Let Them Eat Pain

[MSimon]

Lugano, Switzerland –- A ground-breaking international collaborative survey, published today in Annals of Oncology, shows that more than half of the world’s population live in countries where regulations that aim to stem drug misuse leave cancer patients without access to opioid medicines for managing cancer pain.

http://classicalvalues.com/2013/11/let-them-have-pain/

[MSimon]

Reposted from: viewtopic.php?p=108339#p108339

D,

I was wondering. At the same time China was going opium mad opiates (including heroin after it was invented) were freely available in the US. Could you explain why our use rates never approached China's? Links if you have them.

There is some evidence that during prohibition, the average age of onset of alcohol use went down significantly, possibly because since alcohol sale was illegal in the first place, age restrictions on sales no longer applied. (A curious parallel can be seen today; young people take up using marijuana in greater percentages and at a younger age in the US than they do in the Netherlands, where marijuana is effectively legal but regulated.)

Alcohol prohibition was largely the work of religious conservatives who saw it as a way to combat the growing hedonism of urban dwellers; a return to old-time values and morality by attacking immoral lifestyles. The Protestant majority included in this category of 'social undesirables' the Catholics, whom they associated with alcohol use. Ironically, the passage of national prohibition marked the start of the Roaring Twenties, a period of drunken excess and sexual promiscuity that would not be equaled again until the Hippies.

Although alcohol use sharply declined immediately after the passage of prohibition, it immediately began an inexorable climb back up towards pre-ban usage levels. As public sentiment turned against prohibition, it became harder and harder to get juries to convict offenders. Finally admitting defeat, alcohol prohibition, America's "noble experiment", was repealed on December 5, 1933, and an unlucky thirteen years of government intrusion into people's lives ended in wild drunken celebrations.

http://thedea.org/prohibhistory.html

Not mentioned was the M/F ratio imbalance post WW1 and in the hippie era. As usual the "moralists" had the wrong target.

Instead of looking at some very old book for guidance they should have relied on modern research. Of no matter these days. The old religions are dying out. Gone in Europe and in a death spiral in the US. It is sad because there is some value there. The important values will be refound come the collapse. The unimportant ones will join the dust bin of history.

This final paragraph from an anti-opiate article most mirrors my understanding.

What none of the solutions—whether tending toward radical reform, or severe enforcement—addresses is the impulse that led Pavel to drugs in the first place. He is a lawyer who runs a market stall, a frustrated man who evidently prefers to corrode his veins rather than prolong his misery with sobriety and good health. Ultimately, the solution to the drug problem might be the solution to the problem of life, which is how to navigate our time here with minimal suffering. Unfortunately, the policy that offers that solution will be not a drug policy but an existential one, and it remains as elusive as ever.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113051/

I think it explains why we didn't have the opiate problems the Chinese did. We were never as unhappy. That is corroborated by our Vietnam experience where 45% of our soldiers used heroin in country and within a year in the US that number was greatly reduced. Conditions in the US were better than those in 'Nam.

Some links to the 'Nam study:

In Vietnam, soldiers who drank heavily almost never used heroin, and the people who used heroin only rarely drank. The mystery of the gateway drug was revealed to be mostly a matter of choice and availability. One way or another, addicts found their way to the gate, and pushed on through.
http://addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com/201 ... study.html

So our alcohol addiction of the pre-1914 period may have prevented heroin addiction. But the problem was neither alcohol nor heroin. It was harsh living conditions. When those abated only those with PTSD remained alcohol or heroin "addicts". And of course our "moralists" insist that punishing people with PTSD will cure them. Forgetting that it was trauma that gave them the PTSD in the first place. How Christian. I forgive those of the earlier era. All this was not well understood. I do not forgive those of this era where the understanding is freely available and rejected.

http://www.rkp.wustl.edu/VESlit/RobinsAddiction1993.pdf

Well all this misunderstanding is coming to an end. About 58% now favor general pot legalization and that number is still growing. On top of that the numbers favoring med pot legalization is in the 80% range. Once the drug hysteria dies down a rational look at the other drugs will be possible. Probably not in my lifetime for the other drugs. But it is coming. Because we will look at medical science rather than religion for answers. Another nail in the coffin of religion.

