Why are drugs illegal?

[Ovi]

Why is that? How is it in the interest of the ruling class to forbid most drugs? Is it simply to protect the interests of the legal drug producers (alcohol, tobaco etc)? There has to be more than that.

[Apoi_Viitor]

To target poor and ethnic communities.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Because theyre so much FUN!!!

Cigarettes and Alcohol are both depressants, I think that has something to do with it. Keep our heads bowed down, passive and servile.

[gorillafuck]

Because theyre so much FUN!!!

Cigarettes and Alcohol are both depressants, I think that has something to do with it. Keep our heads bowed down, passive and servile.
That doesn't make sense. I'm willing to bet that people on heroin are more passive and servile than people who smoke cigarettes.

[Property Is Robbery]

To target poor and ethnic communities.

Partly, like cocaine,meth, etc.

But I feel it's partly because many drugs open your mind and they help you challenge the bullshit that is their state.




Cigarettes and Alcohol are both depressants, I think that has something to do with it. Keep our heads bowed down, passive and servile.

Cigarettes are stimulants and alcohol is a stimulant in low doses.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

That doesn't make sense. I'm willing to bet that people on heroin are more passive and servile than people who smoke cigarettes.


I was talking more about trips, shrooms, weed, E etc.

Opium is rotten stuff. Coke is for bellends.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Partly, like cocaine,meth, etc.

But I feel it's partly because many drugs open your mind and they help you challenge the bullshit that is their state.



Cigarettes are stimulants and alcohol is a stimulant in low doses.


I know nicotine is a stimulant, but isnt there something in cigarettes that actually dulls the neuroreceptors?

[Widerstand]

I know nicotine is a stimulant, but isnt there something in cigarettes that actually dulls the neuroreceptors?

Blocking receptors is not (necessarily) the same as dulling or making you passive, though.

[Property Is Robbery]

Blocking receptors is not (necessarily) the same as dulling or making you passive, though.
Right, they react in several different ways on your neuro-receptors because of all the different chemicals. But I don't think they have any depressive effects.

[Jalapeno Enema]

I know nicotine is a stimulant, but isnt there something in cigarettes that actually dulls the neuroreceptors?
Nicotine is actually a stimulant and a relaxant (I wouldn't go as far as to say depressant.)

Epinephrine, norepinephrine, vasopressin, dopamine, and other stimulants are present, but acetylcholine and beta-endorphin act as analegsic (pain-killers; dulls your neuro-receptors), and help reduce anxiety.

As a long time smoker myself, I am of the opinion that the rituals I go through influence the effects (psychosomatic factors) as much as the actual nicotine.

My first few cigarettes of the day, for example, are smoked quickly, violently even, and help me to wake up.

When I wish to relax, instead of a two-minute cigarette, I take slower, longer drags, and treat the smoke as a 15-minute vacation instead. At night, this puts me right to sleep.

[FreeFocus]

Part of it is, for sure, to repress communities and prop up the prison-industrial complex. That's not the whole story, though. The other part is that a lot of drugs are just bad and downright murderous in communities (meth? cocaine?). Instead of addressing the core problems, namely poverty and the lumpenbourgeoisie that pushes drugs and gets rich, the bourgeoisie manipulates it to its own advantage.

[Bright Banana Beard]

There was also racism charge to get drugs banned such as marijuana. They equated marijuana to crazy Mexican as opiate to crazy Chinese.

[Political_Chucky]

I think theres three parts to this question that would need to be broken down to be answered. 1. It depends on what types of drugs you are talking about. 2. You need to explain why the drug was initially banned in the first place 3. It needs to be determined whether or not the initial ban is still the taboo reason and if not, what is the reason given that the drug is still illegal, if there is any reason.

[Outinleftfield]

Because the bourgeois political machine decided to make them illegal and it decided to because it was in the economic interests of the bourgeoisie to make them illegal.

Marijuana was banned to help the paper industry avoid having to compete with hemp.

Moral panics can be used to distract the public while the bourgeoisie robs us blind. Drugs are a great subject of moral panic. When it ties in with racial hatred, even better it adds to the "divide and conquer" strategy.

