemnations of multiculturalism, but it's built into the paranoia/hostility/coldness thing here. If you're constantly inundated with unfamiliar languages and customs, it's what's called culture shock and historically has produced some very nasty results (e.g. the Boxer Rebellion as well as the Anti-Oriental Riots here a few years later). And, this being Canada, it's not OK to be publicly questioning that since it's now part of the national identity/ideology; we've had our own identity taken away from us and a new legislated one imposed upon it; one that includes repressive puritanical religions and social mores to be celebrated as "part of our diversity".

And it's not exactly physical affection and music that I mean as a panacea; those are only elements in the mass. What's needed is for this place to LOOSEN UP and stop taking itself so seriously, and for people here to realize they don't have to be afraid of talking to the person next to them on the bus or at the care. To learn to look at someone walking by and smile, without fear that they'll wince and look away because you MIGHT BE A SERIAL KILLER LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. Which is certainly what The Province pushes, while touting public safety as its concern for being so luridly sensationalist about nearly everything. In fact, I'd peg the advent of the Public Paranoia here squarely on the tabloidization of The Province and the yellow-broadsheet tone of The Sun which were launched around the time of the Solidarity Crisis. Fear your neighbour, obey the police, hunt down those who do not fit the consumerist norms.....

"What cracks me up about latter-day so-called hippies is how clothes-conscious and judgemental they are".

Sorry Skookum1, but I found the same to be true back in 1967. Think it has to do more with lack of experience than any generational factor.

Good piece, Skookum 1.

The system is working mightily right now, with some considerable success, to alienate us all from each other, and to make us paranoid of everything "the system" itself doesn't control, that isn't "policed" and made subject to the demands and the controls of "the marketplace". Cameras everwhere, watching, watching.

Quick, flee home to your little apartment or your house, out of the street madness, bar the windows and lock the doors, and avoid your fellow woman and man. Drift to sleep watching the controlling messages of "the tube", sleep and do it again tomorrow.

Drove transit bus for a long time in Vancouver, sixteen years. Year's before that, when I was a young fellow in the navy, and everyone was still relieved to have survived WW2 and there was an atmosphere of prosperity and some considerable solidarity, and trade unions were active and militant spreading the prosperity around, Vancouver was a bright, interesting and fun place.

Now, or at least up until I fled there five or so years ago, it's just congested, over-populated, too many poor and unhappy, a pig sty, fast, busy, busy, mindless and relentless, the hum of tires on pavement never ending and intrusive wherever one goes, Vamcouver's just a fukin' drag.

"The System" is dragging it down into the relentless neocon "marketplace", fuk everybody but myself gutter with it.

And as a wee prediction-, it's going to stay that way as long as these goddamn neoconazis remain in charge, and the current "system" rules. We've gotten way beyond the range of "reform" possibilities.

It's time for serious coming together, rising above the bullshit self-righteousness of "the system" and doing some serious kicking ass. And I do mean kicking ass, as in busting fukin' ruling class heads.

Way too much nice, and just goin' along, doing the day after day, gettin' by thing.

What's wrong with Vancouver is "the system" what everybody goes along with, that bleeds it like a blood sucker.

It's what's wrong with the entire goddamn province and the country.

Time to join bobthecat with a five day growth of "world weary" stubble. :-)

Right on, Skookum!
I was having a similar conversation a couple of days ago with Venezuelan students- I told them I envied their culture, where you can have a party in the street without planning it, meeting by-law restrictions, filling out the proper forms, dealing with Strata council (surely they'd have some input), and leaving the dog at home because, well, the dog just ISN'T allowed....
Yeaaaah- your post was bang-on! Where do you play guitar? Next time I'm in the area I'll stop and say hi; and sing along with you for a bit- we'll try and start a street party with the zombies; I'll bring my dog...

Fii - We used to debate this in a Spanish class I took a few years back (our teacher was Venezuelan). The Anglosphere has something to learn from 'warmer' cultures, although I have my reservations as to whether drugs are the way to thaw out our frigid social space. Again, I offer you the example of sub-cultures where drugs are already prevalent and where drug-laws are not enforced - it's to an even more alienated social environment.

But on the Venezuelan culture thing, one of the things that emerged in our discussion is that systems of control with assert themselves regardless of whether it's through "legitimate" over-bureaucratization or illegitimate corruption. Our teacher explained that if you're in small town Venezuela and you've got a problem, you've gotta talk to the police chief's mistress in order to get a little justice (and everyone has a mistress). That's how the law works there - there's always gotta be a pay-off. Business and politics functions in much the same way.

Mind you, you can observe similar things going on here (ever wonder why business licenses just seem to fall into the laps of Hells Angels members as though by providence alone--?), I guess we either hide it better or just don't acknowledge it (that would be a very 'Anglo' response as well).

They say the reason the French rather than the English invented the bidet is because it serves a part of the anatomy which the English do not possess ;-)

Really enjoyed that Skookum! Yeah...I live out in the boonies and every once in awhile I get up the courage to go fight the polution in Vancouver(my eyes start watering about commercial and 12th avenue) via skytrain, and wheras out here in the sticks I yuk it up continually with storeclerks and passersby on the sidewalk--even the cops in Tim Hortons; but if I try it in Vancouver I get, "are you talking to me, budddy" looks. Very strange place!

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but really, eh.

I should admit though that I once parked my '85 honda in front of a convenience store at Victoria and Kingsway (I think) where there were at least fifteen cops hanging around waiting for a "police incident" to go down. So I asked them if they'd do security on my car while I was in the store and most of them laughed pretty good.

I have been living on the Charlottes for a year now, finally got to the point where I don't take my keys out of my truck when I stop somewhere. There is crime here, but rare and petty. It is so different, I lived in the bush when I was a kid, went away a few times to work in the bush but you have to move from the city/suburbs to really understand. Imagine driving to work and waving at people coming the other way because there are so few vehicles. There is no smog here, the weather changes every hour, never too nice for very long, never raining for very long. People ask where are you from?, what do you do? Hi my name is-. You can pay for gas or groceries with $100 bills, no one bats an eye. We got to know our nieghbors and we help each other on a barter system, like I trimmed some trees, was given a deer roast. My advice to all would be to get out of that shithole down there and move to somewhere else in the province. It is so clear to me now, best move I ever made.

Coyote:
I like your point about the morality- police-evangelicals who preach against drugs, being themselves addicted to the Lord.
...It reminds me of an old Cheech and Chong routine with the line:
"I used to be messed up on drugs. Now I'm messed up on the Lord"!

*****************************************

I've noticed the vast majority of Canadians are addicted to something or other: some substance, food or behaviour.

Caffeine is the most common addiction. Probably most Canadians rely on a morning shot of coffee/tea before they can face the day. And woe to those deprived of their fix! Headaches, irritability, inability to focus, depression, insomnia, may all result. Hardly innocuous withdrawal symptoms.

Starbucks is a $23Billion (current value. I just checked its "market cap")addictive drug dealing operation with millions of dedicated habitues feeding their habits daily..

Who isn't habituated/addicted to one or other of: Caffeine, nicotine, a pharmaceutical, sugary/fatty foods, TV, the internet,sex,over-excercising... or something else?

Addiction is a very common human trait.

That's one reason that the junkie on the corner isn't so much different from you. It's mostly that the illegality of their particular addiction compels them to live unhealthy, desperate lives.

...Which leads me to the "cold Vancouver"
discussion. Part of the general malaise of the city stems from the sky high property crime rate, which stems directly from illegality of drugs compelling addicts to steal, day in and day out.People are tired of having car, and apartment or house windows smashed and their stuff ripped off, or having their cars and bikes stolen. This "high" crime environment creates a general wariness and weariness, as respect for others is not seen to be in great abundance anymore.

Making drugs legal would remove this particular form of malaise from Vancouver.

That simple huh?

Climber - I would estimate that 30-50% of true crime (theft, extortion, assault, murder) is illegal drug related. If you were to reduce crime by 30-50% PLUS no longer arresting addicts and pot smokers, the result - in terms of global and historical crime rates - would be a very low crime rate indeed.

climber:
Well, I didn't say it would cure every form of Vancouver malaise, just one!

It's probably a long list of causes, including that the whole Lower Mainland is becoming less and less affordable for lower, and even middle incomes, due to
the area's desirability for both immigrants and Canadians from elsewhere.
We're growing too fast.

I think I read the average house price way out in Maple Ridge (let alone Vanc.)is now $330,000! Buying a house in the city itself is becoming a pipedream for most nowadays. As property prices go up, so do rents, making it difficult for low incomes to enjoy decent living spaces unless they spend most of their money on rent.

Vancouver is increasingly friendly only to the wealthy and to the large extended family, but not so friendly to our ever growing underclass who find it unaffordable and challenging.

...I think I'm being talked into moving!
I make my living online. I can live anywhere that offers high speed internet, and still make the same amount of income. So what the f*ck am I still doing here?!
Climber's "advert" for the Charlottes is attractive, although I bet you get even more rain/less sun than even rainy Vancouver!
-Which I suspect may be another source of Vancouver's malaise. It's dark and wet! This can affect some people negatively: Seasonal affective disorder and all that.

Actually Bob, the rainfall amounts for the eastcoast of the Charlottes (where all the people are) is about the same as Van. but it doesn't seem that way. So many times I have seen it rain hard and the sun shine at the same time, lots of rainbows here. It also never gets really hot here in the summer, which I love (if you worked hard outside you'll understand), when the southcoast was suffering recently it got up to the obscene temperature of 26C. here. Bob, you can live anywhere, there is satellite internet, why, of all the beautifull places in this province do you live there? Do it, don't be shy.

Bob999 - Yup, you got it: Vancouver has turned into one of the baldest, most blatant examples of "trickle up" monetarism in action that I've ever seen in Canada.

nightbloom: Glad to see we finally found something we agree upon!

climber: Your Charlotte's advert is sounding sexier, and hey, I love rainbows!
-Which reminds me of a complete arc double rainbow I saw once at the French River in Ontario - the only one I've seen in my life. It was a sight, in a beautiful setting.

anarcho: a good point you make that serious crime,murder, extortion, assault, (and not just property crime), is typically drug related.

In contrast, how much "coffee crime" is there? It appears that if you legalize a drug, all (or most) of the crime it formerly attracted, has no more raison d'etre, and just disappears.

But alcohol, though legal, still seems to attract lots of crime (though not so much on the marketing side - it's not making the Mafia rich anymore), in the form of impaired driving and the many deaths resulting, domestic violence, assault, murder...Perhaps this just argues how particularly nasty a few of our legal drugs can be.

I think it's a conspiracy... (wink)

You're moralizing Nightbloom. It's his personal business, not yours.

Those statistics are absolutely true. SIS Vancouver has not had one single death. I've been shooting in that gallery when a person next to me went down. They had him up and breathing in under 60 seconds. Those nurses at SIS are amazing human beings.

It's called community spirit and yes, we have lost those very important ways of life. Indeed.

Yes, simplifying it to music and affection when we have the complexity of the brain is a bit much. However, I would be hesitant to start a hierarchical organization of potential brain imbalances or deficiencies. If you organize it like that then you will get a government to only treat 'serious' cases first and not the rest. You simply just call it a brain dis-ease and go from there. We don't want the cure to be confused with the hierarchy of the illnesses.

Why do you need to call it dabbling? Does it ease your mind? Just say use, because that's what people are doing. And for the last time, it's not the drug itself thats the problem. It's the illegality of them and the way they are thought of in subcultures, due to the FACT that they are not freely available and become almost a symbol of the subculture because of the deviancy they share. Does that make sense to you?

I could do 300mg iv morphine a day and function perfectly and if you think that's dabbling then fine.

It's simply using the amount needed for my particular brain issues. I had a set dose, and I reached a plateau and got to the 'right dose' and I was fine. The problem was all the hell I went through trying to get that dose I needed daily. That's what made me suffer.

And now I'm on a toxic synthetic, to keep me away from the real deal. How ludicrous is that?

OWA

That's it!

I'm moving to the Queen Charlottes to live a more healthy life with less money. Plus I can probably pick some magic mushrooms for free from the land to re-establish my connection to it.

I took some magic mushrooms about 6 months ago, by myself in my tiny apartment in East Vancouver. I'm a moderate smoker and social drinker who had a fridge full of beer. After taking the mushrooms my desire for smoking and drinking drastically decreased for some reason. It felt like a full body and mind cleansing. You might want to try it Nightbloom - under the right conditions.

and now for something slightly differnt
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/index.html

Keeping Freedom in Mind

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) is a network of scholars elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought. Our mission is to develop social policies that will preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st century.

