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I hope everyone had a great break! It has been very interesting to read over the comments people have made. I have to agree with Jenna when she says that drugs with therapeutic effects should be made legal, at least for medical useage. However I wonder why only THOSE drugs should be made legal, as opposed to ones that at the moment do not appear to have any kind of medical benefit. What is so "dangerous" about allowing these types of things to be sold in the same way that cigarettes or alcohol are.

We spoke some in class about why these drugs have such a bad reception. I know we talked a little bit about the history of illicit drugs, but I wonder if some of it has to do with historical usage. Many of these drugs were isolated in the lab or used by native American populations, but at least in class it didnt seem like many of them had been used much in Europe, though alcohol and tobacco were. Perhaps it was some kind of us/other concept that remained until the drugs became more popular in the 60's. And then again it was another kind of dichotomy, the upstanding moral citizens verses "those crazy radical kids" which led to them becoming so "wrong" and bad.

One part of the deal here is that there is this major stereotype that drug use causes a person to not be a productive member of society. While I am sure that happens in some instances, I have met quite a few people at my internship at Prevention Point of Philadelphia, a syringe exchange program, and have met quite a few heroin users that definitely do not fit the stereotypical "drug user" role. They can hold jobs, they pay their taxes, etc, and use heroin too. Why is it not their choice to do so?

Another question is if these drugs were made legal, would they be more "clean" or "safe?" I don't know about how this has works in countries where pot is legal, if the drugs end up being mixed less with other drugs. How many of the bad effects from LSD etc come from their being cut with other drugs?

Also I was wondering if these drugs were able to be used for medical treatments, how should they be tested? How would we be able to ensure safety (should we?) when dealing with these types of pharmaceudicals?