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Utilizing data from four decades of U.S. government drug use surveys, an extensive and easy-to-use collection of charts has just been created.
[...] The Brian C. Bennett Drug Charts provide a more accurate and illuminating picture of the use and abuse of drugs in America. The visual data components break down people's habits consuming alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, crack cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, inhalants, LSD, marijuana, MDMA, methamphetamines, nonmedical prescription pills, nonmedical prescription pain relievers, oxycontin, PCP, sedatives, stimulants, and tranquilizers.
"The Bennett charts graphically illustrate the natural course of the use of psychoactive drugs", William Martin, director of the Baker Institute's Drug Policy Program, and Katharine Neill, the Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy at the Baker Institute, wrote in an issue brief called Drugs by the Numbers: The Brian C. Bennett Drug Charts.
"Most people who ever use such drugs stop using them shortly after initiation or a period of (usually brief) experimentation. As the introduction to the collection explains, this pattern is closely correlated with age, with illicit drug use (and other risky behaviors) reaching a peak between 18 and 20, declining sharply by age 26 and then dropping gradually over the rest of the lifespan", the researchers explained.
"This calls into question policies that levy harsh penalties and apply indelible criminal records to people for what may be experimental or incidental use likely to stop on its own in the normal course of maturation without treatment, 12-step programs or relapse. More rational and compassionate responses exist and deserve close attention."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quintessence on Friday August 19 2016, @08:51AM
So to recap:
The government at best put forward an unsubstantiated theory, at worse lied through their fucking teeth to justify a drug policy that lead to the highest incarceration rate in the world (USA! USA! USA!).
Wait, there's more!
They also ignored some of the most definitive research available on the subject
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm [druglibrary.org]
and set the stage for even more potent forms which increase the risk for addiction.
What do you say after such a colossal fuck-up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @09:00AM
Misteaks were mad.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Friday August 19 2016, @09:12AM
The resistance to legal pot has been ideological from the get-go, and the expert opinions spurned from the start.
Here, quick bit of googling turns up http://archives.drugabuse.gov/pdf/monographs/31.pdf [drugabuse.gov] ... "Marijuana Research Findings: 1980"
Executive summary: This stuff gets you high. While you're high, don't drive, don't go to work, don't go classes, etc. There may be cause for concern about long-term health effects and more study is needed. A good chunk of indicators (so far, in 1980) were that it wasn't terribly worse than smoking and certainly not as bad as drinking.
Yeah, this is best of research from 1980. I'm still skimming to see what more was being said at the time, but keep in mind this was the research available to the Reagans as they were telling us on national TV that the devil weed was coming to kill us all.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Friday August 19 2016, @09:18AM
(Self reply, bah!)
managed to cut and leave out the bit about how there's an entire section on promising looking therapeutical uses, too!
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @09:23AM
the devil weed was coming to kill us all
Devil's weed [wikipedia.org] is coming to kill us all. Not only is it perfectly legal, an accidental overdose is fatal. I got high on this stuff at summer camp once, and I was lucky I didn't die.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Friday August 19 2016, @09:28AM
Good reason not to let the camp counselors (or attendees) be your suppliers, maaaan!
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @09:33AM
No, man, it's a weed, and it was growing wild at the camp. I was the dumb kid who was sucking nectar out of flowers. I hallucinated for days and I didn't even know why at the time.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 19 2016, @01:47PM
You amuse me! Next you'll be warning us about peppers because you bought some ghost peppers at the supermarket once not knowing what they were.
Don't let this person near nutmeg! That's another one that will cause an altered state of mind for days!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:56PM
Ok smartass, you should try being the bored young kid sucking perfectly innocuous nectar, who hours later develops dilated pupils, extreme photosensitivity, tunnel vision, and a persistent murmuring of voices that just aren't there. And then you go back for more nectar because you don't know you have temporary amnesia and can't understand the nectar is causing your symptoms. The adults warned you about obvious things like poison ivy, but they never mentioned datura, you wouldn't know to ask for help if they had, and you're not acting strangely enough for anyone to notice something is wrong with you. Meanwhile you have no idea the nectar is poisonous or how close you are to overdose.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 19 2016, @08:51PM
Well, ok. If you're not trolling, I shouldn't be so harsh. How did you make it to safety? What was your condition when it wore off? Have you submitted an experience report to Erowid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @10:14PM
I was sucking the flowers for one weekend, in a daze and hallucinating the whole time, but I was functional enough. The direct effects wore off after a couple of days, although I had flashbacks for a few months. For years I thought I had social anxiety from going to camp, until I happened to find datura on Wikipedia. I recognized it immediately and knew then that I had been on a drug at the time, and I realized how lucky I was only to drink the nectar and not eat any other parts of the plant. Never looked at Erowid before today but I know from my own experience as a child, this warning from the site is surely true: "Small children should not use Datura."
