Would murder be a crime if it wasn’t illegal?

David Nutt is a propagandist, not a scientist, and his ‘research’ shouldn’t be cited or taken seriously by anyone.

You know, his raw data are available — feel free to come up with a wieghting of your choice that has a modicum of sanity and shows anything else.

Until you do that your criticism is just, well, hot air.

http://www.amazon.com/Saying-Yes-Defense-Drug-Use/dp/1585422274 

I’d rather argue that NEITHER state-level nor federal-level law-makers have any mandate to regulate brain-chemistry and NEVER had mandate to regulate brain-chemistry, but fear-based political discourse has muddied the water so much that this simple element of policy remains ignored. 

Or to put it another way: it’s politically safer to ignore what a scientist says versus a rancher …especially in an election year.

http://www.amazon.com/Consumers-Narcotics-Stimulants-Depressants-Hallucinogens/dp/0316107174

http://www.amazon.com/Aint-Nobodys-Business-You-Consensual/dp/0931580587

I realize that, but what does it mean to lump harm to users together with dependence potential and harm to society? Nothing, because it’s an absolutely meaningless ‘measure’. 

What Nutt proposes is placing drugs into different schedules based on his harm rankings. Does that really make sense though, to restrict marijuana more than benzodiazipines because some group of psychiatrists (who get paid to prescribe benzos) think they are less dangerous in some way or another?

There is absolutely nothing you can do with these rankings, because they don’t actually tell you anything useful. As far as I can tell Nutt only created them to get media publicity for himself. 

That’s not what he is saying, at all. If you read the book you’d realise that their concept of “harm” encompasses 16 different types of harm including injury, economic, social and environmental harms. So marijuana is ranked higher than butane not because it is more dangerous to any particular person’s health (it isn’t), but because it “scored highest on drug-related damage and drug-related impairment of mental functioning, mostly because of the harms associated with smoking” (often with tobacco).

Similarly, alcohol is ranked by far the most harmful drug, mainly due to how its used on society, not because of its direct physical effects. The fact that Nutt and the ISCD consider other factors besides the direct damage is one reason why this book makes so much common sense.

Yes, which is what I am saying. Nutt’s study makes them look more dangerous than they actually are, because it does not take into account that many of the harms that current opiate users experience are the result of prohibition. 

That is why the results make zero sense. If you actually believe that huffing butane is safer that using marijuana, which is what Nutt says, then you’re probably well on your way to winning a Darwin award. 

“Why is it harmful?” Because it is illegal.

Because if caffeine were illegal then it would be astronomically expensive, so people would inject it to save money like they do with heroin and other drugs. And because only the most hardcore addicts would be doing this, they would also be trying to get the biggest rush possible.

Before opiates were illegal everyone used to just eat them, injecting them was all but unheard of. And if they were, they were doing it safely, at least by the standards of the day. So harms caused by injection are caused by prohibition, not by the substance itself. So it’s completely fraudulent to claim that, say, heroin is more dangerous than coffee based on looking at the problems caused by injections, unless you’re also going to attribute those same harms to drugs that are currently legal.