Posts by debunk
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
Read the article on the "evidence" and how difficult the whole area is
www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/26/hidden-dangers-of-legal-highs
No-one will do "trials" of these psychoactives because there are too many and changing too fast according to the market. I will see what I can find about this unit and the database - tho if its used by police and health sector must be useful for identification of substance type and therefore possible treatments?
"Really, if you'd said even 10 years ago that you;d be able to buy tryptamines on the high street who'd have believed you?" said Ramsey wearily." Times have changed.
"In comparison with regular drugs, there is hardly any data on the harm these drugs do."
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
Russell
Perhaps you could ask the MoH if it would be possible for them to obtain the TicTac database from the toxicologist Dr Ramsey at St George's Hospital in London and put it in a smartphone APP for local doctors and hospitals .. since apparently it is "used by law enforcement and health professionals in the UK to identify mystery pills and powders" ?? -
Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Sacha,
There is a database for the Ramsey work at St George's medical school in London..
He is described as a "toxicologist and drug scientist".."His organisation, TicTac, produces a database that is used by law enforcement and health professionals to identify mystery pills and powders."
Needs to be available as an APP.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Virginia Brooks,
Virginia
Need something like the Ramsey toxicology database (presuming this accumulated knowledge is going into one - tho appears not from the article) as a smartphone APP for emergency services etc configured as a decision support/expert system. Huge amount of info ( Ramsey "has spent decades collecting more than 27,000 samples of narcotics, which he has meticulously catalogued, labelled and hidden away in huge sliding drawers.") -
Psychologists call it "avoidance" - see a lot of it on this thread. Happy to be proved wrong. I would suggest "addiction" is a physiological problem and not just habituation to soothing "addictive" substances.
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Palm oil..palm by product..NZ dairy industry.."sustainability" ....?Mmmmm
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Virginia Brooks,
Virginia
So sorry to hear your story about Matt. I always wondered if my teenage son was going to reach 20 and that was just in the years of beer and marijuana through school, and assorted risky teenage behaviour. There is money about for NGOs. Perhaps this is what the Drug Foundation could raise funds for through the universities as the Neurological Foundation supports a Professorship in Auckland I believe. Though one would think the Poisons Centre would be providing analytical services and not just "advice" as it appears to do. My primary experience is in Australia where I taught in a course on evidence based medicine ("Critical Appraisal") to mid-course medical students for a decade a while back .. and in the UK where I have been doing similar things on research proposals for the NHS which, despite crying poor, has a substantial research fund. They are always looking for projects; I'll try to contact Dr Ramsey to see where they get support from - if any. Looks a cash-strapped project. -
Suspect an interested analytical organic chemist in the universities is needed with a PhD starter looking for a topic. Psychopharmacologists are increasingly calling themselves "neuroscientists" and preoccupied with brain scanning - where all the research funds are going esp in the USA. And they (we) generally look at the effects of psychotropic drugs rather than the composition..few are medically trained - in which case they are clinical pharmacologists. Lot of $$ involved to set up a laboratory with the required skills.
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The UK toxocologist John Ramsey "has spent decades collecting more than 27,000 samples of narcotics" etc (www.theguardian,com/society/2013/apr/26/hidden-dangers-of-legal-highs)..tho apparently his test conditions are pretty old so its not a "government" programme. The NZ Poisons Centre, though apparently based in the Pharmacology Department at Otago Medical School does not appear to do these tests and the Ministry of Health sent the Kronic one to ESR and the Expert-Advisory Committee on Drugs (EACD) which "undertook a preliminary assessment" and found JWH-018 -- this info on Ministry pages. So does not look as though there are facilities to do quick or thorough testing of novel "psychoactives" and the Ramsey tests seem to be a personal interest by an independent toxicologist - as described in this Guardian article.
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Prof Nutt is devising an "intoxicating cocktail..aimed at people who want to drink responsibly" ...
www.guardian.com/society/david-nutt-drink-alcohol-substitute-safer-intoxicant
Twit.