From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!cbosg!cbosgd!mark Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: Refresh on Addiction Discussion Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2349 Posted: Sat Jun 12 15:12:47 1982 Received: Sun Jun 13 04:49:39 1982 References: utcsrgv.382 For an interesting discussion on which drugs are harmful and which are legal, read "Licit and Illicit Drugs", by Consumers Union (the same people that do Consumer Reports). It costs $4 and can be ordered with the coupon in the back of any CR. (It's a paperback book - over an inch thick.) They take a view that I was quite surprised at. They come down very hard on three drugs: Alcohol, Nicotine (e.g. cigarettes) and Caffeine. On the other hand, they claim that certain drugs which are illegal and thought to be seriously harmful are not so bad. (Most people feel this way about Marijuana, but they lump Cocaine and Heroin in this category too!) The book is very thorough and covers many drugs, but is out of date (1972) so it doesn't cover certain modern drugs like PCP. CU shows lots and lots of serious research and is very scholarly in coming to these conclusions. I recommend it as must reading for anyone who takes drugs, or who has children of the appropriate age. In fact, such children probably ought to read it too - being informed is very important. I'm sure nearly everyone who reads this has been to high school and college in the last 20 years and knows what the attitudes on drugs are in these places, and realizes that you just can't ignore this issue and hope it will never come up. (I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has recently attended a private school, or who has a drug-age child in such a school, such as a church school, as to whether such things come up there as well as public schools, and if the age bracket is different.) Also, I have recently heard (Ann Landers? I'm not sure where) that recent evidence has shown real problems for regular marijuana users that makes it look much worse than tobacco. I'd be interested to know if this was just that year's quota of unscientific scare stories to keep it from being legalized, or if there has been real, reproduced, accepted data that shows real problems. I forget the nature of the problem - reproductive or genetic damage or some such thing, I think. Mark