Furthermore drugs by having the capacity to temporarily alter human perception can sometimes lead to novel ideas a person wouldn't normally think of and this can threaten the ideological basis of capitalism. Banning drugs is a form of "mind control", the capitalists don't want our minds exposed to things that might turn us against them.

[Aurora]

There illegality is very useful for various reasons including as others have mentioned prison-industrial complex and asserting the authority of the capitalist state but also as an excuse for military intervention in other countries under the guise of the 'war on drugs' afghanistan comes to mind I'm sure it was probably the same case in vietnam cambodia etc and latin america.

The other part is that a lot of drugs are just bad and downright murderous in communities (meth? cocaine?).
Things arent 'just bad' there has to be a reason. There are plenty people on this board and across the whole world who use levoamphetamine and dextroamphetamine legally and arent 'murderous'. Is it so ridiculous to assume that the negative consequences of methamphetamine are due to it being criminalised?

Furthermore drugs by having the capacity to temporarily alter human perception can sometimes lead to novel ideas a person wouldn't normally think of and this can threaten the ideological basis of capitalism.
:rolleyes: oh please. Keep your idealist bullshit to yourself. 'the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways , the point however is to change it' at best drug use is philosophical masturbation. If you actualy believe that, then by all means go forth and bring cannabis to the workers of the world, bare in mind a large proportion of them already use it :closedeyes:

[JerryBiscoTrey]

"Because it's immoral and as a a sophisticated society we need to adhere to a certain moral standard."

Of course when you ask who defines this morality they start stumblin

[L.A.P.]

Because the War on Drugs is actually the War on Poor Brown People.

[Rafiq]

Is it true weed makes you less intelligent? Like during/after you get high?

[L.A.P.]

Is it true weed makes you less intelligent? Like during/after you get high?

Weed makes more intelligent!:)

[Mr.Awesome]

The simple reason is that they are bad for you. Drugs change the chemical reactions in your body to make you dependent on them. All drugs have nasty side-effects apart from maybe the 'soma' of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' (fictional).
I'm not going to bother to go through all the negative results of taking drugs.

The fact is, they are bad for us. It is estimated that around half a million people die each year because of drug abuse. Considering drug abuse would increase if it was made legal, so would the deaths.

But thats not the whole story. Obviously the bourgeois have some benefit in not making them legal.

[Rafiq]

Weed makes more intelligent!:)

:D

No but seriously, does it?

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Is it true weed makes you less intelligent? Like during/after you get high?

It kills a few brain cells but the positives weigh out the negatives

[Rafiq]

It kills a few brain cells but the positives weigh out the negatives

Well I'm going to need all the brain cells I can get, but otherwise, I would.


But it would be foolish not to legalize it of course.

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Well I'm going to need all the brain cells I can get, but otherwise, I would.


But it would be foolish not to legalize it of course.

you lose brain cells by sitting in front of a computer screen too ya know :p

[Rafiq]

you lose brain cells by sitting in front of a computer screen too ya know :p

Depends on what you're doing :D

[Widerstand]

Update from biology class: The number of brain cells you have doesn't determine how intelligent you are.

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Update from biology class: The number of brain cells you have doesn't determine how intelligent you are.

Haha thats a good point

[Amphictyonis]

Heroin and cocaine were legal in the USA at one point. You could buy cocaine and heroin from magazines and they'd send it in the mail. They'd give it to babies, elderly, sick people and whoever else wanted it. I'm not exactly sure why it became illegal- if you look at the prohabition period(alchohol) I'd say it was probably the same forces behind the prohibition of drugs.

[Rafiq]

Update from biology class: The number of brain cells you have doesn't determine how intelligent you are.

That's interesting.

What purpose do they serve? Memory?

To me, Memory is Vital, because, all of the information I have, it was foolish of me not to site all sources and record them.

The only source I have is my memory.

Imagine if you're arguing with a Capitalist, and suddenly forget all of your information.

Sometimes that scares me.

[Bright Banana Beard]

It more of muscle memory that you are losing, so you get stupid in later life, but this only happen if you smoke it every 2 hours for 10 years.

