Posted on 08/01/2002 5:16:08 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Edited on 05/07/2004 8:00:51 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Rationalize your freedom away, 4freedom. Keep on rationalizing.
Who's going to do the last one?
Why are you so anti marijuana? Here are the facts of marijuana vs alcohol. Why not rant about making alcohol illegal?
Comparing Addictive Qualities of Popular Drugs (Higher score indicates more serious effect) |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Drug | Dependence | Withdrawal | Tolerance | Reinforcement | Intoxication |
Nicotine | 6 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
Heroin | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
Cocaine | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 4 |
Alcohol | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
Caffeine | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Marijuana | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Withdrawal: Presence and severity of characteristic withdrawal symptoms.
Reinforcement: A measure of the substance's ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it again and again, and in preference to other substances.
Tolerance: How much of the substance is needed to satisfy increasing cravings for it, and the level of stable need that is eventually reached.
Dependence: How difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm.
Intoxication: Though not usually counted as a measure of addiction in itself, the level of intoxication is associated with addiction and increases the personal and social damage a substance may do.
Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use."
Tobacco | 430,7001 |
Alcohol | 110,6402 |
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs | 32,0003 |
Suicide | 30,5754 |
Homicide | 18,2725 |
All Licit & Illicit Drug-Induced Deaths | 16,9266 |
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin | 7,6007 |
Marijuana | 08 |
Source:(1996): "Smoking-Attributable Mortality and Years of Potential Life Lost," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control, 1997), May 23, 1997, Vol. 46, No. 20, p. 449.
Source: "Number of deaths and age-adjusted death rates per 100,000 population for categories of alcohol-related (A-R) mortality, United States and States, 1979-96," National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, from the web at http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/databases/armort01.txt, last accessed Feb. 12, 2001, citing Alcohol Epidemiologic Data System, Saadatmand, F., Stinson, FS, Grant, BF, and Dufour, MC, "Surveillance Report #52: Liver Mortality in the United States, 1970-96" (Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Division of Biometry and Epidemiology, December 1999).
Source: Lazarou, J, Pomeranz, BH, Corey, PN, "Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies," Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago, IL: American Medical Association, 1998), 1998;279:1200-1205, also letters column, "Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients," JAMA (Chicago, IL: AMA, 1998), Nov. 25, 1998, Vol. 280, No. 20, from the web at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n20/ffull/jlt1125-1.html, last accessed Feb. 12, 2001.
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., "Deaths: Final Data for 1998," National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), Table 10, p. 53, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., "Deaths: Final Data for 1998," National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), Table 10, p. 53, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
Source: Murphy, Sheila L., Centers for Disease Control, "Deaths: Final Data for 1998,", National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2000), pp. 1, 10, from the web at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvs48_11.pdf .
Source: Robyn Tamblyn, PhD; Laeora Berkson, MD, MHPE, FRCPC; W. Dale Jauphinee, MD, FRCPC; David Gayton, MD, PhD, FRCPC; Roland Grad, MD, MSc; Allen Huang, MD, FRCPC; Lisa Isaac, PhD; Peter McLeod, MD, FRCPC; and Linda Snell, MD, MHPE, FRCPC, "Unnecessary Prescribing of NSAIDs and the Management of NSAID-Related Gastropathy in Medical Practice," Annals of Internal Medicine (Washington, DC: American College of Physicians, 1997), September 15, 1997, 127:429-438, from the web at http://www.acponline.org/journals/annals/15sep97/nsaid.htm, last accessed Feb. 14, 2001, citing Fries, JF, "Assessing and understanding patient risk," Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology Supplement, 1992;92:21-4.
Source: Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), available on the web at http://www.samhsa.gov/; also see Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and John A. Benson, Jr., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, Institute of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), available on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/; and US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition" (Docket #86-22), September 6, 1988, p. 57.
Facts I'm sure never bother you though
What is it with you and apples and oranges, anyway?
What's with you and self-medication? Every yahoo that goes home and wants a couple of beers after a pissy day at work, or gets drunk because his girlfriend left him is self-medicating. Are they supposed to call their doctor and ask permission first?
We might have a few less heart attacks and save a few livers that way.
Hmmm, prescriptions for alcohol.
Boy, would that change the character of your next night out.
Wouldn't change mine any, but I bet there's going to be a long line for the pay phone at the bowling alley.
It seems that the law enforcement in those towns either sucks or is corrupt, or you have loopholes in your laws. Now whose fault is that....
It's this failure to adequately protect the public from drunk drivers that convinces many of us that "a little bit legal" won't work with drugs, either. We haven't found a way to protect my grandkids from the use of alcohol by others. We haven't found a way to protect them, even, from the use of tobacco by others. Granted, we can't find ways to protect them from everything in life, but we ought to be able to prevent individuals and groups from claiming a "constitutional" right to deal dope to my grandkids, blow tobacco smoke in their faces, and run over and kill or maim them while driving drunk.
Someone's arguing about their constitutional right to deal drugs to your grandchildren? That sounds like a ton of hyperbole to me, considering that it's still illegal to deal alcohol and tobacco to children. Considering as how you see tobacco and alcohol to be problems, it seems your efforts to stop pot are misguided. Instead, you should be focusing your efforts on banning these substances that allow grown men to kill your grandchildren while driving drunk and allow them to blow tobacco smoke in their faces.
Maybe it's because we like the feeling of getting high. No anti-establishment hippie bs, just the pure, simple fact that getting high is relaxing to me.
And I don't understand the appeal of NASCAR either, but millions of people do in this country.....
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