Parents, teens, educators, and treatment professionals alike are racing to keep up with the latest designer drug trends. It seems that as soon as one drug is regulated or banned, another appears to take its place. This is a fast-paced and dangerous chase, and traditional methods of research don't work to identify emerging trends, regardless of how disturbing they may be. Why? Because new drug trends simply move too fast. Longitudinal surveys and point-prevalence studies in Emergency Departments can't keep up; taking a sample of statistics on a specific day is irrelevant, because the next days will likely bring entirely new crops of drugs.
This month, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) put five chemicals used to make K-2 and Spice (recently popular and legally-sold "fake pot" products) under federal regulation. Although this is an important and necessary step, chemical regulation is not a one-stop solution to the problem. Without a major increase in prevention, education and treatment, K-2 and Spice will simply join "bath salts" as defunct drugs that have paved the way for newer, trendier -- and possibly more dangerous -- substances.
This unfortunate passing-of-the-torch is currently in progress: a new designer drug, 2 C-E, has arrived on the scene and is already wreaking havoc. Last week in Minnesota, 11 teenagers at a spring break party overdosed on the drug, which they had legally ordered over the internet. One of them, a 19-year-old named Trevor Robinson, died. As was once the case with K-2, Spice, and "bath salts," the primary concern surrounding this new drug is the painful lack of facts -- we simply don't have enough information to determine its risks. How will 2 C-E interact with other drugs? With alcohol? With a teen's medication for ADD? Its users have no idea, and that lack of knowledge increases the drug's potential dangers.
2 C-E, like many of the designer drugs that came before it, is particularly hazardous for young users. It can still be obtained legally, which leads some users to believe that it's safe. It's a stimulant and hallucinogen, and it has a slow-onset of action that has an unanticipated effect on new users; they take a certain amount and don't feel any effect, so they take more. This is the exact process that leads to harmful -- even fatal -- overdoses such as last week's tragic incident in Minnesota.
As a culture, we absolutely need to continue increasing our knowledge about 2 C-E, K-2, Spice, "bath salts," and each and every new drug that comes down the pipeline -- it's this knowledge that prepares us to best address the drug's effects and help the individuals who are abusing it. This is a race we can't win, but one we can't afford to give up. Parents and treatment professionals will never be "faster" than emerging designer drug trends. We will never be able to predict and stamp out the next new drug before it appears in basements and dorm rooms across the country. What we can do is advocate and increase prevention, education and treatment services to change cultural attitudes towards drug use in general. If we can address the widespread root causes of substance abuse, we won't need to run faster than the drug trends; we will have stopped the race entirely.
Howard Meitiner: Bath Salts: New Drug, Old Problem
The Media Consortium: Weekly Pulse: Don't Snort Bath Salts, Kids
2C-E - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Designer drug 2 C-E: "concerning trend" for teens - The Early Show ...
Esme's Blog: We Need Laws Against Designer Drugs « CBS Minnesota
What a false and misleading statement -- it was not important, it was not necessary, it was NOT a good thing, and it will have no effect on anything.Â
ProhibitioÂn is the ABSENCE of regulationÂ. When we prohibit a substance, all we're effectively saying is "here ya' go Mr. illegal drug dealer -- a new product you can push on our kids, and we'll have no say in it!"Â
The real problem here is that the legality of a substance has absolutely nothing to do with how safe it is. Drugs aren't necessarily bad -- but they can be abused, and misused. Alcohol and legal prescription medications are the most commonly abused substances, but we as a society accept that -- and we deal with it accordinglÂy. If we can do that for what is arguably one of the most dangerous and destructive drugs out there, and some truly messed-up man-made concoctions that barely qualify as "medicine", surely we can take that approach for the others.
We cannot have a rational conversatiÂon about the legality of drugs until cannabis is fully legalized. Until then, this is just more twisted madness.
The authoir advocates for doing more of the same because that's how he makes money.
If everyone agrees that prohibition of pot is not working, then what the hell is taking so long? And why are we not taking OUR COUNTRY BACK??? REVOLUTION
Big Pharma is just as influential and greedy as Big Oil and will not tolerate anything that can severely cut into their profits. Our country is run by fortune 500 corporations, not the people and its been that way since the 50's.