[Diogenes]

Reposted from: viewtopic.php?p=108339#p108339

D,

I was wondering. At the same time China was going opium mad opiates (including heroin after it was invented) were freely available in the US. Could you explain why our use rates never approached China's? Links if you have them.

No Simon, I will not explain it. I will not explain it because i've already explained it fifteen hundred times to you, but here you are again, asking me to explain it once more.


You don't want an explanation, you simply want to keep repeating your mantra about drugs previously being legal.


That is all you want to do. You do not want to debate, you want to propagandize. You want to deliberately mislead people into believing that drugs were not outlawed because they were killing people, but because of racism, or some desire to CONTROL people's vices or some other nonsensical thing.


And all of this distortion just to justify Marijuana.

[Jccarlton]

Reposted from: viewtopic.php?p=108339#p108339

D,

I was wondering. At the same time China was going opium mad opiates (including heroin after it was invented) were freely available in the US. Could you explain why our use rates never approached China's? Links if you have them.

No Simon, I will not explain it. I will not explain it because i've already explained it fifteen hundred times to you, but here you are again, asking me to explain it once more.


You don't want an explanation, you simply want to keep repeating your mantra about drugs previously being legal.


That is all you want to do. You do not want to debate, you want to propagandize. You want to deliberately mislead people into believing that drugs were not outlawed because they were killing people, but because of racism, or some desire to CONTROL people's vices or some other nonsensical thing.


And all of this distortion just to justify Marijuana.

Diogenes,
Just because he's propagandizing on this stuff doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. The more I look into the people who originally set up the drug laws in the first place, the loonier they get. Now Msimon might be obsessing about the pot thing. But the people who put the laws in place were worse, by far. Looking back at all the outrageous claims made by the prohibition crowd for alchohol and extending that to drug use, I have come to realize that much of the stuff I and probably most of is were taught in school was wrong and may be pure propaganda. Once you realize that those people were rigging their studies to get the results they wanted, it's hard to mak an objective judgment anymore. The problem is that once one study gets rigged, they all become suspect. Yes, addiction is bad. But is addiction a symptom or the disease? Are those people sick because they are addicted or addicted because they are sick? The longer I look at it the more convinced I am that addiction is a symptom and not the disease itself. That the problem is not drug prohibition, but the control freak and the sick society they have made for us.

[Diogenes]

Diogenes,
Just because he's propagandizing on this stuff doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. The more I look into the people who originally set up the drug laws in the first place, the loonier they get. Now Msimon might be obsessing about the pot thing. But the people who put the laws in place were worse, by far.

What on earth are you talking about? Those patent medicines were killing people right and left. The pure food and drug act of 1906 was passed in response to a need for accurate labeling on ingredients. Too many of various concoctions contained dangerous drugs. Indeed, most of the "magic ingredient" in them turned out to be opium or cocaine.

Looking back at all the outrageous claims made by the prohibition crowd for alchohol and extending that to drug use,

You cannot extend it to drug use. As I pointed out above, it is a very different thing to take a drug like alcohol which has been used by humanity for several thousand years, and for which there was an already existing high demand, and compare it to a more dangerous drug such as cocaine, for which the demand was only getting started.

It is either naive or dishonest to do so.

I have come to realize that much of the stuff I and probably most of is were taught in school was wrong and may be pure propaganda. Once you realize that those people were rigging their studies to get the results they wanted, it's hard to mak an objective judgment anymore.

Again, what are you talking about? I presume you are referring to the efforts to criminalize Marijuana, (about which there may actually be a point) and are ignoring the very real dangers posed by opium and cocaine.


You have an example of a study rigged to make opium or cocaine more dangerous? I know of no such studies. Those drugs ARE dangerous. I've seen cocaine and meth abuse first hand.

