Removing impurities is really tricky, but that said, it’s not like industry grade equipment and operations are being used here to manufacture it. There may be a simple step or two that would help significantly reduce impurities.
Your comment also made me realize for the first time, a lot of these illicit drugs are made by hobbyists, so to speak, not professional manufacturers. Just knowledge isn’t enough, and I say that as a chemical engineer. If I tried to synthesize anything at home it would have a high degree of impurity – even if I bought some nice lab equipment.
There’s probably a lot of benefit in having the government subsidize a pharma company to make high purity drugs. The impurities could be responsible for a lot of side effects.
I bet many go out of their way to avoid getting proper equipment because those purchases can get them on a list. It’s legally safer to produce sketchy shit, and since you’re breaking the law anyways, who cares if what you’re selling is really what you say it is.
Profit comes from volume, you can take the risk of selling to as many people as possible or you can inflate your volume with other cheaper shit and never even consider the bit of powder that remained in a lethal dose-sized clump as you mixed it.
That’s like saying that the best way to reduce harm from alcohol is to make good strong alcohol cheap so people wouldn’t drink eau-de-cologne and denaturate.
Problems with alcohol are not limited to it sometimes being mixed with poison.
Problems with cocaine didn’t start with it becoming illegal.
Let’s please not talk as if it’s normal to consume it.
You brought quite a lot of things together, and I’d say they should be addressed separately if you want to get your message across.
On my part, for example - USSR wasn’t holy, but its demise instead of improvement is a giant tradegy that still negatively echoes in the world history.
Someone else would say there’s nothing wrong with prostitution, for example.
Some would point out folk medicine is not all entirely wrong even by medical science standards and it becomes a problem when patients ignore science in favor of unproven methods.
And at the end of it, you end up with the comment that is half wrong, and the message poorly sent.
On my part, for example - USSR wasn’t holy, but its demise instead of improvement is a giant tradegy that still negatively echoes in the world history.
I agree, but that’s not the position I described.
Someone else would say there’s nothing wrong with prostitution, for example.
Definitely better than alcoholism.
Some would point out folk medicine is not all entirely wrong even by medical science standards and it becomes a problem when patients ignore science in favor of unproven methods.
The latter is what I meant exactly.
And at the end of it, you end up with the comment that is half wrong, and the message poorly sent.
That depends on reader’s interpretation, so you are basically ascribing your own choices to me. If something isn’t clear, it doesn’t mean you can pick the wrong variant and ascribe it to author of that comment. It just means you can ask.
My point wasn’t about the content of statements, but about how such wide statements going way beyond original question will inevitably cause conflict and will drive your point across less effectively.
What the actual fuck are you talking about? The fall of USSR was the second best thing that ever happened to the country I was born in. The first was the end of nazi occupation. Although the negative consequences are still echoing through the entire eastern block.
As I said - USSR was by no means holy, and some regions, particularly forcefully occupied states of Eastern Europe, gained quite a lot from its downfall.
I’m talking about a more global effect, particularly economic and political pressure USSR exerted on major capitalist powers. It was a simple sign: “the policies we implement do work, your workers can and will demand them, and you better do it or the same revolution will strip you out of all your riches”.
Pretty much since its inception, USSR was able to literally shift global policies regarding working conditions and universally available services. It’s after severe protests in pre-Nazi Germany and USSR that all major powers suddenly decided to shorten the work day from 10-12 hours to 8, then from 6 days a week to 5, introduced (except for US) full universal healthcare and higher edication, and many more policies we take for granted today.
Then, when USSR went into its demise, the improvements stopped. The income inequality rose significantly in most major economies, going straight up through the roof in the US, UK, Canada and Germany. Same happened to the post-Soviet countries themselves, even though it has been at first greatly compensated by the sheer volume of money coming from foreign investors. Social services started to receive less funding, and population is more in debt than ever.
