Silk Road Was “The Most Responsible” Drug Market In History

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Aside from the whole "selling illegal narcotics on the internet" thing, a paid consultant for the site says that Silk Road was "the most responsible" drug market in history. :rolleyes:

"[T]he Silk Road website was in many respects the most responsible such marketplace in history, and consciously and deliberately included recognized harm reduction measures, including access to physician counseling," he wrote. "Transactions on the Silk Road website were significantly safer than traditional illegal drug purchases and included quality control and accountability features" that kept purchasers "substantially safer" than regular drug purchases.
 
there was at least a modicum of peer review and accountability...waaaaaay safer than "some guy" at the club
 
Honestly, we should be asking ourselves why a grown adult can't decide for themselves what they should or shouldn't put in their body. I've never been walking down the street and been assaulted, where one guy holds my arms behind my back, and another guy forces me to smoke marijuana or gives me ecstasy or mushrooms and then says "enjoy, motherfugga!" and walks away. As long as you can verify you are over say 21, IMO most drugs that are reasonably safe to consume should be treated the same as alcohol.
 
Honestly, we should be asking ourselves why a grown adult can't decide for themselves what they should or shouldn't put in their body. I've never been walking down the street and been assaulted, where one guy holds my arms behind my back, and another guy forces me to smoke marijuana or gives me ecstasy or mushrooms and then says "enjoy, motherfugga!" and walks away. As long as you can verify you are over say 21, IMO most drugs that are reasonably safe to consume should be treated the same as alcohol.

Well part of the problem there is defining what is "reasonable safe?"
 
Well part of the problem there is defining what is "reasonable safe?"

I'd say, if you're on anything that causes hallucinations then you should be banned from driving and heavy machinery as a start. I think once you start talking about "responsible" drug use you quickly get to a place where the regulations around the most commonly used "recreational" drugs would be so strict that no addict would be willing to follow them. The side effects of crack for example would essentially bar you from everything. As someone with diabetes how easy it is to get their drivers license revoked if the doctors think they could conceivably black out while driving. It's easy to say that people should be able to do anything to themselves, but it's not that easy to actually live with the consequences.
 
Well part of the problem there is defining what is "reasonable safe?"
If the death toll is less than alcohol or tobacco, then legalize it... because people that want it will get it one way or another, just like during the prohibition. Except during the prohibition some people went blind from watered down contaminated alcohol, that they paid a fortune for, and created organized druglords... kinda like we see today.

Alcohol abuse kills 88K each year, and 443K each year from tobacco.

For example the number of recorded cases of premature death from cannabis use is currently 0. Smoking anything is surely unhealthy, but people aren't smoking much of it compared to chain smoking tobacco users.

1 in 5 deaths in the United States are now associated with obesity, and yet Mountain Dew, Dairy Queen, and Dominos Pizza are not illegal even though those are clearly abused as well, with high-fructose corn syrup in almost every product you can think of, killing far more people than alcohol and tobacco combined.

TL;DR: We have f'd up priorities.
 
If the death toll is less than alcohol or tobacco, then legalize it... because people that want it will get it one way or another, just like during the prohibition. Except during the prohibition some people went blind from watered down contaminated alcohol, that they paid a fortune for, and created organized druglords... kinda like we see today.

Alcohol abuse kills 88K each year, and 443K each year from tobacco.

For example the number of recorded cases of premature death from cannabis use is currently 0. Smoking anything is surely unhealthy, but people aren't smoking much of it compared to chain smoking tobacco users.

1 in 5 deaths in the United States are now associated with obesity, and yet Mountain Dew, Dairy Queen, and Dominos Pizza are not illegal even though those are clearly abused as well, with high-fructose corn syrup in almost every product you can think of, killing far more people than alcohol and tobacco combined.

TL;DR: We have f'd up priorities.

One could also note caffeine or prescription drug abuse. These things too are legal, and yet folks die from them every day.
 
It's easy to say that people should be able to do anything to themselves, but it's not that easy to actually live with the consequences.

This is the part that gets me--nobody seems to want to talk about consequences "because freedom" and if you point this out you're "against liberty."

No, what I'm against is "Freedom" for me, bills for everyone else.

You know, that thing everyone hates the bankers for pulling?
 
I'm indifferent to this issue. I believe people should be smart enough to know what they want to put into their bodies.
 
I'm indifferent to this issue. I believe people should be smart enough to know what they want to put into their bodies.

