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How can The Vespiary help reduce harm given the enviorment of drug use?

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Vesp:
What can The Vespiary do to help reduce harm given the current social, political and economic environments caused by the War on drugs, the sometimes addictive and  dangerous properties of some drugs or how people decide to use them?

I think some are clear such as:

1. We should promote the legalization of Marijuana  and other psychedelics. The dangers involved with using them are far smaller than the legal dangers of getting caught with them so by supporting their legalization is supporting their harm reduction. This may be true with all other drugs, but strong arguments could be made against opioids.

2.  Create, spread, and support those who are producing information about drugs - The more available knowledge is to everyone, the easier it will be for them to make informed decisions or actions that will help prevent addiction, impurities, or dangerous actions taken while in the laboratory, dealing, etc.

3. Make it well known how to seek help for overdoses, poisonings, legal advice and others such as suicide hotline.

These are just what I was able to come up with, I am sure you guys who collectively have far more experience and perspective on these subjects will have additional and helpful comments, so please speak up! :)

MentalEntropy:
What makes this such a tall order is, the areas where trustworthy information and real harm reduction are needed the most, seem resistant to these changes. I mean how exactly do you give someone better information when they dont want it? Not to mention that some governments are more than happy to make these efforts criminal.

I keep writing and rewriting this post, different every time, but I just dont know what to say. How do you overcome people's cognitive dissonance? That to me is the main problem--the very people you want to reach wont hear you because they are comfortable with the information they already have even though its completely false. This is a feature built in to the human brain and we all do it to some degree or have to some degree. Google cognitive dissonance or just dissonance and that should put you in touch with plenty of info about that sad habit of humanity. If Aesop is to be believed, even animals do this shit when they cant get food that's too high off the ground for them to reach.

I was considering making an infographic/writeup bout how to purify heroin, complete with pictures. Since in my mind this could lower the risk of overdose by helping to normalize dose. It could also increase harm as purer, cleaner, drugs are often irresistible to those bent on abusing them. Tha'ts been my reaction to most exceptionally pure compounds Ive found myself with, ymmv. But, whatever the conflicts and problems with teaching people the simple basics of A/B extraction and purification of most compounds are, the inconsistency of dose size is and has been probably the biggest danger for heroin users.

I recently made small, not very indepth, infographic for washing OP's (the newer oxycontin pills) and afterwards I had mix feelings about whether I helped anything or if I had just enabled god only knows how many people to abuse medication in an even more dangerous way than they would have. At the end of the day I land firmly on the side that information should be freely available. To be honest, what really bothers me most about the OP graphic is that if it were to become popular, I would not be surprised to see the pharma industry respond by adding poisons to the pills to prevent extraction of actives. They already use this tactic, ie naloxone is added to buprenorphine to discourage from injection. I dont see it as much of a stretch to see them doing it in new ways on new products. There's a whole other side to pill washing in particular that make it a prickly subject. For instance, I never once considered posting that graphic here. I don't think it would be welcome here and I understand why. Besides the fact that anybody with even a slight chemistry bent would have tried what my technique uses on their own anyway and realized its nearly perfect extraction of these pills easily, cheaply and reliably. Thats the kind of thing that can take a great board like this and turn it to shit in a few months time.

I have no idea what this post is supposed to convey. This is a subject I think about and agonize about quite frequently and felt compelled to comment on.

I look forward to reading something that gets everybody's wheels turning, not just mine.

Vesp:
Anyone else have ideas?

I wonder if there is any practical things we could do here?
Perhaps get in cahoots with an anonymous drug testing place to determine impurities in various street drugs users come across?
Maybe work with a lawyer? something?

packetforger:
Yes. Members who have the opportunity to do so should get involved in local harm reduction efforts (students for sensible drug policy, groups that offer drug testing at nightclubs/festivals, etc), and help spread information.

I have been in discussions with some friends about trying to set up a local distribution of Marquis test kits and suchlike for users, and distribution of harm reduction resources (mainly focused on MDMA - the most popular drug here at the moment).

Sending off samples to labs/running tests and publishing results to places such as Pill Reports (http://pillreports.com/) is another option I would tell people to seriously consider, as well as trying to get people to simply look up their pills before taking them, and if anything is "off", get them tested.

Offering harm reduction information to front line people (barmen, bouncers, etc) at festivals and nightclubs is another option. In the last few years a late bar I frequent has changed its unofficial policy on drug use from entirely "turning a blind eye", to having its bouncers "keep tabs" on people/what they are taking, and only intervening if someone is putting themselves or others at risk.

The recent FDA approval of the autoinjectors (naloxone?) for opiate overdose treatment is a great step forward as well, carrying one is an excellent idea if you, or any of your friends, are in the habit of taking opiates, or if you are likely to be in a situation where opiates are being consumed.

There is no "one thing" we can do to help reduce harm, but by practicing safe-use, and encouraging it amongst our peers, and distributing information, we can make a bit of a difference. Maybe even save some lives.

MentalEntropy:
Sadly, I dont believe there is much that can be done that would result in a net positive as long as there is such a thing as the war on drugs. As I said before, I spend a shitload of time thinking about this shit because it just boggles my mind that we have not stood together as a huge scary mob and demanded an end to the war on drugs. Nearly 50 years of data is, apparently, completely ignored. The government's obsession with making meth more and more illegal over the past several years have led to rates of abuse that make absolutely no sense to anyone who has ever used meth. The shit just aint that good. It seems obvious to me that by making meth more and more forbidden they just make it irresistible to people who would have normally had no fucks to give. Then once they do develop a habit the rest of the system steps in to make sure that their entire life is ruined.

Imagine you are a single mom who works two jobs and some person, coworker etc, finally convinces you to do a little crystal to help you through a rough patch. The shit keeps you up to the point that you cant get enough sleep that night and now youre set up to use again in the morning because youre too tired to function. This goes on for a couple weeks and its getting old fast. If you could just go to your doctor or someone in your family and explain what youve got yourself in to, you could get help, which you probably actually want, then chances are good imo that it would be over that easy. Instead, what we have is a society and a system set up that will take your kids and throw you in jail.

The greatest causer of harm is absolutely the war on drugs. Maybe our best bet is to try get people to see how prohibition plays a huge part in drug addiction and how the war on drugs exacerbates not only rates of addiction but how severe the addictions are in general.

I know in my heart that there will come a time when we will look back on the war on drugs and how we view altered consciousness, and the depth of the ignorance and how anti-human it is will be as obvious to us as the Salem witch trials are to us now.

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