[Widerstand]

Not even memory. The determining factors are the degrees of cell clustering and of separation between cells. Both of which depend on how many connections there are and how they are distributed. Adding or removing even relatively large numbers of cells would have (in most cases) very few effects on your overall intelligence, though it may affect different functions. Though after a certain portion has been removed, effects become drastic.

Also there are different parts of the brain responsible for different tasks. One of them is responsible for long-term memories, the hippocampus.

[Rafiq]

So what are the positive effects of weed

(And don't say some bullcrap like "It mellows ya out maan")

[Widerstand]

It blocks the synapses, thus counteracting epileptic seizures, which are an overstimulation of synapses.

[Political_Chucky]

So what are the positive effects of weed

(And don't say some bullcrap like "It mellows ya out maan")

Well the fact that it can be used as to get an appetite when under certain types of health issues that prevent you from eating, it has been used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder for soldiers coming back from war, and more research is needed to really determine whether it can help people with epilepsy and seizures.

On a more "political" sense it could replace a lot of drugs for depression, muscle relaxants, and even help for alternative methods to get out of dependency for other drugs. That's pretty much the reason why most drugs are illegal. Ecstasy could be used as an alternative to most of these anti-depressants out there and be used much safer. The Drug companies don't care and medicine isn't really suppose to make you feel all that great in our system, in my opinion. Its all about profits.:mellow:

[Jimmie Higgins]

While I agree that there are certain specific ways that certain sections of the capitalist state or business that benifit from outlawing drugs, I think the overall reason for it is ideological.

In general it is because bourgeois society loves a moral crusade. In fact legislating or creating a public pressure to conform to a certain moral idea is, on the one hand, an ideological tool to explain social problems as individual failings, and also a way to promote control and conformity over the mass of the population.

Alcohol, more than drugs, has been a longtime target. From the oppression of Irish and German immigrants in the US to the excusing of native impoverishment today, alcohol abuse has been used as a cover for oppression and deeper problems in capitalist society. Just as our leaders today say that black poverty is because "black people sell drugs and look for an easy way to make money" the same lie was used against other groups and use of alcohol or prostitution in the past.

[TC]

The mild high brought on from buying consumer products would be unable to compete with drugs, and if people had easy access to escaping their ordinary reality, they'd be less invested in slaving away to improve their position.

In short, drugs are bad for consumption, bad for production, and thus bad for business.

[Burn A Flag]

Prison Labor?

[Bardo]

The simple reason is that they are bad for you. Drugs change the chemical reactions in your body to make you dependent on them. All drugs have nasty side-effects apart from maybe the 'soma' of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' (fictional).
I'm not going to bother to go through all the negative results of taking drugs.

The fact is, they are bad for us. It is estimated that around half a million people die each year because of drug abuse. Considering drug abuse would increase if it was made legal, so would the deaths.

But thats not the whole story. Obviously the bourgeois have some benefit in not making them legal.


Everything in this post pisses me off except for the last line, which is very true.

First of all, every drug has it's purpose. They aren't inherently "bad" for you. Heroin was a godsend on the battlefeilds of the American civil war. It all comes down to how the drugs are used. As for the people who are addicted to heroin, it's simply their choice to start. It's not like they had no idea that it was addictive. Science and understanding of physical dependence has come along way since the early 20th century.

"It is estimated that around half a million people die each year because of drug abuse." Source? Is that worldwide? Does that include tobacco and alcohol? I would actually guess the number is much higher, I just know this statistic is bullshit.

"Considering drug abuse would increase if it was made legal, so would the deaths" Why do you say this? Are you aware that ALL drugs in Portugal have been decriminalized since 2001? Reports of drug use have actually decreased as have overdose deaths. Treatment for addiction, however has increased as the state began offering rehab to drug offenders rather than locking them up. In Amsterdam, regular marijuana use is lower per capita than it is in the US. Go figure.


