Drugs

Stuff we should click on.  Be sure to state Not Work Safe, if applicable.  KTHX.
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TPRJones
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Re: drugs and

Post by TPRJones »

Yes, but if you let that camel's nose in your tent it will give people the license to start to wonder if maybe marijuana isn't the most dangerous substance known to man. And the next thing you know we'll be handing out joints in school to kindergartners.
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Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Since this decision is so fucking stupid, I'm going to rail on it some more.

Here's chief DEA shitmuncher Chuck Rosenberg. I'm not saying I hope he or someone he knows develops cancer and requires debilitating chemotherapy, but I think it might be the only way he's going to learn.
… drug scheduling is unlike the Saffir-Simpson scale or the Richter scale. Movement up those two scales indicates increasing severity and damage (for hurricanes and earthquakes, respectively); not so with drug scheduling. It is best not to think of drug scheduling as an escalating “danger” scale – rather, specific statutory criteria (based on medical and scientific evidence) determine into which schedule a substance is placed.
Here's Chuck Rosenberg from last year, by the way:
Rosenberg, a former prosecutor, made waves in late 2015 when he referred to the potential medical use of marijuana as “a joke.” He contradicted his future 2016 self at the time, acknowledging that that “joke” actually does have medicinal promise:

There are pieces of marijuana — extracts or constituents or component parts — that have great promise” medicinally, he said. “But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana — which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana — it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine.

Rosenberg clearly isn’t comfortable with the scientific terminology here, struggling to find even the right word to describe active ingredients in cannabis: “pieces” or “extracts” or “constituents” or “component parts.” So it’s no surprise that he might not understand evidence or how inhalation delivery is, in fact, a legitimate therapeutic route that can minimize time to results and maximize systemic delivery and effects. Inhaling a drug for maximum efficacy isn’t by default “a joke.”
The specific statutory criteria for schedule I:
The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
I suppose it meets #1, but so does sugar. The other two aren't kind of false, or questionably false, or even up for a serious debate -- they are 100% dead-on, certain as can be, complete, total, utter bullshit, even by the words of the DEA's current top narc. Virtually the only motherfuckers in the civilized world who think bud has no medical use are the micro-dicked fucktards in the US gov't drug enforcement industry. Even the FDA has finally given up the taking the lie 100% literally (only 99% now).
Two cannabis-derived drugs (dronabinol and nabilone) are already FDA approved for these uses, but both are orally administered.
But those aren't smoking, because that shit is bad.
A drug that lets people on cancer treatment eat and reduce pain and does so far more effectively with fewer side effects when inhaled is not a joke.

Meanwhile, any huckster can call something a supplement and imply that it “boosts the immune system” or cures cancer and do so with near impunity.
Nice job, FDA. Way to keep us safe and healthy.
There’s nothing funny about the DEA’s decision to continue to make it difficult for people to access medical marijuana nationwide by prescription, which a shift to Schedule II would have achieved. Currently, federal law directly conflicts with laws in 24 states and the District of Columbia allowing medical marijuana prescription.
That's approximately half the states in the union plus D.C. Just come the fuck on. How many more individual states have to call out your bullshit before you cave? Are you drinking from the same waters of concentrated lazy, half-assed stubbornness from whose filthy, toxic foam emerged the TSA?
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
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Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Obviously someone who lived a very sheltered life, was never exposed to real chems, and never did his homework on them.
When the first deputy arrived at the couples’ home, she used her Taser on Harrouff, but it didn’t faze him, Snyder said. She tried pulling him off Stevens’ body, but couldn’t. Other deputies arrived shortly along with a dog and it took all of them to subdue Harrouff. Snyder said they didn’t shoot, fearing their bullets would strike the victim.

“The suspect in this case was abnormally strong,” Snyder said, making him think Harrouff was on drugs. He said hospital blood tests showed no signs of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin or other common drugs; it will take longer to test for less common hallucinogenic drugs such as flakka or bath salts.
I assume PCP is covered under "common drugs." If not, that's my bet.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Verdict seems to be flakka, which is a Voltron-like designer drug of wtf-ness.

1. Hyperthermia as seen in extreme cases of X OD.
2. Tachycardia from a weekend long cocaine bender.
3. The same nervous system effects typical of PCP.
4. Hallucinations from your most potent LSD trip.
5. The economic affordability of crack.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Goddamn.
And at the end of last week, after a six-day stretch of emergency room visits that exhausted first responders and their medical supplies, the overdose tally soared to a number health officials are calling “unprecedented”: 174.
...
Synan also heads the law enforcement task force for the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition, which was created so public health and law enforcement officials from Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky could collaboratively combat the heroin epidemic plaguing the tri-state area.

