Candy Meth

The Dallas Morning News recently ran an article, "Danger in disguise: candy-flavor drugs", on candy flavored methamphetamine, which I read with a mixture of amusement and irritation: amusement to see politicians and police drag out the tired old myths they have been recycling for about 150 years, and irritation that they believe we still fall for them.
Police see candy-flavored amphetamines on the market and make the unwarranted assumption that the purpose is for marketing to kids, an assumption they make with no supporting evidence. However, drug dealers don't market to kids; if a kid with money comes along, a dealer will sell to him, but not as a major effort. First, kids don't have enough money to be interesting, and second, they come with dangerous baggage like parents, teachers, and police. Joe Camel can spend millions giving t-shirts and ball caps to kids, confident that RJR will be around in five or ten years to profit when those kids are old enough to smoke. Drug dealers don't invest in the long run. They know they will be either dead or in prison in five years, so their business is strictly cash today.
Strawberry meth is strictly utilitarian. The flavoring (and there are several other than strawberry on the market) is used to disguise the heavy chemical taste of amphetamine when it is sniffed, making the product more palatable to consumers.
It has the secondary effect of product differentiation: just like corn flakes or car dealers, meth dealers want market share. If their pink product has a reputation for potency or purity, it will sell well until others copy the trademark.
The same thing happens with other drugs. Around Houston Ecstasy buyers for years insisted on "blue dolphins" because they were the best. In the East Coast heroin market for years, heroin glassine envelopes with marked with logos and trade names. For a while in Baltimore, heroin dealers would circulate a neighborhood early in the day giving out small samples so the customers would know the quality of what he would be selling later that day. Whole specialty markets exist for premium marijuana plants.
Drugs are just like any other market; the same rules of economics and marketing apply, and trade names do appear.
As far as protecting children goes, amphetamines are a minor threat, ranking at most a distant fifth. If we want to protect children from the harms of drug misuse, we should concentrate our efforts on the big four, in terms of numbers of users and of harm resulting: alcohol, tobacco, antidepressants and anti-anxiety products, and prescription pain killers. Only after these major problems are under control, can we spare additional efforts for the minor ones.
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I'm Confused

I'm confused.

I recently visited a new doctor for a minor problem, and she strongly scolded me for using ibuprofen for pai relief, telling me it could raise my blood pressure to a dangerous level. She gave me a prescription for Tylenol 3 (acetomenaphen plus codiene) to use instead.

Years ago i switched from aspirin to ibuprofen because of aspirin's causing gastric bleeding and problems with blood thinning. I has always avoided acetomenaphen because of the high rate of liver damage it causes. Codiene is an opiate the use of which can lead to addiction.

As I understand it, I can use aspirin, and risk stomach damage, ibuprofen, and risk high blood pressure or stroke, acetomenaphen, and risk liver damage, or codiene, and risk addiction.

What I cannot do is use marijuana, an effective pain-reliever with no serious side effects, because it is a dangerous drug.

Am I just confused, or is something seriously wrong with our drug laws?

Confession of Ignorance

Confession of Ignorance

For more than the past decade, I have devoted the majority of my professional time and effort to the study of drug laws and drug use. Slowly I have come to realize that I know nothing about the subject. By "I", I mean all of us. I can discourse learnedly about how many people use methamphetamine and how the rates of marijuana use compare to those of 1975, but I have no basis to establish the significance of those data.
While "drug abuse" and "drug dependency" have medical definitions, "drug use" does not. What does it mean to say that many people in the United States use marijuana or that the Islamic world is largely free of alcohol use? We have no base-line idea of a "normal" society on which to anchor our statements. A drug-free world would be an impossibility, as would be a world of nothing but addicts, but where is our standard of comparison?
For instance, data indicate that 600,000 to 900,000 people, about 0.2 - 0.3% of a population of 300 million, use methamphetamine. But is that a large number about which we should be alarmed, or is it merely an outlier statistic about which we should be concerned, like a rare non-infectious disease that we would want to alleviate but which calls for no strong intervention? Frankly, we do not know.
Are there things that we do know: principles or generalities that would help determine a picture of human drug use norms? Some principles are available, although they are too general to do more than establish a vague outline.
Psychoactive drugs are as old as human culture. Some of the earliest known artifacts from the beginning of the agricultural age (8,000 - 10,000 years ago) are pottery shards containing evidence of the opium poppy. Beer is older than writing or baking (c. 6,000 years ago). Many of the hunter-gatherer societies that existed into modern times had at least some acquaintance with psychedelics. Note that this is a very weak claim. It does not distinguish between possible medicinal, religious, nutritional, or recreational uses; nor does it claim (except in the case of beer) wide-spread or majoritarian use within any society.
In many societies, including all current industrialized ones, the use of a predominant psychoactive drug is virtually universal. Between 80 and 90% of the residents of the current industrial world use caffeine daily (coffee in the Americas and Europe, tea in Asia). Before the development of modern water systems, beers, meads, and wine were universal beverages throughout the world. In the United States today around 2/3 of the population use alcohol somewhat regularly. In the Andean regions coca was widespread from pre-Columbian times to the present; and Northern and Eastern African and Arabian societies experienced widespread use of cannabis or khat. My own estimation is that until the middle of the nineteenth century -- until the development of safe drinking water and modern dentistry -- almost all English and Americans used opium on an almost daily basis.
Newly introduced drugs either establish a presence quickly or they fade from use. Coffee, tobacco, tea, and chocolate became major commodities in Europe within years of their introduction. Likewise, morphine, coca, and cocaine established themselves within a decade or less of their introduction in the mid to late nineteenth century; as did amphetamines and MDMA in the twentieth. On the other hand, drugs that are too toxic, have unreliable or unpleasant effects or bad side effects, like fly ageric mushrooms, morning glory seeds, or the various synthetic hallucinogens like STP, DPT, and others quickly fade, never finding a following.
The prevalence of any drug will vary over time. Alcohol consumption was probably highest in the U. S. at about the time of the Revolution and may be near an historic low at this time. Tobacco use increased after in introduction of cigarettes to majority use by about 1950 and has since declined to a level of about half as much. Cocaine use has had at least two major and one minor peak since its introduction in the 1880s.
Given a choice, users seem to prefer a "milder" drug. When available, coca was more common than cocaine. Khat users rarely move to amphetamines. Beer and wine continually outsell distilled spirits, which are usually consumed as mixed drinks, diluted to approximately the potency of beer or wine. Cannabis buyers seem to reject plants with a THC content of over about 8%.
Even the "milder" drugs can cause problems. Beer drinkers get drunk, get into fights, and even become alcoholics. Opium smokers can become addicts just as heroin injectors do.
Societies will accept astonishingly high levels of harm from socially accepted drugs. Tobacco is probably the leading cause of death in the United States today, with alcohol following close behind. Alcohol-related deaths, from car wrecks, to domestic violence, to assaults are unremarkable. The British public seems unable to recognize either tobacco or alcohol as harmful.
Social reactions to drugs seem to be more closely related to perceived group affiliations than to objective harm. The relationship of American drug laws to ethnic or cultural groups is well established.
Supply-oriented laws (prohibitory laws) have little or no effect on the level of consumption.
The statements are generalized observations, not firm data points, but I believe each of them is empirically testable and quantifiable. To the extent that this can be done, they can provide a theoretical structure of modern drug-using societies from which more rational policies can be developed.