Shut up, Johnson.
You just want to stop people enjoying themselves. Shove your determination where the sun doesn't shine.
Websites selling mephedrone are already offering the substance for half its previous price, thanks to an imminent ban announced by Home Secretary Alan Johnson yesterday. Sites are offering a gram for £4.50 rather than the usual £10. Prices per kilo have also fallen from £4,000 to nearer £2,000. Johnson said: “I am determined …
What am i going to feed my plants now? My cannabis* will be as limp and lifeless as Cheryl Cole's hair before she washes it.
Bleedin' government do-gooders!
And I havent heard from Uncle Pablo for years. I am beginning to think i wont be getting any more "Colombian Hospitality" Packages from him.
* I wish to inform any law enforcement officers that the word cannabis in this instant is a catch-all word for any plant not of narcotic use, and that it explicity excludes any illegal plant.... Now get back to work.
So let me get this straight.
A couple of kids doing what kids do have the misfortune of ending up dead from a dodgy batch of legal drugs. The press jump on it with their usual ravenous dog attitude and government passes a law within weeks of it happening claiming that it can kill so ban it, supported by the usual dodgy research.
So shall we apply this twattery to something else, oh like smoking or alcohol? no of course not, theres tax to be made from them!!
Is anyone else aghast at how 'knee jerk' this whole saga is?
Shame they haven't pushed through all the expenses and cash for honors corruption as quickly as this.
The sooner we get these self centred, personal agenda pushing, media pandering scum out of power the better
Someone else can explain more fully, but
- Methadone is a heroin substitute prescribed for addicts (not always successfully as it's quite addictive itself). It's a synthetic opiate. It isn't illegal to prescribe although there is inevitably a black market.
- Mephedrone is a cathinone, derived from khat. All the cathinones (including methylone, for extra confusion) are soon to be illegal. It's not illegal to sell right now, although it is illegal to sell for human consumption.
The names are similar, but they don't have much in common.
Excellent, one quick fire sale of existing stock, and then we can look forward to buying stronger but more dubious stuff for a while before the next legal substance that does much the same comes along.
FFS, the facts are plain - prohibition doesn't work. I like the idea of "ban it until we have worked out the safe-sh dose, the fag-packet warnings and how to distribute it in a reposible way", but the "war on drugs" has been lost. It was as if our government were making sword & cavalry charges against dug in mechanised infantry.
"Last year the Home Office banned BZP, GBL and Spice - a smokeable, synthetic cannabis"
With a net effect of.....bugger all. More nanny state crap. If only they would spend more time and money on actually educating people, or perhaps enabling them to have a future to look forward to so they didn't feel the need to piss their lives away doing drugs.
Same old same old.
Legalise and maintain quality, reap tax benefits that could fund rehabs and education - proabably with enough left over to spend on some road safetey and hospitals (more people die in RTA's in a day than this stuff causes in a year!).
"Maybe if kids could get STONED in peace They wouldn't need to explore this seriously dubious concoction."
Maybe if kids had real WORK to do instead of lounging around being pampered all their lives, they wouldn't have all that boring free time to experiment with useless amusements like recreational drugs.
Go ahead, downvote it, like the good little follow-the-leader mindless sheep that you are.
Get your arse to Tuffnells parcel express. Preferably the Haydock depot, where they handle anything up to 30,000 consignments per night. If you can survive six months there (let alone the year and a half I managed before a bust ankle and no sick pay while working with an agency put paid to that), then you can say you know what real work is.
Otherwise, stop tapping away on that computer and pretending you know what work is. Trust me, if you had any experience of "real work", you would probably love the chance to come home and forget about the night shift courtesy of some steaming hot marijuana tea. Or maybe just a spliff.
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The current administration feel they must be seen to act - especially given their track record of "going soft" on drugs (cannabis decriminalisation). With the forthcoming election they are trying to pre-empt the opposition from gaining capital by accusing them of being a soft touch on drugs.
This has very little to do with anything except political theatre.
It also allows Johnson a chance to get a few inches of press before he joins the Millbands, Wacky Jacky, Balls & Brown etc in the political wilderness for the next couple of decades as the public seem minded to eject them.
Reminds me of that cartoon strip where two guys are talking on the phone about the war on terror.
Guy 1: "Oh my god, this war on terror is gonna rule! I can't wait until the war is over and there's no more terror"
Guy 2: "I Know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem and then we declared a war on drugs and now you can't buy drugs anymore? It'll be just like that!"
Some clever soul buys up 10kg of <insert soon to be illegal drug here>, cuts it with 40kg of baking soda, flour, you know, whatever's in the cupboard, sits on it for a few months till it goes proper illegal, then sells it at five times the price the online suppliers gave for the clean, uncontaminated product for their potentially dangerous, dilute product.
