Yes not verifiable 100% certain and not via overdose of Cannabis.
Glad we agree, not a bad record for a recreational drug that has been in use of over 100,000 years eh? and one that is regularly used by hundreds of millions of people world wide every day.
So lets not count the several hundred people a year in the UK alone who die in road traffic accidents while under the influence of cannabis.
Yeah I agree lets not count them,
unless of course you can point me to the post in which I or anyone else has called for the legalisation of the use of Cannabis while driving?
Lets not count the number of cannabis users who commit suicide where cannabis use might be contributory to their state of mental health or their state of mind at the time.
Yeah lets not eh? unless of course you would like to show me the actual figures for the cases in which it was absolutely established that the person in question committed suicide because their mental health was damaged due only to the use of cannabis and that it was 100% established that they would still be alive and healthy if they had not used cannabis,
and keep in mind that every single study into the link between cannabis and mental health issues have one thing in common, not one of them have established beyond any doubt that it was cannabis and cannabis alone that was responsible for any psychological harm, they tend to use words like "probably" and "possibly" and "in some cases" and in those cases where there is an insistence that the 'evidence' indicates that in "some" cases the use of cannabis "may" have a detrimental effect on a few peoples mental health, with becoming "psychotic" being the favourite 'excuse' of the prohibitionists,
But the Elephant in the room in those particular cases is the fact that ALL of the 'evidence' points to a slight chance of becoming psychotic ONLY in cases when the person in question started using cannabis in their very early teens or before,
Once again, I invite the prohibitionists who use this "excuse" to justify their position, to provide examples of where anyone has even remotely suggested legalising it for use by children?
Indeed, the very fact that it is illegal and therefore the only people providing it for sale are criminals then prohibition actually makes it far easier for children to get hold of, as the criminal dealers (some of them) have no qualms at all about who they sell it to,
Once it was legal and on sale to adults from licensed outlets at a price that the criminal dealers couldn't compete with, alongside very severe penalties for anyone supplying recreational drugs without a licence (including alcohol) and every single penalty doubled if they were convicted of selling to a minor, the risks involved for the vast majority of back street dealers would mean they would find another way to make easy money,
who is going to buy from some shady geezer when you can just walk into a licensed outlet and buy a small amount of weed as easily as buying a couple of tins of beer?
the very LAST people who want to see drugs legalised are the criminal gangs, they are way behind any Tory minister on this one.
Lets not count the number of cannabis users who die of lung cancer, bladder cancer, testicular cancer where cannabis might be contributory.
Yeah lets not eh? because as adults most of us are aware of the risks we take every single day of our lives, and we are intelligent enough and balanced enough to realise this,... for example, what would be the more risky? sitting in your own home smoking a joint, or going to the gym for a work out? I know which is the FAR more dangerous activity, and it's not the one that involves getting a numb backside and possibly thumb ache from the playstation controller and a slightly emptier fridge,
do you know how many people die from heart attacks in a gym? do you know how many people die in road accidents on their way to or from the gym?
Take it from me, all things considered going to the gym for a workout every day is a HELL of a lot more risky to your health and well being than chilling out at home with a spliff.
Because despite all these cannabis users dying we all know cannabis is completely harmless because you cannot die directly from a cannabis overdose.
Ah well, see, once again you will have to find the post in which I or anyone said "cannabis is completely harmless" because I thought we had already established that it can be very dangerous indeed if a large quantity falls on you from a great height, so I know I certainly never said any such thing, and unless you can actually find where I have, or anyone has, then we can only conclude that either, you are fabricating stuff to discredit other peoples position, I think we call that lying? or..... you are lying on purpose, s got to be one or the other.
