I'll just leave this here....

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I'm guessing there's some personal history that's turned him into a TRUE BELIEVER. Crackhead stabbed his grandma, bus driver got him stoned and touched his wee-wee, high school girlfriend dumped him for a pot dealer....something.

I know that sounds like I'm just trying to get personal, but I honestly can't think of any other logical explanation for someone who otherwise seems to be mostly rational and non-evil to have so completely internalized such a disgustingly regressive and calvinist way of thinking about a group of people with a disease. I'm actually hoping that I'm right because the alternative is pretty shitty.

It could be the naiveté of living in small towns or predominantly rural areas for most of one's life. Living in a high density urban center of even a small city challenges people's social beliefs on a more regular basis, while more geographically isolated people end up forming strongly held ideas based on limited or no experience.

City dwellers have to develop more skills in changing their social beliefs in the face of new evidence, leading to more experience-based ideas about human nature. Meanwhile, rural denizens have far less tests of their beliefs about people, enabling erroneous conclusions to persist and solidify far before they've ever been challenged by contradictory experiences.

Isolated people don't have as much of an environmental demand for these social skills, and as they grow up they tend to have far fewer circumstances where they are forced to reevaluate their positions. And when they are challenged, it is more often at a distance: through a book, TV show, news report, blog post, the second hand story of a fellow bumpkin. Meanwhile, us city slickers are more likely to have immediate and diverse interactions with the people we are forming opinions about, leading to more practice—by necessity—with altering our inaccurate preconceived notions.

TLDR: It's easier to convince yourself that these punitive measures for addicts are effective and good when you don't have to look into the eyes of these people on a regular basis.

[East Coast Hustle]

I dunno, there's no shortage of drug addicts in rural Maine. Of course, the vast majority of them are addicted to opiate-based painkillers. And a large number of them became addicted after being legally prescribed the drugs for pain management, since a large percentage of the rural population there works physically demanding jobs that frequently lead to back problems.

You'd think the magic of atropine would have a more noticeable preventative effect there.

[Don Coyote]

Can't you get high from atropine too?

[East Coast Hustle]

technically yes, as it's one of the alkaloids present in belladonna and jimson weed, but it's generally regarded as an unpleasant high at best and since the amount that gets you high and the amount that kills you aren't far apart it's very rare for it to be used recreationally.

[East Coast Hustle]

actually, apparently I'm wrong about that last part. The incapacitating dose and the LD50 are actually pretty far apart. Still very dangerous and generally considered an unpleasant trip, though.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

RWHN insinuates that the government is so incompetent that they didn't realize adding atropine to opiates would result in serious harm and death, as though that thought just never crossed their minds.

I'm sure it was because they were so focused on preventing normal people from getting hooked that they just forgot about how curious kids and drug abusers might be killed.

The government doesn't make medications.  Pharmaceutical companies make medications.  I still haven't seen anyone provide any information that proves the government forced pharmaceutical companies to add atropine to medications to punish drug abusers.  

If they didn't consider the effect on drug abusers and children, that would make them grossly incompetent at best.

I haven't seen any documentation from you to support your claim that this was primarily targeted at normal people to prevent addiction.

ETA: I also haven't seen any evidence that atropine works the way you keep portraying it either.

Look up some drugs that have atropine as an additive.  You will see tha the reason it is there is to reduce the likelihood of addiciton and to deter overdose.  

So we should destroy people's futures by keeping weed illegal because it could hurt children, BUT we should add dangerous things to opiates that increase their lethality towards children because it may help deter addiction and overdose in adults?

It really looks like you want it both ways. "For the children" with severe costs to adults and addicts on one hand, "for the adults" with severe costs to children and addicts on the other.  The guiding principle in your position appears to be in favor of artificially increasing harm to people, to prevent an intrinsically lesser harm.

If you were in charge of automobile laws, would you require the installation of spikes on people's steering wheels as a way to deter unsafe driving?

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I dunno, there's no shortage of drug addicts in rural Maine. Of course, the vast majority of them are addicted to opiate-based painkillers. And a large number of them became addicted after being legally prescribed the drugs for pain management, since a large percentage of the rural population there works physically demanding jobs that frequently lead to back problems.

You'd think the magic of atropine would have a more noticeable preventative effect there.

