As such, if I witnessed a drug-caused medical issue, I'd get rid of whatever drugs were around (frankly I imagine if you put them in your pocket you'd be fine - doctors aren't allowed to inform the police about it unless they have a reason to believe you're a threat to the safety of yourself or others, and being a drug addict, short of being really close to killing yourself, isn't what that mean) and have no worries whatsoever about calling an ambulance.

edit: side-question, is there anyone on here who a.) knows what coke and white heroin are like and b.) would be willing to comment (with a throwaway if preferred) on: is it hard to tell them apart? I've never seen any form of heroin in my life, but find it hard to believe I could sniff it without knowing.. so wonder is it an easy mistake, or were these victims people who didn't know what to expect cocaine to be like in the first place?

edit 2: For anyone who hasn't been to Amsterdam, or at least the red light district... I've never taken them up on their offers, but the number of street dealers there... last time I was over there for work went out in the evening for a few drinks and some smoking, must've been offered coke over 10 times just while walking along streets. (And MDMA a couple of times, but not as frequently.) Never known anywhere easier to get coke if you wanted it, never known anywhere that I'd trust the quality of drugs on the street less if I had wanted it.

The thing that makes heroin masquerading as cocaine dangerous is that typical heroin doses are quite small (~10 mg) vs cocaine (~100 mg). If you get heroin instead of cocaine and snort your regular dose, it can easily be a fatal dose of heroin for a naive user.

This suggests that there is some motivation to pass heroine off as cocaine, rather than this being a supply-chain mixup. But then why sell heroine as the substitute? It seems like the street value of heroine would still be higher than other substances (say, talc with the local anesthetic). If you're dealing, why not just try and pass that off, increase your profit margin, and not invite criminal investigation into the deaths of your customers?

Or is the presumption here that some people are dealing with the purpose of causing harm?

Moments later, some very intoxicated tourists dive into what they think is cocaine. They do a line each, don't get the cocaine feeling that perhaps one or two of them vaguely remember, but they assume that they just got badly cut drugs, so they dive in and do more.

Snorting heroin (especially if you think it is cocaine) is a surefire recipe to die because it tends to take a little longer to really kick in. And, because of its toxicity, there isn't a lot of room between getting high and dying.

I'd be surprised if that didn't happen all the time with heroin too, though if heroin doesn't provide a numbing feeling then there's no motivation to specifically add a cheap numbing drug.. but numbing could well be an accidental side-affect of something that was added to dilute the % of heroin in each gram sold?

Could be. As [boefs mentions on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/thenetherlands/comments/2npjx5/just_...), selling Heroin in the Netherlands is really hard.

The two most likely scenario's at this moment is that either someone got his hands on cheap Heroin and wanted to make a quick sell or that someone was ripped and sold a large quantity of Heroin and now wants to make some money off that. Either way, in the Netherlands you apparently hardly get rid of heroin, whereas coke is sold for much higher prices much easier.

"Test it by placing a pinch of the powder on your tongue. If, within a few minutes, this does not have a numbing effect, it is not cocaine. It could be heroin instead."

http://www.ggd.amsterdam.nl/english/drugsalert/more-informat...

In South Korea they can and do arrest and prosecute people for photographic / recorded evidence of them doing drugs even while overseas.

Even if they catch you with drugs on you, as much as possession (non-dealing) charges have high maximums - for class A drugs I think the maximum is 7 years prison + fine for possession or life in prison for dealing - realistically you're unlikely to get in much trouble for a small quantity. Weed unless you're a serious repeat offender, or a cop decides he hates you, you'll either get an on-the-spot official "caution" and fine up to £90, or more likely a non-recorded verbal warning and confiscation. For harder drugs police aren't meant to do that, but stories I've heard you're still more likely to get confiscation and possibly a caution.

I've even known weed dealers (low level) who've been caught and only had to give up the cash and weed they had on them.

