I'm irritated by Penn and Teller

[Ian Osborne]

Something else about this episode had me scratching my head. One of the notions put forth was that a free person ought to have the right to ingest any substance he wanted, as long as it didn't hurt anyone else.

This is something that's always worth bearing in mind when watching Bullsh!t - Penn has his own agenda, a Libertarian one.

 

[scotth]

Something else about this episode had me scratching my head. One of the notions put forth was that a free person ought to have the right to ingest any substance he wanted, as long as it didn't hurt anyone else.

An argument can be made that pot affects--and therefore arguably hurts--others. Second-hand marijuana smoke can cause intoxication--among other effects--in those who choose not to smoke. (Physically affecting a non-smoker with second-hand pot smoke was actually depicted during the show.) Therefore, it would seem reasonable that even if pot were to be legalized, restrictions would have to be placed on its use so that those who wish not to be exposed to second-hand smoke will have their wishes respected. The restrictions would have to be more restrictive than those pertaining to tobacco usage (but of course, Penn & Teller were opposed to certain tobacco usage restrictions in the first season).

"Contact" high is pretty much bunk. Even blowing the smoke in the face as they depicted in the show is pretty nearly useless. Getting high off of someone else smoking takes a very deliberate effort.

An even more troubling concern is that some drugs by their nature have the practical effect of hurting others. They have effects that are orders of magnitude worse than alcohol, for example. Users who get hooked on certain substances care only about the drug, they don't care about work or responsibilities, they become a burden to their families and friends....

Please indicate which drug that is orders (or any) magnitude worse than alcohol.

In other words, there are some drugs--like acohol and perhaps pot--where a case can reasonably made that if the drugs are used responsibly, only the user is affected. But there are other drugs where it's hard to make the case that only the user of the drug is affected. This sort of distinction was missing from the show.

 

[Brown]

Contact" high is pretty much bunk. Even blowing the smoke in the face as they depicted in the show is pretty nearly useless. Getting high off of someone else smoking takes a very deliberate effort.

That's as may be. But concentrated second-hand smoke may affect people who don't want to be affected.

Here's a concern that I put forward for purposes of illustration. Suppose a bunch of friends decide to go have a good time, and one of them is the designated driver. The friends go into a bar that serves alcohol. The designated driver socializes with his friends and watches them consume, but does not get intoxicated by their behavior. Will the designated driver be as free from intoxication if the group goes to an establishment where the air is thick with pot smoke? Maybe so, but I have not seen evidence of it.

Please indicate which drug that is orders (or any) magnitude worse than alcohol.

Cocaine, for one.

 

[TheBoyPaj]

I got a similar bad taste in my mouth watching the one denying the effects of passive smoking.

I mean, maybe no one has been able to pin it down in a large enough study, but it doesn't take a gigantic leap of logic to assume that breathing in smoke from someone else's cigarette will have a similarly harmful effect on you as on the smoker, albeit maybe not as intense. I am against smoking in public places for this reason.

I do enjoy Bullsh1t, but of course it would be foolish to take everything P&T say on faith.

 

[scotth]

That's as may be. But concentrated second-hand smoke may affect people who don't want to be affected.

Here's a concern that I put forward for purposes of illustration. Suppose a bunch of friends decide to go have a good time, and one of them is the designated driver. The friends go into a bar that serves alcohol. The designated driver socializes with his friends and watches them consume, but does not get intoxicated by their behavior. Will the designated driver be as free from intoxication if the group goes to an establishment where the air is thick with pot smoke? Maybe so, but I have not seen evidence of it.

Despite the totally rediculous scene in all too many movies (where the air is nearly opaque from all the pot smoke)... in reality you expect a pot bar to have much less smoke in the air that from cigarettes in a normal bar.

It isn't unusual at all for a bar patron to smoke a half a pack of cigarettes (or more) during an evening at the bar.

A pot smoker would be hitting is pretty hard to go through as much pot in the entire evening as there is tobacco in a single cigarette.

