Whitney Houston, Superstar of Records, Films, Dies

[AD1184]

Being illegal didn't slow it down any.

How do you know, Bart? Could not more people have taken up the habit if they had not feared criminal prosecution? In many circles there is enormous peer pressure to try drugs, and their illegality is the only factor that could persuade people not to.

I believe in Britain that the fairly recent repeal of older, stricter drink licensing laws has lead to a gargantuan increase in drunkenness in this country. Alcohol, unfortunately, cannot be treated as harshly as other narcotics because it has been a part of our culture as long as we have had culture. But even its use may be tempered by tougher legislation. The other drugs, however, can be treated much more harshly. Cigarette smoking, after being popularized during the first half of the twentieth century in two world wars, is now at a low thanks to increasing legal restrictions on the sale of cigarettes and the areas in which you may smoke them. I expect eventually that cigarette smoking will become illegal here. And good riddance.

With regards to children having access to drugs, raised earlier:

Even in the case of legally available and regulated alcohol, we have more use amongst children than in any recent period in history. Cigarettes too, have long been attainable by children. There are also black market trades in both alcohol and cigarettes.

In Britain, I believe that drug use could be reduced to almost nothing and thus Britain's contribution to the international trade in illegal drugs brought to a tiny fraction of what it is currently, all through a concerted legal effort to achieve this by a toughening of the laws on drugs, and by an attempt to actually enforce those laws. This would entail a replacement of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, a police force dedicated to the role of policing (which is desperately needed as a response to crime in general in this country), and also a targeting of the criminal users of drugs (who are mistakenly viewed as victims) with custodial sentences for possession, as opposed to just targeting dealers. Do that, and drugs use shall be banished to the outermost fringes of society. Some illegal drug trading will continue, as it will even if drugs are legalized and their sale is regulated.

If we choose the other option of legalization in an attempt to minimize the illegal drugs trade, then I fear that drug use in society shall become rampant, in much the same way that excessive alcohol use has now become rampant, and the societal decay as a direct response to this shall be immense.

[SOUL-DRIFTER]

Yes, indeed.
RIP Whitney.
You will never be forgotten.

[bart5050]

I am well aware of the devistation.
I watched a former friend lose his business, house and marriage over cocaine, and nothing could stop him.
If the only thing that keeps society from self destructing is laws, then it is out of control.
Morality just cannot be legislated.

So you feel that the tens of thousands now dead in the Mexican drug wars are an acceptible loss?
Those wars are all about the income satisfying the US demand for illegal drugs.
And in spite of throwing more laws and huge sums of money at it, the problem only gets worse.
No tolerance laws can be enacted, minor infractions a fellony, with long sentences.
And all we will accomplish is putting most of the kids in jail.

If laws would solve the problem, it would have been solved.
More laws, more money, more prisons, and the problem grows worse, not better.

I think more could be accomplished with education, examples, and demonstrating that there are goals to achieve in life that users cannot attain.
And pointing out that alcohol is ingrained into society and so must remain is useless.
Like drugs are not?
LOL
The stuff is sold on street corners everywhere.
I thought when I moved to a small town, I would leave the big city issues behind.
Wrong.
The older ones are alcohaulics and the younger ones are crack heads.
And it isn't about laws or legality.
It is about a region where unemployment is high and the kids have a sense of hopelessness.

There will always be self destructive personalities.
Hope and goals cannot be legislated.
All the funds put into drug enforcement could go into jobs, education, and goals for kids to hold as a vision.
You use, you can't get a drivers license, you don't get education oppertunites, and you don't get the good jobs.

[SOUL-DRIFTER]

Well said Bart.
Exactly.

If there was no demand for illegal drugs there would be no traffickers or pushers.

[Annoyer]

See this response from a biographer of Francis Crick to the laughable allegation that he was using LSD during his work on DNA in the very early 1950s:

Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code | The Rational Optimist

So he was using LSD but not in the 50s? Okay.
The author of the biography is laughable, they suggest that LSD was invented in the 1950s.

LSD was first synthesised in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann while working for Sandoz laboratories.
However, it was not until 1943 that Hoffman discovered the Hallucinogenic properties of LSD.
Sandoz Laboratories, is the only company to manufacture and sell LSD.
They marketed the drug in 1947 under the trade name Delysid.

I do not doubt that many of the Baby Boomer generation who took their tertiary education in the 1960s used LSD at the time. I know that many of its users attribute a lot of importance to their experiences on the drug--which is perhaps another of its negative aspects--but this is not to say that there would not have been the same successes if drug use had not been so popular at the time. Equally, taking LSD will not turn you into a genius. And I can point to many more great works of science, art and music that were produced while not under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.

Really? WOW, that's surprising.

[bart5050]

Well said Bart.
Exactly.

If there was no demand for illegal drugs there would be no traffickers or pushers.

Unfortunately, there will always be a demand.
The best you can do is stop the deaths from exploitation.
And minimize the burden on society.

Use them and trash your life.
Or go for something better and look for self worth and a sense of accomplishment.
You cannot legislate a will to live, and a desire for success.

And prohibition would be ok if it was working, but it isn't.
The financial drain fighting the war is a considerable burden on society while the dealers grow rich.
So rich they will launch wars killing tens of thousands to keep it going.

