Sound As the New Illegal Narcotic? 561
ehrichweiss writes "The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is warning parents and teachers of a new threat to our children: sounds. Apparently kids are now discovering binaural beats and using them to get 'physiological effects.' The report goes on with everyone suggesting that such aural experiences will act as a gateway to drug usage and even has one student claiming there are 'demons' involved. Anyone who has used one of those light/sound machines knows all about the effects that these sounds will give and to state that they will lead kids to do drugs is nonsense at best. It seems the trend in scaring the citizens with a made-up problem has gone to the next level."
Level Upper (Score:3, Insightful)
Do it! (Score:4, Insightful)
I sing because I live with Satan.
Jenkem (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah no kidding, and you know why? People on Madison Ave. make huge money figuring out ways to sell more useless products to the populace. It has been proven that fear and uncertainty can significantly drive sales. Don't believe me? Google "fear drives sales"
Anything that alters consciousness is a narcotic? (Score:5, Insightful)
April Fools? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope! Not April 1st... Okay, that makes them taking this seriously a little more scary...
did today suddenly become April 1st? (Score:1, Insightful)
huh??!
Re:Anything that alters consciousness is a narcoti (Score:5, Insightful)
If binaural beats are made illegal and deemed "narcotic", then the "drug war" is more about denying people access to their own minds.
This is what the drug war has *always* been about. The rest of you are just now starting to figure it out.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." - Bill Hicks
Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Troll (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. Probably the vast majority of people on Slashdot know it's bullshit. But I'm not completely convinced that the people in charge of regulating drugs know that it's bullshit; and that's a bit scary (and incidentally the point of posting it here).
Re:Further Down the Rabbit Hole (Score:3, Insightful)
That was just... that... I mean. Wow.
I'm glad I was here for that.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
Listen, parents. Don't worry about drug use with your kids...altering consciousness is something that humans have taken part in for literally thousands of years.
Drug use is no cause for concern, and in the case of some kids, it can open their minds and expand their horizons. No, what you need to be worried about is drug abuse.
There is a very distinct difference.
physics lab now illegal? (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to TA for a physics course and one of the labs was about sound waves. We used empty plastic tubes and generated sound of a given frequency into them, then the students would change the length of the resonant cavity and find where the standing waves formed, and calculate the speed of sound from this. Then, the final part of the lab was to take the speakers and generate slightly different frequency tones and listen for the beat frequency. I guess this lab is now illegal in Oklahoma!
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
altering consciousness is something that humans have taken part in for literally thousands of years.
If Oklahoma is going to regulate activities which entrain brainwaves, they need to target the pushers purveying prayer and even training young kids and defenseless elders in its practice.
That's right, Oklahoma, go after the churches.
good for portugal (Score:3, Insightful)
you will notice of course, that portugal's efforts are aimed at reducing drug use
in other words, their tactics are different, but the goal is the same: reduce drug use
so there will always be a war on drugs, forever. in fact, there always was a war on drugs. tactics change, but reducing drug use in society is merely a constant maintenance function of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday, that will never end. you don't declare a "war on garbage" and clean your apartment up once, and never again have to worry about garbage. no, that's not the nature of the problem. same with drugs: its not some sort of "war" you win once and never have to fight again. no, its a constant low grade clean up effort
so yes: the notion of a "war" on drugs is stupid, but whatever you call it ("the cleanup on drugs", "the trash collection on drugs"?) you must realize something absolutely true: the reduction of drug use is an effort that will never end, whatever the tactics, forever
and if you don't know why drug use has to be constantly cleaned up, you don't know much about your world and human nature
uranium, anthrax, cyanide, ricin, arsenic... (Score:4, Insightful)
why the hell do you think "natural" has or should have anything to do with legality?
Re:good for portugal (Score:5, Insightful)
so yes: the notion of a "war" on drugs is stupid, but whatever you call it ("the cleanup on drugs", "the trash collection on drugs"?) you must realize something absolutely true: the reduction of drug use is an effort that will never end, whatever the tactics, forever
and if you don't know why drug use has to be constantly cleaned up, you don't know much about your world and human nature
You are sadly misinformed. Prohibition of any substance increases it's use, just look at your history books. The drug war, or whatever you choose to call it, has done nothing but increase dangerous drug use, criminalize otherwise law-abiding citizens, enabled a lucrative black market and seriously eroded civil rights.
Put down the kool-aid and do a google search or two.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
My point was that you can't have a full time job, a healthy family life, and still be considered financially successful while also being a drug abuser.
I don't see a dependency as being the same thing as being an abuser, though. Example:
My soon-to-be wife can't get started in the morning without caffeine; she has a dependency on it. That being said, if we suddenly found ourselves low on money, she isn't going to sell our DVD player just so she can go to Starbucks.
Re:because drug addiction destroys freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Society has mechanisms in place to deal with addicts. Criminalizing the possession of a substance only serves to make an already bad situation worse. People who are drug addicts eventually lose their jobs, friends, etc. That is enough of a punishment. A person can't be saved from themselves. They need to learn their own lessons.
Agree... (Score:4, Insightful)
and disagree. Education: yes. Using erowid as a single source: definitely not.
My nephew found an old tank of freon from an A/C service cart at a diesel repair shop. After reading the info and reports at erowid he believed he was perfectly safe to inhale from the tank. Apparently none of the reports and info on erowid mentions the dangers of inhaling freon from an A/C service machine: which is full of oil and contaminates from all the service discharges performed.
My nephew got more than he bargained for. Fortunately the I'm-sure-I'm-dying spell only lasted a couple days and only required one trip to the ER.
I would have told him, had he simply asked. However, not so sure he would have listened seeing as how brilliant the internet has turned him.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
My niece likes it when i pick her up and spin her around so she gets dizzy.
Should I be concerned that spinning is a gateway to harder stuff like cocaine?
Should I be demanding that her daycare ban spinning or other dizziness inducing activities?
Re:because drug addiction destroys freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
the worst jail in the most orwellian government authoritarian nightmare you can imagine, doesn't begin to compare to the bars drug addiction places in the mind.
where before a mind might contemplate philosophy, literature, art, now you have an interrupt cycle which turns this person into a drug seeking zombie
So what? There's millions of people who do nothing but sit in front of the TV watching reality shows and collecting welfare checks. They certainly aren't contemplating philosophy. Are you going to ban stupidity too?
You can't force people to be free. You can only provide them freedom to make their own choices, for better or for worse. If they choose to create a prison for themselves, whether it's a drug-induced haze or a mind-numbing existence of watching The Hills, trying to force people to live the way you want will only cause problems.
LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
so you want the GOVERNMENT to hand out addictive drugs?
think about that for a second, moron
in the name of the fight for freedom from oppressive government policy, you want to hand government the greatest tool of oppression possible: addictive drugs
i'm sorry, but in a world where the government is doling out heroin, freedom really is dead
people worry about the government having national id cards or keeping tabs on your internet posting. people complain about the opiates of the masses: television and entertainment news, killing our minds
and here you sit, advocating that the government become the drug dealer!
so you like being a slave, huh?
hilarious!
Re:good for portugal (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it simply increases it's price. And given market dynamics, that should reduce the overall usage... the problem comes in when the black market usage of said substance increases (which is an obvious correlation), which increases crime and all sorts of other bad things.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
..., if we suddenly found ourselves low on money, she isn't going to sell our DVD player just so she can go to Starbucks.
that just proves that TV addiction is worse than the coffee addiction