The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire

All of this is just causing problems for those of us, who have real pain management issues.

I can't decide which is more asinine: the war on (some) drugs (WOSD) or a person who puts an ad up for a service they know is illegal on site accessible to anyone on the planet.

sasquatch, you have my sympathies as a lot of doctors don't prescribe opiates because of bad experiences with drug abusing patients and worries about the provincial college of physicians interrogating them on their prescribing practices. To me, this is about as stupid as giving up ones guns because Gharbi misused his.

Times sure have changed. The way to get legal amphetamines in the early 1970's was as follows:
(a) find a fat girlfriend
(b) talk to her about losing weight
(c) have her go to student health and get prescribed a large quantity of "diet pills"
(d) have her share the diet pills with you at exam time.

A friend of mine who was in pre-med at the time mystified me when he suddenly started going out with a rather obese girlfriend, but his reasons were suddenly revealed when he gave me a few preludin tablets before one of my final exams. Quite a nice amphetamine but unfortunately no longer on the market.

Back then amphetamines were legal and widely used by students, truck drivers and people at disco's who had the urge to dance all night without falling asleep. Doses were in the low range and people experienced no bad effects. The people involved in the WOSD seem unaware that it's the dose that makes the poison and comparing the several gram/day methamphetamine user to a student cramming for exams is like assuming identity of a person having a glass of wine with a meal and a skid road alcoholic who has seizures whenever his blood alcohol level drops below 80 mM.

As far as I'm concerned, almost all drugs should be freely available without a prescription and people allowed to make their own decisions about what to put in their bodies. While there would be some stupid decisions made, the cost to society of this approach would be far far smaller than the totalitarian state that has arisen out of the WOSD. /rant off

what sasquash said.

MM

and how far has canada advanced in illegal drug sales..
much like the advance in censorship of publicized speech
the US has far to go to match canada..

"In 1981, the CIA helped ship cocaine from El Salvador to Texas and Arkansas, then to LA. "
"The high amount of people in jail is a direct result of the Crack Epidemic, which was started by the CIA. "
http://www.southcentralhistory.com/crack-epidemic.php

"For nearly a decade the CIA, helped spread crack cocaine in Black ghettos"
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/Secret_ties_between_CIA_drugs_revealed_2625.shtml

ok, is that you?

I agree with Loki 100% and so should all true libertarians. Kate is not one.

I agree with Loki 100% and so should all true libertarians. Kate is not one.

I say if you want it legalized .....don't make me pay for the stupid people ie. private health care insurance....problem solved .until then James shut your fat mouth , and by the way sorry for caring about other people.

Paul -- relax. Funny how you say you care about people but your first statement is about how you don't want Prohibition to end until you have private health insurance. You're all heart, aren't you?

It's time we get our liberties, even one at a time.

I've seen ads for dope on usedvictoria.com.

Paul in Calgary >

“I say if you want it legalized .....don't make me pay for the stupid people ie”

I agree 100%.

I could care less if stupid people want to stick rat poison in their veins, but I’m not paying for the fallout. Personally I’ll be the first to agree to legalizing ALL drugs once I have my FULL rights to Open & Conceal Carry along with full Stand Your Ground and Castle laws.

Then have at it, get high all day every day, if you try to jack me for drug cash I legally get to put a bullet in your brain. No issues otherwise.

On the bright side, this does make it easier for public spirited citizens to find these clowns don't you think?

The problem with the "Its ok if I don't have to pay" is that you WILL pay, and pay, and pay. Sure, cut off all welfare and medical care for junkies, I'm good with it. But you will still have JUNKIES, and they will still be living WITH US in our cities and towns. Every one of them is somebody's kid. You are going to lose relatives to it. Factor that into your calculations is all I'm saying.

I see no reason for guys who make a huge amount of money selling dangerous drugs to have a free and easy life. They should be looking over their shoulders all the time, fearfully.

I'd like to live on the same street as Knight 99.

I like the cut of his jib.....

I'm confused by phil's non-farmer related comment. Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?

The Phantom >

I agree with most of what you’re saying, but, these same guys are not going to pack it up and get a legitimate job. They just move onto other, even riskier or more violent ways of getting their money.

At the street corner level, that means allot more home invasions or the like instead of standing out on the streets selling to pathetic liberals that pull up in their SUV’s.

Again not a problem for me, just give me the legal right first to legally defend against the onslaught as they move off the streets and into our homes.

eastern paul >

"I'd like to live on the same street as Knight 99."

Ha ha, it’s actually a pretty nice street, enough so that the regional Hells Angels boss was my neighbor for a couple of years until they arrested him with a SWAT team. Needless to say they hauled off everything from a tricked out 4x4, a couple of tricked out Cadillac’s, custom jet boat, RV, some Harley’s, et al.

He was a nice quite neighbor though, kept a low profile and had several of his boys around every week cutting grass, shoveling snow, trimming the hedges or whatever was needed. They all minded their own business and never gave anyone any trouble (No parties, loud music etcetera).

My place itself is an unassuming fortress, well prepped for the coming Zombie apocalypse :)

Meh. If they legalized all the drugs, it would pull the rug out from under the cartels and criminals.