If anything, USSR was the force that kept major powers in check and didn’t allow capitalism to do what it does best - concentrate wealth, population be damned. I know capitalism can look like magic when your country has got significant economic boost in living memory, but global trends show a very different picture.
It’s after severe protests in pre-Nazi Germany and USSR that all major powers suddenly decided to shorten the work day from 10-12 hours to 8
Some industries in the west has been adopting the 10 or 8 hour working day even before the soviet union has existed. And this is going to be only my personal speculations, but as the nature of the work itself has been changing over time, so did the time requirements.
from 6 days a week to 5
It’s funny that you mention that, because one thing that I distinctly remember from what my parents and grandparents has been telling me about the previous regime was something called “working saturday of honor”, when the workers were mandated to come work an extra day. Some of them were to compensate for the state holidays, some just to ramp up the productivity.
Tell that to my two infrequent user friends who decided to share some cocaine at home, after going out the bar, catching up after not seeing each other for a while who both died from fentanyl overdose.
Inert cutting agents that simply dilute the product are not type of impurities in the sense that I was talking about. And I think there’s clear.
Also. when inert cutting agents are used without the user knowing the potency they are more liable to overdose. Legal and regulated cocaine would not have fentanyl or levamisole etc, and the potency would be printed on the bottle.
tbh america and domestic mass shootings are pretty much synonymous at this point. this time (this one rare time) an immediate association with the us seems appropriate.
Nope, you can’t. Unless you inherit some substantial sum, choose the very cheapest place or you aren’t in the top 5-10% of earners with a wife/spouse also earning equally good and with no children
Me and my wife earn quiet a lot, we have 150K+ in savings but it still was not the right one there on the market and right now we are not yet ready to make any compromises.
I’m sorry, but a 10% drop isn’t a “plummet.” That’s a dip. Sure, it’s a big dip; but when prices have gone up 300% in 15 years and roughly 10% every year in general the last 2 decades, this is just a down year.
Man, I just don’t get how that many people would like coke. It’s a shitty high, that doesn’t last nearly long enough, that has massive implications for your long term health, and it costs way too much for what you get. $50 of weed = enough for a week+. $50 of coke = maybe 30m if you’re not sharing. I’m glad I never really got it, it’s too much of a rich persons drug for me to have ever been able to service an addiction to it.
Worth noting that a gram of coke currently goes for a nationwide average of around 100-150 USD in Switzerland, and about 200-250 in the US, per the data I looked up.
Different supply levels of and ease of access to various drugs make them comparatively more or less expensive. Combine that will a user base of above-average wealth and it makes sense.
I agree regarding the absolute value of the two drugs though. Coke is fine, I suppose, but nothing I want to shell out the money for - but then again, I’m not in Switzerland so who knows.
Holy fuck prices have gone up since I got sober. The current Swiss price is higher than the street price where i am in the US in 2012 when I last did the stuff.
Note: unless you know someone, MOST cocaine you get (especially in the US) is complete shit and has been for decades. Likely less that half actually cocaine.
So unless you have a contact up the food and I mean really up the chain. You’re not getting cocaine in the US, you’re get a mix of street trash with some Fentanyl to make you get the numb lips, vibrate sense. (unless they put too much in and then you die)
This is the main reason that legalization and regulation should be considered, at least in my opinion. People are going to do drugs, until the end of time. Even if it means playing Russian roulette with Fentanyl, they are still going to do it. We should focus on harm prevention and rehabilitation, not punishment.
Yup, I had a friend OD a few years ago. Had moved out of the city and got clean. Came back visiting and was just going to have “night” out and got bad shit.
Not really the same as cocaine, but I feel the same way whenever I see cigarette prices now. I remember being able to get a pack of GPCs for a dollar before I quit in 2000.
Always found coke highs were like an hour or two max, maybe mine wasn’t best but all night? Mean it wasn’t nothing after an hour but it was at the stage where coke’s name should be ‘more?’. If it did that to me in my party days I’d have said it was cut with some speedy stuff. That said I had a decent tolerance to most things at that point so my experience may not be usual either but it may not just be quality level is all I’m saying.