Additional heroin overdoses reported in that area, plus New Jersey, tipped the total to 225+, according to reporting on Fox 13 News Now.
Mostly because the smack is a batch laced with elephant tranq.
Further complicating matters is that Narcan, the nasal-spray version of the drug Naxalone, which reverses the side effects of an overdose, isn’t working anymore, at least not as reliably. Usually one, maybe two doses of Narcan will stabilize a patient. But the recent overdoses required two or three times that dosage.
That's even more insane. Six sprays of Nax?
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
TPRJones
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Re: drugs and

Post by TPRJones »

Gee, if only there were a regulated market where one could purchase legal and "safe" drugs of these sorts that don't involve killing you with off-label ingredients. But of course that would be so much worse, because drugs are bad and making them legal will cause everyone in the country to immediately start taking smack. Because illegality is the only thing holding them back, apparently.
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Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

TPRJones wrote:Gee, if only there were a regulated market where one could purchase legal and "safe" drugs of these sorts that don't involve killing you with off-label ingredients. But of course that would be so much worse, because drugs are bad and making them legal will cause everyone in the country to immediately start taking smack. Because illegality is the only thing holding them back, apparently.
Think of the children, TPR ... and all the pigs who wouldn't otherwise be able to illegally stop, arrest, beat, or kill suspects.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

DEA announces it will start a new plan to create more opiate users and addicts.
Ash says a toxicologist hired by AKA reviewed the 15 deaths the DEA says occurred between 2014 and 2016 and in a forthcoming report disputes each finding of kratom toxicity as the cause of death. She says many were using other drugs and that she knew one of the deceased personally and that he was injecting experimental chemicals he bought online.

The association founder says consuming too much kratom induces vomiting, making it difficult to take too much, and that it doesn’t cause respiratory depression, a cause of death for opioid overdoses. She says she’s never heard from someone who suffered purported side-effects such as itchiness and hallucinations.
But it's the DEA. Logic, facts, science -- all irrelevant.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

As I was walking through the store buying cleaning supplies yesterday, I thought to myself:

Bud, X, and numerous other substances are illegal. Sudafed, nicotine, booze, and others ... you have to show the proper ID or paperwork to get. But anyone can walk into goddamn near any supermarket in the country and purchase household cleaners with active ingredients like lye or hydrochloric acid to their heart's content. Because those last two aren't dangerous enough, I guess.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Look who just donated a cool half mil to kill bud legalization in one state.
According to campaign finance reports posted online by the Arizona secretary of state's office, fentanyl manufacturer Insys Therapuetics has donated $500,000 to foes of the Prop 205 marijuana legalization initiative.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid several dozen times more potent than heroin. It has been linked to numerous opioid overdose deaths across the country, especially when mixed with heroin. Marijuana, on the other hand, has no reported overdose deaths, ever.
I guess it's less evil than black market drug dealing.
Insys isn't just any pharmaceutical company. Its sole product is Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray, and the company has shown that it's willing to bend the rules to sell that product. In the past month alone, two former company employees pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to an alleged kickback scheme to get doctors to prescribe Subsys, and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against the company charging that Insys hawked the drug to doctors for off-label prescribing.

Insys' "desire for increased profits led it to disregard patients' health and push addictive opioids for non-FDA approved purposes," Madigan wrote.
Seems way safer than a joint and some munchies.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Hey, losers from the US, Canada says you suck balls, and I agree.
Matthew Harvey was banned from the United States for one reason - he smoked weed and was honest about it. He was planning to cross the border to take his 3-year-old Lika to California's Disneyland.
...
"They said that I was inadmissible because I admitted to smoking marijuana after the age of 18 and before I'd received my medical marijuana licence," he said.
...
He was detained for six hours, despite being a legal medical marijuana user in Canada. Now, he'll have to apply for advance permission to enter the U.S, instead of just driving through across the US Canada border.
Yeah, can't have those Canadian stoners here. They might dry up our supply of Cheetos and crappy imported Labatt.
While a spokesman said on Friday the Canadian government has been speaking to the US government to ensure officials are aware of Canada's plans to legalize marijuana, the controversy over Canadians being stopped at the border and barred from future travel to the US has not been addressed.
This apparently is not an isolated thing. We are actually wasting time, money, and resources stopping Canucks at the border and keeping them out if they've smoked bud. Murderers, rapists, thieves, kidnappers -- all welcome. But FUCK YOU if you toked up and are stupid enough to admit it in a country where it's legal in 10% of the member states, including one that borders your country. How fucked up must that be? You come from Canada, where no one cares, to Washington, where no one cares. Except for micro-dicked Border Patrol agents who obviously have no real responsibilities and need to be fucking fired or set to clean urinals, because I'm betting they'd be better at that than patrolling a border of any sort. Fucking pricks.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Leisher
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Re: drugs and

Post by Leisher »

I'm all for stopping as many Canadians from coming into the country as possible. Remember, they sent us Justin Bieber and Celene Dion.
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TPRJones
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Re: drugs and

Post by TPRJones »

But they also sent us Captain Kirk and Chris Hadfield.
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Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Leisher wrote:I'm all for stopping as many Canadians from coming into the country as possible. Remember, they sent us Justin Bieber and Celene Dion.
The amount of records and tix they sell in the US is staggering. That's on the fans, the American fans.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Leisher
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Re: drugs and