This is excellent. Good capitalism at work undermining the state.

Every one of them is somebody's kid. You are going to lose relatives to it. Factor that into your calculations is all I'm saying.

Emotional drivel along with gross exaggeration of theharms of drugs are all the drug warriors have left.

That's better. You had me worried there, phil.

While I understand Knight99's sentiments when he wants to use junkies for target practice, one should think of the useful role that junkies play in medical education. This is a role they will continue to play until there is a very realistic human pathology simulator which I'd guess would be decades away.

When I interned in Vancouver, we learned on junkies and Hastings street alcoholics. These individuals seem to be almost impossible to kill and I can now manage alcohol withdrawal while asleep. Junkies came in with the most esoteric of infections and, if an intern messed up, who cared if there was just another dead junkie? We saw how long it took for people to take notice of Picton and his porcine playpen.

The few fatal mistakes I made with junkies taught me a lot and I think I'm a far better doctor because I got free reign to get creative when dealing with this population. I remember one episode in the ICU when there was a junkie overdosed on tricyclics where we were reading an ICU textbook at the same time as we were trying to revive the guy. One of the interns would find a section that said we had to give bicarb so in went the bicarb and the QRS duration shortened. Then someone else would mention magnesium and we'd mix up the mag in between shocking the guy back into sinus rhythm. (This was in the pre-UpToDate days when we had to use real paper books). If this was a non-junkie patient we'd have been relegated to the sidelines as the intensivist personally handled the case.

I've seen so much bacterial endocarditis that I always think about it and I've seen specialists at Vancouver hospitals that care for the well heeled population embarrased by a first year resident from a less well regarded downtown hospital who quickly diagnoses a case of endocarditis in a patient who has been totally worked up for all sorts of exotic diseases except no-one at the un-named hospital thought of endocarditis. (This happened to one of my patients).

So, before you pull that trigger, think of the potential medical education opportunities that would be wasted (well it would teach surgical residents how to deal with gunshot wounds).

Loki, well said I agree.

Loki, in truth I must agree with you a little. I did some of my practical at two gawd-awful New York hospitals, and had some very interesting junkies to work on.

I didn't learn squat about physical therapy from them, but I did learn how hard it is to stop a human being with a pistol. Two or three cases of multiple gunshot wounds who ran for blocks. This was the basis of my love for the shotgun and the .308 rifle. No cases of guys shot with those running away.

I also learned, peace be upon LAS, that street drugs commonly cause permanent and very debilitating brain damage. The results of which can be a combination of abject stupidity and poor impulse control. Basically a person who is useless for anything other than shoveling or sweeping, and who can't be trusted with shoveling or sweeping.

How many people like that can we have in a city before we can't deal with them anymore? Why should we let guys make money causing that problem which WE have to clean up?

I'm in agreement with "shoot, shovel and shut up" as a principle. But you know, I don't want to have to be -doing- that. I really don't want to wake up at 3AM because I had that dream about shooting the junkie again. I've got enough PTSD bad dreams without blasting some f- that came in my house. I will if I have to, but I don't want to have to. Right?

Knight99 said: "...these same guys are not going to pack it up and get a legitimate job."

Well, no. They're not. But as we know, crime is an opportunistic thing. Schmucks don't do it because they like it, they do it because its easy and they get money from it. When criminals have real fear of consequences, they either move or stop doing crimes. To avoid -dying-, y'know.

Junkies don't. Because brain damage.

So I think drug dealing should be a very, very dangerous profession with not much money in it. Like bank robbery. The risk should be much greater than the payoff. If the sonsabeatches are posting on Craigslist the risk can't be that high, can it?

I also learned, peace be upon LAS, that street drugs commonly cause permanent and very debilitating brain damage.

Not true for occasional users. Only a few become these addicts.

Why should we let guys make money causing that problem which WE have to clean up?

Drug dealers don't cause the problem, period. They are just good businessmen bless them.

I've got enough PTSD bad dreams

Take some MDMA for that.

Phantom, I guess the teaching potential of junkies in physiotherapy is only a fraction of their teaching potential in medicine. Fortunately doctors just have to deal with the acute physiologic disruption in junkies when they come into ER and I guess physiotherapists get the long term fallout in this patient group.

The only drug that has unequivocal evidence of brain damage with single use is MPTP which causes Parkinson's in the vast majority of people who use it. With every other drug; it depends on the dose. The most deadly drug that I deal with on a daily basis is good old ethanol with it's attendant sequelae of Korsakoff's, cirrhosis and DT's. Just because I see these things on a daily basis is not going to stop me from enjoying a couple of beer when I feel like relaxing; it's the dose that makes the poison. Can't repeat this often enough in the field of pharmacology.

LAS, why MDMA? MDA seems to have fallen out of fashion and it's a far less stimulant drug and was used widely in psychotherapy before it got banned. MDMA is more similar to straight amphetamine than the more serotonergic MDA.

For PTSD, cannabinoids now seem to be the first choice and I prescribe a lot of nabilone for this disorder.

Well, I'd heard complaints about junk being sold on Craigslist, but I had given that a different interpetation entirely...