If alcohol is the most dangerous drug, how should that affect our drug laws?

We need to stop using alcohol as a template for what to approve.

Before we consider legalizing other drugs, we need to be able to monitor for them better. As it stands now, if you are in a car accident after recently drinking, we can test you for intoxication and prove you were intoxicated. If you drank a week ago, it’s not going to come up on the test. However, if you were stoned, we couldn’t really determine if you got high an hour ago or a week ago or if you were really intoxicated, making it harder to determine if you were intoxicated at the time of the accident or not.

The damage caused by any substance should be irrelevant. All drugs should be legal, simply because people have a right to choose what to and what not to put in their own bodies.

Any government that claims you should not be able to take any given substence is basically making a claim of legal ownership over you, in other words they have claimed you as a slave.

When a government tells you that you cant take certain substances, and that you cant sell your body, and that you cant end your own life, they are basically claiming ownership of you. To me, this justifies retaliation, even violent retaliation. there is nothing wrong with a slave hurting the master.

I think the government is also protecting me from some of the behaviors of drunk and/or stoned people. I understand that stoned people’s reflexes will be slower, eg driving (if they even think of driving!) but surely that doesn’t last a week?

@faye being old affects your reflexes, and that lasts for life.

edit: make it illegal to drive while stoned if you like, but you cant outlaw taking drugs all together.

I agree with @poisonedantidote they should legalize them all and let the chips fall where they will. It is that way in some countrys.

@faye If you’re responding because of me, I was implying that it would show up in your system, even if you weren’t still actually stoned. Meaning if you were in an accident (not necessarily a car accident but perhaps an accident at work), and you were tested to see if you were intoxicated at the time for liability, the drugs would show up and they wouldn’t be able to show if you had done it an hour ago or a week ago. That is why I think there needs to be better testing for other drugs.

@faye

The difference is that when you drive drunk or stoned, you are endangering other people. In that case, by outlawing “influenced” driving, the government is preventing you from doing damage to other people. But what business is it of the government’s what drugs we take ourselves when we are not endangering the lives of other people by doing so?

@Seaofclouds Yes, in response to your post but only because you said it first! I also think there should be better testing. I know a few people who might take part in smoking a joint at a party once in a blue moon. None of them feel in any way impaired the next day, unlike a hangover. So while we know that science can tell that you have smoked in the last month, there needs to be better proof that right now you are affected. @poisonedantidote There are laws to take old people away from the wheel of a car just like drunks. Are you seriously comparing the behavior of a heroin junkie and an old person?

@DominicX I agree in principle, we should all be able to make our own decisions about what goes into our bodies. Where I begin to have a problem is when, after the drugs have a negative effect in some way, people want either compensation for the damage done, or free health care. The same is true for smoking, and unhealthy eating for that matter. You coud make the same case for riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Why should the insurance company have to pay for a choice that I made?

“War on drugs” is about as meaningless as “war on terror” The drugs policy should be reassessed and I would include drugs for medication as well as alcohol, marijuana and all the rest.

@faye those laws only come in to affect at a certain age. there are still people out there with low reflexes, be it cause they are old, just woke up, or simply have lower than average reflexes. Are you seriously reaching for top shelf heroin as your example? as if no other lesser drugs existed and as if junkies could actually afford gas?

how about cocain, speed, and anfetamines? people who take those have super high reflexes, they are almost like cats. maybe to keep people safe, we should make it so you can only drive when high on coke.

@poisonedantidote I was refering to any behavior of a junkie. I never said what I wanted to say in the first place. The article doesn’t really say what criteria he used, if it’s health or behaviors or what. If drugs were available openly, it would do away with lethal mixups. Maybe alcohol has become so dangerous because it is what’s available.

we need to do to all drugs what we have done to cigarettes: educate the heck out of the population and offer incentives to quit. We don’t need to be demonizing people.

Did you know that most prescribed pain relievers contain alcohol in one form or another?

