Sim-O

I’ve just listened to Radio 1 for the first time in a looong time and Newsbeat came on.

They had a quick bit about roadside testing for drug-drivers and they featured a quote from some cunt from Transform.

On Newsbeats website, the story is featured but not with the quote from the Transform chap.

Now, I’ve not looked at the Transform website in any detail so I don’t know if the drugs policy changes they advocate are any good, so like wise I don’t know if they’re heroes or wankers, but this chap that featured on Newsbeat has a fucking weird grasp of logic.

I’m gonna paraphrase things here, but essentially he said that this idea to test drivers for drugs is ridiculous because it would basically criminalise using drugs and turn a whole heap of people into criminals.

What. The actual. Fuck?

First off, illegal drug taking is already all but illegal. It is illegal to sell and to possess controlled substances, and seeing as you can’t put anything in your body yourself without, however briefly possessing it, people that take illegal drugs are criminals already.

Secondly, how is it criminalising being under the influence of drugs? it is criminalising driving whilst under the influence of drugs. There is a *big* difference.

The obvious analogy is alcohol. The current drink-driving laws don’t make being boozed up illegal but they do make it illegal to drive with over a certain amount of alcohol in your blood.

Is this cunt seriously advocating repealing the drink-drive laws?

Whoever from Transform let this dickhead loose in front of a microphone must’ve been off their head.

Don’t bother listening to experts, the government it seems, knows best….

Ministers will not be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy in future, under new government proposals.

The police reform and social responsibility bill, published last week, contains an amendment to the constitution of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that would remove the requirement on the home secretary to appoint at least six scientists to the committee.

Crime reduction minister James Brokenshire said…

Scientific advice is absolutely critical to the government’s approach to drugs and any suggestion that we are moving away from it is absolutely not true.

Removing the requirement on the home secretary to appoint to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at least one person with experience in six specific areas will allow us greater flexibility in the expertise we are able to draw on.

And by flexibility, the good minister means being able to get in whoever agrees with the government as easily as possible, whilst getting rid of anyone that doesn’t agree.

I missed this the other day, Vince Cable changing his mind about granting an export licence for a drug used in some American states for executing Death row prisoners…

Mr Cable initially said he could not restrict exports – but lawyers from Leigh and Day, working with Reprieve, subsequently established that no European supplies to the US were being used in medicine – meaning that they were only going to death row.

Furthermore, one of the manufacturers identified in the legal action said it did not oppose the government imposing export restrictions.

Excellent news.

People should stop calling heroin users “junkies” or “addicts”, an influential think tank on drugs has said.

The UK Drug Policy Commission said such names stigmatised users and made it more difficult to get off drugs.

…says a page on the BBC website.

What a crock of shit.

Heroin users are called ‘junkies’ because heroin is also called Junk – by drug users. Junkies are also called ‘addicts’ because they are addicted to a substance.

Authors of the six-month report said the terms “junkie” and “addict” were distrustful and judgmental and led to feelings of low self-worth among drug users.

The feelings of low self-worth are caused by the drug. Any term used to describe a junkieis going to have negative connatations because of how junkies behave.

They said these hostile attitudes only added to the stigma of drug addiction and made it harder for users to give up.

I would argue that these hostile attitudes also prevent a fair number of people from taking heroin in the first place.

Colin Blakemore of Oxford University, one of the report’s authors, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme drug addicts faced stigma “as damaging as similar attitudes to gay people, and people with mental health issues, were 30 years ago”.

And that’s a bad thing how? There may be many factors determining whether someone take drugs or not, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the individual. It is a choice. People don’t choose to be gay, and you’d have to be mantal to actually want a mental health issue of any sort. Gay and people with mental health problems don’t have to spunk a great wodge of cash they don’t have on being gay or being er, mental. They can be for free.

He added that hostility towards drug addicts failed to recognise how difficult it was for them to quit, describing what they faced as “chemical bondage”.

No it doesn’t. It recognises that the vast majority of mainliners are untrustworthy to some degree or other. Don’t give an addict an ultimatum between you and the drugs. The drugs will win.

“The crux of this problem, I’m afraid, is the persistent view that drug addiction is the problem of the addict,” he said.

For fucks sake. Who’s fucking problem is it then, if it’s not the addicts’ problem? Society at large, I suppose.

I’m all for liberalising drug laws and spending money rehab rather than prison, treating drug addiction from a public heath direction rather than criminal, but lets not remove responsibility from the user for getting hooked in the first place or try and hide what a fucking awful life being a heroin addict is.

N.B.
Yes, I know there are always exceptions to the dirty skank junkie, and prostitues that get hooked because of their pimps etc.

Hand out mephedrone in nightclubs, says ex-drugs tsar Professor David Nutt

You what? Has the man taken leave of his senses? This stuff is dangerous. D.A.N.G.E.R.O.U.S.

But in a classic Daily Mail sidestep, that’s not quite what the Prof said. There’s more to it than just doleing out drugs.

I wouldn’t be against exploring the possibility of some sort of regulated use for MDMA or mephedrone where people, maybe in clubs, could have access to small amounts, safe amounts under guidance.