Basically, the Govt is actually going to contribute to deaths caused directly by the ingestion of badly cut product, and to the capital holdings of your friendly neighbourhood drug dealers supplier.
What a bunch of fucking idiots.
Steven R
Nice one Mr Johnson. There's now not a 17-year-old in Britain doesn't know about this stuff and isn't making their way to an internet cafe with switch card in hand. You know, had you left it alone, it might possibly have faded away as today's silly young tw*ts become tomorrow's adults. But no, you had to publicise it didn't you? As well as giving it the added kudos of being illegal and rebellious and dangerous. You realise of course, that you will now NEVER get rid of it, will NEVER be able to impose any sort of regulation or quality control - making it far more dangerous than it ever is at present - and will be obliged to waste police time and effort until the end of time tracking down backstreet producers?
Bravo sir. With a single statement, you've introduced a brand new and far more dangerous drug into youth culture at the expense of pleasing a few hysterical voters. Have you ever considered a career in marketing?
Oh no! I can't legally *sniffle* get out of my stupid brainless head any more *whine*. I can no longer legally take risks *whinge* with my mental and physical health *pout* and the well-being of those around me *cry*, all for the sake of a few hours of dubious 'fun'.
Grow the fuck up......
Thanks for that, AC, but could you explain how the well-being of those around you would be compromised at all by your ingestion of dubious substances?
Incidentally, I had to laugh at this the other week
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewmcfbrown/100028413/why-are-people-taking-plant-fertiliser-for-fun-inside-the-murky-world-of-legal-highs/
'Why are people taking plant fertiliser for fun?'
Er... for fun. (And it's not plant fertiliser.) The same reason people troll web forums, I guess.
"could you explain how the well-being of those around you would be compromised at all by your ingestion of dubious substances?"
Certainly. I was merely referring to the anguish your* loved one(s) would have to endure when they receive that call in the night, to tell them you've vommed your ring into a puddle and will need burying sharpish.
Or perhaps the friends and family you may end up stealing from to fund your dirty habit?
Sounds alarmist, I know, but it's an unfortunate fact of substance abuse that it can destroy not only your life but the lives of those around too.
And the sooner the "I just do it on Saturday and can totally quit when I want to" brigade get it into their chem-poached brains, the better.
Ok, rant over....
* Not you personally, of course!
"but if you don't fuck yourself up, it does no harm to anyone else."
That's true, no arguement here. But why take the risk? Is the pay-off really worth it?
I mean, getting high\stoned is great and you can have a fantastic time etc. but what are a few hours of fun compared to the risk of seriously messing your life up?
I know you can say that about a lot of things, that are perhaps much more likely to hurt you - such as bunjee jumping or driving a racing car. But in my experience, drug use hurts a much higher number of people than those other things and I can't understand, when people are fully aware of those risks, why they continue to take the risks and, worse, to argue their right to do so with such fervour.
It's just crazy, to my eyes.
Kind of reminds me of one person who is now diabetic, and gets money (well, vouchers) for alcohol because if they were to suddenly stop, the withdrawal symptoms would kill them.
Fucking idiot, basically. All done to themselves legally, too.
But hey, don't let reality get in the way of a Tabloid-inspired witch hunt against any and every possible form of fun that doesn't come from what amounts to yeast-shit.
I was under the impression that the ACMD was required to have a veterinary expert on board to meet it's requirements so, after Polly Taylor resigned, I figured the three new members of the ACMD would include a vet, but no: A pharmacist, a dentist and a phytochemist.
Can anyone explain how the government is still pushing ahead when the makeup of the ACMD doesn't meet its own rules on membership to issue advice and ACMD-consultation is required under the misuse of drugs act before any ban can be put in place (besides the obvious "We only apply the law when it suits us" argument)?
So some people in the UK has died from consuming a poisonous substance. Same sort of thing as drinking floor polish or meths - people have died from doing that too. The stupidity of the government however is not seeing that reponsibility lies with the equal stupidity of the individual for consuming poison but not seeing that SMOKING kills millions, yet that is not banned.
Simple explanation: Tobacco makes the government millions in taxes while mephedrone brings in nothing. The UK government puts finance before humanity? You bet!
>>So some people in the UK has died from consuming a poisonous substance. Same sort of thing as drinking floor polish or meths - people have died from doing that too.
Yes, but your logic's off. Quite a number of people have taken this particular substance and not died. One can safely say the majority of people who've taken it haven't died, in fact, and most of those haven't got ill, either. So I don't think the comparison to floor polish doesn't hold up, unless there are a bunch of floor polish drinkers who've evolved a special tolerance for it.
Model aircraft and car fuel is mostly methanol with some nitromethane and castor or synthetic oil thrown in for good measure. If you really wanted to get very high, then blind, then dead - it's about £20 a gallon for the really good stuff. Basic GX5 will set you back about half that.