Growing knowledge in the neurosciences, enhanced by exponential advances in pharmacology and other neurotechnologies (technologies that make it possible to monitor and manipulate the brain’s electrochemistry) are rapidly moving brain research and clinical applications beyond the scope of purely medical use. The definitions of "medicine" and "mental health" are expanding from treatment and prevention, to improvement and enhancement.

The CCLE is dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of thought in the modern world of accelerating neurotechnologies. Our paramount concern is to foster the unlimited potential of the human mind and to protect freedom of thought.

The CCLE supports technological advances, and believes that the application and regulation of new drugs and neurotechnologies are best channeled by a renewed allegiance to the fundamental right to freedom of thought. Our guiding principles are privacy, autonomy and choice:

Privacy: What and how you think should be private unless you choose to share it. The use of technologies such as brain imaging and scanning must remain consensual and any information so revealed should remain confidential. The right to privacy must be found to encompass the inner domain of thought.

Autonomy: Self-determination over one’s own cognition is central to free will. Decisions concerning whether or how to change a person’s thought processes must remain the province of the individual as opposed to government or industry.

Choice: The capabilities of the human mind should not be limited. So long as people do not directly harm others, governments should not criminally prohibit cognitive enhancement or the experience of any mental state.
No Simple Solutions
The CCLE recognizes that these are extremely complex issues with no simple solutions. We see our contribution as helping to negotiate the intersection of law and science so that new neurotechnologies expand rather than reduce freedom of thought.

What We Do

Advocacy The CCLE supports social impact litigation that has the potential to broadly advance cognitive liberty. We have filed legal briefs on the topic of cognitive liberty in federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

Analysis The CCLE monitors developments in neurotechnology, cognitive sciences and the law, to identify and offer guidance concerning those developments with a potential to significantly impact freedom of thought. We produce reports and professional testimony on complex freedom of thought issues currently facing policy makers, industry, and the general public.

Education By raising awareness of emerging cognitive liberty issues, our outreach and education campaigns empower people to meaningfully participate in public discourse and the democratic process. We provide course content to universities and professional schools in order to accelerate scholarly discussion of cognitive liberty across a wide range of disciplines.

That wasn't moralizing at all - it's a valid question to pose to anyone advocating drug use from a personal viewpoint. Anyone advocating a policy change on this issue based on their own personal experience must be able to answer that question credibly, in my view: why do you require an altered state of conciousness to feel at home with yourself? Why should policy and social norms be altered to accomodate you?

"Dabbling" simply connotes occasional, social, non-addictive, non-chronic useage of the stuff. I believe we were discussing E-hangovers. Some people only feel tired afterwards, whereas others experience major emotional upheavals as a result of serotonin depletion. The point is that the minority of people who don't experience extreme side effects and who continue with that scene can't dismiss the negative experiences of others, experiences which they've been fortunate enough not to have gone through. They just don't know.

As I've said, I'm open to being convinced but no one has presented a rational, credible argument to support this assertion. Every legalization regime (or non-enforcement set-up) experiences the same drawbacks I've been discussing: the long-term personal deterioration, the desperation, the property crime & prostitution, the Organized Crime networks. The benefits of legalization have not been proven, not by any stretch of the imagination. You speak as though you're stating fact, but it's nothing more than a shaky theory.

Without addressing these fundamental realities, OWA, that assertion is nothing more than a permissive liberal cliché.

, so wrote OWA.

OWA: You wrote in response to something I wrote. I wasn't thinking it terms of
the medical system, and who gets treated or doesn't, etc. I was really referring to self-medication, such as what I do with the over the counter SAMe and 5HTP.

People can discover for themselves what they need or don't need, and at what dosage. Professionals aren't even required in such cases (though they might be in others). I think bipolar and schizophrenia sufferers can benefit from pharmaceuticals and professional assessments. Over the counter (or illicit) self medicating may be insufficient for them.

, so wrote nightbloom.
Do you yourself, nightbloom, never feel the need or desire to alter your own consciousness?
Do you never use caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, etc.? If you're like most Canadians, you use at least one of the above psychoactives regularly.

Altering ones consciousness with psychoactive substances is something a large majority of Canadians do frequently. Only a small fraction (Mormons, perhaps)do not. It's a pretty basic human trait. I'm guessing it's not so much altering ones consciousness you're against. It's that some psychoactives you deem acceptable, others you demonize. All quite black and white. I don't think it's that easily divisible in reality.

Where would schizophrenics be without anti-psychotic drugs, or bipolar folks without lithium to positively alter their
unbalanced states of consciousness?

Maybe your view of drugs is overly coloured by seeing a recreational drug scene, which might be seen as frivolous use...but there's a whole other side
to drug taking which has to do with self-medicating (and also physician supervised medicating)for perceived brain imbalances of one kind or another. This is what OWA and myself are most focussed on.

Diogenes: Thanks for the link. Most interesting was the summary of the book they publish: PHARMACOTHERAPY
AND THE FUTURE OF THE DRUG WAR:

Summary:
Over the next decade an increasing number of new “pharmacotherapy” medications will become available with the potential to tremendously impact the use and abuse of illegal drugs and the overall direction of national and international drug policy. These pharmacotherapy medications are designed to block or significantly reduce the “highs” elicited by illegal drugs. Used as part of a drug treatment program, pharmacotherapy medications may provide a valuable aid for people seeking a chemical aid in limiting or eliminating problem drug use. However, the tremendously politicized nature of the “drug war”, raises substantial concerns that in addition to those who choose to use such medications, some people will be compelled to use them. In the absence of extraordinary circumstances, governmental action compelling a person to use a pharmacotherapy drug would violate a number of constitutional guarantees and other legal rights protecting people from forced medical treatment. Among the rights potentially implicated by compulsory use of pharmacotherapy drugs are the right to informed consent, the right to bodily integrity and privacy, the protection against cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to freedom of thought.

Big Brother: always looking for new ways to flaunt power...And many Americans still suffer under the delusion they're living in a free country!

I feel that this argument is going about in circles because the core issue is not being discussed properly. There are basically two competing ideas here: 1. Psychoactive drugs can be therapeutic and beneficial in many circumstances 2. The use of illegal drugs leads to deterioration in quality of life and many other detrimental effects.

Both are true. However, the first claim merely states the potential and possible benefits of making many psychoactive drugs legal based on research and personal experience. The second claim shows that CURRENTLY psychoactive drug use leads to contaminated drugs (cut with meth for example), addiction, property crime, prostitution, and so on.

The reason these problems continue to arise in lue of liberal drug laws is because the surrounding regions still enforce poor drug laws. Organized crime for example is FUNDED by illegal drugs ( needless to say they would not have these funds if the drugs were legal); Property crime arises because of the huge markup of many drugs (again caused by criminalization); E would not be cut with Meth if it was legal either because it would be controlled instead of distributed by the black market. It seems that nearly all of the negative aspects that are associated with drug use are not properties of the drugs themselves but rather properties of having demand for ILLEGAL drugs.

I am not saying that drug use cannot go overboard and lead to many problems as well. Overuse of nearly any substance will lead to problems (fast food, coffee, alcohol, sugar, etc.). However, handing over any extremely valuble substance to a criminal market will only cause more problems than it solves.

Of course drug legalization is just a theory, but it's a theory that should be tested after years of failure from the alternative. Not the mention that drug use from opiates, amphetamines, cocaine, and nearly all currently illegal drugs has grown exponentially since criminalization. Improvement through legalization may not be fact but deterioration from criminalization is.

"Organized crime for example is FUNDED by illegal drugs"
I totally nagree with the above claim.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/gunsdrugscia.html
http://bosp.kcc.hawaii.edu/Horizons/Horizons2002/The_Opium_Wars.html

So who is the organised crime?

This illustrates my critique way above, which I expressed thusly:

You can't relativize hard drugs with sugar, aspartame, fried foods or any other such nonsensical comparisons. I got into a wee dust-up with playright and socialist mouthpiece Brad Fraser in the gay press on this exact issue about a year ago. I've heard it all before ... In my party days (waaaaay back) I used to hang out with drug dealer who argued quite convicingly that the person who bought one tab of E in a club (i.e. the one-time consumer) was morally equivalent to the established club dealer who sold thousands of them for profit, since they were both breaking the law. He also was noted for rationalizations like "Some people need their Starbucks every morning...I need my bump of trail mix". That sort of thing.

Garbage reasoning derived from a garbage value system. Bullshit. Pure unadulterated bullshit.

Again, the relativism and inability to draw clear distinctions within this issue. You're talking about tested, approved and regulated presciption pharmaceuticals available by medical prescription under ongoing medical supervision. Can you see the difference between that and recreation hard drug use/addiction?

This further illustrates my point that we would be obliging government to take on a massively expanded regulatory and policing role, if not a flat-out "dealer" role. There's no other way to accomplish this end. Even so, I don't believe it would elimating demand or availability of street drugs. The reasons why E and K are cut with meth is because there's a massive demand for it.

I would say the opposite - public, open useage has gone up since we stopped actively enforcing drug laws over the past 15 years or so. Canadian authorities only go after the supply-side now, and very rarely the consumer side. I can think of only two occasions in recent memory (say, over the last 10 years) when there was a clean sweep of the "retail help" in Vancouver's gay community, and both times it was because the networks had gone totally out of control and had begun orchestrating protracted and malicious retaliations against debutantes to inadvertently "broke the rules". Ask anyone who's kept their eyes open in the scene over the past 10 years or so.

So there is no "drug war" in Canada and never has been. It's all a paranoid fantasy, and a projection of American scenarios onto the Canadian context.

nightbloom: Of course some drugs are worse than others.
I've been saying that all along.In fact, part of my argument is that some of our legal drugs are among the worst of all.
And I repeat for the 3rd (and last)time:tobacco kills 30,000+ Canadians each year.
That's equivalent to 10+ 9:11 disasters each year, just in Canada.
Heroin kills a few hundred a year at worst. TOBACCO IS MORE DEADLY THAN HEROIN

Varieties of addictive substances are on a continuum. But going by death statistics alone, tobacco
would be at the far end of that continuum
for being the deadliest drug in common usage.

I'd say you're the one having trouble with rational assessment of equivalencies Quote: "Lost me on the 'Heroin = cigarettes'"

How is it that you refuse to acknowledge that a simple gov't statistic of tobacco deaths reveals tobacco to be more deadly than heroin. I wish I'd been able to google a hard # on annual heroin deaths, but you should know yourself it's likely a tiny fraction of 30,000.
How can you possibly deny this obvious statistical fact?

I imagine you might also underestimate the role of fatty foods in disease and death: terminal illnesses including heart disease, diabetes, even cancer are associated with high fat diets/obesity.
I'm sure obesity, like cigarettes, kills far more Canadians each year than the demonized heroin ever could do.

Street addicts often appear a mess because of the degraded and desperate lives they are compelled to lead, due to the illegality of their drugs of choice. Otherwise they'd appear fit as fiddles, and much healthier than your typical reeking life long tobacco addict, as his lungs and arteries slowly turn to concrete, and his skin dissolves into ashen wrinkles.

Perhaps it's the mental/emotional/personality effects of recreational drugs you find so repugnant.
But when someone dies from smoking or alcohol or diseases of obesity, their brains happen to die along with the rest of them. Brain death seems to me about the worst possible "mental effect" due to drug use, there could be!

If you do happen to be a smoker (you haven't been quick to deny it),
it suggests you're the biggest f'ing hypocrite on this thread, and when you find yourself gasping for breath with terminal emphysema [very common among smokers]in a few decades (yes, tobacco kills slowly), or when you're in acute cancer pain that only heroin or morphine can alleviate,
then you will know for certain what a hypocrite you are being right now.

Well, it's not the drug that's the problem, nightbloom. How could it be? Heroin's only dangerous if the dosage and composition is wrong. If a heroin addict could go down to the drugstore with a prescription and get a safe, clean, reliably metered dosage, for about $2.00, which would include a good markup for administration etc., the problem would be greatly reduced--particularly the problem of being poisoned or overdosed and thrown in jail, or malnourished, or beaten up and robbed by dealers or losing his/her home because his addiction took $200 per day, or losing his family to the "tough love" syndrome or from contracting hepatitis B from dirty needles, or...well you know, nightbloom.

I linked you to some research in this regard, but evidently it didn't mean a thing to you. (autopsy studies--70% of the overdosees were so sick they could have been knocked over with a feather)

Of course, if you're talking about people who think these drugs are for fun enhancement, nothing can save idiots from themselves, not even legalization.

The most candid words I've ever heard about this came from a prison guard at the Surrey Remand Centre. I was working on his sundeck and we were talking about drugs. He said--and I remember exactly--
"These guys are our stock in trade. If we didn't have a constant supply of druggies going through the criminal justice system most of us would have to get real jobs."

This is a generalization, of course, but there's a whole lot of others who, if intellectually honest, would have to make the same admission.

