Why is khat illegal?

[EstimatedProphet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Khat, or qat, for those not familiar with it. It's considered a Schedule I drug based on cathinone, yet according to a study done in The Lancet, it is less addictive and physically harmful than cannabis! Erowid's (http://www.erowid.org/plants/khat/) experiences compare it to COFFEE! IMO this is similar case to how marijuana was vilified at the turn of the last century, as "something those dirty Mexicans do". Marijuana is still illegal in part because the propaganda was used to promote racism, and there's still people than think of it that way. Seems like khat is being treated the same way.

Crossposting from drug policy.

[ChiciB1]

1. WOW, Now That's Really Interesting To Me!! I Play Scrabble Any Chance I

get and have used the word "qat" many times, but NEVER knew what it meant. Just read the letter "Q" and other words that can be used that don't use a "U" behind it!!

Thanks for the definition and the OTHER information about what qat is!!!

[EstimatedProphet]

4. But that's a word in a foreign language, so it's not allowed, is it?

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. It is a word FROM another language, and has been adopted into

our language, just as 'algebra' and 'mesa' have been. There is no English equivalent, therefore, it is legal.

As a word, that is, not as a drug.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. OK - it's been years since I've played Scrabble

[DBoon]

2. because Somali immigrants have a bad reputation

Same reason marijuana was made illegal in the 1930's - the "wrong people" used it

You nailed it

[EstimatedProphet]

3. And it's disturbing to see it acting out in real-time.

[SlipperySlope]

5. Once upon a time drugs were prohibited because they were harmful...

Once upon a time, certain drugs were prohibited because they were believed to be harmful. That belief could have been well-founded, or it could have been based upon hysteria. The harm could have been to the individual, or to society. But at the minimum it seems like there used to be some standard where a substance had to at least be considered harmful before we would legislate it away.

That has changed. The standard is just "can this get you high". It is almost simply a war on pleasure. No longer does any harm need to be shown. The standard is just that if people can find a way to enjoy it, and corporations can't profit from it, then we need to ban it.

[Fumesucker]

8. Alcohol and tobacco are both harmful..

Drugs, by and large are not prohibited because they are "harmful", far more often it's due to who it is that's perceived to use and enjoy those drugs.

Opium.. Chinese immigrants.

Cannabis.. Mexican immigrants.

Cocaine.. Blacks.

Meth.. Poor white trash.

Ecstasy.. Club kidz.

Alcohol and tobacco are used by good, God fearing conservative white folks so there's no reason to make them illegal no matter how harmful they might be.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. Bingo

[SlimJimmy]

9. The last time I checked, coffee didn't

produce a toxic psychosis when consumed.

So far, the habit of chewing khat has remained more or less confined to the areas where the plant grows, since only fresh leaves are active. Nevertheless, in recent years the khat habit has made its appearance in regions far from the areas of cultivation of the plant, and this is mainly due to the possibility of air-transporting the leaves. Thus, fresh khat is now marketed in Great Britain (Mayberry et al., 1984; McLaren, 1987), which is of concern because the consumption of this drug may result in toxic psychosis (Carothers, 1945; Dhadphale et al., 1981), and because its habitual use is characterized by moderate but often persistent psychic dependence (Eddy et al., 1965).

Warning .pdf file

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1368302/pdf/brjclinpharm00064-0049.pdf

[EstimatedProphet]

10. This is nothing like what The Lancet has found

Also it's nothing like what history has shown for khat usage. It's been used since the 6th century - in Arabic countries.

Plus there's this:

Tijdschr Psychiatr. 2007;49(10):763-7. - Khat is a drug endemic in East Africa, whose active ingredient has amphetamine-like effects. Khat might induce psychosis, but there is no consensus about this in the literature. Two cases of suspected khat-induced psychosis are presented. Treatment of choice appears to be discontinuation of khat use, possibly combined with treatment with an antipsychotic.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200605160221.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/10/qat-herbal-stimulant-ban

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/03/nation/na-khat3

Given the history, given the study in The Lancet ( Nutt D, King LA, Saulsbury W, Blakemore C (March 2007). "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse". Lancet 369 (9566): 1047–53), given the multiple opinions that it is being singled out because of the Arabic cultural aspect, I question the decision that it should be illegal being made solely on its effects. Reading the article you provided, the authors discuss the toxic psychosis aspect solely based on 2 previous papers. I suspect that the side effects of khat may come from similar dosages to the kind that produced cancer from saccharine; i.e. so high as to be impossible in practice. And at those levels, even coffee produces some serious effects.

[SlimJimmy]

11. Amphetamine use is highly regulated or banned for good reason in this

country. The list includes drugs such as Dexedrine and Adderall (the ADHD drug). Designer amphetamines, like MDMA (Ecstasy) are also part of this drug classification. To say that Khat is no more harmful than a few cups of coffee is being disingenuous on a grand scale.

Read the study. The dosing amount was the same across the board and not considered to be abnormally high.

[EstimatedProphet]

12. 100 g is abnormally high. 100 g of leaves to chew at one time would be near impossible.

And let me be clear - I'm not trying to argue that khat is harmless, or that it's really awesome and cool, etc. etc. Frankly I have no idea what it is like, and I am going by experiences by others. But I find it hard to believe that there isn't a political motivation behind it, given the reports I've heard about it vs. the policy we have in place now.

[SlimJimmy]

13. I checked it and

The drug was given orally in gelatine capsules as the hydrochloride in an amount corresponding to 0.5 mg base kg body weight.

That would be approximately 40 mg for a 180 lb person. Not abnormal for a daily intake at all.

[EstimatedProphet]

14. This is in the discussion

In fact, the dose of 0.5mg kg-1 that we used in our experiments would correspond to the consumption by a person of medium body weight of 100 g khat having average cathinone content

This is what I was getting at before. The problem with giving a dosage in a study that is concentrated and extrapolated to a corresponding "real world" dosage is that it is just that - an extrapolation. It automatically introduces a confounding factor into the study design. Are the results because the the chemical being studied alone, or are they also complicated by the concentration, or the fact that that concentration enters the system all at once? As another example, there are a number of caffeine addicts that will drink 10 cups of coffee a day (around 200 mg caffeine total), and all they will suffer is jitters and bad temper in the short run. Down the same 200 mg amount in caffeine pills, and people have been known to die. Inject the same level of caffeine intravenously, and life expectancy goes down to about 3 seconds. The study methodology this paper uses doesn't allow for the fact that the assumed rate of uptake of cathinone for the average person will be less than their study design allowed (100g is roughly one quarter pound, which is a helluva lot of leaves), and also will be affected by the efficiency of the delivery method (chewing) and the time required to introduce it into the system (several hours at best, versus a few minutes). In fact, the authors mention this problem in the discussion:

Even so, the effects of a given batch of the drug depend not only on the alkaloid concentration, but also on the efficiency of the mastication
process, and with regard to the dose it must be kept in mind that it is difficult to increase the intake of khat beyond a certain limit because of the bulkiness of the plant material.

And to get back to my original point, it also seems ridiculous that khat is considered a Schedule I drug and is prohibited, when anyone in the country can go online and order Datura and Fly Agaric, both of which have been proven lethal multiple times in addition to being intensely powerful hallucinogens. I still believe that the policy response is in part because of the fact that khat is used mostly by Arabic peoples, especially Somalis.