Chemical Pleasure...

[Embattle]

I've never really understood the argument of making it legal & educating people, surely it is better to keep it illegal and educate people....although I sure the education of people about the dangers of drugs has been going on for some time now, with limited effect on some people.

 

[Yoni]

Legislation will make sure the substance is "clean" and not tainted with impurities which can cause problems in itself. It will also stop people having to go to "dealers" and put play to the cannabis leads to hard drugs argument (so over used its untrue).

 

[-KnoX-]

This brings me to another question. What do you think about legalising canabis for medical use.

 

[Any]

Originally posted by Embattle
I've never really understood the argument of making it legal & educating people, surely it is better to keep it illegal and educate people....although I sure the education of people about the dangers of drugs has been going on for some time now, with limited effect on some people.

Why should you be able to tell me that i cant do something to my body?

 

[bigfoot]

Because what you do to your body can have a negative effect on the rest of society.

 

[Flamin_Squirrel]

Originally posted by -KnoX-
This brings me to another question. What do you think about legalising canabis for medical use.

It can be administerd as a oral spray which has no 'side effects'.

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by Any
Why should you be able to tell me that i cant do something to my body?

I'm not, if you want to be stupid and do it then there is nothing I can do about it but I sure as hell won't see it be made easier or endorsed by being made legal.

As BF says, it can have an negative effect on society by the loss of direct lives, indirect lives, money, etc, etc.

 

[rynnor]

Originally posted by -KnoX-
This brings me to another question. What do you think about legalising canabis for medical use.

It already is legal if prescribed - many people in the uk take it for arthritis and other conditions.

I welcome the lowering of cannabis to class C as a step to applying a little logic to the drugs situation. Its crazy that ecstasy is a class A drug yet alcohol/tabacco are legal - most if not all the bad side effects from ecstasy come from the drugs/chemicals the original drug is mixed with (plus a lot of the time people get hold of any prescription drugs they can and sell them as ecstasy...).

A large proportion of ecstasy pills are cut with LSD which can be a pretty nasty cocktail - if the drug was legalised purity could be assured leading to less deaths/strain on casualty.

This isnt the ideal solution I know - if it were doable I would be in favour of making them completely unavailable but its completely impratical - an unnattainable goal.

Factor in the terrorist organisations that use drug sales as a major source of income and the case for legalising drugs looks pretty strong to me.

The only problem with this idea is that its political suicide to even suggest it currently - the government should come clean with the fact that the war on drugs was a complete failure and that a major rethink is needed.

 

[tris-]

some of what people are saying makes no sense. first your saying they are stupid to take any kind of drug and saying that you dont want people to wreck their lives yet youd rather people took the drugs illegaly and in crazy mixtures rather than being more controled i.e. being sold legaly by the government.
mabe its me and my no compasion for other people or you lot cant make your mind up. people know drugs are bad for them but so fuck, if people want it they will have it. you can educate a lad all you want that smoking may cause lung cancer, but that wont stop them smoking. i mean look at fag packets "smoking harms unborn babies"; "smoking causes lung disease". we can be told till the cows come home but in the end its up to us to decide. seems some people think educating and telling about the effects will be the end of all drugs forever or something.

 

[r32]

Two points come to mind here.

1) Embattle, those diseases you claim that have been left out of the report do NOT cost the NHS 5.4billion a year when then diseases that have been included cost £1.6billion. I would have thought they would have been included if they did, as the government love ANY figures that put smokers in a bad light.

2) Cannabis should be 100% street legal. I fail to see how they decided that you should be able to go to jail for doing something which hasn't a single recorded fatality in human history. It's better for you than alcohol, tobacco, sugar, caffeine paracetamol and aspirin. Now, when something that's better for you than a commonly used painkiller is illegal, you know you live ina very, very fucked up world.

 

[Flamin_Squirrel]

Originally posted by r32
2) Cannabis should be 100% street legal. I fail to see how they decided that you should be able to go to jail for doing something which hasn't a single recorded fatality in human history. It's better for you than alcohol, tobacco, sugar, caffeine paracetamol and aspirin. Now, when something that's better for you than a commonly used painkiller is illegal, you know you live ina very, very fucked up world.

I really hope you dont belive that.

 

[Damini]

Originally posted by r32
Now, when something that's better for you than a commonly used painkiller is illegal, you know you live ina very, very fucked up world.

Better for you? Seriously, when was the last time someone developed schitzophrenia after taking paracetamol? I've known people who've freaked out so badly on pot they had to be hospitalised. Which, incidently, has never happened when they took anadol.

I don't think pot is teh big satan, but people that talk about it like its the mother theresa of all drugs rub me the wrong way.

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by tris-
the drugs illegaly and in crazy mixtures rather than being more controled i.e. being sold legaly by the government.