As a slightly related anecdote, a friend of a friend got caught with 11 grams of cocaine (supplying for a party, I think) and by the time he got to court he was being charged with possession of 4 grams, which reduced his "years in prison" with "a few months probation and a fine". No mention of where the 7 grams went in the months between.

Even as authorities await tests confirming heroin as the culprit in the latest deaths, the police and health departments are distributing fliers to community health and addiction service centers warning that “preliminary testing indicates that contaminated heroin may be available on the streets.” The fliers also list resources for patients and families struggling with addiction.

[1]http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/06/worcester-offici...

They released a 10 year report in 2011 that basically showed drug use had gone down by nearly any metric since they changed the laws in 2001. Not sure the best source to link to, but Forbes have an easy-reading brief piece [1] and tdpf.org.uk has some more detailed stats with references cited [2] (from a quick google for the report's findings)

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...

[2] http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-...

According to this NY Times article (from 2013), 11 states and DC have passed such laws: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/opinion/calling-911-should...

(The article quotes someone I know, who sadly lost his son to an overdose.)

It's often surprisingly difficult to prosecute somebody for repeat breaking and entering or gun violence, but the cops generally know who is causing the problems, so they get them on drug possession. This is where the crack cocaine sentencing disparity comes from. Crack affected communities demanded the law get the gang bangers off the streets, and crack possession was the obvious way to pop them.

TLDR; Sign says tainted cocaine is on the streets, call for help you won't be arrested if you need it.

Why is drug policy "liberalizing" now? There's no new information. We've known about the risks involved in marijuana and other drugs since it was first scheduled. Harm reduction is not a novel concept.

It seems suspicious to me that drugs are being released into the population, under the watchful eye of regulators of course, now that we're in a permanent recession/permanent war rather than, say, during the Clinton years when the economy was great and we were temporarily not locked in conflict.

Optimists say that ending the "war on drugs" will stop surveillance and overpolicing, but that doesn't seem like such a sure bet to me.

There is. And because of it doctors really want to use marijuana derivatives. I know some of the folk running the NHS studies and doing some of the PHD work on endocrine effects.

Here's a couple of recent studies on Sativex.

http://www.gwpharm.com/oncology.aspx

http://www.gwpharm.com/GW%20Pharmaceuticals%20Announces%20Ne...

Also, you have organisations like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who have been working heavily behind the scenes for the past decade. http://www.leap.cc/

That said, this doesn't mean marijuana needs to be recreationally legalized; in the US it would only need to be made a Schedule II drug rather than a Schedule I drug. Cocaine is a Schedule II drug IIRC, and it's routinely used medically, so it doesn't make sense to have recreational legality, or tolerance of widespread use, just to get medical benefits.

For virtually every cause, there are groups "working heavily behind the scenes for decades" -- the existence of activist pressure doesn't seem to correlate with policy change. I'd love to see hard data disagreeing with me, but this is my impression from being an activist for some time, and knowing the histories of social change for various struggles.

That said, marijuana is certainly less benign than you're making it out to be. I know several people who started using marijuana in high school and became interested in basically nothing else. Anything can become addictive, but biological components that have tolerance factors are especially effective because they cause you to increase your dosage over time.

It's not like doctors in the 60's thought that marijuana was actually lethal, though. The propaganda about marijuana has been divorced from truth basically the whole time, but it's been scheduled anyway.

I find it hard to believe that this is simply a miracle story of the long work of activists finally paying off. There are no free lunches. If we're getting legal marijuana, we're losing something else. So what is that?

Well, what else are we losing?

Besides, the current laws are not stopping people from doing it. Most know that weed is something which can be enjoyed recreationaly without risking their health or lifestyle. It doesn't hurt anyone around them, so current law is viewed as arcane and unjust. What benefit are these laws providing to society?

This doesn't follow at all. The downside to legalization of all recreational drugs is minuscule compared to the societal benefit.

State surveillance is officially motivated by terrorism, with the drug war only an ancillary motivation. The war on terrorism can never be won and can never even be stopped, because terrorism can only be suppressed, not eliminated. So I don't think there's a compelling argument to be made that the end of the drug war will cause an end to surveillance.

