By Libby
This isn't exactly news. It's long been known and remarked on within drug policy reform circles, but it's worth mentioning when the media periodically rediscover that legal drugs kill more people than illegal ones do.
MIAMI � From �Scarface� to �Miami Vice,� Florida�s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.
An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined. [...]
The report�s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.
There's two major points we can take from this. One is that the urge to alter our perceptions and our mood is strong in humans and people will take mind altering substances to do so. They've been doing it from the beginning of time and no threat of penalty will stop them.
The second point is that deaths attributable to the abuse of legal pharmaceutical drugs are three times greater than illegal ones, but you don't hear any huge calls to ban those drugs. Instead our professional prohibition profiteers use the same failed approach as they do in the war on illegal drugs. They go after those least culpable. In this case, the doctors who prescribe them and the pain patients who legitimately need them . See Richard Paey and Radley's voluminous chronicles of persecuted doctors.
As an aside, it's useful to note that at 4,179 incidences, "alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug" found in bodies of the dead, although listed as the sole cause of death in only 466, but marijuana remains the only so-called dangerous drug which has not been attributed as a cause of a single fatality in 5,000 years. Yet in 2007 there were 44,640 Americans imprisoned at the state and federal level solely for offenses related to this natural herb. There's no count on the numbers held in local and county jails.
America's real drug problem is its addiction to prohibition. It hasn't worked in the last 40 and more years and it won't ever work. For a fraction of the billions we spend on failed policies that rely on eradication, interdiction and incarceration, we could invest in treatment facilities that would actually solve the problems of addiction and abuse, which are the only real dangers of drug use and allow responsible substance consumers to live in peace and productivity. [h/t Tits McGee]
How many deaths due to psilocybin?
ReplyDeleteI don't know the answer to that Michael. I didn't focus my drug policy work on psychedelics but there is an NGO that does. MAPS. I haven't been feeling well this week and don't have the energy to check myself but I bet they have the stats there if you feel like checking and reporting back.
ReplyDeleteGood Post Libby
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons we still have our "War of Drugs" is that it's easier to dole out the million-dollar contracts to the same Military-Industrial Complex fat cats ...
It wouldn't look good, to have combat helicopters and commando squads raiding Aunt Ester's apartment, or rounding up teenagers for raiding Mom's stash ...
Much easier to keep rolling out the Drug War Czars and keeping the easy-cash pipeline open ...
Peace
JTD
While I think you are right here "One is that the urge to alter our perceptions and our mood is strong in humans and people will take mind altering substances to do so." the comparison of prescription drug to illegal drug deaths is severely skewed by the simple fact that presently, illegal drugs are, well, illegal.
ReplyDeleteDrug laws obviously don't deter everyone, but they do deter a lot of people who don't want to take the risk of getting caught. Legalize drugs, removing the threat of repercussions, and I'd wager you would see a dramatic rise in non prescription drug deaths.
As to your comment that "marijuana remains the only so-called dangerous drug which has not been attributed as a cause of a single fatality in 5,000 years." is a bit disingenuous and may or may not be true if you're talking overdose, but I'd be willing to bet that there are a lot of marijuana related deaths if you factor in stoned drivers in car accidents etc.
My first girlfriend in high school died exactly that way. Riding home from a party with a stoned friend, the friend lost control of his car, and rammed into a tree. My girlfriend (who wasn't wearing her seat belt) flew through the windshield and landed almost thirty feet away. She died less than an hour later at the hospital due to massive head injuries.
While you could say that technically, she didn't die because of marijuana, factually, the driver being stoned out of his gourd was a major contributor to her death.
Libby, as far as I can tell, there aren't any confirmed deaths due to psilocybin overdose either. I was merely pointing out that cannabis is not the only so-called "dangerous drug" with a 5,000+ year record of not causing fatality. There are numerous fatalities due to mushroom misidentification, however.
