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How do illegal drugs alter the mind as compared to legal drugs?


dannieyankee

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To really answer this you have to understand that one drug seldom really resembles another in it's effects. Alcohol is not like Cannabis or cigarettes or cocaine. Each and every drug has a unique active chemical and do not affect the same areas of the brain. They can be arranged on similar groups as to their effects but the effects often over lap because the brain has a limited number of ways it can react to chemical stimuli. Opiates IE vicoden, codeine, heroin, and other derivatives of the poppy plant are all very similar chemically and have similar effects. Cannabis is a mild hallucinogen and bears no resemblance to tobacco other than they are both usually smoked. Cocaine is a stimulant and to some extent a hallucinogen too. Alcohol is a depressant with wide ranging effects on the brain and body. LSD is a very strong hallucinogen whose effects are similar to DMT which is the active ingredient of some other hallucinogenic plants. sometimes the chemicals can be very different but have similar effects on the human brain. To sum it up you need to really look at every "drug" differently, legal and illegal are totally artificial constructs and nothing to do with the effects or danger of these mind altering chemicals.

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Well the illegality isn't really the point; I realise that illegal drugs aren't necessarily more harmful than legal drugs.

 

I'm just looking for evidence to back this up.

 

You are the one who phrased the question, as to illegal and legal, if you want to know the various ways drugs affect the brain and legality isn't pertinent then why did you ask this question? You need to ask the effects of each drug you are interested in separately, their effects are not linked by their legal status.

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You are the one who phrased the question, as to illegal and legal, if you want to know the various ways drugs affect the brain and legality isn't pertinent then why did you ask this question? You need to ask the effects of each drug you are interested in separately, their effects are not linked by their legal status.

 

Sorry, wording has never been my forte.

 

What I meant was that I was trying to find whether a drug is illegalised based on how dangerous it is or by other effects.

 

By comparing legal and illegal drugs, I was hoping to discover if the (il)legalization of a drug had any real basis.

 

I apologize for the confusion!

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What I meant was that I was trying to find whether a drug is illegalised based on how dangerous it is or by other effects.

 

By comparing legal and illegal drugs, I was hoping to discover if the (il)legalization of a drug had any real basis.

Short answer: yes, how dangerous a drug is taken into account by most governments when deciding its legal status – legal, illegal, or the various statuses in between.

 

This is a complicated subject, involving centuries of history in several nations, but I think it can be overviewed by looking at a couple of brief summaries:

 

The US’s Controlled Substance Act (CSA for short), enacted in 1970, is a pretty good representative of how most “first world” nations’ drug laws currently work. Drugs are placed, by name, on one of five classifications, called “schedules”, by their “accepted medical use” and “potential for abuse”, with Schedule V containing drugs with accepted medical use and little potential for abuse, schedule I containing drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Drugs not placed on any schedule are no subject to the Act, and may be obtained over-the-counter (or out-of-the garden, etc.). Schedule I drugs cannot legally be prescribed by an MD or dispensed by a pharmacy. Common black market drugs such as Cannabis, LSD, and MDMA (Ecstasy) are on schedule I, because they are legally considered to have no accepted medical use, while ones Cocaine, Oxycodone, and amphetamines are on Schedule II, because while having as great or greater potential for abuse as Schedule I drugs, they have accepted medical uses.

 

As a general rule, psychotropic or physiologically significant substance that were sold, and typically taxed, for recreational use when the laws of a nation were codified, are “grandfathered in” as non-drugs, subject to different laws than the CSA. Tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine fall in this category. However, this status is not necessarily permanent. Cannabis, for example, was once legal if a special tax for it was paid, then later, if prescribed by an MD with a special federal license, before being made entirely illegal by the CSA. Alcoholic drink was illegal in the US from 1919 to 1933 per the 18th Amendment and 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th. At present, Cannabis has an especially complicated legal status, as it’s illegal according the CSA, a federal law, yet explicitly legal under certain conditions according to the laws of several US states.

 

Taking a higher historic overview of the regulation of drugs by governments, one can look back a couple of centuries to when the only legal regulation of drugs consisted of punishing illegal acts involving drugs, such as the fraudulent sale of an ineffective or dangerous drug, the production, transport, and sale of a drug without paying its legislated tax, or criminal behavior under the influence of a drug, typically termed “drunken conduct” or something similar.

 

The widespread illegalization of the strong alcoholic drink absinthe, ca. 1905, is considered by some, including me, a significant event in government proactively illegalizing a substance believed dangerous and unbeneficial to the public, and also an example of controversial and questionable science informing various governments, while the real motives for its illegalization may have been cultural, rather than scientific: in short, an effort to suppress offensive “bohemian” culture associated with absinthe, much as in the 1960s, cannabis and LSD were associated with offensive “hippie” culture.

