UK Home Secretary Theresa May is continuing a trend of ignoring science advisers when it comes to drug policy:
Home Secretary Theresa May and her statutory advisers on drug policy look to be heading for a showdown over government plans to deal with so-called "legal highs". Some members of The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) are understood to be furious that they were not consulted on proposed legislation for a blanket ban on psychoactive substances. The relationship between the ACMD and ministers in various governments has long been strained. There have been sackings and mass resignations in the last few years, amid claims that expert scientists were being bullied and ignored because their advice didn't coincide with government policy.
Questions are now being asked as to whether the ACMD is being edged out of the drugs debate - 44 years after a Conservative government set it up to ensure science rather than politics dictated policy. In the House of Lords yesterday, a number of peers demanded to know why ministers had not asked the ACMD's opinion before drawing up the controversial Psychoactive Substances Bill.
"It is actually a legal requirement set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that the ACMD must be consulted before alterations to the Act or new legislation is brought in," Labour peer Lord Rea told the House. "Instead, a specially appointed expert panel was set up by the Home Office. I can only suggest that this was done because the opinion of the ACMD is often not exactly welcomed by the Home Office".
The principle which underpinned the drugs debate in the UK at that time [in 1971] was the longstanding and broadly accepted view that addicts were ill and required treatment rather than punishment. Known as the "British system", ministers felt a medical science-led approach was preferable to US-style prohibition. Roll the clock forward four decades and the government view seems to have turned around entirely in responding to the threat from so-called "legal highs". The bill to outlaw NPS prohibits everything "capable of producing a psychoactive effect" unless it is specifically exempted - and there are concerns that the proposals are being introduced without proper consultation with health experts.
A blanket ban on psychoactive legal highs with prison sentences of up to seven years was featured in the Conservative Party's election manifesto and the Queen's Speech.
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from the tyrant dept.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May is favored to become the new leader of the Conservatives and the UK's next Prime Minister following a first round of voting, the elimination of Liam Fox, drop out of Stephen Crabb, and the earlier drop out of Boris Johnson:
Home Secretary Theresa May has comfortably won the first round of the contest to become the next Conservative leader and UK prime minister. Mrs May got 165 of the 329 votes cast by Tory MPs. Andrea Leadsom came second with 66 votes. Michael Gove got 48. [...] Further voting will narrow the field to two. The eventual outcome, decided by party members, is due on 9 September. Following the result, frontrunner Mrs May - who campaigned for the UK to stay in the EU - received the backing of Mr Fox, a former defence secretary and Brexit campaigner, and Mr Crabb, the work and pensions secretary, who backed Remain.
[...] Mrs May - who has said she will deliver Brexit if PM - said she was "pleased" with the result and "grateful" to colleagues for their support. She said there was a "big job" ahead to unite the party and the country following the referendum, to "negotiate the best possible deal as we leave the EU" and to "make Britain work for everyone". She added: "I am the only candidate capable of delivering these three things as prime minister, and tonight it is clear that I am also the only one capable of drawing support from the whole of the Conservative Party."
Update: The race to lead the Conservative Party and become the next Prime Minister of the UK is down to two women: Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom:
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday June 12 2015, @07:08PM
No more Chocolate? Mein Gott! Food is "psycho-active"! I thought all the Puritans had left for the Colonies some time ago.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Friday June 12 2015, @07:47PM
They should ban sex and rock'n'roll too. They are on the verge on finishing the drugs part.
Everything you do is psycho-active. And I mean everything you eat and do. Walking is also psycho-active, so that drinking water to sustain your walk is potentially illegal. Such law, however intended, is only there to be abused to make sure you are a criminal guilty of at least something. It is simply to make it easy to silence dissent.
First they came for the...
etc...
Soon we need to colonise the seas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @09:28PM
They have. Men used to marry girls. It was banned in the late 19th century early 20th
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday June 12 2015, @10:41PM
I would like to propose a new class of *woosh*!
*mikeeusa woosh*
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday June 13 2015, @11:04AM
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” H. L. Mencken
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Friday June 12 2015, @07:13PM
Why are governments so concerned about people taking "psychoactive substances"?
As I've gotten older, the answer to this question has only gotten less and less clear to me.
