Talk:Drug harmfulness

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 August 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: LucasHill, Kissinger458.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:52, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Legal drugs

@Mangokeylime: Thanks for working on this article. I have some reservations about describing some of these drugs as legal as they are not available to the general populace and use if heavily restricted. I am interested in knowing what countries have legal MDMA and LSD. It would probably be good to add some references to the list. Sizeofint (talk) 01:34, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Oops that was a typo, I meant they were "illegal"Mangokeylime (talk) 00:04, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Validity of the article

There is no evidence that some drugs are "hard" and that others are "soft". This distinction does not exist in any field of science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zouloum (talk • contribs) 04:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

There is probably more of a spectrum than rigid categories, but the distinction is still made in everyday language. This article does have serious sourcing problems however. Sizeofint (talk) 05:46, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Rankings

2600:1010:B102:7E3D:EFDA:4A7C:EDA2:3B1C, I don't think the drug rankings are a medical claim. The study is simply reporting on how Scottish addiction specialists perceive the harmfulness of various drugs. The image in various forms has been included in high traffic drug articles since 2007 despite scrutiny from many medical editors. Sizeofint (talk) 05:36, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Generally the whole article reads like an editorial arguing that "some recreational drugs aren't that bad and should be legalized".

What an encyclopedia is supposed to do is summarize expert opinion on a subject, with weight given to different viewpints based on their prevalence among experts. We recognize the extent to which experts assign credence to different primary research studies by the extent to which those studies are cited in reviews and other secondary sources.

This article not only relies extensively on primary research findings (which we don't know whether they are widely accepted as credible by experts), it is also full of conclusions drawn by Wikipedia editors that are not made even by the primary source cited in support. The list of "hard" and "soft" drugs, for example, cites sources that do not use these words.

This might be an interesting blog post, but it does not belong in an encyclopedia in its current formby. It should be cleaned up, adding secondary sources, removing statements for which secondary sources are not available, and removing material supported by unreliable sources like alt.net discussion groups. If these better sources can't be found, the article should be deleted.

Rankings of drug harmfulness are as much a medical claim as claims of relative efficacy in tresting disease. MEDRS definitely applies here. Original research aside, most of the sources used here do mot meet even the lower rewuirements of WP:RS re— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1010:B102:7E3D:EFDA:4A7C:EDA2:3B1C (talk) 13:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

This situation seems very similar Talk:Electronic cigarette/Archive 26#MEDRS violation which didn't end decisively. I am still not convinced this is a medical claim but it would probably be good to seek wider input. Given the terrible state of this article perhaps it should be nominated for deletion (rendering the first discussion moot). Sizeofint (talk) 23:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The graphic under the Gallery section labeled "A rational harm assessment of drugs" is an very poorly made

The biggest issue with this chart is that there are lines connecting adjacent drugs. The harmfulness of the drugs is somewhat sorted which makes the chart look useful, but in reality, the harmfulness of the adjacent drugs are completely unrelated. These lines make it very difficult to not make the assumption that adjacent drugs harmfulness is somehow related.