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Post by ncsonde on Jan 17, 2013 14:46:05 GMT
Do you think that the criminalisation of the drug known as Miaow Miaow (by journalists and by no one else) was done on scientific evidence? I've just pointed out - scientific evidence is one thing, social policy is another. They're not necessarily connected at all. Sounds sensible. Yes, we know all about your views on drugs, porn, censorship, etcetera etcetera. William Wallace and his "FreeeeDUM!!" had nothing on you. What you always fail to appreciate is that we live in a democracy, and most people disagree vehemently with you. Most people think what makes heroin, cocaine, speed and so on dangerous is not their illegality, but their addictiveness, and the mess they consequently make of people's lives. With cannabis these days, the danger their children might be pushed into psychosis or schizophrenia. You pooh-pooh such notions - but in this case it's you who totally ignores the scientific evidence because it doesn;t suit you, not the government. Forget this notion that critics of the AGW lobby have "a cause", Aubrey. It's misleading you entirely. |
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Jan 17, 2013 17:07:21 GMT
Oh, oh - people against you have a cause, people who agree with you are all eminently sensible, and just reacting. That's a pretty psychotic argument in itself, isn't it?
I don't understand why you think banning a drug solely because of a panic by easily panicked newspapers is sensible.
Heroin is addictive, but quite safe when used with clean needles, etc. Coke not so safe, but much more safe when pure: the Police use this fact in their advice to users after a bust.
A criminal record for cannabis is far more likely than any other bad effect, and just as damaging. The Govt just add (very rare) examples of psychosis to their list of other dangers of cannabis, which, as you know, is every bit as dangerous as any other drug, dirty needles or not.
So do anti AGWers, which is why they form groups that have spokesmen like Nigel Lawson (who won't, though, say where the money for his group comes from). So, that's why I mentioned Lawson. The other people I mentioned in the past - Delingpole, Monckton, Matt Riddley - have all been praised on this forum, before I ever mentioned them. I wouldn't have done otherwise.
I love the way you like to imagine that all anti AGW types are disinterested individuals, battling, individually, against a huge force of ignorance and prejudice, and concerned only with the truth.
The rest of your stuff - just pointless insults, really.
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Post by aquatic on Jan 17, 2013 23:38:18 GMT
yep.
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Jan 21, 2013 10:31:47 GMT
How does this fit with my known support for Uncle Joe?
Of course that's what they think. They also think that cannabis will cause psychosis, and if it doesn't then users inevitably go on to shooting up heroin. The Govt have been saying this for 90 years, and the Govt never lies about anything. Does it?
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Jan 21, 2013 17:58:57 GMT
I may be stuck in S Yorks with no drugs.
Well, it'll probably be ok. I might just have to walk down to the bus stop, chiz.
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Post by ncsonde on Jan 22, 2013 6:30:57 GMT
Oh, oh - people against you have a cause, people who agree with you are all eminently sensible, and just reacting. That's a pretty psychotic argument in itself, isn't it? Against me? What the hell are you rambling on about now? I repeat - it's a scientific question, first and foremost. It's those people - politicians and green campaigners mainly, but also, sadly, certain sections of the scientific community - who have ignored or worse attempted to corrupt the scientific investigation into this matter that have a "cause". For the simple reason that it may not have been the sole reason at all. Kids may well have died from taking a new and unassayed drug for all anyone knew. The first sign of such a danger would be people dying after taking it, after all. What would not be sensible would be for the government, which has a responsibility for safeguarding public health, shrugging their shoulders, saying oh, it's just the Daily Mail stirring up a needless panic, and allowing thousands of kids to legally buy a drug that nobody knows anything about. Then should dozens of people start dropping like flies, or contracting organ damage, or turning into moral imbeciles, who would be the first to start slating the government for being so neglectful? You'd accuse them of being in the pockets of the drug companies, no doubt, or of not caring about the poor uneducated young.  