Thinking About Addiction

That’s not to say the perceptions of cannabis as health-improving aren’t important, but post-legalization, it’s mostly a marketing tool.

Perhaps more important, the patient could begin to resume a normal life.

The real issue is that Kratom use is already so widespread that attempts at a total ban would inevitably create hardship for those who are already dependent on the drug, as well as fuel the appearance of a thriving black market.

What legalization can’t do is fix any problems inherent in drug use itself.

Once a problem such as opoid overprescribing is widespread, entrenched in practice, good luck eradicating it with new laws.

Even if society miraculously eliminated its problems,  some people would still be attracted to drugs.

The goal is to eventually develop an objective scale by which pain can be measured not by self-report, but by neuroimaging.

As the article points out, it’s possible to make use of the flashlight on your cellphone for the necessary illumination.

Once such substances get a foothold in a region, they’re extremely hard to eradicate.

My concern is that these same hallucinogens have a pronounced tendency to escape the research environment and find their way out into the streets