So, yes, the criminal laws are the problem, nightbloom, to everyone except the criminal gangs, for whom your opinions read like a marketing presentation.

History's replete with artists, writers, actors, lawyers, doctors, policepeople etc. who just quietly went along using their drugs of choice and didn't rob and steal and break into cars--and noone basically noticed them--unless they accidentally overdosed, like that Richmond RCMP officer five or so years ago.

So, nightbloom, you like the status quo, eh. I think it's because you witnessed a bunch of immature people using drugs for some kind of social or sexual enhancement--or other sinister power-tripping, and you understood the folly of it--even danger--and somehow you've used that knowledge as a template from which to view the broader issue.

And for that you wouldn't be exactly unique, as people go.

Did I mention the fact that illegal drugs are manufactured with absolutely no regard for sanitation--and a certain percentage of them are full of pathogens and any number of adventitious agents?

Minimum, let's get some health board people involved in the manufacturing process, wouldn't you think, nightbloom?
You know stuff like, no rats on the tables, no feces in the drugs, no bleeding into the drugs, no using outdoor toilets without washing, while making drugs in the hidden jungle labs, no tricky fillers, no mycoplasma infections, no ecoli, streptococcus or staphlococcus aureus--you know, nightbloom, stuff like that.

No, for the record I have not and never have been a smoker.

Statistically, smoking-related illnesses cause more deaths than heroin. But I reject the reasoning behind the glib turn of phrase "tobacco is more deadly than heroin". Tobacco far more prevalent in mainstream society, and therefore its ill-effects are far more pervasive in society. This what you`re really trying to say.

And even so, this debate isn`t about tobacco or fatty foods. Or coffee and sugar.

Heroin destroys lives, period. It removes a person from reality, from his family and relationships, from employment...I`m all for a compassionate accomodation of hard core drug addicts who have no other hope, so in this sense we`re in agreement. I`m fine with a strictly controlled, professionally monitored program to provide clean H to these people. But I`m not for the upturning of mainstream social norms regarding hard drug use, which is what many people are arguing for, be they libertarians or what have you. "Harm Reduction" is ideology not medical science - we have to "reduce harm" on the general collective population, not just on the individuals who are already lost.

Fundamentally, the non-user must be placed at the centre of drug policy, not the user. Policy must be ordered towards preserving the non-user status of the maximum number of people.

Truman - I can see that you`ve made an effort to see where I`m coming from on this, and your summation is probably correct. Your argument proves the point I made that legalization will oblige government to take an even more invasive, regulatory and enforcement role than it currently has on this issue. Big Government would have to become the Number One dealer. This would be extremely problematic.

-Truman quoting a justice system worker.

Very telling. Even he knew our drug laws/enforcement act as a make work project for people like him, while accomplishing little good for society (or so he seems to imply).

Truman's draconian views are more typical of folks south of the border than Canada. Americans seem more easily led by the nose by moralist leaders, and quick to believe all enforcement industry propaganda.

We mustn't forget the US is also the country where a majority of Americans (contary to all evidence)still believe Saddam had WMDs at the start of the war, and that Saddam and Al Qaida were allies. These don't appear to be the most rational thinkers in the world.

Surprisingly, a few brave American conservatives have come out against the U.S. war on drugs, as a waste of taxpayer money that does not solve problems associated with drugs. Former Secretary of State under Reagan (and Labour Sec'y under Nixon), George Schultz is one.
I see some former justice system employees are now campaigning against the US drugs war.

Happily,
Canadians on the whole are different,having a more enlightened view,
closer to the views of Europeans. Our own right wing Fraser Institute published a paper arguing for legalization/taxation of cannabis.
I like to think we're more rational thinkers here!

Imagine if all the drug addicted musicians (or other artists) had been put away in jails
for legthy sentences for their "crimes", think of all the music we'd have missed! Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Billie Holliday and scores of other fine jazz artists, the Rolling Stones at their peak, the Beatles (Lennon was a junkie in the late '60s), the Who, Led Zep, Clapton, Elton John,Sex Pistols, Depeche Mode, the Police, Nirvana, Chili Peppers, Alice in Chains, Guns and Roses, to name but a few. (I don't necessarily like all the above, but they were big).

Or how about some writers that lived long drug addicted lives: De Quincey, Baudelaire, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coleridge, Poe, Cocteau, William Burroughs,Graham Greene(at least, he wrote of his love for smoking opium)..., naming but a few.

I say, in a free country, let people
ingest whatever psychoactives they choose to. It should be none of the government's business, in a free country (unless someone is driving impaired, for instance).

If people want to kick, provide easy access to detox and even psychedelic therapy of the article.
Taxes from legal unadulterated drug sales would be more than enough to pay for all social programs aimed at addressing any health issues associated with drug use.
Stop addressing drugs as legal/criminal problems, while demonizing and victmizing users.

I'm convinced legalization will lead to
a happier, healthier society.

SORRY TRUMAN! Obviously, when I wrote "Truman's draconian views", I meant to write "NIGHTBLOOM'S DRACONIAN VIEWS"!

LOL - Yup - "Draconian" - that's m.

I'll assume you're joking. I've already endorsed medically supervised useage and compassionate relief of addicts. If that's "draconian" then I suggest you're following the liberal tendency of totally demonizing anything and anyone who isn't your exact ideological clone.

No one has convicingly demonstrated how legalization would remove organized crime, eliminate the property crime and prostitution associated with a drug-centric lifestyle, or halt the long-term personal deterioration which is the inevitable result of chronic hard drug useage (regardless of how "clean and safe" it is).

...You also haven't addressed the problem of the proper role of government under a legalized hard drug regime. Once the government legalizes it, the government is responsible for it. How is this going to work?

This question is the reality that policy makers contemplating legalization must think out in advance. I guess reality is draconian for some.

nightbloom, I think you're convinced that the pharmaceuticals would be fighting over the right to manufacture and sell legal opiates. If you go have a look at how Bayer lost its patent on heroin, and think about exactly which substances are intersting to the pharmaceuticals, you might conclude that it's only patentable substances they're interested in--otherwise the competition and lack of danger for the mules and dealers, growers, jungle lab employees etc, would drag the price down to where it should be--about the same as a pint of milk.

Did you look at the figures I posted about the difference between the farmgate cost of opium and the value on the streets of Vancouver. It went from $90.00 to $750,000 per kilogram.(pure grade)

These products are not particularly difficult to make. I'd venture to say that few of the professional assemblers are qualified chemists. Have you ever seen photos of the jungle labs?

I think, in order for you to be correct that nothing would change and that organized crime's participation would remain the same, you have to believe that the profit levels would remain rougly similar to what they are now.

Economist Milton Friedman has said many times that the illegal drug market is completely phony and that it would crash if there was wide-spread legalization.

I bet if you go have a look at his arguments for the regulation, instead of illegalization, you'll be persuaded that it's a much better way to go.

As for your three considerations: removing organized crime, eliminate the property crime and prostitution, and halting the personal deterioration associated with long-term usage of hard drugs.

I think there's a very persuasive case to be made that the first two are totally dependent upon the cost of the drugs. If a shot of heroin cost $5.00 bucks instead of $40, I think a lot of incentive for property crime would diminish; nothing will prevent prostitution, but I think a reduction in drug price would diminish at least some of it, and I think the personal deterioration you refer to is as much a result of the lifestyle--especially poverty, malnutrition and homelessness--not to mention stress, an underrated killer--that so often accompanies it.

-nightbloom
If this means you're for drug maintenance, SIS, etc., there may be hope for you yet!
This is not what you've been hammering on about though...didn't you write something
about making enforcement harsher?

-nightbloom
You seem to be arguing for more persecution of users here, Mr. "Compassionate Relief".

When alcohol was made legal in the US in 1933 after 15 years of prohibition, it took the product out of the hands of organized crime, destroyed their black market which had made them so rich and powerful. Why should legalizing drugs, not weaken organized crime in exactly the same way? I don't see the rationality of your argument about organized crime (or about property crime). You throw it out there without explaining what your argumant is exactly.
How could it be that crime would NOT decrease, if black market prices became affordable prices under legalization?
Presumably, addicts would no longer need hundreds of dollars a day to feed habits anymore. That should mean hundreds of dollars worth of stolen goods they no longer need to rip off everyday.
Isn't it only logical crime would decrease?

I haven't heard of many people stealing large amounts to feed their booze, tobacco, or caffeine habits. It will be the same when other drugs are legalized.

Another thing I like about legalization is people would be free to grow their own plant drugs in their gardens, including
pot, opium poppies (actually people do this now with poppies unmolested), perhaps even coca leaves. One could thus avoid paying tax just as people do now by home brewing.

The government should control commercial production and sale through licensing and inspection to ensure purity, if nothing else.
Entrepreneurs should be banned from selling home made kichen lab white
powders, for instance.

By the way, I'm not a big booster of heroin in particular (I'm not a heroin user. I did try it a bunch of times years ago). I believe natural opium is preferable, less problematic (although heroin's dangers are greatly exaggerated). Opium I'm quite familiar with I should say...special thanks go to John McCrae ("In Flanders Field" author),
for raising the poppy flower to icon status, far above the easy grasp of law enforcement! Otherwise, I'm sure little old ladies would be having their backyard opium "grow-ops" busted left and right!

If both were legal, users would have the
the option, and could make the more responsible (IMO) choice of opium over heroin.
As it is now, opium's hard to find on the street (but easy to find in the garden, ironically).

No. I said government would have to assume an even more invasive regulatory role than it does now under a legalization regime.

No again. I was stating that drug laws are no longer widely enforced on recreational consumers. Instead, the target is the supply side apparatus (i.e. the labs and large-scale grow ops).

No, it just legitimized the gangsters (like the Kennedy's) who then used their fortune to enter public life and/or legitimate enterprise, and obliged government to become the dealer... Anyway, I don't accept the analogy blurring the distinction between alcohol and Heroin, crystal meth, etc. You were on safer ground on the tobacco issue, which only started 500 years ago (from a Eurocentric perspective, anyway). Fermented fruits and grains have been part of human civilization for millennia. Perhaps our resistance to the legitimization of plant-drugs stems from the notable lack of such indigenous fauna in Europe and North Africa (i.e. the old "Mediterranean World"). Graeco-Roman, Hebraic, Celtic and Germanic culture totally lacked natural psychedelic or hallucinogenic plants as a cultural or ritualistic staple (as far as I know of). North America seems to be singularly blessed in terms of the natural pharmacopia available in the natural environment. So perhaps there's actually some deep-seated anthropology to the Anglosphere's reservations on the drug issue.

In any case, even if we take the instance of post-prohibition alcohol, who is obliged to be the Number One dealer?

Big Government.

Oops - I meant "indigenous flora", of course.

Night, what's wrong with the govenment being the number one dealer of alcohol, You are familiar with the concept of taxation, I would imagine.

Nightbloom, what's up with the digression into flora and fauna, anyway--And the Kennedy's going legit--is this really vertically argumentative?

Or are you just changing the subject instead of responding directly to Bobb999's challenge?

And if you say you'er into compassion for addicts and medically supervised usage, doesn't it follow that the supply for such "supervised usage" would be better coming from a legal manufacturer than a jungle lab or clandestine warehouse? For instance, at the injection site they're still having overdoses, but as of yet, noone has died. Why do they still have overdoses? Could it be because the products are not reliable, and noone really knows what they're getting.

Afterall, even at the safe injection site the users still have to bring in their own stuff which they've purchased from criminals who are not particularly famous for their product reliability.

I really do think you've come over to our way of thinking on this issue, but you're just too stubborn to admit it. Am I correct?

Why isn't it at least possible to you that if the supply was "clean," not only would the deaths decrease dramatically, but also the overdoses?

And no more flora and Kennedys maybe, eh.

The Americas do possess lots of natural psychoactive plants, but not so much in
the Northern part, including Canada (at least that were used).

Our natives of the BC coast, for instance, reportedly have no tradition of using such plants in vision quests. Instead, fasting , including
water deprivation and other trials were
used. Psilocybin mushrooms have always grown on every continent. That doesn't mean they were necessarily used. Peyote use among Canada's natives dates back only as far as the mid to late 19th century.

Some eastern Canada tribes, such as the Ojibway, reportedly used Amanita Nuscaria mushrooms in Shaman training.
Jimson ("loco") weed grows in the BC interior. Whether natives ever used it traditionally, I'm not sure.

Europe does have some history of psychoactive plant use, especially plants in the same family as mandrake and belladonna (jimson weed contains the same chemical). These were the drugs witches were accused of using to aid them in attending the "witches sabbath".
The Christian church stamped out the herbal healers (often women)as pagans, replacing traditional plant medicine with bizarre new methods often based on traumatizing the body: blood letting, causing skin boils, purging, administering noxious substances,etc.