More damaging than a psychotic break or schizophrenia? Or, for that matter, turning into a drongo, pissing their life away on benefits in a haze? Not everyone has your sense of values or level of ambition, Aubrey. You don't know how rare it is. The last time we had this tedious conversation you denied it happened at all. In fact, I don't think you know the first thing about drugs. Stop trying to tell me what you think I know. You always get it wrong, as you do with your claims about what you think you know. They don't. Nigel Lawson forms a group that he's a spokeman of - he doesn;t speak for anyone esle who criticises the AGW theory. For a start, he's not "anti-AGW" - his argument is about the appropriate response to man-made climate change, not whether it's happening or not. There is no "anti-AGW" group; there are no "spokesmen". Why don;t you try learning something about what he has to say before you start condemning it? Glad to hear it - they deserve praise. That's pretty much the case, yes. What do you think they are? For the most part, they're scientists or intellectuals who have learned about the subject who question the conclusions that the AGW supporters have leapt to. It's called science. It's an enitrely normal and healthy, indeed essential, part of the scientific process. It's the extraordinary virulent response that such critiques have received that should tell you that it's not they who have "a cause", ulterior motives, or a campaign requiring "spokesmen", it's the so-called "scientific consensus" and the people so desperate to promote it to incurious and already partisan people like you. Pointless if you don't listen, agreed. You already "know" all you need to though. don't you? No need to learn about the AGW debate (or anything else, really) - one side are "right-wingers", so that's that settled. |
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Post by ncsonde on Jan 22, 2013 6:49:47 GMT
How does this fit with my known support for Uncle Joe? You want me to psychoanalyse you? As with most far-Left pontificators with a petulant resentment of any authority, I'd start by asking about your father. Yes. You see the difference between beliefs that are true and those not necessarily coherent ones that rattle about in your head? No. They think it might. They think there's a risk. You see the difference? If you have a child, this sort of thing matters. You see? Not "pointless insults" at all, but sage advice. I repeat: I suspect that's your usual overactive imagination leaping to the most lurid exaggerated picture again...Try responding to the arguments people actually present for once.Quote where and which government has said what you claim, please; then we'll see whether this is worth discussing, or whether it's merely another case of your usual overactive imagination leaping to the most lurid exaggerated picture again. |
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Post by marchesarosa on Jan 22, 2013 6:57:23 GMT
By Christopher Booker7:00PM GMT
12 Jan 2013
It is the graph the Met Office didn’t want you to see, in an episode which, according to one newspaper, represents “a crime against science and the public”.
Inevitably last week it didn’t take long for the bush fires set off by Australia’s “hottest summer ever” to be blamed on runaway global warming. Rather less attention was given to the heavy snow in Jerusalem (worst for 20 years) or the abnormal cold bringing death and destruction to China (worst for 30 years), northern India (coldest for 77 years) and Alaska, with average temperatures down in the past decade by more than a degree. But another story, which did attract coverage across the world, was the latest in a seemingly endless series of embarrassments for the UK Met Office.
Some of this story may be familiar – how on Christmas Eve the Met Office sneaked on to its website a revised version of the graph it had posted a year earlier showing its prediction of global temperatures for the next five years. Not until January 5 did sharp-eyed climate bloggers notice how different this was from the graph it replaced. When the two graphs were posted together on Tallbloke’s Talkshop, this was soon picked up by the Global Warming Policy Foundation which whizzed it around the media.
The Met Office’s allies, such as the BBC’s old warmist warhorses Roger Harrabin and David Shukman, were soon trying to downplay the story, claiming that the forecast had only been revised by "a fifth", and that even if the temperature rise had temporarily stalled, due to “natural factors”, the underlying warming trend would soon reappear. But they were only able to get away with this by omitting to show the contrast between the two graphs.
In 2011, the Met Office’s computer model prediction had shown temperatures over the next five years soaring to a level 0.8 degrees higher than their average between 1971 and 2000, far higher than the previous record year, 1998. Whereas the new graph shows the lack of any significant warming for the past 15 years as likely to continue. Apart from how this was obscured by the BBC, there are several reasons why this is of wider significance for the rest of us.
For a start, it is not generally realised what a central role the Met Office has played in promoting the worldwide scare over global warming. The predictions of its computer models, through its alliance with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (centre of the Climategate emails scandal), have been accorded unique prestige by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ever since the global-warming-obsessed John Houghton, then head of the Met Office, played a key part in setting up the IPCC in 1988.