So long as we imprison or fine people for victimless medical issues, we will continue to be a stupid, wasteful nation that causes more harm than it prevents.

The disparity in danger and legality, and other issues in regards to alcohol, marijuana, psychedelics, and hard drugs, further prove this point.

@faye “Maybe alcohol has become so dangerous because it is what’s available.”

or maybe look at some of the scientific research into the direct effects of different substances, as opposed to their effects on society, and see how alcohol is a relatively dangerous substance, regardless of its availability or prevalence.

In fact, I would say that the prohibited drugs are more dangerous, because of the prohibition.

Poor public information, no health & safety standards, no control of sale, unlike alcohol, which is still more harmful than the VAST proportion of illegal drugs, even with government oversight.

and OP, for the law to be consistent & logical, either alcohol should be Class A (Schedule I) or almost every drug should be as legal as alcohol is.

America already tried Prohibition, and ‘succeeded’ in all but one case, because alcohol was just too popular with the dominant social group.

btw all the organised (and a lot of the disorganised) crime in the USA, which makes that country so dangerous & violent, which has transformed whole areas into lawless, desperate wastelands, is a direct result of prohibition.

People will not stop doing drugs, We have already established this. Humans have been using drugs for longer than all history. Drug use is as Human as sports or art or spirituality.

All prohibition does is hand lots and lots of money and power to violent criminals. Great.

Also, the drug laws demonstrate the hypocrisy of American culture. How can you be accepting of other cultures, when you prohibit Cannabis, Coca, Opium, even the psychedelics that had been used by the natives for thousands of years before the Euros arrived and banned everything except their mind-numbing alcohol!

There was another study done recently that suggested that people that abused alcohol lived longer. WTF? I just started abusing alcohol in the hopes that I would live forever.

It’s because most people are hypocrites who use alcohol. The usual will claim “prohibition didn’t work on alcohol so why ban it”. I ask the same question when it comes to cannabis. Old belief systems die hard.

@thekoukoureport Any idea what the study was? Where I could read it?

@Seaofclouds Good point. It seems to me in this digital age, it would not be too great a stretch to develop a driving ability test that checks not only for reaction times but for things like judgment. While cocaine and speed my increase reaction time, they also confer a feeling of invincibility that is quite separate from the reality of driving a car. Anyone failing the digital test would either have to give a blood sample for testing or be assumed guilty of driving under the influence. It is possible to test blood for serum levels of THC and the active ingredients in all the major drugs. A standardized test regimen could be made quite cost effective. And taxes from sales of recreational drugs would provide far more revenue than needed for enforcement and treatment programs for those who get so addicted that the drug begins to interfere with their lives.

We need to remember that while alcohol is potentially addictive and debilitating, there are many millions of people who enjoy it responsibly, don’t drive while drunk, and don’t become violent or drink so much they pickle their livers. I think we could expect the same behavior with other intoxicants and psychedelics.

I tend to agree with @poisonedantidote. It should be up to each of us what we do with our own bodies. The only time our personal choices should become a legal issue is when we chose to do something that risks the lives and safety of others, like driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs.

@faye I saw it on the ticker of one of the news shows I believe it was CNN but www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/MedicalReports/Longevity/ is an article that references what I mentioned.

I think that if alcohol is the “most dangerous” drug then it should be the basis for the entire drug data base. If alcohol is permitted to be sold under controlled conditions, then so should other drugs and the DEA should be abolished. The way I see it, if you are a legal adult, your choice of drug use or non use is a private matter. If you cause harm to others you are responsible and should be appropriately punished. If you die, the government’s only duty is to see that your remains are properly disposed. Any protections for the results of drug usage are between you and your insurance company. I personally don’t care if a stranger overdoses on any drug. If a friend or family member is having problems I would try to get them help but there is no place in this process for the police.