Who knows but that knowledge of other mind altering drugs was simply eradicated. Psilocybin would have been available. Accidental ergot poisoning from eating bread made from wheat contaminated with ergot fungi, caused a mild LSD effect, as ergot contains lysergic acid. Intentional ergot use could very well have occurred.

There's a theory that the drink served at the secretive Eleusinian mysteries rites of ancient Greece, which altered participants' consciousness, was an ergot concoction. Certainly the wheat stalk was a central focus of the Eleusis rituals.

Opium was known in Europe (typically imported from the east) going back over a millenium. And forms of opium poppies have always grown wild across Europe.

It is believed the "nepenthe" mentioned in Homer, to help one forget sorrows is opium. A poppy goddess cult certainly existed in ancient Crete. And archaeologists have found small ceramic bottles shaped like poppy pods, still with traces of opium in them. It's thought this was an item of Mediterranean trade.

Truman has a point. The gov't currently regulates everything from food quality to appliance safety to building codes.
The money to pay for our medical plans, among other things,comes from taxing things like alcohol, and just about everything else purchased retail via GST
and prov. sales taxes. What's wrong with that? You prefer debt and deficits?

Anyway, if one wants to avoid big brother, one can bypass alcohol taxes by home brewing or wine making.

Nightbloom: Your mention of indigenous
plant drug use has me wondering. Do you think it's okay for Amazonian tribes to
trip on a variety of psychedelics?
If so, how come it's acceptable for them,
but not for you and me? Because many people in our culture use such drugs frivolously, is that sufficient justification for forbidding their use entirely? This sounds overly paternalistic, putting it mildly.
I certainly don't want to elect politicians who feel they should dictate to me what drugs I can to take or not.
I'm a grown up now, I can make my own decisions, thankyou.

No, I feel that I'm the one who's not getting straight answers from you 'pro-druggers'. There are actually two different discussions going on here. One is medicinal/therapeutic/harm-reductive uses under professional supervision, which I am supportive of in principle as a compassionate and responsible way to treat extreme examples of the pathology of drug addiction. Again, I say pathology, not 'lifestyle choice'. The latter is the second discussion that is taking place here. I don't believe the status quo should be altered to normalize chronic escapist recreational drug useage within mainstream society. The current non-enforcement practice is hardly ideal, but it is preferable to the normalization of hard drug use. I have serious doubts whether - over time - organized civil society, the financial incentive system and other bulwarks could survive as we currently know them should powerful and widely available recreational drugs gradually replace all other forms of incentives, rewards and institutionalized gratification.

Ref. my comments last year on a similar topic regarding Allan Bloom's brilliant concept of Premature Ecstacy, the psycho-chemo-emotive rewards of personal achievement without the effort of getting up and actually achieving anything. The best, more memorable moments in life become internal, not ordered towards the external world and our actions & relationships within it. Ecstacy and self-fulfillment are bought when you get your trail mix just right, not when your first kid is born, or you win professional recognition, or when your hard-fought campaign gets you elected, or your artistic hobby results in a genuine masterwork.

I don't think the drug threshold should be moved any closer to the centre of society than it currently is...which is still pretty close when you consider that everyone between 15 and 30 now spends at least a year or two in a "drug phase" of one sort or another.

Not that it particularly matters for the sake of this discussion, Nightbloom, but I'm not a "pro-drugger," as you referred to me. I actually haven't used a single illegal drug since I took a puff or two of pot in l963--which got me well known in my group for feeling nothing except dizzy.

I'll do an advil for an overworked shoulder or maybe lower back but that's it. And personally, I'm having so much fun just being alive that I can't imagine ever needing something to pick me up. I've had probably less alcohol to drink than anyone who ever reached early geriatric age in the history of the world.

All of which means only that I may have been genetically luckier than most people.

But that's not the point. I'm talking about maybe making the lives of addicts a bit less miserable, and confiscating those obscene rooms full of cash that organized crime currently uses for everything from enslaving prostitutes all over the world to bribing and intimidating politicians and police officials. Did you read that awful story from Mexico where 70 or so armed drug gang members just went around molesting people and when a few policemen approached them they were just shot dead? And what do you think inspired the gangs in Brazil to attack the whole society?

You're denying that a drug war exists in Canada, well maybe there's no tanks and F16s, but we're just as much a part of the global war on drugs as anywhere else.

And I'm not only thinking Canada, but Mexico, Peru, Columbia, Burma and Afghanistan, which has regained its status as the world's number one supplier of opium.

You're obviously not moving from your enchantment with the status quo, but thankfully many others are.

-says Truman. Yes, thank goddess for that.
Even our NPA mayor and city council pretty much lean the way Truman and I do.

I agree with you Truman that nightbloom is skirting a lot of questions posed to him, and seems unwilling or unable to rationally explain some of his positions.
I don't need to restate these. They're in my and your prior posts, if nightbloom cares to answer them specifically, instead of veering away from them.

Will you answer this one question directly, nightbloom:
-Are you a smoker? A simple yes or no would suffice.

Further to Truman's point:
How is it the Taliban is coming back strong. It's partly that they're protected in Pakistan, but where is their funding coming from?
-The rich profits from black market opium prices, due entirely to the illegal status of the drug.
Remove the illegality, and you remove
the easy money that funds the Taliban.

How do you think the brutal neo Maoist Shining Path funded itself for years in S. America? Black market cocaine profits.
How do all the armed groups currently in civil war in Colombia stay funded and fighting?
-You guessed it.

If cocaine was legal, funding for such armed groups wouldn't be nearly so easy.
Illegal drugs produce bloodier wars.

Make them legal, and the world may become just a little bit more peaceful.

Okay, NB, I admit I'm diminishing my reliability by not adhering to my "one last shot" at convincing you proclamation but...hows about we try this.

In accordance with a highly-credited credited scientific polemic, basically derived from the work of scientific philosopher Karl Popper, is the idea that a theory should be falsifiable--capable of being challenged by the existence of a formally-stated contrary case--at least to the degree that it doesn't descend into abject tautology.

In that regard, let me ask you this:

If it could be statistically proven--perhaps by employing the services of an Angus Reid--that, as I believe, almost everyone who wants to use illegal drugs is already using them, and therefore legalization would not cause an increase in numbers, would you agree--as your personal formal falsification-- that, if that could be proven without doubt,legalization would be a good idea?

Your dangerous tautology would obviously be: I like the anti-drug laws because they make drugs illegal.

Bobb999, would you puhleeeeze put your crack pipe down and read my clear, lucid, unambiguous, plain-english, black-&-white response to this query, posted about 10 km back on this thread...? I'll poste it again here so you don't have to get too dizzy scrolling back:

Truman, I already agreed with your argument in principle. You don't seem to appreciate the fact that you and our reading-impaired friend Bobb999 are arguing two totally different things.

But to answer your question: No. Once drugs are a legal marketable product in mainstream popular culture, like hip-hop music or iPods or soft drinks, then there's nothing in the world that will impede the proliferation of chronic drug-use throughout mainstream society. Demand will expand, not decrease or remain stable. I can't see how anyone who denies it can be taken at face value - it's so self-evident.

But even your fall-back argument of stable demand demonstrates that even you harbour ambiguous sentiments regarding the appropriateness, acceptability and credibility of currently illegal drugs being a valid product openly available to private citizens within the legitimate marketplace. If these substances really were just another legitimate lifestyle choice, why fret about stable or increasing demand--?

I think its not deniable that it all comes down to, then, a consideration of your word, "legitimate," and whether this is really a suitable contingency upon which to decide the appropriateness of illegality.

Who, in a democracy should decide the "legitimacy" of a lifestyle choice?

Is it not true that what is to be sought in a democratic society is that the rights of the individual shall be sovereign--as long as the enjoyment of such rights does not interfere with the rights of other individuals or the betterment, or even stability of the society?

This is not an idle question. I once interfered in the lives of two very chemically dependent friends because I was totally convinced that their lifestyle was neither legitimate or healthy, to the degree--if I honestly rewind events--that things might have worked out better if I had just minded my own business.

And this turned out to be a very painful example of good intentions paving the road to hell.

Addiction is not a "lifestyle choice". It is a social pathology. We have a fundamental difference in outlook here. You're undermining your own argument for compassionate medical relief of H addicts. If it is not a pathology, and is a choice as you suggest, then I see absolutely no moral or ethical obligation for the state to accomodate them. Recreational useage is by definition a purely personal and occasional indulgence which is largely tolerated within certain bounds, although society as a whole is under no obligation to endorse that decision or tolerate its outcomes in the common public milieu. Common space must be kept 'clean' for everyone's enjoyment, not just the selfish drug-user who is only seeking his/her own artificial gratification. Why not tolerate public masturbation then? By your standard it too is a simple lifestyle choice.

There's two different policy issues here. The article also mixes the two, but they're like oil and water, in my opinion.

I think anything that can be done to improve the quality of life for hard-core addicts should be tried and studied. That's quite different from setting up a legalized regulatory regime through which Big Government would provide subsidized opiates for the masses. Treat the down-and-out, but don't do anything which could conceiveably expand the pool of addicts. The non-user must be the number one priority of any responsible drug policy.

I hear you on the good intentions gone wrong. Ideally, one should never have to be placed in such a position with regard to friends and family. All too many people - non-users and users alike - now go through very similar anguish over this issue. Drugs have inflicted great damage to a few of my own close relationships, so I hope you understand that I am not passing judgement and casting stones from the safe remove of some ivory tower.

Thanks, nightbloom, for answering my question. I was suspicious because you seemed irrationally non-accepting of stats Canada statistics about the lethalness of tobacco, by all measure the most deadly drug in common usage.

Needless to say I concur with Truman's
recent comments about rights of an individual in democratic societies.

Cannabis usage decreased in Holland after it was de facto legalized . Perhaps the "forbidden fruit" allure was gone.
Someone earlier posted that E use decreased when it became available from pharmacists over the counter at one point (so they claimed)...which, if true, argues that Nightbloom's idea of what's "self-evident", doesn't necessarily square with the real world, I'm afraid.

I'll leave you 2 to carry on. It's been another fascinating Tyee thread, on another subject near and dear to my heart.
-Annual trip to Ontario beckons. Gotta pack and go.

Cheerio, all.

All the best, Bobb999, and thanks for so many unusually perceptive comments on so many of these threads--particularly after the Sheldrake articles.

Peace to you too, Nightbloom!

Thanks guys - To clarify: I accept the stats on the mortality rate caused by tobacco, but I just didn't swallow the semantic gloss that tobacco is therefore a more dangerous or deadly drug than heroin. There are quantitative and qualitative differences that need to be considered.

I'd need to see the data on the declining use of once-forbidden fruit...My own observations have convinced me that non-enforcement + social acceptability = epidemic useage. Everyone has drunk the kool aid.

Yup, peace all around. Enjoy Ontario - I understand the heat & humidity have finally eased off a little.

Actually, Nightbloom, heroin's the world's safest analgesic, if the dosage meets the physiological requirements of the user, and there's no bacteria, or other adventitious pathogens in it.

And, when used as painkiller, it's not even addictive. Email Barry Beyerstein, sfu brain specialist on this aspect, NB. I learned it from a television discussion on which he was featured.

Tobacco's (nicotine) intrinsically poisonous. There's no comparison at all. I find it difficult to believe that you don't already know this!

So you're wrong on this, eh. There's no "semantic gloss," as you say. Just the truth, which you have a vested interest in ignoring.

“You can't relativize hard drugs with sugar, aspartame, fried foods or any other such nonsensical comparisons.”
Au contraire Nightbloom
http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-information.html
Dangers of Aspartame Poisoning
The dangers of aspartame poisoning have been a well guarded secret since the 1980s. The research and history of aspartame is conclusive as a cause of illness and toxic reactions in the human body. Aspartame is a dangerous chemical food additive, and its use during pregnancy and by children is one of the greatest modern tragedies of all.
Why haven't you heard about aspartame poisoning before? Partly because the diet industry is worth trillions of American dollars to corporations, and they want to protect their profits by keeping the truth behind aspartame's dangers hidden from the public. When NutraSweet® was introduced for the 'second' time in 1981, a diet craze revolutionized America's eating protocols and a well-oiled money machine was set into motion changing modern lifestyles.
http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/hidden_dangers.htm
Aspartame: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

If a product is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and composed of natural ingredients, would you assume it is safe to consume?
If the same product is an artificial sweetener, would you assume it helps control your weight?
Millions of people use aspartame, the artificial sweetener known as NutraSweetâ„¢, with these assumptions in mind.
Aspartame can be found in thousands of products such as:
• instant breakfasts
• breath mints
• cereals
• sugar-free chewing gum
• cocoa mixes
• coffee beverages
• frozen desserts
• gelatin desserts
• juice beverages
• laxatives
• multivitamins
• milk drinks • pharmaceuticals and supplements, including over-the-counter medicines
• shake mixes
• soft drinks
• tabletop sweeteners
• tea beverages
• instant teas and coffees
• topping mixes
• wine coolers
• yogurt
However, aspartame's tainted history of approval and potentially toxic ingredients cast serious doubt on the safety of this sugar substitute. Furthermore, aspartame may actually increase your appetite (Farber 52).