A major reason why the Met Office’s forecasts have come such croppers in recent years is that its computer models since 1990 have assumed that by far the most important influence on global temperatures is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Yet as early as 2008, when temperatures temporarily plummeted by 0.7 degrees, equivalent to their entire net rise in the 20th century, it was already clear that something was fundamentally wrong with this assumption. The models were not taking proper account of all the natural factors governing the climate, such as solar radiation and shifts in the major ocean currents.
Even the warmists admitted that it was a freak El Niño event in the Pacific which had made 1998 the hottest year in modern times.
But the Met Office was not going to abandon easily its core belief that the main force shaping climate was that rise in CO2. As its chief scientist, Julia Slingo, admitted to MPs in 2010, its short-term forecasts are based on the same “numerical models” as “we use for our climate prediction work”, and these have been predicting “hotter, drier summers” and “warmer winters” for decades ahead. Hence all those fiascos which have made the Met Office a laughing stock, from the “barbecue summer” that never was in 2008, to the “warmer than average winter” of 2010 which brought us our coldest-ever December, to its prediction last spring that April, May and June 2012 would probably be “drier than average”, just before we enjoyed the wettest April and summer on record.
Such a catastrophic blunder is scarcely mitigated by the Met Office’s sneaky attempt to hide that absurd 2011 graph. One day it will be recognised how the Met Office’s betrayal of proper science played a key part in creating the most expensive scare story the world has ever known, the colossal bill for which we will all be paying for decades to come.
Meanwhile, it is not just here that this latest fiasco, reported in many countries, has been raising eyebrows. Our ministers love to boast that British science commands respect throughout the world, They should note that the sorry record of our Met Office is beginning to do that reputation no good at all.
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Jan 22, 2013 8:07:28 GMT
How does this fit with my known support for Uncle Joe? You want me to psychoanalyse you? As with most far-Left pontificators with a petulant resentment of any authority, I'd start by asking about your father. Of course that's what they think. Yes. You see the difference between beliefs that are true and those not necessarily coherent ones that rattle about in your head? No. They think it might. They think there's a risk. You see the difference? If you have a child, this sort of thing matters. You see? Not "pointless insults" at all, but sage advice. I repeat: I suspect that's your usual overactive imagination leaping to the most lurid exaggerated picture again...Try responding to the arguments people actually present for once.Quote where and which government has said what you claim, please; then we'll see whether this is worth discussing, or whether it's merely another case of your usual overactive imagination leaping to the most lurid exaggerated picture again.[/quote] Govts - all govts - have used the gateway argument about cannabis ever since it was first criminalised: I have been told that it leads to other drugs in lots of arguments, with people who have believed the general Govt line. No one in Govt will even alllow that cannabis is safer than, say, Meth; drugs are all dangerous, is all they ever say. Their response to drugs hasn't progressed much from the film Reefer Madness in the 30s. Going on about psychosis is a pretty good example of overactive imagination, isn't it? It happens, but not often. Kids get killed driving cars or bikes as well: there the Govt response is education and regulation, not saying Don't do it, because whatever you do it will be dangerous. Children taking cannabis have much more chance of suffering from the consequences of a conviction, or losing their job through a drug test, than any effect of the drug itself. They hadn't taken it. Besides, more people are taking it now that it has been criminalised than before (it was the same with heroin, as well). But I suppose you will say that the Govt has done all it can now and so isn't responsible. The vast majority - if not all - of deaths from heroin are caused by infection, lifestyles, and overdoses: all caused by the drug's illegality. Oh, and making out that I am somehow undemocratic because I don't agree with what you think is the majority opinion: do you understand democracy? Obviously you're going to say that the people who agree with you are sensible, broad minded, altruistic and all round jolly good fellows. Oh, yes, and intellectual. (Which must mean very clever: IE, much cleverer than anyone who doesn't agree with them. But you're one of them, aren't you?) And whatever you say there are anti-AGW campaigning groups who will not say who funds them - like Lawson's. And pretending that you're not a campaigning group is a bloody good way of campaigning, really. And most of the people involved in these campaigns are right wing. You can't get around that, can you? So you just pretend that it has nothing to do with it. AGW is just a bunch of tree hugging hippy crap, so obviously right wingers are going to be against it. |
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Post by ncsonde on Jan 22, 2013 9:00:25 GMT