Militarized police are currently primarily justified because of the drug war, but there's always terrorism to fall back on in the even that the drug war liberalizes.

And if the populace is on drugs, who's going to speak out against militarized police? Or against anything else for that matter?

Living with a bunch of college students, I can promise you that activism and drug use are far from mutually exclusive.

The idea that you can be jailed for unhealthy behavior (when it doesn't affect other people) is relatively new I think. If anything, I feel like liberalizing drug policy would be more of a correction than a radical departure from history.

For as long as I'm aware, some portion of the population will desire recreational drugs, whether that's alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, cannabis, or whatever. A smaller subset will run into issues with their use (whether that's for physiological reasons like genetic disposition or because of life circumstances that make intoxication seem like a more appealing escape).

That won't really change if you can no longer be put in jail for ingesting something. I'd imagine it would be a lot like it is now. A good chunk of the population would continue to chemically alter their moods and mental processes on occasion and a smaller subset of them would run into dependence or other health issues.

The difference would be that people wouldn't be at risk of prison or permanent financial ruin because they did something that is (at worst) unhealthy or unwise. Intoxication would and should remain no excuse for otherwise criminal acts committed while under the influence. You're still responsible for your actions, you just wouldn't automatically become a criminal because you adjusted the way your brain works for a few hours one afternoon.

Activism itself is not a threat to the status quo. Successful activism is.

Needs some evidence for a claim this strong. Yes, the DoD sold excess hardcore equipment to police forces. This still required money to buy them, in my understanding, even at reduced prices.

And police departments are responsible for the costs of most of their equipment. Think hand guns, batons, etc.

I'm willing to listen to your perspective if you can put together a cogent, evidence-supported argument. As it stands, you're alluding to things that may or may not be the case, with little evidence, and hinting at some sort of a conspiracy without actual logic, other than some predilections for suspicion of authority.

"By providing law enforcement agencies with surplus military equipment free of charge, the NDAA encourages police to employ military weapons and military tactics." -- http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033...

'[The 1033 Program] "permits the Secretary of Defense to transfer, without charge, excess U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personal property (supplies and equipment) to state and local law enforcement agencies (LEAs),"' -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/14/t...

Caveat: "given" may be the wrong term: 'Estevez said that such equipment is "conditionally loaned" to the local police departments and is returned to the Department of Defense for "demilitarization at the end of its useful life."' -- http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/09/10/official-most-...

It's also definitely worth noting that the majority of items aren't tanks, though: "Requisitions cover the gamut of items used by America’s military -- clothing and office supplies, tools and rescue equipment, vehicles, rifles and others small arms. Of all the excess equipment provided through the 1033 program, only five percent are weapons and less than one percent are tactical vehicles." -- http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.as... (Though if that <1% is in terms of number of items rather percent of total value, that may still be a misleadingly small percentage.)

I've found this information in two google searches and integrating information from three results available on the first page of results. Google filter-bubbles, so your results might be different. But probably not impossible.

Notice also that you were factually wrong about whether or not this equipment was free. Are you going to go through your mind, search for all the conclusions you made based on that incorrect assumption, and propagate that belief? Or are you going to squelch it with an excuse?

Don't hide behind the rhetoric of rational thought by requesting "strong evidence for strong claims" when you're disagreed with. It outs you as a hypocrite.

Getting the munchies and getting fat? Falling asleep? Even driving while high is still less dangerous than driving drunk.

Cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol. The medical benefits are amazingly well documented, but recreational use is being legalised because:

1. It's a massive drain on police budgets to enforce laws against soft drugs.

2. It's a law that's often applied selectively to penalise people the police don't like.

3. Legalising and taxing it will raise huge amounts of money.

4. Legalisation stops money flowing to criminals.

5. Both Washington and Colorado have had crime rates significantly decrease post-legalisation.

Why is it being unscheduled now?