People generally do not need to smoke cannabis
Again, I am sorry but are you in this thread? only I ask because you seem to be arguing against points which no one has stated, mentioned, or come even close to doing. so you might forgive my question as to which thread you are in? who has said that people "need" to smoke cannabis? who has said that people "need" to drink alcohol, coffee? eat chocolate? because I can assure you, they don't "need" to do any of those things, but most of us do at least some of them for no other reason than we enjoy doing it.
and it is highly likely the road traffic accident deaths are due to the people being under the influence of cannabis
I see, so,.... all of these people guilty of this mass carnage on our roads do it because cannabis "makes" them do it do they? fact is the legality of a drug has nothing at all to do with a persons decision to drive or not while under it's influence,
In most road deaths in which the use of recreational drugs is deemed to be a factor, the word used are always "due to drink AND drugs" which is utter bollox and deliberate conditioning, because almost everyone only hears the "drugs" part, and yet there is never any comparison as to which was the drug having the most detrimental impact on the drivers driving, what they should be in fact saying is simply "due to being under the influence of recreational drugs" of which alcohol is most certainly one.
and possible that some of the suicides and cancer deaths might be linked to cannabis use. So why take the risk? Alcohol kills vastly more people but two wrongs do not make a right.
Why take the risk? well, to quote the late great Bill Hicks, none smokers die every day,
"Risk" is a very subjective thing, what might appear as "risky" to you, may seem everyday and run of the mill for me, and vice versa,
I ride a motorbike and have done for over 40 years, many people would find that risky whereas I don't. being alive is very risky indeed.
Dont think its about going soft on drugs, its about still sticking to a system that has not worked, is not working and will not work, the war on drugs was lost along time ago, and nothing has been gained for all the billions of pounds spent, and trillions of man hours that has not gained a thing, it is time to look at the whole drug issue again and keep a open mind while every ave is looked into.
Neither did we ever "go soft" on drugs, in fact we are 'harder' on them now than at almost any other time in our history, but then, people who tend to never question anything very rarely know any of the answers so they make stuff up instead.
It worked before prohibition, which started in a large scale way throughout the 70's and 80's,
Prohibition was the thing which triggered the epidemic of global drug use - statistically speaking; quite simply it wasn't actually much of a problem before this.
If you had a time machine and could go back to earlier parts of the twentieth century you'd find virtually no drug addicts or drugs available to purchase on the streets. In the UK I think there was something like less than 1,000 Heroin addicts in the 60's, and more than 300,000 now.
Neither did we ever "go soft" on drugs, in fact we are 'harder' on them now than at almost any other time in our history, but then, people who tend to never question anything very rarely know any of the answers so they make stuff up instead.
When we were not soft on drugs we had zero tolerance for possession. We had prosecutions not cautions.
It worked before prohibition, which started in a large scale way throughout the 70's and 80's,
Prohibition was the thing which triggered the epidemic of global drug use - statistically speaking; quite simply it wasn't actually much of a problem before this.
If you had a time machine and could go back to earlier parts of the twentieth century you'd find virtually no drug addicts or drugs available to purchase on the streets. In the UK I think there was something like less than 1,000 Heroin addicts in the 60's, and more than 300,000 now.
In other words, we are now too soft on this crime.
When we were not soft on drugs we had zero tolerance for possession. We had prosecutions not cautions.
In other words, we are now too soft on this crime.
I'm speechless at your general lack of comprehension.
Drugs were completely legal pre-prohibition. We didn't prosecute people because the Misuse of Drugs Act didn't exist. That's the whole point, prohibition didn't exist for f*ck sake
Things were 'softer' then than they are now because then there were no laws surrounding drugs. This really isn't a complex thing to understand.
I genuinely wonder if you're a troll sometimes, or just not very bright
It might have been possible if all the major pharmaceutical billion pound/dollar profit making companies didn't have so much invested in far more expensive methods of producing effective pain medication, We certainly can't have an effective medicinal drug that could be grown by your average granny in her greenhouse now could we?
What would that do to all that luverly profit that the drug companies are only ever interested in?
Hell, can you imagine what would happen tomorrow if someone came up with a way of turning water into an effective fuel for the internal combustion engine? I can almost guarantee that within weeks there would be undeniable proof that it causes cancer and/or destroys the environment.
To be honest, i think the drug companies would love it if cannabis was legalised / decriminalised, they would stand to make a fortune even if some people did grow their own.
It's possible to brew your own beer, but that hasnt stopped all manner of businesses making a lot of money off the alcohol trade so I don't see why cannabis would be any different - there's a lot of money to be made from the paraphanalia, selling seeds, weed, opening coffee shops, everyone can get in on the action, not just drug companies.
