Our Glorious Leader Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to keep us safe from consuming these drugs through the Protecting Our Youth from Dangerous Synthetic Drugs Act (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...). I'd say something about voting her out of office in 2016 (for this and for running intelligence committees which rubber-stamp NSA spying, among many other things), but she's already said she won't run again.
I do want to note that some of these drugs have dramatically worse side effects than the illegal drugs for which they substitute.
MDPV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks.
Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property. To me, the designer MDPV and PCP would be the poster drugs for this category.
"MPDV, in particular, has lead to a range of terrible effects, including psychotic states leading to cannibalistic attacks."
Can you cite more than anecdotes to support this? For what it's worth caffeine can also induce psychosis, like any other stimulant (which is what MDPV is).
"Even the strong and broad legalization proposals, in which I can see the wisdom, acknowledge the need to control substances which regularly cause users to behave violently toward persons or property."
I'm not sure you could regulate these drugs in the same manner as alcohol, because they really are significantly worse in terms of both biochemistry and societal harm. (As an aside, certainly alcohol causes far worse damage, but only because it's far more prevalent.)
Let's start with the biochemistry. MDPV is both a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor and a dopamine releaser. For most users, it provides a short and intense cocaine-like high lasting several hours before abating.
However, in a significant minority of users, the dopamine receptors seem to get stuck in the "on" position. The resulting flood overwhelms lower behavioral centers and results in intense hallucinations of danger, psychomotor agitation, and uncontrolled aggression. See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/
As to the attacks, here's a few, just from my hometown:
"Scranton police have witnessed several incidents in recent months, however, and found that abuse of the disguised salts leaves a user with feelings of constant and extreme paranoia, imminent danger including threats on their lives, and hallucinations that have kept some hospitalized for up to five days.
In one case, a man in a third story apartment believed to be using bath salts heard a knock on his door, according to Klein. He thought he was under attack, jumped out the window and shattered his ankle.
“Previously, we had a guy that was injecting it at his house (on West Elm Street) in West Side, and he had his elderly mother and father locked in a bathroom,” Duffy said. “We had to have our negotiators come out, and he was actually injecting it as he was coming out of the door to talk to police.”
“Two days ago, a complainant asked officers, ‘Can you see the two males across the street?’” Scranton Police Capt. Carl Graziano said Thursday. “He’s seeing them, and there’s nobody there.”
On Wednesday, March 9, alleged bath salts abuser Ryan Foley, 25, of Scranton, was charged with breaking into St. Ann’s Basilica and stabbing and bludgeoning the Rev. Francis Landry. In a message to parishioners dated March 13, Landry wrote that he suffered “12 stab wounds and lacerations and at least six bruises” in the attack."
I think the main argument is along the lines of "If people could get [amphetamine/cocaine/drug of similar effect but better safety profile] legally and cheaply, they wouldn't be using random shit whose number-one design criteria was sidestepping the Analog Act"
Obviously those other drugs are still harmful, but at least we have the benefit of research into their nature and specific harms.
And DARE classes would probably be a lot more effective if they focused on which were the least bad.
Not to be picky but I think it's MDPV, not MPDV. Could be wrong of course.
IIRC most of the so-called cannibalistic attacks that were attributed to bath salts turned out not to be. For instance the famous Miami face-eating attack turned up no evidence of anything but pot in the guy's system - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack
The Miami incident was unrelated, but a casual googling will give you plenty of bath salts horror stories.
In the town where I grew up, bath salts became a large problem. At one point, a man on a two day binge broke into a local monastery, got into bed with one of the priests, and held him at knife point until morning. Just a month ago, the federal government busted a producer in a nearby house holding seven kilos of the stuff.
From work with community outreach and through relatives in law enforcement, I can tell you that one minor shift in the drug market radically altered the enforcement landscape. It was getting very bad for a while before the drugs were banned.
I don't know whether our experience was unique or rare as a community. I suspect our experience was simply an accelerated version of what would have happened elsewhere. For some reason, we had little enforcement, wide distribution, and a burgeoning market in the stuff. We were among the first areas in the country to pass a municipal ordinance to ban the substances, and request help from the Federal government.
I suspect that, as an area with harsh drug laws and strict enforcement of marijuana and cocaine, the balloon effect drove up interest in the designer chemicals. But that's just a hunch.
>> I suspect that, as an area with harsh drug laws and strict enforcement of marijuana and cocaine, the balloon effect drove up interest in the designer chemicals. But that's just a hunch.
I think you're probably right.
Imagine what we could do in a non-prohibitionist atmosphere, where mainstream labs could research into stuff that gives people a buzz without being addictive or harmful...
It would certainly be great for innovation. For example, we already know it's possible to create benzodiazepines with similar effect profiles to alcohol, but that do interesting other things, like have a limit on intoxication that doesn't allow a person to become intoxicated to physically dangerous levels. There are alternative alcohols that have less toxic effects on the body as well.
Synthetic marijuana, properly made, could mitigate the unpleasant side effects such as apathy and paranoia through optimizing the cannabinoid balance. Hopefully, we'd even find the holy grail: anti-pain and anti-anxiety drugs that aren't physically addictive.
One great side effect is that research into palliative care would be greatly expanded. The military applications of new pain and anxiety medications would be massive as well.
The harm that we could prevent, not only from ending the narco-wars that are funding our enemies and tearing apart our neighbors to the south, but from a flood of new research and investment is staggering.
since all brain receptor become less sensitive as you expose them to their target chemical, doesn't it means that drugs will always cause some damage and be addictive ?
