Should Meth/crack be legalized?

@Eddie - I'm a bit intrigued that in your story you feel the only problem with the heroin use is the economic side of the story. In both the anecdotes you provided, while you state that both individuals appeared to be able to 'function' - both also resorted to theft to feed an addiction. From my perspective, that shows that the drug has a very dangerous effect - that someone will resort to an illegal act (one they would consider to be unacceptable and wrong) to fund their addiction.

Even if the drug cost a very minor amount, they would eventually fall on hard times to resort to paying for the drug - cheaper heroin doesn't necessarily mean that people won't steal to get it. It just may take longer before they have to resort to theft to buy it. At least - that is my perception of the unusual addictive qualities of the substance.

I think its pretty rare to find people who will resort to theft to fund their cigarettes & alcohol habits. Sure - cigarettes & alcohol are hot commodities when people break into someones home or corner shop - generally because of their resale value and easy marketability, not because they're desperate to have a cancer stick or a beer.
 
So no evidence then?

I'm being a douche, I know, but it's douchery with a purpose.
 
@Professor Yaffle - on the topic of drug education, my comments were directed at the specific level of detail mentioned by Dessi's post.

The comments you post related to drug eduction I have no issues with. I DO think there is a distinction to providing clear, honest & direct information about the realities (for example) of injecting heroin to kids, without getting into the lurid details (ie - can you safely clean a syringe, can you get into trouble for calling 911 for an o/d etc...)

These details can be left to the more targetted forms of drug education mentioned in the article.
 
Antiquehunter said:
@Eddie - I'm a bit intrigued that in your story you feel the only problem with the heroin use is the economic side of the story. In both the anecdotes you provided, while you state that both individuals appeared to be able to 'function' - both also resorted to theft to feed an addiction. From my perspective, that shows that the drug has a very dangerous effect - that someone will resort to an illegal act (one they would consider to be unacceptable and wrong) to fund their addiction.

Even if the drug cost a very minor amount, they would eventually fall on hard times to resort to paying for the drug - cheaper heroin doesn't necessarily mean that people won't steal to get it. It just may take longer before they have to resort to theft to buy it. At least - that is my perception of the unusual addictive qualities of the substance.

I think its pretty rare to find people who will resort to theft to fund their cigarettes & alcohol habits. Sure - cigarettes & alcohol are hot commodities when people break into someones home or corner shop - generally because of their resale value and easy marketability, not because they're desperate to have a cancer stick or a beer.
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Writing those anecdotes down, really hammered home for me how strong the need for a fix must be. Sometimes writing something down puts it in a much starker light.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Nope.

I drew that line on opinion, not evidence.
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Any lesser man would not have admitted it. Thank you. :D

(By His Noodly Appendages I appreciate these forums for exactly that reason)

Now, are you (or anyone else) interested in the reality of casual drug use vs addiction/abuse rates of methamphetamines and crack-cocaine? I can probably get a reasonably recent source for that somewhere in the library or on ze interwebz.
 
IIRC, about 1 in 6 people will be addicted to cocaine 10 years after first use.

ETA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_dependence

According to a study of 1081 US residents aged over 11 years who had used cocaine for the first time within 24 months prior to assessment, the risk of becoming cocaine-dependent within 2 years of first use (recent-onset) is 5-6%; after 10 years, it increases to 15-16%. These are the aggregate rates for all types of use considered, i.e., smoking, snorting, injecting. Among recent-onset users, the relative rates are higher for smoking (3.4 times) and much higher for injecting. They also vary, based on other characteristics, such as sex: among recent-onset users, women are 3.3 times more likely to become addicted, compared with men; age: among recent-onset users, those who started using at ages 12 or 13 were 4 times as likely to become addicted, compared with those who started between ages 18 and 20.[3]
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nvidiot said:
Now, are you (or anyone else) interested in the reality of casual drug use vs addiction/abuse rates of methamphetamines and crack-cocaine? I can probably get a reasonably recent source for that somewhere in the library or on ze interwebz.
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I'd be interested. I've been googling for meth, but all I've found so far are bald statements about its highly addictive nature without any references or statistics.
 
nvidiot said:
Any lesser man would not have admitted it. Thank you. :D

(By His Noodly Appendages I appreciate these forums for exactly that reason)

Now, are you (or anyone else) interested in the reality of casual drug use vs addiction/abuse rates of methamphetamines and crack-cocaine? I can probably get a reasonably recent source for that somewhere in the library or on ze interwebz.
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Thank you.