There might be a lot of addicts in rural Maine, but you don't have to see their miserable existence on the street every time you go out, do you?

As the Milgram experiments show, it's easier for people to harm people the more removed they are from your immediate experience. Many people are only familiar with the part where they shocked people in another room, but the study was more comprehensive than that. They found that when shocks were to be administered face to face, compliance went down.

[Kai]

Yes, because asking where you got your degree is totally fishing for PI. PI that I could obtain any time I want to anyway given that, y'know, I have access to every part of the site AND a pretty decent datamining skillset.

No, really, your personal information (that I could have any time I wanted) is terribly interesting and valuable to me.

And what, exactly, am I misinformed about? I'm not making any claims ITT that are not backed up by either science (atropine is a deadly dangerous drug that does not create a synergistic effect with regards to opioids, that's easy enough to look up) or, in the context of how the black market really works, many years of being a drug dealer/pot grower/smuggler with generations of my family's firsthand knowledge to draw from as well as my own. I mean, have you ever even bought a bag of weed? Have you ever even taken a puff? I'm almost certain you've never smuggled anything across an international border or had to talk your way out of a room full of people pointing automatic weapons at you. You trying to posit that I'm misinformed about how the black market works is like me telling Kai that he doesn't know shit about insects.

Ha! But you shouldn't trust me as an authority. You can trust me (to some extent) because I'm summarizing information that is easily found and interpreted with a bit of effort.

[Kai]

Also, I'm strongly considering putting my legal name as my user name here. Because my user name already has my initials, and people know I went to grad school in the Carolinas for bugs, so /anyone/ could find out who I was from that anyway, right? 

Probably shouldn't, though. Probably would kill all chances I'd ever have of getting a job. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes, because asking where you got your degree is totally fishing for PI. PI that I could obtain any time I want to anyway given that, y'know, I have access to every part of the site AND a pretty decent datamining skillset.

No, really, your personal information (that I could have any time I wanted) is terribly interesting and valuable to me.

And what, exactly, am I misinformed about? I'm not making any claims ITT that are not backed up by either science (atropine is a deadly dangerous drug that does not create a synergistic effect with regards to opioids, that's easy enough to look up) or, in the context of how the black market really works, many years of being a drug dealer/pot grower/smuggler with generations of my family's firsthand knowledge to draw from as well as my own. I mean, have you ever even bought a bag of weed? Have you ever even taken a puff? I'm almost certain you've never smuggled anything across an international border or had to talk your way out of a room full of people pointing automatic weapons at you. You trying to posit that I'm misinformed about how the black market works is like me telling Kai that he doesn't know shit about insects.

Ha! But you shouldn't trust me as an authority. You can trust me (to some extent) because I'm summarizing information that is easily found and interpreted with a bit of effort.

Well, yes! That is exactly why I, at least, trust you. You even provide links much of the time, which makes me far less likely to cross-reference things you say when you don't cite sources, because I know from past experience that you have a high level of verifiability. (Which would make it easy to pull the wool over my eyes if you suddenly decided to!)

Also, you have a history of backing down if you find out your position is flawed, which also engenders trust.

[Kai]

Yes, because asking where you got your degree is totally fishing for PI. PI that I could obtain any time I want to anyway given that, y'know, I have access to every part of the site AND a pretty decent datamining skillset.

No, really, your personal information (that I could have any time I wanted) is terribly interesting and valuable to me.

And what, exactly, am I misinformed about? I'm not making any claims ITT that are not backed up by either science (atropine is a deadly dangerous drug that does not create a synergistic effect with regards to opioids, that's easy enough to look up) or, in the context of how the black market really works, many years of being a drug dealer/pot grower/smuggler with generations of my family's firsthand knowledge to draw from as well as my own. I mean, have you ever even bought a bag of weed? Have you ever even taken a puff? I'm almost certain you've never smuggled anything across an international border or had to talk your way out of a room full of people pointing automatic weapons at you. You trying to posit that I'm misinformed about how the black market works is like me telling Kai that he doesn't know shit about insects.

Ha! But you shouldn't trust me as an authority. You can trust me (to some extent) because I'm summarizing information that is easily found and interpreted with a bit of effort.

