39 Replies to “Let Me Fix That Headline For You”

  2. Actually, ecstasy’s active ingredient, MDMA, has been found to be much less harmful than previously though, with recreational use causing no long-term cognitive impairment. It’s all the other crap thrown in thanks to prohibition that’s the problem.

  3. The original headline is ridiculous. Agreed. It’s like when media report that “‘deadly heroin’ has hit the streets”.
    “Calgary health authorities confirm Ecstasy behind recent spate of deaths”
    That would’ve sufficed and something the NP should have used instead.
    And as a bonus, they’d do a sort of public service by citing ecstasy itself as the cause of death since IT, by it’s name, was the drug sought, bought and ingested by those who were ultimately killed by it, instead of focusing the attention on the so-called “lethal chemical” additive. Moreover, since there’s no way to determine what’s in any of it you buy anywhere, it’s journalistically irresponsible to send the message that one only needs to stay clear of the kind with the “lethal chemical” added to it, especially young people thinking of trying it and now given the message from NP’s headline that they need only steer clear of the “bad” stuff.

  4. libertarian: what constitutes recreational use.
    Once a month, once a week, once every 3 days, once daily. Although I cannot produce an example right here and now, there are lots of people who have died from their first recreational use of illicit drugs. mike
    I also read somewhere that ecstacy alters the brain such that the dopamine receptors get “burnt out” and cease to function. That’s part of the reason why larger doses are required to get the high. At some point it kills you, and you don’t know when it will be.

  6. I think ectasy should be legal for all those that promote the Liberal Progressive agenda. I’d hand them out myself.

  7. Libertarian,
    the ingredients of Ecstasy: Ephedrine (a stimulant), Dextromethorphan (DXM, a cough suppressant that has PCP-like effects at high doses), Ketamine (an anesthetic used mostly by veterinarians that also has PCP-like effects), Caffeine,Cocaine,Methamphetamine
    the effects: “In a study using monkeys, exposure to Ecstasy for four days caused brain damage to serotonin nerve terminals that could still be seen up to seven years later, providing evidence that people who take Ecstasy may be risking permanent brain damage.
    Researches believe the brain damage occurs because the drug, like methamphetamine, causes a degeneration of neurons containing the neurotransmitter dopamine. Damage to these neurons causes the motor disturbances seen in Parkinson’s disease, beginning with a lack of coordination and uncontrollable tremors, which can progress to a form of paralysis.”
    http://alcoholism.about.com/od/ecstasy/a/ecstasy.htm
    Right. Harmless enough for a church picnic.

  8. MDMA is quite harmless. Despite widespread use since the early 1900s it has caused few deaths.
    It is psychologically addictive, but so is alcohol of course.
    Scientifically there’s no reason to ban it and leave alcohol alone.

  9. When a young lady died out here in B.C. (17 years old) the local health officer said that, though it was hard to know how potent a single ecstasy pill was; two could definitely be dangerous! Of course this is where they have free syringes and crack pipes for users, and are giving “serious” thought to providing a drinking premises for alcoholics and the public will pick up the tab. That oughtta give a boost to the tourism sector!

  10. Osumashi Kinyobe >
    The problem with arguing about drugs on these blogs is that you’re most probably arguing with users. A fruitless effort.
    Anyone of rational and sober mind with children of their own, or people they truly care about would not want mind altering drugs readily legally available in their society beyond medical use, period.
    99.9% of people posting on SDA grew up in Canada & the US, whether they used drugs or not they’ve had some experience with them in society, they did not grow up in a vacuum. It’s funny then that all these advocates for drug use talk as if they are the only people that can understand drugs and how they affect a person or society.
    I’ve personally known too many drug abusers to count, losing two uncles to heroin and friends to stupid drug responsible deaths. I could care less if other idiots I don’t know want to harm themselves in any way they wish, but I will never lend my vote to legalize harmful chemicals for consumption in my society.

