Posts by Russell Brown
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No Right Turn takes the opposite view -- that the absence of a Labour-Green campaign coalition will give National more scope for mischief, because National will be able to define the relationship itself. This seems counter-intuitive to me -- surely National would be more likely to make hay out of the fact of a formal coalition?
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Ianmac,
I wonder if Guyon will declare a war between National and ACT since (wait for it!) John Key has not declared that he will have a cup of tea with their new leader! Dark days ahead for ACT then.
Good point.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Farmer Green,
Will do. Good luck.
Thanks for your understanding.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Godfather…, in reply to 81stcolumn,
Had no idea about the connection
Until I looked it, me neither!
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Farmer Green,
Anyway, your call Russell. Leave it there?
I would prefer it if you left the conversation. You're just baiting people and making the discussion about yourself. Again.
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to Virginia Brooks,
The Psychoactive Substances Act may be forward thinking legislation. Prohibition doesn’t work. Hopefully the Act will drive demand for ‘safer’ products and educate as it goes. But much like the official economy, it will only ever control part of the market.
Yeah, I think that's true and everyone knows it. But the alternative was an uncontrolled market.
I do hope that eventually this kind of approach will cover currently illicit drugs. The situation with Chinese-made NBOMe drugs taking the place of LSD in the market is bad. A young guy in Christchurch was put in intensive care with kidney and cardiac complications last month. Whatever LSD's flaws, it doesn't do that.
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to debunk,
There can be a socially-mediated placebo effect with ordinary garden strength cannabis (same with laughing, or yawning response) but I doubt whether you will see it with these “legal high” concoctions ..which are selected for their desired effect as per chemistryworld article I quote earlier.
The adverse reactions to the most risky synthetic cannabinoids definitely aren't placebo. There's plenty to attest to that in the relevant Erowid experience vault. It's troubling that most of the adverse reactions involve JWH 018, which was the ingredient in Kronic and other pre-regulation products. It should never have been on sale to the public, but it was because until last year there was no regulation.
so much to choose from why would they market weak product, and why would consumers buy it?
Consumers didn't choose JWH 018 -- it simply happened to be in products made available for sale. Users had no way of knowing what was in the products they bought. It's not as straightforward as it being 'weak" or "strong".
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to debunk,
Robert Whitaker’s two books “Mad in America” and “Anatomy of an Epidemic” are instructive for anyone interested in how much research has gone into mainstream psychiatric drugs ..not a lot. The only useful test for the effects of these assorted “legal highs” will be hospital attendances, symptoms, deaths and disabilities, that one hopes will be recorded against the product type (assuming that the hospital can find this out).
Any approvals will apply to individual products, rather than active ingredients, and the same is true for the monitoring of adverse reactions. That's covered here. Reports are collated by the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) at Otago University.
The Authority's paper on reporting includes this passage:
"As with all post-market safety monitoring systems, including medicines monitoring systems, the data sources available tend to underestimate the risk posed by a product. In order to ensure that products pose no more than a low risk of harm, the Authority has taken a precautionary approach by setting the risk score for acceptable products at a very low level.
The effect of this decision is that a single report of a severe adverse effect, such as an epileptic seizure, is sufficient to identify the product as posing more than a low risk of harm. Details of the risk framework and the products which have been assessed and approved are available on the Ministry of Health website."
And how will the governments who allow this account for the social and health costs? These are the questions this blog should address, in my view.
It might help if you could address any of the reasons that this Act exists. You've repeatedly quoted the Chemistry World article. Why do you think that article describes New Zealand as "leading the way" with this legislation?
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And meanwhile, Keith Ng has just done the thing I asked about in my post.
People should read it.
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to debunk,
The point is that “A large number of synthetic cannabinoids have been designated class B drugs” (UK) “As with all legal highs, it is unfortunately not clear for users” (that) “many brands vary enormously in the compounds they contain” ie they are not THC – the main active compound in cannabis
No. By definition they’re not. That’s also covered in the original post.
What's been happening until now is that consumers not only don’t know what a given cannabinoid does, they haven’t even known what they’re consuming. In the case of prohibited drugs, it's even worse. See my comments on the NBOMe class.
As a post-grad psychopharmacologist I am appalled at the state of ignorance in New Zealand about psychoactive drugs and their dangers – and this includes anti-depressants, “mood” changers etc – all of which are poorly researched. No-one is going to “research” these legal highs if they can’t even do proper assessments of main stream drugs!
I’m hopefully going to be able to ask some questions about the trial and approval process of the authority soon. But the idea that even drugs formally approved for prescription by doctors can’t necessarily be trusted is kind of a different issue.