Even black market purchases are included in the phrase 'vote with your dollar'. So if you're wondering whether ketamine is sustainable or if your casual cocaine habit is bad for the environment, read on for more information about which drugs are most environmentally friendly.
If your name is Jan and you have a grudge against the youth of today, it's time for you to leave. To everyone left: Humans do drugs. They always have and they always will. I don't necessarily condone that, but we're not going to touch on any part of this issue other than the fact that recreational drug use affects the environment. So which drugs are most eco-friendly?
Cocaine
Cocaine is produced from the coca plant. Here are the main environmental issues, keeping in mind that the cocaine industry is RIFE with other serious impacts:
- Deforestation is widespread in the production of cocaine. More demand = more deforestation = less rainforest that this planet so desperately needs. For example, hundreds of thousands of hectares of rainforest is destroyed each year in Colombia for the cultivation of coca plants.
- Where plantations are illegal, law enforcement often use toxic chemical herbicides in an attempt to destroy coca plantations, causing serious environmental harm as it runs into waterways and poisons surrounding land
- In a period of 21 years, the spraying of these herbicides has completely wiped out 4.35 million acres of Colombia. This displaces farmers, who are forced to burn down more rainforest in order to grow food (and coca crops) to survive.
- The chemicals used to perfect the drug into a saleable condition can produce, on average, more than two metric tons of waste per coca hectare. This leads to devastating effects on biodiversity, hydrology and soil.
- 1 gram of cocaine produced = four square metres of rainforest destroyed
Methamphetamine
Meth is artificially derived, and not grown like cocaine or marijuana. A whole range of dangerous and noxious chemicals are required for production, and these chemicals can devastate the environment. Chemical runoff into soil and water tables will kill off plants, fish, and other aquatic animals. The byproducts of the manufacture of methamphetamine are commonly dumped into fields, rivers, and so on.
In addition, methamphetamine will be present in your urine and this is flushed right back out into the environment - even after treatment. In 2015, researchers found that trace amounts of methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy in Adelaide waterways were impacting soil, water microbes, insects and worms. They noted reduced reproduction, DNA damage, as well as changes in colour and weight.
I want to note here that perfectly legal drugs like antibiotics and other prescription medications have also been found in signifiant quantities in the natural environment - that's also not great for our fishy friends so we're all guilty somehow.
Ketamine
Like other drugs, ketamine has been detected in the natural environment. It cannot be removed by conventional waste water treatment. A 2017 study found significant reproductive toxicity in Daphnia Magnia, a type of crustacean, after exposure to relevant amounts of ketamine.
"Ketamine has been increasingly used both recreationally and medicinally around the world. Although the metabolic pathways to form its metabolite norketamine have been carefully investigated in humans and animals, knowledge of their environmental occurrence and fate is limited." - Source
Given ketamine is a pharmaceutical grade anaesthetic and is used in hospitals and the like in many countries, I'd assume that the biggest impact on the environment comes from this kind of usage. In addition, I think it is safe to say that the environmental impact of ketamine is considerably lower than something like methamphetamine, because the compound is very difficult to synthesise and so black market production is not common. Recreational users will generally be illegitimately acquiring legitimately produced ketamine.
MDMA/Ecstasy
I couldn't find a whole lot of quality information specific to Ecstasy, but here we go:
- Dumping of chemicals is an issue. In places where MDMA is unregulated, a huge amount of chemical waste created during production is illegally dumped in natural environments, causing severe damage to flora and fauna
- Parts of Cambodia have been wiped out in order to mine the roots of the Sassafras, a rare tree whose roots are used to make a raw material which is important for MDMA production. In addition, the processing plants for these trees are usually located near streams and so water is often contaminated
- Estimates suggest the production of 1kg of MDMA by reductive amination produces 6–10 kg of toxic waste, 1kg of amphetamine by Leuckart synthesis produces 20–30 kg of waste
Acid/LSD
According to a chemist on Reddit, a large, well equipped lab operating full time could make enough acid in one week to satisfy the world's demand for YEARS. There are claims that 90% of the world's LSD is produced by a handful of suppliers - mostly professionals. If this is true, I'd suggest the environmental impact is low compared to other recreational drugs.
Here's a fun fact - a 2016 study found that people who have taken psychedelics are more likely to engage in pro-environment behaviours, like purchasing eco-friendly products and reducing air travel and water consumption. Eat acid, save the planet baby.
Mushrooms
Magic mushrooms are in the psychedelic category, so eating mushrooms also makes you more environmentally friendly. They grow naturally all over the world, on every continent except Antarctica, including 19 species in Australia & associated islands. Archaeological evidence from the Sahara desert shows humans have been using them for more than 7000 years.
You can pick it yourself if you know where to look and how to correctly identify them. This is one of the only recreational drugs you can acquire and use in it's natural form without buying from the black market. There are no synthetics, no fillers, no unknown additives, and they are organic.
Even better? Studies show it is the safest of all recreational drugs to take, with rates of emergency medical treatment required for psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms being at least five times lower than for MDMA, LSD & cocaine.
Weed
God damn there were a lot of articles about this. I don't know why that is so surprising to me. Maybe it's the lack of specific information about all the others. ANYWAY. Issues with marijuana, MJ, sweet Mary Jane, the chron, etc etc etc:
- It's a water intensive plant to grow, requiring almost 23 litres of water per plant per day
- Indoor cannabis production = almost 3 pounds of carbon pollution per joint thanks to the significant amount of energy required to power hardcore grow lights; this is worse where illegality prompts growers to use shitty diesel generators in order to stay off the main grid
- Outdoor cannabis production = land clearing, edging out of wildlife, stream degradation, erosion
- Pesticide use affects waterways, flora and fauna like all drug production
- A study on marijuana watersheds in California found that weed production was responsible for 1.5 times more deforestation and 2.5 times more forest fragmentation than timber
- If you can grow your own or source local organic weed, that's the most environmentally friendly solution.
So what's the verdict?
You've heard of the food pyramid, here's the Ethical Millennial pyramid of recreational-drugs-and-how-shit-they-are-for-the-environment. Avoid the ones at the top. Avoid the ones at the bottom less. Pick your own mushrooms, buy organically grown weed. Namaste.
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