I’ve found the initial rush of coke to last for maybe an hour or two, but then there’s an afterglow where you’re still feeling it but not to the same intensity. The problem is that people will want to re-up as soon as the initial rush wears off which causes a much higher rate of usage.
You have it the other way around. Amphetamines last for QUITE a bit longer than cocaine does. Cocaine lasts like 90 minutes max, 30 minute peak at best if your body chemistry allows it. You can get high as fuck off a single dose of speed and be good for several hours, like a 4 hour peak.
Also, nobody is cutting that shit together, have you ever even done either of those drugs before? You’d know that you can’t mix the two, you’re either going to get high off the coke or the amphetamine, that’s because the coke will block amphetamines so you’re basically just going to get extra stimulation and that’s it.
I know this thread is about cocaine but you made a blanket statement about people using drugs having mental health problems. There’s plenty of recreational drugs out there and people use them for all sort of reasons, some of them might have mental health issues, none of them need your judgement.
And it’s not just the coke parties you don’t get invited to.
I didn’t say every one using drugs has mental health issues. Wrong user.
I will say that drug users live in this weird bubble that over normalizes it. Most people are “boring” and don’t do more than light drinking. We have parties. We have a good time. We don’t generally want to hang out with coke heads.
Sorry I thought i was replying to op’s smart comeback.
I will say that you too are putting “drug users” in one big bunch and judging them. No one wants to hang out with coke heads, I did mention recreational use. Your boring friends that only do light drinking are recreational drug users too BTW.
Just making sure you don’t claim something on people who didn’t say it.
Also, your stance on me and other anti-drug folks as boring nerds who know no fun is hilarious to say the least and only reinforces the notion about drug heads not imagining what genuine fun even is.
Imagine that for a second. No coke. No weed. No alcohol. Just a company of close friends, evening talks, board games, and tea. You don’t need to alter your mind in a slightest, because you have a completely real, not externally induced, fun. That’s the kind of parties I throw and participate in with my friends, and it’s lovely and creates a lot of moments we all cherish for long, long time.
What exactly does substance use have to do with mental health?
Nobody uses drugs as a way of having a good time, they are used to enhance a good time. If you aren’t having a good time sober, you aren’t gonna have a good time peaked either unless you took a LOT.
If you’re having a genuinely good time, there’s little in there to improve. If you’re actually happy, or actually relaxed, or anything, really, you can easily get even to overwhelming levels without using anything - assuming you have a healthy psyche and are currently in a good condition.
But then people have anxiety disorders, they may be depressed, they might have BPDs, they may have extreme burnout - and then to curb it and have a truly good time they need substances - to let go, to induce positive emotions, to relax.
Honestly this shows even with casual alcohol drinkers - remove alcohol and the party will appear bland and empty to them, they won’t be able to open up and have equally good time. They would look for alcohol in order to make the party good again. This is very problematic. And the same goes for party drugs - go ahead, hold a party with friends into drugs, but remove the substances, alcohol, etc. Not such a wonderful time, huh?
People with healthy and good mental state and no addictions can absolutely have wonderful and amazing moments with their friends without “enhancing” their feelings in any way; there is no need to enhance anything, it peaks already. If it doesn’t, look up why.
I’ve had friends that were cocaine addicts and some that really hit the bottom. This seems insane to me, this isn’t a fun and easy drug like weed imo. I’ve always lumped coke with meth and heroin.
Its harm potential is somewhere in between. To put it in perspective, alcohol is worse than heroin. And like alcohol addicts, your friends should be able to get a clean and safe source to reduce damage, and the help they need without any fear of persecution.
You can’t criminalize problems away. It evidently didn’t help your friends.
I don’t think alcohol is worse than heroin by any means, although the harm that alcohol does is definitely underestimated.