Well, yes! That is exactly why I, at least, trust you. You even provide links much of the time, which makes me far less likely to cross-reference things you say when you don't cite sources, because I know from past experience that you have a high level of verifiability. (Which would make it easy to pull the wool over my eyes if you suddenly decided to!)

Also, you have a history of backing down if you find out your position is flawed, which also engenders trust.

You know, it's times like these that make me wish I was a troll, just so I could slip in bits that were totally not true. Alas, I am an honest sort.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yes, because asking where you got your degree is totally fishing for PI. PI that I could obtain any time I want to anyway given that, y'know, I have access to every part of the site AND a pretty decent datamining skillset.

No, really, your personal information (that I could have any time I wanted) is terribly interesting and valuable to me.

And what, exactly, am I misinformed about? I'm not making any claims ITT that are not backed up by either science (atropine is a deadly dangerous drug that does not create a synergistic effect with regards to opioids, that's easy enough to look up) or, in the context of how the black market really works, many years of being a drug dealer/pot grower/smuggler with generations of my family's firsthand knowledge to draw from as well as my own. I mean, have you ever even bought a bag of weed? Have you ever even taken a puff? I'm almost certain you've never smuggled anything across an international border or had to talk your way out of a room full of people pointing automatic weapons at you. You trying to posit that I'm misinformed about how the black market works is like me telling Kai that he doesn't know shit about insects.

Ha! But you shouldn't trust me as an authority. You can trust me (to some extent) because I'm summarizing information that is easily found and interpreted with a bit of effort.

Well, yes! That is exactly why I, at least, trust you. You even provide links much of the time, which makes me far less likely to cross-reference things you say when you don't cite sources, because I know from past experience that you have a high level of verifiability. (Which would make it easy to pull the wool over my eyes if you suddenly decided to!)

Also, you have a history of backing down if you find out your position is flawed, which also engenders trust.

You know, it's times like these that make me wish I was a troll, just so I could slip in bits that were totally not true. Alas, I am an honest sort.

Oh, you could fuck some people up!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

RWHN insinuates that the government is so incompetent that they didn't realize adding atropine to opiates would result in serious harm and death, as though that thought just never crossed their minds.

I'm sure it was because they were so focused on preventing normal people from getting hooked that they just forgot about how curious kids and drug abusers might be killed.

The government doesn't make medications.  Pharmaceutical companies make medications.  I still haven't seen anyone provide any information that proves the government forced pharmaceutical companies to add atropine to medications to punish drug abusers.  

If they didn't consider the effect on drug abusers and children, that would make them grossly incompetent at best.

I haven't seen any documentation from you to support your claim that this was primarily targeted at normal people to prevent addiction.

ETA: I also haven't seen any evidence that atropine works the way you keep portraying it either.

Look up some drugs that have atropine as an additive.  You will see tha the reason it is there is to reduce the likelihood of addiciton and to deter overdose. 

Perhaps you're right on this point... however, I still see no reasonable justification for putting a poison in a drug that isn't necessary for the drug to be effective. Even in the most optimistic scenario its still a case of 'the road to hell' being paved with belladonna and datura. In a pessimistic interpretation, its no different from the stories of 'laced' street drugs. Maybe the truth is somewhere in-between... but there doesn't really seem to be any good position in-between.

That being said, in the example of diphenoxylate, the amount of atropine added is intended to cause weakness and nausea if the users takes more than the prescribed amount. A short term effect to discourage improper usage. Of course, thats assuming the user took a little more than intended... not that a child took more than intended, or that someone may take some other recreational drug that could cause more problems etc etc etc. Of course, those situations "shouldn't " happen. Many drugs would have adverse effects in those situations... BUT an additive that is not part of the treatment, one that is unnecessary for the drug to work, one that could cause more side effects, worse effects in instances of abuse, child use or even accidental overdose seems like a very bad idea to me.

When you argue for educating people about the dangers of drugs, I agree with you. If society is going to involve itself in people's private lives, providing honest and factual information about the positive and negative impacts of drugs seems reasonable. However, sneaking poisonous additives into prescription drugs(whoever is behind it), putting people in jail, ruining a college education etc etc etc seem absurd and completely illegitimate forms of abuse prevention to me.

In my opinion, that last bit is where you and many of us seem to diverge. We all seem to agree that education is good, that treatment is good... you, however, seem willing to defend even the most absurd anti-abuse positions. It seems kind of dogmatic, like a wall in your BiP... or maybe some shrapnel...