TBH Id have thought this would be right up the tories street!
Doubt the French care and if they do they are just looking on disaprovingly. The only reason we are now ahead of them on GDP is because we chose to count prostitution and illegal drugs guesstimates while they refused to do so. They view that they are often not voluntary commercial enterprise as prostitutes maybe victims of sex trafficking or otherwise working under duress and illegal drugs maybe bought by drug addicts who being addicts are not choosing to be customers and many fund their drug habits through crime. While the UK government in their wisdom would probably add murder for hire if it upped the GDP figures and the EU allowed them to add it.
This is rubbish, all countries are now forced to include black market activity in GDP by law, including France and the UK has one of the smallest black markets n the EU.
This is rubbish, all countries are now forced to include black market activity in GDP by law, including France and the UK has one of the smallest black markets n the EU.
France has chosen to not include illegal drugs and prostituition as it views such activities as non voluntary. http://www.english.rfi.fr/economy/20140618-france-refue-eu-order-include-drugs-prostitution-gdp-figures
The UK has chosen to include illegal drugs and prostitution and as a result our GDP is barely above France's GDP that does not include illegal drugs and prostitution, if France included these activities then France would have a higher GDP than the UK.
What you say is perfectly correct, but no serious person is recommending alcohol should be illegal, are they?
My point was two wrongs do not make a right. You cannot justify legalisation of cannabis on the basis that a more harmful drug alcohol is already legal.
At present hands are tied. Giving genuine harm-reduction information (other than the promotion of total abstinence) is very difficult legally speaking for educators. It's actually completely impossible for people like head-shops. If they give harm reduction information, they become guilty of a crime of endorsement.
Department for Education and Employment
‘Just Say No’ and ‘shock/ scare’ approaches are likely to be ineffective and may even be counterproductive
Good quality drug education can impact on changes in specific drug using patterns
Accurate and up to date information about drugs is an important component of drug education
As far as headshops are concerned are you talking just about legal highs. Things they are ostensibly selling not for human consumption, that in reality irresponsible or callous shops are knowingly selling to people for them to abuse despite them being unsafe and resulting in many deaths each year. You may as well be arguing that shops selling glue, gases and aerosols should be able to market them to people as things to abuse and give advice on how to best use them, despite doing so being dangerous. The law needs changing to stop shops selling legal highs to people to abuse not changed to give them respectablity, they are scum of the earth no better than dealers in dangerous illegal drugs.
As far as headshops are concerned are you talking just about legal highs. Things they are ostensibly selling not for human consumption, that in reality irresponsible or callous shops are knowingly selling to people for them to abuse despite them being unsafe and resulting in many deaths each year. You may as well be arguing that shops selling glue, gases and aerosols should be able to market them to people as things to abuse and give advice on how to best use them, despite doing so being dangerous. The law needs changing to stop shops selling legal highs to people to abuse not changed to give them respectablity, they are scum of the earth no better than dealers in dangerous illegal drugs.
If you stopped a shop selling legal highs, this will not make them go away. It never has and never will do. What will happen is, if people want them, they will find them from dubious sources, at an inflated, untaxed price - and probably adulterated with crap you really shouldn't be putting in your body.
Not to mention the dubious sources are not exactly law abiding themselves, so therefore by keeping drugs illegal / criminal, normal people will also be funding god knows what else.
If you stopped a shop selling legal highs, this will not make them go away. It never has and never will do. What will happen is, if people want them, they will find them from dubious sources, at an inflated, untaxed price - and probably adulterated with crap you really shouldn't be putting in your body.
Mephedrone became popular when it was legal due to being far cheaper and higher purity than illegal cocaine and ecstacy which were getting lower purity and more expensive due to the sucess of drug seizures. The rise in it is use reported in your link is based of a survery shortly after it was made illegal at two London gay dance clubs that have lots of drug users. It reflects changing drug of choice amongst drug users. And according to your link one explaniation is that it still cheaper and higher purity than cocaine. Despite becoming more expensive since being made illegal. According to your link it was £10 when legal now it is £24, cocaine by comparison is £40 and has less purity. Ecstasy by comparison is often of very low purity or contains no MDA. Methedrone remains popular amongst drug users and continues to gain popular amongst drug users because of its price and purity in comparision to cocaine and ecstasy.
