Are we discussing heavy use or use? It's pretty obvious that heavy use of any drug, legal or not, is going to fuck you up in some way.

equinox_code wrote:

Feeling a bit high at the weekends. Walking around a club or festival location with other like minded people. Lots of smiling, dancing and socialising.

BAN THIS FILTH

So we're legalising good drugs but keeping the ban on bad ones.

Yes, but all drugs are good, so that's okay then.

Yossarian wrote:

These are effects on an individual, not society. If someone is educated about these risks and chooses to do it anyway, that should be up to them.

You need to scroll further down the page.

Well yes but we're discussing lunatics who smoke it from the am to the pm, not general people who like the odd smoke.

Workers who smoke marijuana are more likely to experience increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers' compensation claims, and job turnover.

Workers who test positive for marijuana use have 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries, and a 75-percent increase in absenteeism compared to non-smokers.

Heavy marijuana abusers self-report that their use of the drug had negative effects on their cognitive abilities, career status, social life, and physical and mental health.

Replace heavy marijuana with severe lack of sleep and you're probably looking at similar stuff. If you use anything to absolute, insane excess, you'll be a fuck up. Where's the studies on occasional use?

If it were to be legalised, would drug prices go up, down, or not change?

Ftr, 'heavy' marijuana use - as defined for the purpose of the scientific research in the link I provided - is simply using on an almost daily basis (27 days from 30), irrespective of quantity consumed.
I wouldn't define that as 'insane excess', not if you compare it with, for example, drinking a beer with your evening meal every day, or several cups of tea or coffee as part of your diurnal routine.

Kinda missing the point I was making there. Also, I think excessive alcohol consumption should certainly be considerably less tolerated by society than it is at present.

Smoking weed every day will make you an idiot.  Smoking occasionally will make you laugh.

There are high/normal-functioning addicts out there but the general pattern is pretty damning evidence against habitual drug use. Btw DS, I didn't know you'd got back into work. Nice one - I hope it works out for you.

igorgetmeabrain wrote:

There are high/normal-functioning addicts out there but the general pattern is pretty damning evidence against habitual drug use. Btw DS, I didn't know you'd got back into work. Nice one - I hope it works out for you.

Looking for, not employed thanks though. When I state I smoke near that amount, you're talking one to two joints a day, not continuous day in day out. Plus I take spells of two-four weeks without, oftenish.

I used to get a similar feeling with vodka redbulls. An odd sensation as the depressants don't really cancel out the stimulant stimulants a your body can't figure out what it wants.

mistercrayon wrote:

I used to get a similar feeling with vodka redbulls. An odd sensation as the depressants don't really cancel out the stimulant stimulants a your body can't figure out what it wants.

Indeed. In your example a CNS depressant (alcohol) is in indirect competition with a CNS stimulant (caffeine) but those drugs are working on completely different receptors in the brain - the GABA antagonism from the alcohol and and the dopamine and ephedrine release (or maybe reuptake inhibition) from the caffeine do pull you in different directions in terms of wakefulness, but are doing so through completely different and therefore non-mutually exclusive mechanisms. So it's therefore possible to feel simultaneously sleepy and wired, or to bounce back and forth between the two states. People seem to think that mixing uppers and downers is dangerous, but it's not really. I'm not condoning it of course but there is a reason that people enjoy and generally survive speedballs ie. cocaine stimulation plus opiate sedation in a single hit (I'm indulging in a far, far more tame version of that at the moment by the way - I've never injected myself with anything in my life, nor will I).

It's much more dangerous to mix stimulating drugs, as that can lead to a strain on the heart and to psychosis. And worst of all is mixing CNS depressants, which is the number one cause of overdose as you do not want to give your body signals over more than one channel at a time that it should relax - as that eventually tricks it into thinking that it doesn't need to worry about breathing too much.

If one message should be made made absolutely clear in any discussion of poly-drug use, it is that nobody should ever mix opiates, opioids, benzodiazepines, barbiturates (if you can still get 'em and I recommend you don't try), alcohol or any other a-typical central nervous system depressants, as by doing so you are basically encouraging your body to stop breathing, and that is probably the most common cause of death from drug use. Mixing stims might make you crazy and therefore cause you to do irrational things and get yourself killed in the process, but please for the love of god do not give your body multiple chemical messages that it is okay not to breathe. That is harm reduction 101, and I'm going to copy paste that into my original post right now.