  11. I think some of you are confusing ecstasy for meth. Both are bad, but for ever-so-slightly different reasons. There are many bad drugs that gained favour with elites over the years. In the 80s, cocaine was considered harmless, and touted as the drug of choice for the upper class. I’d learned better in the 70s. One drug that gets a bad rap, is heroin. It’s a very effective pain killer, and a Godsend for terminally ill cancer patients. It’s addictive, but doesn’t kill on its own. Most addicts are killed getting money to buy it. Rich people like John Phillips, or Keith Richards live long, productive lives, while using herion regularly. Not so for cokeheads. They rarely last more than 5 years.

  12. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of pharmacology by people especially the principle of “it’s the dose that makes the poison”. PMA is a safe drug if used in the appropriate dose. Hence, it’s not that popular among knowledgeable users as it has a low therapeutic index. MDMA is quite safe and has been used in psychotherapy for decades. The studies which showed it to be toxic to serotonin (5-HT) neurons were quite flawed as the same results were obtained when the diet drug, dexfenfluramine, was used in the experiments. Dexfenfluramine was removed from the market not because of “neurotoxicity” but because of 10 women taking dexfenfluramine who developed valvular heart disease.
    Why MDMA is sold instead of MDA is unclear. Perhaps it’s because MDMA has more stimulant effects and lets people dance all night at raves. instead of laying back and marveling at the beauty of the world. I’ve seen lots of heavy MDA users from the 1960’s as patients and they seem to show no adverse neurologic effects.
    Methamphetamine is legally available in the US as Desoxyn and is used for treatment of narcolepsy and ADHD. Of course, the doses prescribed are far lower than illicit methamphetamine users ingest. Methamphetamine has been around since the 1930’s and was the primary stimulant of the Wehrmacht. The allied forces used dexedrine and pemoline. There are people with narcolepsy who have been on methamphetamine since the 1950’s and show no adverse neurologic effects. When one does something idiotic like injecting a gram or more/day of methamphetamine then one does cause brain damage.
    To put things in perspective, good old dihydrogen monoxide is lethal in overdosage and I’ve seen people (usually schizophrenics) with water intoxication who lived only because they were brought to hospital in time. The poor mans way of drinking oneself to death.

  13. This is why drugs,all drugs ,should be legalized.
    I am all for building prisons to get the criminals off the street,but you cannot fill them up with drug peddlers and drug users.A lot of Canadians like ther illicit drugs,let them have them.We should have ‘drug’ stores set up like the LCBO stores of old.
    Getting messed up is not a crime,it is a necessity. The road to wisdom and all that. We have to punish those who do us harm,that’s the reason we have a justice system,not to regulate our behaviour.

  15. Exactly Kate. Good headline. This may sound cold, but if people want to poison themselves let them. You can die from over drinking water to too much food.
    Its why Prohibition never woks, these things just go underground while our Courts become more corrupt from illegal money, with criminal gangs springing up. Our police becoming twisted. With the attendant violence of street warfare. Better our jails be filled with real criminals like thieves, not addicts. Addicts that usually between 70 or 80% stop being drug users if left alone, not coddled or made to look like victims of their own appetites. Much better exposing the ill effects of these unguents of death. Let socialization naturally stifle this. Until the 20th century none of this existed , nor did our vast jail system to accommodate it. Its a business now.
    Opium use was frowned upon. The first pushers where the British & Americans in the opium wars as China tried to outlaw it. Look where that led to.
    The CIA took up the proud tradition in Vietnam, only with Heroin.
    Prohibition is worse than the drugs.

  16. Kate, this post is why I click on your blog. I know nothing about “ecstasy” (the drug, I had to go to wikipedia). But your headline showed me something that Radio-Canada never does.
    Keep up the good work! There are people out here who may disagree but appreciate what you do.

  17. I would bet that a good portion of people who are happy to use drugs manufactured out of god knows what in someone’s basement will only eat organic food because they don’t want to poison themselves.
    Throwing out our drug laws is a good idea, but to make it work you would have to get rid of our public healthcare system, and welfare checks.

  19. “The problem with arguing about drugs on these blogs is that you’re most probably arguing with users. A fruitless effort”.
    True. The dopers tell us again and again that prohibition doesn’t work; so why do we enforce any of the hundreds of laws that regulate human behavior? The courts recently upheld a law against public nudity. Shouldn’t we be screaming at “the man” to get stuffed because we want to let it all hang out.

