Journal Austrian Anarchy's Journal: Who does not know caffeine is already regulated? Lustig edition 18
Apparently Dr. Robert Lustig is one of the last people around who is unaware that caffeine is already regulated. He uses it in an odd example in his crusade to regulate sugars more to his liking. While I was waiting for a magazine to approve or decline this article (they declined) I discovered that Jay Leno thinks caffeine is addictive. Also discovered that Adam Carolla, Dr. Drew, and Dr. Spaz brought some science to the discussion.
Not Regulated Enough Already?
What? (Score:2)
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take an article which thinks that caffeine isn't addictive (you'd have to have one heck of an strange definition of addiction to get around that one), or that in defence of second-hand smoke, links to an article that repeatedly emphasises how bad second-hand smoke is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Physiological tolerance and dependence, in this instance via the adenosine receptor pathway. Of course you could just ignore the science when discussing addiction, but that'd just be mythologising, wouldn't it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Qualitatively, something is either addictive or it isn't. Quantitatively, everything has a different profile in how physiological dependence builds up or goes down.
That you're trying to deny the very existence of addiction because you think "addictive things = bad", suggests that you've internalised some rather harmful ideas. The fact is that we have all this good, scientific evidence on addiction and substance dependence, and on the other hand you have this simplistic and patronising cultural "good/evil" c
Re: (Score:2)
you're trying to deny the very existence of addiction
You over-read me there by quite a bit. I'm merely asking what the definitions are, and who has the power to manage them. It appears that you may think yourself among them, wrapping yourself in a cloak of "scientific evidence", and dropping me in some Manichean [wikipedia.org] bin.
Gone seem to be the days when the peasantry were permitted to converse with the nobility, and inquire thereof.
Re: (Score:2)
My mistake, I assumed that the argument you were trying to make was that addiction is an arbitrary and poorly-applied label, from the theses you were putting forward. What was it you were actually trying to say?
Dare I quote myself? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The definitions are the ones I mentioned. The shifting weight of objective evidence has the power to manage it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to assume that there's some quantitative scale, and people arbitrarily put a dividing line on it between "addictive" and "nonaddictive". It doesn't work like that. Something either does the biochemical things that make it addictive, or it does not.
You do have a sliding scale of how addictive something is, how quickly it builds up dependence and how quickly that dependence is lost when the substance is withdrawn (this doesn't happen with oxygen!); that applies to everything in the "addictive" group
Re: (Score:2)
On caffeine, I'd go with a simple medical definition of addiction relating to physiological tolerance and dependence. It's the model addictive drug: you can actually see the effects on the adenosine receptors. Unless you have some strange psycho-cultural definition of addiction which doesn't seem to be something to build rational decisions around.
On second-hand smoke, let's quote from the Oxford article directly:
The fact that passive smoking may not be strongly associated with lung cancer points to a need t
Re: (Score:2)
The response to scientific evidence should never be "talk radio". :(
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, to discuss caffeine addiction you provided a link to a social science paper?