As to how effecive making it illegal has been in reducing use.
Between July 2009 and February 2010, UK health professionals accessed the National Poisons Information Service 's (NPIS) entry on mephedrone 1664 times and made 157 telephone inquiries; the requests increased month on month over this period. In comparison over a similar time period, the entries for cocaine and MDMA were accessed approximately 2400 times. After mephedrone was made illegal the number of inquiries to the NPIS fell substantially, to only 19 in June 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone#In_the_UK
While methedrone may have remained popular amongst drug users, and continued to gain popular with people switching from illegal ecstasy and cocaine to the now illegal methedrone. Amongst other people use appears to have dropped substantially going by the NPIS.
From which you then go on to talk about something that isn't quite on topic, is it?
EH? How is talking about drug abuse in a thread about drugs not "quite on topic"?
and my points about alcohol were perfectly valid in response to the insulting post that I quote below.
Anyone who thinks the answer to drug abuse is to decriminalise drug use is an imbecile.
As alcohol is clearly a drug, and a particularly addictive and harmful one, then to say that people who support legalising all drugs, even those which are far less harmful than alcohol, are "imbeciles" MUST, if we are to follow this rather twisted form of 'logic' also mean that those who support the use of alcohol and keeping it legal are "imbeciles" too?
Or does it only matter when someone dies from the use of an illegal drug? because I can assure you, I got not one shred of comfort, when my father died at the age of 63 as a result of alcohol addiction, in knowing that at least he died due to a legal drug, it would have been so much worse for our family had it been an illegal
drug that killed him.
the entire debate around the legalisation of all drugs revolves around using the harm they can do as the main reason not to legalise them, so any such debate must include the legal drugs too, after all 'we' have decided that the taking of 'some' drugs is a crime because they are harmful, while the taking of other harmful drugs is seen as perfectly normal and acceptable behaviour, why it's even funny to see people high on this particular drug, and Christmas just isnt Christmas unless one gets off one's t!ts on that particular highly addictive killer drug.
and advertising it on TV showing just how 'sexy' or 'funny' or 'sophisticated' using that particular hard drug makes you, is seen as perfectly normal,
I wonder why they don't show a typical A&E on Christmas eve to illustrate just how 'funny sexy and sophisticated' alcohol makes people? I suppose copious amounts of vomit, blood, urine, feces, bad language, violence and even death, that usually comes with that sexy funny sophisticated and acceptable drug?
So yeah I suppose talking about a drug in thread about drugs could be seen by some as "off topic" in the same way talking about the off side rule in a thread about football might be seen as "off topic" by 'some' people.
Mephedrone became popular when it was legal due to being far cheaper and higher purity than illegal cocaine and ecstacy which were getting lower purity and more expensive due to the sucess of drug seizures. The rise in it is use reported in your link is based of a survery shortly after it was made illegal at two London gay dance clubs that have lots of drug users. It reflects changing drug of choice amongst drug users. And according to your link one explaniation is that it still cheaper and higher purity than cocaine. Despite becoming more expensive since being made illegal. According to your link it was £10 when legal now it is £24, cocaine by comparison is £40 and has less purity. Ecstasy by comparison is often of very low purity or contains no MDA. Methedrone remains popular amongst drug users and continues to gain popular amongst drug users because of its price and purity in comparision to cocaine and ecstasy.
As to how effecive making it illegal has been in reducing use.
Between July 2009 and February 2010, UK health professionals accessed the National Poisons Information Service 's (NPIS) entry on mephedrone 1664 times and made 157 telephone inquiries; the requests increased month on month over this period. In comparison over a similar time period, the entries for cocaine and MDMA were accessed approximately 2400 times. After mephedrone was made illegal the number of inquiries to the NPIS fell substantially, to only 19 in June 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone#In_the_UK
While methedrone may have remained popular amongst drug users, and continued to gain popular with people switching from illegal ecstasy and cocaine to the now illegal methedrone. Amongst other people use appears to have dropped substantially going by the NPIS.