  22. Eskimo and others who seem to think this is a matter of natural selection, I do not think of my fellow man or woman as being part of a herd! I cannot stand to see beautiful young women and men whom I see as brother and sister going into a nightmare world, sleeping next to garbage bins, defecating in alleys, prostituting themselves etc., so that scum, from the lowest street dealer to well healed business men and woman sleep the sleep of the innocent! A high ranking member of the RCMP was recently charged with stealing cocaine from their evidence lockers! Where does in all end, with a whimper or a bang? I’d prefer the bang myself.

  23. The most dangerous thing about these sorts of drugs (and pot is one of them) is the myth that they are harmless.
    And the legalization, production (to control “quality”, don’t you know?) and taxation by governments of street drugs is a drug pushers wet dream. (You often hear the proponents claiming this will “cut the deficit”….as if they give a damn). But that is absolute nonsense as it makes their bootleg homemade product indistinguishable on the streets, the drug pushers undercut the “official” price and end up collecting the “taxes” themselves.
    And there is already models that show that to be true. Cigarettes are taxed to the hilt….what happens? It is now estimated that 60% of the cigarettes sold in Ontario and Quebec are sold by organized crime….First Nations being heavily involved.

  24. Libertarians are chock-full of internal contradictions. They’re supposed to be against micro-management of our lives by the Powers That Be, yet they also want the Guv’mint to make everything nice and safe for us. Legalize drugs and hookers! That will make them less dangerous and unhealthy! Regulate everything so we don’t have to face any consequences for our own actions!
    Wouldn’t a real libertarian say, Let people go ahead and make their own stupid mistakes and let the government stay out of it?

  25. Yes, to your last sentence Ellie in T.O.
    But you’re a bit confused.
    “Legalizing” isn’t government doing stuff on being of libertarians.
    Legalizing is butting out of an earlier intervention, which is what all “real libertarians” want.
    All this talk about the chemical/addictive properties of various drugs is utterly beside the point which is simply that the state has no business telling a person what substances she may put in her own body. Period.
    From a public policy point of view the point is this: yes, many of these drugs are very dangerous; yes, widespeard use of these drugs has a deleterious effect on society. BUT, you have to weigh this damage against the egregious damage done by the INSANE “War on Drugs” which in my view dwarfs the damage done by the drugs.
    A person who favours prohibition reveals their inner totalitarian, and that includes our beloved Kate.

  26. Me No Dhimmi >
    “…you have to weigh this damage against the egregious damage done by the INSANE “War on Drugs””
    As you said who cares what people do to themselves, the unfortunate thing about drug addiction is that it usually isn’t just about the user. It is about the harm to greater society.
    I want the War on Drugs to end, I would vote for it in a minute if the drug using left agreed to close the borders and secure them properly, then allow society to clean house by ending welfare dependence and “free healthcare for all”. Why should we pay to keep these people alive?
    As you stated –
    “…the state has no business telling a person what substances she may put in her own body. Period. “
    In turn these people should not be asking the state for free healthcare or welfare.

  27. “BUT, you have to weigh this damage against the egregious damage done by the INSANE “War on Drugs” which in my view dwarfs the damage done by the drugs.”
    I agree,mnd,in this case the attempted cure is worse than the disease.
    Thanks for that post,”loki”,it’s always beneficial to hear from someone with experience in treating the people who use the drug under discussion.
    Ecstasy is in common use today, as common as any of the chemicals were in the ’60’s. I talk with kids on the job sites and their references to “E” use at parties is an everyday occurrence.
    The use of “E” is widespread,but it’s only used for recreation at the same time as a person would use any other type of stimulant. There aren’t hordes of drug-crazed addicts walking around stoned every day.
    The war on drugs is stuck in the Victorian era,and governments have successfully propagandized enough of the population to allow them to continue wasting our money on their useful “war”.
    Users have for the most part been portrayed by the images of street people or skid row addicts,this view aided by the MSM’ coverage.
    The average person has this “horror” of drugs and drug use. Anyone who disagrees with the W on D line is accused of being an enabler,or as in a post above, a user, simply not true.
    One day,the “prohibitionists” may be replaced by more rational thinkers,and we’ll quit this exercise in showing the power of government authority,and start to treat the addicts,NOT through shooting galleries,but with real medical treatment.
    The drug laws are as dull witted as the MADD assault on drinking and driving, and we can all see how that’s working out.