Not to go to far off topic… I suggest you choose a different example than Aspartame as it well might be more dangerous than some of the drugs spoken about on this thread

For the same reason I can't turn my head around and physically look at the middle of my back is why psychedelics taught me more of myself than I ever could have without them. The depth of discovery - the knowledge I gained from my own thoughts as well as the trip experiences were priceless. I found out more about myself than I could possibly explain in such a short space. It seemed endless but like most things in life, there will be an end and recognising it before you turn into a vegetable or waxing poetic of the ways of the world is definitely a bit tricky. Enlightenment or awareness or insight or whatever you may call it, seems a fitting term for the experience of psychedelics.

Hey Diogenes! Glad to see you just aren't at Vive. Good posting about aspartame. I won't have that crap in the house. Once the wife bought home a can of diet soda from a party and I poured it down the sink.

nightbloom

I've already considered your arguments for partial prohibition. Very few of us are born libertarians or drug reformers. We arrive at legalization out of necessity.

1. If currently illegal drugs were legalised drug substitution would happen. There would be less smoking and boozing (nicotine and alcohol) so use of the most dangerous drugs would decline.

2. It would be possible to develop safer drugs. For instance I read a paper, ten years ago, about an Ecstasy analogue which had no serotonin neurotoxicity. Because MDMA is much easier to manufacture it's the street drug - not that analogue. Likewise we could develop better less penal methods of drug treatment and educate people rather than brain-wash them.

3. The only reason why methamphetamine is widely abused is because it's just about the cheapest synthetic drug to make in terms of bangs per buck. Prohibition created the illegal currently market.

4. If you doubt me on this consider the recent debate in the Journal of Psychopharmacology on alternatives to alcohol: http://www.geocities.com/politicsofsin/alcohol/index.html They agree that, in theory, safer drugs could be developed but that the rollercoaster of prohibition has made such developments impossible. For example nicotine chewing gum (which is infinitely less carcinogenic than smoking cigs) is banned in the EU on the grounds that it is a substance which is novel to the market. How much crazier can prohibition get than that?

5. It's far more sensible to:
* strictly regulate adverts and promotion of recreational drugs;
* strongly enforce against sales to minors and 'at risk' adults;
* demand well-written comprehensive safety information to be given out with each drug pack;
* work closely with drug companies to ensure that they sell only the safest drugs;
* tax recreational drugs to drive up the price (as advocated by Nobel prize winning economist Gary Becker: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/03/the_failure_of.html

I don't have a problem of drug (or gambling) abusers being 'forced' into treatment if their problem gets out-of-control but I would prefer a non-penal route.

How libertarian does all that sound? Am I some kind of druggie who just wants to get his drugs? Not quite. The only drug I use is caffeine. Once upon a time, years ago, I gave it up for an entire year. But old habits die hard. Now I need two cups of coffee in the morning. Is there any chance that another (less addictive) recreational drug could be invented to replace caffeine? Not with our current world-wide prohibition laws. No pharmaceutical company would waste time trying to develop a better alternative.

Hardly anyone expects a libertarian utopia. We want a civilised regime instead of a penal regime.

It's about time the advocates of prohibition were forced to deal with the mess they've got us into.

Wow. Sorry I have not read most of it.. (well, it was/is gigantic) -- just read, scanned, read....

but just this, Wurther responding to why might one 'need' such a thing:

Brilliant remark. I was thinking something like: I guess drugs are like sex, if you haven't tried it (psychedelics I speak of), you just won't get it. It is impossible to describe an orgasm (to the point that someone will know what you mean), and so with psychedelics.

And -- as McKenna would note, it's our birthright (a stretch perhaps) -- do you think a person would be "missing something" to go to the grave without experiencing an orgasm? So some of us feel about psychedelics.

The questioner seems to think we're 'on drugs all the time'? A little goes a long way, here! MeKenna also jokes, "yah my favorite drug is DMT... I last did it in 1956" (to overstate the point.

Further: I'd just note the point of the original article often seemed lost. Many individuals HAVE been able to get back on track with the life-changing experience of (major, not party-dose) psychedelics. "Set and setting" is crucial here. The drug policy person noted that not much control-group type of experimentation has been done, for obvious reasons.

I'm proud to be a British Columbian, when I see this stuff. Please look as well at the full, original report from last fall.

http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/fourpillars/pdf/DrugPolicy.pdf

[Wurther and others, check out Christopher Bache's Dark Night, Early Dawn, very inspiring on this topic.]

be well, everyone

LMHR

LOL - The list of "dangerous" products containing aspartame made me laugh. Yeah, yogurt has devastated the gay male community...and Jelo has wreaked havoc with the inner cities. Our native reservations are overrun by the evils of breath freshners.

If only the Downtown Eastside had an aspartame problem instead. Puhleeeze - Gimme a break already.

It demonstrates my point that the pro-drug "lobby" (not quite a lobby, I know) often uses tired and banal analogies in their attempts to relativize chronic hard drug useage. "You have your Starbucks, I have my trail mix - what's the diff??". If you really believe aspartame is so deadly then you should be arguing to have it regulated or banned, not using it as a semantic foil to blur distinctions between substances.

But setting that aside, even if you agree with the pro-drug position, that's still no reason to jettison critical thinking altogether: my point stands that this article (and many posters here) are mixing up two distinct issues on the drug-policy front. Supervised medicinal uses of 'clean' substances and/or plants to treat the most desperate cases of addiction is a totally different policy issue from the setting up of a government mandated and sponsored regulatory framework to make currently illegal hard drugs available for casual recreational consumption by the general citizenry.

Totally, totally different issue.

I find it difficult to understand this kind of thinking in our society. To treat sick individuals with psychedelics in our part of the world sounds more like we are just asking for trouble. In the shamanic experience it is not just the drug that is of benefit to the person being treated but it is the experience of the healer and his ability to lead the other person out of the darkness of their own minds and into the light. The drug is mearly there to loosen the boundaries a little bit. So with out the experience of the healer there to assist the other person I believe that this sort of therapy in our world would not be of a very great benefit and might indeed do more harm than good......

nightbloom:

You stole my lines with those quips about aspartmate. But just because some legalisers, like Diogenes, are a bit foolish doesn't mean you can brush us all in the same coat of paint. Pro-drugs does NOT equal anti-penalizer.

meth is the cheapest bang per buck money can buy - that's a function of prohibition. Without prohibition no one would want to use meth. Crack cocaine - a function of prohibition too - they don't do it in the Andes - people are content to chew coca there.

nightbloom:

You lump all druggies together with statements like that. Psychedelics twice a year IS NOT "chronic recreational escapist drug use". The history of the War on Drugs teaches us that demonization of drug users is a both a prerequisite and a function of penalization.

Later, you admit that it's possible for users, of even the most addictive drugs like heroin, to use without getting hooked. Why group all 'drug' use together like you do? I can only understand it in terms of wanting to justify prohibition. Grouping entheogens with narcotics and addictive drugs with non-addictive drugs is senseless. How I can I 'debate' with you when you resort to those arguments? This thread began with a discussion of psychedelics. Your first tactic was to smear the distinctions between drugs with the statement:

Next came your remarks about

PS: esctacy and ketamine are not, strictly speaking, psychedelics.

Bob999 accused you of lumping together quite disparate substances too but your banal evasion is to accuse anyone who are against penalization as having a:

Part of the ideology of prohibition is to:
* treat all drug use as abuse;
* refuse to consider evidence of whether the policy actually works;
* refuse to consider options other than penalization;
* side with simple drug abstinence ideas which actually promote harm (restricting needle availability, overdose treatments and safe injection rooms).

Apart from the last point your thinking is typically prohibitionist.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I don't think I'm the one blurring the distinctions here - If you want to use non-addictive naturally occurring psychedelics to treat addicts, then I accept that it may be an avenue to be explored rationally. What a lot of posters here want to do, however, is kick the bottom right out of the bucket and open the the drug market right up. They're not acknowledging that the silent non-user majority are stakeholders in this debate as well.

I don't think all drug use is "abuse" per se, but I also don't believe individuals who are "practicing" drug users are able to reliably make that call for themselves. I've known too many people who were convinced they didn't have a drug problem even once their work, family and personal lives started deteriorating.

Also, "abuse" in my opinion has a public as well as personal criteria. Someone who uses drugs in public space, for example one who smokes up beside someone who is not a user and/or who objects to the drug use, is "abusing" by forcing stangers to become passive participants in their lie. Ditto for the transaction itself - I've lost track of how many times I've had to stare stupidly off into space as money & white powder exchanged hands right under my nose in my "community space". That is also another kind of public drug-associated "abuse". It is particularly abusive to the non-user, and downright offensive to the recovered user. This is why I oppose outright legalization, and why I want law enforcement to retain the power to clamp down on the public space at their discretion (and I'm convinced that enforcement has become very lenient on the recreational consumer, who is already far too indulged...at least from where I'm coming from). The user has absolutely no right to impose their drug use on others within the public space, and social norms have already swung too far towards normalizing that kind of imposition. This is why I believe policy should continue to "draw the line" on this issue.

Proponents of recreational useage might better spend their efforts cleaning up their act rather than berating non-using conscientious objectors (this is a general observation, not directed at anyone here). There is absolutely no moral, ethical or legal reason why the recreational drug user should be indulged by the non-user any more than they currently are under the status quo, and why social norms and policy should bend over yet again for the recreational drug-using demographic.

Nightbloom, not to worry, we'll still have laws against nuisance behaviour and especially criminal acts committed by drug users when the criminal justice systems finally gets a sufficient amount of sane input from the public on this problem in about twenty-five years from now.

In fact, I think there will be a trade off on nuisance behaviour. The justice system will, in effect, say: "We won't put you in jail, insist on there only being a contaminataed supply, and encourage all these killers and psychopaths to market this stuff, but if you're going to be an idiot about usage, it won't be tolerated."

Mere possession or usage won't be a criminal act, as it is now, but encroaching on the rights of others will not be tolerated.

I hope you read LMHR's link. It's an long-awaited prospectus for sanity-- unlike your status quo entrenchment.

Yeah, we have the laws in place now - they're just not enforced. And the behaviours I'm talking about would not be 'criminal' under your legalization regime. You can't interfere with someone who's doing something perfectly legal....not like they're being interfered with in any way under the current status quo (for from it: they are deferred to). I don't see much 'enforcement' going on in the Big Drug Club (oops, I mean 'gay community'), and you've failed to convince me as a citizen and taxpayer how your proposal(s) would make the situation in my community any better.

Nightbloom, incoming concession here!

I did a rather huge study of illegal drugs in your community--meaning the gay community--as part of my research into the relationship between specific sex acts, (receptive and active anal sex) drug usage, and the etiology of immune depression. As you'll recall, you supplied me with some links to the Vancouver (Vangard, I think) studies in this regard.

I admit, I think drug usage among young gay men is grossly out of proportion to drug usage among young heterosexual men. I believe it might be as high as 70%, and as you know the "Rethinking Aids" movement (and I agree) has identified illegal substance abuse, extreme sexual promiscuity--and infection--requiring excessive use of antibiotics, other recreational chemicals, including amyl nitrites--poppers--and probably illegal drug and vaccine contamination as more etiologically causative than a simple 9 kilobase (in otherwords, stupid)retrovirus as the pathogenicity responsible for 29 or so "Aids-defining" diseases.

My personal impression to your intransigence on this issue is that it is a reaction to your special, accurate knowledge about drug usage in the gay community, and the (perhaps correct) suspicion that--at least in the gay community--legalization would accomplish little if anything.

And you may be correct, but I think extrapolating from this special category is not an adequate justification for maintaining the status quo for the entire community.

And is it not fair to speculate that your use of the term, "The Big Drug Club," supports my percentage estimate?

Yes, the number of chronic users in the gay male community is pretty high - it's hard for mainstream society to appreciate just how pervasive it is unless you spend time in "gay space" (i.e. the clubs, the afterhours parties, the circuit parties, and the bathhouses). You'd also be amazed at how much high risk unprotected sex is going on - I'm totally shocked at what I'm seeing on a regular basis. It's totally insane and suicidal...which is one of the reasons I'm so fed up with 'soft-touch' progressive messaging on the issue that avoids "judgment" and hurting feelings, and which places priority on "destigmatization" efforts (for the HIV+ contingent) ahead of prevention efforts (to safeguard the HIV-negative non-patient majority). I see the same forces at work in our current elevation of the drug user over the non-user in drug policy and planning.