The drug lords absolutely do not want it legalized.
And they do not care if we imprison our children for using.
Or that they instill a feeling of hopelessness and cheapen life and death to a few bucks.

[seen'um]

For the record I was 23 before I smoked pot and shot up LSD. Lol had already been smoking and drinking cigs and alcholic for over a decade. Oh ya my home town at the time was 17,000 pretty sure it was a small town.

[rorechof]

Morality just cannot be legislated

I do understand that Bart...

My point about cocaine's effect on The Brain isn't a Moral Issue.
It is a Biophysiological Phenom...

Your friend did not fall victim to a Moral Issue...
He was a Victim of cocaine's undeniable characteristic of creating a Craving in the Brains of most users who use coke on a daily basis.

Coke is not addictive in the way Cigarettes, Alcohol, Heroin etc are.

I too have several well-to-do 'close friends' who 'lost it' over coke and they were not weak-willed street-people dealing with a 'moral issue'.

Cocaine IS not a good choice for 'recreational drug use' in our society at this point in time. ~rore

[rorechof]

This is what I mean by Cocaine creating a Craving.
&
WHY it is such a dangerous 'recreational drug'.
I hope it makes sense to everyone...

"Cocaine is potentially more dangerous than heroin as evidenced by the higher fatality rate seen in laboratory animals given unlimited access to these drugs.

"The neural basis of cocaine reinforcement has been identified and involves an enhancement of dopaminergic neurotransmission in the ventral tegmental dopamine system..." aka the 'reward system'.
Addiction Research Unit/Buffalo: Cocaine Addiction

Essentially: Cocaine hyper-potently activates the brain's reward system and this reward system plays a major role in Controlling One's Behavior.

The effectiveness ie, the potency, of Natural Rewards activating the Reward System is now compromised by repeated hyper-potently activating the Reward System with cocaine.

The person using cocaine literally has 'their way of thinking' about Good & Bad Behavior bio-physiologically altered.

This is not a 'moral choice' made by the user... ~rore

[bart5050]

This is what I mean by Cocaine creating a Craving.
&
WHY it is such a dangerous 'recreational drug'.
I hope it makes sense to everyone...

"Cocaine is potentially more dangerous than heroin as evidenced by the higher fatality rate seen in laboratory animals given unlimited access to these drugs.

"The neural basis of cocaine reinforcement has been identified and involves an enhancement of dopaminergic neurotransmission in the ventral tegmental dopamine system..." aka the 'reward system'.
Addiction Research Unit/Buffalo: Cocaine Addiction

Essentially: Cocaine hyper-potently activates the brain's reward system and this reward system plays a major role in Controlling One's Behavior.

The effectiveness ie, the potency, of Natural Rewards activating the Reward System is now compromised by repeated hyper-potently activating the Reward System with cocaine.

The person using cocaine literally has 'their way of thinking' about Good & Bad Behavior bio-physiologically altered.

This is not a 'moral choice' made by the user... ~rore

I know this.
And Heroin has a very similar affect.
Crack is the worst of the worst, cocaine with a bit of heroin in it.

Sugar, coffee, food, lots of addictive stuff out there.
There is a reason why obesity is a problem in affluent societies as well.

If prohibition worked, I would be all for it.
But it creates its own set of problems, just as bad as the drug, maybe worse.

I have a friend who sold his business recently and retired a multimilionaire.
He kicked heroine out of his life many years ago, and would never have accomplished building that business if he had not.

He told me, once a junkie, always a junkie.
That he sometimes gets the shakes from craving, just thinking about heroin.
This was right before the funural of his ex wife, who died of an infection in her legs from using dirty needles.

Tobacco is highly addictive, and will surely kill you or destroy your health over the long haul.
If it were illegal, the black market would be busy with that as well.
Yet the use of tobacco is slowly declining, bot because it is illegal, but because of education.
And because of restrictions of where you can use it.
Also because Joe Camel and the Marlboro Cowboy is no longer allowed to tell you how cool it is.

One of the things that makes cocaine so destructive is the cost.
People go broke supporting the habbit, cause black market prices drive the cost up, and drug lords look to maximize their prophets.
You don't hear of people going broke supporting their tobacco habit.

All that money going into illegal drugs creates vast fortunes, and where that kind of illegal money is to be had, drug wars and violence are a consequence.
I have a friend whose little brother died of a gunshot wound to the head, he was trying to rob a streetcorner drug dealer with a wad of cash in one pocket and a gun in the other.

Prohibition is a miserable failure that creates a whole new set of problems.
And I don't think 10,000 dead in Mexico in the last three years is an acceptable loss in the war on drugs.

Instead I think the income from the drug industry would go to better use treating it as a medical problem.
And in creating a campaign to attach a social stigma to its use.
In educating people, and in marketing campaigns for educational and job oppertunities that you can't get if you can't pass employers drug tests.

It is a medical problem because it has a chemical effect on the brain.
Making it a criminal problem creates a much worse issue that just does not have to exist.

Remember when Escebar offered to pay off the national debt of the US if they would just stop chasing him?
Thats a lot of money, and would do a lot more good financing a medical campaign against cocaine, instead of financing a death campaign in Mexico.