Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a “miscellaneous” category together?
Also, note all the ridiculous drug propaganda lies.
The people who blabber incessantly about weed being a gateway drug are the exact REASON that I agree with them, but we VERY much disagree on the specifics.
Think of it this way:
Every adult in your life has told you that weed is JUST AS BAD as heroin and cocain and meth. You hear it repeated ad nauseum, ESPECIALLY if you were in DARE.
Now one day someone you have known for a long time offers you some because “it’s not that bad, trust me you’ll be fine” and they go ahead and take a puff or twelve. Turns out it’s not that bad. They were fine after some initial uncoordinated attempts at doing something.
So if weed is this interesting, maybe heroin isn’t that bad either?
Yeah turns out heroin IS that bad, and lumping it in with weed is like tossing the kindergarten bully into a maxsec prison.
So yeah, it’s only a “gAtEwAy dRuG” because you fucks lied for decades and made false equivalence of things and taught kids they can’t trust you.
While drunk, I got insane cravings for cocaine and nicotine
While high, I get insane cravings for pizza and Tame Impala
Turned out, the gateway drug was tobacco…
Arguably one of the worst drugs to be taking. Death is slow and agonizingly painful. The addiction is deep seeded. The high is very minor, like you see me going out on heroin you know I’ve experienced things your greatest orgasm could never compare too. Smoking, I got to like, stand outside for 5 mins at a time.
Where is the alcohol section that causes probably the most deaths per year?
Marijuana is not a gateway drug.
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.
Legalize pot, sell it at the grocery store, and you will watch the number of addicts in general fall precipitously. I guarantee it.
I buy THC drinks online from 3Chi. I haven’t had an urge to try anything harder (in fact, I’m a bit scared of anything that might affect my heart (aside from booze becaus3 we all do at least one very stupid thing), and the only thing I do want to try but only with a good support group around is shrooms).
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.
Marijuana is addictive though. Maybe not as addictive as some other things, but pretending it’s completely non addictive is disingenuous and misleading. It’s more addictive than say LSD or psilocybin for example.
That isn’t to say it should remain illegal though. Legalisation has positive benefits even for harder, more addictive substances than marijuana. See the history of alcohol prohibition for example, or the disaster that is the war on drugs.
Weird how cigarettes and alcohol are not ‘gateway drugs.’
That’s because from a health perspective, alcohol in particular is an “end state drug”. It’s what you die with. It ruins you. Not as fast as heroine, but just as thoroughly.
So if I just occasionally have a beer with dinner does that mean I could also enjoy a bit of light recreational heroine for dessert?
light recreational heroine
The best dessert.
Don’t forget shampoo!
My D.A.R.E. officer made sure we all knew that shampoo is a drug because it’s a chemical compound that physically affects our bodies. I definitely had fewer issues with drugs after learning that I was already a ‘drug user’.
I had fewer issues with drugs after doing drugs, having a great time, feeling better the next morning than if I’d had 4 pints of beer.
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs
Clearly marijuana has some serious kind of habituation, and it’s equally clear that many people that use marijuana are problem users. Addictive? No, not by any strict definition of addiction, since you won’t suffer serious adverse effects if you stop. OTOH, I’ve known at least as many problem marijuana users as problem drinkers
The question isn’t whether Marijuana is habit forming. Obviously for some percentage it is. The question is whether Marijuana use in and of itself encourages or preface additional drug use. My position is that it does not and by legalizing Marijuana we would find that it is the interaction with black market drug dealers which correlates instead.
Weed is a gateway drug to the fridge.
What specifically stands out to you as a ridiculous bit of probaganda?
It’s certainly not the most accurate or clinical, and some of the categories are a bit “eh”, but nothing popped out to me that I would describe so strongly.
If nothing else, it’s a lot more objective and grounded in reality than what they gave me in that dumb dare program. Might be why my reaction is just “close enough”.
Marijuana being a gateway drug.
