Recreational Drug Use Legalization

[TheMercenary]

LSD and Ecstasy are hardly safe drugs. Same for shrooms, maybe to a less extent depending on the person using them.

[TheMercenary]

MDMA
Health Hazards

For some people, MDMA can be addictive. A survey of young adult and adolescent MDMA users found that 43 percent of those who reported ecstasy use met the accepted diagnostic criteria for dependence, as evidenced by continued use despite knowledge of physical or psychological harm, withdrawal effects, and tolerance (or diminished response), and 34 percent met the criteria for drug abuse. Almost 60 percent of people who use MDMA report withdrawal symptoms, including fatigue, loss of appetite, depressed feelings, and trouble concentrating.

Cognitive Effects
Chronic users of MDMA perform more poorly than nonusers on certain types of cognitive or memory tasks. Some of these effects may be due to the use of other drugs in combination with MDMA, among other factors.

Physical Effects
In high doses, MDMA can interfere with the body’s ability to regulate temperature. On rare but unpredictable occasions, this can lead to a sharp increase in body temperature (hyperthermia), resulting in liver, kidney, and cardiovascular system failure, and death.

Because MDMA can interfere with its own metabolism (breakdown within the body), potentially harmful levels can be reached by repeated drug use within short intervals.

Users of MDMA face many of the same risks as users of other stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamines. These include increases in heart rate and blood pressure, a special risk for people with circulatory problems or heart disease, and other symptoms such as muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, faintness, and chills or sweating.

Psychological Effects
These can include confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, and severe anxiety. These problems can occur during and sometimes days or weeks after taking MDMA.

Neurotoxicity
Research in animals links MDMA exposure to long-term damage to neurons that are involved in mood, thinking, and judgment. A study in nonhuman primates showed that exposure to MDMA for only 4 days caused damage to serotonin nerve terminals that was evident 6 to 7 years later. While similar neurotoxicity has not been definitively shown in humans, the wealth of animal research indicating MDMA's damaging properties suggests that MDMA is not a safe drug for human consumption.

Hidden Risk: Drug Purity
Other drugs chemically similar to MDMA, such as MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine, the parent drug of MDMA) and PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine, associated with fatalities in the U.S. and Australia) are sometimes sold as ecstasy. These drugs can be neurotoxic or create additional health risks to the user. Also, ecstasy tablets may contain other substances in addition to MDMA, such as ephedrine (a stimulant); dextromethorphan (DXM, a cough suppressant that has PCP-like effects at high doses); ketamine (an anesthetic used mostly by veterinarians that also has PCP-like effects); caffeine; cocaine; and methamphetamine. While the combination of MDMA with one or more of these drugs may be inherently dangerous, users might also combine them with substances such as marijuana and alcohol, putting themselves at further physical risk.


Extent of Use

National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)*
In 2004, an estimated 450,000 people in the U.S. age 12 and older used MDMA in the past 30 days. Ecstasy use dropped significantly among persons 18 to 25—from 14.8 percent in 2003 to 13.8 percent in 2004 for lifetime use, and from 3.7 percent to 3.1 percent for past year use. Other 2004 NSDUH results show significant reductions in lifetime and past year use among 18- to 20-year-olds, reductions in past month use for 14- or 15-year-olds, and past year and past month reductions in use among females.

Community Epidemiology Work Group (CEWG)**
In many of the areas monitored by CEWG members, MDMA, once used primarily at dance clubs, raves, and college scenes, is being used in a number of other social settings. In addition, some members reported increased use of MDMA among African-American and Hispanic populations.

Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey ***
Lifetime**** use dropped significantly among 12th-graders in 2005, from 7.5 percent in 2004 to 5.4 percent. The perceived risk in occasional MDMA use declined significantly among 8th-graders in 2005, and perceived availability decreased among 12th-graders.

[TheMercenary]

LSD
Health Hazards
The effects of LSD are unpredictable. They depend on the amount taken; the user's personality, mood, and expectations; and the surroundings in which the drug is used. Usually, the user feels the first effects of the drug 30 to 90 minutes after taking it. The physical effects include dilated pupils, higher body temperature, increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, dry mouth, and tremors.

Sensations and feelings change much more dramatically than the physical signs. The user may feel several different emotions at once or swing rapidly from one emotion to another. If taken in a large enough dose, the drug produces delusions and visual hallucinations. The user’s sense of time and self changes. Sensations may seem to "cross over," giving the user the feeling of hearing colors and seeing sounds. These changes can be frightening and can cause panic.

Users refer to their experience with LSD as a "trip" and to acute adverse reactions as a "bad trip." These experiences are long; typically they begin to clear after about 12 hours.

Some LSD users experience severe, terrifying thoughts and feelings, fear of losing control, fear of insanity and death, and despair while using LSD. Some fatal accidents have occurred during states of LSD intoxication.

Many LSD users experience flashbacks, recurrence of certain aspects of a person's experience, without the user having taken the drug again. A flashback occurs suddenly, often without warning, and may occur within a few days or more than a year after LSD use. Flashbacks usually occur in people who use hallucinogens chronically or have an underlying personality problem; however, otherwise healthy people who use LSD occasionally may also have flashbacks. Bad trips and flashbacks are only part of the risks of LSD use. LSD users may manifest relatively long-lasting psychoses, such as schizophrenia or severe depression. It is difficult to determine the extent and mechanism of the LSD involvement in these illnesses.

Most users of LSD voluntarily decrease or stop its use over time. LSD is not considered an addictive drug since it does not produce compulsive drug-seeking behavior, as do cocaine, amphetamine, heroin, alcohol, and nicotine. However, like many of the addictive drugs, LSD produces tolerance, so some users who take the drug repeatedly must take progressively higher doses to achieve the state of intoxication that they had previously achieved. This is an extremely dangerous practice, given the unpredictability of the drug.


