De-criminalization of Drugs?

[Michael Agar]

No question but that the US "War on Drugs" has been and continues to be
a spectacular failure on several grounds. New Mexico, by the way, is
famous among drug policy reformers nationally, partly because of Gary
Johnson's comparatively sane ideas, partly because of the endemic and
destructive concentration of heroin addiction in Rio Arriba. The
questions around the shape drug policy reform should take and its many
consequences go on and on, You could check out the sanest reform lobby
in the US, the Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org, if you're
interested.

Mike

>>> owen at backspaces.net 12/22/05 4:49 PM >>>
Here's an interesting speech by the ex-governor of NM:
   http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/drugreform.html

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org


On Dec 22, 2005, at 2:25 PM, Martin C. Martin wrote:

>
>
> Owen Densmore wrote:
>> My question from this is why have the War On Drugs at all?  If we
>> simply treated drugs somewhat along the line of liquor, or possibly
>> pharmaceuticals for really hard stuff, do we have *any* idea what
>> would happen?
>
> Yes; many voters would freak out, and toss out whatever politicians  
> were
> responsible.  While I think democracies are the best form of  
> government
> overall, they still have drawbacks.  "Tough on crime" is another
> example; many studies have shown that there are far cheaper & more
> effective options to locking people up, but the voting public doesn't
> pay much attention.
>
> It's been said that democracies avoid both the worst and the best  
> ideas.
>   For example, the country that's eradicating poverty the fastest is
> China, a dictatorship, not India, a democracy.  On the other hand,  
> India
> never had the cultural revolution.
>
> - Martin
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Roger Critchlow-2]

On 12/22/05, Michael Agar <magar at anth.umd.edu> wrote:
> No question but that the US "War on Drugs" has been and continues to be
> a spectacular failure on several grounds. New Mexico, by the way, is
> famous among drug policy reformers nationally, partly because of Gary
> Johnson's comparatively sane ideas, partly because of the endemic and
> destructive concentration of heroin addiction in Rio Arriba. The
> questions around the shape drug policy reform should take and its many
> consequences go on and on, You could check out the sanest reform lobby
> in the US, the Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org, if you're
> interested.

One of the more startling factoids that turned up in the past month
was this article in PLOS Biology:

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030387
-----------------------
Ancient and Recent Positive Selection Transformed Opioid
cis-Regulation in Humans

Changes in the cis-regulation of neural genes likely contributed to
the evolution of our species' unique attributes, but evidence of a
role for natural selection has been lacking. We found that positive
natural selection altered the cis-regulation of human prodynorphin,
the precursor molecule for a suite of endogenous opioids and
neuropeptides with critical roles in regulating perception, behavior,
and memory. Independent lines of phylogenetic and population genetic
evidence support a history of selective sweeps driving the evolution
of the human prodynorphin promoter. In experimental assays of
chimpanzee?human hybrid promoters, the selected sequence increases
transcriptional inducibility. The evidence for a change in the
response of the brain's natural opioids to inductive stimuli points to
potential human-specific characteristics favored during evolution. In
addition, the pattern of linked nucleotide and microsatellite
variation among and within modern human populations suggests that
recent selection, subsequent to the fixation of the human-specific
mutations and the peopling of the globe, has favored different
prodynorphin cis-regulatory alleles in different parts of the world.
-----------------------
So, we may have language, we may use tools, but natural selection has
been making us into opioid factories.

-- rec --

[George Duncan]

Owen asked for serious research on the subject of drug policy. Some of the
best is done by RAND, including that by my colleague at Carnegie Mellon, Jon
Caulkins. See
http://www.rand.org/multi/dprc/pubs/trends_national_1996-00.html

Cheers, George


On 12/22/05, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:

>
> On 12/22/05, Michael Agar <magar at anth.umd.edu> wrote:
> > No question but that the US "War on Drugs" has been and continues to be
> > a spectacular failure on several grounds. New Mexico, by the way, is
> > famous among drug policy reformers nationally, partly because of Gary
> > Johnson's comparatively sane ideas, partly because of the endemic and
> > destructive concentration of heroin addiction in Rio Arriba. The
> > questions around the shape drug policy reform should take and its many
> > consequences go on and on, You could check out the sanest reform lobby
> > in the US, the Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org, if you're
> > interested.
>
> One of the more startling factoids that turned up in the past month
> was this article in PLOS Biology:
>
>
> http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030387
> -----------------------
> Ancient and Recent Positive Selection Transformed Opioid
> cis-Regulation in Humans
>
> Changes in the cis-regulation of neural genes likely contributed to
> the evolution of our species' unique attributes, but evidence of a
> role for natural selection has been lacking. We found that positive
> natural selection altered the cis-regulation of human prodynorphin,
> the precursor molecule for a suite of endogenous opioids and
> neuropeptides with critical roles in regulating perception, behavior,
> and memory. Independent lines of phylogenetic and population genetic
> evidence support a history of selective sweeps driving the evolution
> of the human prodynorphin promoter. In experimental assays of
> chimpanzee?human hybrid promoters, the selected sequence increases
> transcriptional inducibility. The evidence for a change in the
> response of the brain's natural opioids to inductive stimuli points to
> potential human-specific characteristics favored during evolution. In
> addition, the pattern of linked nucleotide and microsatellite
> variation among and within modern human populations suggests that
> recent selection, subsequent to the fixation of the human-specific
> mutations and the peopling of the globe, has favored different
> prodynorphin cis-regulatory alleles in different parts of the world.
> -----------------------
> So, we may have language, we may use tools, but natural selection has
> been making us into opioid factories.
>
> -- rec --
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at Mission Cafe
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

--
George T. Duncan
Professor of Statistics
Heinz School of Public Policy and Management
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
[phone]
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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On 12/22/05, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:
>
> One of the more startling factoids that turned up in the past month
> was this article in PLOS Biology:
>
> http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030387

Owen's response this morning reminded me that I have more fun decoding
these kinds of abstracts than most people.

The article is about a very significant difference between the
chimpanzee genome and ours, a difference which shows very strong
evidence of positive natural selection at the time when humans
diverged from the rest of the primates, because the mutations are
universal in the human line, and strong subsequent selection, because
there's a repeat polymorphism with very different frequencies in
different populations around the world.

The change facilitates the production of the precursor to endorphins,
the natural neuropeptides which are simulated by opium, morphine,
heroin, etc., hence they are called opioids.

So we, as a species, are distinguished from our nearest relatives by a
greater capacity for producing opioid neurotransmitters and, as a
consequence, probably much more prone to substance abuse.  This might
have some bearing on the war on drugs.

The year end issue of Science has named "Evolution in Action" as the
"Breakthrough of the Year."   This article from PLOS Biology is the
first one cited in the bibliography under Human Evolution.

-- rec --