Making something illegal doesn't solve the problems or make them go away, quite the opposite. Mephedrone has almost doubled in price, halved in purity (like you said yourself) and is on the increase, Yes I accept it maybe because it is the drug of choice because the other drugs on offer are shitter and more expensive, and like all things in life drugs too fall in and out of fashion. Point is, making mephedrone illegal didn't solve the problems associated with it, it made the issues a lot worse.
Oh and by the way, people don't choose their drug of choice purely on cost and quality, while it may help, I think the main factor is how it makes you feel, and with mephedrone being somewhat like a cross between E and coke, it may well explain why it has taken the place of these shitter quality and costlier drugs. I would hazard a guess mephedrone would have likely taken over from E and coke regardless of its legal status. The drug problem still hasnt gone away.
The sort of insult handed out when one is losing the argument. I do know that drugs have not always been illegal but it's irrelevant.
We are too soft on drugs. We lost the battle when we become soft.
However, it's too late to turn the clocks back.
The battle was lost along time before then, because being hard did not have any effect did not stop people taking drugs or anything else, did not stop people bringing drugs into the uk or anything else. There is "no obvious" link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use, a government report has found.
Norman Baker has just revealed that the recent Home Office drugs report was censored of recommendations by Theresa May.
Anyone surprised?
I can't understand why she blocked it for, especially if one of the plans was to try and gradually get the addict clean. You'd think that she would have tried it to see how successful it was.
The battle was lost along time before then, because being hard did not have any effect did not stop people taking drugs or anything else, did not stop people bringing drugs into the uk or anything else. There is "no obvious" link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use, a government report has found.
When I was at school I didn't know anyone who took drugs. Drugs were not freely available.
Comments
Yeah I agree lets not count them,
unless of course you can point me to the post in which I or anyone else has called for the legalisation of the use of Cannabis while driving?
Yeah lets not eh? unless of course you would like to show me the actual figures for the cases in which it was absolutely established that the person in question committed suicide because their mental health was damaged due only to the use of cannabis and that it was 100% established that they would still be alive and healthy if they had not used cannabis,
and keep in mind that every single study into the link between cannabis and mental health issues have one thing in common, not one of them have established beyond any doubt that it was cannabis and cannabis alone that was responsible for any psychological harm, they tend to use words like "probably" and "possibly" and "in some cases" and in those cases where there is an insistence that the 'evidence' indicates that in "some" cases the use of cannabis "may" have a detrimental effect on a few peoples mental health, with becoming "psychotic" being the favourite 'excuse' of the prohibitionists,
But the Elephant in the room in those particular cases is the fact that ALL of the 'evidence' points to a slight chance of becoming psychotic ONLY in cases when the person in question started using cannabis in their very early teens or before,
Once again, I invite the prohibitionists who use this "excuse" to justify their position, to provide examples of where anyone has even remotely suggested legalising it for use by children?
Indeed, the very fact that it is illegal and therefore the only people providing it for sale are criminals then prohibition actually makes it far easier for children to get hold of, as the criminal dealers (some of them) have no qualms at all about who they sell it to,
Once it was legal and on sale to adults from licensed outlets at a price that the criminal dealers couldn't compete with, alongside very severe penalties for anyone supplying recreational drugs without a licence (including alcohol) and every single penalty doubled if they were convicted of selling to a minor, the risks involved for the vast majority of back street dealers would mean they would find another way to make easy money,
who is going to buy from some shady geezer when you can just walk into a licensed outlet and buy a small amount of weed as easily as buying a couple of tins of beer?
the very LAST people who want to see drugs legalised are the criminal gangs, they are way behind any Tory minister on this one.
Yeah lets not eh? because as adults most of us are aware of the risks we take every single day of our lives, and we are intelligent enough and balanced enough to realise this,... for example, what would be the more risky? sitting in your own home smoking a joint, or going to the gym for a work out? I know which is the FAR more dangerous activity, and it's not the one that involves getting a numb backside and possibly thumb ache from the playstation controller and a slightly emptier fridge,
do you know how many people die from heart attacks in a gym? do you know how many people die in road accidents on their way to or from the gym?
Take it from me, all things considered going to the gym for a workout every day is a HELL of a lot more risky to your health and well being than chilling out at home with a spliff.
