When are they going to go after Starbucks for dealing espresso?

Coffee is such a dangerous stimulant that the English at one time made it illegal. Tobacco too.

Personally I think we ought to outlaw vegetables. They seem to make vegetarians insufferable.

Cuba - Similar to espresso, café cubano is an extremely strong coffee that is not sipped -- it is shot, like tequila. In restaurants, Cuban coffee is served at the end of the meal in tiny tacitas, cups smaller than demitasse cups.

Coffee

Slugging down coffee? A sure sign of addiction - like binge drinking. Something must be done.

Methcathinone, a related chemical, is easier and safer to make from cold medicine than methedrine. About ten years ago there was this big scare that it was going to sweep the country. Much to the disappointment of the narcs, it never caught on.

Yay, an idealogical screed that refuses to put forward proof for any statement! The War on the War on Drugs really needed another one.

Kath was not made illegal because of 'busybody breaucrats'. It was made illegal because the damn thing has a fairly long half-life (at least three hours) during which it causes maniac and unrealistic behavior, and is known to lead to hallucinations as an individual's body works the stuff out.

But, hey, by the same metric there we should allow opium. It's a cultural thing, right? There weren't too many negative reports about the drug until after it was banned, there, too.

I'm sorry. I know a lot of ways the War on Drugs has gone ugly. But I don't have to advocate breaking down doors and shooting grannies over a dime bag of pot to think that, just maybe, the vast majority of uses of PCP have enough of a negative effect on random bystanders to justify a ban. I find it hard to agree with the use of significantly impairing drug that can suddenly bugger someone's judgement over when they're driving six hours later.

careful gattsuru

waxing pragmatic about dangerous (to innocent victims) drugs vs beneficial pharmacuticals (like bloodpressure medicine) is going to have you labeled as an accomplice to murder or even an advocate of mass murder

cuz, ya know, the tweaker who kills their kid is no different than Anne Frank.

Reading the excellent book right now The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. Most of it is not new to me in the department of economic data, but she does a terrific job of uncovering Hoover's busybody-ness.

Point being that it was in the same general time frame that socialism - the nannystate if you will - was in coming to full flower. It was almost dead in America though until Hoover revived it with his intrusive brand of governing, and paved the way for FDR and the modern nannystate.

Darleen, for the life of me I cannot understand how there can be victims of drugs, any more than there can be victims of alcohol, tobacco, guns, cars, cell phones, or pornography. People who do bad things (either to themselves or to others) are in no way excused by what they use, nor are the things they use any defense to their actions. I don't see a glue sniffer behind the wheel as more excusable than a drunken driver, and I don't see what the driver's conduct has to do with whether what he misused should be made illegal. Might as well maintain that a neglected spouse is a victim of pornography, or a gambler's family is a victim of a slot machine. (Or a deck of cards.)

Ray, a major busybody was Harry J. Anslinger -- a tireless self promoter who gave marijuana a permanent place in the American culture war machinery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger

Personally, I think hatred is a natural human need, and stigmatizing drugs gives people an outlet for it. (It could be argued that this is good for society, but I'm not feeling up to an essay which would be misunderstood by all sides.)

Bear in mind that prohibition of alcohol was made possible largely because of anti-German sentiment.

Wow, cocaine goes for $1000 a gram in Philly? I may have to change careers and relocate.

yours/
peter.

As a commenter has pointed out that khat can have side effects, it's worth noting that reports of psychosis are rare.

Psychosis itself is relatively rare, and cathine or cathinone-related hallucinations are poorly studied enough that I can't argue about them. Unrealistic thinking and mania, however, are common with any large dose of cathinone, such as might be achieved by getting a normal sized dab of very fresh leaves.

Those aren't exceptional reports, and the results are significant compared to most legal drugs.

It's easy to pretend it's similar to caffeine, but both chemically and physiologically the drug is much closer to amphetamines. They're all classified as stimulants, but the results of actual use are a bit varied.

Well, what about the numerous studies confirming caffeine psychosis?

The ones that require long-term use of toxic doses or high doses mixed with other drugs? Yeah, that's comparable to something recorded to happen with a single normal dose while tired.

I don't think Khat is comparable to amphetamines in the way they are normally used, because the dosage and ingestion methods are so different. It's like comparing beer to vodka or chewing coca leaves to smoking crack.

But I don't think amphetamines were dangerous enough to prohibit. Crank -- and meth labs -- are the result of years of criminalization, with ever more draconian penalties. My mom used to take amphetamines to study in college, and they were widely prescribed in the 1960s and 1970s. Once they were made into a Schedule II drug, doctors stopped prescribing them, and the illicit manufacture began in earnest.

Whether the criminalization approach is worth it is highly debatable. Few people will ever be convinced to change their minds. (My opinion is that criminalization creates crime, and that it is immoral to imprison people for self harm.)

The point is, now we have created Khat criminals. Did we really need them?

Most amphetamines aren't that destructive, either, at least not in the ways typically associated with them. They are stimulants, and in very low doses, are quite useful as such. Form of use doesn't really mean much outside of injected drug use (which has that whole STD risk thing). It's about concentration in blood serum, rate of intake, and cultural schema regarding acceptable times of use.

Meth and a few other subtypes are particularly nasty, but the vast majority of 'straight' amphetamines are nearly identical chemically to cathinone, and many were administered orally.

Criminalization creates criminals... well, that's a truism. Criminalizing murder makes criminals, but it's seldom considered a bad thing. I have little difficulty 'making criminals' when the alternative is ignoring folk who use a drug known to cause mania, unrealistic thinking, and hallucinations when tired, particularly when the drug's popular use is for when users are tired and active.

I'd like to take a more libertarian viewpoint on this sorta stuff, but even Randian Objectivism relies on folks having the ability to make their own decisions.

I have eaten betel nut many times, and it gives a mild stimulation (a rush), but can also blur your vision and cause sweat.

If khat is similar, I don't think I'd want taxi drivers to be eating it. (In Taiwan, taxi drivers love betel nut, too.)