Are they really willing to say that they're going to destroy people's lives (try getting a job with a drug conviction on your record) just to keep people from destroying their own lives (by getting addicted to some drug)? Would drug addicts have a better outcome if we treated them like Alcoholics or food addicts - i.e. social but not legal pressure, with medical assistance in recovery if desired?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Friday June 12 2015, @07:46PM
Your stance seems very reasonable to me, but the propaganda against drugs runs deep. For most it becomes a debate of good vs. evil, reason doesn't enter into it. The demographics are changing, so hopefully in the not too distant future the drug agenda will move into the social sphere and not the legal one.
Another possible reason for legalization is that it should make it safer for users. If we have companies that create the drugs, then they'll suddenly have a public reputation. Cutting drugs with harmful chemicals will become less common, hopefully reducing overdoses and complications.
From my armchair it seems that legalization measure have resulted in less crime without major social upheaval. Prohibition measures result in more crime and social unrest.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Informative) by KGIII on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:01AM
I do strongly support the legalization of all drugs. The government should not be preventing those who have reached the age of majority from doing what they will with their own body provided it does not risk other people beyond the user. Now, I do mean all drugs - not just the ones that you like. Taking the crime out of possession, consumption, and sale is a way to reduce crime - especially violent crime. The fact that they are illicit is a draw for some people. People are not going to suddenly decide that they are going to go out and start a heroin addiction just because heroin is legal.
People will not suddenly use because of the changes to the law - they may report their use in studies or such because it is now legal. People who want drugs are not stopped by the law. If people could not get drugs we would not have this "drug problem," would we? So, yes, anyone who wants drugs can already get drugs. The only way we can affect change in any meaningful and non-draconian way is to simply legalize them and use the war on drugs money to educate and rehabilitate.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday June 14 2015, @08:47PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 15 2015, @03:24PM
I'm inclined to agree with such arguments, but the problem is that "public" rarely ever means public. Do you actually mean just the streets (the one place most people feel no need to ban it) and the courthouse, or do you mean every private bar or restaurant?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:58PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:21PM
What about hookah bars or cigar shops? Can you smoke there? Is it only allowed if they refuse to give you a glass of water with the hookah? Or maybe the water is OK if they don't charge for it? Around here it's quite common for such establishments to also serve alcohol; sometimes food too. Is that banned? Or can we have a hookah lounge that is also a bar, just not a bar that is also a hookah lounge??
How about we just say it's a private business, and they can do what they want. If you get a job or go out to eat at a smokers' bar, you don't really have any right to complain about people smoking IMO. Perhaps there's a need for some regulation if an establishment would like to start to allow smoking where they didn't previously (ie, offer a severance package to any employees who choose to leave because of it) but if you've got a bar where people have smoked inside for the past decade, I don't see how you can claim *anyone* present is being "forced" to inhale that smoke. If you don't like it, just don't eat there. Vote with your wallet.
Besides, banning it in bars and restaurants is a wholly different concept than banning it in public; and in fact I'd say the two are mutually exclusive. If you ban it in bars, people have to step outside into the public street to smoke. Keep it legal in the bars, and you can ban it on the streets and tell smokers to go indoors if they want to smoke. Ban it in all commercial establishments, all industrial establishments, AND all public places and you might as well just place all nicotine addicts under house arrest as it's the same end result.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by wisnoskij on Friday June 12 2015, @07:47PM
While the punishments should be controversial, and the wording is slightly too broad, the idea of filling loopholes in laws is sound. Everyone who takes these knows that they are only legal because they were not popular enough in the past for the government to take notice.
Some of these substances don't just impair your thinking, but literally do make you go on rampages or gouge out your own eye balls. If there is a 1/10,000 chance that taking a drug will turn you into a raving cannibal with an insatiable thirst for human flesh, taking the drug while not locked up in a room away from everyone else should be illegal.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Friday June 12 2015, @08:23PM
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but assuming you are serious I do understand your concern. However, you're only taking part of the equation into consideration. You are more worried about the 1/5000 chance (according to the article) that cannabis use will lead to schizophrenia than the effects of prohibition: increased crime incentives with the black market, increased incarceration, increased social unrest as people's live are destroyed by drug convictions. Statistically speaking, prohibition leads to more problems.
Also, while the increased risk of schizophrenia is there, the additional probability that such a schizophrenic will actually go on a murdering cannibalistic rampage is much lower. Please cite evidence of at least two such occurrences to at least slightly redeem such an extreme statement.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday June 12 2015, @10:52PM
Note: I am 100% for the cannabis legalization efforts in the US. These instances are a result of edibles. I tried edibles once and did not have a good experience. However, some folks swear by edibles. Who am I to tell somebody else how to consume their cannabis? In the case of medical treatments, edibles may be the safest drug delivery mechanism available.