Ah well, see, once again you will have to find the post in which I or anyone said "cannabis is completely harmless" because I thought we had already established that it can be very dangerous indeed if a large quantity falls on you from a great height, so I know I certainly never said any such thing, and unless you can actually find where I have, or anyone has, then we can only conclude that either, you are fabricating stuff to discredit other peoples position, I think we call that lying? or..... you are lying on purpose, s got to be one or the other.
Again, I am sorry but are you in this thread? only I ask because you seem to be arguing against points which no one has stated, mentioned, or come even close to doing. so you might forgive my question as to which thread you are in? who has said that people "need" to smoke cannabis? who has said that people "need" to drink alcohol, coffee? eat chocolate? because I can assure you, they don't "need" to do any of those things, but most of us do at least some of them for no other reason than we enjoy doing it.
I see, so,.... all of these people guilty of this mass carnage on our roads do it because cannabis "makes" them do it do they? fact is the legality of a drug has nothing at all to do with a persons decision to drive or not while under it's influence,
In most road deaths in which the use of recreational drugs is deemed to be a factor, the word used are always "due to drink AND drugs" which is utter bollox and deliberate conditioning, because almost everyone only hears the "drugs" part, and yet there is never any comparison as to which was the drug having the most detrimental impact on the drivers driving, what they should be in fact saying is simply "due to being under the influence of recreational drugs" of which alcohol is most certainly one.
Why take the risk? well, to quote the late great Bill Hicks, none smokers die every day,
"Risk" is a very subjective thing, what might appear as "risky" to you, may seem everyday and run of the mill for me, and vice versa,
I ride a motorbike and have done for over 40 years, many people would find that risky whereas I don't. being alive is very risky indeed.
It used to work before we went soft.
No it did not, it has never worked
Neither did we ever "go soft" on drugs, in fact we are 'harder' on them now than at almost any other time in our history, but then, people who tend to never question anything very rarely know any of the answers so they make stuff up instead.
What on earth do you base this on?
It worked before prohibition, which started in a large scale way throughout the 70's and 80's,
Prohibition was the thing which triggered the epidemic of global drug use - statistically speaking; quite simply it wasn't actually much of a problem before this.
If you had a time machine and could go back to earlier parts of the twentieth century you'd find virtually no drug addicts or drugs available to purchase on the streets. In the UK I think there was something like less than 1,000 Heroin addicts in the 60's, and more than 300,000 now.
When we were not soft on drugs we had zero tolerance for possession. We had prosecutions not cautions.
In other words, we are now too soft on this crime.
I'm speechless at your general lack of comprehension.
Drugs were completely legal pre-prohibition. We didn't prosecute people because the Misuse of Drugs Act didn't exist. That's the whole point, prohibition didn't exist for f*ck sake
Things were 'softer' then than they are now because then there were no laws surrounding drugs. This really isn't a complex thing to understand.
I genuinely wonder if you're a troll sometimes, or just not very bright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30614864
It's possible to brew your own beer, but that hasnt stopped all manner of businesses making a lot of money off the alcohol trade so I don't see why cannabis would be any different - there's a lot of money to be made from the paraphanalia, selling seeds, weed, opening coffee shops, everyone can get in on the action, not just drug companies.
TBH Id have thought this would be right up the tories street!
This is rubbish, all countries are now forced to include black market activity in GDP by law, including France and the UK has one of the smallest black markets n the EU.
http://www.english.rfi.fr/economy/20140618-france-refue-eu-order-include-drugs-prostitution-gdp-figures
The UK has chosen to include illegal drugs and prostitution and as a result our GDP is barely above France's GDP that does not include illegal drugs and prostitution, if France included these activities then France would have a higher GDP than the UK.
‘Just Say No’ and ‘shock/ scare’ approaches are likely to be ineffective and may even be counterproductive
Good quality drug education can impact on changes in specific drug using patterns
Accurate and up to date information about drugs is an important component of drug education
As far as headshops are concerned are you talking just about legal highs. Things they are ostensibly selling not for human consumption, that in reality irresponsible or callous shops are knowingly selling to people for them to abuse despite them being unsafe and resulting in many deaths each year. You may as well be arguing that shops selling glue, gases and aerosols should be able to market them to people as things to abuse and give advice on how to best use them, despite doing so being dangerous. The law needs changing to stop shops selling legal highs to people to abuse not changed to give them respectablity, they are scum of the earth no better than dealers in dangerous illegal drugs.
