Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: When the drug warriors turn

Farmer Green

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:08:07 +1300

But its getting close to the time humanity took a good long look at itself en masse (that’ll be fun)

‘there’s shitshow of that happening’.

Well FG agrees with you that it will happen, simply because it must.
He just wonders what sort of a shitshow will cause it to happen ; something fairly exciting he guesses.
Crisis/opportunity. Yes please.

andin

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 07:40:54 +1300

I'm beginning to like you Farmer Green quoting Alan Watts at length. The conservative pushback came in the 70's and has been going on ever since.
But its getting close to the time humanity took a good long look at itself en masse (that'll be fun) and the way we…

Farmer Green

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 11:02:12 +1300

Alan Watts on the use of the psychedelics (LSD, mescaline , psilocybin, and cannabis) :-
, . . . there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs may be dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous—climbing mountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space,…

Joe Wylie

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:56:14 +1300

"Methylphenidate was first synthesized in 1944 . . . by Ciba (now Novartis) chemist Leandro Panizzon. His wife, Marguerite, had low blood pressure and would take the drug as a stimulant before playing tennis. He named the substance Ritaline, after his wife's nickname, Rita."

As Lou Reed said, those were…

Farmer Green

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:42:31 +1300

"very old indeed"

Harrumph!

Joe Wylie

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:36:01 +1300

You could still get a buzz off it.

Farmer Green

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:35:13 +1300

Thanks for the correction : propylhexedrine it was.

Joe Wylie

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:22:55 +1300

Anyone remember the little benzedrine nasal inhalers that were used in the 50s and 60s?
Presumably you're referring to those little items sold as Benzedrex. Still available in the US, but banned here in the early 2000s. You'd have to be very old indeed to remember when they contained real…

Farmer Green

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 08:52:05 +1300

" there still needs to be developed an angle which takes into account the actual positive reasons that people might want to do drugs."

Perhaps the starting point should be recognition that ALL substances have a use and an abuse ; indeed , anything can be used or abused.
That…

Konrad Kurta

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:44:07 +1300

Very late post, but I just remembered this and thought it was pretty salient. If you want an idea of the degree that high-level obstruction hinders evidence-based discussions on the subject, here's the DEA head talking about marijuana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwaXsQY6Eg

BenWilson

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:05:38 +1300

Until there is widespread agreement on what the aim of any drug policy should really be (reducing harm would be a good start for me) then figuring our what works and what doesn't is going to be hard.

Totally agree on your main point here, aimlessness is really pernicious in…

Rich of Observationz

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:24:23 +1300

Under the US Constitution, federal law trumps state law

Not really. The federal government can only legislate for certain things. They purport to have authority over drug use under the Commerce Clause. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court (the members of which are political appointees and often not the best lawyers in…

Russell Brown

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:58:48 +1300

Annnnnnd ... the backlash:

A group of ex-US drug enforcement chiefs say Washington must crack down on marijuana use in two states that recently voted to legalise the drug.

Eight former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) leaders urged the Obama administration to sue the states

Sanho Tree is quoted:

Sanho Tree,…

Bart Janssen

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:59:30 +1300

Same comment as I made in a previous thread and as pointed out at the end of the post...

We should really stop doing what doesn't work and try something else.

But in this case it's more complex. I see two big problems with stopping the current response, first is…

DexterX

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:28:37 +1300

and while I'm off the subject::

http://archive.org/details/reefer_madness1938

DexterX

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:10:35 +1300

Like these guys are suggesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbIgfAdt9MQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Kumara Republic

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:50:35 +1300

Via Salon.com:

Prison, poverty and pot: The way to stop filling up prisons is to end the War on Drugs, curb inequality and change our perspective on class

Craig Young

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 10:14:37 +1300

NORML and Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis, George, but you're right. They don't seem to realise that they're seen as single-issue zealots, apart from the medicinal cannabis issue. It's sad, really. A serious senior politician needs to sit down with them and tell them the political facts of life.

Morgan Nichol

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:46:48 +1300

The couple of times I tried Kronic it was actually really nice.

[insert Labour leader here]

God I wish someone would.

