A prosecutor says five people have been charged in connection with Matthew Perry's death from a ketamine overdose last year, including the actor's assistant and two doctors.
You don’t know whether or not things which render people who don’t even know they’ve been given them unconscious very quickly should be OTC or not? Really?
And about alcohol- it’s a horrible, horrible thing in many ways, including facilitating date rape (although nowhere near as easily as ketamine). And if prohibition hadn’t been a complete failure, I would support it continuing.
But I wouldn’t say keeping ketamine prescription-only has been the failure that prohibition was because otherwise we’d have a lot more Matthew Perrys and a lot more Bill Cosbys. Which is what you seem to want.
I’ve done ketamine before, I know many people who have, I know the context it is most used in, and I understand it’s far more of a recreational drug than a date rape drug. So I’m not falling for this fear peddling D.A.R.E level bullshittery on what it actually is.
As for trying to turn this into some moral attack on my character by calling me pro-overdose and pro-date rape, it’s unbecoming.
It may be unbecoming, but that is the end result of what you want.
“I enjoy this so I should have easy access to it” is a terrible argument. People enjoy going out into a field and blowing shit up with various explosives. That doesn’t mean they should have easy access to C4 or RPGs.
Alcohol is not that bad? Are you fucking serious? Do you know how many millions of alcoholics there are in this world and how so many of them have destroyed their entire families?
You can buy tannerite at the grocery store, though. It’s not entirely unreasonable to ask that society apply their principals, however warped they may be, consistently.
I don’t disagree. And as I said, if prohibition hadn’t been a complete shit show, I would support it. However, making ketamine prescription-only has not been a complete shit show.
Honestly, if I ran things, doctors would give prescriptions for alcohol and cigarettes too. Because they’re really fucking dangerous, unlike things like cannabis.
“When I’m Dictator for Life…” is very relatable sentiment.
Sadly, between the failure of prohibition and the spectacular failure of the ‘war on drugs’, we’ve pretty conclusively demonstrated that a different approach is needed (preferably one that works instead of one that ruins society across half a continent…). I hold the theory that decriminalizing / dispensing some drugs (the safer ones) would greatly decrease the demand for the more destructive drugs (heroin, coke) and help to destigmatize drug use, improving treatment and safety all around.
To live in a world where something good might actually happen… Sigh. Probably not worth speculating about.
Putting certain drugs behind a prescription wall is not the same as the war on drugs. Those drugs, unlike heroin, cannabis, etc. are still legal. They just require a doctor’s supervision.
In my opinion, any drug that has the potential to knock someone unconscious or even kill them without them even having known they were given that drug is not safe enough a drug to be available OTC at your nearby Walgreens.
Fair enough! My ‘war’ point was more about enforcement of the prescription-only status and how we’ve seen that restricting recreational drugs via state violence just doesn’t work. But pleasantly, we’re finding that things like safe injection sites and injection instruction work really well. It’s not quite doctor overseen administration but with purity testing and informed dosing, it’s damn close!
Restricting drugs on their anesthetic or toxic properties is pretty pointless, though a good idea on the surface. A quick browse through my garage will net you dozens of odorless chemicals in various degrees of lethality (er… I admit my garage may be a bit of an outlier here) and off the top of my head I can think of five different weeds in my yard that can be easily reduced to what most would call a ‘date rape’ drug (and one that can be refined down to a weapon of mass destruction).
The sad truth is that restricting access won’t deter anyone. Rape has been a constant throughout human history, long before we had anesthetics, and it will be a disgusting staple of society long into the future. We don’t need drugs to rape people, we just need a big wooden club and societal acceptance. The harm we do to recreational users by demonizing drug use like this far outweighs the potential benefits of strictly restricting their use, even in the hypothetical world where prescription laws aren’t casually circumvented like they are today.
I do understand where you’re coming from though. IMO, the best solution I’ve heard is a registry for ‘dangerous’ recreational drugs that all dispensaries are required to use. Obviously there’s some flaws with that, but that + marker DNA to trace batches would go a very long way to preventing casual roofie-ing. Though the most effective thing in preventing drug-aided assault has been, predictably, education.
The specific issue with a drug like ketamine, unlike, say, ether, is that it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. If someone spikes your drink with ketamine, even if it isn’t alcohol, you won’t know. That is super dangerous. Much more so than plying someone with alcohol or using something like ether or chloroform that you can buy without a prescription.
I suppose you could legislate some sort of odor or taste or something to be added to ketamine, but I imagine it doesn’t have them for a reason.