Your contact high scenario really just doesn't hold water.

Cocaine, for one.

Cocaine was a wise choice, meth probably would have been better. Regardless.....

Please present some valid evidence that cocaine is worse than alcohol in the respect of

Users who get hooked on certain substances care only about the drug, they don't care about work or responsibilities, they become a burden to their families and friends....

 

[richardm]

Please indicate which drug that is orders (or any) magnitude worse than alcohol.

A lot of opiate-type drugs leave their users pretty wiped out when they're actually on the high, although many of them have to turn to crime to pay for their habit.

However, other drugs like Phencyclidine (PCP) leave users agitated, irrational and delusional, meanwhile giving them a feeling of great power and strength. When in this state, some users become extremely aggressive. It's addictive. It can induce feelings of paranoia, hallucinations and delusions, which are not something you really want to have in an individual who's also feeling aggressive and powerful.

So it's quite similar to alcohol in some respects Except that because of the illegality and consequent high cost, many users also have to turn to crime to pay for it.

I'd hold it up as an example of an illegal drug that's worse than alcohol.

Edited to add: I know a heroin addict who's managed to hold down a perfectly respectable job with no problems. I've known more than one cocaine addict doing the same. However, the majority can't do this. This is in part, I believe, because heroin and cocaine is illegal and thus so expensive that most people can't earn enough in a regular job to pay for their hits. So they're out finding other ways to scrape up enough cash.

 

[bignickel]

Originally posted by epepke
3) Isn't this about the 87th time that Penn has worked in his statement about never having taken a recreational drug into a lecture? As far as I can tell, while this kind of thing might have some value as supercilious ideological purity, with respect to practical matters and getting the facts right, it only indicates a lack of personal knowledge.

Unfortunately, he has to do this every single time to cut off the 'ad hominem' attack of "You only want it legalized so you can get high all the time!"

Even still, I bet there are a number of people out there who disbelieve him anyway: 'any person who's for legalization uses drugs.'

I've always thought that the best way to approach it to put the burden on prohibitionists: don't be pro-legalization, but anti-prohibition. Challenge the prohibitionists to prove their claims about the cost-effectiveness of prohibition, it's lack of success, it's hypocracies regarding favored drugs such as alcohol (and stiffer penalties to crack users). This approach is a skeptical approach (and thus, why I prefer it).

It's all academic really: the American people are too addicted to their narcotics laws, and are always jones-ing for their TV footage of cops beating druggies heads in. Makes them feel more secure knowing that 'they' are being kept down (whoever 'they' happen to be at the moment).

Originally posted by Undodog
The Special Forces aren’t going to swing in through your windows.

I could easily guess that you don't live in the U.S. We've had special police teams and feds storming into people's homes for years. Check out Baum's "Smoke and Mirrors" for some fun examples. Particulary the over-70 farmer whose farmland the feds wanted to grab for themselves. After 3 seperate passes with a helicopter, the narco agent 'spotted' pot plants... with binoculars while zooming over the field at high speed. So, the feds burst thru the door early morning, farmer wanders out of his bedroom with a gun to ward off whoever's busting into his house, gets immediately dropped with a hole in his chest... and the feds find not one single pot plant in the entire farm. No one went to prison over that one by the way.

 

[Chanileslie]

Re: Re: Re: I'm irritated by Penn and Teller

No. Unless you count marijuana-related automobile accidents, which, to be fair, always get counted with respect to alcohol deaths.

Do you have evidence that marijuana is unique amongst all other substances that burn in that chronic irritation from inhalation is somehow unable to cause cancer?

Bear in mind that it took decades of correlation to find a clear cause-and-effect relationship between smoking tobacco and cancer. That's of a behavior that was not only legal but socially encouraged and involved a drug that was politically important to the country in which the studies were done.

Actually, the act of inhaling smoke is not what causes cancer in cigarette smokers, it is the carcinogens inherent in tobacco that causes the cancer. Although, I don't think it can be to great for anyone to inhale smoke into the lungs as that is not the purpose of the lungs and they are not necessarily equipped to handle it.

