Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)
  • Richard Branson joins war on drugs.
  • BigJohn
    Full Member

    I’m on Virgin.

    What will this do to my broadband speed?

    jon1973
    Free Member

    Any more than a 10MB line is Intent to Supply.

    MrWoppit
    Free Member

    What a hypocrite.

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    sugdenr
    Free Member

    Virgin Coke anyone?

    therag
    Free Member

    Didnt he make his fortune from stonners whilst being stoned!

    kimbers
    Full Member

    multi billionaire tax evader who lives on a tropical island telling UK MPs how to run the country

    sounds par for the course to me

    even if i do think hes right, it’ll never happen the daily fail is more powerful than even the goateed one

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Actually a fairly sensible intervention. The war on drugs has failed – harm reduction / health / education based approaches work much better. Se Portugal and Netherlands and compare with the UK and US

    Papa_Lazarou
    Free Member

    Not sure about this – my concern is that if certain drugs are brought within the law and more widely available, many people (especially the young) may perceive that they are in some way normal or acceptable, as per fags and booze.

    themountaingoat
    Free Member

    What side is he going to be on?

    yunki
    Free Member

    many people (especially the young) may perceive that they are in some way normal or acceptable, as per fags and booze.

    and in a great many ways they are.. and perhaps should be.. and is it not also true that the very prohibition is the where much of the appeal lies..?

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    The portugese experience is interesting. Hard drug use is less of an issues than it was. Same in the Netherlands.

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

    MSP
    Full Member

    Branson urging callmedave to make a “brave decision”. I wonder if that’s a reference to Yes Prime Minister.

    nacho
    Free Member

    IMHO most illegal drugs are far more acceptable than fags or booze althoguh that’s a different thread I suppose 😉

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    This is the best consensus onthe relative harm of drugs as worked out by a group of experts looking at harm to indicviduals and society

    BigJohn
    Full Member

    I remember in the ’70s you could buy those great big Rizlas in the Virgin record shops.

    andypaul99
    Free Member

    Unfortunately any drug (alcohol included) leads to long term issues if taken in any great quantity. Apart from that there is evidence that even the so called soft drugs cause mental health problems.

    Comparing the UK to Portugal and Holland is pointless, as we have a completely different culture – we dont seem to have the self control with alcohol so whay would drugs be any different?

    LordSummerisle
    Free Member

    drugs are bad mmm’kay – must be, I’m agreeing with TJ!

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    TJ argues. Rather sensibly, for a change.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    WTF is a “mean harm rating”? Alcohol is 1.8 ‘harms’?

    I get that it’s showing the bars relative to each other, but what are those numbers supposed to be?

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    andy – portugal used to have one of the worst hard drug problems ineurope – it no longer does.

    In the UK we have more and more heroin addicts each year and the average age is younger. In the Netherlands there are less each year and the average age is higher.

    Our punitive criminal justice based approach simply has failed. I have worked a bit with junkies and locking them up does nothing of any use at all and costs huge sums of money

    So much crime is committed by junkies – 70% in some areas. Any significant reduction in the numbers of junkies would have huge positive benefits for society

    Every country that has moved to a public health approach to drugs has seen large reductions in the harm done by drugs. Punitive criminal justice approach simply exacerbates the situation. the war on drugs has failed.

    The portugese appraoch has worked, ours has failed

    Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Cougar – its just a relative nominal figure I think. You should be able to get the methodology if you want as it was a UK government research project

    Squidlord
    Free Member

    TJ+1
    But also
    AndyPaul99+1

    But there’s also the issue of morality – what business of the government is it to tell us what we can do to ourselves?

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    I don’t understand why heroin scores so high, is because people accidentally overdose due to unknown purity ? Or because of associated health problems due to it’s high cost and the likely personal neglect in causes ? In which case it’s the fact it is illegal that causes these problems – a known quantity at a known quality and at an affordable price would resolve the problem. I’m not saying that it should be legal, I’m just wondering whether heroin itself is that dangerous, or whether it is its illegality that makes it dangerous – I would expect both alcohol and tobacco to be much more dangerous.

