116
votes
Accepted
Did 20% of US soldiers in Vietnam use heroin, 95% of whom quit afterwards?
Yes, the claims are approximately true.
From a 1976 study:
Two stages of Vietnam drug use are identified-a period of increasing marijuana use followed by the 1970 influx of highly potent heroin to ...
- 14k
93
votes
Accepted
Do blacks in the US get arrested more often for drug usage despite using drugs at the same rate as whites?
A similar claim is often made, but limited to the use of marijuana. For that, the Washington Post has a good overview. The results for overall drug use are similar to those results.
Drug use by race/...
tim♦
- 50.6k
74
votes
Is Adrenochrome an addictive drug only obtained by drinking blood?
You can just buy adrenochrome, e.g. here from Sigma-Aldrich. It's somewhat expensive for a relatively simple chemical, but not as expensive as it would have to be if the only way to acquire it would ...
- 42k
67
votes
Accepted
Do methamphetamines give more pleasure than other human experiences?
It's somewhat simplistic view that dopamine is directly proportional with pleasure. This was a mainstream hypothesis in the 1980s, but has fallen out of favor:
The idea that dopamine was a mechanism ...
- 51.1k
43
votes
Accepted
Does a pair of trainers (shoes) hanging on a telephone wire mean the house nearby is a crack den?
Snopes.com includes it as a legend and includes a large number of other possible reasons with the most likely one is that most people do it because they think it looks cool.
All across the United ...
- 5,926
37
votes
Accepted
Did Coca-Cola contain cocaine?
Is it true Coca-Cola once contained Cocaine?
Yes, yes, yes; it did.
When created, Coca-Cola's two key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine. Guess how the name Coca-Cola was derived? Since the ...
- 29.8k
35
votes
Accepted
Has LSD 'been widely used in hospitals for the treatment of mental disorders'?
Yes, LSD has a history of psychiatric use
In terms of the number of doses administered in an official clinical setting, it might not fit the definition of widely, but it has been tried out for wide ...
- 43.6k
34
votes
Did 20% of US soldiers in Vietnam use heroin, 95% of whom quit afterwards?
The first part of the statement is probably true.
The second part is highly misleading. What the actual paper of the time shows is that 5% of former addicts became re-addicted (basically meaning ...
- 51.1k
21
votes
Accepted
Has anybody overdosed on marijuana and died?
From the DEA drug factsheet for marijuana:
No death from overdose of marijuana has been reported.
- 1,048
18
votes
Accepted
Did Dubai sentence someone to four years in jail for possession of three poppy seeds from a bread roll?
As far as I can tell all the articles refer back to Fair Trials, a real charity with a focus on access to fair trials around the world.
Their original article as far as I can tell is not on their ...
- 828
16
votes
Accepted
Are SWATs in the US mostly used for serving marijuana warrants?
SWATs are used more often for drug warrants than to deal with any violent crimes
An ACLU report © 2014 titled War Comes Home --
The Excessive Militarization of American Policing says that in their ...
- 26.3k
16
votes
Is this claim that "vaccinations are associated with heroin use" made in good faith?
The meme claims that:
children who are vaccinated are 85% more likely to inject heroin than those who are not.
Because the claim didn't mention which type of vaccines will cause heroin injection, ...
- 29.8k
15
votes
How lethal is Fentanyl in humans?
As an ER physician who routinely uses fentanyl to treat acute pain in patients, I can confirm that 250 mcg (0.25 mg) would be a potentially lethal dose in some circumstances.
When I use fentanyl to ...
- 151
13
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to get high smoking banana peel?
Bananas contain no known psychedelic substances, so any "high" that is experienced is purely psychological.
The book Rooted in America: Foodlore of Popular Fruits and Vegetables gives a short ...
tim♦
- 50.6k
13
votes
Accepted
In states where medical marijuana laws are passed, did prescription painkiller sales decrease?
