Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a “miscellaneous” category together?

Also, note all the ridiculous drug propaganda lies.

  • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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    7 months ago

    The people who blabber incessantly about weed being a gateway drug are the exact REASON that I agree with them, but we VERY much disagree on the specifics.

    Think of it this way:

    Every adult in your life has told you that weed is JUST AS BAD as heroin and cocain and meth. You hear it repeated ad nauseum, ESPECIALLY if you were in DARE.

    Now one day someone you have known for a long time offers you some because “it’s not that bad, trust me you’ll be fine” and they go ahead and take a puff or twelve. Turns out it’s not that bad. They were fine after some initial uncoordinated attempts at doing something.

    So if weed is this interesting, maybe heroin isn’t that bad either?

    Yeah turns out heroin IS that bad, and lumping it in with weed is like tossing the kindergarten bully into a maxsec prison.

    So yeah, it’s only a “gAtEwAy dRuG” because you fucks lied for decades and made false equivalence of things and taught kids they can’t trust you.

  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    What specifically stands out to you as a ridiculous bit of probaganda?

    It’s certainly not the most accurate or clinical, and some of the categories are a bit “eh”, but nothing popped out to me that I would describe so strongly.

    If nothing else, it’s a lot more objective and grounded in reality than what they gave me in that dumb dare program. Might be why my reaction is just “close enough”.

      • warlaan@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        It doesn’t say that I’m the text. It literally says that it is CALLED a gateway drug because of what SOME people do.

      • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        Also being the most abused drug. I’d say that would be caffeine. There are more people who take caffeine daily than cannabis. But this seems to be about “bad” drugs, not “good” drugs.

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I’d give it to alcohol, not caffeine personally. I wouldn’t say most people “abuse” caffeine, they just drink it.
          Abuse to me implies having a negative impact, and I can think of more people who have been negatively impacted by weed than by caffeine, but way more from alcohol than either, and with a significantly more negative impact.

          I know people who smoke too much and it’s definitely made them stagnate in life and gain a lot of weight.
          I know people who drink way too much caffeine and get insomnia, leading to a cycle of discomfort and heartburn from all the coffee.
          I know people who drank too much alcohol and died, or developed terrible health complications.

          Most people are totally fine with all of them, but alcohol is easily the worst and most common.

    • undercrust@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      The information in the hallucinogenic section about acid flashbacks is incorrect. This was a false rumour spread in the 70s to demonize the political opponents of Nixon.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Hrm, I always thought it was just a mis-name for PTSD after an excessive dose.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

        It looks like there’s at least a degree of clinical validation to it being a combo of PTSD and “sometimes colors stay funny for a while”.

        Are you sure you’re not thinking of “the entire war on drugs, but particularly pot and heroin”?
        That’s what I thought was an invention by the Nixon administration.

        • undercrust@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Oh, HPPD is definitely a thing, but extraordinarily rare.

          I may have misspoke about the brown acid - this was a legit warning resulting from “home-brew chemists” attempting to make their own LSD and failing to create it properly. Most of the supplies back then were direct from Sandoz (Novartis) and basically were being given away to the scientific community for novel testing. Fun stuff.

          I’m talking about the hyperbole of “acid flashbacks” which was a narrative introduced to discourage and demonize LSD usage by the political and intellectual opponents of the Nixon administration. “Rots your brain permanently” and all that other garbage.

          Turns out regular LSD usage by the “hippie” community and by many people involved in high-level education (particularly college and university professors) was making people feel more connected and empathetic towards one another, and that just didn’t do for the Republicans who needed everyone to fear “the other”.

          What they also did with marijuana and heroin, and subsequently with crack cocaine, was truly abhorrent.

  • ashok36@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Marijuana is not a gateway drug.

    Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.

    Legalize pot, sell it at the grocery store, and you will watch the number of addicts in general fall precipitously. I guarantee it.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.

      Marijuana is addictive though. Maybe not as addictive as some other things, but pretending it’s completely non addictive is disingenuous and misleading. It’s more addictive than say LSD or psilocybin for example.

      That isn’t to say it should remain illegal though. Legalisation has positive benefits even for harder, more addictive substances than marijuana. See the history of alcohol prohibition for example, or the disaster that is the war on drugs.

    • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      I buy THC drinks online from 3Chi. I haven’t had an urge to try anything harder (in fact, I’m a bit scared of anything that might affect my heart (aside from booze becaus3 we all do at least one very stupid thing), and the only thing I do want to try but only with a good support group around is shrooms).

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs

      Clearly marijuana has some serious kind of habituation, and it’s equally clear that many people that use marijuana are problem users. Addictive? No, not by any strict definition of addiction, since you won’t suffer serious adverse effects if you stop. OTOH, I’ve known at least as many problem marijuana users as problem drinkers

      • ashok36@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The question isn’t whether Marijuana is habit forming. Obviously for some percentage it is. The question is whether Marijuana use in and of itself encourages or preface additional drug use. My position is that it does not and by legalizing Marijuana we would find that it is the interaction with black market drug dealers which correlates instead.

      • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Don’t forget shampoo!

        My D.A.R.E. officer made sure we all knew that shampoo is a drug because it’s a chemical compound that physically affects our bodies. I definitely had fewer issues with drugs after learning that I was already a ‘drug user’.

        • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I had fewer issues with drugs after doing drugs, having a great time, feeling better the next morning than if I’d had 4 pints of beer.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That’s because from a health perspective, alcohol in particular is an “end state drug”. It’s what you die with. It ruins you. Not as fast as heroine, but just as thoroughly.