Also, I truely have to wonder about the statistics surrounding the numbers of deaths caused by smoking. I believe, if one smoked in ones life and one dies, one is tallied as dying from a smoking death.

 

[Brown]

Please present some valid evidence that cocaine is worse than alcohol in the respect of

With all respect, I do not know what you are asking. I certainly don't want to get bogged down about whether my "evidence" is "valid" or not or whether it shows that coke has far "worse" effects than alcohol. I don't use coke or alcohol, and I can't speak to their effects personally. But from what I've seen and heard, coke tends to have a far more hurtful effect on those around the user than booze. Find some people who have had someone in their family who is addicted to coke, and ask them whether they think alcohol or coke is more harmful to non-users. In my experience, people who have actually had to deal with the problem have found coke to be more disruptive.

 

[Cynical]

Chani, from your above comments, I am guessing that you are a smoker. Especially with your suggestion that some smokers don't die from smoke-related illness, even though they smoked.

Wake up. Smoking rots you out, causes shortness of breath, and ruins your insides as well as your skin. You might SAY that someone died of a heart attack, stroke or cancer, but you can be d*mn sure that the smoking was connected somehow.

Give it up, Chani. Smokers stink. And anyone who would smoke in this day and time is either suicidal or just plain stupid.

 

[geni]

Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm irritated by Penn and Teller

Also, I truely have to wonder about the statistics surrounding the numbers of deaths caused by smoking. I believe, if one smoked in ones life and one dies, one is tallied as dying from a smoking death.

Do you have any evidence for this claim? It' doesn't fit in with what I know of the epedemelogicla methods used to determine deaht rates to do with smokeing. Also the figure don't fit (deaths due to smoking would be at least an orditude of magnitude higher if you what you claim is true).

 

[Luke T.]

Something else about this episode had me scratching my head. One of the notions put forth was that a free person ought to have the right to ingest any substance he wanted, as long as it didn't hurt anyone else.

An argument can be made that pot affects--and therefore arguably hurts--others. Second-hand marijuana smoke can cause intoxication--among other effects--in those who choose not to smoke. (Physically affecting a non-smoker with second-hand pot smoke was actually depicted during the show.)

Not true.

During my naval career, one of my subordinates "popped positive" on a urinalysis. He was a good man, and so when he told me he had had a New Year's Eve party at his house and had passed out and a civilian friend of a friend of his wife's had put a joint in his mouth while he was passed out, and that is why he popped positive, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

His story had all kinds of holes in it which are unrelated to my point, but as a result, I ended up doing a lengthy investigation into the whole urinalysis process. The Navy is full of stories of people claiming to have popped positive because of being at a rock concert near someone smoking a joint, and things like that. My all time favorite excuse was given by a female sailor who said she got it by giving oral sex to her dope-smoking civilian husband!

Anyway, I ended up talking to a lab technician in Jacksonville, FL where the Navy sends urine samples for drug testing. He explained urine is tested three times if it is positive for drugs. Each stage is more stringent than the last, so when a person is accused of smoking dope, or taking any other drug, there is as near a certainty they are guilty as you can get. He was familiar with the "rock concert" excuse and said they had long ago debunked it by placing volunteers in a sealed room and flooding it with marijuana smoke. None of them tested positive afterwards. We had a lot fun talking about that. When I asked about the "someone put a joint in my mouth while I was passed out" excuse, he said that was bunk as well. He then pulled my man's file and told me the tests were so good that he could tell me my man did not come in contact with dope on New Year's Eve but his educated guess was that my man had imbibed on the 11th of January instead. He was able to do this somehow despite the fact that THC levels vary after last imbibement depending on frequency of use.

When I and the Chief Master-At-Arms finally confronted my man with the various holes in his story we had investigated, he broke immediately. At the end, we asked him when he had actually gotten high. I had not told him what date the lab tech said. My man confessed to smoking a joint on the 11th. Simply amazing!