Goggles, because even if you survive methylated body cells, your eyes won't.
You miss my point. I am not disputing the point that floor polish is more or less poisonous than mephedrone. I was just noting that substance abuse happens. Period.
The point I am making is that the UK government turns a blind eye to more or less harmful substances if it brings in money and I bet smoking and alcohol abuse kills a lot more people than mephedrone and other less harmful substances.
Having never tried any drugs (inc. alcohol) other than medical ones, I'd always have said that drugs are a force for bad and in the world and should be banned, but over the last few years I've completely resigned myself to the fact that they're here and that the only way to solve the problem is legitimising their sale (albeit still under limitations as to the amount sold to each person, providing some instructions with them, etc) so that you can control a) what they're diluted with and b) what's actually in them.
The entire idea of banning these and *most* other drugs is crazy in the extreme - all it does is make the 'rebel' kids think they have to have them and make other kids (and older) curious and so try them. But no, we simply have to, we simply must, put in place a ban destined to be ineffectual and cause masses of trouble and likely injury or death due to the highly likely increasing strength of the drugs and decreasing safety of what they'll be watered down with - and as I said vastly expanding the market.
Why whenever there is a drug related article here on the Reg do all the commentators come out in support of taking drugs? You all seem to have alarmingly nerdy knowledge about all the pro drugs arguments yet hardly anyone comes out to agree that some drugs should be banned. And using alcohol as your crowbar into the pro drugs argument just seems nonsensical, don't we already spend millions treating the side-effects of alcohol related illnesses and the associated anti-social behaviour it causes? Why would we want to introduce a new drug into the mix?
I've gone off on one there, I only menat to ask am I the only IT professional left here who doesn't take illegal drugs?
You don't have to take drugs in order to hold the opinion that other people should be allowed to take drugs. And why shouldn't they?
If they harm other people as a result, we already have laws against harming other people which we can use to punish the bad apples who would take drugs in situations that put others at risk.
On the other hand, if you manage to use drugs without harming anyone (except potentially yourself) then why should what you're doing be criminalised? Just because it's unhealthy? Please, everything is unhealthy. And besides, should we all be aiming for 100% health 100% of the time? Why? To what end?
You might argue that legalising drugs would cost us extra in health care. I argue that taxing the drugs would cover most of that, and the money saved not enforcing ill thought out drug laws would probably cover it five times over.
"am I the only IT professional left here who doesn't take illegal drugs?"
No you're not. I don't, either. However, that's through personal choice more than anything else, I've tried a few types, and just wasn't keen on the effects, rather than it being anything moral.
If they banned whiskey & cigars tomorrow, then I'd be "taking illegal drugs", and that's why I feel the need to be quite libertarian in my approach to this argument. The Govt bans substances, making them "illegal", quite arbitrarily, rather than on the basis of risk and science. As is often stated, tobacco causes more deaths than all of the illegal drugs in this country, and I smoke cigars, so I'll quite happily stand up for someone who wants to smoke a (safer) reefer.
The quoted research in favour of relaxing the drugs prohibition indicates that, were they legalised, many aspects to the current drug "problem" would disappear, alcohol would continue to cause the problems it currently does. I won't go into the arguments here, as I'm not particularly familiar with many of the nuances, and because other people will be able to explain them more ably than myself should the need be found to do so.
Also, I have today seen three alternative substances for sale that aren't beta-ketones and therefore are not covered by the ban (two of which are very nasty indeed, believe me). The sellers and the Chinese labs they pay to manufacture for them knew this was coming a long time ago and had contingency plans ready. It was a complete waste of time and money which will achieve nothing; although I'm sure the coke-dealers are feeling a bit better about themselves now the legal alternative is about to dry up...
Whilst it'll be 6 years till I'm out of Uni so I don't qualify as an IT professional yet, you're certainly not the only one who doesn't take drugs - it's just that many people who think into it end up gravitating towards the approach that they're here and all banning will do is push them underground and hence create way more problems than it solves. In an ideal world I'd like it if these drugs didn't exist, but we don't live in one and so a more effectual response is far more important than what I'd say is strictly moral as I see it.
Personally its not the banning of dangerous drugs I am against as long as theres a good reason for it, its the knee jerk type reaction that happens without proper research by the goverment. The problem is that prohibiting drugs doesn't really work, education would be a better idea.
I can remember when I first took an E a long time ago and the papers where full of Leah Betts and how one pill could kill you etc, and after attending a few raves and seeing a lot of people rather definetly not dying and actually having a good time I tried one myself with no more problem than being tired and having a sore jaw. Problem is that it did cause an attitude that what you are going to be told by the goverment is all balls and partly due to them being shills for alchohol and the tobacco industry. So it becomes a trust issue.