How exactly would being legal make them more controlled, last time I checked you could walk through London, in fact Kingston, and find many people who have drunk too much pissing up walls and face down in their own vomit.

1) The figures were not produced by the Government, IRC.
2) Hmmm....Ok.

 

[Tom]

What silly remark got r32 banned then?

 

[Damini]

Ooh, missed that. What happened?

 

[Embattle]

Maybe his comment in the DVD forum.

/shrugs

 

[Stazbumpa]

My slightly learned opinion:


The drugs thing for me personally is that I find drugs very boring, and lot of users are most anally retentive people I've ever met. It's all a fake, lets face it. What you're feeling isn't you, its the chemicals you just imbibed, the same goes for alchoholic binges that we Brits are so fond of.
There is a DJ bod I know that loves to shove the white powder up his nose, as a result he is more affectionatly known as "that wanker over there" as opposed to "my mate so and so".
Heroin sucks ass, and the people that use it deserve everything they get, from social stigma to collapsed veins. As for cannabis, its either the start of something bigger or the root cause of some of the most pointless conversations known to man.
On a professional basis I find that drugs are the cause of a hell of a lot of crime, heroin in particular. Smack heads are not on this earth most of the time, but if they need a hit they can often do very nasty things in order to get it. I actually know a bit about this, my job entails quite a bit of work with tossers such as these.
Ok, some people are in a mess and need help, but most of the ones I deal with are just morons that actually enjoy what they do.

The gist of what I'm saying is that downgrading is the first step towards legalisation, and with legalisation comes acceptance. What I'm asking is, where does this stop? How far is too far? Speaking from experience, humans seem to love fucking themselves up, and why should society provide the tools for this to happen? Like someone said, fuck yourselves up in your own homes, but in front of everyone else is not cricket.
But everybody here knows that its going to be in our faces even more so than it is now.

If you've ever had to babysit a heroin junkie with a 5 hour addiction, who just got nicked for smuggling 1500 quids worth of the stuff shoved up his arse, and he's beginning to twitch and cough, and look at you with a slightly glazed expression; then you'l know what I'm talking about.

 

[Rubric]

Originally posted by Damini
I've known people who've freaked out so badly on pot they had to be hospitalised.

Happened to me that. Tried a bit of solid every now and again then had a grass spliff one night that gave me a rather nasty panic attack.

 

[Scouse]

and lot of users are most anally retentive people I've ever met.

Bob on that.

Had a wide variety of m8's at Uni (ahhh, years past) - many of whom took all manner of illicit substances. The ones who did so in large quantities quickly became the most moronic, dull-witted, un-fun people to go out with.



Anyway - I, personally, enjoy growing cannabis MUCH more than smoking it. - Which is why I'm going to take my two big green bumper-sized garden bin liners full of my last crop and wang it straight onto the village bonfire on Wednesday nite just to see what happens.......

.....allegedly









/edit: I'd better point out that I never have (or ever will) sold anything illegal in my life.

 

[kameleon]

Robert Rankin came up with an interesting solution to the drugs problem in "they came and ate us".

 

[xane]

While I loathe to submit to unsubstantiated research, I find it interesting what Damini has to say on dope and psychological disorders.

Certainly I've seen several friends and friends of friends who are heavy dope users succumb to mental conditions, in one case I friend of my wife had a brother who committed suicide through depression, almost certainly brought on by dope, not only that but this caused her other brother, also a dope user, to get depressed over his death and commit suicide - tragic.

My jury is still out on whether dope causes mental illness, or accelerates it, or whether people with mental illness have a predisposition to use dope to excess.

I'd like to know what Damini's other personality thinks about it.

 

[Scouse]

Ditto with my little brother. Was a massive user and went totally bonkers


He's better now - but he'll never be "better".....

 

[Will]

Originally posted by xane
My jury is still out on whether dope causes mental illness, or accelerates it, or whether people with mental illness have a predisposition to use dope to excess.

I read some research on this, and the theory put forwards is that it triggers latent schitzophrenia. However, there isn't any way to check this fact. I know I haven't developed it (and if I had, I have other things to blame apart from dope). I have gone through periods of pretty severe depression, but I started having those before I started smoking.

All my friends who went off the rails did so because of acid rather than dope. One has been sectioned, one is in and out of treatment reguarly. Makes me sad to see, but also makes me glad I stopped when I did.

 

[granny]

Throwing in some information here...

First off the cannabis/schizophrenia link is entirely inconclusive. It's been *heavily* studied and at the end of the day 2 things have come out of all the research:

1) Heavy cannabis use seems to be weakly associated with an increase in development of schizophrenia in people already predisposed towards the disease.

2) There is also an association with patients already suffering from schizoid disorders to experience some relief from their symptoms as a result of cannabis use.

So there's no conclusive evidence either way. One thing is clear and that is that excessive use of *any* drug can trigger mental problems - alcohol is responsible for far more problems than cannabis but of course the question of scale comes into play there - there are far more alcohol users than cannabis users.