Not to mention the dubious sources are not exactly law abiding themselves, so therefore by keeping drugs illegal / criminal, normal people will also be funding god knows what else.
As to how effecive making it illegal has been in reducing use.
Between July 2009 and February 2010, UK health professionals accessed the National Poisons Information Service 's (NPIS) entry on mephedrone 1664 times and made 157 telephone inquiries; the requests increased month on month over this period. In comparison over a similar time period, the entries for cocaine and MDMA were accessed approximately 2400 times. After mephedrone was made illegal the number of inquiries to the NPIS fell substantially, to only 19 in June 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephedrone#In_the_UK
While methedrone may have remained popular amongst drug users, and continued to gain popular with people switching from illegal ecstasy and cocaine to the now illegal methedrone. Amongst other people use appears to have dropped substantially going by the NPIS.
EH? How is talking about drug abuse in a thread about drugs not "quite on topic"?
and my points about alcohol were perfectly valid in response to the insulting post that I quote below.
As alcohol is clearly a drug, and a particularly addictive and harmful one, then to say that people who support legalising all drugs, even those which are far less harmful than alcohol, are "imbeciles" MUST, if we are to follow this rather twisted form of 'logic' also mean that those who support the use of alcohol and keeping it legal are "imbeciles" too?
Or does it only matter when someone dies from the use of an illegal drug? because I can assure you, I got not one shred of comfort, when my father died at the age of 63 as a result of alcohol addiction, in knowing that at least he died due to a legal drug, it would have been so much worse for our family had it been an illegal
drug that killed him.
the entire debate around the legalisation of all drugs revolves around using the harm they can do as the main reason not to legalise them, so any such debate must include the legal drugs too, after all 'we' have decided that the taking of 'some' drugs is a crime because they are harmful, while the taking of other harmful drugs is seen as perfectly normal and acceptable behaviour, why it's even funny to see people high on this particular drug, and Christmas just isnt Christmas unless one gets off one's t!ts on that particular highly addictive killer drug.
and advertising it on TV showing just how 'sexy' or 'funny' or 'sophisticated' using that particular hard drug makes you, is seen as perfectly normal,
I wonder why they don't show a typical A&E on Christmas eve to illustrate just how 'funny sexy and sophisticated' alcohol makes people? I suppose copious amounts of vomit, blood, urine, feces, bad language, violence and even death, that usually comes with that sexy funny sophisticated and acceptable drug?
So yeah I suppose talking about a drug in thread about drugs could be seen by some as "off topic" in the same way talking about the off side rule in a thread about football might be seen as "off topic" by 'some' people.
A little bit more up to date article.
Making something illegal doesn't solve the problems or make them go away, quite the opposite. Mephedrone has almost doubled in price, halved in purity (like you said yourself) and is on the increase, Yes I accept it maybe because it is the drug of choice because the other drugs on offer are shitter and more expensive, and like all things in life drugs too fall in and out of fashion. Point is, making mephedrone illegal didn't solve the problems associated with it, it made the issues a lot worse.
Oh and by the way, people don't choose their drug of choice purely on cost and quality, while it may help, I think the main factor is how it makes you feel, and with mephedrone being somewhat like a cross between E and coke, it may well explain why it has taken the place of these shitter quality and costlier drugs. I would hazard a guess mephedrone would have likely taken over from E and coke regardless of its legal status. The drug problem still hasnt gone away.
We are too soft on drugs. We lost the battle when we become soft.
However, it's too late to turn the clocks back.
The battle was lost along time before then, because being hard did not have any effect did not stop people taking drugs or anything else, did not stop people bringing drugs into the uk or anything else. There is "no obvious" link between tough laws and levels of illegal drug use, a government report has found.
So we should be tougher? Like how?
I can't understand why she blocked it for, especially if one of the plans was to try and gradually get the addict clean. You'd think that she would have tried it to see how successful it was.
Zero tolerance.
Meaning?