Chronic hard drug useage has also broken the age barriers that usually exist in the hetero world (i.e. gay men from ages 14 to 50+ are regular or semi-regular users of hard drugs in large numbers right across the board...in fact the 40 & 50 year olds are often the most hard core participants, especially in Vancouver and Montreal). So in other words it's spectrum-wide. You can't get away from it. Virtually everyone has drunk the proverbial kool aid now.

It boggles my mind, and it's converted me from a "progressive" on this issue (I was once a regular user too) to a "reactionary" (at least that's what I was described as once in Xtra West...see how the battle-lines are draw).

As for extrapolating the gay drug experience on mainstream society...I think the hetero world has a lot of stabilizing bulwarks (contrary to what the New York supreme court might believe!) that could mitigate a similar deterioration. But gay men have always been the social and aesthetic tred-setters for the rest of society. The "queer eye" has a heritage that goes right back to the depilated and unguent-painted courtiers and priests of Pharaohonic Egypt. What's cool in the gay community eventually filters into the straight world. Granted, the gay male aesthetic assumes a militantly conformist purity within the peculiar and rarefied context of extended gay male cliques (a peculiar phenomenon not explained by traditional "male bonding" theories, creating a social environment with an almost fascist anxiety concerning conformity and in-group membership...again, you almost have to be a gay guy to see & appreciate it).

So I doubt straight men will depart family life en masse to joint the North American Party Circuit in the event of legalization, but it's too optimistic to assume that mainstream society will be able to avoid entirely the ills that are now so pervasive in North American gay male urban enclaves.

Thank you Rubin. You said it.

See, I think part of the issue is that people who use currently illegal substances are seen as less valid when they talk about legalization.

If someone who didn't use posited these very same things chances are they'd be given more credibility, hence Rubin's qualified statement that s/he is not out to 'get' drugs for him/herself.

OWA

Nightbloom, that was an unusually candid, valuable--even eloquent--response.

Well, thank you Truman!

1. The report mentioned by Danielle E is here:
http://www.geocities.com/politicsofsin/clarke/Science.Tech.Report.2006-app14.html (HTML)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/1032/1032.pdf (PDF: see appendix 14)

It wouldn't happen if drugs were legal. By legal I'm not talking about a free-for-all. I'm talking about a system that encouraged responsible drug use. You seem to have decided in your own mind that the vast majority of people can't act responsibly with drugs. There's no argument I can put against that - I can't give you any evidence because drugs are illegal everywhere. Responsible behaviour is socially learnt. A prohibition society, encouraging illegal markets can only ever have responsible drug use.

PS: Most governments would even rail against me providing advice on 'responsible drug use'; which they'd class as encouraging 'drug abuse'.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is absolutely no solid evidence to support this claim. Spontaneous on-the-spot demand for drugs in social venues, dance clubs and sex establishments will not go away, and where there's demand there's someone willing to supply. There are no vacuums in that kind of economy. Every bit of turf is claimed and/or up for grabs.

Let's fine-tune that to purge the misguided liberal social deconstructionism: responsible behaviour and moral reasoning are

inculcated. Moral character crystallizes between 5-7, believe it or not. It comes down to Mom & Dad and the set up people they choose to allow around the family hearth. True civil society starts there.

No. Governments now fund social welfare satrappies to do precisely that. They seek to reduce risk by disseminating information about the "safe" way to find a dealer and do hard drugs. Here's one of them (YouthCo), whose repeated interventions and statements to deflect heat for our failed prevention strategies away from the gay drug-circuit provoked a major dust-up in the community last year http://www.youthco.org/cms/ These organizations are driven by the need to justify government grant-funding, and that shapes their whole approach and policies. You're never going to get them to say anything publicly that conflicts with their self-justifying ideology. The last thing they're going to do is promote an outlook which places the non-user at the centre of policy, and which situates causation primarily in personal behaviour and prevention in personal responsibility. In true liberal fashion, 'society' is always to blame.

...perhaps a more precise way to articulate this point is to say they won't do anything to undermine the arguments upon which their grant-seeking strategy is based. This makes them very unresponsive to reality at times. Here is one example:

The AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) came under international criticism for its entrenched soft-touch approach and its obfuscation on the meth-HIV issue:
http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/2005/aug18_05/methamphetamine_hiv.html

Prior to this belated reversal in policy and doctrine (reluctantly brought about by the public backlash), ACT had been criticised for firing an employee who had had drawn attention to the meth/HIV connection (claiming they were "off message"), and who had advocated change in the organization's messaging on the issue. This is one example of the pervasive tendency among these organizations to resist any overt criticism whatsoever of hard drug use. It is a "lifestyle choice" that can be "managed" through the sliding scale of "harm reduction", not to be stigmatized or subjected to "judgmentalism" (read: rational criticism).

And just to demonstrate how much leeway government gives 'genteel' recreational drug users in our society, here is Tourism Vancouver's endorsement and promotion of no less than three major drug-associate Circuit Parties put on within Vancouver proper:

http://www.tourismvancouver.com/visitors/about_vancouver/gay-friendly_vancouver_events

These are major narco-tourist events and translate into major revenues for local businesses, hotels, the city, and - of course - local Organized Crime.

Note, it's technically four drug-parties being endorsed here, since up 'til this year Gay Ski Week included the internationally renowned 'Altitude Party' - another big ticket party. It's important to remember that each circuit party is actually combination of three or four different parties occurring back-to-back over several days....so altogether we`re talking about a dozen separate drug-party events being endorsed by government here, all aimed explicitly at the gay male demographic.

So you see why I have a hard time swallowing the schtick that recreational users are somehow hard-done-by by civil authorities.

The pendulum needs to be steadied and brought carefully but firmly back in line within healthy and sustainable social norms.

...that should have read`"drug-associated" Circuit Parties

Nightbloom says, "The pendulum needs to be steadied and brought carefully, but firmly back in line with healthy and sustainable social norms."

And I guess he thinks that the gangsters and criminals and are just the ones to accomplish this readjustment back to his own version of "healthy and sustainable social norms."

Honest, Nightbloom, and I think you know I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it, this sounds, (except where you admit to the exaggerated drug usage among gay men), like narcissistic fanaticism, not reasoned evaluation of the use of the criminal justice system to deal with a social, cultural and medical problem.

Why you can't see that criminalization has failed to alleviate all the problems you have described will remain your own little secret.

Everything you've described screams out for recognition that the cops and gangsters haven't done anything except make the problem much worse than it would have been.

Really, Truman, there's nothing "fanatical" about it. Medicinal useage of psychedelic substances to help treat far-gone addicts is a viable idea. But that's totally different from a government controlled legalization regime (and it would have to be government controlled). They're totally different ideas; totally different policies; with a set of totally different problems and implications attached. This article and this thread blurs the two.

Having said that, no one has been able to demonstrate that legalization would reduce or eliminate organized criminal activity (it wouldn't - it would simply prompt Organized Crime to adapt, and lessen the divide between Organized Crime and government regulatory and enforcement authorities). Nor has anyone conclusively demonstrated that spectrum-wide legalization of supply would lead to spectrum-wide diminishment in demand. It's just not logical. I used the example of the gay male community to demonstrate that ample and easily accessible supply creates more demand - exponentially more over time, in fact. It generates a sub-culture, momentum and social pressures all ordered towards increased drug use.

These questions can't be ignored, no matter how much the pro-legalization lobby would like to.

So you see, there's no fanaticism here, although I find it cute how liberal progressives on any issue attempt to pathologize the opposition rather than counter their arguments. These are all valid points that belong in any debate of these issues.

I'm not arguing about psychedelics to treat drug addiction. We both agree that it just might be a good idea.

I'm arguing that the other currently illegal drugs such as pot, heroin, cocaine and meth should be regulated outside of the criminal justice system.

Supply doesn't necesssary create demand. Cigarettes are easily available. When I was a teenager in the 60's virtually everybody smoked. Now we're down to 20% or so.

Last year I went around asking people if they would start shooting up heroin or cocaine if it was legal. (private little survey)

I didn't get a single affirmative. Legalization doesn't mean free.

50% of the population are instantly out of the heroin loop, for instance, because that's the percentage which cannot tolerate it.

And no well-adjusted, happy person is going to shoot up heroin or coke, even if it's free and mailed daily to them by Canada post, injection ready.

I've known a lot of drug addicts; not one of them could be said to be even reasonably well-adjusted, and if you listen to their histories, they all tell similar stories of abuse, failure, learning disabilities, rejection by family because of sexual or other unpopular orientation, physical pain due to accident, disease or illness, diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness, even just an inability to fit in.

Using the criminal justice system against such people is, in itself, a crime.

If you can't accept that legalization would diminish the participation of organized crime, you just might be the only one in North America who can express such doubt, and keep a straight face.

If legalization is going to provide the incentive for non-users to start shooting up, we're pretty well lost as a society anyway.

My view is that almost everyone who wants to use 'hard' drugs is already using them. And if you're going to express doubt of this regarding pot, then you truly must be a fanatical drug criminalizer.

Well, I disagree (needless to say) although I recognize that your argument is coming from a principled and humanitarian stance as you see the issues.

We all start out as healthy well-adjusted people (for the most part). Some of the most "together" people I've known have declined into chronic useage. It's what happens along the road, and within our ambient environment, that makes all the difference. It's the ambient environment I'm concerned about. The line separating street youth and the "together" university student is narrower than you think. All it takes is a few solid hard knocks in succession. The fall of the "mainstream" non-user into chronic useage is a wearing down process that doesn't take all that much.

Of course mainstream people today are going to answer "no" on the question of trying H if it were legal. Chances are their milieu is totally disconnected from all that...what I'm concerned about is the people of tomorrow. It is a mistake to tamper with social norms and strictures on such a potent issue without looking seriously at the long-term implications. Where will it take use? The poor of the inner cities, aboriginals, and urban gay men are the canary in the mineshaft on this issue. We still haven't answered the questions raised by the nasty social experiment that's been pulled on the gay male community. Really, the ideology of permissive liberalization has given me every reason in the world to oppose general legalization. Laws and norms are not even being enforced now - what makes you think civil authorities and regulatory bodies will be able to a handle an even more porous system that seeks to take the criminal justice system out of the equation altogether?

I think it might be helpful if you'll google, "Human Rights Watch-Vancouver Police," nightbloom, to get a view of criminalization in action, and whether police forces have historically reflected the general attitude of society in their dealings with marginalized, poor and often drug-addicted people, many of whom have used drugs for no other reason than to be able to cope with the degraded lifestyles in which they find themselves.

I think there's a pretty strong consensus now, that most long-term drug addicts are using, not for recreation, but for a kind of self-medication.

I have outlined above some of the social, medical, and mental health issues which require such self-medication. Certainly, legalization will not end such a need but I believe it will make the entire situation much less ugly.

And they're using not only for personal adjustment issues. I lived in a hotel room off Hastings in l969. The area was seedy then, but it deteriorted to a virtual hell-hole by the mid nineties, with drug-addicted women disappearing and dealers standing around selling contaminated drugs, to deaths from overdoses reaching all-time highs.

I remember vividly the words of a Vancouver Police officer--quoted in the press--that you'd have to be crazy NOT to use drugs if you lived in the middle of all that craziness.

And the police did their share in creating it.

I think we need to decriminalize not only the drugs, but the drug users also, as a first serious step towards bringing creativity and thoughtfulness into our response to addiction.

nightbloom writes.

My friend, where did that come from? I know you added a codicil but, even so, how can you possibly start an argument from such a shaky premise?

If it were true, much of the rest of the stuff in this thread would be unnecessary. As I think I’ve stated before, I leave these narcotic discussions to those who have some knowledge and experience in an area I know nothing about – apart from fiction. That statement is cringe-worthy.

Gwest, you're looking for fault where you want to see it.

That statement was my response to Truman's insinuation that only people who are already fkd-up or fallen will opt for drug use under a legalized regime. Greater availability of supply will increase opportunities for otherwise balanced individuals to start their decline. Any number of things can trigger it. To assume that only those who are already somehow pre-destined to be down-and-out will resort to drug use is the truly cringe-worthy assertion here, my friend.

You know exactly what I meant.

BTW - Alcibiades, if you're out there, check out Rex Murphy's commentary on the AIDS conference in today's Globe&Mail ("Mr. Harper Wasn't the Rude One"). I couldn't agree more.

As I said above, I know little or nothing about drug culture and what brings people to use drugs. I thank whatever Gods there be that it has never been a problem for me or mine - but this does not in any way imply that I (and my personal relations) am, or have always been, healthy and well-adjusted.

