Comment by Factorium

i have had a theory for years if you sold any drug like meth or cocaine in an advil bottle with a label on the side saying “take at most 1 tablet every 4 hours, do not exceed 6 tablets in one day. do not use for more than 2 days in a row” etc then the vast majority of people would not have any issue with it. the people who are already abusing it would continue to abuse it. most people can be around hard addictive drugs ingrained in society like alcohol and do just fine

Having never done weed, if I smoke one will I preform worse at cognitive tasks than I would if I had a beer?

I know, comparing uppers and downers, not the same effects, etc.

In Britain at least diamorphine hydrochloride (heroin) can be prescribed to individuals.

"The results of it have been quite devastating."

They've been devastating for good reason, which is that with oxycodone the long proven, well established administration and monitoring protocols for narcotic opioids were not observed.

Essentially, every narcotic opioid ever discovered or used has addictive properties and thus they all have the potential to addict users. Opiate addition takes a very pernicious form because withdrawal makes the addict feel so absolutely rotten which is instantly fixed by restoring the level of drug to its normal 'maintenance' levels.

Opiates come in a huge range of types and strengths. Some are considered sufficienty mild or innocuous to sell OTC without a script, others are considered too powerful and dangerous to ever sell legally even though they do have legitimate medical uses, heroin (diacetyl morphine) falls into this category in most countries as it's considered too 'hot' to handle/administer - although the UK is one exception where it's used for intractable pain (as in terminal cancer).

(The UK struck out/did not sign the section that covered the complete prohibition of heroin in the international treaty on banned narcotic drugs because its doctors used the rationale that heroin is actually a more effective painkiller in terminal cancer cases over morphine (which in fact it is by a reasonable margin) - thus addiction was a secondary consideration in such dire circumstances. Whilst the UK, didn't ban heroin for medical use, it agreed to the other provisions of the treaty - those concerning its illegal trade, and possession, etc.)

As I said, ALL opioids that induce narcotic and pain-reducing effects have the potential to be addictive - even mild OTC ones. I'll use myself as an example here. Years ago, I used to take OTC painkillers for the occasional headache of the type that included both codeine and paracetamol (acetaminophen) and whilst they cured the pain I found the headaches becoming more frequent which then led me to take more tablets. Eventually, it dawned on me that the codeine was the reason for the increase in frequency of the headaches - not what caused them in the first instance. I then switched to the paracetamol-only tablets and the frequency of my headaches subsided to the frequency that they were originally.

Of course, in my case, withdrawing from the codeine was was trivial - just a simple matter of switching to codeine-free tablets, but it's anything but simple for a heroin addict - in most cases it's a fucking painful 'nightmare' of the worst kind.

Right, I've taken a long time to get to the point which is this: simply introducing a new opioid drug, especially so a powerful one such oxycodone, without keeping in place all the existing protocols that cover the medical administration of opoids which have existed for well over 100 years is a recipe for an unmitigated disaster - and that's exactly what happened.

We know that Purdue Pharmaceuticals and its owners - that ragbag mob the Sacklers - were the irresponsible pushers of oxycodone, but in many ways it's how we'd gotten to the point where oxycodone was so widespread that it's had such a devastating impact on the population that is so damning and it still must be explained in detail.

What's never been explained to me or, for that matter any other member of the public, why the FDA didn't nip this potential problem in the bud at the outset when it originally approved oxycodone. Moreover, why did the second line of defense fail so catastrophically - that is, why didn't the medical profession - all those doctors prescribing oxycodone - use their knowledge of opiate addiction (which is basic 101 pharmacy knowledge required for them to pass their medial exams), stop the opioid crisis before it took hold?

The opioid/oxycondone crisis is one of the greatest failings in public health administration in modern times. Purdue and the Sacklers started the crisis but why public health administration failed so catastrophically has never been answered.

Good question. If you were to go by relative effects on consciousness, alcohol is a far harder drug than cannabis. Lots of illegal drugs are, alcohol is much worse than we believe.

it's a good question - I avoided it in my own response with the clever use of quotation marks.

But to answer, I think the term is used colloquially all of the time and of course is open to interpretation.

I would suggest it has nothing to do with a drug's pharmacology or chemical structure but rather the degree to which a drug when taken in easily-consumed quantities can shape our perceptions of the world, the likelihood of negative externalities due to consumer behavior and the probability of becoming addicted to the drug.

A mixture of those things makes a drug "hard" in conversational language e.g. something that dramatically changes a persons perceptions, frequently has negative externalities and can cause addiction with short-term sustained use is a "hard drug". Like alcohol.

When addicted to such a drug, the negative externalities typically expand in scope and severity and if the use scales to a significant portion of the population would generally be regarded as an undesirable state for society to be in.