SHOULD BE.

If I have to go any further you're out of touch with reality.
 
I'd say, if you're on anything that causes hallucinations then you should be banned from driving and heavy machinery as a start.

How many people have you seen driving while hallucinating? I'm way more worried about people texting and driving because it's actually a real concern.
 
shop at home junkies vs brick and mortar junkies.

such a hard decision.
 
SHOULD BE.

If I have to go any further you're out of touch with reality.

Good, we could afford to weed out some of the dumber portion of the population that appears to be breeding at a rapid rate.

But that's not the case. Take a look at the statistics of countries that have better drug policies than us. Addiction and crime our down... Also, it would only take a small percentage of the tax payer dollars we are wasting on this failed drug war to cover costs of education and addiction treatment. So I'm not seeing the downside here.

And if anyone who isn't all for banning alcohol/tobacco as well, your opinion doesn't matter. Those are far more problematic and kill many more people yet they are legal thriving industries...
 
Well part of the problem there is defining what is "reasonable safe?"

Do you drink alcohol?

therapeutic+indexes.png
 
Alcohol is legal. So a reasonable definition would be equally or less harmful than alcohol.

Funny you say that because some of the safest drugs are the most illegal drugs. The government knows this too as they've been some of the biggest studiers of these drugs.

I wonder why.
 
I say don't legalize it but decriminalize it... its sad when you get more time for petty possession then a white collar theft of thousands or even millions
 
Honestly, we should be asking ourselves why a grown adult can't decide for themselves what they should or shouldn't put in their body. I've never been walking down the street and been assaulted, where one guy holds my arms behind my back, and another guy forces me to smoke marijuana or gives me ecstasy or mushrooms and then says "enjoy, motherfugga!" and walks away. As long as you can verify you are over say 21, IMO most drugs that are reasonably safe to consume should be treated the same as alcohol.

And ironically none of those drugs are addictive or deadly. Ecstasy was made illegal buy paying a scientist who is on call to create bunk papers that say substances meet the criteria to be a schedule 1 drug. Pot and Ecstasy clearly do not. Some day we'll undo this mess, but I'm not sure I'll live long enough for it to happen.
 
I'd say, if you're on anything that causes hallucinations then you should be banned from driving and heavy machinery as a start. I think once you start talking about "responsible" drug use you quickly get to a place where the regulations around the most commonly used "recreational" drugs would be so strict that no addict would be willing to follow them. The side effects of crack for example would essentially bar you from everything. As someone with diabetes how easy it is to get their drivers license revoked if the doctors think they could conceivably black out while driving. It's easy to say that people should be able to do anything to themselves, but it's not that easy to actually live with the consequences.

Complete unadulterated BS. You don't make items illegal because people might do something that's illegal if they do those things. I can't speak to the rest of the world, but I don't recall driving around while tripping balls. I certainly didn't go to work on acid.

And you don't suddenly start hallucinating because you did acid last week (at least I never knew anyone that happened to).

I can't speak to crack, though AFAIK it's an extraordinarily short high.
 
This is the part that gets me--nobody seems to want to talk about consequences "because freedom" and if you point this out you're "against liberty."

No, what I'm against is "Freedom" for me, bills for everyone else.

You know, that thing everyone hates the bankers for pulling?

We've spent $15 billion this year on the drug wars. I can promise you it's cheaper to just treat people as needed and jail those that break other laws (which would be far less if drugs were legal). FIFTEEN BILLION and we're not at the halfway point yet.

Talk to me about money when we stop wasting over 30 BILLION DOLLARS EACH YEAR enforcing laws that don't work.
 
Fatal dose != level of safeness. How many alcohol "users" do you know ODing on a beer?

How many marijuana users do you know ODing on a ton of pot?

How many die from MDMA Overdoses (it's pretty much 0...almost all deaths are related to adulterants).

That said, 6 people die from alcohol poisoning every day. Most people dont, because most don't drink like that, but some do. And bud, if you're applying that logic, it applies to the illegal drugs, and you'll lose the argument again.
 
And you don't suddenly start hallucinating because you did acid last week (at least I never knew anyone that happened to).

There's a common myth that LSD remnants are stored in your spinal cord or subcutaneous fat, but that's just a myth and doesn't have any actual evidence to back it up.
 