The problem is that once one study gets rigged, they all become suspect. Yes, addiction is bad. But is addiction a symptom or the disease? Are those people sick because they are addicted or addicted because they are sick? The longer I look at it the more convinced I am that addiction is a symptom and not the disease itself. That the problem is not drug prohibition, but the control freak and the sick society they have made for us.

Simon will argue that addiction is a symptom of a larger cause of unhappiness within individuals. In some cases he asserts the root is a naturally occurring chemical imbalance in a person's biochemistry, and in others some sort of mental anguish caused by life's traumas.

My position is that life's traumas will not evaporate when someone decides to dose themselves with plant toxins. Indeed, they generally make things worse, and the problems caused thereby generally spill over onto people around them.

As for naturally occurring chemical imbalances that need to be corrected by medication? Get a D@mn doctor to sign off on it by providing scientific proof of the condition.


As for whether or not the chicken comes before the egg, I will say that there appear to be those in society for whom addiction is not a problem if they never come in contact with an addictive substance. It stands to reason that with the differences in people's biochemistry, not all have the same level of dependency on various known addictive substances.


I have met people who tried crack and heroin, and walked away from it. I have known others who became snagged on their first hit of crack.

[GIThruster]

. . .it is a very different thing to take a drug like alcohol which has been used by humanity for several thousand years, and for which there was an already existing high demand, and compare it to a more dangerous drug such as cocaine, for which the demand was only getting started.

It's important too, to draw the proper distinctions between them based on what they do to a person. Cocaine gives people heart failure, as does ecstasy, and lots of other stimulants. Cannabis separates people from reality and makes them psychotic. If you spend any time around the mentally ill, or with workers who work with the mentally ill, everyone: doctors, patients, nurses, therapists, simply EVERYONE will tell you that the very worst thing someone who has any sort of mental health challenge can do is use cannabis. They're tell you they don't know which is the chicken and which the egg, but they are damned sure that every person who goes through the doors knows cannabis is contraindicated. It is what makes most people crazy. You can pretend it is harmless, but it is not. We did not have the sheer numbers of mental health problems in this country before Vietnam that we have now. The mental health problems society faces now are the direct result of rising cannabis use.

It doesn't take much to observe this. The champion of drug use here is sitting at home without a job for fifteen years, living off the taxpayer, because he's a drug addict. Do you think that would be true if he didn't have access to drugs? Of course not. If he had grow up in a society where drugs were not easily available, he probably would have finished school, landed a good job and been a productive member of society all these years, instead of a sponge.

So really, don;'t even put cannabis in the same category as alcohol. They're not even close. Alcohol is a depressant and muscle relaxant. Too much alcohol makes you go to sleep. Ex is a stimulant. I makes healthy people die while having an orgasm. Cannabis is an hallucinogen. It makes you see things that aren't there. None of these are anything like the others.

[Jccarlton]

Diogenes,
Just because he's propagandizing on this stuff doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. The more I look into the people who originally set up the drug laws in the first place, the loonier they get. Now Msimon might be obsessing about the pot thing. But the people who put the laws in place were worse, by far.

What on earth are you talking about? Those patent medicines were killing people right and left. The pure food and drug act of 1906 was passed in response to a need for accurate labeling on ingredients. Too many of various concoctions contained dangerous drugs. Indeed, most of the "magic ingredient" in them turned out to be opium or cocaine.

Looking back at all the outrageous claims made by the prohibition crowd for alchohol and extending that to drug use,

How do I know the studies were rigged? Because the food and rug act had as it's father a power hungry crusader:
http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/on ... wiley.aspx
Once you get one of the these guys on the warpath you can expect that reasoned arguments and facts go right out the window and that everything goes in the name of "The Cause." That's one pattern that keeps repeating itself. The one thing I do know is that somewhere along the line there are lies involved. Especially when said crusader has things like a poison squad and says he's being thwarted by unnamed "interests." I might not be able to find all the details through the accretions of a century of propaganda telling us how important the bureaucrats of the FDA are and how they keep us all safe, but I can spot the patterns that all the things seem to have. Maybe the Food And Drug Act didn't come about in pile of lies, propaganda, muckraking and backroom deals, but the evidence seems to show that that's exactly what happened and if it didn't it would be a first.


