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Comment by cmdrfred | Hacker News Reader

In medicine, you have to show a drug is more effective (or as effective) and is as safe as existing drugs for a purpose in order to get FDA approval. Why not take a similar stance on drugs for recreational purposes? If it is as safe or safer than alcohol or tobacco, approve it.

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Au contraire, a substance should only be banned from consumption if it is shown to be highly addictive, and life-threatening if overconsumed. Or something like that. I don't believe something should be banned until presumed completely safe.

>>highly addictive, and life-threatening if overconsumed

You mean like caffeine or nicotine?

No.

1) Addictive as in, one "normal" dose causes high physical addiction.

2) Lethal, more specifically that it is easy to overdose, or that the difference between "normal" and LD50 is low.

You don't get hooked on caffeine after one coke, and it's hard to kill yourself drinking too much coffee.

Which drugs cause "high physical addiction" with one dose?

It is pretty rare for anyone to get addicted to a drug after one dose. Even for things like heroin. I think I've read that at most, there is a 25% chance of addiction. Still high, but still below the thresh hold. But admittedly, it is rather hard to sort out fact from propaganda here. (and heroin does have that second one, I'm guessing).

Little known fact: pure nicotine is hardly addictive. The Mono-amine oxidase inhibitors in tobacco really ramp up its addictive potential.

Make them all legal, tax the hell out of it, and put that toward substance abuse programs.

The ones who can't handle their addictions will cease to be a problem soon enough.

This has been done. Mitragynine and 7-OH-mitragyine (the primary alkaloids in kratom) do not recruit β-arrestin[1], which os what causes typical opioid side effects - including respiratory depression. It is this that kills when you overdose on almost every other known opioid drug. This really is huge deal.

Less importantly, but still relevant, it also doesn't cause anywhere near the level of constipation that pharmaceutical opioid drugs cause.

It also activates both mu and delta opioid receptors, which is perhaps why I personally find it is so much more effective for neuropathic pain than the more common mu-opiod pharmaceutical drugs.

[1] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.6b00360?journalCode...

Tobacco and alcohol are unusually dangerous in the scheme of drugs. I don't disagree with your intention to relax restrictions behind drugs, but if this logic was followed, nearly every drug would be legalized, which is not the goal of the government of the USA.

If that is true, and your end goal is truly safety, why doesn't the FDA and DEA advocate for the criminalization of those drugs as well? I have been told that the argument is that prohibition caused violence and crime, but so does the prohibition of heroin so that logic doesn't seem to hold.

Because it would be politically impossible? (I would also argue that the DEA's goal is not safety.)

I upvoted you for adding to the discussion.

If that rule is so great, can we afford not to use it everywhere?

Let Pepsi, Toyota and Apple prove they're better than Coke, Ford and Microsoft!

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