I do think that the central point in the argument for legalization is that such a regimen would result in 'less' harm than the current system does. Truman implies that this is the case where drug availability is not criminalized. Rather than debate that point with him you raise the spectre of an ill-defined threat to a wider population of well-adjusted citizens that does not, in my view, actually exist.

I don't have any answers to this, but to argue against a solution which has at least the prospect of improving the current situation on the basis of a false postulate is nonsense.

The only really well adjusted and stable people in this world are in cemeteries…sadly, many of them victims of illegal drugs..

Nb, regarding the Aids conference, maybe Harper just knows hiv doesn't cause aids because the disease is not sexually transmissable; hiv is too inert to cause immune depression; the risk groups are exactly the same as they were when the immunosuppression was first noticed; the disease has not spread into the general heterosexual community as it was preducted to do, and as ALL genuine sexually transmitted diseases do; the diagnosis by antibody-antigen reaction is in error, because simple antibody reaction only means that the immune system has responded to an antigen by constructing immunoglobulins; a positive antibody test doesn't mean illness. The antibody tests are not specific--70 pathological syndromes have been identified which will provide antigens to the immune system, which will trigger a reaction.

It has never been shown exactly how hiv destroys the immune system. Aidists are finally admitting that hiv doesn't kill T-cells (CD4's) not only because retroviruses don't kill T-cells (they need them for replication) but even if a few cells succumb, it has been proven that hiv cannot kill any more than one out of 500 cells at any given time.

Aids is not contagious. Noone has ever "caught" aids from another person. Compare this to hepatitis A, B, or C--or tuberculosis, or herpes.

Aids, itself isn't a disease. All of the 30 or so "aids-defining" diseases have existed without HIV for many years in Africa; in fact tuberculosis or malaria or wasting disease, without HIV is not called "Aids" unless HIV is present, but they have the EXACT PROGNOSIS as tuberculosis WITH Hiv.

Luc Montaigne who first "discovered" Hiv while working for the Pasteur Institute, now believes that Hiv could not cause aids without a co-factor. He has identified such a co-factor as mycoplasma.

Robert Gallo claimed to have discovered what he called HTLV 3, but it is generally conceded that his HTLV 3 was merely the virus that he had received from Montagnier. Gallo had been looking for viruses that cause cancer when the immunosuppression turned up.

No retrovirus (reversely transcripted) has ever been shown to cause disease in humans except Gallo's (supposed) discoveries: Hiv and HTLV 1. (Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus)

Maybe Harper just knows it's probably the most disgusting medial hoax of all time.

The real Aids is a result of a toxic syndrome, not an infection. African Aids is a mere misidentification by clinical case diagnosis of diseases that have long had other names, and are caused by poverty and malnutrition.

Every scientist on earth knows that starvation causes immune suppression!

The main point in the above rant is that HIV does not kill a sufficient number of T-Cells to destroy the immune system.

And most, if not all, of those scientists at the Aids Conference know this.

Which all means that the anti-retroviral chemotherapies have killed as many as 70% of all the people who have died of Aids in North America over the last twenty or so years.

The Aidists pharmaceuticals are currently engaged in public relations in order to ensure a vast market for their antiretrovirals.

Julio Montaner, head guy at the conference has come out with a plan to treat every single HIV positive person in the world with anti-retroviral chemotherapies, WHETHER THEY ARE PERFECTLY HEALTHY OR NOT.

This is identical to treating perfectly healthy people with anti-cancer chemotherapies.
Haart (highly activated anti-retroviral therapy) chemotherapies cannot be directed exclusively towards the hi virus, but employ a shotgun-approach like cancer drugs and damage all the cells of the body.

The Aidists are currently trying to get govenments to recommended treatment of all hiv-positive people.

Identification of hiv positivity for the global program will be hiv antibody reaction tests, not CD4 and Viral load assays.

Where's the proof, Gwest? I've provided concrete examples from my own community of open supply creating run-away demand. I've put forward in good faith my argument that legalization will not accomplish what its proponents claim - how is this unclear or obscure? It's only "nonsense" when I challenge positions you happen to agree with, I suppose. How is it nonsense to ask people to back up their claims (i.e. that it would reduce useage, marginalize organized crime, and lead to decreased levels of addiction in the general population)?

And therapeutic useage for treatment purposes (which I agree should be explored) is totally different from an open legalization regime. I seem to be the only one on this thread willing to acknowledge that fact. I doesn't looklike you're drawing this essential distinction either.

nightbloom
I've been busy - sorry. My remarks stand re Harper; and, I'm not much of a Rex Murphy (Max Pointy) fan. He's all pomp and circumstance, much ado about nothing. I'm not impressed by his multi-syllabic volubility or his vacuous devotion to an overfull vocabulary- to me its all just verbal legerdemain. All sizzle – not much steak.

If you can’t reduce a message to a few simple and straightforward words, it is probably not worth the candle.

This noticed from a scan of the long debate that I've been away from since throwing my back out last Monday and being hobbled up since...and I'd meant to weigh in on clinical realities of legalization in terms of ALL drugs vs the health problems posed by contamination and "improper packaging/labelling" and "irresponsible marketing", so to speak, for another post.

This comment about "genteel" drug use perked my eyes/ears up. What most people don't understand (including those "blessed by the Gods" as I think Nightbloom confessed, who have never had recourse to drug-use...I'm taking that to include alcohol and tobacco as well as dextromethorphan...HAH!) and as the media pander to ignorance of, is that the huge volume of the drug trade in this town has nothing, for the most part, to do with the Downtown Eastside's denizens.

Or, er, that's the wrong way to put that. What that crowd constitutes is the bottom of the food chain, the small-time users who, despite the depradations on their bodies and souls, do not use as much as many "functioning" addict/recration-users. Just because you're a junkie doesn't mean you're going to live on the street and go dumpster-diving, and there's not enough money down there to fuel the drug economy. Where THAT money is lies elsewhere in the city; in Kerrisdale, Point Grey, the Properties, Lynn Valley, darkest Burnaby and in the wilds of dressed-up neighbourhoods in Coquitlam, Surrey, Richmond etc.

It's the people who have good incomes, and good cover stories to go with them, that can keep up their heroin and coke habits and still make it to work and dress like human beings. THEY are the real meal deal in the equation, and the schleps you see on East Hastings are the flotsam and jetsam of the drug trade, just as they are the flotsam and jetsam of the rest of the economy/housing market etc. Poverty, mental problems, social/personal issues and more - those are what make the "street addicts" that everybody identifies as junkies and "drug-users". But the REAL market lives in condos and drives nice cars, and can afford to.

This was even true of crack - I can't really say about jib (meth) - but in the context of the Circuit Parties and the club culture's (gay or straight) ongoing love affair with intoxicants, most and in fact nearly all of those people don't wind up in an SRO or looking for lunch in a Smithrite. The trickle-down formula of arch-capitalism functions in the drug economy/society just as it does in the "straight" world (here I don't mean gay/straight, but the other, older meaning); the street people are only a symptom of the problem, they are NOT the bulk of the problem.

And the problem, to me, is the alienation and stress of modern life, and the various forces that drive/encourage people to use drugs; to try to find themselves amid the dehumanizing world of consumerism, escalating cost of living, and the need for stimulation in any form (be it sports-as-porn, the Grouse Grind, or a few toots of whats-yer-fancy) that is created by the oppressive "normalcy" and false expectations foisted upon us all by consumerism/media et al. The de-culturation of individuality into something you're supposed to conform to.

But this even applies in the drug culture; from the oppressive gay and metrosexual dress codes to what's trendy as a substance and what's not. And unfortunately, lately, it's become meth that's the most trendy...a long way from the benign high or marijuana and pure E, vs the ravages of speed, which are almost as bad as alcohol (but not quite).

Anyway, back to the point about "genteel" drug-use. The human road-kill that's becoming too visible on our streets is nowhere near the biggest chunk of the pie; "the cake left out in the rain", as MacArthur Park puts it. They're just the poeple whose personal lives and financial/career situations made it so they "can't handle it" and wound up finding company with others who are lost in despair. But as one crackhead's poem, seen somewhere on line a long time ago puts it (and which if I can find in my hard drive somewhere I'll post here), when you're "down there" you're AWARE of your despair; instead of rich enough to keep on lying to yourself that you ARE happy/secure, when you're really not.

And remember - drugs aren't the only drug. The far bigger drug is money. And bigger than that is status. And then, most of all, power. You know that glazed look in a freshly-elected politician's or newly-appointed senior bureacrat's eyes? It's euphoria. A big high. Same as anything else; and with just as destructive results IMO. Especially for the rest of us. Self-righteousness is a powerful intoxicant, especially when coupled with near-monarchical power....

Rider to all of the above: the heaviest drug users I've ever seen had good clothes, flashy cars, bodies you could make statues out of, and would never be caught dead (or alive) on East Hastings.

nightbloom
As I've said before, I think the alienated and disconsolate who succumb to drug use in 'your' group (of which I know nothing other than what I've read and what you post) are probably not all that different from the alienated and disconsolate in the general population who succumb to drug use. In addition, they are probably, in a proportionate way, much more numerous.

I think that Truman (or someone else perhaps) did post examples of situations in Europe where a less legalistic approach toward the supply of drugs in a legal or quasi-legal fashion (Holland and Switzerland - my son worked there for a summer) has produced a better over all result than our current situation. The current government seems ambivalent even to continuing the current safe injection experiment despite what I know to be positive outcomes.

What more can I say: In the US, where the drug wars continue unabated, the prisons are full to overflowing and inner city crime is beginning (in the wake of a phony 'good' economy) to bloom again.

Surely it's time we tried another course - what we have now just ain't working, dude.

No, it's the full spectrum. The Circuit Party crowd refer to themselves openly as the "A-list" of the gay community. They tend to be well-heeled social climbers with professional incomes and without the life-nurturing responsibilities of a heterosexual family unit. Life is a party, and that doesn't include dirty diapers. Regular long weekend getaways to Vegas and Miami are easily doable.

I've seen the documentaries, most of which possess a certain liberal propagandistic quality. They ignore inconvenient facts like Holland's massive organized crime problem, and the high level of chronic recreational useage and addiction. All Holland is done is shift the problem from the criminal justice system to the health & welfare sector.

The problem in the US has many facets. Much of it has to do with potent socio-economic and demographic dynamics for which we can find few (if any) easy analogies here. Canada has never had a US-style "drug war". We haven't been systematically enforcing drug laws on the consumer side for about 15 or 20 years now. This was a self-conscious change in practice on the part of the police profession which affected most major police department in this country.

For the sake of argument, another international perspective...

Real Crime, Fake Justice
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_oh_to_be.html

A sample passage from the article:

And you don't think there's an big sub-group of heterosexual males (and females) who are spending, boogying and blowing themselves into oblivion too? Your perspective is far too narrow nightbloom. The gay people I know and, surprise surprise, some of them are your age - aren't living the way you describe - just as there is a pretty fair-sized chunk of the same demographic of straight young people who don't live like mad hedonists too.

sez nightbloom

First of all, it's dangerous to rely on documentaries for your understanding of the way a society works (or fails to work). There's always a big lag involved: the documentary describes a situation which is, by definition, already passé; and, despite the claims of dispassion, documentary makers almost always have an axe to grind.

Second, the problems of drug use and the breakdown of civil society are, in the end, social and health problems and not within the competence of the civil justice system anyway. Crime is another matter - however, using the justice system to solve the drug question is a recipe for further and more intractable problems - as the US experience so demonstrably proves. My son agrees that the situation in parts of Zurich is still a problem – interestingly enough, not necessarily because of the behavior of the Swiss themselves. Drug ‘tourism’ is not something that can be ignored.

If you don't think the current Canadian socio-economic dynamic isn't tracking toward a much more American ‘have / have-not’ metaphor then you haven't been paying attention. In the lower mainland you should have no difficulty recognizing this and it’s been observed and discussed literally dozens of times in these forums.

I don't disagree with your observations about the current level of drug enforcement at the consumer level; but that's just another aspect of the problem - it has nothing to teach us about possible solutions except to prove that the status quo isn't working.

I'll look at the link.

On second thoughts - Theodore Dalrymple nightbloom? This guy is an icon of the law and order Right, a fellow traveller of the odious David Horowitz of FrontPageMagazine

I'll read it, but I don't expect too much from a text that blames the liberal 'Observer' for Britain's social ills in its second paragraph.

I'm sorry, but I don't think so. If Britain is in trouble it's no small part a consequence of almost 20 years (1979 – 1997) of class warfare by Maggie Thatcher and John Major. Blair hasn't helped much with his asinine ASBO laws, but to pretend that the dislocations in modern society and the dysfunction of the legal and justice system in Britain are nothing more than a failure of 'discipline' and the consequence of liberal (New Labour) rot is not even worthy of serious debate.

I'll get back to you if I think he has anything worthwhile to say.

But I doubt it.

