Posts by paulalambert
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Keith your departure is a loss for PA readers, but whatever you do I'm sure you'll continue being extraordinarily good, self-doubt or no. Before you go, do you have any comment on this?
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Do you mean that of the 61 admissions, 19 of them were actually readmissions?
If so that was how spinners in the UK presented their numbers for hospital psychosis admissions, but on an online discussion somewhere I read their numbers included multiple readmissions. However the Keele University report recently found incidence of UK psychosis had decreased. That report is still unpublished though, Gordon Brown is in Downing St nesting on it :) -
Russell, there is nothing in New Zealand to match the way you and the contributors here are intelligently discussing this issue in a factual and sane manner. In the wider context of drug debate, worldwide other people are still trying to have this discussion, but its very rarely reported here by mainstream media. For example, you won't see these :
What a UK police Chief Constable has to say, reported today . . .
"In an age of cost-benefit analysis... there is no appetite for solutions that have no visible return and no patience for any which will not bear immediate political fruit."And a Stanford & Notre Dame University economist . . .
We must urgently explore options that enlist market forces rather than support futile attempts to outlaw them.Heres a rather small-time Sabin-esque ex doorman
He said: “It’s a sad thing to say but schools are considering the use of dogs like Solo because they have drug problems. We go round schools routinely once a month and support what the headteacher wants to do. With that information we can educate parents and say this is a good school.”Its a sad thing to say but mainstream media are a very large part of the problem. Kudos to you all here.
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You speak the truth Russell, it was curious that so many Chch people had trouble with BZP, unlike other most centres. I have my own theory about why that happened. It involves the phrase 'quality control' and some pretty scary Chch people. Class D wasn't Anderton's idea, though he backed it while he commissioned that research. Only a complete fool would fiddle with the needle exchange.
Yes! I had occasion to fly recently and read the smallprint 'no peanuts' in our processed food.
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Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence.
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Maybe with drugs but not with fisheries.__
Anderton makes a big show of looking at the evidence but it definately wasn't quite there for outlawing BZP. Though he was responsible for commissioning the research - which I believe has never been properly peer-reviewed - our joke of an EACD, weighted for self-interest with customs and police, rubber-stamped it.
A real substance use expert (a Chch Professor) on the committee didn't even bother to attend the 30 November meeting where the ban was announced. Instead he was at an addiction seminar I attended in Chch that day, where an overview of the flimsy 'evidence' was presented to the 60+ attendees who work in the field.
Dr Gee, of Chch Hospital, who had made so much 'ban BZP' noise in the media was also there. He sat through the morning sessions on other topics, during which one of the presenters did a useful exercise: various terrible outcomes caused by an ingested substance were described, then a show-hands requested on whether it should be banned. Well over 80% of the audience obliged and had the grace to look quite embarrassed when he informed them they'd just voted to ban peanuts. Dr Gee didn't say anything when the BZP 'evidence' was described, then left.
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Perhaps most amusing is how drug legalisers are missing their opportunity to put this report to their own use... for its contents serve their purposes well, and perhaps were intended to given the looming review of the Misuse of drugs Act. As regards pot at least... not so well would it suit legalisers of P.
Still they would use the report contents to intended advantage (eg contrasting alleged pot harm with alcohol harm taken from other sources) at their peril - given the methodology is so incompetent in the round.Amusing ? I think most so-called 'drug legalisers' are tying themselves up in knots merely trying to promote a rational factual evidence-based debate (never mind what comes next). The scientific community don't seem to be of any assistance, and its clearly no use waiting for mainstream media or the politicians and police.
Alison Ritter said "The method applied for the Australian Index has been to decide on the purpose, identify all the outcomes, and quantify them through the application of a social cost" and I wonder who decided on what purpose here.
The purse-strings can be poisonous for the scientific community too, its no different here
Survey: People With Higher Incomes More Likely to Use Legal and Illegal Drugs; Marijuana Use Widely Reported in U.S. June 30, 2008 UN/WHO -
No, the Herald story today is based on selected parts (ie: the parts the police wanted to give them) of a report that isn't published.
Yes, very sorry about that time-wasting comment.
Would the Herald play that sort of game with any other government agency?
Could the answer be . . . other government agencies don't have quite the same impact on the sale of newspapers?
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...despite my misgivings about the methodology and some of the assumptions informing the modeling, I don't think this is "bogus". I do think it's partial, but it's damn sight better than "just say no".
I agree, and wish - from both a personal and a normlnz perspective - that more people in that middle ground were prepared to become vocal about it. I'm afraid that instead we'll end up like Fortress New Zealand, polarised to hell and back. This report merely reinforces community division, and enables the police to grow their 'underclass' and protect their resources based on a lie. And the MSM will pass it off as science.
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I think there is something published, I saw it on the NORMLNZ forums last night . . . 92 page report downloadable from this page http://www.berl.co.nz/content/aboutberl/projects/2008/1031/zealand-index.aspx
The NZ Herald's 'Have your say' is 6 pages of interesting comments
http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/your-views/2008/6/24/war-drugs-worth-fighting/?c_id=181#message -
It's that faffing around that keeps some quite irregular users from becoming slightly-more-regular. They can't be fucked finding their own source, so they just toke up when an obliging friend is around and happens to have some. It's probably not a significant number, sure, but it won't be zero or even particularly close to it.Matthew Poole,
I find that perfectly acceptable, but then I would. Younger people interested in using pot will faff more readily than their elders. Engaging with the wider black market, and those risks, is virtually the norm. I don't find that so acceptable.
Well I could have 100 hits on a vaporizer and get less tar and crap than from a cigarette nz native
I don't know about a 100 but lately I have been seriously thinking of investing in one . . . for my tobacco. I'm far more concerned about that danger than any minor pot use.