Things is drug use and problems that come along are more likely to turn up because the effects are insidous and its not a one hit your addicted/dead/whatever but more likely to come with constant long term use, and unfortunately that knowledge was definetly less propogated, combined with the trust issues of what was being told from both pro and anti camps and it muddies the waters.
Today there is still some of that problem and people are clued up enough to know that the odd hit of something is unlikely to effect you in any worse ways than alchohol, (and tbh not talking about the stuff that you usually see over here, (which is cut) but in comparison a 1/8th of a gram of mdma can cause you to have a very fun night and not really any bad effects the next day, so I am guessing that the impurities/ quality of manufacture are often worse for you another problem with prohibition) so it doesn't seem to make much logic.
Personally I think better education should be made available, non biased research from the goverment should be made and more rational descisions should come into play.
I'd rather tell someone yeah they can be fun but treat it like beer its ok when you're first getting into drinking to go out and get smashed every time like its a requirement but if after a while you're not growing out of that habit, don't get that occasionally just a pint or two or teetotal is ok, then its probably a good time to have a look at your usage habits.
Now I don't have all the facts and figures, but I'm pretty sure all the deaths for ecstacy were caused by dehyradtion rather than a reaction to the drug itself. However, if these boys died because of a reaction to mcat, then that would make it more dangerous than mdma. Why were they taking mcat over mdma? Because they wanted to get high... legally.
That about sums up the situation I believe. However what you've foolishly done is given every newspaper the opportunity to print screaming headlines of "DRUG MORE LETHAL THAN ECSTASY TO BE BANNED" featuring "scientists" (my benchmark of "scientist" being Gillian McKeith), concerned parents, a few local MPs celebrating the move and thus justify the whole thing.
Presumably, most of you would agree that it should be illegal for any idiot to sell painkillers or antibiotics from dubious suppliers in China - but many of you seem happy for the same type of idiot to sell legal highs from the same sort of dubious Chinese supplier. Personally, I don't see the difference, other than that many of the legal highs have little or no research performed into their short, medium or long term effects.
"In order to consume meths without the impact of bitrex, soak some bread in your tipple and eat the soaked bread."
i was told this by my English teacher when I was 12 or 13 never tried it though my dad had plenty of alcohol in the house which tasted strangely watery whenever my dad tried them.
Maybe what we really need to do is a populist campaign to ban alcohol and make it a class A drug. Maybe that would draw attention to how retarded the war on drugs is when the white middle class types start to feel a little threatened - I'm thinking something along the lines of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
(Now where's my Noodley Appendage icon?)
As far as I know you can have an allergic reaction to MDMA just like any other drugs but it very rare, also some people have died because they overhydrate instead.
According to an interview with one of the former home office scientist on CH4 news (think it was Dr King) one of the reasons they are gaining popularity as well is the fact that there isn't really any proper ecstasy for sale on the market now.
It costs about £2-3 quid for one now you ain't getting E for that.
With regards to some halucinogens, my beliefs are firmly in the 'shaman' tradition, i.e. not for recreational use, but for spiritual enlightenment and insight.
I haven't tried this defence with the Police yet however, somehow I don't think they will take it seriously as there aren't any extremist shamans that I know of ready to lobby government and the Daily Fail as to why my religious beliefs are being persecuted.
don't come from an Anglo-Saxon tradition, so good luck getting the Daily Heil to support you even if you can get Joey Nine-Trees Charging Buffalo of the Cherokee to lobby on your behalf. You'd end up with an article about how Good Christian Values (TM) are being threatened by heathen mushroom-munching, deadly-skunk smoking foreigners, and the Twat-O-Tron would be working overtime.
Once again the gov has responded to this issue in a childish way. Clearly the phenomon of taking drugs in't going away.Clearly the main concern is the physical impact drugs have on young physiques.
My idea is a licenced system, intrested parties can take a test and get a licence to self-prescribe. The govcan raise much needed tax from the sale of drugs, people can party off their heads safe in the knowledge that, well they know what they do as drug taxes can pay to help educate them.
Meanwhile the gov insists on puting this revenue and the safty of our children into the hands of unscrupulous criminals, criminalises indiviuals (which improves their criminal contacts) and keeps the gen pop in ignorance. One may think that there is some vested interest here, possibly to do with war funding.
I'd seen other media reports that users would or "should" be stocking up on the "legal high" substance before it became illegal, but this is the first report I've seen that tells us that legal dealers will be offering deep discount prices to get rid of their stock while they can. Maybe I -should- have been able to work that out for myself. But I don't even want it for plant food. I am an unremorseful plant neglecter and killer.
So, anyway, buy now, kids! It's never been cheaper! Sell your Nintendo!
(And your point is...?)