It is a fact the CIA was the main supplier of crack-cocaine to the LA gangs in the 80s in order to fund their central American escapades that couldn't receive funding from Congress.
In 1986 Congress passed a law stipulating that individuals in possession of crack-cocaine will receive sentences equivalent to the sentence of a person possessing 100 times the quantity in powder cocaine.
The DEA then enforced this law and sent droves of individuals, mainly African-American (which was intentional, of course) to jail, feeding the prison-industrial complex.
President George H W Bush, in a television address, informs his citizens that he will be enacting the largest expansion of the number of agents and prosecutors in history to handle the drug and crime 'crisis'.
A perfect system to enforce tyranny abroad by enforcing tyranny at home.
I have spent time with addicts. I quit shooting heroin on my own. My parents had nothing to do with that. Instead they gave me the tools, SELF-RESPECT, confidence, worth, and value of life, to combat addiction on my own. Not because they forced a drug-free lifestyle on me, but because they taught me how to love myself and other people. Everytime they ever tried to force their views on me, I just disobeyed. If kids know a test is waiting at home, many times they just won't come back until they can pass, or just fail anyways.
If teens didn't discover how harmless pot is at an early age, and that it goes against everything they were told as kids, they might not look at other dangerous drugs similarly.
Also, drug tests are great at detecting marijuana(which is, besides caffeine, the safest recreational drug known to man) but not so good at detecting alcohol(which kills thousands of teenagers every year), cocaine, heroin or amphetamine usage. And it doesn't test at all for drugs like 2ci, 2ce, ritalin, LSD, mushrooms or ketamine.
This drug is dangerous in VERY high doses, as is Tylenol, or alcohol. I took some of the highest recommended dosages by its designer and father of all synthetic psychedelics, Alexander Shulgin. I didn't die, nor even come close. I had the proper equipment to measure the doses out. I was also younger than these kids at that stage in my life, and I knew the dangers of drugs.
As Sheen said, "Dyin' is for fools!" Be cautious with drugs you haven't tried yet. Psychedelics can give beautiful experiences!
with street drugs for the following reasons:
(see 4th paragraph in this link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect
It can be used at low frequencies to change (adjust) minds
and at higher frequencies for crowd control. At lower frequencies, targets
won't even notice anything different or that they are being tampered
with at a distance while sleeping or awake.
(like the movie only without the sci-fi aspect)
If you google the above beyond Wiki (& sometimes even
within it) you will find fact DELIBERATELY mixed with subtle &
not so subtle disinformation. Your tax $ at work.
There's this outrageous scam where heroin addicts go to a doctor and say they want to be clean. The doctor prescribes them a substance called suboxone, which relieves an opiate addict of withdrawl symptoms while blocking opiates from working. The doctor overprescribes the patient and the patient can now sell the excess suboxone to his buddies who are hurting because they're out of heroin. They take that $, buy heroin, do it for a few days or a couple weeks until it's gone, then have an easy comedown until their next doctor appointment/refill. The doctor will often prescribe Xanax or Ativan to help with the 'anxiety' and 'trouble sleeping' when coming off opiates. This is also overpresrcibed and the excess are sold, maintaining a double layer of addiction on the patient.
Many doctors are government-sanctioned drug dealers.
This keeps the population poor, ignorant, emotionally damaged, and therefore mentally weak, and easy to manipulate into buying products and services they don't need and to tell who they should vote for.
It makes a great profit for the pharmacutical corporations who support and instigate this behavior among the doctors. It is supported by the for-profit treatment centers. And it is supported by the prison-industrial complex.
Humanity is continually enhanced by mind-altering substances.
The Enlightenment saw many philosophers huffing ether to induce dream states to carry their mind to greater heights. That period wrought the ideas which formed Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as well as The Declaration of Independence (both written in 1776), and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as France's Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The Trancendentalist Movement, including the works of Emerson and Thoreau, was inspried by a life which included smoking cannabis.
Not only Steve Jobs and Apple, but most of Silicon Valley is psychedelic-inspired.
Legalize safe, from-the-earth drugs like pot and mushrooms and you'll drastically cut down on the creation of new designer drugs that are possibly very hazardous, not to mention synthetic and yucky.
But I guess you are free to keep on pursuing the methods that have proven to fail over and over again, and put children's parents in jail for weed, a drug no more harmful than coffee.