Posts by vangam
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Russell Brown,
Thanks Graeme -- this looks really useful and I appreciate you stepping up as a fact-checker
So useful it'll take days of re-reading for a proper understanding to be realised.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
There’s unpleasant smells all over public places…in rubbish bins, for instance, and in toilets.
Indeed, try driving thru Smellfast (read: Belfast) everyday.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to nzlemming,
Apologies – I thought “not-in-employment” lifestyle excluded the "general population".
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
P is a drug of choice for criminal elements because it is profitable and suits their not-in-fulltime-employment lifestyle.
That is simply preposterous. If it were only used by the "criminal element" it would hardly be the scourge of society that we are told it us. The fact of the matter is, many people use it, mostly because they want an alternative to booze on a night out. Offer them better alternatives and 'P' will return to what it was in the eighties - for the lunatic fringe.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Craig Young,
the issue of P/crystal meth. In that particular instance and that instance only, I’m afraid that measures like harm minimisation and risk reduction don’t work.
Why not? Is there any empirical evidence for this? Or is it because this drug is so nasty that conventional interventions don't work?
I fail to see why harm reduction works with other drugs but not with 'P'.
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I'm not in favour of drug courts - I would rather see them not go to court at all. As it is, the drug courts are currently restricted to youth offenders, who are, most likely, dealing with behavioural problems - the drug use is probably symptomatic of and peripheral to the real problems. Too often drugs are used as the excuse or the jusitification. I get tired of teenagers admitting they have a drug problem - do it for ten years and then tell me what a problem it is!
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
But P does seem to have a higher attrition rate than anything else I've seen.
God knows why. It was the most underwhelming experience I'd ever had (which, I might add, is not inconsiderable) with drugs.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Bart Janssen,
So the compelling thing for me is that we've been treating drug users as criminals for several decades and it hasn't stopped people using drugs
But according to the laughable Pauline Gardner, we have been trying the harm minimisation approach for the last 20 years! It is true, in a manner of speaking; harm minimisation has been permitted in some small measure, but overall the policy is still dictated by the 'war-on-drugs' approach.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Rich Lock,
Thanks for that Mr Lock. The futility of that policy is illustrated by the NZ experience: when you stop the flow of heroin something even uglier takes its place, ie.'P'.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Tom Semmens,
I think a lot of people who watched this show drew conclusions that were not necessarily the intended ones.
I refuse to watch it because it breaks my heart to see the people on the bottom of the heap being kept there.