phil stovell

What about nicotine addicts in withdrawal?

--
Phil Stovell, South Hampshire, UK

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather
let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife"

davon96720

May when I was much younger I got anxious about, think it was just that us
kids just needed something to do.

As an adult, as times I've been an heavy smoker and life situations changes
and so did my smoking, no problem.

Now, I've no set routine around it, so guess don't have oppertunity to
devlelope a slight dependence, if that's what it is. Personally, I would
like to see much more done to quality such a conclusion being solely
dependent on canabis; and furthermore, would want to see if it's in any way
harmfull, which I doubt.
Aloha,
davon96720

jasbird

I realized that the following may bore you to tears but ...

The collateral damage from nicotine smoke (passive smoking) is more
harmful than all the car accidents caused by inebriated driving.

Can we see the formula you use to calculate the balance of harms that a
drug causes - including weightings for different harms (harm to self and
harm to others).

If you are going to do this "harm" calculation for drugs:
1) premature death must be rated very high.
2) physical addiction is highly rated (due to the tendency of drugs to
be more harmful when consumed on a very regular basis (daily or more
frequently)
3) harm to others is rated more highly than harm to self.
4) other 'harms' (going temporarily insane/inebriation/tripping) should
not be rated as real harms unless the user actually breaks the law in
some way (other than by possessing illegal drugs). Evidence of user
doing real harm under the influence of psychedelics or cannabis is very
low; with alcohol it is very high.
5) You must factor in the harm caused by prohibition (spread of STDs,
bad heroin overdoses, collateral damage caused by crime - i.e.
acquisitive crime is twice as high as it should be because most crime is
done by heroin addicts seeking to fund their addiction). In the case of
heroin we find that it is far more harmful when illegal than it would be
if it were legal. But a real harm calculation like that nearly
impossible; and prohibitionists will not do it.

Add it all up. This is my initial calculation:

A - Alcohol, nicotine, opiates, cocaine
B - amphetamines
C - cannabis, psychedelics
Note: even then I'm sure that neither opiates nor cocaine (were they
legal) would be as harmful as alcohol or nicotine
Note 2: In this revised calculation cannabis and psychedelics are far
less harmful than many over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like Aspirin and
Paracetamol.

So after a bit of thought my final calculation is:

A - Alcohol, nicotine
B - amphetamines, opiates, cocaine
C - Aspirin, Paracetamol.
legal - cannabis, psychedelics

Note 3: This is just an academic exercise. I'm proposing nothing because
the harms caused by prohibition will out-weigh other harms.

This is my government's calculation:

A - opiates, cocaine, psychedelics
B - amphetamines
C - cannabis
legal - Alcohol, nicotine, Aspirin, Paracetamol.

Prof. Nutt (of the UK ACMD) has promised to publish a revised harm
calculation matrix in the journal The Lancet. We await his figures with
baited breath. It's interesting that the Matrix they currently use has
never been officially published - I wonder why not? - what are they
afraid of telling us. Could it be that their figures are actually pretty
close to my revised calculation? I'm absolutely fascinated to know how
they calculate psychedelics to be class A drugs.

jasbird

If that is a real harm you should be able to put a number to it.
X = no. of crashes. Y = no. of fatalities, Z = no. of serious injuries.
W = total cost to society (in £).

But you never do try to quantify things, do you Claude?, so that you can
get a proper measure of harm. You never do risk ****ysis. That's because
your real motive is not "harm reduction" - you even call harm reduction
pro-drug propaganda. You are only interested in inventing theoretical
harms and then treating every possible theoretical harm as being of
equal importance. That kind of thinking made magic mushrooms a a class A
drug. If we followed your advice every drug would be class A because
that would be "sending the right message".

johnr

err.... no, the drugs claude uses wouldn't.

name

I doubt that seriously impairs their ability to behave responsibly,
just like
alcohol addicts in withdrawal for that matter.

jasbird

So complex that the Government never had a formula and just made things
up off the top of their heads. Risk ****ysis they say, schh'malysis.

phil stovell

Alcohol addicts can die in withdrawal.

--
Phil Stovell, South Hampshire, UK

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather
let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife"

name

Sure, but I don't see how withdrawal symptoms in case of alcohol are
likely
to cause people to behave irresponsibly (in the way alcohol
intoxication typically does). People can die from cancer too, but that
doesn't mean cancer causes people to behave irresponsibly either.

dave j.

In MsgID<dese72tjkq80cpnnaof048f2j07d4ho146@4ax.com> within

Could you explain how a 'rebound effect' differs from any other sort of
withdrawal symptom? Looked at one way I'd have called some aspects of
opiate withdrawal a 'rebound' effect, but this is clearly not how they
mean it as they're differentiating between this effect and what they
regard as 'real' withdrawal.

Dave J.