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Comment by dopamine | Hacker News Reader

May I take this opportunity to remind that the only drug known to be relatively safe is caffeine.

Pure caffeine powder can be almost instantly fatal if handled without gloves and respiratory protection. There are no safe drugs, only safe quantities.

And conversely, cocaine can be made into a healthy tea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea

I believe you mean nicotine...I have observed friends taking 10 kilograms of food grade caffeine microballs and weighing and bagging in 500 mg doses to distribute at a hacker convention, with no adverse effects.

Food grade caffeine granules are both diluted and granulated to prevent machine material handling errors from becoming deadly at food packaging plants. The powdered stuff is quite dangerous.

The info I have is that the granules are mainly to ease mechanical processing. Given that ld50 of anhydrous caffeine USP is above 100mg per kilo of body weight, I do not think a few grams, especially through skin, would be much risk. The msds advises gloves, due to it being a skin irritant, but that is for constant exposure.

Fine powders are a fire safety and explosion risk, of course, especially in automated storage and processing environments....flour, non dairy creamer, aluminum powder, etc are great fun.

If there is any info to the contrary I would be very interested.

"Given that ld50 of anhydrous caffeine USP is above 100mg per kilo of body weight, I do not think a few grams, especially through skin, would be much risk."

Fine water-soluble powders are absorbed quickly when inhaled, producing a very high peak concentration in the blood that supplies the heart. If it is enough to stop the heart from beating, you die, even if dose averaged over the whole body is reasonable.

Not unless you back it up with evidence.

Then you don't know a lot about drugs. Caffeine can be extremely dangerous in certain quantities. The only drug I know of that has no effective toxicity is cannabis, but that has other possible long term issues.

If you were to refine cannabis down to pure THC, I'm sure it'd have a toxicity level as well. Cannabis, like iceberg lettuce, doesn't have a toxicity level because of chemicals contained in it. And cannabis, like iceberg lettuce, could have stuff extracted out of it which would be toxic in large amounts at high concentrations.

By just about any definition of the word "drug" (except common-use, which isn't acceptable as it changes rapidly), water is also a drug.

People drown in water. Choke on water. There's water poisoning if you have too much of it.

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