I say don't legalize it but decriminalize it... its sad when you get more time for petty possession then a white collar theft of thousands or even millions

Decriminalization is a nice first step, but for drugs that aren't Pot or Shrooms, you still have the problem of drugs being sold on the black market and one of the biggest dangers with those drugs is that they're often cut with other drugs. In some cases the cut interacts with the drug in dangerous ways. For dugs like heroin thats especially dangerous, because when someone dies, junkies think, "Oh it must be really good."

Pot should be legalized outright. It's just not dangerous to use.

MDMA should be rescheduled and decriminalized. I'm not convinced it's dangerous in most cases, but it's biggest benefit is for psychiatric use -- by definition that means it's not a schedule I drug. Ironically that was known when they made it a schedule 1 drug.
 
Fatal dose != level of safeness. How many alcohol "users" do you know ODing on a beer?

I know a lot of people that died from drinking, I don't anyone that died from half of the top of that list. You're right, alcohol is worse and should be illegal.
 
Fatal dose != level of safeness./QUOTE]


By the way, how much of a drug it takes to be lethal is precisely related to how safe it is to consume. Otherwise people wouldn't drink coffee, eat table sugar, or take ANY prescription pills.
 
If the death toll is less than alcohol or tobacco, then legalize it... because people that want it will get it one way or another, just like during the prohibition. Except during the prohibition some people went blind from watered down contaminated alcohol, that they paid a fortune for, and created organized druglords... kinda like we see today.

Alcohol abuse kills 88K each year, and 443K each year from tobacco.

For example the number of recorded cases of premature death from cannabis use is currently 0. Smoking anything is surely unhealthy, but people aren't smoking much of it compared to chain smoking tobacco users.

1 in 5 deaths in the United States are now associated with obesity, and yet Mountain Dew, Dairy Queen, and Dominos Pizza are not illegal even though those are clearly abused as well, with high-fructose corn syrup in almost every product you can think of, killing far more people than alcohol and tobacco combined.

TL;DR: We have f'd up priorities.
Yeah but going on a per year basis is a bit misleading, because in all those things you mentioned it takes a lifetime of abuse to become fatal. No one died of obesity related after one Dairy Queen cone, but how many have died from a single use of some illegal drug? That would be a better metric to go buy, has a single beer killed anyone? Nope, but 2 -24 packs in a beer bong at pledge week fraternity party has. Has marijuana ever killed anyone even after smoking a whole whole bunch of it? No. But what about heroin?

Something like 1/1000 deaths each year are associated with suicide, time to make it legal it's safer than obesity!
 
This kid sure did.


And wait until they're doing 'powdered alcohol'. You'll be eating your words more and more over the next few years.

Time to ban water too

So someone who drank 25 shots in a minute died, taking an extreme example does not make a point, he put down alcohol so fast his body didn't give him a chance to pass out before he died, where as the average person would pass out well before they got to 25 shots.
 
It certainly makes sense that the Silk Road created more responsible sellers and at the same time made it much safer for the buyers They created a marketplace where people could have a honest review system, imagine that... lol One of the very much intended consequences of the drug war is to make the market overly dangerous, oh hell lets be honest here, the "moral do gooders" want it outright deadly, for the buyers. After all, if they would just follow the law, bad things won't happen, and drugs are not moral, but killing people by letting them be poisoned is perfectly fine. Hell I'm honestly surprised the government isn't out there poisoning drugs themselves like they did to alcohol during prohibition. ...Jesus Christ, how the hell can someone thing drug prohibition is a good thing after the obvious failure of alcohol prohibition?
 
taking an extreme example does not make a point

Exactly, that's precisely why it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that a lot of illegal drugs are perfectly safe if used properly. Only an idiot can die on them. And some idiots die on water!


Something like 1/1000 deaths each year are associated with suicide, time to make it legal it's safer than obesity!
It should be under proper oversight, wtf are you smoking.
 
I know a lot of people that died from drinking, I don't anyone that died from half of the top of that list. You're right, alcohol is worse and should be illegal.

No No NO! We already did that and ended up with all the negatives associated with black market drugs.
 
Good, so his punishment will be limited to participation in harming fewer people, murder for hire and a whole bunch of other charges. :rolleyes:
 
No No NO! We already did that and ended up with all the negatives associated with black market drugs.

Of course, just every currently illegal drug that is safer than alcohol should also be made legal to the same exact degree. I should be able to walk into a store and purchase Dimethyltryptamine. I'm sure big phrama wouldn't like that though. MDMA is bad but anti-depressants that may cause suicidal thoughts are just great!