ReplyDeleteCocaine is not a narcotic, and narcotic is not a synonym for illegal drug. Cocaine is a *stimulant*; heroin is a narcotic.
ReplyDeleteCuzco, there is simply no evidence that cannabis impairs driving performance in a way that leads to a greater risk of accidents.
ReplyDeleteExactly JT.
ReplyDeleteCuzco, I'm willing to bet your friends driver was also drinking. People who are just high on marijuana usually drive very slowly and very carefully. Besides no one is condoning drugging and driving anymore than one would condone drinking and driving.
I also seriously doubt there would be huge spike in ODs of currently illegal drugs, since any legalization would include quality controls on purity and regulatory controls on use. Not that I think there would be much a bump in use. Initially some people might for instance try marijuana, but most wouldn't like it. It's not for everyone and who would go out and start doing heroin because it was legal? I wouldn't, would you?
In any event, as we've seen with alcohol, it's easier to control substances when they're provided in a legal market.
Michael, thanks for checking.
Bill, good point, but that was a quote from the story, not my own.
> While you could say that technically, she didn't die
ReplyDelete> because of marijuana, factually, the driver being
> stoned out of his gourd was a major contributor to
> her death.
I am genuinely sorry to hear of this loss.
However.
But by the same argument cell phones, lack of sleep, doing one's cosmetics, reading the morning paper, talking to passengers, changing the radio station, yelling at one's kids, etc all would be equally as culpable.
Some things are hard to regulate.
Maybe you are not clear on what 'overdose' means in relation to substance abuse.
The Department of Motor Vehicles in Washington State commissioned a study in 1968 that tested pot smokers, alcohol drinkers and people who were not under the influence of anything at all. The results?
ReplyDeletePot smokers scored the highest (best), and the drunks scored the worst.The 'straights' were in the middle. I still have the press clipping about the study and its results.
I know a kid who wrapped his Chevelle around a tree, and he was straight at the time. Some people are horrible drivers, especially young drivers with a fast car (and a girl in the car with them that they just have to show off to). I will bet that J.T.'s first girlfriend was in the car with stupid driver before I will believe it was the 'fault' of the pot the driver allegedly smoked.
LSD has never caused a fatality, either. The one LSD fatality was an elephant, and the amount consumed was enormous.
ReplyDeleteLSD doesn't have a 5,000+ year history of human use, however.
ReplyDeleteLibby: Besides no one is condoning drugging and driving anymore than one would condone drinking and driving.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, as we've seen with alcohol, it's easier to control substances when they're provided in a legal market.
You can control a substance all you want, but you can't control the behavior of people on that substance or their reaction to that substance. If you can buy joints in a bar, as easily as people buy drinks, there will be a lot more people driving home high. It's a question of simple arithmetic.
For the brief time I smoked pot semi-regularly, (last year of high school/first year of college) it had a huge effect on me. I used to hallucinate when I was high.
As to this
Michael: "there is simply no evidence that cannabis impairs driving performance in a way that leads to a greater risk of accidents."
Bunk. If talking on a cell phone or changing radio stations can increase the risk of accidents, driving while high certainly can.
Again, from personal experience, I once drove home when I was stoned out of my mind and due to pot's aforementioned hallucinogenic effects on me, I thought I was several miles further down the road than I actually was. I was making turns for where I thought I was on the road rather than where I actually was. I came within inches of ramming head on into a stone wall. I think it was just body reflex that saved me as It took me a minute after the car stopped for me to realize where I was. When I realized how close to death I had just come, I pulled the car carefully off the road and walked the rest of the way home.
My reaction to pot may be unusual but I find it hard to believe that my brain chemistry is so unique that I'm the only one it affects this way.
Cuzco, you pulled the car carefully off the road and walked home. That's exactly what a too stoned driver ought to do. If you're too stoned to drive, don't drive.
ReplyDeleteYour experience suggests you were confused but did not have an accident. I'd like to point out to you that there is a big difference here with alcohol, for instance. Not everyone is comfortable driving stoned, and maybe you shouldn't, I'm not advocating it. But it's a whole lot safer than driving drunk.