  28. Reminds me of the public announcement at Woodstock (1969):
    “To get back to the warning that I received. You may take it with however many grains of salt that you wish. That the brown acid that is circulating around us isn’t too good. It is suggested that you stay away from that. Of course it’s your own trip. So be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, ok?” (http://www.hark.com/clips/ygmhswwswk-brown-acid-warning)
    The MSM is taking this ecstasy scare so seriously that I was expecting Lisa LaFlamme of CTV to follow up her report with:
    “People, I’ve decided to break journalistic protocol and give out the phone number of my personal dealer: ask for ‘Harry’ @416-xxx-xxxx. All of us at CTV can assure you that this dealer only pushes good stuff attested to after years without any problems, and originally recommended by Peter Mansbridge of the CBC in the ’60’s.”
    😉

  29. When you start discussing neurotransmiter dopamine and serotonin terminals you tred near a circumstance where anti psychotics used for treating schizophrenia and schizoid tendencies may cause – Tardive Dyskinesia – and resembles Parkinsons.

  30. “”Legalizing” isn’t government doing stuff on being [sic] of libertarians.”
    But these libertarian types don’t just want to legalize stuff. They want management and regulation. Safe sanitary bawdy houses where all the whores have a clean bill of health! Safe sanitary injection sites with free needles and crack pipes and counselors on hand! And who’s going to provide and oversee all this? Why the Guv’mint, of course! And who’s going to pay all those overseers and inspectors and bureaucrats? Why the taxpayers, of course!
    Libertarian shmibertarian.

  31. Ellie in T.O. >
    No kidding. There are libertarians, and then there are self professed libertarians plaguing the blogosphere.
    Most of the latter are nothing more than new age’y pot smokers jumping on the next newest idea that someone stuck in their head. A little like they hijacked the term Liberalism until it became a dirty mainstream word. Now we need to distinguish with terms like “classical liberalism”. Neo con Republicans are just as guilty by essentially taking over the Tea Party as their own.
    A smart Libertarian has the sense to know that society has been backed into a corner by decades of Liberal progressive regulations and social policies that can’t just be unwound overnight. There needs to be a complete reversal of today’s manipulated western values and core ideologies to turn back the clock to the days of individual harmony and national identity.
    How can you say we don’t need large police forces (now today) when we have an epidemic of national drug violence and related crimes, and yet the Liberal left disarms honest law abiding citizens from defending themselves? Legalizing drugs does not make criminals stop being criminals. Disarming the public does not stop the criminals from attaining guns or drugs.
    The Liberalization of the west needs to be stopped first and foremost in order to successfully gain some order in society. Stopping the entitlements and demanding responsibility from all people who wish to partake in the luxuries of a society is a fundamental step towards regaining the liberty and individual rights the left has stolen.