 

[Brown]

He was familiar with the "rock concert" excuse and said they had long ago debunked it by placing volunteers in a sealed room and flooding it with marijuana smoke. None of them tested positive afterwards.

Interesting story. I have never used pot, and I have never been in an environment in which it was used heavily by others.

I hate the effects of second-hand tobacco smoke (which for me include headaches and nausea), and I was wondering whether second-hand pot smoke might have other effects on me, such as a loss of judgment. According to what I'd heard (all from non-governmental sources, by the way), a person can get intoxicated by second-hand pot smoke. Some posters are disagreeing with this, so maybe what I'd heard was incorrect.

The notion of drug tests never entered my head until you mentioned them, but it seems to me that people could reasonably wonder whether they could be liable for second-hand exposure. A non-using motorist with a minor driving infraction, for example, would not want to find himself criminally liable for driving while intoxicated. It's interesting that some studies have suggested that the drug tests are very specific, and that the chance of a false positive is very low.

 

[jackmott]

I've heard from a medical student friend of mine, and I have no other reason to trust this info so take it with a grain of salt, that mariuana smoke does not get trapped inside the lungs as tobacco smoke does, and hence does not pose the same sort of cancer risk.

furthermore, you can get stoned in a number of ways that don't involve smoking =)

I just saw the episode of http://www.randi.org/jr/040904that.html#5 that covered drugs and the war thereon. While, ideologically, I favor the legalization of the majority of drugs, there were three things about this episode that really stuck in my craw.

1) The whole "nobody has ever died from marijuana" schtick. Although once it was stated that nobody had ever died from an overdose of marijuana, at other times it was stated that nobody had ever died from marijuana. Hey, guys! It's smoke, and it's particularly irritating smoke as well. Deliberately concentrating and inhaling smoke, and chronic irritation, are both known to cause cancer. I don't know how many people have died from marijuana usage, but to imagine that it has been zero is just nucking futs.

2) The whole "medical marijuana" schtick. I think that marijuana for medical uses should be legal. But, unless you count the English pharmacists who inject heroin into cigarettes for heroin addicts, smoking some plant matter is, at best, highly unorthodox in modern pharmacology. It's herbal medicine. Modern pharmacology, for the 25% of drug families that are based on plants or animals is all about finding out what actual substances are responsible for the beneficial effect and separating them from other substances that may be harmful. Besides, you get your own inhaler, with a metered dose. That scene with a bunch of sick people passing around the same bag of smoke and one guy supercharging the old lady, while it doubtless resembles many parties, didn't look a lot like medicine to me.

3) Isn't this about the 87th time that Penn has worked in his statement about never having taken a recreational drug into a lecture? As far as I can tell, while this kind of thing might have some value as supercilious ideological purity, with respect to practical matters and getting the facts right, it only indicates a lack of personal knowledge.

 

[jackmott]

This is something that's always worth bearing in mind when watching Bullsh!t - Penn has his own agenda, a Libertarian one.

Which is the best agenda of all!

 

[VicDaring]

Chani, from your above comments, I am guessing that you are a smoker. Especially with your suggestion that some smokers don't die from smoke-related illness, even though they smoked.

Wake up. Smoking rots you out, causes shortness of breath, and ruins your insides as well as your skin. You might SAY that someone died of a heart attack, stroke or cancer, but you can be d*mn sure that the smoking was connected somehow.

Give it up, Chani. Smokers stink. And anyone who would smoke in this day and time is either suicidal or just plain stupid.

So if someone smokes, it's impossible for them to die of anything else? Despite everything we know about the role of genetics in health?

from Geni
Do you have any evidence for this claim? It' doesn't fit in with what I know of the epedemelogicla methods used to determine deaht rates to do with smokeing. Also the figure don't fit (deaths due to smoking would be at least an orditude of magnitude higher if you what you claim is true).

