[ExI] The Problem with Drugs (was Re: kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 11:51 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:


> It's positive feedback loops that I worry about, not of intelligence but
> of emotions; look at all the problems that drugs have caused the human race
> in the last few decades, and they only provide rudimentary access to the
> emotional control panel, imagine if it was the real deal.
>

I don't recall discussing drugs on the list, at least for a while. It is
clearly an extropian issue, as drugs tend to increase entropy in the human
brain. Also, some kinds of drugs are clearly putting some of us into the
realm of posthuman. My girlfriend, for example, isn't herself when not on
anti-anxiety medication. She is a post human, because as her natural self
she drives herself and those in her life just a little nuts.

Now, I know John was referring to illegal drugs, and I believe most illegal
drugs are create a huge detriment to those who use them and to the children
of those who use them to excess. That being said, the problems with the war
on drugs are worse than the original problems of drugs themselves.

Prior to Richard Nixon creating the War on Drugs, and the Reagans expanding
it, there were how many deaths from drug use in America?

Well, it wasn't zero. Here are a couple of references.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu12.htm
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.zEVnBrwe.dpbs

Bottom line seems to be that there are around 17000 deaths per year in the
USA attributable to bad use of illicit drugs. How many of those deaths
would be prevented if there were a safe and legal place to go to use drugs?
I'm guessing most of them.

In the past 8 years or so, there have been 80,000 deaths in the drug wars
just in Mexico. Of the 16,000 or so homicides yearly in the United States,
how many are casualties of drug violence? 20%? 30%?

Prior to the war on drugs, drug use was lower (not that there is a causal
relationship) and you had almost no drug deaths in Mexico (other than the
occasional addict one could assume).

So is the "cure" worse than the problem?

Is there a "military-industrial complex" that feeds off of the war on
drugs? Is that why no politician will talk about getting rid of the damn
thing?

We lose more people (21,329 vs. ~17,000) to misuse of legal drugs than to
misuse of illicit drugs.

-Kelly
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