What Professor Nutt is saying is have a look at regulated access to the drugs. He isn’t even saying we should do that, just that we should look into what sort of harm reduction may be achieved from letting consenting adults, because only adults are allowed in nightclubs, buy untainted drugs that aren’t cut with all the usual rubbish along with the information to let those adults make an informed choice. We do that with alcohol and cigarettes, so why not with other substances that are no more harmful than alcohol and cigarettes?

The headline which gives the impression that every club should have someone just dishing out mindbending drugs to who ever wants them in what ever quantities are asked for. That is just ridiculous. We don’t even do that in pubs, and pubs are only there to sell you a mindbending drug.

This sort of mis-representation would be right at home at the Daily Mail. But it isn’t. It’s the Independent, a supposedly ‘quality’ paper. No wonder it’s had to pay someone to buy it. Which is bribery, isn’t it?

Just a quicky about a couple of tweets from Nadine Dorries.

From the surrounding tweets, Nadine is arguing against the governments drugs policy, and how effective it is. I don’t know the exact argument but you don’t need to here as the statements made by Nadine are absolutely ridiculous and even I could do better.

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168531952

Lamb made the point that based on statistics, alcohol is more serious than drugs. I’ve never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate.

Can you guess the reason Nadine has never seen anyone selling booze at a school gate? Could it be something to do with shops and pubs? Kids aren’t stupid, why would they be risk getting into trouble by buying booze from a dodgy bloke outside school in full view of the authorities (teachers and other people that will report them) when they can just as easily get lashed on drink bought by themselves or their older looking mates from an off-licence?

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6168961615

I’ve never heard of anyone stabbing or murdering someone or trafficking for a drink and our Prisons aren’t full of alcoholics.

The MP for Mid-Beds has never heard of drink dealers stabbing and murdering each other because the criminal element has been taken out of the system. The business of selling alcohol has been put into the hands of proper, licenced business men. The role of contraband booze has been left with the the small guy that does a booze cruise and sells to his mates or the big criminal gangs that make counterfiet vodka. The role of the nasty vicous bastards you get in the middle of the drugs trade is non-existant because you either need lots of equipment and time and an investment and the demand for hooky booze is negligible and so not enough money in it. Drugs are easy money.
Prisons also may not be bursting at the seams with alcoholics, but you can’t walk around a prison for very long with out bumping in someone with a problem…

Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of (a) the number and (b) the proportion of prisoners diagnosed with alcohol problems in each prison in England and Wales, in each of the last 10 years. [265702]

Mr. Hanson: A number of studies have provided a picture of the alcohol-related problems experienced by those entering prisons:

Research(1) carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 1997 stated that 63 per cent. of sentenced males and 39 per cent. of sentenced females reported a hazardous drinking pattern in the year before coming into prison. This figure rises to 70 per cent. in the case of young adult offenders. The numbers who are physically dependent on alcohol, which can be defined as those who need alcohol detoxification (Tiers 3 and 4 of Models of Care for Alcohol Misusers (MoCAM)), are much lower at around 8 per cent. of females and 7 per cent. of males.

The Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SCPR) study(2), a large national longitudinal survey of newly sentenced adult prisoners, reported in 2008 that 36 per cent. of the sample could be classified as heavy drinkers. However, heavy drinking—defined as drinking more than twice the recommended sensible daily limits—is not directly comparable to the hazardous drinking category used in the ONS report.

http://twitter.com/NadineDorriesMP/status/6169016126

Off licences don’t control housing estates and publicans don’t run brothels, control child prostitutes and fund trafficking from booze.

Would drug dealers be able to control housing estates and fund people trafficking from drugs if drugs were legal like booze? I strongly doubt they would.
I also doubt that drugs fund people trafficking and prostitution to as greater extent that is usually portrayed.
Criminals are in drugs and prostitution for the money. That’s why there isn’t a black market for alcohol as there is for drugs. Think about it. Why would you break the law for lots of work, lots of hassle and no reward? Are criminals using prostitution as a loss-leader, like Tesco does with milk? Of course not.

The points above are supposed to be argueing in favour of stricter, harsher drug laws. They fail completely.

Mid-Beds, this is your MP. Please learn from your mistake at the next election.

Oh, and drugs are bad, mmkay?

Update:
Two more posts on the same set of Dorries tweets, the first from JDC325 who has more detail on the figures and stuff, and the second (via JDC325) from Mark Reckons which contains this nugget of comedy…

[Nadine tweets:] When I visited a womens prison, 100% of inmates were in for drugs related offences. 100%

As El_Cuevro tweeted, HM Prison Service says that 33% of female prisoners are in for drug offences. Nadine’s figure of 100% can only be because she must have visited a drug offenders institution.

BBC…

The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies.

Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C.

He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being politicised.

The home secretary said he had “lost confidence” in his advice and asked him to step down.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is the UK’s official drugs advisory body.

Following his sacking, Prof Nutt told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects.

He described his sacking as a “serious challenge to the value of science in relation to the government”.

Problem solved.

Ben Goldacre…

What happened when Portugal decriminalised all drugs?: go on, guess.

This did…

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal’s drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Drug WarRant…

Via D-Notice elsewhere.

Cannabis NI…

Dont be using empty coke cans for ashtrays. Breaks your heart when ya drop your j in :(