Try this: http://www.cato.org/dailys/04-29-99.html

And this from Levy elsewhere:

If a smoker who is obese; has a family history of high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart problems; and never exercises dies of a heart attack, the government attributes his death to smoking alone," according to Levy and Marimont. That procedure, applied to other causal variables, produces more than twice as many attributable deaths as actual deaths. Those are "phantom deaths, not real deaths-constrained neither by accepted statistical methods, by common sense, nor by the number of people who die each year

Yeah, I know...CATO. But I think the point is still valid.

 

[bignickel]

All this back and forth about the effects of pot on the lungs vis a vis second-hand smoke is of course entertaining and informative.

But in the end, has nothing to do with prohibiting a particular substance.

To wit: tobacco has already enough studies linking first-hand smoke to cancer, yet it's still legal. And will remain so for the forsee-able future. Thus: whatever pot's effects are in second-hand smoke are illrelevavent in the discussion of it's legality.

In the privacy of your own body, do what thou wilt. Of course, any time your noxious fumes come near my clothing, hair, or lungs, it becomes my concern.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I speak as a long time user and player of chemical roulette, as well as a one time Addictions Counciler. (I do drink in almost abstentious moderation, and I smoke cigarettes, which of course means I do in fact use 'drugs'.)

I do not see drug use as a 'moral' issue, nor do I see it as a legal issue.
Drug use (or abuse), including both legal and illegal chemicals, is entirly a medical problem.

Drug abuse in and of itself, possession or being high should not be criminalized. The consequense of drug use/abuse is another issue.

DWI for instance is still a criminal act. (good)
I would even be in favor of viewing 'being high' as an enhancement to the seriousness of criminal action,( much as using a weapon makes robbery a more serious offence.)

As to the arguments about personal/societal harm.

Working too much can cause harmful stress resulting in heart disease. It can cause stress in relationships, even destroying families.
Should we criminalize work?

I know, silly analogy...

But still, because a behaviour may be personally harmful, or even harmful to innocents is not in and of itself a reason to make it criminal.

 

[Cleon]

Chani, from your above comments, I am guessing that you are a smoker. Especially with your suggestion that some smokers don't die from smoke-related illness, even though they smoked.

Wake up. Smoking rots you out, causes shortness of breath, and ruins your insides as well as your skin. You might SAY that someone died of a heart attack, stroke or cancer, but you can be d*mn sure that the smoking was connected somehow.

Give it up, Chani. Smokers stink. And anyone who would smoke in this day and time is either suicidal or just plain stupid.

Whoa! Smoking's BAD for me? Oh my god, I had no idea! That's it, no more cigarettes for me! Thank you, good sir, you are a true American hero.

</wisea$$>

Cynical, has it occurred to you that those of us who smoke might just possibly know that it's bad for us? Hell, I drive a motorcycle, drink beer, and eat bacon cheeseburgers, too (not at the same time, though). None of which is known to increase lifespan. But dammit, I do it anyway.

It never ceases to amaze me...You don't see non-drinkers display this kind of condescending, angry BS towards people who drink. For some reason, there's something alluring about the whole evangelical non-smoker movement. Maybe it's the feeling that you're superior somehow? Or just looking for an excuse to sneer?

 

[Chanileslie]

Chani, from your above comments, I am guessing that you are a smoker. Especially with your suggestion that some smokers don't die from smoke-related illness, even though they smoked.]

Well that is because your reasoning is very flawed. I can do nothing about that.

Wake up. Smoking rots you out, causes shortness of breath, and ruins your insides as well as your skin. You might SAY that someone died of a heart attack, stroke or cancer, but you can be d*mn sure that the smoking was connected somehow.

Correlation without causation. You don't know that is actually the case. I am not about to defend smoking because I do think it is not a good idea, but cancer is caused by the carcingens found in tobacco, not the actual smoke which is just a means of transfer.

Give it up, Chani. Smokers stink. And anyone who would smoke in this day and time is either suicidal or just plain stupid.

So do you, but I don't see us attributing every death that happens to people who may have come in contact with you on you.

edited to add not to a sentence that would have otherwise made it appear that I did think smoking was a good idea.