http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jun/16/designer-drugs-legal-highs
Why the war on drugs has been made redundant
For every ‘designer drug’ the authorities ban, clandestine labs are churning out a new version. No wonder the law can’t keep up…
Vaughan Bell
The Observer, Saturday 15 June 2013
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When Germany identified the substances and banned them in early 2009, new cannabinoids, again never before seen outside the lab, had replaced them within weeks and this is what has been happening ever since. One gets banned and another novel substance takes its place almost immediately. Professional but clandestine labs are rifling the scientific literature for new psychoactive drugs and synthesising them as fast as the law changes. In one of the most interesting developments, a cannabinoid detected in 2012, named XLR-11, was not only new to the drug market but completely new to science. Several previously unknown substances have turned up since. The grey market labs are not only pushing new substances on to the drug market, they are actually innovating drug design. The human testers select themselves of course, unaware of what they’re taking, sometimes leading to disastrous results. Information about the dangers of new substances is usually nonexistent.
The whole process has also been an unwitting experiment in drug policy. Despite the free availability of substances as pleasurable as already banned drugs, we have not seen a massive increase in problem users and drug mortality rates have been falling. Furthermore, even with the newly introduced “instant bans”, drug laws are simply not able to keep up.
Currently, it is barely possible to detect new drugs at the rate they appear. It has long been clear that the drug war approach of criminalising possession rather than treating problem drug-users has been futile. The revolution in the recreational drug market is a stark reminder of this reality. The war on drugs has not been lost, it has been made obsolete.
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OK, can we now decriminalize “drugs”.
Let’s recognize reality!
The FDA and Big Pharma are in bed with each other. The underground drug market is how the REAL free market should operate.
Consumers Reports, Underwriters Laboratory, and informed people are our only defense.
Since time immemorial, humans get high. 10% or so become addicts. The percentage varies but that 10% seems to be a floor.
Instead of wasting resources and ruining lives, let’s get back to basic medicine.
Argh!
But politicians and bureaucrats like to use force on victims of addiction because it is PC and their easy to campaign against.
Meanwhile the politicians and bureaucrats are the real problem. And, some of them are criminals.
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Posted by reinkefj 
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