You cannot extend it to drug use. As I pointed out above, it is a very different thing to take a drug like alcohol which has been used by humanity for several thousand years, and for which there was an already existing high demand, and compare it to a more dangerous drug such as cocaine, for which the demand was only getting started.

It is either naive or dishonest to do so.

I have come to realize that much of the stuff I and probably most of is were taught in school was wrong and may be pure propaganda. Once you realize that those people were rigging their studies to get the results they wanted, it's hard to mak an objective judgment anymore.

Again, what are you talking about? I presume you are referring to the efforts to criminalize Marijuana, (about which there may actually be a point) and are ignoring the very real dangers posed by opium and cocaine.


You have an example of a study rigged to make opium or cocaine more dangerous? I know of no such studies. Those drugs ARE dangerous. I've seen cocaine and meth abuse first hand.

The problem is that once one study gets rigged, they all become suspect. Yes, addiction is bad. But is addiction a symptom or the disease? Are those people sick because they are addicted or addicted because they are sick? The longer I look at it the more convinced I am that addiction is a symptom and not the disease itself. That the problem is not drug prohibition, but the control freak and the sick society they have made for us.

Simon will argue that addiction is a symptom of a larger cause of unhappiness within individuals. In some cases he asserts the root is a naturally occurring chemical imbalance in a person's biochemistry, and in others some sort of mental anguish caused by life's traumas.

My position is that life's traumas will not evaporate when someone decides to dose themselves with plant toxins. Indeed, they generally make things worse, and the problems caused thereby generally spill over onto people around them.

As for naturally occurring chemical imbalances that need to be corrected by medication? Get a D@mn doctor to sign off on it by providing scientific proof of the condition.


As for whether or not the chicken comes before the egg, I will say that there appear to be those in society for whom addiction is not a problem if they never come in contact with an addictive substance. It stands to reason that with the differences in people's biochemistry, not all have the same level of dependency on various known addictive substances.


I have met people who tried crack and heroin, and walked away from it. I have known others who became snagged on their first hit of crack.

[Diogenes]

What on earth are you talking about? Those patent medicines were killing people right and left. The pure food and drug act of 1906 was passed in response to a need for accurate labeling on ingredients. Too many of various concoctions contained dangerous drugs. Indeed, most of the "magic ingredient" in them turned out to be opium or cocaine.

How do I know the studies were rigged? Because the food and rug act had as it's father a power hungry crusader:
http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/on ... wiley.aspx

Your link does not seem to establish that he was a power hungry crusader. The evidence supplied could just as well apply to a man with a conscience concerned about adulterated foods and dangerous drugs. He didn't even start out concerned with drugs. His primary interest was food adulteration, and he eventually extended his concerns to adulterated drugs.

I'm not getting the "Power Hungry" vibe from him unless you consider being "director of the Good Housekeeping Bureau of Foods, Sanitation, and Health" to be a particularly powerful position.

Once you get one of the these guys on the warpath you can expect that reasoned arguments and facts go right out the window and that everything goes in the name of "The Cause."

Yes, Fanatics can be a problem, but I have seen no evidence indicating that a law requiring accurate labeling of food and drug ingredients was the product of some sort of fanaticism. Coca (Cocaine) Cola was popular for many years (18) before people started noticing a problem. The whole thing looks like a normally evolved progress from evidence to conclusions.

That's one pattern that keeps repeating itself. The one thing I do know is that somewhere along the line there are lies involved. Especially when said crusader has things like a poison squad and says he's being thwarted by unnamed "interests." I might not be able to find all the details through the accretions of a century of propaganda telling us how important the bureaucrats of the FDA are and how they keep us all safe, but I can spot the patterns that all the things seem to have. Maybe the Food And Drug Act didn't come about in pile of lies, propaganda, muckraking and backroom deals, but the evidence seems to show that that's exactly what happened and if it didn't it would be a first.