The most current thinking in criminology is that the whole ‘broken windows’ strategy is nothing more than a band-aid and a way for folks in upscale suburbs to continue to feel good about themselves. What's needed is a re-infusion of hope and a comprehensive plan to permit communities to start to rebuild from the ground up. The published data is available from a longitudinal study in Chicago. I have it somewhere in my files but if you take some time you'll find it for yourself. I think, in fact, I’ve been through all this before with someone called Tax cutter who used to post here and make similar kinds of easily challengeable claims – or perhaps it was Colin.

Of course, although I believe there are intrinsic social forces which will eventually pull most young heterosexuals back into "real life". They aren't obliged to live and breathe within a sub-culture in which the prime condition of membership is participation in the drug-circuit (this is now undoubtedly the case for urbanized gay men under 35), and where active participation in the drug-circuit is promoted as a form of community support and philanthropy (check out who the charitable beneficiaries of these events are...the same groups represented at the AIDS conference in Toronto, not coincidentally). You see the game yet?

We've created the preconditions by which young gay men in a genuine search for community with their peer-group are channelled into the drug scene as if by the force of gravity alone. It's now the first form of social activity queer youth come in contact with in the gay community. Can you not see how this is a problem - am I speaking Chinese or ancient Greek here? This is what I mean by the shift in social norms which breeds a growth in demand. Any policies not ordered towards reducing the popular draw of the drug-scene is simply the wrong policy - perhaps even an evil policy.

Young gay men who choose to remain aloof from this trend by definition have removed themselves from their own community. If your gay friends are men under 40 and are not part of the urban drug scene (especially in Vancouver), then they do so by holding their own community at arms' length. The degree of internal alienation this has caused cannot be underestimated.

As I've said, I believe the gay example demonstrates the liabilities in allowing an entrenched drug-centred sub-culture to take root. The young urban gay male community, aboriginal communities, and the urban poor are the canaries in the mineshaft, and warning to mainstream society.

Well, nightbloom, it seems to me you've danced around the problem without ever addressing it yourself.

If the only characteristic of 'community' that is important for gay folks is their sexuality and the only sense of belonging they have is with that group then I'd say that's a big part of the problem. Like other minorities they are still suffering from the marginalization (or a partially self-imposed notion of ‘otherness’) that sets them apart from the community at large.

I'd say there are reasons for this, both in our culture and in the attitudes of gay people themselves (and of the government, the churches and community organizations - including the justice system) which are more responsible for the dysfunctional behavior you're describing than you may be prepared to acknowledge. Your almost purblind attitude toward the current government is just another symptom of not understanding your own circumstances as a responsible gay adult with political responsibilities - my suggestion only. As I've said before, this analysis is entirely my own and is not based on any but the most superficial analysis. Much of it because of reading your writing here at Tyee.

Consequently, I hesitate even to mention it and I'll be happy to accept your admonishment that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Were it not on this obscure thread I probably wouldn't even post this.

Speaking of not seeing the forest for the trees, did you see this in today's Toronto Star?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1155985535064&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

Gwest, interesting post with some good points I've debated many times with other gay people, sometimes quite heatedly. I'd be hijacking this thread away from the original subject matter if I were to respond at length to the big and relevant issues you raise. I could write volumes. The problem is indeed instrinsic to the contingent nature of the community. We're in a largely incomprehesible and unpredictable societal transition right now...post-legalization, post-marriage, and post-retroviral-therapies. Now we have to finally work out how to live with ourselves. Who guessed we'd ever reach this moment.

And you are correct that established structures have not responded well or effectively to the gay reality, from government, churches and educational institions on down....which is why queer people are such easy pickings for hard Left ideologues who wish to exploit their marinalization, make use of the fundamental morality of our civil rights cause, while turning a blind eye to the profound damage which has been wrought on our community. I mean really: when was the last time a self-annointed spokesman for queer liberation ever addressed the issues I've tackled on these threads (not Svend Robinson, Tim Stevenson, Jack Layton, or any other apparatchik who is after the queer vote). They don't dare.

But enough about the gay issue - I only used it as an example of the fundamental fallacies underpinning the pro-legalization arguments.....What do you think of the article and the issues it tackles...?

What fundamental fallacies, Nightbloom?

There are no fundamental fallacies. The fundamental fallacy is that you want to maintain the status quo re. drug criminalization, but at the same time you want to rave against the evils caused by the status quo.

You won't even go for light decriminalization.

Seriously, with no sarcastic intent, I don't think this is healthy because it developes personal conflict.

Well, I'm not going to repeat myself. I appreciate that you sincerely believe in the viewpoint your putting forward. I don't think either of us is going to convince the other.

To summarise what I've said, I believe that using such plants to help addicts is a viable idea that warrants further investigation and study. If those studies prove fruitful, then policy changes affecting treatment regimes should be considered. General spectrum-wide legalization of hard drugs is another issue entirely, and I don't believe the assertions of the pro-legalization lobby are supported by practical experience and empirical evidence. I've given a number of examples demonstrating this. As I've said, I'm open to being convinced, but I'm inclined to see most pro-legalization arguments as ideologically motivated, rather than the result of a sober consideration of the facts, and the potential impact of such a policy shift on society as a whole.

"Ideologically motivated," eh, Nightbloom. You mean that you've been reading my rants for all these months and still think I've got an ideological bone in my body. With your obvious cerebrals creds, I don't think it's possible.

I first got the idea that the drug laws cause most of the pain when I got to the house where my sister was shot to death by drug addict, Andy Bruce in l969--so he could pay off a heroin debt to some other drug dealers.

Not you Truman - I should have been more precise. I meant generally. The general sympathy in the younger mainstream, within activist youth movements, the Left and Gay press, and in marginal communities with "anarchist" pretensions like my own, for legalization strikes me as ideologically motivated.

In the end, everything is 'political' and everyone is pushing an ideology. Some are less dangerous and more keyed toward persons than others.

Alcibiades, here's some ideologies:

fascism, neo fascism, national bolshevism, pan arabism, black nationalism, white nationalsism, marxist leninism, stalinism, trotskyism, christianity, neo-marxism, darwinism, neo-darwinism, individual anarchism, classical libertarianism, market liberalism, new liberalism, anarcho-capitalism, neo-liberalism, paleolibertarianism, capitalism, reputed capitalism, regulated capitalism, christian socialism, allopathic medicine, alterntive medicine, socialism, peronism, nationalism, christian anarchism, christian democracy, religious zionism.

Find these and more here: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/ideology

Nightbloom cops to having "ideological" intent, (ie, his admission to "anarchist pretensions) but, yet, strangely suggests that others who advocate legalization of drugs do so for their "ideological motivation." And the implication is, by logical necessity, that he is not "ideologically motivated," in his reverence for the status quo by ideological motivations.

You see, his argument is therefore untenable at best and deceptive at worst.

As far as everything being "political as you say--and that everyone is pushing an ideology, I wonder if you'd be more specific, because since I am nightbloom's opponent in this discussion, it seems intuitive that you are referring to me.

In fact, I'm far to the right of Randy White, regarding the use of imprisonment for those who wilfully cause physical damage to others, and especially if that damage diminishes the ability of a victim to enjoy the use of his/her body. My punishment would be that such a perpetrator would remain in prison as long as his/her victim still suffers loss or impairment. If that means a life sentence, so be it.

Alcibiades - That's a platitude, not an argument.

Truman - I made no claim to "anarchist pretensions". I believe many in the pro-legalization 'lobby' are motivated by such, however. I don't revere the status quo...I'm simply not convinced by the pro-legalization argument.

There's nothing "untenable" or "deceptive" about my viewpoint. I simply don't see how legalization will help the problems we're confronting. It will exaserbate the problem in marginal communities/demographic groups, reduce any leverage which the citizenry has with regard to Organized Crime in their communities, and it will simply shift the burden onto the health and welfare system, and ultimately back onto the streets.

Yikes. Nightbloom. Where the hell are you getting this information?

Human Beings are amazingly adaptable and learn and grow throughout their lives. There are critical periods but as far as morality goes, that develops over time and is not cemented into a short age bracket.

That's why we have such terms as 'emergent properties' and why Psychology has embraced things like Chaos Theory to understand just how mechanisms like resilience work.

Resilience, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, is the child who grows up in say an alcoholic family and then goes on to have a wonderful life, devoid of those problems one would ASSUME them to have.

I'd beware of making statements like the one you made above NB.

I haven't read all the comments since my last post. Hopefully I will respond more thoroughly before they close this thread.

OWA, I hope you do too, and I also hope you give my comments a fairer reading than you were inclined to do just above. There's a wealth of professional literature that confirms the assertion you object to. To say human being learn throughout their lives is a glib truism which doesn't address the problems we've been tackling throughout the length of this thread. Also, it might be helpful for you take a second glance at the context in which I made that particular remark. My point was an important and relevant one.

nightbloom:
It wasn't meant to be an argument.

You attack all manner of posters for being ideological as if that's some kind of a horrible exception for which individuals deserve to be condemned.

Such an attitude connotes a kind of platonic ideal that is not 'ideological' - I suggest there ain't no sech animul - everybody has an ideology - even if they don't know it and we're all pushing some kind of political agenda: Except maybe J Christ; and his followers have mucked up his message (whatever it was) to the extent that I’m not at all sure about him anymore either.

The object is to get enough reasonable people to come together and agree on enough things that we can take control of the Juggernaut from the thieves who run it now before it’s too late. Is that political? You BET. The only question is are you in on the program or just here to snipe from the sidelines.

My view on the drug thing – legalize it now before any more poor buggers are killed needlessly – get it out of the hands of ideological capitalists and into the hands of someone who gives a damn about something other than dollars.

LOL - Notwithstanding the imaginative samples of hyperbole, that's the laziest post you've penned yet, Alcibiades. Fine, that's your opinion...now care to back it up with something...anything...?

No, not everyone is motivated by ideology on a given issue. Truman certainly isn't - he's been upfront about the life experiences that led him to research and adapt his chosen position. It happens to be a position I respect, even though I don't agree with it. If you think that's ideology, you don't know what ideology is.

Likewise, I too am influenced by life experience and personal observation. I was obviously pro-drug at one point in time. I've provided my own concrete observations which now lead me to discount (or at least to strongly queston) the pro-legalization arguments. I've presented my rationale as fully as I can on such a forum. Dunno what else I can say.

What raises my suspicions are people motivated not by life experience but by trendy ideologies, who never ventured outside of their comfortable bourgeois box, well-fed limousine liberals who never had a whiff of white powder touch their delicate white noses, or never genuinely agonized over the pending results of an AIDS test, or struggled for weeks or months through bouts of drug-induced paranoia, depression and psychosis, but who come out stomping and screaming about capitalist oppressors who want limit the damage of harmful illegal drugs in marginal communities and the poor. Now that's ideololical, my friend.

And speaking of sniping from the sidelines...That's been the predominant nature of your posts for quite a few months now. You act more frequently as "nightbloom's gadfly" that you do as a spokesman for your own views on articles provided by Tyee writers. Not that I mind particularly - but your statement about my allegedly sniping is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.

You seem to want the comfort of exclusively assenting voices here. How very "liberal-Left" of you

;-)

Oops, Alcibiades, I forgot to include this ideology of yours, eh: won'tinsultapoetlaureateeventhoughIknowhisstuffismediocreatbestandjuvenileatworst--ism

Nightbloom, you needn't have agonized over an "Aids test." It wouldn't have meant a goddamned thing, except that your immune system had come into contact with any one of 70 or so antigen-producing toxins, bacteria or viruses, and had produced non-specific immunoglobulins(antibodies) to fight them off. Which would mean, of course, that there isn't a damn thing wrong with your immune system. Even pregnancy will get you a hiv-positive test, not to mention some weird looks from your technician due to Hervs. (human endogenous retroviruses)

The Aids hoax is unravelling and the Aidists are trying to get all hiv people in the world to take antiretrovirals, not only for the huge bucks, but in order to conceal the true Aids etiology in a cloud of so-called "hiv-related illnesses," which will be, in actuality caused by the drugs themselves.

Can you imagine anything more devilish than prescribing antiretrovirals in the form of dna chain terminators and protease inhibitors to starving people.

It's positively Mengelian!

Oh, okay. Silly Nightbloom.

You are a persistent fellow, I'll grant you that.

Okay nightbloom...one more thing...read this study on PubMed-Medline entitled:
"Longitudinal study of homosexual couples discordant for HIV-1 antibodies. Palencik J"

Then tell me what you think. Pay particular attention to the conclusion.

It's about the transmissability of HIV and was done in l993 or so.

Then read: "Sexual transmission efficiency of Hepatitis B Kingsley LA"
Also on PubMed.

See what you think.

"Discordant" means one spouse is positive and the other one is negative.