    Papa_Lazarou
    Free Member

    I don’t understand why heroin scores so high

    On an individual level – highly addictive and very hard to get off, even with medical intervention.

    On a sociatal level – addicts are generally a bit of a mess and use crime to fund their increasing habits.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Heroin itself is not dangerous. On that chart it scores highly from the harm done to society which is an adjunct of its illegal status.

    If we gave every junkie a clean supply of smack they would be no bother and it would save the country billions. A junkie who has their fix does no harm to anyone – not even to themselves really so long as they eat. Tehy just become very dull.

    Thi is why the healthcare / decriminalisation works with junklies 0 it removes all the “danger” and “glamour” from being a junkie and just exposes the utter tedium of it

    leggyblonde
    Free Member

    would alcohol have fewer harmd (or whatever) on that scale if it was illegal and so therefore fewer people would choose partake?

    MSP
    Full Member

    would alcohol have fewer harmd (or whatever) on that scale if it was illegal and so therefore fewer people would choose partake?

    Prohibition in the USofA suggests it becomes far more dangerous.

    Squidlord
    Free Member

    Yep – demand remains the same, but prohibition adds scary people with guns into the mix.

    nacho
    Free Member

    Just think if all the junkies could get heroin on prescription (or by a.n.other gov’t approved method) then they wouldn’t need to rob, steal and generally cause crimes against society to get a fix. Of course there would still be junkies committing crimes just as non junkies do but the amount we would save on crime prevention and prosecution would be massive.

    whatnobeer
    Free Member

    Prohibition in the USofA suggests it becomes far more dangerous.

    As soon as something like this become illegal and you no longer no the purity or whether there are other things added it becomes a lot more dangerous. As TJ says, controlled heroin isnt too dangerous.

    Plus did the US Government not deliberately add poison to try and stop people bootlegging by increasing the chance of illness?

    MSP
    Full Member

    Plus did the US Government not deliberately add poison to try and stop people bootlegging by increasing the chance of illness?

    Nah, the bootleggers made the booze from all kinds of crap, and added all kinds of more crap to it.

    Just think if all the junkies could get heroin on prescription (or by a.n.other gov’t approved method) then they wouldn’t need to rob, steal and generally cause crimes against society to get a fix. Of course there would still be junkies committing crimes just as non junkies do but the amount we would save on crime prevention and prosecution would be massive.

    Yeah, and think what a boon it would be to the arts, every gallery the length and breadth of the country could have an unmade piss stained bed in it.

    whatnobeer
    Free Member

    Nah, the bootleggers made the booze from all kinds of crap, and added all kinds of more crap to it.

    True, but I remembered reading this a while back: The Chemist’s War

    headfirst
    Free Member

    He’s joined the war on drugs? Don’t they check for that kind of thing when you sign up these days?

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Not all drugs are the same of course and different ones IMO requitre different approaches.

    Th one I really cannot make my mind up about is Cocaine. Not really addictive in the true sense, many / most users it simply is not an issue for them in any way – no ill effects

    However it is implicated in heart attacks and strokes and I know of one death and one disablement related to cocaine use.

    However it also makes people into horrid stroppy greedy nasty self aggrandising people

    I would be happy for cannabis to be decriminalised, for heroin to be treted as a public health issue, for exctacy to be decriminalised even legalised but cocaine? dunno

    Lifer
    Free Member

    My mate Greg is a Cannabis activist. He has Crohn’s disease and after years of conventional drugs, and invasive surgery, he found that Cannabis controlled his symptoms.

    The government has granted a license to GW Pharma to produce Sativex, a tincture spray created by mixing cannabis with a solvent (in this case alcohol). This is available to patients, it’s legal to use in the UK.

    But herbal cannabis, according to the department of health, has no health benefits. Until you patent and license it obviously. The dangers of cannabis have also been shown to be a lot less significant than previously thought.