Not necessarily. Yes (AFAIK) receptors become downregulated when frequently exposed to drugs, but there are some drugs (LSD is usually cited) seem to be non-addictive, people don't typically use them chronically, and as a result damage is unlikely.
Addiction and habituation are not just down to this effect either. I know a variety of people who have been both daily pot smokers and daily tobacco users. The tobacco use was far harder to stop. (I'm not going to pretend pot doesn't have some addiction potential, and in fact it does seem to have minor withdrawals, just not anywhere near the level of tobacco, opiates etc). Receptors also recover after varying amounts of time.
So I don't see why we couldn't research things that are fun, don't compel people to chronic use, have minimal impact with occasional use, etc etc. It may not be possible to make the 'perfect' drug, but it may be possible to eliminate many of the harms. Particularly where some drugs are toxic over and above their primary effect, have toxic metabolic products etc
Not every drug causes a rebound effect. Manipulating neurotransmitters directly, our most common method of psychoactivity in mood-altering substances, almost always leads to rebound.
However, there are many ways of affecting receptors further up the metabolic chain. For example, recent research has focused on neurohormones are alternatives to benzodiazepines for anxiety treatment.
Some of these may be, in theory, less addictive or entirely non-addictive. Unfortunately, the current drugs are very effective for short duration courses, the most common medical use.
A less restricted market would incentive drug companies to find less harmful substances for recreational use. In a regulated market, you could even use the tax burden to further shape the public's preferences.
I don't think this case is representative (for a bunch of reasons, trying to avoid being overtly political, but including that CA is the most powerful state even without a senate delegation, and Boxer is fairly senior on her own.)
I did not intend to give the impression that I thought that her seniority was a reason to keep her around. It was more of a half-assed lazy web request. In the interim I put a question on the politics SX and emailed an old professor. I do agree that it will not be as big of a loss for CA as it might be for other states, e.g. VT losing Leahy.
Not avoiding being overtly political: In my opinion the House is similar to the kids table at a big thanksgiving dinner. Representatives and children are Every now and then the kids get too rambunctious and noisy and the adults (i.e. the senate) have to step in and tell the little brats to behave. If I could choose any elected office I would pick being a senator. The House "is teh suk."
Also, California and other large states can't get much impact from federal pork because they have to spread it too thin across a large population.
Wyoming and Alaska can get a few billion dollars in waste and abuse money from senior senators and spread it across half a million people. That makes for a lot of fun for anyone who's in on the windfall of bridges to nowhere, local culture grants, "national security" slush funds, and the like.
The right way to get her voted out isn't via a Republican challenger (at senate level, California is a single party state), it's through a combination of a primary challenger and intense pressure on her donors. DiFi's supporters are voting for her for a very simple reason: they (rightly) associate republicans with being anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, pro-corporate, and unilateral when it comes in regards to foreign policy. They understand DiFi is horrible in regards to civil liberties, but they see any republican challenger as standing for something worse (and this is very much the republicans' fault).
tl;dr They aren't voting for DiFi based her civil horrible liberties (constitutional issues, WoD, NSA spying, etc...) stances: they're voting against republicans based on that party (vs. the individual candidate’s) based on the republican party's civil rights stances (women's rights, protection against discrimination, immigration, gay rights, etc...).
If, on the other hand, the choice is between two "liberal" democrats, the electorate will not feel that they're risking much.
I think steps are:
1) Find anyone with strong civil libertarian and general liberal credentials: one approach may be to convince liberal-leaning republicans with great degree of California popularity -- e.g., Richard Riordan or Tom Campbell -- to switch over, the other may be convincing a house representative to do the same (other approaches could be prominent attorneys, business leaders, etc...)
2) Exert grass-roots pressure on corporate and wealthy donors to support that candidate. Seek endorsements from national political figures. One (controversial) approach may be to have senators Manchin or Toomey speak in a campaign slot about how Feinstein's early push for an assault weapons ban sunk any chances of Machin Toomey passing ("Feinstein put the horse before the cart, rather than helping us get our foot in the door, she alienated moderate gun owners from the cause of gun safety" -- which is literally what happened).
3) At the mean time, promote a popular, liberal republican in the republican primaries as well. Likewise, sponsor a third party liberal (e.g., green) challenger. In other words, democratic donors and national democratic party leadership should begin to think that there's a likelihood of Feinstein losing, and that a candidate with more fresh appeal would be required to win.
4) Increase voter registration in the 18-29 group: they strongly oppose NSA spying, drug war, and support gun ownership more strongly than any other age group (in all of these issues, Feinstein stands diametrically opposed to them). They also vote the least, especially in primaries (many many not be aware such exist).
I am not saying this will be easy or that this strategy will succeed in 2016. Most likely, such a campaign will still fail, but not without giving Feinstein and the democratic establishment a great scare. It will certainly have an impact in 2022: the coalition will come back together in that year's democratic primary and either field an candidate that will be elected or get the establishment candidate to sway in a more civil libertarian direction.
tl;dr Stir up the existing consensus, form a new coalition around a candidate that goes against the Chumer/Feinstein wing of democratic party: the wing that was elected on a "tough on crime" platform as a result of political conditions -- consensus view between dems and republicans on economic issues, high crime rates, cold war winding down, etc... -- that no longer exist.
Republican party did this: Barry Goldwater overwhelming lost the election, but the coalition of pundits, donors, politicians, and special interest groups that formed around him helped Reagan get elected.
It doesn't matter, because DiFi is not running in 2016; she's retiring (and hopefully focusing on family life or charity or religion or something to the exclusion of politics entirely).
It's going to be much more interesting if she doesn't anoint a successor, and if there's a genuinely open primary.