The only difference between prescription pills and illegal drugs is the government (the rich) controls one and not the other.
 
TL;DR: We have f'd up priorities.
Not really. The drug laws are put into place to support the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical corporations. It never really was about keeping people off of drugs; it was about keeping us buying drugs from the right merchants. America is a capitalist society, and whenever you see law being passed, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, who will profit from this law? consider that we HAVE to buy insurance now. Who benefits? Not the average consumer, our rates haven't decreased at all, and costs increase just as usual. Insurance companies and healthcare providers benefit, none of which have to show their books to prove how much money they're making, and now charity care can become a thing of the past. Now they are guaranteed payment at whatever prices they set, so it's up to negotiation between the insurance companies and the providors. All they had to do was just say 'we're losing money' and the laws got passed. Yet, hospital administrators, doctors, pharmaceutical companies are all making as much or more than ever. Not all of them; but most. There are still a few stupid, stubborn ones out there that refuse to adapt. But you won't see any of them driving around in an old Chevy anytime soon.
 
Of course, just every currently illegal drug that is safer than alcohol should also be made legal to the same exact degree. I should be able to walk into a store and purchase Dimethyltryptamine. I'm sure big phrama wouldn't like that though. MDMA is bad but anti-depressants that may cause suicidal thoughts are just great!

The only difference between prescription pills and illegal drugs is the government (the rich) controls one and not the other.

That's a very different position than alcohol should be illegal. Personally, I'm OK with the FDA being involved in these drugs (well maybe not Marijuana), I just want the current laws changed. It can be a gradual change, but change must come. For drugs like Heroin, it's probably best that they're not legal, but if you're addicted, the government will simply provide the drug in a controlled manner. It's not like these are really expensive to make. Hopefully users will quit, but if they don't, it's probably possible to be a functioning person who's addicted to heroin. God knows we have functioning alcoholics (at all levels of success).
 
That's a very different position than alcohol should be illegal.

I was being sarcastic about that as his comment about 'beer' being so safe was utter stupid. Like alcoholics don't outright die from it or crash their pickup truck into a mini van killing the whole family before even realizing what they did. It was like he tried to separate beer consumption from alcohol consumption. Everyone knows what happened during prohibition as well. Almost like what's happening when the safer drugs to do are made illegal, almost, wait, exactly like it. Meanwhile the CIA is bringing the illegal drugs in then running news reports blaming the mexican cartels for it all. Then our US banks launder the cartel money for them...lol. It's a game being played on the common know nothing sheep.

The funniest part to me is if table sugar was outright banned it'd save more lives than were ruined if you legalized heroin. Enough people get heroin is bad all while they shovel pounds of sugar down their throats. Just as addictive (to some people), too!

Personally, I'm OK with the FDA being involved in these drugs (well maybe not Marijuana), I just want the current laws changed.
Of course the good aspects but not the whole can be bought off by big pharma for the right price part. They've clearly let things go through that shouldn't have if money wasn't involved. I've seen ads for a certain prescription pill on one station then flipped the station and seen an ad telling you to call if a loved one has died from taking it. On top of that, this.

It can be a gradual change, but change must come. For drugs like Heroin, it's probably best that they're not legal, but if you're addicted, the government will simply provide the drug in a controlled manner.
IMO, crystal meth, krokodil, and heroin should remain illegal for purchase but made available for addicts (sick people, like fat people) so they don't go around begging people for money (weed them out). That itch those specific users get is brutal with heroin being the least evil of the three. Those three just all around ruin lives at any regular rate of usage.

It's not like these are really expensive to make. Hopefully users will quit, but if they don't, it's probably possible to be a functioning person who's addicted to heroin. God knows we have functioning alcoholics (at all levels of success).
I know a couple of all kinds of users (most functioning with jobs years after using) and besides the three I mentioned above, the rest shouldn't be illegal, and should be regulated by the FDA. People will do them regardless. Our last three Presidents did illegal drugs and if Hillary won, it'd make four, in a row. And I'd bet the house Bill and Hillary did LSD in college. It's probably why they made it so far in life, in my personal opinion.

I have a better chance at killing myself eating too much sugar than dying on drugs like marijuana, Dimethyltryptamine, LSD, etc. I've tried sugar and I don't like it, I'd like to try the others without worrying about where the cops are at. Maybe I'll visit Sweden.
 
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