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Friday August 19 2016, @02:48PM
Didn't I cover that case? You weren't an attendee?!
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday August 19 2016, @12:51PM
I'd argue that the resistance to legal pot has more-so always been economic. There are a lot of players that would lose money with legal cannabis. These include the alcohol industry, the big drug companies, the textile industry, the paper industry... I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but the point is that cash is king in the US (and most of the Western world). Politicians ideological ideas change with the flow of cash lining their pockets..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday August 19 2016, @01:55PM
All of those, but the big two you missed are the for-profit prison industry and the asset seizure (highway robbery) industry.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 19 2016, @03:13PM
In exactly one hour, there will be a story called "Justice Department Says It Will End Use of Private Prisons".
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/08/19/031257 [soylentnews.org] (link will work when the story goes live)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Saturday August 20 2016, @02:34AM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:35PM
The demonizing was easy back then. Jut tell people it makes white girls have sex with negro men. Done.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday August 19 2016, @09:08PM
The textile industry was responsible for Reefer Madness [wikipedia.org] as well as the Marihuana Tax Act [wikipedia.org].
From the very beginning, weed was demonized because it took profits away from rich men that had powerful friends in government to help them get it back.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @01:52PM
Business as usual.
It has always been amazing to me that the children of the 60's, who are now the old farts running the place,
and who should have the experience to know that Alcohol and tobacco are much more addictive than Marijuana,
did not legalize it.
To a varying degree, there are two types of folks. Those who have the genes to become an addict and those who don't.
Those who don't have the gene can and do function just fine with 'self medication'.
Those who do have the gene have to choose between being functional productive members of society or being a drug/alcohol addict.
Prohibition proved that folks are going to get high regardless of what the govt says.
The only outcome that can come from a war on drugs is that everybody has to perpetually live in a war zone.
The gene thing is not black and white.
The govt has the opportunity shift the balance a bit in grey areas, by encouraging the softer drugs and discouraging the harder ones.
By encouraging Alcohol and prescription drugs and discouraging MJ, the war on drugs is actually making things worse.
Again, business as usual.
PS, It appears this study completely ignores the gene thing?
I wonder if the folks compiling the study understand the problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @03:24PM
That it wasn't a fuck-up. It worked as designed, gave a chance to crack down on low-income and minority populations at will, and generated a lot of money for certain sectors (including Dupont, not just the prison-industrial complex).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:37PM
The next step is obviously to make it illegal to do any further research on the subject...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/us/politics/medical-marijuana-research-hits-the-wall-of-federal-law.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
And do that after refusing to publish or fund research which shows how drug abuse may be mainly the result of social stress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park [wikipedia.org]
"Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to them is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself.[1]
To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, a large housing colony, 200 times the floor area of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16–20 rats of both sexes in residence, food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating.[2] The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis.
The two major science journals, Science and Nature, rejected Alexander, Coambs, and Hadaway's first paper, which appeared instead in Psychopharmacology in 1978. The paper's publication initially attracted no response.[3] Within a few years, Simon Fraser University withdrew Rat Park's funding.[4]"
Or as videos using claymation and drawings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3swVNAaoDgw [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQFNe3pkss [youtube.com]
Although, as a caveat, different drugs work in different ways so Rat Park research on opiates can't be 100% generalized to all other types of drugs without further research, even as it is suggestive....
Of course, accepting the implications of such research would mean the USA would have to admit that while it does not need to guard its borders to keep people from escaping the way the USSR did, it instead needs to guard its medicine cabinets...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 19 2016, @05:54PM
What do you say after such a colossal fuck-up?
Why, you double-down, of course!
"I'm getting some very negative reports coming out of Colorado as to what's happening, so we'll see what happens." -Donald Trump, responding to a question about legalization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @06:14PM
I'd say it's time to double down, baby!
Same goes for trickle-down economics. Load me up baby! I'm ready to win!!!11111LOL!!!11