 

This same period – the early 20th century - saw the creation of laws leading to agencies such as the US FDA, which were charged with proactively determining what drugs could and could not be used, and how. At the same time, various countries including the US began to devise more legalistic approaches to determining who could and could not practice medicine, including a system of accrediting schools the ability to graduate MDs. By the 1940s, these efforts lead, in the US and Canada, to organization such as the AAMC, and LCME, which to this day determine who can and can not prescribe controlled substances in the US and Canada.

 

Prior to the early 20th centuries, more in rural areas than urban ones, anyone who seemed sufficiently “doctorly” could practice medicine, formulate and dispense drugs, etc. The system present in most of the first world is, more or less and depending on location, about a century old, and as it pertains to drug laws, about half that. This system is not present everywhere - today, in many countries, such as Mexico, you can legally purchases most US Schedule II substances in a legitimate pharmacy, and use them in those countries as you wish, without a MD’s prescription.

Legal/Illegal has no bearing on danger or harm done by drugs, several years ago a study, ( that i do not have a link to) showed that for every death caused by illegal drugs 1000 people died from legal drugs.

While it’s true that far more people die in the US while taking drugs prescribed by an MD than while taking drugs purchased via a black market, I don’t think the legal status of a drug is unrelated to its safety. This is especially true with regards to drugs where the delivery system itself is potentially dangerous, such as injected drugs, which increase the risk of contracting blood-born diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.

 

On the other hand, the determination of the potential and severity of consequences of abuse of many drugs on the CSA’s Schedule I is of questionable scientific validity. I’m hopeful that the US government and the governments of its many states will soon decriminalize the use of many of these, based on sound scientific data and reasoning.

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Craig, I was referring to recreational drugs not drugs taken as medication. The one dead from illegal to 1000 dead from legal is all about the number of people killed directly by alcohol and tobacco, not prescription drugs. Recreational drugs have rarely if ever been judged due to their danger to society or individuals. All recreational drugs have been considered immoral by the hard core religious Conservatives and have at one time or another been targeted as illegal. alcohol is a prime example. Danger to society is at best secondary to simply being something immoral to be controlled by the moral. The act you sited came after illegality of almost all of these drugs, not after, it was used to justify the laws not form them.

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Money Dannie, money is basically responsible for tobacco being off limits to review. Only in recent years has tobacco been reveled as the demon it really is but not so many years ago the actually claimed the smoking relived coughing. the US government often requires that third world countries allow duty free or much favored importation of American tobacco (I live in the tobacco belt). It's really sad but it makes the US government the largest drug dealer in the world. As for alcohol, it has been used since time unknown, some say bread making was an offshoot of beer making so it is ingrained in human society at a very basic level.

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Money Dannie, money is basically responsible for tobacco being off limits to review. Only in recent years has tobacco been reveled as the demon it really is but not so many years ago the actually claimed the smoking relived coughing. the US government often requires that third world countries allow duty free or much favored importation of American tobacco (I live in the tobacco belt). It's really sad but it makes the US government the largest drug dealer in the world. As for alcohol, it has been used since time unknown, some say bread making was an offshoot of beer making so it is ingrained in human society at a very basic level.

 

Marijuana has been a HUGE part of society for a very, very long time, possibly close to the amount of time we've been 'drinking'.

 

Government corruption is fuelled by money; I wonder if utopia would be a moneyless society.

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yes, MJ has been associated with humans a long time, I've read it might very well have been the first domesticated plant due to it's fibers seeds and hallucinogenic properties but it was mostly in the far east. Western societies, especially the Judeo Christian world was very suspicious of anything from that part of the world labeling it paganistic or demonic. the two worlds mixed a few times but smoking didn't really catch on in the western world until tobacco ws introduced for reasons i am unaware of.

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One component of the banning or regulation of substances has been prejudice. It is utterly common that the progression of legislation has followed demonizing and propaganda largely about a perceived race or social class. There are numerous books and movies not to mention the legal records themselves that document how Harry Anslinger, for example, was at first perplexed at how he was going to manage to enforce outlawing a weed, one that grew wild in the US Capital at the time, but later warmed to it as it became popular and brought him unprecedented power. It was seen as a menace when journalists played up blacks and mexicans as crazed "hop head" fiends out to rape and defile white women. IIRC William Randolph Hearst, was a major mover in this debacle.

 

Now such propaganda appears ludicrous and "Reefer Madness" and such appears at festivals and on cable as comedy when once it was seen as true and diabolical horror. Slightly off topic but nevertheless similar and pertinent is that erotica was outlawed in western civilization primarily from the pressure of "decent gentlemen" of Victoria's England who, while believing they were immune, were either actually concerned that the great unwashed could be driven to rape of gentile ladies or saw it as a politically hot issue and couldn't resist ringing the Pavlovian Bell.

 

Racism and Class Arrogance is often behind victimless crime legislation of all kinds as is political motivations when it is seen that large numbers will "salivate". Thus it is OK to own an assault rifle and ammo, or an automobile, but the right kind of weed or flower will get you a jail sentance.

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