Yea--I had a friend who used to say the same thing, but he went to UC Santa Cruz and did too many drugs. He would come home on breaks, and the damage was very noticeable. He's fine now, actually a programmer I think, but I miss the dude he left in Santa Cruz. (I think he did too much acid? I'm pro drugs, but thought I would pass this along as a cautionary tale.)

Prohibition solves nothing, as we can all see. I wonder what other mechanism might instead prevent this kind of thing from happening. Education? Psychologists? I wonder if we spent all the money used in law enforcement of drug laws on therapists instead, how would that turn out?

Wonder no more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-drug-policy-decrimin...

This statement is just vague enough for prejudice, but not concrete enough for evidence. Mental illness that was merely latent and could not be seen at the care of home, onset disabilities, many mentally ill people find drugs in reverse, not the other way around.

Sigh.

Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibted and mental illness without drug use.

I am strongly in favour of legalising drugs. Warning people about the risks of mental health problems is a calm, sensible, evidence based bit of advice and is not anti-drug propaganda.

It is disappointing to see so many advocates for better drug laws ignore or even argue against this advice. They are harming the campaign for better drug laws and they are ignoring the risks that people face.

> Because drugs are illegal it is hard to do research but most peoe are pretty clear that drugs can have a causal effect on mental health problems, even for people who would not have exhibited and mental illness without drug use.

From both personal experience and from observing various kinds of drug users close to me , I get the distinct impression that the danger of drugs is often not inherent to the drug itself (as in, 'drug has irreversible effect X'), but rather more to do with the fact that if you are a regular drug user, you're essentially wresting control away from your 'natural' functions, and taking matters into your own hand. This is just my experience and observation; I'm perfectly happy to be told that I'm completely wrong.

Regardless of whether you are mentally 'fit' to begin with or not, taking control of things that normally are managed more, eh, organically carries specific kinds of risks. Especially if it is not entirely clear what these particular 'things' or bodily functions are.

I think this applies to drugs in the broadest sense.

Take, for example, someone using sleep medication to fall asleep. If this person gets used to this medication, the first problem is that his body might 'forget' how to naturally fall asleep. Even worse, this person might get used to eating a huge meal or drinking a coffee every evening. While 'naturally' this kind of habit can disrupt sleep, the 'managed sleep', through medication, removed this problem.

When the person stops using this medication, his first challenge is to give the body time to learn how to fall asleep by itself again. But the bigger challenge is to learn (or even just realize) that he should not eat a big meal or drink coffee late at night.

Now with sleep medication you at least have a decent idea of the effects. But if your medication is weed or alcohol (for example), the effects are more varied and unpredictable.

I think legalization doesn't necessarily 'solve' the problems that a substance can present, as alcohol is arguably one of the worst drugs one can use. Cigarettes aren't that great either.

But being able to reason about a substance is crucial. Talking about smoking or drinking, and associated dangers, was a part of my upbringing. Talking about other drugs (MDMA being a popular one over here currently) just didn't happen, in large part because they're illegal to begin with. If things are illegal, why have a reasonable conversation about it with your kids/students/peers/etc.?

On the mdma tangent, I push this website as hard as I can.

www.rollsafe.org , easiest website, straight to the facts, what they need to know. Stuff like this is what we need. If you're gonna 'harm' at least 'harm reduction' to maximize.

What you said needs to be said as a hedge to my statement and that's all good. It's the vague sentence that is not good. We need effective people and effective info with the information hedge.