I’d also like to say that I don’t necessarily think the use should be criminalized. Putting addicts in jail solves nothing and the justice system should be concentrating on the ones that sell it. Making it legal will just make more addicts, and won’t help the ones that currently are.
It’s also harder to stop abusing something if it’s sold in every city legally. Dealers go to jail and their numbers can be deleted.
Decriminalization but making the sale highly illegal while offering free rehab to the ones that need it is the way forward imo.
What is the source of that image? I’m questioning its validity. They have cannabis as more dependency forming and physically harmful than GHB. Unless it means something it doesn’t say, like they’ve weighted the results by how many users there are of each drug or something.
Interesting - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg, which pulled it from an expert survey in the UK.
I think they were asking for the source because the link you shared is just Wikipedia to a file. I was wondering about the original source of data too.
Edit: full link came out weird like yours. No wonder we were confused.
I love GHB but it needs to be way higher on dependence. It’s extremely easy to be addicted to. Benzos as well. Benzos are just under heroin in levels of dependency.
Edit: full agree with you, LSD isn’t even on this chart if the chart was real.
You should totally question the validity, but I’d pause before dismissing it entirely. It’s supposedly based on an opinion survey of psychiatrists and a group of ‘independent experts’ (footnote incoming) published in the Lancet in 2007. Edit: I said things that weren’t true about the Wikimedia image that I have removed - it’s based on the table near the bottom of the article.
DOI is 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4
You should ask our friend ANNA if she’S heard people talk about this during her time in the ARCHIVEs.
It’s not a completely objective harm/dependence measure, for sure, but the opinions of experts aren’t meaningless - it’s worth reading the article and judging the authors’ claims rather than this image. Though I will say the number of participants seems really low.
On LSD,
the opinion thing should be underlined and considered heavily (particularly in the UK, where rave culture is/was more top of mind than other places and LSD is/was in the mix, albeit I don’t think to the same degree as MDMA and other compounds), but also
as crazy as it may sound, dependency can develop in some users. I’d argue it looks VERY different than dependence to other substances (frequency is obviously much lower, given rapid tolerance, and some people may not call once a week or every two weeks dependency*), but it still exists. Given that this is basically an expert opinion poll it’s actually placed more or less where I’d expect to see it.
*Though in online discussion groups for folks interested in such compounds, those folks often do call that level of frequency a sign of dependency. Should note I’m talking specifically about macrodoses, not microdosing.
(Footnote) from page 1049: “These experts had experience in one of the many areas of addiction, ranging from chemistry, pharmacology, and forensic science, through psychiatry and other medical specialties, including epidemiology, as well as the legal and police services.”
The data in the paper is obtained solely from questionnaire results obtained from two groups of people: the first comprised people from the UK national group of consultant psychiatrists who were on the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ register as specialists in addiction, while the second comprised of people with experience in one of the many areas of addiction, ranging from chemistry, pharmacology, and forensic science, through psychiatry and other medical specialties, including epidemiology, as well as the legal and police services; the experts are not named and were chosen by the authors.
Thanks for the graphic, but many of those are laughably wrong. I guess it depends on their specific definitions. But for example solvents do irreversible damage with every use; meanwhile heroin is a drug available with a prescription (usually just in hospital use) and doesn’t do almost any long term damage on its own.
My friend’s brother just died of heroin overdose a few weeks ago and I just couldn’t help but feel for him. How many dark alleys did he have to go to to get his high? How many sketchy people were involved? Did he have access to clean needles? He overdosed alone, and likely felt subhuman due to being relegated to the fringes of society just to get his high.
Legalization would not have kept him from getting high, but it certainly would have enabled him access to clean drugs from a safe place, clean needles, and possibly made him viewed as someone who enjoyed getting high and not a piece of shit addict. He had a problem and it being illegal only made it worse for him.
Legalize it all. He was an adult, it’s his body. He can do what he wants with it, it’s nobody’s place to tell anyone what you can or cannot consume. He loved getting high on heroin and I don’t see a problem with that.