You haven't presented any evidence that it was the product of lies, propaganda, muckraking and backroom deals. The link you provided argues to the contrary; That it came about through an evolved process starting with concern for the public health.


Just how is it a bad thing to require an ingredients label?

[MSimon]

D,

I don't expect you to ever get it. Your income depends on your not getting it. The more money spent on Prohibition the more secure your job.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

It is why you don't speak out on the depredations done to the Black community by selective enforcement as recounted by a Black former DEA Agent starting at about 2 minutes in: http://youtu.be/HmgeCeGk--I

And to hear you rant about people on the government teat is a hoot. Me? I'm hoping to land a contract in the military industrial complex doing technical/cost audits on contracts. The difference between us is that despite my pro-defense attitude I am aware that it is just a different form of welfare. But maybe I can do something to lower costs a little.

Besides when Obama's ineptness causes the balloon to go up we are going to need all the military hardware and talent available. Even if it is way overpriced.

[MSimon]

The link you provided argues to the contrary; That it came about through an evolved process starting with concern for the public health.

Nope. Its original basis was racism. When Timothy Leary got the Federal laws struck down new laws were enacted based on "health". They made pot a schedule one substance because they claimed it had no medical value.

The science says otherwise. http://rockford-for-safe-access.blogspot.com/ FWIW about 80% of Americans favor legal medical cannabis. The government anti-drug agencies have no credibility in the matter.

Here are some government links on medical uses:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?ter ... annabinoid

http://search.nih.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9 ... nnabinoids

And of course the racism continues. Blacks are far more severely punished for violations of the law than whites. A former Black DEA agent explains it starting at about 2 minutes in: http://youtu.be/HmgeCeGk--I

The usual assumption is that the Prohibitionist answer to how a society should deal with drug use was born purely of a noble desire to protect users from harming themselves. The real story...is far less virtuous.

<snip>

The Black Menace

<snip>

In the US, cocaine abuse was associated with black men, first in the form of laborers using the drug to increase endurance while working long, grueling hours, then in the form of widespread use by Jazz musicians at scandalously racially integrated nightclubs. In yet another echo of opium's history, the press began to spread lurid stories of "cocaine crazed Negroes" attacking white women in the southern states. In response to this fear of drug-fueled blacks, some police departments switched to more powerful handguns out of concern that their current pistols were not powerful enough to bring down such rampaging monsters. Later, Harry Anslinger (head of what would eventually become the DEA) called for harsher penalties for cocaine by describing scenes of racially mixed groups dancing together at clubs under the presumptive influence of cocaine.

http://thedea.org/prohibhistory.html

Of course the answer to cocaine, opiates, and alcohol etc. in medicines is labeling. Prohibition just moves the stuff to the black market. But black markets guarantee police and ancillary jobs. The more police the more police radios and other police hardware of all kinds. And that is only one small part of the police state required to "enforce" prohibition.

The police are doing a terrible job. The last time I saw an estimate (they quit giving them out the numbers are so bad) the police were getting 10% of the flows. I remember a 20 ton cocaine bust in LA some years back. The reports at the time said the price of cocaine didn't even twitch.

Fortunately we have Blacks like Matt Fogg in the above video who actually have some moral sense. At least after they have retired.

For your amusement:

http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/10/04/dr ... -cocaine2/

http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/09/27/si ... -cocaine2/

Clinton, Mena, Iran Contra, and Cocaine http://youtu.be/nxaFGsdGxnc

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/PO ... _mena.html

http://etherzone.com/1998/reich3.html

"If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched."

-- George Bush, cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter

http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/PO ... A/mena.php

You can see Sarah McClendon in action in this video: http://youtu.be/nxaFGsdGxnc

I don't see how you can stop drugs when our own government brings them in.

[MSimon]

Judge Billy Murphy talks about the racism of the Drug War http://youtu.be/fQp_ZeEF2U8