Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: First-person media and the…, in reply to william blake,
I really wish I had a v log and an audience when I was an adolescent but I’m really glad I didn’t.
Oh man, I'd have been unstoppable with today's tools ...
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Here's quite a serve -- From Doctor Geoff Noller – in the comments under the Herald editorial:
Dear Editor, you have misinterpreted Prof Glue's article. It reports on the "three months before and after implementation of the PSA on 18 July 2013". Thus the results, i.e. a 42% reduction in EPS contacts and 52% reduction in patient presentations, are compared with the three months pre-PSA. In other words the Act had the desired effect of reducing availability, e.g. down from approximately 5000 outlets to about 150 (Glue incorrectly reports 50) and thereby harms.
It's erroneous to suggest that based on Glue's data prohibition is seen to be effective. Exactly the opposite in fact; it was regulation that produced the results he reports. Nonetheless problems clearly remained with both the Act and the products. These stem in part from poor implementation of regulations and lack of their enforcement.
For example, many of those paraded by the media were underage users who had accessed synthetics illegally, often in collusion with unscrupulous retailers. Significant problems also resulted from the Ministry's failure to educate consumers. Why should we be surprised that following 90 years of prohibition cannabis analogs at 1/3 the price should be so popular?
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Hard News: Synthetic cannabis: it just…, in reply to Michael Savidge,
Including this gem: “So much for the black market. So much for the claim that prohibition never works”.
One pretty major thing that editorial leaves out is that the study it quotes says psychiatric presentations halved during regulation under the Psychoactive Substances Act.
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I did quite a bit of thinking about this national character thing for the Great New Zealand Argument book, and one big thing I came up with was an aversion to theory. When New Zealand's social welfare system was established, reformers came from all over the world to hear what we had to say about it – which turned out to be bugger-all. It had just seemed a practical thing to do.
Mind you, we didn't later think much about the reforms of Rogernomics, for much the same reason.
I also concluded that we tended to work best at the intersection of practicality and creativity. Historically, we've been the skilled roadies and the great on-tour chefs rather than the rockstars.
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Speaker: Sex, monsters and outrage, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I certainly will, starting with giving myself a stern rap over the knuckles for not having the bullshit detector fully engaged when this first dropped. But you know why I was hard on Chris: Because it really sounded way out of character from someone I knew casually back in our student politics days and had a lot of time for.
I don't for a moment think Hipkins holds the views you ascribed to him. He just got caught by cynical reporting and online outrage, like a lot of people did.
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Speaker: Sex, monsters and outrage, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
We’re soaking in it, Chris, and the least we can do is at least start giving young people their first tools to defend themselves from it. It could quite literally save lives down the road.
I hope you gave everyone you know who took the story at face value the same lecture.
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These are not, still, my favourite things about our national character. A couple of years back, I took great pride in doing something that to me epitomised what it means to be a New Zealander. I had a conversation, on Twitter, with the leader of a major political party, about giant robot dinosaur vaginas. (There are no prizes for guessing which leader it was.) We live in a country where she could have that conversation, publically, with no repercussions. We also live in a country where she could be the kind of person who would have that conversation.
This is such an odd thing to bring to the argument (I'm beginning to suspect you're a quite unusual person, frankly) -- and also completely 100% on the money. That such a conversation could simply be accepted in the spirit in which it was uttered is something to be bloody proud of. Huzzah!
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First national flag meeting a flop
Apparently Christchurch has bigger things to address. Who knew?
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I’ve received a very civil letter from Peter Dunne, which is attached to this comment (see the link above this sentence).
My response is as follows:
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Dear Peter,
Thanks for your letter.
I think you’ve misunderstood part of my post. At no point did I say that MDPV, Alpha-PVP and NBOMe chemicals were synthetic cannabinoids – they clearly are not. But they were identified in tablets and blotters along with synthetic cannabinoids. These are not only risky combinations, they are all substances for which the principal supply is China. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the cannabinomimetics were imported by similar means to the other chemicals in the same tablets.
The report from ESR lists 15 samples analysed since July 2014, identifying 10 chemicals. It does not include the two “unknown” cannabinomimetics found in tablets, presumably because these could not be conclusively identified. (These tablets are described in a separate report, “Unusual Drugs Cases Sheet 2: Tablets/Capsules”.)
That brings us to 12 different chemicals, only three of which were issued with interim product approvals –– and thus could plausibly be “leftovers” from the period of regulated sale under the Psychoactive Substances Act’s interim regime. Five of the 12 are entirely new.
My statement in the blog post that “[r]ecent samples almost all contained cannabinomimetics never listed by the ministry,” should have been better-phrased. It would have been more appropriate to say that the majority had not been granted interim product approvals.
As you say, four substances were issued with temporary drug class notices prior to the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. But given the age of those notices, it seems hard to believe that the samples were leftovers from when they were sold at retail. I’m further assuming that the largest seizure – the 158g of JWH-018 seized by Customs – was made at the border and thus could not have been a domestic leftover.
So while I could have better phrased one part of the post, I’m happy with its general conclusion that synthetic cannabinoids continue to enter New Zealand for sale in the underground market.
I did bear in mind the two ESR scientists’ statements to me that recent seizures were new substances and that new substances continued to turn up, but the conclusions in my post were my own and should weigh on me, not them. I was impressed by the goodwill and helpfulness shown by ESR staff.
Thanks for the kind words about my work, and for the tone of your letter. I regard this as a fascinating and important area to write about.
Regards,
Russell Brown
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And another. Miley Cyrus's sessions for the homeless and LGBT youth charity Happy Hippie Foundation are quite a revelation. Here she is with Melanie Safka, doing Melanie's 'Look What they Done to My Song, Ma':
And doing 'Different' with Joan Jett:
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