I agree with you. I know a lot of people who are cocaine addicts and their addiction makes them all incredibly unreliable. They stay up partying until 7am then crash for 12 hours the day of a big event. I’ve also known people who died due to tainted cocaine. It’s not a safe drug by any means. I’m all for decriminalization and treating it like a health issue, but it should not be taken lightly.
I don’t think that would be a good idea. We want it to be refined so it’s high purity and safe (or as safe as it can be).
If anything I would suggest the opposite – make it legal when refined, and have a government agency certify they meet a certain quality. You’d want to encourage people to take the refined version, which has known composition and materials. The unrefined street product would be illegal, but the only “punishment” would be confiscation. No jail time, except perhaps for manufacturers who are knowingly getting people sick with their product.
See its traditional use in leaf form. It’s way less potent and it’s a lot easier to tell if something is wrong with a leaf than if someone cut something into a powder post inspection.
Potency with coke is a real problem. It’s TOO good. And we get it refined in large part because of our silly policing policies around it. It’s silly to be policing a leaf the way we do when there’s coffee beans lining our shelves.
Yeah there is no safe amount of cocaine to do. There is also no safe amount of alcohol to do. At least if shit is legalised people can decide to use cocaine or not with informed consent and can be sure they are actually getting pure cocaine.
I had a friends cousin die from using cocaine but it was because they had bought it off a street dealer and it was tainted with fentanyl. They just wanted to have a little extra fun on a night out on vacation. They’d be alive and well if cocaine was legal.
Prohibition doesn’t work. It just adds suffering and stigma to addiction. One of the biggest factors to addiction is isolation something that criminalizing health issues greatly contributes to.
Nonsense. Alcohol is a carcinogen, every part of your body it touches has an increased risk of developing cancer. It is directly neurotoxic. It damages the liver and stomache. A bottle of it can kill you. Stopping taking it can kill you.
Weed taken orally is physically very safe. It can still be habit forming and there are other unwanted side effects but to act like it is physically comaparable to alcohol is silly.
I say there’s no safe amount of cocaine because it is directly cardiotoxic and has been known to cause heart defects in healthy young men at moderate doses.
I don’t think ant drug should be illegal I just think people should be aware of the dangers of substances so they can make an informed decision.
Sure, but what chemicals do we have that are safer? Pretty much all of our over the counter drugs will fuck you up long term if taken regularly, and lots of them are acutely dangerous.
“We hypothesize that THC neurotoxicity is attributable to activation of the prostanoid synthesis pathway and generation of free radicals by cyclooxygenase.”, would make THC, by definition, a carcinogen.
I also agree with your last statement completely. My issue is that everyone touts weed like it’s God’s greatest gift to mankind, and it very clearly is not. Stoners are easily identifiable by their inability to think clearly and quickly even when sober for stints. Weed absolutely affects the brain.
But shouting it’s safety from the heavens is not at all responsible, simply because not enough research has gone into the substance. Even CBD is a neurotoxin, albeit with some observed neuro-protective properties: advancedsciencenews.com/how-the-brain-protects-it….
If those neuro-protective properties failed in other parts of the brain for reasons of age, mice brains being significantly different, medications, or health conditions, the results would be devastating.
And that’s not a dumb opinion, it’s something I’ve noticed from multiple close friends becoming heavy users, and then stopping use because they couldn’t think clearly. If you had read the articles, it’s actually from THC’s neurotoxic effects on the hippocampus.
Ok, good to know. I also try to make sure people understand weed is addictive and has withdrawal symptoms and all that. You were the one who brought weed up originally though. And there is still no doubt that cocaine and alcohol are more dangerous than weed.
Yes… from the perspective themelm argues. Any drug/substance can throw you in a downward spiral if you dont have a reason for living, meaning in your life.
Not the perspective I was arguing. I was arguing that people should be allowed to make informed decisions about what they want to put in their body and that criminalizing drug use doesn’t help anyone but criminal drug gangs.
