Hard News by Russell Brown

Surely all recreational drug use is detrimental to the health and well being of the individual with perhaps the exception of reggae musicians. Until New Zealand society finds a way to turn around our mental health and child welfare statistics which makes our situation IMHO incomparable to any other country in the western world, liberalising our drug laws strikes me and I suspect many other citizens as reckless and neglectful.

Cannabis,loathe it or love it you can't ignore it.
Keeping it illegal hasn't helped has it?
Best to regulate and treat any issues as a health problem and not a law and order election posture I'd have thought.
Perhaps if it had been legal and controlled our synthetic problem wouldn't have occurred almost certainly not to the same extent.
As for hand wringing over child welfare and mental health how about the elephant in room warning re social harm, alcohol.
The lowering of the drinking age working out ok for you?
The treatment of cannabis with punitive sanctions has allowed criminal elements to thrive and given them the opportunity to go on to supply other far more harmful products cos it's all illegal anyway.
The misinformation in regard of it's harms has caused a credibility issue when authorities speak about other drugs.
I'm not saying that there are no issues regarding cannabis use but they are not as bad as has been stated ( reefer madness, for Christs sake! ) and using the law will not help with this.
In effect the best way to deal with cannabis is to open it up and deal honestly with it and not make it illegal and have the cops and courts as the first line of control.
It's here and it isn't going away.

The current laws around recreational drugs have been around for decades and are clearly a failure by any measure.

Surely continuing with prohibition is the more reckless option.

I disagree, I think original synthetics law established a new baseline for failure.

Great piece. Really gets my goat this use of the word cannabis. It really does matter.

We aren't talking about legalizing synthetics though.
The cat is out of the bag as far as synthetics are concerned and the main issue is the health effects which illegality is not addressing.
The evidence for dealing with these harms points to openness not lock them up and ineffective posturing.

The old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results springs to mind.

weeding out these misunderstandings

*applause*

Drug Harm Index didn’t explicitly talk about being remanded or sentenced to prison as a drug harm

If so, that's quite an omission!

all recreational drug use is detrimental to the health and well being of the individual

I look forward to your campaign against alcohol. Good luck with that.
(Speaking as a non-user, I’d still quite like to hear more NZ reggae though, so this seems one of the rare cases where other people’s drug use could impact me positively. I’m not exactly seeing a problem here.)

I feel bad for being so off topic.

I did like the recent term douche flute for vaporiser. Perhaps synthetics / fake marijuana are deserving of an equally derisive term?

Surely all recreational drug use is detrimental to the health and well being of the individual

That kind of logic would make any puritan proud, and wrong. We all need to relax (recreate as you say) one way or another. Do you want to be the one telling people how to do that? Watching sport isnt my idea of recreating/relaxing.

To what extent is the problem synthetics, and to what extent is it synthetics and polydrug use?

If “polydrug use” is simultaneous use of multiple drugs, possibly as one product combining several drugs … then presumably at least some synthetics are reaching the market as ingredients of such mixtures, so a clear distinction might be difficult to maintain.

I look forward to your campaign against alcohol.

Or for that matter the campaign against caffeine, or theobromine or….

Whats a polydrug?

Kava?

As Linger said above, polydrug use " is simultaneous use of multiple drugs, possibly as one product combining several drugs", although I used it in the sense of additional drugs apart from synthetics. My point was, what if it is the admixture of those substances that creates the problem? And have the producers of new substances adequately subjected their products through clinical and field tests to ascertain risk and potential toxicity beforehand?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/112674482/random-roadside-drug-testing-must-be-urgently-introduced

This is the first up on a google search in articles about roadside drug testing. I've never heard of Mike Yardley before but I only needed to see one other article of his which was a pro Trump piece and used the terms feminazi and snowflake in the first paragraph to understand his narrow political orientation.

Your piece is a very gentle fact check in relation to to this kind of disinforming bile.

Cannabinoid receptor agonists

That would be the correct term.

But since defining three words each time you describe the drug seems a little much I suspect it wont catch on.

I’ve never heard of Mike Yardley before...

What an enviable state to exist in!

He is Chchch's Mike Hosking analogue - with Stuff and Radio access
(ie: another right-leaning opinionated proselytizer and largely a waste of carbon)

At Last ! - Thank you Russell Brown for dragging this gross misuse of 'Cannabis' by saddling it with the word 'Synthetic' - It's pure deliberate propaganda from National Party types and other unintelligent right-wing species -

'Synthies' are bloody dangerous drugs, should be biffed in the "P/Meth" bag and are no comparison to Cannabis -

- Many folk don't seem to realize that this small country that punches far above it's weight is partially due to those many few out there that imbibe in an odd smoke and are naturally great sports, creatives, innovative peoples in so many fields - It is also true though that it is not the drug for everyone to try- It can have serious mental effects on certain folk and there is no way to tell who they are going to be- Usually if someone tries it and doesn't like it, leave it there & abstain - I say this especially for the sake of OUR children -

- I believe there is no place for Cannabis around Our children, period - Any banter about " Legalization" is selfishly ignorant of the potential harm that could happen if OUR children are lead to think it's okay to smoke cannabis - When they're adults, that's their choice and if age is to be a factor then 20 -25 yrs old will give them a great head start in Life - Lets face it, Politicians will say Anything to get their fix, "Power"-

Decriminalization is the only way the Cannabis Referendum should go, so, so many people have had their Lives seriously harmed by being busted for just use or minor possession charges- (Meanwhile Booze still continues to carves it's way through our people seemingly unabated) -

The other overlooked point is if Cannabis were Legalized, it would have a very serious effect on our economy - Politicians have no idea just how much this country runs on the "Underground Dollars" and if there are any brains in these money-hungry Govt's. they will stick to making their dollars from the many advantages that Hemp offers and helping those that need Medical Marijuana - No lollies or edibles though, as there's the ever-present danger of children getting them and that's especially dangerous when eaten by the littly's -

Thanks Russell, that's a huge relief to have that aerated publically, they all NEED to know ~