@Ron_C Before we can legalize them for adult consumption, we need to be able to detect them on a short term basis so we can determine if someone was under the influence at the time of an accident to see if they are to blame for the accident or not. If we are going to use alcohol as our guideline, then it means all aspects of it need to be used, such as setting a legal limit, having methods of detection, regulation of usage (such as driving under the influence), and then enforcement of those regulations.

@Ron_C I certainly agree that it calls existing drug laws into serious question. But there are a few things we need to review to avoid the law of unintended consequences. As @Seaofclouds mentions, accurate detection of DWI (driving while impaired) is a serious issue. I’ sure that it’s resolvable with technology. I mentioned one idea above. But it does need to be dealt with.

Also, one of the reasons alcohol does more damage than any other drug is its wide availability. How much damage might crack cocaine, heroin and crystal meth do if you could bop into any liquor store and pick up a packet for a few bucks. Perhaps we should start with the least debilitating drugs such as marijuana, LSD and MDMA (Ecstasy)..

@ETpro Well I think that a big problem at the moment is that it is easier for some kids to get drugs from the street, than alcohol from the liquor store. This shows prohibition is ineffective and often counter-productive.

Marijuana is not a drug. It is a plant. It is not manufactured it is grown. Every other product mentioned in this string is manufactured, manipulated or extracted. Your body has THC receptors at the cellular level and no one has ever died from overdose. You can’t even say the same for aspirin.

The theraputic properties of Marijuana is well documented, if made legal it would make people less reliant on the pharmaceutical industry. Lets find a way to measure for oxycodone, a control prescribed medication that is one of the most abused substances in America. But that would hurt small business.

@thekoukoureport I wouldn’t call pharmaceuticals “small business”

Also, I mentioned opium, which I’ve eaten many times straight from the plant… doesn’t make it healthy.

Interesting you mentioned aspirin actually. It is produced in exactly the same way, from salicylic acid (which is what gives willowbark its medicinal properties), as heroin is produced from morphine (which is the primary active ingredient in opium).

It is far less irritating to the stomach than the original salicylic acid formulas.

Doesn’t make it healthy, but it’s better than the natural equivalent from which it was derived.

@The_Idler Good point.

The small business comment was sarcasm.

I compared the abilty to burn holes in your stomach from overdosing on aspirin causing death to the lack of ANY credible reports that Marijuana is physically harmful in any way. Every year people have died from overdose due to Opium, Alchohol, Oxycodone. Yet there is not ONE documented case of a Marajuana overdose in CA. It has been available for years and perscribed to tens of thousands of people.
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The leaves of the cocoa plant have been used for centuries for medicinal purposes and it was not until it was extracted and purified did it become the dangerous drug that it is today the same applies to the Poppy plant.

@ETpro I think that the two should be dine simultaneously, get rid of drug penalties and up date technology to test for drunk driving. There are little instruments that you can wear that tell you when you are falling asleep while driving., similar technology can be used to gauge your ability to drive. I know some people that shouldn’t drive and they NEVER use drugs or alcohol.

Education and good parenting is more effective.

Drugs, meaning the three food groups. Cigarettes, alcohol and pot. Should be legal.

But, for personal use (consumption) only. And you have to grow it (make it) yourself.

I will let alcohol slide because it got under the wire. It being from a different time and culture.
You can buy it. But for personal consumption only. Meaning you have to take it home to drink.

@ChazMaz yes, yes, yes, yes, but GOD NO, NOT THE PUB!

@ChazMaz Excellent plan. The take home rule would create a huge fight with the bar owners, though.

@ETpro AND ME

“The take home rule would create a huge fight with the bar owners”

This is true. And, no kidding. Sort of like the drug dealers in California that do not want to see it legalized. As it would put a dent in their profits.

I say… You cant re-new you liquor license or sell it. Once it is gone or the owner is out of the business the licenses (liquor) is dead.
Because we are a society of such booze hounds, beer and win only in restaurants. Has to be a compromise.
It is about time we grew up. ;-) That mean take your drinking home.