I was agreeing with you… In the part that criminalization increases social isolation… It was just a remark towards @Sweetpeaches69, who tries reductio-ad-absurdum, which for weed (like any substance) has negative effects on the body, and mind (and in it’s specific case the mixture of the two - brain).
I was mostly trying to tell about the biggest impact of weed I can see (and so I write) is the use during difficult times in life (nobody became an addict out of a fulfilling and good life, fairly sure it is a saying even in English?) can exacerbate life problems.
Yes but they aren’t legalizing it because it’s fun and safe they are legalizing it because jailing people over drugs does not help them and there is no point in filling your jails with such a high percentage of your population.
I’d say legalization is actually better in this case, as you can provide licenses to pharmaceutical manufacturers subject to QA regulations, lab accreditations, etc. Decriminalization just means that guy with 1:1 cocaine:fentanyl is probably getting a ticket rather than arrested.
[Was going to put a ‘doesn’t help when the guy overdoses’ comment here, but thinking about it now people do overdose (and die) on just cocaine too. One of the factors that make this a different conversation than cannabis. Don’t know the thresholds for overdose re: just coke, though]
Regulation and the obliteration of the illegal drug trade which directly harms millions in the pursuit of profit.
It should however, (and I cannot stress this enough) be privatized. This would be a fucking nightmare and simply move the profit motive causing the harm to another source
I don’t think housing will ever be cheap again. It’s been too over-consolidated and the game of corporate monopoly has already started. Unless we get strong regulations about how much housing property a person or company can own, we are stuck high housing prices.
I have lived in Germany for 7 years. I hold a STEM master‘s degree and was working an industry job that paid market rate salaries. With 50k€ in savings I was still denied mortgages because 50k was just barely covering the additional purchase costs (such as realtor and notary fees).
For a modest condo with a small garden in a small-ish city in central Germany I would’ve had to work and pay the mortgage until I retired, because the average house was 600k EUR. And most of the properties sold at that price still needed significant renovations.
If that is not f^cking crazy, then I don’t know what is.
Yeah the salaries in Europe do not jive at all with the housing prices in major metros. At least in the US a STEM job is probably gonna pay north of 6 figures if you’re in a decent metro area. I live in the EU now and if I switched from freelancing for American clients to working a full time job here I would be taking a major pay cut to do it. The pay is god awful but rent is fairly comparable to where I used to live on the US west coast.
While the prices are surely very high, they are not that high everywhere. My sister just bought a small house with small garden in a smallish city (50k people living here) for 260k. And we are 30min train ride from the next major city
The point of my comment was not really that there are no cheaper options. The point is that I should be, by most measures, firmly middle class and should be able to afford to buy a house around the place where I work. It’s not Munich or Hamburg, and I was not looking for something close to the city center. I was just looking for a decent house for my family.
I dunno what you’re doing wrong but I bought an apartment in Germany a couple years ago and that wasn’t my experience at all. I saw plenty of nice places big enough for a family of three for 250-300k. We had a little bit more than 50k in savings and were able to buy something much bigger than we need with a large garden (we spent 440k), but could easily have gotten something big enough with 50k savings. We’re in a medium/large city but just not right in the middle, more towards the outskirts. Still only 15 mins bike ride to the centre though!
They only construct the super luxurious condominiums. The reality is that for decades less new houses have been built than needed. And the gap was only widening with the years.
Prices now are decreasing because of the higher interest rates and the high inflation, so the majority of the people have even less disposable income at the end of the month. So they didn’t get any cheaper for regular people.
In Munich, the average rent for a single studio apartment is north of 1.000€, I would even say more like 1.200€, while the average salary is like 2.700-3.000€. A three room flat in the city would probably cost around 800K, and then you need to pay 6-7% administrative fees on top of it. You can make the calculation yourself how affordable flats in Germany are and who can actually buy them, especially in big cities.
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