It doesn’t say that I’m the text. It literally says that it is CALLED a gateway drug because of what SOME people do.
The information in the hallucinogenic section about acid flashbacks is incorrect. This was a false rumour spread in the 70s to demonize the political opponents of Nixon.
Hrm, I always thought it was just a mis-name for PTSD after an excessive dose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder
It looks like there’s at least a degree of clinical validation to it being a combo of PTSD and “sometimes colors stay funny for a while”.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of “the entire war on drugs, but particularly pot and heroin”?
That’s what I thought was an invention by the Nixon administration.Oh, HPPD is definitely a thing, but extraordinarily rare.
I may have misspoke about the brown acid - this was a legit warning resulting from “home-brew chemists” attempting to make their own LSD and failing to create it properly. Most of the supplies back then were direct from Sandoz (Novartis) and basically were being given away to the scientific community for novel testing. Fun stuff.
I’m talking about the hyperbole of “acid flashbacks” which was a narrative introduced to discourage and demonize LSD usage by the political and intellectual opponents of the Nixon administration. “Rots your brain permanently” and all that other garbage.
Turns out regular LSD usage by the “hippie” community and by many people involved in high-level education (particularly college and university professors) was making people feel more connected and empathetic towards one another, and that just didn’t do for the Republicans who needed everyone to fear “the other”.
What they also did with marijuana and heroin, and subsequently with crack cocaine, was truly abhorrent.
I agree, but I don’t think D.A.R.E. was dumb. It was just difficult to hear the personal opinions that officers had of people who had been on particular drugs that are so often used in a hospital setting. Between the time I was an infant to the time I was ten, I had already been hospitalized for various illnesses and injuries that sometimes required hospital grade medications. Try telling a third grade kid that she is a bad person because the hospital put her on intravenous pain medication after having both her radius and ulna completely broken in a fall from the school’s playground equipment.
On a side note, after so many hospitalizations in my life, I absolutely hate people who use drugs for fun.
Wait, so you think dare wasn’t dumb, but you have specific negative memories associated with it mischarecterizing drug users due to your legitimate usage?
I would call a program that makes children feel bad for going to the doctor “dumb”.Your dislike of people who use drugs because you went to the hospital a lot is quite strange. I’m not sure why those would be related.
Did they put you in the hospital, or make a police officer come to your school and tell you you were a bad person?Mind your own business and you’ll have a happier life, less hateful.
It’s everyone’s business when some recreational drug user makes bad choices that impact the lives of others.
And it’s everyone’s business that people like you make drug reform impossible, because all the science agrees that the only way to solve “the drug problem” is to legalise and regulate everything.
You’re suffering from the same bias that transphobes who say “I can always spot trans people” do; you’re simply unaware of how blindingly ignorant you are of the reality of the situation.
No, as someone who has had many of the medical drugs they discuss in D.A.R.E., I wouldn’t compare myself to some cis gendered person who happens to be transphobic. That would be comparing opposites. I’m a person who has been given morphine several times in surgery, and after hemorrhaging in labor. I don’t think the government should legalize recreational use of morphine and regulate it. That seems dumb to me. D.A.R.E. doesn’t seem dumb. Sorry if you feel differently, but I don’t think we should legalize all drugs. You might argue for different drugs being legalized. I don’t want people that hate me to be allowed to carry drugs that they might put into my food order at a restaurant, either. You can’t assume that people who want to legally carry, or keep, drugs want to do so for personal use. It isn’t safe to have people carrying drugs on them that can be used to poison others. Not everyone who is into drugs is looking to party with you. Some are looking to get rid of people.
“They’ve given me opiates in a medical setting so that’s why I know recreational drugs are bad for society”
So, to reiterate, exactly your type of intelligently stupid willfull ignorance is one of the main reasons that we have so many drug problems. If people like you weren’t brainwashed so easily, if you actually spent even a tiny bit of time looking into this subject, you’d realise you’re wrong. But you won’t. You won’t.