This is an important point, inasmuch as people who are too stoned to drive recognize it, whereas those who are too drunk to drive are more likely to claim they are "fine" and drive anyhow.
Michael already answered your comment Cuzco. Just as you shouldn't drive if you've had too much to drink, you shouldn't drive when you're too stoned. And any drug, even legal ones affect everyone differently. Just as some people can have a couple of drinks and drive fine, some can't. That's where responsible use comes in. And I would note that you say you don't smoke any longer, because you don't like the effect it had on you, so chances are even if it was legal, you wouldn't start again would you? In any event, as Observer pointed out, I was speaking about overdose deaths in the post, and there hasn't been a single one, ever.
ReplyDeleteNothing is perfect, but prohibition and the war on some drugs is an obviously failed policy that does more harm than the use of the drugs themselves and is costing us billions that could be better spent in ways that would solve the problems of drug ABUSE, without destroying the lives of responsible consumers and their families.
> If you can buy joints in a bar, as easily as people
ReplyDelete> buy drinks, there will be a lot more people driving
> home high. It's a question of simple arithmetic.
Well, you can do exactly that in the Netherlands, yet there is no significantly larger amount of traffic deaths there. Why is that?
Against that dubious argument of yours stands the concrete fact of literally tens-, and possibly hundreds of thousands Americans imprisoned for non-violent "crimes" related to Cannabis.
"I used to hallucinate when I was high."
ReplyDeleteThen you must have been smoking PCP laced weed. I have smoked pot daily for 37 years now, the last seven as a medical marijuana user, and I have never met anyone who hallucinated from it. Never. When I hear or read about someone who did, my BS detector goes off.
Ever hear of 'smoking yourself straight'? Once it happens, you no longer 'get high' from pot. It is just like smoking cigarettes at that point. Try that with alcohol.
I have been pulled over by the law while stoned, and I have never been given a roadside test to see if I was. I comported myself perfectly for the officer each time, and I took my ticket (for a burned out tail light or some other minor issue) or warning with grace.
Hallucinating from pot? Thanks for the laugh!
Congrats on the link and mention over at BalloonJuice. Maybe this little blog will get some traffic from the cowboys/girls from over at BJ.
ReplyDeleteHere's some research from Britain how drunks are worse than stoners behind the wheel:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2063-alcohol-impairs-driving-more-than-marijuana.html
Quote: "However, volunteers drinking the equivalent of a glass of wine fared worse than those who had smoked a joint. Those who were given both alcohol and cannabis performed worse still, reinforcing the idea that alcohol has a cumulative effect when taken with other drugs.
But the study also found that drivers on cannabis tended to be aware of their intoxicated state, and drove more cautiously to compensate. Indeed, doped-up volunteers often rated themselves as being more impaired than police surgeons brought in to evaluate their sobriety.
Surprisingly, drinking alcohol didn't offset this cautious behaviour, opening up the unproven possibility that a driver who is moderately drunk might be better off under some conditions if they had also smoked.
This cautious behaviour is in line with findings by other researchers. "Whereas alcohol promotes risk taking like fast speeds and close following, cannabis promotes conservative driving, but may cause attention problems and misperceptions of time," says Nicholas Ward, technical adviser to the Immortal project - a three-year European Union trial designed to quantify the crash risk drivers face after taking various drugs and medicines."
The second point is that deaths attributable to the abuse of legal pharmaceutical drugs are three times greater than illegal ones, but you don't hear any huge calls to ban those drugs. . . They go after those least culpable. In this case, the doctors who prescribe them and the pain patients who legitimately need them . . .
ReplyDeleteI pretty sure virtually all of the deaths are NOT attributable to "legal" drugs. Rather, they are attributable to legally manufactured drugs that were obtained/stolen/diverted etc. illegally. If someone buys an Oxycontin on the street, it is a "street drug." Morphine bought on the street is an illegal substance even if it was manufactured legally.