Govts - all govts - have used the gateway argument about cannabis ever since it was first criminalised The gateway argument is not what you paraphrased, though. This is not the gateway argument: They also think that cannabis will cause psychosis, and if it doesn't then users inevitably go on to shooting up heroin.That's merely another case of your usual overactive imagination leaping to the most lurid exaggerated picture again. That's more like it. It can and sometimes does lead to other drugs would be even closer. That's the general govt line - and people generally believe it because it's true. Rubbish. Well, they say a great deal more than that, if you listen. But generally speaking, drugs are all dangerous - that's why they're called drugs: they have a biological effect. Those that are psychoactive are potentially highly dangerous, because we know very little about the brain, and side effects are extremely difficult to isolate, and that ignorance is potentially devastating. We're talking about possible damage to our mental faculties - to our personalities, to our identities. Hardly. No. I've directed you to the scientific research which statistically proves this link before. Study the matter you're pontificating about for once. How often is often? Who's at risk? Teenagers. From cannabis engineered far beyond the sort of weed and hash people of your age and experience and background have ever been familiar with. How much do they have to take before it becomes dangerous? No one knows - sometimes it's just one joint, and the more they smoke the more that risk increases, as does the long-term damage. That's the danger - and it's a proven danger, one serious enough for any responsible parent not to wish their children ever to touch the stuff. Irrelevant. You simply do not know this. You're merely making a wild guess. And again, it's an irrelevant comparison. If they don't take the drug, there will be no conviction etcetera. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. You have a psychoactive drug being sold on the streets - maybe it's dangerous, maybe it's not. Who knows until it's analysed and studied? Because it's been criminalised? Obviously, you can't possibly know that. Taking opium was very widespread indeed in late Victorian Britain. Taking cocaine would almost certainly have become so had it not been banned. If tobacco were outlawed now, would in the future more people start smoking, or less?  Responsible for more children taking a street drug? Yes, I would say they aren't responsible for that. You do talk a load of crap sometimes. I made out no such thing. I said you didn't appreciate the nature and depth of that opinion. You have the bolshy teenager's view of life that society's laws should mirror your beliefs and and values and desires, and if they don't they're repressive and rationally illegitimate. No, I'm not. As I said to you, stop telling me what I think - you always get it wrong. I repeat, again: this is first and foremost a scientific question. I don't care whether anyone agrees or disagrees with my own assessments - what matters is whether they're following the canons of scientific enquiry and rational thought. That's all. You claim that the "anti-AGW" blogs are following a rightwing political cause - I claim that for the most part they're reporting and discussing the science. Seeing as I read most of them, and I doubt you ever have, I think I'm in a better position to judge. Look it up. Huh? It's an irrelevant issue - who's clever or not has no bearing on the matter. Neither does one's political views, or economic interests, or what body might or might not be funding one's interest in the matter. That's what "intellectual" means in this context: it's a matter of interest as an objective problem about the world, has a means of agreed investigation and standards of rational assessment, won over centuries of cultural progress, that are, on the whole, followed by those climate sceptic blogs you deride, but are contravened by the AGW lobby (including a worryingly wide range of major scientific institutions, and the international panel of appointed "experts" charged with exercising that intellectual rigour.) So what? It has nothing to do with the science, or the merits of the argument. What is important, and genuinely disturbing, on the other hand, is the denial of funding to scientists who research or discover findings that contradict the AGW thesis; and conversely, the inducement of scientists to support it, should they wish to practise and further their careers. That's what you should be worried about, not Lawson, who has never claimed to be anything other than a politician, attempting to influence policy decisions. Lawson pretends no such thing. No one does, as far as I'm aware. Lawson, you mean? Who else is "involved in these campaigns"? You mean a handful of newspaper columnists? That's their job. To do with what, for crissakes! I repeat - the issue is first and foremost a scientific question. I'm not "getting around" that - you are, by falsely claiming that anyone investigating this question must be part of a rightwing "campaign". Look at the science, Aubrey. Then you might also be able to understand what that handful of rightwing commentators are actually saying. Jeez. Are you able to raise the quality of your argument beyond the level of a 12-year old, please? |
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Post by aubrey on Jan 25, 2013 12:19:27 GMT
Good grief. How many words would it have taken if you did care?