Post by Leisher »

Malcolm wrote:
Leisher wrote:I'm all for stopping as many Canadians from coming into the country as possible. Remember, they sent us Justin Bieber and Celene Dion.
The amount of records and tix they sell in the US is staggering. That's on the fans, the American fans.
Then I will ask you to stop going to their concerts.
“Every record been destroyed or falsified, books rewritten, pictures repainted, statues, street building renamed, every date altered. The process is continuing day by day. History stops. Nothing exists except endless present in which the Party is right.”
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Leisher wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
Leisher wrote:I'm all for stopping as many Canadians from coming into the country as possible. Remember, they sent us Justin Bieber and Celene Dion.
The amount of records and tix they sell in the US is staggering. That's on the fans, the American fans.
Then I will ask you to stop going to their concerts.
I only buy the tickets because your mom doesn't want you to find out she's in charge of the Bieber fan club.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

I love graphs and charts.
Image

Image

But let's keep wasting resources on things like bud and classifying them as Schedule I.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Malcolm wrote:DEA announces it will start a new plan to create more opiate users and addicts.
Ash says a toxicologist hired by AKA reviewed the 15 deaths the DEA says occurred between 2014 and 2016 and in a forthcoming report disputes each finding of kratom toxicity as the cause of death. She says many were using other drugs and that she knew one of the deceased personally and that he was injecting experimental chemicals he bought online.

The association founder says consuming too much kratom induces vomiting, making it difficult to take too much, and that it doesn’t cause respiratory depression, a cause of death for opioid overdoses. She says she’s never heard from someone who suffered purported side-effects such as itchiness and hallucinations.
But it's the DEA. Logic, facts, science -- all irrelevant.
DEA has no fucking idea what in the fuck it's doing.
The DEA will now open up a period for public comment until Dec. 1 of this year. It is also asking the FDA to expedite a "scientific and medical evaluation and scheduling recommendation" for the active chemical compounds in kratom.

At the close of the comment period, a number of things could happen. The DEA could decide to permanently place the plant in a schedule of the Controlled Substances Act, which would require an additional period for lawmakers and the public to weigh in. It could also decide to temporarily schedule kratom, which would not require any additional comment.

It could also decide to leave kratom unregulated.
I'd bet about a million dollars it goes to schedule I with "FUCK YOU" written in large, red, capital letters next to it.
"It's certainly a positive development," said Andrew Kruegel of Columbia University in an email. Kruegel is one of the researchers working to develop next-generation painkillers based on compounds contained in kratom.

Kruegel says that the FDA's evaluation of the drug will carry a lot of weight in the DEA's decision. But the kind of rigorous, controlled trials that the FDA typically refers to in situations like this simply don't exist for kratom.

"Unfortunately, in the United States I don't think we have a good regulatory framework for handling this situation or taking perhaps more reasonable middle paths" between banning the drug outright or keeping it unregulated, Kruegel says.
Columbia? Those crackpots? What the fuck do they know about medicine?
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
TheCatt
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Re: drugs and

Post by TheCatt »

Lots of ballot initiatives for marijuana

Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada appear to be looking at complete legalization.
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Malcolm
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Re: drugs and

Post by Malcolm »

Douchebags trying to keep bud nice and illegal. I'm sure it's out of the goodness of their spotless bulwarks they call hearts.
In most of the states, wealthy individual donors and small businesses, along with drug policy advocacy groups, have funneled far more dollars to the opposition than casinos, alcohol or the pharmaceutical industry. For example, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is singlehandedly responsible for roughly one-third of all anti-legalization spending this year, a total of $3.5 million in three states so far.
...
California stands out for the outsize role of individual wealthy donors have played in campaign funding. On the pro-legalization side, Napster founder Sean Parker has given millions to the cause, according to California Secretary of State records. The lion’s share of money to the opposition, more than $1 million of it, has come from wealthy East Coast retired art professor Julie Schauer, who has argued that marijuana is linked to violent behavior.
Violent behaviour? Are you shitting me? Let's review these two sentences:

1. "Those two assholes got into a drunken brawl and someone called the cops."
2. "Those two assholes got into a stoned brawl and someone called the cops."

Has anyone ever heard the second?
Opponents of legalization in Nevada are keeping pace with supporters for donations. That opposition money comes almost exclusively from the gambling industry or individuals closely affiliated with it. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has given $2 million to the anti-legalization effort in Nevada, according to the Secretary of State.

Mason Tvert, director of communications for the pro-legalization group Marijuana Policy Project, suggested Adelson’s opposition is fueled by his business interests.

“If you like drinking alcohol and playing blackjack at the casino, Mr. Adelson wants you to be his guest,” Tvert said in an email. “If you prefer to consume marijuana while playing video games in the privacy of your home, Mr. Adelson wants you to be in jail.”

Adelson also contributed $1 million this year to fight a medical marijuana measure in Florida, after funneling $5 million into a successful effort to stop a similar ballot initiative in 2014.
Dick.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
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