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After our discussion last class period, I personally am in support of the idea of using illicit drugs to help people with disorders that are generally very difficult to treat.  I agree with Jenna that if there is scientific evidence that MDMA really has a positive effect on PTSD sufferers, I don’t see how ethically we can deprive them of that chance to get better.  I would extend that idea to any illicit drug that appears to treat a difficult to treat condition, provided that negative side effects do not eclipse the good that treating the condition would do, and as many people have noted, that becomes difficult because people react in different ways to these drugs – some people, for example, might in general be more prone to bad LSD trips. 

Thinking in general about illegal drugs, I feel like there are some “harder” drugs which should remain illegal, but at the same time some “softer” drugs that are currently illegal, but I can’t understand why.  The problem, of course, is that if the softer drugs were to be legalized and the harder drugs were to remain illegal, the line drawn between “soft” drugs and “hard” drugs would have to be totally arbitrary.  I think what’s frustrating to me now is that drugs like morphine are legal for the treatment of pain, but the use of medicinal marijuana is so controversial.  In my mind, how scary or dangerous a drug is has to do mostly with how addictive it is, and I believe that scientific evidence indicates that morphine can be physically addictive, while marijuana is not.  I don’t necessarily see a problem with the idea of drugs being available for people in general to use, but I do see a huge problem with growing percentages of the population becoming addicted to these drugs and not being able to function normally without them.  The problem is, coming from the whole DARE program background, I’ve had the idea that drugs like heroine are instantly addictive to everyone who takes them – I thought Professor Thomas’ point that the majority of people will not become addicted to such drugs was very interesting, and makes me more open to the idea of legalizing illegal drugs in general.

I also thought Felicia’s point regarding the role of the government in how we feel about drug use was very interesting.  Going back to morphine vs. marijuana as a pain killer, it seems that marijuana has a negative stigma that morphine definitely does not – but I can’t think of any logical reason why that would be other than simply that the government tells us that morphine is ok.  I know this whole post is confusing, but I keep getting confused when I try to think about why some drugs are medicinally legal and others (shown to potentially help medical conditions) are not.