Ok. That previously legal drug (called Miaow Miaow by newspapers) was not found in the bodies of the people who were said to have died from it. More people are taking it now than before it was criminalised, and in an adulterated form.
Deaths from heroin are down to lifestyle, dirty needles, adulterated supply, that sort of thing: all caused by illegality. Someone taking measured doses of pure heroin will be fine; illegality deliberately prevents this.
I never said that Cannabis is totally harmless, just that the harm is exacerbated by illegality; the children who have been rendered psychotic by cannabis were stopped by its criminalisation, were they? Yes? No? Did they have any choice other than skunk?
I'd much rather smoke hash than grass, and grass than skunk; but skunk is about all you can get these days, due to an unregulated market. I have seen in newspapers that skunk is 30 times stronger than what we used to smoke; it isn't - 3-4 times stronger, maybe. (And it tastes bad.)
And because it's illegal, there is always the chance of getting a criminal record - even for someone using it for medicinal purposes: people have been given 10 years for this in the US, and people have been done for it here. Synthetic cannabis substitutes are very expensive and don't work very well.
Do you think your life would have been better if you'd had a criminal record for possession? Mine wouldn't.
I once saw a Govt minister challenged to say that Cannabis is safer than Meth. He wouldn't, just said that all drugs are dangerous.
Ah, the gateway thing. All users of heroin started on cannabis is nothing like the same as saying that all users of cannabis go onto heroin. All users of heroin started on alcohol, on tobacco, on coffee, on tea, on milk.
You are very sanguine about the dangers of driving, especially for young people.
I take a lot of drugs, which could be very dangerous if taken in the wrong way. The thing is, they are regulated, and I am allowed to be told the safest way of taking them. This does not happen with illegal drugs.
The present method of combating drug use costs a hell of a lot of money, and does not work. Once we get private prisons as a regular thing (like in the US) it will cost even more, and will still not work.
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Post by ncsonde on Jan 26, 2013 15:03:01 GMT
Good grief. How many words would it have taken if you did care? As many as it took to get to a rational assessment of the truth. The same amount as if I didn't care. Most thinking people are aware that how the climate works is a little more complicated than whether you vote Labour or Tory, you see. And? Your conclusion is? And how was it previously "legal" - it was granted a license to be sold on the streets and in clubs, was it? And if it's in an adulterated form, how is it the same drug? That's right. And that's wrong. Apart from the weird use of the word "fine", you propose the State sets up a nationwide netweork of drop-in clinics where addicts can call in three times a day to get their fix, supervised by health professionals using only the most sterilised equipment and the purest forms of heroin, is it? For free, of course, in order that no economic disadvantage should be suffered to the "lifestyle" of these poor disabled people? You're not talking about the "harm" that is scientifically proven, then, but about some fantastical and immeasurable stuff about "lifestyle" choice. They might have been if they had been better informed, instead of believeing it's safe because people like Aubrey says it is. But of course there will always be people who take drugs, fully knowing how dangerous it is. That's not why such laws are made. They're made to safeguard all those uncountable children who have been stopped by its criminalisation. Do heroin addicts have to shoot up? No. Any more than they have to use dirty needles. No, the 30 times stronger is fairly accurate. It's the THC contents that matters. A minor side-issue; nothing to do with the argument you've been making. Laws are not made or unmade to make the lives of people who choose to break it better. Ah, that proves it then. You must have similarly seen someone once say smoking cannabis inievitably led to injecting heroin, yes? You should start a scientific journal of your own, Aubrey. "The Factual Nature of the Universe Using Proven Methods of Received Truths Once Overheard and Vaguely Remembered." You must have overheard Rosie Boycott say this once, back in 1980 something, when she was leading the Independent and Guardian's campaign for legalisation? I wonder what made her change her mind? Don't forget walking to school. Eating peanuts. Talking to girls. Going to work. Oh no! Claiming benefits! I think the whole blogosphere became chronically aware of that some years ago. Well then, do what you usually do when confronted with the terrible dilemma of how much arsenic to take. As opposed to the present method of combatting which sort of crime? You should start your own scientific journal. "Prognostications That Will One Day Turn Out to be Accurate Made Under the Influence of Unregulated Pharmaceuticals." |
