Posted on 05/27/2018 6:16:38 AM PDT by Steve Schulin
Sorry, mom... you still have a long way to go before truly expunging the insanity of the Left.
I think you engaging in a fallacy here, in that you seem to be expressing the belief (popular among drug abusers) that their addictions do not affect other people. The problem is, they do. Whether you are talking about the heartbreak of a mother who is helpless to break her son's descent into addiction, the crimes committed by the addict to get money for the next fix, the cost to the taxpayer of "social spending" to provide medical care, food, and shelter to the addict, or the suffering of those close to an addict who has become violently abusive because the drugs have addled his mind--the costs to families and society at large make addiction everyone's problem.
One aspect of the "insanity of the left" that I have overcome is, in part, the attitude that anyone has a right to do whatever they want, no matter what the effect on others. Had I grown up to be the person I was raised to be, I'd be a welfare queen gaming the system for whatever I could get, all while complaining that I wasn't getting enough. And the toil of taxpayers who are forced to pay for the non-productive to have decent lifestyles would mean nothing to me. That is analogous to the attitude of drug abusers whose desire to get high overrides any consideration for others.
Honestly, if there were a way to separate drug addicts so that their behavior would not be a burden to everyone else, I'd support it fully. I really don't care if their desire to escape reality leads them to OD. I just don't want to have to pay for that behavior.
Nope. Unless a person has consumed so much alcohol that his life is in immediate danger without medical attention, he has not overcome his body's natural ability to destroy and remove alcohol.
So dizziness is not an effect of mild or moderate alcohol toxicity - toxicity kicks in only when one requires medical attention? Sounds fishy to me.
Only because you have not studied toxicology.
And, I think I will take this opportunity to point out that while you keep making a big deal about how feeling the effects of having a drink must be a sign of how toxic alcohol is, I can't help but notice that you are avoiding making any kind of statement about how feeling the high from marijuana must also be a sign of toxicity. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, FYI, has an LD50 about 10 times lower than alcohol. That means that it is about 10 times as toxic as alcohol, since the lower the LD50 is, the more toxic a substance is.
Is "direct proximity" the same as binding? Is there any evidence for mental effects of lipid-stored THC? As far as I know, the answers are no and no.
The fact that it is in direct proximity to a target molecule means that it is available to bind, and that it does spend a certain amount of time bound to the target. The specific amount of time it spends bound vs. not bound can only be determined by some heavy duty kinetics experiments, interpreted through complicated logarithmic functions, so I do not and cannot have the information necessary to estimate the ratio of bound/unbound THC, or to know to which molecules it is binding. In order for THC to have effects on neurological function, it is not necessary for the user to actually feel high. Those effects can occur through different pathways and affect neurological function that is not related to consciousness. For example, I do not think that hyperemesis syndrome is related to being high, but it is certainly a neurological outcome of using marijuana. In addition to receptors that are directly involved in the feeling of being high, there are thousands of other molecules in and on the cell--and what is the effect of marijuana chemicals on those other molecules? Does it affect gene expression? Does it damage DNA? Does it interfere with other metabolic pathways that are necessary for cell survival? Etc. A substance does not have to cause altered consciousness to be harmful.
Sorry, but you can get an advanced degree in mathematics and engineering without understanding the basic principles of evolution (both the process and the theory), but doing so in a life science is difficult, if not impossible. Determining the evolutionary relationships of a specific protein across different species was an integral part of my doctoral research and remains a fundamental function of a large body of biological research.
Also, FYI, the concept of evolution is thousands of years old. Darwin did not invent evolution, any more than Watson invented DNA.
I think I mentioned in my first post in this thread that I do not buy the conspiracy theories of why marijuana was made illegal. Like any conspiracy theory, they just fall apart when logic is applied.
Yes, but there are reports that there are at least 17 strains of cancer that pot actually attacks the cells and kills them, thus actually curing the person.
Just because something kills cancer cells does not mean that it is a potential cure for cancer. For example, I spent years growing billions of cancer cells in the lab and reliably killed them by bleaching them. However, I do not advocate drinking bleach as a way to cure cancer. Also, dioxin protects against some kinds of cancer--I don't advocate consuming dioxin, either.
It’s time we actually study and not from the pro-pot or anti-pot stance, but literally from the “What does it do to the body? What can it do? Does it have positive effects? Does it have negative effects?” We hear claims on both sides, but the level of true scientific study and factual based claims are not proven because there isn’t enough study.