    The real question is, though, if I can use cannabis what harm does that actually do to the rest of society? They cannot claim that cannabis has too many health risks as a medicine as they are telling me to use Sativex, which is cannabis, or that it isn’t a medicine, because of the point that I just made. They cannot say there are too many health risks because there are far less then any other pharmaceutical drug that controls my symptoms. To get the relief I get from using cannabis I have to take about 16 pills a day. That gives me relief, it doesn’t make me feel comfortable, control my disease or allow me to live a normal life. They all have addictive side effects, they all damage my liver, some thin my bones, some cause malnutrition, most can be fatal if I were to stop taking them suddenly, several gave me acute psychosis, several were only add-ons to control the severity of the side effects of some of the others I was taking, most had low overdose potential, and as if the fatal (death) side effect wasn’t bad enough you could always get there through developing skin cancer, lymphoma or leukaemia (cancers). Did I mention that some carry very high chances of making you infertile?

    The only side-effects from cannabis I have suffered so far are gaining 30lb on to my skinny frame of a body after ingesting around 5 to 10 grams of high potency, medicinal quality cannabis – in herbal, extract, pill, edible and tincture form – daily for the best part of 6 months.[While investigating the medicinal marijuana industry in the US] Inhaling cannabis is particularly helpful for my illness as trying to swallow a pill or a drink provokes more nausea and vomiting. Vaporization is a very clean and preferred method of inhalation. For the first time in 5 years I had an appetite and eventually increased the foods I was able to digest the healthier I became and the more my intestines healed from the Crohn’s Disease. I was using the toilet once a day compared to the 12-20 that I was used to. If this is not displaying the medicinal effects of cannabis I am not sure what does more evidently? Just to confirm any doubts, upon my return to the UK and my lack of access to good quality cannabis due to the political status it has, I dropped 15 of those 30lb within two weeks (fourteen days) most of the symptoms I had been living without for the last few months (nausea, vomiting, blood, mucus, cramps, fatigue, lack of appetite, anaemia) started to return.

    My specialist has co-sent me a letter sent to my GP stating that I have “stopped using contemporary medicine and is [am] now using alternative therapy. He is doing remarkably well.”

    He reminds me that cannabis is a Schedule 1 drug that has no accepted medicinal benefits. It was placed there in the 2001 Misuse of Drugs Regulations and he claims that it did not highlight any health benefits of cannabis. Of course it was not the intention of the regulations to determine if cannabis has a medicinal value, it simply took its placement in the Class B of the Misuse of Drugs Act ’71 and placed it where the Government’s current opinion lay. I say opinion because Government policy in 2001 was already accepting cannabis’ medicinal benefits. GW Pharma had germinated their first seed 3 years prior in 1998, and seeing as there is no chemical alteration to parts of cannabis used from the plant (all of it except the fibre), Sativex as a final product is nothing more than concentrated cannabis oil.

    Cannabis is a harmful drug, try sativex (Pt.1)
    Cannabis is not medicine try Sativex (Pt.2)

    simonralli2
    Free Member
    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Its another aspect of our drug laws is we can do no decent research on the illegal drugs – either about their effects as recreational drugs or as theraputic

    bikewhisperer
    Free Member

    The US war on drugs has **** Mexico, Colombia and a bunch of South American countries.
    It really boils my piss that they can take their societal problems and utterly fail to fix them, but then manage to screw over so many other countries and cause so much death and suffering in the process.

    EDIT: and for what it’s worth, a mate of mine summed up cocaine in two words: dickhead dust.

    MSP
    Full Member

    If I ruled one of the south american cocaine producing countries, I would tell the US to **** off and deal with its own problems within its own borders, then tax cocaine production.

    As for its effects, I tried it a couple of times when I was younger, and don’t get what its meant to do. There was something recently where some scientist claimed that drunk people behave the way they do when drunk because of social conditioning, I am not so sure about that with alcohol, but I am pretty sure that’s what accounts for a big chunk of behaviour with cocaine users.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    If I ruled one of the south american cocaine producing countries, I would tell the US to **** off and deal with its own problems within its own borders, then tax cocaine production.

    Evo Morales has.

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)

The topic ‘Richard Branson joins war on drugs.’ is closed to new replies.