  32. Joey:
    Your post betrays a complete ignorance of fairly recent history. I suggest you borrow someone’s DVD’s of “Boardwalk Empire” to see exactly what happens during a prohibition, and then look at US history to see what happens after.
    If your premise were correct, there would be booze pushers out in the streets of Canada, undercutting the high official prices. People should be cooking vodka in bathtubs, and making moonshine out in the woods. No one does it, of course, because there’s not enough money in it, there’s no market for it (even if someone were offering me booze at $10/gallon, I wouldn’t buy it – who would know what’s in it, and why take the chance?), and the penalties are way too high. Similarly, from the 20’s to the 70’s, the “numbers” game (a Mob-run street lottery) was very popular in inner cities. It’s almost completely gone now, because state-run lotteries are cheap, prevalent, and legal. Your premise just doesn’t hold water.
    I know a fellow who smokes medicinal marijuana. I asked him if he still buys street pot. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Why bother?” he said.
    To those who think the current system keeps drugs out of kids’ hands, I can say categorically you are dreaming. I recently started working with a group that includes some young kids, just out of university. The subject of pot came up during lunch last week, and I said something along the lines of “There isn’t a high school in Toronto where a kid can’t transfer in, and score pot in three days”, to which one of the kids said “or that afternoon”. Both my daughters are in a high school program for gifted kids, and both were offered pot at parties when they were in Grade 10. My elder daughter told me some of her friends smoke it because it’s EASIER to get than booze. I’m glad my girls are level headed enough to turn down the offers (so far, at least), but to pretend that the current prohibition on pot is effective in any way, shape, or form is as reality-denying as anything Bambam says.
    Finally, the people who end up living in alleys, etc. because of drug use are not necessarily there because of the drugs themselves, but rather the artificially high cost of the drugs imposed by the prohibition. If you’re spending $100/day on heroin, you probably don’t have much left for food, shelter, etc.. But that same amount of heroin can be provided for $5/day (or less); it’s the illegality that makes it expensive.
    We have to make a choice as a society: continue the ineffective and corrupting prohibition, make criminals out of people who aren’t really hurting anyone else, waste ever increasing amounts of money on police, courts, and jails, and continue to see a portion of society insist on using drugs, or:
    legalize, control, purify, educate, and provide assistance for those who want to kick the habit. I’m no fool. As an engineer, I know applying this type of “step function” is going to result in a spurt in drug use. How long and how many would be affected is impossible to say, but I’m not Polly-annish enough to think that the effect would be minimal. We would lose a bunch of people – and it would be mostly young people – to dope for a few years, until the examples of their wasted lives deterred younger kids from trying the stuff. Eventually, we’d reach a steady state, where we’d just accept, as we do with alcohol, that a percentage of people will have problems. But if the huge amounts of money we currently waste in futile enforcement and punishment, and the equally large amount of new tax dollars that would be brought in, were diverted to treatment, help could be available for those who want to kick.
    The current program is a colossal failure. It’s amazing to me that people who want to scream “Mind your own business” to those who want them to lose weight, stop smoking, stop drinking, use less energy, etc., etc., still feel they have some moral right to tell others what they can do. Rank hypocrisy – there’s no other term for it.

  33. we have an epidemic of national drug violence and related crimes
    CITATION NEEDED

  34. Smarter >
    I don’t owe you anything, cause generally you’re a run of the mill troll that only comments against the grain of the discussion regardless of topic with snotty, meaningless little one-liners void of substance or proof.
    Anyway as this is a no brainer for anyone else looking for a little extra reading beyond living with an ounce of situational awareness.
    http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=42&articleid=164&sectionid=1053

  35. The reason drugs continue to be illegal is because crime lords and politicians get rich from prohibition. That of course is why it will continue.
    It’s not about drugs it’s about money.

  37. “legalize, control, purify, educate, and provide assistance for those who want to kick the habit. I’m no fool. As an engineer, I know applying this type of “step function” is going to result in a spurt in drug use. How long and how many would be affected is impossible to say, but I’m not Polly-annish enough to think that the effect would be minimal. We would lose a bunch of people – and it would be mostly young people – to dope for a few years, until the examples of their wasted lives deterred younger kids from trying the stuff”.
    Oh great, or in the words of Uncle Joe Stalin,
    “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic” or
    “To make an omlette you have to break a few eggs”

  39. Back in the day, I had a position of authority…command….and went along to get along….then one day Victor Charles was in the wire and I looked over to one of our mortar pits and….saw a dooped-up fool drop a bomb in backwards. I will spare you the grim details.
    I made the Spanish Inquisition seem benigh after that….zero tolerance. My staff backed me up.
    I succeeded so well in instilling fear that the grunts would strip search visitors or replacements….NO EXCEPTIONS….
    I thought it went to far when they “processed” a Colonel…until they found him holding….oh my….
    News travelled fast….our entire base inspired fear in the district.

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