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posted by martyb on Friday August 19 2016, @08:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the where-*DO*-addicts-come-from? dept.

Medical Daily reports

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."


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 19 2016, @03:10PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday August 19 2016, @03:10PM (#390111) Journal

    4/20: Half-Baked Headline [soylentnews.org]

    A recent article in Harper's Magazine includes the following gem that sums up the modern Drug War's origins. The journalist interviewed John Ehrlichman, one of the Watergate co-conspirators:

    At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:21PM (#390133)

    Now that this has lost it's edge they just claim the person raped a women.

  • (Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Friday August 19 2016, @09:05PM

    by Hawkwind (3531) on Friday August 19 2016, @09:05PM (#390286)
    The author of the article was interviewed on NPR back in March. Interview highlights are at http://www.npr.org/2016/03/27/472023148/legalize-all-drugs-the-risks-are-tremendous-without-defining-the-problem [npr.org].