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Post by jean on Jan 26, 2013 17:43:31 GMT
...you propose the State sets up a nationwide netweork of drop-in clinics where addicts can call in three times a day to get their fix, supervised by health professionals using only the most sterilised equipment and the purest forms of heroin, is it? That's the way to do it. And it has, of course, already been done - but sadly, no longer:
Liverpool Clinic Losing Funding April 1
by Mike Gray
In less than 60 days, the British Health Service plans to terminate the contract with the Liverpool drug clinic that has recently become the focus of the international drug policy debate. The clinic is one of the last in England operating under the rules of the so-called "British System" where addicts are given free prescriptions for their drug of choice. Until the 1960s, this practice was the norm in Great Britain, and was credited by many experts with keeping the English addict population limited to a few hundred in total. But over the last twenty-five years, outside forces -- largely from the United States -- have pressured the British to bring their policies in line with U.S. drug prohibition. The concept of heroin and cocaine maintenance for addicts has been slowly replaced with a stringent methadone reduction policy intended to lead to total abstinence.
The Chapel Street Clinic in Widnes (a suburb of Liverpool) run by Dr. John Marks is the most famous holdout for the old system of free drug maintenance. The incredible success of this small institution has been a stark contrast with the documented failure of other alternatives. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has maintained constant pressure to shut down this glaring example of an approach that flies in the face of American drug war orthodoxy.
The situation became critical following a CBS "60 Minutes" broadcast on the clinic in 1990. The facts in this story completely debased fundamental U.S. policy assumptions. The most startling statistic was the crime rate. Beginning in 1988, the local police began tracking the criminal records of 112 addicts who entered the drug maintenance program at Chapel Street. According to the Cheshire Drug Squad, there was a 93 percent drop in theft, burglary, and property crimes among this group over the next two years -- thus illuminating the age-old argument about whether it is the drugs themselves or the pursuit of drugs that drives addicts to criminal behavior.
In addition, the HIV infection rate among these injecting drug users was zero. Zero. And the incidence of death among addicts -- normally 15 percent per year -- was also zero.
Even more significant was the fact that the incidence of new drug users in the Widnes-Halton area dropped dramatically -- contrary to popular assumptions. Drug dealers simply stay away because they know the local addicts don't need them anymore. And the addicts themselves have no reason to sell drugs since they can get whatever they need for nothing.
The "60 Minutes" broadcast and subsequent world-wide media attention -- MTV broadcast a segment from the clinic last fall -- has been a terrible embarrassment to the conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and their American allies.
The British government could not attack Dr. Marks directly because the British medical establishment -- unlike their American counterpart -- will not permit the state to get between a doctor and his patient. So they attacked the clinic on the basis of economics, saying that heroin maintenance is too expensive and that Methadone is much cheaper. A one-year supply of heroin costs the clinic 10,000 pounds, where Methadone costs 500 pounds. And why does a synthetic drug cost less than the natural product? Because a single British pharmaceutical company has been granted a heroin monopoly and they are allowed to charge whatever they want.
Last year the local health authority informed Dr. Marks that his services were too expensive and that the future health needs of the addicts in the district would be managed by the Warrington Health Clinic. There they will be switched to a regime of Methadone maintenance and withdrawal. Oddly, the Warrington Health Clinic has no trained personnel, their management was recently investigated for fraud, the chairman had just resigned -- and in fact, the clinic had not even bid for the contract. Their solitary asset seems to be their Christian fundamentalist philosophy.