Yes, this was studied in Medical Marijuana Laws Reduce Prescription Medication Use In Medicare Part D Health Affairs July 2016 vol. 35 pages 1230-1236 :
In states with medical marijuana laws, pain ...
- 99.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Was the quantity of Fentanyl imported in 2018 enough to kill every American?
According to Fentanyl seizures at US-Mexico border up 750 percent:
The amount of fentanyl seized by border agents has skyrocketed in recent years, from two pounds in fiscal year 2013 to ...
- 99.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Does smoking one joint give as much exposure to cancer-producing chemicals as smoking four to five cigarettes?
The USC webpage states
MARIJUANA USE CONSEQUENCES
The well-confirmed danger of smoking marijuana is lung damage and lung cancer. As examples:
1 joint = 5 cigarettes in terms of ...
- 14k
9
votes
Accepted
Is GHB safe to consume?
GHB is a fairly safe medication as long as it's not mixed with alcohol or other depressants, which can be fatal. An overdose can cause deep, unresponsive sleep with lowered respiration, but even at ...
- 382
9
votes
Accepted
Is driving stoned safer than driving drunk?
Marijuana, alcohol and actual driving performance found that a 0.04 g/dL alcohol concentration resulted in minor impairment, while 200 mg/kg THC resulted in moderate impairment, and the two combined ...
- 622
9
votes
Does a pair of trainers (shoes) hanging on a telephone wire mean the house nearby is a crack den?
Shoes (probably not those ones, specifically) mark a gang's turf. This practice is in decline, however gangs selling drugs, is not. Source, living in Chicago.
"It might appear to be a juvenile ...
- 394
9
votes
Accepted
Do most drug users not become addicted?
Although he does not state it clearly, Hayes is working under a definition of addiction that is tied to societal outcomes, in contrast to mere physical dependence. Here's the contrast from NIH's "...
- 51.1k
8
votes
Did the CIA sell drugs in the US?
Probably Not
There is no evidence to suggest that the CIA actually sold drugs in the US. There is plenty of evidence that they worked with groups that trafficked drugs like the Contras and Vietnamese ...
8
votes
Did the Nixon administration use anti-drug law against anti-war movement?
Apparently it is true. Interview with John Erlichman:
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently ...
- 181
8
votes
Accepted
Can fermented human waste ("jenkem") be used as a hallucinogenic drug?
I'm calling it a hoax.
Besides Wikipedia calling it a "presumed" drug and Snopes debunking it as you already found out, Erowid, which is a reputable and complete aggregator of psychoactive-related ...
- 78k
8
votes
Accepted
Is it fair to say that "everything we think we know about addiction is incorrect"?
In short, Partially.
This appears to be referencing the famous Rat Park addiction experiments. Prior to this study, the scientific evidence matched pretty much what is still commonly believed, that ...
- 1,354
8
votes
Accepted
Do the recent changes in US drug policy correlate with an increase in people moving from prescribed opioids to heroin?
There's a lot of literature on this apparently, and I've only looked at one (55-page) 2018 NBER paper. There is some (correlational) evidence that the "pill mill" crackdown contributed to the switch ...
- 51.1k
8
votes
Does most illegal fentanyl sold in the US come through Mexico?
I suspect that might be based on estimates using as proxy the US seizures of fentanyl at borders (points of entry more precisely). If we use that method, the claim is only nominally correct, i.e. in ...
- 51.1k
8
votes
Accepted
Did Harry Anslinger say these things?
I see no evidence that he actually said these things. I believe one of the principal sources for these quotations is this ad by Common Sense for Drug Policy, which ran in 2006. It claims to be a ...
- 40.4k
7
votes
How lethal is Fentanyl in humans?
A DEA publication states:
Although the total quantity of fentanyls seized may appear small
relative to other illicit drugs, fentanyl is more lethal to potential
users than other illicit drugs ...
- 5,509
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible