Digital Subliminal Drug Simulants: Good or bad idea?

[Shannon]

Let's consider this.

First, the situation is not about personal freedom. If that were everything we were looking at, I'm all for personal responsibility. That means, for those of you who don't realize it, that I am for the individual deciding for themselves, when it does no harm.

Second, once this sort of thing were released there is no way to ever undo that act. It would be replicated ad nauseum, and distributed ad nauseum. It would get into every crack and crevice of society, from the youngest to the oldest, whether directly or indirectly. It would be unstoppable and impossible to prevent the usage of, shy of what all lawmakers think is the only solution to everything: make it illegal.

Now we all know that making something illegal does not stop its use. Or it's purchase, or it's production. But we do know that making something illegal does feed into a pre-existing industry in which people now have a vested interest in keeping said thing illegal because they are profiting from that law being in place.

We could probably pay off the entire national deficit in 2-3 years if drugs were simply decriminalized and taxed at reasonable levels. And I'd bet we could also do away with income tax while we were at it. But that will never happen because at every step of the way, someone is benefiting from the way things are right now. In fact the penal system of the United States has begun becoming a private enterprise, meaning that it is a growing phenomenon that prisons are now a for-profit business. Not all of them, to be sure, but there are companies out there who build and run prisons, and they have shareholders. End result: prisoners for profit. As if the USA were not already the country leading the world in per-capita incarceration rates. Now we have financial incentives to put people in prisons. Now we have lobbyists pushing for laws that benefit these companies, and you know that those laws are not going to benefit you.

But the point is that drugs are illegal for two reasons. First, their illegalization reduces competition for those who have the power and influence to continue selling and profiting from them after their illegalization; and second, there are very good reasons why they should not be freely available to the general populace.

Let's look at one such reason. When you are on a commercial airline flight, do you want your pilots to be using mind altering substances? Let's use the "minor" example given in this thread of alcohol. It's a mind altering substance that is legal. Why not have your pilots be drunk while you're flying? Well, maybe because that would be a great way to kill and maim people and destroy property. Just like drunk driving does. Only this time, it's a hundred or several hundred people at a time.

Now let's look a this with a more serious drug. Let's say your pilots are on cocaine. Are they still as safe to pilot that craft as they would be off it? Even marijuana acts as a mind altering substance. If they were high on that, would they be as safe to pilot that plane? The answer is a definitive no, and this can be seen in the fact that those who stand to lose money if the pilots are drunk, stoned or otherwise using some sort of mind altering substance, will absolutely not allow the pilots to use them while flying. Money, as we know, is typically valued above human life by governments and corporations. So to see the cold hard truth, we have to see what the insurance companies would do, and what the airlines would do. They stand to lose money.

I have heard it argued that nobody ever got in a car accident because they were high on marijuana. The veracity of that statement is in question, because marijuana has the effect of diffusing your focus. That high you get is partly because your brain has shifted to an altered state in which there is significantly less focus, which is largely why people feel relaxed and have trouble remembering things while they're stoned. Driving requires focus, and flying a plane requires a lot more focus, because it's a much more complex task. So in large part these laws exist to protect the public from themselves. In other words, do you want to prove something that has been proven a million times over by losing your life or the life of a loved one, because someone doesn't understand the truth that driving impaired is dangerous? How many people have to die from drunk driving before we get it? And given that many people every year die this way because someone didn't get it even after all these deaths and all these years, how many people's lives are improved by having laws against drunk driving? Many, many of them.

The same is true for other drugs. Then there is the impact that these drugs have on society in terms of cost. Drug addiction treatment is very expensive and so is the scenario that happens if you don't get treatment. If we did not have laws against drugs and a social paradigm against using them, we would have a lot more people using drugs recreationally. But we would also have a lot more people becoming addicted, and they would be not only damaging their own lives, but those of the people close to them who are affected by them, and care about them. These laws are in place to help prevent this from happening.

If it were just a case of you can go use whatever drug and not harm anyone including yourself, then I would not care if my neighbors were doing heroin and crack and marijuana and such and such. But because it is very well documented and proven that drug use leads to damaged and destroyed lives, society as a whole seeks to work against that for the good of the whole, because every person is a member of society and each of us relies on the rest for the whole society to function.

Consider. I cannot go to the store to buy my groceries without someone making my car, if I must use a car to get to the store. That car is the result of an entire society of people working together to achieve the goal that is that car. If we look at what it took to make that car, we have the following components in use: Metal, glass, plastic and rubber. To get the metal for that car, we have to locate the ore, and mine it, and smelt it, and then shape it and transport it to where the car is made. All of those require groups of people to do. Then it has to be assembled.

The rubber has to be harvested or synthesized, then transported to the tire manufacturer, then heated, molded and transported again to the car manufacturer, which is to say nothing of the people required not only to do those jobs, but the job of designing the tire (including the design of the rubber chemistry, the steel belts, the shape, etc.), and then the people who make the machines that make the tires... and the machines that put the tire on the rim, and the machines that affix the tire to the rest of the car.

The glass has to go through a similar process, and requires many people working together in many different fields and jobs to become a window or windshield.

And so too the plastic and electronic parts.

To make that car, literally tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands of people working in dozens or hundreds of different fields must cooperate. And all of them must be capable of doing their jobs competently. Otherwise you end up with things like tires that fail unexpectedly. Engine blocks that crack under pressure. Brakes that fail during normal use. And people can and will die.

Now this is just making the car that I hop into to get from point A to point B. It won't run without a battery or gasoline or various fluids. Those fluids and batteries must also be manufactured and transported by various groups of people working together. From the geologists who seek out oil deposits to the people who build the drilling rigs to the people who actually drill and extract the oil to those who refine it, and the chemists who test and design each refinement, and then the people who transport the resulting engine oil and gasoline to their respective destinations, so that I can now actually start that car. Thousands and tens of thousands more people are now involved, and again they have to be of sound enough mind to accomplish these goals safely.

So now we have built the car and gassed it up, but for me to get to the store I must rely on all the people who designed the roads and built the roads, and all the people who educated them, and built their tools. So hundreds to tens of thousands more people are now involved, and all I have done is gotten in a car, turned it on, and driven to the store.

Now I am relying on all the people who built the store, and all the people who designed the store and the parts to build the store, and the people who transported those parts, and the people who made the machines that transported and put those parts together, just so there is a store for me to drive to and walk into. But it's not done there, because now we have to have things in the store for me to buy. And those things must be manufactured, picked, built, tested, designed, cleaned, packaged, transported, unpacked, put on the shelves, priced, tracked, and checked out. All requiring groups of people in every step to accomplish this goal.

The end result is that for any of us to do anything, we must have the help and cooperation of hundreds of thousands to millions of other people who we never think about or consider the involvement or contributions of. Those people are society. Society works because it is interwoven in a way that allows it to support all parts and not collapse. And that requires that everyone who is a part of that society be able to do their part, do their job within that machine. Which they can't do if they're using drugs, drunk, etc.

Marijuana users are going to argue till they're blue in the face that they can do their job better when their high. A lot of people use cocaine at work because it makes them work faster and not need sleep. Caffeine, etc. Blah blah blah.

The fact is, if everyone was free to use any drug they wanted, then the society itself would be at risk without developing some sort of defense mechanism, because then people would begin rendering themselves ineffective for safely and effectively performing their jobs.

Do you realize that part of why I do not drink alcohol is that there is no room for error in my line of work? I take even one sip and there is no guarantee that my thinking, judgement and reasoning is now not impaired in some way that will cause problems down the line. So I simply don't drink, and that saves everyone trouble. Do you suppose I could do my job if I were high on marijuana? Hell no. And I could not do it if I were on speed, coke, crack, meth, horse or any other of the recreational drugs. That's because they are mind altering. They affect your ability to focus and think clearly, which is precisely why people use them. Escape.