So on April 1st of this year, Dr. Marks' Chapel Street Clinic will lose its funding and 450 addicts now receiving maintenance doses will be out on the street.Another article on this topic: www.independent.co.uk/news/let-gps-prescribe-heroin-says-former-top-drugs-adviser-1593877.html |
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Post by aubrey on Jan 27, 2013 7:45:23 GMT
OK, I'd post the clip of the Govt minister refusing to say that cannabis is safer than Meth if I had it. But I don't. But when have you ever seen a Govt minister saying that cannabis is safer than anything?
The idea of cannabis as a Gateway drug has been around for years, ever since the the film Reefer Madness stopped being taken seriously. You know this, but you still choose to argue otherwise. I don't know why.
If Govts did actually tell the truth about drugs instead of scaremongering then young people might take some notice of them. Oh, and if you really think that skunk is 30 times stronger than old style grass, then you can never have had any; if it really was that strong you'd be ripped out of your box before you finished your first spliff.
There are private prisons in the US. There has been corruption there - backhanders from the owners of the prison to law enforcers, that sort of thing. A huge proportion of people in US prisons in general are there for non-violent drug crimes, and by far the largest proportion of these are for cannabis. It is much - much - easier to prosecute crimes involving cannabis possession than other crimes. There is also a hell of a lot of money invested in the drug war generally, and a hell of a lot of people getting killed because of it.
We are starting to get private prisons here.
Tell me: do you think that a life sentence for possession of 7 cannabis plants is proportionate, and a good use of public money?
The idea of using cannabis as a medicine is very relevant, as medicinal use is illegal, even if it's the only thing that works for the patient.
The drug war is not really against drugs, but against the users of drugs, especially people in the lower classes - middle class and upper drug users are mostly left alone.
Actually, the state giving addicts heroin would be very cheap; you'd really rather pay for the present punitive method of dealing with the problem, would you? I mean, pay a hell of a lot more, with no result. Just think: a measured, safe dose, given in clinical surroundings, with clean needles, and addicts not having to steal, prostitute themselves, or put themselves or anyone else in any form of danger in order to get their supply. Pure heroin is very cheap: it's only its illegality that makes it expensive (though it is much less expensive now than, say, 30 years ago), and dangerous. It's as safe as any other drug you get from a doctor, when you get it from a doctor.
The drug known as Miaow Miaow was legal to buy. Now it is not.
The rest of your stuff, I don't know. You seem to veer off into irrelevancies or deliberate misinterpretation all the time; it's like you can't help yourself.
Oh, oh. Peanuts, cars, walking to school, etc can be dangerous: that is why Govts provide things - like driving tests, pavements (sometimes), warnings on packets - to try and make them safer. If 30% of people in the country have tried cannabis, the old methods of saying that it leads onto other drugs, or that it as dangerous as any other drug, are obviously not working. There are some dangers with cannabis, but no one is going to believe a word the Govt say about it now, after everything it has said before (remember that cannabis was just as dangerous in the 70s, before Skunk came along).
Golly, it must be so hard when you're the only one who knows the truth, and people just won't believe you no matter how much you go on at them.
Go and sit upon the grass
and I shall come and sit beside you.
Go and sit upon the grass
and I shall come and sit beside you.
And do not mind if I thump you when I’m talking to you.
Do not mind if I thump you when I’m talking to you.
I’ve something important to say. (Ivor Cutler)
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Post by marchesarosa on Apr 8, 2013 15:16:34 GMT
Met Office’s Private Briefing Document For The Environment AgencyAPRIL 8, 2013 By Paul Homewood Following the wet summer in the UK last year, the Met Office provided the Environment Agency with a briefing document, giving an overview of the weather. This was discussed at the September Board Meeting of the Environment Agency, which Met Office officials attended. As far as I know, this document, which I obtained through FOI, has never entered the public domain. It is brutally honest in admitting how little the Met’s scientists understand about what affects our climate, and, in particular, what caused the unusual weather last year. This is in stark contrast to many of the hyped up claims, made in public statements in the recent past by, among others, the Met Office themselves. The full document is reproduced below, but there are four particular areas I wish to focus on - Drought, Jet Sream Changes, Madden-Julian Oscillation and the Decline of Arctic Ice .... more notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/met-offices-private-briefing-document-for-the-environment-agency/#more-3009
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Responsible for more children taking a street drug? Yes, I would say they aren't responsible for that.