HeadingNorth Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Opiate/ Opiod = pretty much the same thing. If this is to be a medical debate rather than a political one, the difference is fairly important. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagel Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Nope. Neither is ecstasy. I looked it up and found an article from the BBC addressing the very issue, prompted by Prof Nutt's assertion that ecstasy is safer than horse riding. If the article is to be believed then horse riding is moderately dangerous - "In his paper Hazards of Horse-riding as a Popular Sport, Dr Silver cited a study from 1985 that suggested motorcyclists suffered a serious accident once every 7,000 hours but a horse rider could expect a serious incident once in every 350 hours. Dr Silver also cites a figure from 1992 of 12 equestrian-related fatalities from 2.87 million participants. He also notes that in the period from 1994-1999, 3% of all spinal cord injury patients admitted to Stoke Mandeville Hospital were the result of horse riding." That's not to say people shouldn't ride horses or take ecstasy. They should just be aware of the risks and take steps to minimise them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFKvsNixon Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 If this is to be a medical debate rather than a political one, the difference is fairly important. The definition has changed over the years. Opiate refers to drugs that are derived from opium and opioid used to refer to drugs that were developed synthetically, now opioid has evolved to encompass the entire family of opiates. So an opiate is a type of opioid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jam1e Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 regular users of cannabis, ecstasy or cocaine are doing far less damage to their own health than you are to yours. Dunno about that, cocaine is extremely toxic on the body. I'm sure if i smoked crack everyday for 20 years my body would be in a far worse state than if id smoked fags for 20 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teenyweeny Posted February 25, 2012 Author Share Posted February 25, 2012 Dunno about that, cocaine is extremely toxic on the body. I'm sure if i smoked crack everyday for 20 years my body would be in a far worse state than if id smoked fags for 20 years. Exactly right,which is why there are laws in place for cocaine heroin and cannabis,although im not saying smoking cigs is not dangerous it is not a hard drug like the others.I will probably now get the pc lot on my back for saying so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFKvsNixon Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Exactly right,which is why there are laws in place for cocaine heroin and cannabis,although im not saying smoking cigs is not dangerous it is not a hard drug like the others.I will probably now get the pc lot on my back for saying so. I think that you are mistaking lack of prohibition to be a sign of safety. Like it or not tobacco is a deadly drug which kills around half of all it's users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Dunno about that, cocaine is extremely toxic on the body. I'm sure if i smoked crack everyday for 20 years my body would be in a far worse state than if id smoked fags for 20 years. On the other hand you could chew coca leaves your entire life and find that it has all sorts of health positives, unlike a lifetime of oral nicotine use. You can compare the most dangerous routes of administration, but that tells you nothing about the danger or toxicity of the actual substance in question. Five hundredths of a gram of nicotine can easily kill an adult human. Five hundredths of a gram of cocaine won't. Oral tobacco use (not fire cured tobacco) is largely uninjurious to health, excepting slight keratination of the oral mucosa. Oral coca use transfers positive health benefits, and enables toleration of higher altitudes, acts as a mild analgesic etc etc. In the words of Fun Boy Three and Banarama: "It ain't what you do, it's the way that do it" The thing to remember is that nicotine addiction is harder to break than most, and any addiction is even harder to break if you are also a nicotine user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Exactly right,which is why there are laws in place for cocaine heroin and cannabis,although im not saying smoking cigs is not dangerous it is not a hard drug like the others It's considerably harder a drug than cannabis. (I'll admit to not being aware of any solid figures on the likelihood of death from cocaine usage versus tobacco usage, but I would still bet my money on tobacco being the more dangerous. And I'm not sure why this has anything to do with political correctness. Personally I think anyone who uses any recreational drug is a certifiable lunatic, but I don't argue for them all to be illegal. If you want to destroy your own body, go ahead, just don't take anybody with you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halibut Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 The thing to remember is that nicotine addiction is harder to break than most, and any addiction is even harder to break if you are also a nicotine user. This is an interesting notion and seems to be supported by my own observations and experience - i.e. during a break of a couple of years from smoking cigarettes, I seemed to find my consumption of alcohol dropping, without any conscious attempt to drink less on my part. Could you expand on this idea please and point to any relevant studies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halibut Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 It's considerably harder a drug than cannabis. (I'll admit to not being aware of any solid figures on the likelihood of death from cocaine usage versus tobacco usage, but I would still bet my money on tobacco being the more dangerous. And I'm not sure why this has anything to do with political correctness. Personally I think anyone who uses any recreational drug is a certifiable lunatic, but I don't argue for them all to be illegal. If you want to destroy your own body, go ahead, just don't take anybody with you. Whilst I agree with what I think you're trying to express here (for the most part) I think the terms 'hard' and 'soft' are pretty vague and don't really represent the relative harms and risks involved - and as Phanerothyme correctly observes, much of the relative harm revolves aroung the method of use (and quality of product). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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