Ecstacy is safer than weed?

[Fritzo]

Wow...that's like saying colon cancer is better than stomach cancer.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: Legendary
A bad hit of ecstasy can kill you. Rare, but it still happens.

Please define 'bad hit' as I can find no data to back your claim. As to the others in the thread, this study was widely discussed a few months ago. You should be able to find more than enough information on the science behind it, but to get you started:

BBC News
Guardian Unlimited

Personally, I find this one of the most realistic views on drugs I've seen to date. I do hope this helps eventually drive drug policy.

Some outtakes:

"The scientists, including members of the government's top advisory committee on drug classification, have produced a rigorous assessment of the social and individual harm caused by 20 substances, and believe this should form the basis of any future ranking."

"They asked a group of 29 consultant psychiatrists who specialise in addiction to rate the drugs in nine categories. Three of these related to physical harm, three to the likelihood of addiction and three to social harms such as healthcare costs. The team also extended the analysis to another group of 16 experts spanning several fields including chemistry, pharmacology, psychiatry, forensics, police and legal services.

The final rankings placed heroin and cocaine as the most dangerous of the 20 drugs. Alcohol was fifth, the class C drug ketamine sixth and tobacco was in ninth place, just behind amphetamine or "speed".

Cannabis was 11th, while LSD and ecstasy were 14th and 18th respectively. The rankings do take into account new evidence that specially cultivated "skunk" varieties of cannabis available now are two to three times stronger than traditional cannabis resin.

The position of ecstasy near the bottom of the list was defended by Prof Nutt, who said that apart from some tragic isolated cases ecstasy is relatively safe. Despite about a third of young people having tried the drug and around half a million users every weekend, it causes fewer than 10 deaths a year. One person a day is killed by acute alcohol poisoning and thousands more from chronic use.

(btw MDMA deaths are almost always underhydration or overdydration, not a result of the drug itself)

Uh.. lol..

I have an extremely strong aversion to letting people's personal opinions affect our laws. If you think these peoples personal opinions did not factor into their rankings, you are naive.

This is pseudo-science garbage, although I agree with your stance on MDMA.

 

[AAjax]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: potato28
You can get a similar effect of ODing on pot, but it doesn't do anything to your body(other than kill a few brain cells.) X can kill you in a few doses if your not careful, and you can OD very easily. I must say this thread seems... different... :Q

:roll: Its almost impossible to OD on X. Now, X is often spiked with other drugs (caffeene, meth, etc) which it IS possible to OD on, but its important to not confuse those two points.

Um, huh? Ive seen it happen on multiple occasions (with and without the full body convulsions) Though Ive never taken the stuff myself and have no idea of the quality of the chemical ingested by those I saw this type of reaction happen to.

 

[Eli]

I dunno. I'm getting too caught up in the Cannabis vs. E. thing.

Like I said, I think the graph is on the right track.. But once you get down into the middle, things are so harmless that you could jumble it up any way you wanted and it would not change much.

 

[bsobel]

I have an extremely strong aversion to letting people's personal opinions affect our laws. If you think these peoples personal opinions did not factor into their rankings, you are naive.

Come on, our current drug laws are almost completely based on opinion. All these scientists are doing is trying to introduce some facts into the discussion. I think people miss the point in an overall is E better or worse than Canabis. On the plus side no-one is arguing Heroin is not worse than either

 

[Lonyo]

http://www.lonyo.co.uk/stuff/PIIS0140673607604644.pdf

That's a copy of the original report which the graph came from.
You can get it free from the website, but you have to register, so I hosted an alternate copy.

 

[bsobel]

Like I said, I think the graph is on the right track.. But once you get down into the middle, things are so harmless that you could jumble it up any way you wanted and it would not change much.

Look at the scale used, I think that is a completely reaonable position for you to take. We should be lookin at the discussion over the entire range, not so narrowly as comparing two items which are fairly close. Also, if newwer stronger strains of pot were not included, it would have been noticebly lower on the list...

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: bsobel

I have an extremely strong aversion to letting people's personal opinions affect our laws. If you think these peoples personal opinions did not factor into their rankings, you are naive.

Come on, our current drug laws are almost completely based on opinion. All these scientists are doing is trying to introduce some facts into the discussion. I think people miss the point in an overall is E better or worse than Canabis. On the plus side no-one is arguing Heroin is not worse than either

This is true, and I agree..

It just sucks that it is such a subjective thing, though..

Here's an idea; legalize all drugs. Do away with all this bullsh!t. Let people do what they want to themselves; they already do anyway.

Crime would go down. Deaths due to impure drugs would go down.

The only people that would not benefit are current drug dealers and manufacturers. Isn't that what we want?

It boggles the mind.

 

[RallyMaster]

LIES! ALL LIES!!1

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: blackllotus

Originally posted by: destrekor
LSD should be among the lowest, period. I want to know the reports involved in the making of this graph. LSD has been shown to have no harm on any part of the body, thanks in part to the sheer minuscule amount that the dose is.

Thats not entirely true. LSD users can sometimes have flashback hallucinations even if they haven't taken the drug recently.

that's not harm. That can be along the lines of how your body deals with stress (remember, stress is not in of itself bad. there is a such thing as good stressors, and some LSD trips could be seen as good or bad stress). Such as, PTSD. Flashbacks most likely occur because the initial trip was so insane to the mind, that it recalls it later for whatever reason. Much as we don't properly understand PTSD, we don't understand LSD flashbacks. And just as the trips can be good or bad, the flashbacks can be of varying degrees.

 

[bsobel]

Um, huh? Ive seen it happen on multiple occasions (with and without the full body convulsions) Though Ive never taken the stuff myself and have no idea of the quality of the chemical ingested by those I saw this type of reaction happen to.

Hard to prove now, but given the science I am certianly willing to bet that what your describing isn't MDMA. Now, these people may have THOUGHT they were getting MDMA (aka X) but the reaction you describe isn't an X overdose reaction.

 

[tomywishbone]

The X kids have today is rubbish. Call me, and I'll send you 10 grams of 1988 Berkeley MDMA. That will change your life. :beer:

 

[bsobel]

Here's an idea; legalize all drugs. Do away with all this bullsh!t. Let people do what they want to themselves; they already do anyway.

Im close to your opinion on that, my view is slice that chart at a specific level and legalize everything below. All of the laws we have now for say drunk driving (etc) would apply (so if your high on e and drive and cause a death, its the same as being drunk). I do think some drugs (e.g. heroin) are too addicitve and cause too much societal harm (which means I'm not a complete libertartian on this, but its my take)...

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: tomywishbone
The X kids have today is rubbish. Call me, and I'll send you 10 grams of 1988 Berkeley MDMA. That will change your life. :beer:

Side note MDMA is back in clinical trials for PTSD (one of the many unintended consequences of Iraq...), it's currently in the third phase of trials. Its non-unlikely we'll re-see medical production in a year or two.

A side note, MDMA was invented in 1917, wasn't made illegal until 1986. In 1986 the FDA wanted to make it a prescription controlled drug, the Reagan adminstration as part of the war on drugs specifically overrode the FDA opinion and make it a class 1....

 

[fishmonger12]

If any of you have seen before/after pictures of meth addicts, I think you would say meth is one of the most harmful drugs. Funny how they group it in with amphetamines, which includes drugs like Aderol, and don't give it it's own category. ****** graph.