Extent of Use
Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey*
Lifetime** use dropped significantly among 12th-graders from 2004 to 2005, while annual and 30-day use remained stable. (Also see the InfoFacts on High School and Youth Trends.) Perceived availability of the drug fell among 12th-graders for this same period.

[Undertoad]

Quality variations are never as much a problem with legal drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies.

It doesn't matter how harmful the effects are. People need to be invested in their own choices. We can put up a guardrail but we simply can't hand-hold every single person's brain through their experience with altering their consciousness. Life is full of dangers and in some ways we are thankful for that, because if it weren't we would become complacent and fat and stupid.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Quality variations are never as much a problem with legal drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies.

It doesn't matter how harmful the effects are. People need to be invested in their own choices. We can put up a guardrail but we simply can't hand-hold every single person's brain through their experience with altering their consciousness. Life is full of dangers and in some ways we are thankful for that, because if it weren't we would become complacent and fat and stupid.

No doubt about that. But should we be responsible for the long term health care of these choices? Sure we do it with lots of other self inflicted disease, but should we draw the line for recreational drug users who screw themselves up and end up costing society in billions in direct and indirect costs?

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Quality variations are never as much a problem with legal drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies.

It doesn't matter how harmful the effects are. People need to be invested in their own choices. We can put up a guardrail but we simply can't hand-hold every single person's brain through their experience with altering their consciousness. Life is full of dangers and in some ways we are thankful for that, because if it weren't we would become complacent and fat and stupid.

I'm completely cool with that reasoning as I think people should take responsibility for their own choices but what happens when the more tender hearted among us feel that with let these poor people down? Create a new program to support them? Afterall, if we hadn't legalized it and basically forced the chemicals into their bodies they would certainly have continued upon their cherubic lives.

[TheMercenary]

More on LSD long term effects:

More on LSD

LSD users quickly develop a high degree of tolerance for the drug’s effects: After repeated use, they need increasingly larg e r doses to produce similar effects .
LSD use also produces tolerance for other hallucinogenic drugs
such as psilocybin and mescaline, but not to drugs such as marijuana,
amphetamines, and PCP, which do not act directly on the
serotonin receptors affected by LSD. Tolerance for LSD is shortlived—
it is lost if the user stops taking the drug for several days.
T h e re is no evidence that LSD produces physical withdrawal
symptoms when chronic use is stopped. Two long-term eff e c t s —
persistent psychosis and hallucinogen persisting perc e p t i o n
disorder (HPPD), more commonly re f e r red to as “flashbacks”—
have been associated with use of LSD. The causes of these
e ffects, which in some users occur after a single experience
with the drug, are not known. P s y c h o s i s . The effects of
LSD can be described as drug induced psychosis—distortion
or disorganization of a person’s capacity to recognize re a l i t y ,
think rationally, or communicate with others. Some LSD users
experience devastating psychological effects that persist after
the trip has ended, producing a long-lasting psychotic-like state.
LSD-induced persistent psychosis may include dramatic mood
swings from mania to pro found depression, vivid visual disturb -
ances, and hallucinations. These effects may last for years and
can affect people who have no history or other symptoms of
psychological disorder. Hallucinogen Persisting
Perception Disorder. Some former LSD users report experiences
known colloquially as “flashbacks” and called “HPPD”
by physicians. These episodes are spontaneous, repeated,
sometimes continuous recurrences of some of the sensory
distortions originally produced by LSD. The experience may
include hallucinations, but it most commonly consists of visual disturbances such as seeing false motion on the edges of the field of vision, bright or colored flashes,
and halos or trails attached to moving objects. This condition is
typically persistent and in some cases remains unchanged for years after individuals have
stopped using the drug. Because HPPD symptoms may be mistaken for those of other
neurological disorders such as stroke or brain tumors, sufferers
may consult a variety of clinicians b e f o re the disorder is accurately
diagnosed. There is no established treatment for HPPD,
although some antidepressant drugs may reduce the symptoms.
Psychotherapy may help patients adjust to the confusion associated
with visual distraction and to minimize the fear, expressed
by some, that they are suffering brain damage or psychiatric disorder.

[Undertoad]

The costs of police, courts, jails, prisons is higher than the costs of health care.

Putting people in jail is worse for them than the drugs we seek to protect them from.

[TheMercenary]

I don't consider prison or jail a place to protect people. It is punishment for breaking the law as it is written. Lord knows you aren't going to rehab hanging out with other loser criminals for a few years end on end.

Health care costs are only one of many elements where the cost of drug use is counted.

[regular.joe]

Well, legalize any substance that puts the person into the state of psychosis. Nice, and then ask them to make some decisions about life like, don't drive or do anything stupid or irrational that just might put some one else's life in danger.

I don't see the logic, or adult decision making about the society I live in there at all.

No they should not be legalized. Period.

[lumberjim]

glatt,

have you ever seen a tobacco plant? you smoke the leaves. you'd need a half acre under constant rotation to support one habit.

you can grow 6 plants in buckets in your basement and keep yourself high and sell some to your buddies, too.

[binky]

Okay field trip to LJ's basement

[Cicero]

Sometimes I'm more worried about the people that are on prescribed medication.

[Undertoad]

All this talk of "how'r we gonna pay for this..." is entirely irrelevant because the people are doing the drugs anyway, today, and getting paid for as it is, today.

Nowhere legalization has been tried, has there been a spike in new addicts.

[Cloud]

you can get paid for doing drugs?