Think my grandpa started smoking about that age. Good thing he did not go nuts and start killing folks. Instead he died of prostate cancer at 86.

No, my argument is the exact opposite of socialism and it's purely in regards to limiting the reach of government. The government should not have the authority to tell people what to do to themselves in almost every instance. I believe in dangerous freedom.

I didn't even have to open the article and read it to know that meth is probably the cause. I also have to point out that the people did lots of crazy stuff on meth despite the fact that meth is completely illegal. The law obviously isn't doing anything and it's even safe to say that methamphetamine use has become more pervasive and more dangerous since it was first outlawed. It would be shocking for most to know that methamphetamines weren't even illegal until the early 70s. Do you remember those billboards with dripping letters that said speed kills? They weren't talking about going over 55 on the highway. It was in response to the new laws passed making amphetamines illegal. Prior to that you could buy them in the grocery store as pep pills or Diet aids. Do you remember dexatrim? It was little square caramel chews that had dexedrine in it. Have you ever heard of beanies that were a pep pill widely sold at convenience stores? That was methamphetamines called Benzedrine. Today we just buy a Red Bull. In hindsight I'm probably alive today because methamphetamines were widely distributed to the Marines in the Pacific in my grandfather told me that pet pills are what kept Him going at Guadalcanal.

I call BS on those numbers. Every reputable source has similar numbers. Do you have a link to the numbers you are quoting?

https://www.verywellmind.com/rates-of-illicit-drug-abuse-in-the-us-67027

https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/202110260320

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-illicit.htm

https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/drugfactsnationwidetrends1.pdf

https://bjs.ojp.gov/drugs-and-crime-facts/drug-use

So 30% of the US population which includes infants to old folks home are doing elicit drugs? BS!!!!

You take <14 and >75 and it makes it basically 50% of US population. No way

Read what I said again. If you still don’t understand read it again.

I read and understood exactly what you said and I have to point out that the United States existed as a nation for 179 years before cocaine or marijuana was made illegal. I think they made opiates illegal at the same time.

I don't know how they came up with those numbers and I suspect it's just so they can get their budget increased but those are the numbers on the dea's website.

There is also probably a great deal of overlap in consumption of illicit substances and I wouldn't put it past a bureaucrat in government to double and triple count things.

I just realized something, I have had family members die from using illegal drugs. My mother remarried when I was 22 and I don't really know anyone from my stepdads side of the family but his youngest brother died from a heroin overdose and his oldest son was a lifetime consumer of methamphetamines and that killed him some years back. My sister was working in the ER when our step brother came into Harris in Fort Worth and told me the drug level in his system was the highest they had ever seen at that hospital. Technically pneumonia killed him but it was simply a complication brought about by a lifetime of drug abuse. He was a giant of a man and the laziest POS you will have ever met. He also had six kids with an illegal alien, all of them are as big and fat as a house but at least they're not the lazy person that their dad was.

I could really care less what someone drinks, injects, snorts or smokes. Make it legal (tax the chit out it) or make it illegal. ZFG!!! People should be allowed to make their own life choices, good or bad.

Just an FYI...if the government wasn't so hypocritical. Drugs are bad but nicotine is good?

Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.

Unfortunately, that story is repeated over and over with illegal drug use. I had a patient who killed himself on a heroin overdose a few years ago. Poor kid was only 24, and I really enjoyed having him as a patient. Cool kiddo. His mother was devastated. So sad.

A lot of these arguments for hard drugs fall apart based on the fact that people who are addicted to controlled substances don't just stay to themselves. They burglarize homes, businesses, steal vehicles and equipment, commit robberies ect ect all to feed their insatiable habit. If they just sat alone and slowly killed themselves with dope, I would have no issue with it, but they don't.

This right here!

When I first started in business when a client lost a child it was either early cancer, Car crash, or a suicide. Now when I see a client lose a child it's more often than not an opioid overdose. Truth be told I feel a lot of contempt for people that kill themselves through their own stupidity but I would never voice that to someone who just lost their child.

I feel like I'm beating my face against a brick wall. They steal so they can afford the drugs that are super super expensive because they are illegal. If they were not illegal they would be very inexpensive. You can go to a shrink and get a prescription for Adderall which is meth and it is dirt cheap. Those same pills sell for a fortune on the illicit Market. $30 at the pharmacy, $1,500 on the street. The government processes hundreds of tons of coca leaves every year in New Jersey. They take the organic alkaloids out of it which is also known as cocaine and the syrup that they make that contains the Coca flavor get sold to the Coca-Cola Corporation. If cocaine were legal actual production cost for it would be about 10 to 14 times the cost of producing sugar but for some mystery reason it's several thousand times the cost of sugar.

How many meth heads can keep a consistent job? How many OxyContin addicts can keep a consistent job?

Most people addicted to hard drugs aren’t keeping a consistent job. If you can’t function with out the drug how can you work while not on the job. Potheads aren’t exactly overly ambitious at work…

You are comparing your successful life with health insurance to scumbags from the hood who don't. Small A-trains go for 10 bucks a pill without insurance from a pharmacy. It take a lot of those to get high.

Many, many convenience stores, anyone over 21 can buy tobacco, alcohol, high cholesterol foods, and all the sugar they want. Just in a convenience store!

When those stores begin also selling narcotics, cocaine, and methamphetamines on a regular basis. Insurance companies will also test for those substances.

Lacing weed is nothing new. Been happening for years. Primo weed laced with cocaine. Wet weed dipped in phencyclidine. Kids would do these and still just consider it smoking weed. Now they are doing it with fentanyl.

I thought primo was weed laced with PCP. It's so hard to keep up.

That’s what Hector gave Smokey… and he ain’t been right since

I thought it was what Alonso gave Jake in Training Day.

I have seen a few OxyContin addicts where no one knew there was an issue until they decided to throw heavy drinking into the mix. Had a client who took 40 to 60 of them per day until his wife found him passed out in the living room one afternoon. She had no idea that there was an issue until he got to the the hospital. He stopped after that. I still clean his pool and that was 15 years ago I think. If any of y'all know where Emmit Smith lived this is a house in his neighborhood.

Meth? Seen plenty of guys working oil fields on it but they burn out and I don't know what happens to them afterwards. Meth is a very destructive drug and in my opinion most people never come back from it.

Pot? I know plenty of other pool guys that are wake and bakes that put in 12 to 14 hour days 6 days per week year round. I couldn't do it but it works for them. I also know a few people in other professions that do the samething and one in particular has a net worth pushing 800 million from what I can read about him.

I don't know the drug lingo but I do know what Adderall goes for because I pick up scripts for a neighbor and her 60 pills cost 30 bucks per month. Never have taken one but it says amphetamine salts right on the label so I am assuming they get you wound up.

Scumbags in the hood have all of the drugs they want despite the laws against the drugs. Scumbags in the hood do all of the crazy crap that they want to do on drugs despite there being laws against the drugs and most of the crazy crap that they want to do while on drugs. I don't care about any of that at all. All that I care about is some over paranoid officer who is convinced that I have drugs in my car when I get pulled over and then tries to intimidate me into allowing them to perform a consent search and then going off their rockers when I tell them "Hell No".

Adderall

That’s a whole interesting subject .