Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to debunk,
Thanks Russell. For those of us who are interested these threads have been useful and civilised. I was living in the UK 2006 when volunteers died in these “human drug trials” .. so would not favour them for industry compliance. Students etc do it as a source of income..some go from one trial to the next .. spooky existence?
I think you make a sound point about the limitations of safety trials. What's becoming clearer to me now is where the gaps have been on the ground. I'm still strongly of the view that this legislation was the right idea, but I also think no one realised what would have to be done to address what was a problem at street level long before the Act was passed.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to debunk,
Don’t be rude, Shulgin. Respect to the elderly, not ranting….
Agreed. No one needs to be rude here.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Sacha,
MoH are more of a policy unit these days. Don’t do any service delivery like the District Health Board hospitals.
Ah. Whereas what this situation really needed was troops on the ground.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to BenWilson,
Just a thought here, too. The MoH may not have considered it a particularly high priority. They’re also in the business of harm assessment, and emergency services very much so. While it might be something that they’d note, a rise in this kind of problem, how does it really stack up against the constant flow of people they have to treat?
The programme following Campbell Live was Road Cops, which was end-to-end alcohol-fuelled chaos. It was a serendipitous bit of programming.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to BenWilson,
Then others that have any reliable connection to reported harms actually occurring. That does require some kind of reporting procedure though, which I’ve never heard of actually happening in A&Es.
My impression is that the adverse response reporting part is actually happening adequately. Other forms of monitoring, not so much.
Last night’s Campbell Live is really worth watching.
It’s pretty clear to me now that there’s a class of people – young, disenfranchised, mostly brown – in trouble with these substances, but it’s not a problem that started eight months ago. The dramatic reduction in the number of retail outlets has just made visible a problem that developed over the last five years while we were randomly banning things.
Pulling the plug now isn’t helping that problem. A couple of the users interviewed by Campbell said there was already a black market – people selling things outside shops – and it seems that’s about to take off. I think there needs to be a very serious focus on support services now.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Serious question: What would it take to set up a regime for “purity testing for active ingredients.” Someone who knows please correct me if I’m way off base, but I got the impression that wasn’t just something you can order off Amazon, or simply port in from overseas.
No, but the MoH had a long run-up to the passing of the law (which became active immediately on assent) and eight months since. The whole point of this law was that it would be clear what people were consuming.
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New Scientist: Safety fears spook New Zealand's drug reform pioneers
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Which sounds like a fundamental failure of the regulatory regime. What has Ministry of Health been doing for the last year? Looking at pictures of cats?
It certainly sounds that way. The Act provides for certified analyses, audits and site inspections. But I'm told purity testing for active ingredients has only just been implemented.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Andre,
The products they are retailing may be slightly different to those originally approved under the regime but there is no testing of the products so this is covered up.
And testing is something that's supposed to happen under this law.
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Hard News: Illegal Highs, in reply to Andre,
But I think the numbers involved aren’t that high considering the massive amount of the drugs that are being sold.
Yeah, this is interesting. The rest of us have had no idea quite how large the market has been and it only became apparent when we made everyone go to the same shop. Also: what your story says about dependence is scary.