DRUG LEGALIZATION PRIMER

(A Public Service Announcement from Suburra Publishing.)

Myth #4

Drugs Will Kill You

DECLARING A WAR ON STAIRS:

What Kills

The only reason drugs are so deadly is because they are illegal. Because the market is underground its users have difficulty knowing the purity, i.e. the amount, of the drug they are taking. In addition, most only come in their purest form. If illegal drugs were decriminalized, deaths from overdose would be as rare as those from legal drugs such as alcohol. (Deaths from alcohol are usually accompanied by extremely reckless use.)

Even on the black market some drugs are virtually impossible to consume to the point of permanent damage. Some of these innocuous drugs are marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms (psilocybin). (When damage does occur from “using” these drugs it is almost always because something else was taken, e.g. a toxic mushroom.)

THAT’S NUTTY:

Ecstasy vs. Peanuts

Deadly Nuts – drug war logic applied outside of the drug taboo

Heroin

Perhaps nowhere is the gap between a substance’s actual deadliness and its perceived deadliness as wide as with the “killer drug” – heroin. Most heroin overdoses are the result of uncertainty about potency, which could be avoided with legalization. Additionally, fatal heroin overdoses usually take over an hour, and they can be counteracted by an antidote – Narcan (naloxone). Narcan acts within minutes and is so effective that sometimes people near death will receive it and promptly “get up and walk away.” Despite there being no danger of Narcan overdose, Narcan is illegal and so tightly controlled that strict limits on its use by paramedics have cost lives even when paramedics were present.

Heroin Kills?

Cocaine

Cocaine deaths are extremely rare. Fatalities are frequently linked to respiratory failure because it substantially increases the heart rate. In users with healthy hearts death can still occur because like peanuts and Ecstasy, a miniscule percentage of people are allergic to it. This was the case of college basketball great, Len Bias. His death in 1986 following his drafting by the professional basketball team, the Boston Celtics, was used to launch a media blitz against cocaine and take the drug war “nuclear.” In the month following Bias’s death the network stations aired 74 evening news segments about crack and cocaine.
 

It is unlikely that any media outlets pointed out that Bias did not overdose, but had an allergic reaction. In addition, Bias was having his third convulsion before his friends sought medical attention. As countless others have done, they hesitated in seeking medical attention because they did not want him or themselves to be arrested.

All information taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I  by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.

Page last modified August 29, 2007.