I’ve argued about this longer than most of Lemmy users have been alive. I know all the science. I bet you know none of it.
Drug prohibition does not work and anyone who supports it is either ignorant or directly benefitting from the illegal drug trade. That’s it. There’s no other alternatives. There is not a single logical reason to keep the prohibition according to science. Everything improves with proper legal frameworks in which to sell the drugs that clearly can not be effectively banned.
This isn’t about “feelings”. It’s about cold facts. And the fact is that by your rhetoric, by your behaviour, you’re indirectly enabling drug abuse and all the heinous shit that cartels get up to. That is unless you’re willing to admit you’re wrong and start supporting a complete reformation of this inane law. That’s the only moral position.
It isn’t safe to have people carrying drugs on them that can be used to poison others.
These are the types of weird fantasy scenarios you have to make up and it still doesn’t even work, in the slightest. There are a dozen more dangerous chemicals in everyone’s cleaning cupboard than anything you’d find sold as a recreational substance. Why aren’t they banned? Why are people allowed to handle gasoline by themselves? You know you could torch people with gasoline, right? And we allow people to drive around in metal hunks filled with gas, as incredibly velocities? You know you can die just from falling down, right? You walk on the street, every day. Anyone could push you and with bad luck, kill you.
People like you honestly never stop to think about the things you say. They make absolutely no sense. And it doesn’t matter to you that you can’t make a single thing make sense when you’re trying to defend the drug prohibition. No… it’s just been stamped to your brain that “DRUGS = WRONG” and you don’t have the cognitive capability to question that.
Here, have a listen to what a former police officer who used to infiltrate drug gangs has to say about the war on drugs: https://youtu.be/y_TV4GuXFoA?si=SXdIKIP1ON43N594&t=716 (Hint: his memoir is called “Good Cop, Bad War”)
There is literally no other option than to have a properly managed and regulated legal trade of these recreational substances. To keep the situation were currently in, willfully, is to willfully endanger lives, perpetuate drug ABUSE (not use, which is different) and to support criminal gangs which don’t give a fuck about anyone.
Oh right, that copper is just one guy. Hmm how about https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/world-leaders-call-for-legalisation-of-drugs
And I could literally paste studies and data here for several comments to max char limit and it still wouldn’t even make you question that maybe you should question your feelings on the matter in accordance with reality. I know it won’t, because I’ve had this exact same argument a million times, and it’s always the same. If you really wanted there to be less problems caused by drugs, you’d be in favour of legalising them, as backwards as it must sound to you. Because legalising is the only way to take the market out of the hands of the criminals, as the market will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER die.
You think that would end the illegal drug trade? People can legally own guns. They are legal to own and we have regulations for owning them. Guess what is still traded on the black market, and moved by gangs for cash? Guns are. Legalizing drugs will not solve the problem. Instead, you will have food service workers carrying drugs like opium on them, without legal repercussions. You want a blueberry smoothie your ex is making for you on your next lunch break? I guess it depends on who that is making it, and how much they hate you. I would hope they chose a lifestyle that didn’t involve drugs. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a drive-thru order for you. Wouldn’t want someone to get drugs in their food and then drive away while consuming it.
I don’t have to agree with you. I just see too many problems arising from legalizing all drugs, as you suggested.
I get the sense that the author hasn’t tried many or any of these substances and is trotting out the standard line. I didn’t see alcohol, cigarettes and Oxycontin mentioned.
If we’re going to have an adult conversation about addictive substances we should first talk about sugar and junk food. We should also discuss the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, lack of healthcare and community, ignorance of mental health, motor vehicles, pollution, the criminal justice system, Judeo-Christian culture and being a person of colour. Those will form the major risk factors for human health.
we should first talk about sugar and junk food
Absolutely not. Cigarettes are way way way more dangerous than sugar and junk-food
I have never in my life heard anyone actually call weed “dope.”
“Dope” is heroin, and its derivatives and relations.
Dope is 100% also used for weed. Maybe just less common for the younger gens.