You don’t know whether or not things which render people who don’t even know they’ve been given them unconscious very quickly should be OTC or not? Really?
And about alcohol- it’s a horrible, horrible thing in many ways, including facilitating date rape (although nowhere near as easily as ketamine). And if prohibition hadn’t been a complete failure, I would support it continuing.
But I wouldn’t say keeping ketamine prescription-only has been the failure that prohibition was because otherwise we’d have a lot more Matthew Perrys and a lot more Bill Cosbys. Which is what you seem to want.
Yeah, nah.
I’ve done ketamine before, I know many people who have, I know the context it is most used in, and I understand it’s far more of a recreational drug than a date rape drug. So I’m not falling for this fear peddling D.A.R.E level bullshittery on what it actually is.
As for trying to turn this into some moral attack on my character by calling me pro-overdose and pro-date rape, it’s unbecoming.
It may be unbecoming, but that is the end result of what you want.
“I enjoy this so I should have easy access to it” is a terrible argument. People enjoy going out into a field and blowing shit up with various explosives. That doesn’t mean they should have easy access to C4 or RPGs.
Yet it’s the same argument society accepts with alcohol and it’s not that bad.
Alcohol is not that bad? Are you fucking serious? Do you know how many millions of alcoholics there are in this world and how so many of them have destroyed their entire families?
You can buy tannerite at the grocery store, though. It’s not entirely unreasonable to ask that society apply their principals, however warped they may be, consistently.
I don’t disagree. And as I said, if prohibition hadn’t been a complete shit show, I would support it. However, making ketamine prescription-only has not been a complete shit show.
Honestly, if I ran things, doctors would give prescriptions for alcohol and cigarettes too. Because they’re really fucking dangerous, unlike things like cannabis.
But good luck passing those laws.
“When I’m Dictator for Life…” is very relatable sentiment.
Sadly, between the failure of prohibition and the spectacular failure of the ‘war on drugs’, we’ve pretty conclusively demonstrated that a different approach is needed (preferably one that works instead of one that ruins society across half a continent…). I hold the theory that decriminalizing / dispensing some drugs (the safer ones) would greatly decrease the demand for the more destructive drugs (heroin, coke) and help to destigmatize drug use, improving treatment and safety all around.
To live in a world where something good might actually happen… Sigh. Probably not worth speculating about.
Putting certain drugs behind a prescription wall is not the same as the war on drugs. Those drugs, unlike heroin, cannabis, etc. are still legal. They just require a doctor’s supervision.
In my opinion, any drug that has the potential to knock someone unconscious or even kill them without them even having known they were given that drug is not safe enough a drug to be available OTC at your nearby Walgreens.
Fair enough! My ‘war’ point was more about enforcement of the prescription-only status and how we’ve seen that restricting recreational drugs via state violence just doesn’t work. But pleasantly, we’re finding that things like safe injection sites and injection instruction work really well. It’s not quite doctor overseen administration but with purity testing and informed dosing, it’s damn close!
Restricting drugs on their anesthetic or toxic properties is pretty pointless, though a good idea on the surface. A quick browse through my garage will net you dozens of odorless chemicals in various degrees of lethality (er… I admit my garage may be a bit of an outlier here) and off the top of my head I can think of five different weeds in my yard that can be easily reduced to what most would call a ‘date rape’ drug (and one that can be refined down to a weapon of mass destruction).
The sad truth is that restricting access won’t deter anyone. Rape has been a constant throughout human history, long before we had anesthetics, and it will be a disgusting staple of society long into the future. We don’t need drugs to rape people, we just need a big wooden club and societal acceptance. The harm we do to recreational users by demonizing drug use like this far outweighs the potential benefits of strictly restricting their use, even in the hypothetical world where prescription laws aren’t casually circumvented like they are today.
I do understand where you’re coming from though. IMO, the best solution I’ve heard is a registry for ‘dangerous’ recreational drugs that all dispensaries are required to use. Obviously there’s some flaws with that, but that + marker DNA to trace batches would go a very long way to preventing casual roofie-ing. Though the most effective thing in preventing drug-aided assault has been, predictably, education.
The specific issue with a drug like ketamine, unlike, say, ether, is that it is tasteless, colorless and odorless. If someone spikes your drink with ketamine, even if it isn’t alcohol, you won’t know. That is super dangerous. Much more so than plying someone with alcohol or using something like ether or chloroform that you can buy without a prescription.
I suppose you could legislate some sort of odor or taste or something to be added to ketamine, but I imagine it doesn’t have them for a reason.