The studies are being done. One of my researchers is, in fact, studying the ability of cannabidiol to control seizures. The studies were not done before, because it was a royal pain to get the DEA license to do the studies. But now that so many states are jumping on the marijuana legalization bandwagon, it is suddenly imperative for researchers to do the studies and document what, exactly, the effects of marijuana are. So they are going through the hassles of getting DEA licenses and are doing the research. I just searched for "marijuana" on PubMed (the top medical research database) and found 27,587 results. Back in the 1990s, IIRC, the same search would have returned less than a thousand or so results.
Obvious nonsense - if one is feeling alcohol's effects, the affecting alcohol molecules by definition got past the body's destroying and removing.
you keep making a big deal about how feeling the effects of having a drink must be a sign of how toxic alcohol is
No, that's your straw man.
Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, FYI, has an LD50 about 10 times lower than alcohol.
Is that by weight? If so, it's a meaningless comparison - the relevant one being LD50 weight as a percentage of typically consumed weight.
And since they've never succeeded in killing a lab animal larger than a rat with THC, that LD50 must be a large leap of extrapolation. There is no documented case of a human being dying from the proximate cause of consuming too much THC ... very much unlike alcohol.
So you support banning alcohol - which has all of those effects?
(Although less fix-money crime because alcohol is legal thus cheap.)
“just as they’ve had to do w/ respect to alcohol,“
That took a Constitutional Amendment.
L
Thousands of years old?
Yes. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all recognized the concept and process. It took a few thousand years and a lot of observation for the theory to be formulated in a usable form.
Hi again. I appreciate learning about why you think “Libertarianism is fine in theory”. But my question was about the Constitution. It wasn’t a ploy to misdirect you away from your, uh, uncharitable opinions.
“...appreciate learning about why you think “Libertarianism is fine in theory”. But my question was about the Constitution. It wasn’t a ploy to misdirect you away from your, uh, uncharitable opinions.”[Steve Schulin, post 90]
My charity is overtaxed, extending rhetorically courteous benefit of the doubt to libertarian dogma. Since it cannot work in the real world, the theory doesn’t matter. Theorists who cannot acknowledge this limitation up front should not be trusted any more than any other pie-in-the-sky reformer/activist.
The US Constitution is not some perfect gem of rhetoric, inspired by Divine Intervention: it’s a practical document - written by human beings every bit as fallible and flawed as any modern - that distills a few morsels of the wisdom of the ages, combines them with a couple hard-headed value judgments about the best (well, least bad) methods & procedures to get people to work together without squashing all the uniqueness and originality from their lives, and throws in some canny observations concerning organizational psychology and politics. Rather quotidian, when we get right to it.
I am almost alone in noting that ideologues, activists, agitators, and other fanatics love to cling to the Constitution when it (as they believe) supports their nonsensical schemes. It cannot be denied, that they insist on quoting the vague high-flown rhetoric (some of which is found in the Preamble, some in the Amendments), and that only - when they claim it supports their policy demands. And they have created a whole alternate universe of post-modern “rights” which they’ve largely succeeded in convincing the general public are just as valid, just as important, as any original rights mentioned in the Constitution. And they’ve been forced to develop more legal fantasies to furnish a supporting framework: social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, etc.
Any assertion that recreational drug use is legally equivalent to drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco may be defensible on grounds of legal precedent, but it’s a mistake to infuse legal precedent with some sort of existential Fundamental Revealed Truth outside of the legal system or our society. Believing there’s any deeper meaning to that gambit is not merely weak argumentation, it’s downright bad faith. Same is true of all the other emanations, penumbras, and mere shadows that the Progressive Left claims to have found in the text (and in other Founding Documents): they do so only because they ache to “reform” society, and cannot summon the patience to do it by cleaner, more honest methods.
That’s BS. Which Greeks? Which Romans?
Is the idea of a federal government limited to strictly enumerated powers a flawed one?
“Is the idea of a federal government limited to strictly enumerated powers a flawed one?” [NobleFree, post 93]
In the strictest sense - yes, absolutely so.
If only because everything humans think of and do is flawed, and cannot be perfected - by definition.
It’s often been said that “perfect” is the enemy of “good.” Bunches of people acknowledge the truth here, but persist in believing that just because they can imagine it, “perfect” can actually be attained in the real world. Then they voice their vision of perfection, and specify the steps they judge necessary to reach that perfection. They always fail; instead of blaming themselves, they blame followers and everyone else, for lack of faith.
All the attendant fuss obscures the more mundane truths: that “good” can be reached (sometimes), and “better” may be possible. But the steps necessary to reach the latter in hope of approaching the former are entirely different from what the pursuers of “perfect” want, and what steps they will tolerate.
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