It kinda makes me mad to see this up on the front page. The article reads like it was written by a college student trying to defend the harmlessness of psychedelics versus alcohol. That's all well and good, but this is not a scientific study by any means. Don't think I'm trying to disprove the guy, I know how dangerous alcohol is, but if he were anyone quallified to write a serious essay on the subject, he would have Dr. in front of his name. Most of the article is speculation and BS. He mentions absolutely NO scientific data, facts, studies or names of individuals, labs or corporations that even conducted the studies. All things that make for a legitimate essay.
The most toxic recreational drugs, such as GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and heroin, have a lethal dose less than 10 times their typical effective dose. The largest cluster of substances has a lethal dose that is 10 to 20 times the effective dose: These include cocaine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often called "ecstasy") and alcohol. A less toxic group of substances, requiring 20 to 80 times the effective dose to cause death, include Rohypnol (flunitrazepam or "roofies") and mescaline (peyote cactus). The least physiologically toxic substances, those requiring 100 to 1,000 times the effective dose to cause death, include psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, when ingested.
See this would be where a real writer would include sources of this information. Where did he get these numbers from? from an actual study conducted by professional scientists? how 'bout some names? and dates? Did you just pull these figures out of your ass, did some bum on the street tell you this? Of course they're probably close to accurate. Maybe. But if it were a professional study, there would be more information included, I don't know who Robert Gable is. Oh wait, he's a professor of psychology.
I've found no published cases in the English language that document deaths from smoked marijuana, so the actual lethal dose is a mystery. My surmise is that smoking marijuana is more risky than eating it but still safer than getting drunk.
See, to me, this makes him sound stupid. "I've found"....well just because YOU haven't found a case or study that proves or disproves something doesn't make it fact. I know no one's ever died from smoking pot, I'm just pointing out how to write a serious paper. "My surmise"....okay so I'm just going to take your word for something because you're a professor of psychology? And guess what? smoking it isn't safer. There
have been documented cases of people dying from injested marijuana. Oh what's that? you didn't read about any of those cases? Well I guess they just didn't happen.
The common routes of consumption, from the least toxic to the most toxic (in general), are: eating or drinking a substance, depositing it inside the nostril, breathing or smoking it, and injecting it into a vein with a hypodermic syringe.
This is probably my favorite part. This is what I mean by bull shit. You're telling me that it's safer to drink gasoline than it is to inhale it? I could smoke datura seeds all day so I guess it's safe to eat them since "eating or drinking a substance is less toxic than smoked or inhaled". I know a lot of the things he says are "in general" but this is just not good, scientific writing. I like to smoke crack, maybe I'll try eating a big ol' 5 gram rock when I get home. After all, it's safer that way. I breathe air all day, I wonder what would happen if I shot some oxygen into my veins, oh I know; I'll likely have a heart attack or an aneurism.
I know I'm being a bitch, picking apart his essay, and nit-picking over little stuff, I'm just pointing out that it's silly to take something as serious scientific research, when it was written by a professor of psychology who provides no facts or figures, names or dates to any of the claims he makes, and just pulls a pretty little bar graph out of his ass. If there's no recorded death from a mescaline overdose, how is it that it's 40 times more dangerous than lsd? The whole graph is apparently just this guys uneducated guess.
Again, I totally agree with most of what he is saying, and the fact that psychedelics (for most folks) are theoretically safer than alcohol in terms of the ld50, I'm just stunned by the way it was written.