The DEA and other government agencies refer to the effects of "prescription drugs" when they cite abuse/overdose statistics, but they are almost ALWAYS referring to manufactured substances that are illegally traded, sold or obtained. The sick and their physicians are far more likely than criminals to be punished/profiled, however.
cl
CL, that's a good point and I'd agree in terms of the DEA's stats on abuse, that the majority is for legal drugs that have been diverted. However the death count most certainly includes people with prescriptions who overdosed or died of a bad interaction. Google aspirin overdoses, and you'll find a lot of people die from that annually. That's surely not traded on the street.
ReplyDeleteBut the study also found that drivers on cannabis tended to be aware of their intoxicated state, and drove more cautiously to compensate.
ReplyDelete"Sir, do you know how fast you were going?"
"Aw, man... I dunno... Sixty?"
"Six."
Speaking as a motorcyclist and former bartender, if you're stoned (on anything, alcohol included), get the fuck off the road: and no, I don't want you to use your own judgement.
"Congrats on the link and mention over at BalloonJuice. Maybe this little blog will get some traffic from the cowboys/girls from over at BJ."
ReplyDeleteYEE HAW! ;)
We're a bunch of rabble (rousers) over there, but somehow we are able to enjoy it. John runs a great blog, and all of them come up with interesting topics to trash.
Becoming habituated to pot kind of takes the fun out of it, but it still relaxes you and makes you more contemplative. I would not want a new pot smoker on the road until they learn to handle it or smoke themselves straight, but I would take a thousand experienced pot smokers on the road over one drunk. Any day. I have ridden motorcycles since I was a kid, and when I travel I take a break for a hit or five before taking off for the next stopping point. I know my capabilities, and I am a cautious rider as any good rider is.
After all, I DO want to live and I sure as hell don't want to hurt someone else. As they say, you can't judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. Blind justification for laws that just do not work will never accomplish anything, but our government believes that if you jail enough people then everyone will obey the law.
Somehow our politicians are able to forget the failure that was Prohibition.
Aren't you conflating deaths attributable to prescription drugs with deaths attributable to the *abuse* of prescription drugs?
ReplyDeleteMany people die because of adverse reactions to legitimately-prescribed drugs, to prescription interaction, to mistakes in prescribing (wh/ often happens in hospitals) or mistakes made by the patient in taking the meds. Not to mention the use of new prescription drugs that have been insufficiently tested (see Vioxx).
Nancy, the death stats don't break down the causes so there's no way to determine which deaths are due to abuse and which to normal medical mistakes. The point of the post is, the prohibitionists justify the war on some drugs on account of of their dangerousness, when in fact more deaths occur via legal drugs. You don't see a war on pharma corps over it and as you point out yourself, they're drug pushers who sometimes irresponsibly peddle undertested products. But our government protects them from lawsuits while it incarcerates consumers.
ReplyDeleteThe main point I've been trying to make about the war on some drugs for years now is it's expensive and ineffective. We treat drug abuse and responsible use, equally as a crime when the latter should be a matter of personal choice to the extent that it doesn't endanger anyone else and the former should be treated as a public health issue.
OH, and hey CL. I've been meaning to say it's nice to see you over here and thanks for the pertinent commentary.
ReplyDeleteI don't smoke much any more, but I honestly believe I was a worse driver high than straight. However, my judgment was better. I was less likely to drive while high because I could recognize that it was riskier. On the other hand, when I used to drive while drinking, I often thought I was fine to drive, even when I wasn't. I think it's best not to drive while under the influence of anything. It's also best not to talk on one's cell phone or drive while extremely tired.
ReplyDeleteMany people die because of adverse reactions to legitimately-prescribed drugs, to prescription interaction, to mistakes in prescribing (wh/ often happens in hospitals) or mistakes made by the patient in taking the meds.
ReplyDelete