In terms of physical health implications of cannabis it's a lot less harmful than you'd think. Cannabis isn't addictive but there is some fairly good evidence of a higher level of respiratory diseases and lung cancers in heavy cannabis smokers. The main problem (in my view) is that it very frequently leads to users becomming addicted to nicotine - a far, far worse drug than cannabis.


A brief comment on the heroin issue... my step-dad used to do community liaison work with GP's who specialised in treating alcoholics and drug addicts and he says that the GP's used to wish that their alcoholic patients were addicted to something safe like heroin instead of alcohol. Heroin per se is a pretty benign drug. It doesn't fuck your organs, it doesn't make you violent and it's actually a lot less addictive than both alcohol and nicotine. The problems with heroin stem from it's class A status and the fact that getting clean, pure heroin is pretty damn hard to do on the street.


This is turning into a massive essay so I'll get the fuck on with it..

Seems to me that the problem with the current legal status of cannabis is the massive contradiction between the effects of it in comparison to already-legal drugs, namely nicotine & tobacco. The majority of cannabis users quickly become aware of this contradiction when they find out how relatively benign cannabis really is. This leads to mass flaunting of the law and denigrates the law as a whole.

Full legalisation now would be impossible for any government to achieve,regardless of how much they wanted to. In that light it makes absolute sense for politicians, health care providers and the police to lower cannabis's category.

In an ideal world I would advocate complete legalisation of all drugs. All of them. But that's in an ideal world... a long way away from the world we live in now.

 

[throdgrain]

Originally posted by granny
Throwing in some information here...

Heroin per se is a pretty benign drug. It doesn't fuck your organs, it doesn't make you violent and it's actually a lot less addictive than both alcohol and nicotine.

Sorry to snip up your post like this, particularly as you made some very relevent points.
However, this bit here is blatant misinformation.
I knew a lot of heroin users back in the day some twenty years ago.
I say "used to know", because they are almost all dead now. You dont die of heroin per se, but you die of heart attacks and stuff like that. These people all used diamorphine or physeptone methadone btw, as issued by the government. Diamorphine is a pure as you can get.
They didnt die in a year or two either, sometimes it takes 10 years, but die you do.
Heroin is far far more addictive than alcohol.
Im not doing the scaremonger stuff here, its not like you just have to be in the same room as someone who once did smack and your a junkie etc etc
But. Clinical additiction to heroin is after 12 day consecutive days. Thats clinical addictiction, vomiting, dt's , the whole hog. Never mind the mental thing, which is far more overwhelming.
No, it doesnt make you violent, Id agree. Well, not till you havent got any.

 

[Will]

I can see the point though. I've worked with alcoholics, and smackheads (as well as people using jellies). Alcoholics are the most unpredictable, by a long way. That doesn't make heroin a good thing, but it gives some perspective.

 

[Stazbumpa]

True, but the thing about violent drunks is that there co-ordination is often impaired so getting out of the way is a lot easier. However, a smack head with a knife in need of his hit is focused on his actions in a frightning way.


And the main point is that if you need drugs to enjoy life, then you have a shit life and need to make some changes. Drugs are never the answer coz you never own them, they own you.

 

[Chameleon]

Originally posted by Stazbumpa
And the main point is that if you need drugs to enjoy life, then you have a shit life and need to make some changes. Drugs are never the answer coz you never own them, they own you.

Not all drug users need the drugs to enjoy life, but use them as many people use alcohol. Your point quoted is too much of a generalisation, as are the vast majority of the posts tbh. This is to be expected ofc, as we are only voicing our own opinions which will generally be quite one-sidedly pro or anti, but the point needs to be made still.
The downgrade will have no effect other than to reduce the time the police and legal system have to spend on processing people who have done far less than most who get drunk in the pub and piss up a wall on the way home.
Grass leading to harder drugs only occurs where the person is likely to try them anyway (sorry ill informed mothers who shout about the evils of grass in the popular tabloid press) and excess use of grass leads to no more serious problems than excess consumption of alcohol. Most people know when to stop drinking to prevent becoming an alcoholic. The same applies to those who smoke dope.
I'm not pro-legalisation, but it does wind me up when the same old 'old wives tales' rear their ugly head.

 

[whipped]

I went through a big mental gap last christams and at first I put it down to the amount of gear I used to smoke.

But I'm entirley convinced that it had nothing to do with it.

I'm not denying that it may have accelerate the breakdown I had, but I don't think it caused it.

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by Chameleon
Not all drug users need the drugs to enjoy life, but use them as many people use alcohol.

Don't forget the two are the same thing, just different substances. Perhaps when people realise this as a truth, rather than a rumour, attitudes may change.

If you want a rush, get on a racing pushbike and do 45mph down a hill, thats always been enough for me.