To answer the original question, certain drugs are illegal but not all. In the US, methamphetamine, morphine and cocaine are all technically less illegal than marijuana and mushrooms on the federal level as the former are all schedule II and the latter are schedule I. Amphetamines are given to young children diagnosed with attention disorders (which seems to be every other child), reletively unresearched and rather ineffective antidepressants are handed out like candy, as are opiates here in Florida. In a recent study, (I think it was done by the WHO) alcohol was found to have the most damaging effects on society than any other drug. Of course, heroin, meth, cocaine ect were rated as more damaging to the individual, but alcohol was the most destructive to society. Alcohol in itself can be a deadly and horribly addictive substance.

Why are some drugs legal for medicinal use and pushed upon the public? The answer is simple: MONEY. Count how many alcohol commercials you see on tv every day. It's big business. In the US, they want you to use their amphetamines (and they're really not extremely hard to obtain legally). But get caught with meth without a Pfizer stamp on it and you're in trouble.

The origins of illicit substances have other histories as well (racism, cultural intolerance, ect ect). But I'll save that for another day.

[Outinleftfield]

:rolleyes: oh please. Keep your idealist bullshit to yourself. 'the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways , the point however is to change it' at best drug use is philosophical masturbation. If you actualy believe that, then by all means go forth and bring cannabis to the workers of the world, bare in mind a large proportion of them already use it :closedeyes:

Yes, the point is to change it, but to change it the world must also be interpreted in order to determine the details of how it should be changed. Figuring out changes even for your own personal life can be useful too. Personal liberation is necessary in order to be effective at pushing for social liberation.

Nothing idealist about this either. The human mind is part of a physical, material system, and the material interactions of what our brains are exposed to everyday including nutrition, chemicals, herbs, even the amount of water we get can have a material impact on the mind.

If certain channels are opened or closed it leads to the neurotransmitters interacting together in different ways, leading to connections between things a person might not otherwise make connections with.

"Ideas" are a real part of the material world. They are made up of a collection of neural tissue and neurotransmitters that cause the experience of having an idea.

EDIT: Case in point, the Hippies even though the movement didn't last were changing the world. The lives of people drawn into the movement were changed in some very significant ways, and the example of the movement sparked a debate over a number of cultural issues. It is unlikely the Hippie Movement would've happened without psychedelics.

[Ovi]

Is it true weed makes you less intelligent? Like during/after you get high?
It's probably a bit more difficult to do quantum mechanics while stoned. Last time I got stoned really bad, I tried for about 5 minutes to close the window and failed miserably haha. Anyway, no permanent effect on intelligence has been observed after smoking marijuana as far as I know.

[synthesis]

Many things manipulate the brain in the same way as drugs. Of course, there's gambling, sex, eating and shopping, but there's much more than that. Video games, for example, particularly RPGs, like World of Warcraft, interact with the mesolimbic reward pathway and dopamine receptors in a very similar way to cocaine.

Religion can function as a painkiller, and social acceptance can increase one's pain tolerance, an effect that can be reproduced simply by handling money. Furthermore, we're hardwired to get a "high" not only from hearing opinions with which we agree but also from rejecting opinions which don't jibe with our worldview. Hell, our bodies make DMT all by themselves.

The point? Positing that "drugs" are distinct from "everything else" represents something of a false dichotomy. Pretty much anything that drugs can do to us can be reproduced by things we don't physically ingest.

To me, this means that both praise and criticism of "drugs" will often ignore the fact that the aforementioned distinction is essentially meaningless - sorry if I'm repeating something that's already been posted.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Is it true weed makes you less intelligent? Like during/after you get high?

I can only speak from personal experience, so take this with the requisite grain of salt, but I find that weed slows down the speed of my thoughts, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - my performance on shooting games is improved because I'm no longer so jerky and twitchy, and overall muscle movement is smoother.

The quality of my thoughts also change, including a greater amount of free association. Again, I don't think this is necessarily a "bad" thing. For example, while strange thoughts and concepts might occur to me while stoned, I feel no desire to suddenly embrace ideas that are antithetical to my usual thinking when sober. I might feel an urge to focus on an unusual subject, but that does not mean I feel I have to accept what I read as some kind of gospel truth.

Of course, as someone with Asperger's, my reactions could plausibly be said to be atypical. What do others think?