And good numbers on this subject would be much appreciated.
 
I'll dig some up tonight. :) To paraphrase: there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and then there's drug use statistics. ;)
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
IIRC, about 1 in 6 people will be addicted to cocaine 10 years after first use.
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Whilst I'm very interested in statistics (as stated above), I'm a bit sceptical of them.

The trade is not charted (as it is illegal) and the users that come in contact with authorities are usually of the problematic variety.
This may distort the picture considerably.
 
@nvidiot - its a very generous offer. While there is no end to crap posted on the internet on the topic of drugs, it will take a significant amount of digging to find numbers that appear to be valid & not produced to drive one agenda or another.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Whilst I'm very interested in statistics (as stated above), I'm a bit sceptical of them.

The trade is not charted (as it is illegal) and the users that come in contact with authorities are usually of the problematic variety.
This may distort the picture considerably.
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The study referenced in the wiki article:

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v30/n5/full/1300681a.html

In this paper, we present new estimates for the risk of becoming cocaine dependent within 24 months after first use of the drug, and study subgroup variation in this risk. The study estimates are based on the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse conducted during 2000–2001, with a representative sample of US residents aged 12 years and older (n=114 241). A total of 1081 respondents were found to have used cocaine for the first time within 24 months prior to assessment. Between 5 and 6% of these recent-onset users had become cocaine dependent since onset of use. Excess risk of recent cocaine dependence soon after onset of cocaine use was found for female subjects, young adults aged 21–25 years, and non-Hispanic Black/African-Americans. Use of crack-cocaine and taking cocaine by injection were associated with having become cocaine dependent soon after onset of use. These epidemiologic findings help to quantify the continuing public health burden associated with new onsets of cocaine use in the 21st century.
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Eddie Dane said:
Whilst I'm very interested in statistics (as stated above), I'm a bit sceptical of them.

The trade is not charted (as it is illegal) and the users that come in contact with authorities are usually of the problematic variety.
This may distort the picture considerably.
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I think I would agree that statistics might be a bit misleading, I'm not sure that current users are necessarily representative of the overall population.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
I think I would agree that statistics might be a bit misleading, I'm not sure that current users are necessarily representative of the overall population.
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That only leaves animal studies, because to my knowledge a randomised study on cocaine in humans has not been performed (and never will for ethical reasons), hence my suggestion to make each drug legal for a few years and see what happens before deciding what to do long term.

IIRC, animal studies show that rats will forego behaviour necessary for survival to keep receiving cocaine.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Possibly.

Neither drug is popular in Europe, I have no experience with their users.
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The only time in the UK it came from someone returning from Czech Republic and its relatively common. As I understand it, its cheap and easy to make - in fact my Czech friend refuses to show us how as he doesn't want him and us addicted
 
Manger Douse said:
The only time in the UK it came from someone returning from Czech Republic and its relatively common. As I understand it, its cheap and easy to make - in fact my Czech friend refuses to show us how as he doesn't want him and us addicted
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OK, maybe it has reached Europe.

I'll say in my defence that I'm forty, have three kids and drive a beige Volvo.

I might be a bit out of touch with the counter-culture at this point.

*Slouches off to have mid-life crisis*
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
The study referenced in the wiki article:

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v30/n5/full/1300681a.html
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HOWEVER, you also have to realize that we draw the line for "addiction" in different places for different drugs.

E.g., at first impression it sounds worse than alcohol, until you realize that for alcohol basically we just don't give a damn until it really starts to interfere with someone's life. If someone drank a beer every evening probably most people would not consider him an alcoholic, but if he did cocaine every evening, most people would consider him quite thoroughly addicted.

To put things in perspective, almost half of Americans aged 12 or older reported being current drinkers of alcohol in a 2001 survey. Among people ages 21-22, 85% of men and 76% of women have used alcohol within the last 30 days. Some 55% of men in the same age bracket and 33% of women drank five or more drinks in a row in the past 2 weeks, i.e., binge drinking.

If you had the same stats for cocaine use as for binge drinking, you'd say those people are surely addicts.

Yet for alcohol we consider that only about 7.5% of Americans qualify as alcoholics, just because we require it to really interfere with one's life before we even consider it a problem.

What I'm saying is that "1 in 6 will become addicted in the next 10 years" sounds bad, but realistically it's not that different from alcohol. We just use very different definitions of what counts as addicted for the two.
 
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