[AFK]

Because it wasn't for the drug abuser.  It was for the person who was getting the medication for an actual ailment.  And so if they double up or take a higher dosage, they feel bad enough that they think twice about taking a higher dosage again.  This, then, would reduce the likelihood of someone becoming addicted to it.  It wasn't intended for the drug abuser, the drug abuser who is already taking higher dosages of a medication, where there is no ailment, and the medication wasn't prescribed to them. 

This argument that you, and TGRR, and ECH are making suggests that it is the pharmaceutical companies' duty to make sure their drugs are safe for drug abusers, people who take far more than was ever intended.  Medications are designed for people with legitimate ailments, they are not designed for drug abusers. 

Now, with all of that said, it may very well be that there are far more effective ways to make medicines less addictive than adding something like atropine.  I will agree that there may be better ways to do that.  However, what I'm rejecting, without evidence, is that the government purposefully forced pharmaceutical companies to add atropine as a way to punish drug abusers.  Because that is what is being alleged.  If there is evidence to support this, not beliefs evidence, I would be glad to consider it. 

It looks like you are admitting that the intent is to make people greivously ill.

I don't expect the company to attempt to make drugs safe for people who take more than they are supposed to,  I do expect them not to purposely make them unsafe which is what they are doing when they add atropine.

I wouldn't say "greivously ill".  There aren't too many prescription drugs that aren't going to make you greivously ill if you take far more than was prescribed by the doctor.  From what I've read the intent was to keep someone who is earnestly taking the drug.  That is, someone who would likely be gradually increasing their dose.  Not someone who is purposefully seeking out rx drugs to abuse.  Someone who was prescribed the drug isn't generally going to go from, for example, taking  a prescribed dosage of two pills to taking dosages of 5 or 6 pills.  More often than not they are going to take an extra pill, maybe two, because they are just trying to treat their pain or symptoms.  They aren't seeking to get high or addicted.  But of course we know that this is how tolerances are developed.  So I think the aim was to stop that from happening.  It wasn't for the people who go from two pills to 10 pills. 

You keep ignoring the part where that idea is completely contrary to how both opiates and atropine actually work.

Atropine is deliberately added to certain medications for precisely the reason I just laid out.  To discourage over-dosage. 

It isn't working, so it does need to be rethought.

Well of course it isn't working.  And as I said earlier in this thread there are efforts underway to find new ways to reformulate prescription drugs, in particular the prescription opiates, to make them more abuse resistant.  But it will always be trying to hit a moving target because drug abusers will find ways around it.  And I've said numerous times now that that I'm not defending the atropine additive.  I'm simply explaining what was likely the thinking behind it (as I don't work for the pharmaceutical companies that first added it).

But utilizing some common sense thinking one can deduce what the intent was.  I don't think there was this nefarious intent as many of you suspect.  I just don't because there is no evidence to support that.  However, as we all know, sometimes even things with honest intents can go wrong. 

[AFK]

I'm guessing there's some personal history that's turned him into a TRUE BELIEVER. Crackhead stabbed his grandma, bus driver got him stoned and touched his wee-wee, high school girlfriend dumped him for a pot dealer....something.

I know that sounds like I'm just trying to get personal, but I honestly can't think of any other logical explanation for someone who otherwise seems to be mostly rational and non-evil to have so completely internalized such a disgustingly regressive and calvinist way of thinking about a group of people with a disease. I'm actually hoping that I'm right because the alternative is pretty shitty.

Except that what you think is my "way of thinking" about a group of people with a disease is completely wrong.  You are assuming, incorrectly, that I am cheering drug abusers being poisoned by abusing prescription drugs.  I'm not.  I've been very clear.  All I'm doing is pushing back against the assertion that this was a concerted effort by the government to punish drug abusers.  None of you have been able to provide any evidence of this yet.  There have been a lot of belief statements, but no evidence. 

Indeed I understand fully the disease that is substance abuse.  It's why I do what I do.  To prevent more kids from becoming addicted to prescription drugs and other substances.  But I also fully support and work side by side with the provider community who help treat those who are addicted.  Drug abusers are good people who fell into a destructive path.  Our societies should do whatever is possible to help them get back on a healthy path.