Now consider that a subliminal is an audio program. It is digital. It can be copied infinitely and distributed worldwide instantly. And it can be played on speakers to affect everyone in earshot. If a digital subliminal alcohol were to get out, and it worked, it would not be "light" at all. If it worked, it would render people effectively drunk. And anyone could potentially be rendered drunk at any time, regardless of what they were doing, because of the decision of one person to play said program on speakers. What happens when that person is sitting on a public bus and renders the occupants of that bus inebriated? The driver would likely crash, and the effect on the passengers would very likely result in a brawl. Lives would be at risk.

What happens if that same program is played in a high school classroom? The teacher and all present are rendered inebriated. I don't even want to touch the potential consequences of that, even before the administration, news media, parents and lawmakers discovered what had happened.

What happens if that alcohol subliminal is played at a bar? All the designated drivers present are now being inebriated against their will. The bartender is being inebriated. And people are getting drunk regardless of how much they drink or how fast. The potentials here also include lives at risk, pregnancies, diseases being transmitted, theft, fights, and worse.

Because subliminals are audio, and audio can be played on speakers, there is too much risk of persons being exposed and affected who did not agree to or consent to being exposed and affected, and the consequences can be life threatening if things are released that have the effects of drugs.

Why do you think I have not yet released the sleep aid? I have tested it now, but now I have to add safeties to it. I can release it when that happens. So why can't I just add safeties to the rest of these? Because there is a conflict. If the safety works, the program goal may be interfered with, when we are talking about creating recreational drug effects. If the effect is to relax you and I put in a safety that prevents it from working under certain circumstances, that can lessen the effectiveness of the program in general and prevent it from working at all.

And just because you don't care to pay attention to how crazy our legal system and political systems have become does not mean they are not present and accounted for. They're a crapshoot, at best, and I'm not going to risk myself, our company or the people who work with us over it.

The only benefit that comes from me making and releasing programs of that sort is for the end user. You cannot speak to profits, because there would be next to none for us because of piracy. And the point that existing companies would be able to lobby lawmakers to make our product illegal is a valid one. If I created subliminal beer that was 100% as good as or better than physical beer, it would collapse beer sales overnight. Everyone would be drunk all the time. This would threaten society, because drunk people can't work and be productive, and beer companies cannot make money and employ people if nobody buys their product. The society and the economy would be damaged.

So now we have the concept of helping people get off drugs with these. It won't work. Drug users who want to be off drugs will find a way regardless, just like people who want to use drugs will find a way regardless. But drug users don't usually want to stop, an it's just like smoking. Giving a smoker a piece of nicotine gum may distract them from smoking because they have nicotine now, but in all likelihood what's going to happen is that a drug addict (the smoker) is only going to remain a drug addict because they are still ingesting/partaking. You have not solved the problem, just transferred the source of medicating it. Or, they're more addicted now because no they're using both.

What's more likely, if I release digital marijuana in a subliminal form: people stop smoking pot and instead use the digital form, or someone figures out that the effects can stack, and now they're using both? Given that using marijuana is not just about getting high, but about the social aspect of the whole thing (groups of people supporting one anothers' validity in a given state of insecurity/self medication by smoking together), my money is on people using both. This does not make anything better. It only makes the situation more convoluted. Self medication is still taking place and the habitual and social aspect of it perpetuates it regardless. Only now people have the power to affect those who do not want to be affected, without their consent or knowledge.

Now anyone who reads all this and does not understand what a legal nightmare this would be is just closing their eyes. I am not going to make digital subliminal drug simulants. Even through a different company. Period.

That said, I am going to find ways to create subliminals using this technology that are safe to use and helpful. But it is my considered opinion and belief that nothing good would come of me attempting to create digital subliminal drugs.