Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!rutgers!nike!oliveb!prs From: prs@oliveb.UUCP (Phil Stephens) Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.med Subject: Re: Drug Abuse - True Problem or Media Hype? Message-ID: <55@oliveb.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 20:13:21 EDT Article-I.D.: oliveb.55 Posted: Thu Oct 2 20:13:21 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 09:31:34 EDT References: <720@scc.UUCP> <20756@rochester.ARPA> <463@epimass.UUCP> <135@spectrix.UUCP> <1805@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA> Reply-To: prs@oliven.UUCP (Philip Stephens) Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca Lines: 148 Xref: watmath talk.politics.misc:502 net.med:5029 (Reply to Ray, but as usual everyone else is addressed and welcome to respond. References to relevant studies welcome, especially if any exist that would help predict effect of *marijuana* legalization/decriminalization). < Kinda long, and more a statement than a reply > In article <1805@curly.ucla-cs.ARPA> ray@rochester.ARPA (Ray Frank) writes: >In article <135@spectrix.UUCP>, clewis@spectrix.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes: >> >> You walked right into this one - they did murder and steal for alcohol >> during prohibition. An extremely strong case can be made that the >> damage to society (crime, health costs etc) of a drug of any sort >> is *higher* when the drug is illegal. >> >We all know the damage that alcohol currently does to our society. I doubt >500,000 people annualy were killed or seriously wounded during prohibition. Ray, please include sources for shocking statistics like this, as a matter of etiquette. However, I have a figure from the Readers Digest Almanac for alcohol related *fatalities* at 96 K, mostly their own from related illnesses, accidents (20K per year traffic, and nearly as many in *other* accidents), and suicides. 500 K/year *injured or* killed in alcohol related accidents and incidents may or may not be a little high; where did you get the figure, please? >So much for your extremely strong case. In the paper this morning, a headline ... >Again, so much for your extremely strong case. Try convincing that family >about the safety of legalizing dangerous chemical substances. Try convincing the families of people who died in the Mexicana jet crash that planes are safe... dramatic, but more heat than light. See below. >Legalizing drugs will make them part of our history just as tobacco and alcohol ... >assupmtion? What if you are wrong? Imagine a pack of crack costing less >than a pack of cigarettes such that every curious kid in the nation can easily >satisfy their curiosity, and get hooked in doing so. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, >quite a few drugs will get you hooked in days rather than years. Well, I don't agree with some of the things Chris said, but there's no need to try to shock him or us with ad-absurdum arguements, ie taking your own version of what he has said and inflating it into National Enquirer style headlines. My own suggestion would be to determine which currently illegal drugs, if any, would help *replace* alcohol as our national recreational drug *without* causing more problems than those solved by the reduced use (not prohibition) of alcohol. This may be naive on my part, to think that such drugs exist. But let's think about it. We can start by eliminating some candidates from our discussion. Crack apparently is much worse than alcohol. Heroin I'm not so sure of, but I wouldn't encourage its use. Cocaine I don't really know enough about, but I suspect it isn't a good candidate. Speed can't replace alcohol, not the same appeal. Ganja is the only major candidate I can see. No, pot is *NOT* absolutely safe. *Heavy* use will cause many of the same problems as habitual tobacco smoking. Use while driving or operating heavy equipment *could* be as bad as alcohol *if* the intoxication is maximal. But in practice, most people who use marijuana now do not get that "looped" habitually, and I suspect that the patterns of usage would evolve in ways that would not be causing tens of thousands of extra automobile fatalities per year, and that the combined toll from alcohol and pot together would actually decline significantly (*after* the first few years of adjustment). Of course, this is mere speculation, I have no scientific studies to support my proposal. And my view may be prejudiced by my experience with marijuana which was much weaker than I hear is available now. But I am not just saying this to weaken Ray's argument that "Alcohol is horrible, 'drugs' must be even worse; it's too late to prohibit alcohol, but not too late to prohibit 'drugs'"; I think that argument is weak enough already. I am concerned (but not hysterical) about alcohol abuse. I sincerely believe that there is a very good chance that legal and widely available marijuana (not so sure about any of the other drugs) would reduce alcohol abuse effects more than it would add pot abuse effects, in terms of traffic deaths and injuries, health effects (more cancer, but less cirrosis), loss of employment (pot is *relatively* non addicting, but also remains in blood longer), broken homes (pot makes you lazy, alcohol causes violence...oversimplified, of course...). Particularly coupled with a public campain to *replace* alcohol with pot, similar to present campains to quit smoking, or to not drive while drunk. I may be wrong about the tradeoffs, but it's worth looking into. Remember to seperate the two questions I raise: 1) *if* the tradeoff is as I say, does it justify *some* ills getting worse in order for larger ones to decrease? (philosophical, abstract question) 2) *would* the tradeoff be positive, or would we just have *even more* intoxicated drivers, absenteeism at work, and various alleged side-effects of pot such lowered scholarship, lowered sex drive, docility in the face of insane right wing politicians.... I *don't* claim to know the correct answer to '2', but I think it probable enough to be worth investigating. ('1' is not subject to proof, it is a value judgement. My choise obviously is in favor of "the greater good", in this example; not in all concievable "greater good" examples. I think a spate of hypothetical unrelated counter examples would be highly redundant; everyone's already heard them, so just state your stand if you disagree with '1'. '2' is more interesting, and substantitive discussion is possible, if not likely). And what if legalizing pot only puts a small (net) dent in the alcohol death- toll, say 10%? That would be about 9 or 10 thousand lives per year. About 200 per state. About 4 per state per week, at the level of effect I have arbitrarily chosen. Many of them teenage drivers, no doubt. Perhaps some state should become a laboratory for this experiment. (I hear Alaska has decriminalized pot, but I haven't heard of any social pressure to *replace* alcohol with pot, so the experiment I'm talking about has not been done yet). Needless to say, special restrictions applicable to some professions, such as pilots, bus drivers, truckers; may require some sort of drug test, much as I dislike them for general population. Comparable to breath test for alcohol (but I'm concerned about reports that current tests are sensitive to pot smoked several days earlier, or secondary smoke from a concert. I am not aware of any effort to determine an "acceptable" blood level, as for alcohol; the effort has been on detecting *any* THC, as far as I know.) Pardon me, folks, for going on so long. But alcohol abuse *is* killing even more people than cars are (and half of the people in car crashes): <<< About one every 5 or 6 minutes in the US, on average. >>> (Pretty good chance some have died while you've been reading this article. Chance of some crack deaths in same period about 1% as high) This is about two orders of magnitude more serious than the current "epidemic" of drug use, and I would guess at least a full order of magnitude greater than would be created (in terms of deaths) if all the illegal recreational drugs were indeed legalized as some others have been recomending. (Which is another number we need to know, but don't). >ray - Phil prs@oliven.UUCP (Phil Stephens) or: prs@oliveb.UUCP