Rich of Observationz

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:19:47 +1300

I would be interested to hear from a biochemist on that. My semi-educated thought would be that receptors don't work like that – some kind of ester of two psychoactive molecules is unlikely to behave like either or both of them.

George Darroch

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:12:54 +1300

And yet, as long as anything but NORML are the face of reform, the conversation will stall. I imagine it will take a Gareth Morgan style figure to charge a public debate; someone squarely from middle-and-respected New Zealand.

(Not that Morgan can assume that mantle comfortably any time soon, he's…

Kumara Republic

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:55:19 +1300

Indeed, the hypocrisy of the "soft on booze, hard on weed" brigade knows no bounds. Could one reason be that the financial model of cannabis is inherently anarchistic? The fact that Du Pont was a major player in getting it banned in the States, in order to protect its chemical…

Craig Young

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:25:48 +1300

Which does raise the interesting question of how much overlap currently exists between the Christian Right and the narcoconservative 'anti-drug' pressure groups. Konrad is quite right about the Conservative Party and drug prohibitionism, given recent comments by Colin C on that very matter. They've got a funny way of showing…

Luke Williamson

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:42:48 +1300

This government, and any government that follows, will have a real problem with anything 'evidence-based' because that will entail including alcohol in the equation. We all saw recently how government deals with any regulation of the alcohol industry, i.e. cave in. It is very difficult to be teaching the kids…

BenWilson

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:40:47 +1300

Sounds Wicked! But one does wonder, why not just have pot and meth, if that's your thing? As he concludes.

Ross Bell

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:12:46 +1300

Check out this "frankenmolecule": part pot, part meth, part LSD

BenWilson

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:39:05 +1300

The active ingredients get banned and swapped out whack-a-mole style

Yup and it's not clear if it was all synthetic cannabis either. Those effects smacked of an actual tranquilizer. Noticing him all silent, I asked him if he felt a bit sick when the dinner arrived and then his eyes…

Russell Brown

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:57:30 +1300

In 10 years of smoking dope in large quantities, nothing like that had ever happened to him.

The crazy thing is that it might not have been the same Kronic he smoked a month before. The active ingredients get banned and swapped out whack-a-mole style.

Islander

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:43:05 +1300

10 years of smoking dope in large quantities, nothing like that had ever happened to him.

Geezus!
Marijuana has been used recreationally, medicinally, prophylactically for millenia-
the human system copes with it…but new whacko crap – not.
To downgrade the conversation- I think the same criterion applies to butter versus…

BenWilson

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:27:26 +1300

Given the mounting evidence that synthetic cannabinoids are potentially much more risky than actual cannabis, that doesn't make any bloody sense.

I can personally attest to that, having spent my 40th birthday at the A&E with an experienced stoner friend who make the mistake of popping outside to have a couple…

Russell Brown

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:44:36 +1300

All good points. I still think there’s a knee-jerk, “drugs are bad, mmmkay?”, bent to strongly opinionated and poorly researched voters. I can’t see National tackling this issue if it alienates their core voters (fairly conservative older white folk)

Judith Collins is a particular offender. She's cynical to the core…

Russell Brown

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:42:04 +1300

I think the war has different drivers here, and I don’t know that it’s the same war. For example, concern from leaders in poorer communities about the effects of drugs on their young people. It’s genuine, not posturing, and if we believe in decriminalisation/legalisation we need to communicate better the…

Konrad Kurta

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:35:13 +1300

All good points. I still think there's a knee-jerk, "drugs are bad, mmmkay?", bent to strongly opinionated and poorly researched voters. I can't see National tackling this issue if it alienates their core voters (fairly conservative older white folk) so the Greens and Labour would have to tackle it. It'd…

Stephen Judd

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:18:55 +1300

I think the war has different drivers here, and I don't know that it's the same war. For example, concern from leaders in poorer communities about the effects of drugs on their young people. It's genuine, not posturing, and if we believe in decriminalisation/legalisation we need to communicate better the…

George Darroch

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:41:23 +1300

"It is up to ordinary citizens to declare a truce in this unwinnable war.", an opinion piece in the journal The Lancet declares, reviewing a recent film.

It's easy to see the insanity of the United States and make loaded assumptions that the war being fought there isn't the same…

Public Address

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:41:23 +1300

Discussion from blog post.