(My take-away is caution: just like with my nuclear chicken wings, do not get in over your head if you are inexperienced. They can take nuclear-class chicken wings from my cold, dead hands, and I will defend to the death the right to purchase and/or bake edible cannabis products, even if I don't like them myself.)
Occurrence the first: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25488963/marijuana-edibles-spotlight-colorado-after-students-death [denverpost.com]
Occurrence the second: http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/03/in-colo-murder-case-effect-of-marijuana-edibles-at-issue.html [findlaw.com]
Whew! If you had asked for three, I would have been at a loss!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:10AM
Thanks for the links! While important cautionary tales, those are a far cry from someone turning into a cannibal and eating human flesh.
While these are disturbing, there are way more such occurrences of suicide / death from alcohol. I am very suspicious of the man who murdered his wife, but yes altered states of mind can be dangerous. This is more of an issue with drug education.
And again (for wisnoskij) the negative stories from drug use are overshadowed by the negative affects of prohibition: creating a black market, theft, murder, and imprisonment (which creates a cycle).
All that said, of course there will be substances that will be regulated. As new drugs are created they must be tested before legalization.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:57AM
The flesh eating zombie thing is probably a reference to a case in Florida. However, in spite of the sensationalist headlines, the M.E. found no trace of cathinones in the zannibal's system. NMaturally, those headlines were nowhere near as larg or stridently reported.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:30PM
Agreed on alcohol and prohibition in general. It's almost dark humor that two of the most dangerous drugs we know, alcohol and tobacco, are legal, while safer drugs such as cannabis are illegal.
Ken Burns' documentary Prohibition almost makes the case for cannabis legalization. (Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't the main thrust of the documentary.) Again, it's dark humor that we can't apply what we learned during alcohol prohibition to cannabis prohibition. Of course, there's always racism. During alcohol prohibition, the crime was in our backyards. With cannabis prohibition, the crime just affects brown folks. /s
Speaking to designer drugs, I do wish that HU-210 (among the other components of the “old” spice, back before the DEA cracked down on HU-210 and spice had to change its formulation to be imho useless—it was this useless formulation that made headlines in the USA, not the old spice [cue the Old Spice Guy]) specifically would be given proper safety trials and made legal. The high is somewhat different from cannabis and more psychedellic.
While I have great respect for the various highs Mother Nature has given us, it behooves us to understand that the human mind is a complex organ and that perhaps putting it in a “debugging mode” does involve hallucinations. We should understand the importance of introspection and drugs that operate on a, dare I say, “spiritual” level in creating psychological change. It could be the case that the solution to a number of mental illnesses is at our fingertips, if only we'd accept that irrational states of mind are useful debugging modes.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:47AM
The only reason people even try those "off-brand" drugs that cause zombies in Florida is that the much more popular and less dangerous drugs are illegal and the crazy stuff isn't.
Meanwhile, I sure hope they remember to list each and every industrial solvent and useful gas. It would be a shame if they screwed someone for life over engine de-greaser.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:35PM
Yikes! Bath salts may have been the cause of this Florida cannibal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_cannibal_attack [wikipedia.org]
I think we can universally agree that bath salts are bad, mmkay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:52PM
And alcohol literally makes you go on rampages and beat your wife, murder innocent families of four, its the #1 date-rape drug used in countless rapes, not to mention the withdrawal really can kill you, and it is the most toxic recreational drug, so why does it get a pass? Alcohol is more toxic and dangerous than every illegal and quasi-legal drug put together.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:48PM
> Why are governments so concerned about people taking "psychoactive substances"?
My theory is that one particular puritan faction got in a position to implement their ideology on the momentum of the social pendulum swing back from the liberal 60s. Then it became a sort of mantra, repeated unthinkly and reinforced in schooling via anti-drug 'education.' So now many of the people in charge are on autopilot - having to question something they've taken as a given for most of their lives. That's hard, often unpleasant, easier to just keep on keeping on.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday June 12 2015, @07:49PM
Because the right-wing traditionalist model, as we're so accustomed to seeing dominate the political debate in the US, is that if something is bad it is also caused by a moral failing. And moral failings mandate punishment. It extends to poverty, being a victim of crime, illness, and addiction all to varying degrees.
Note, this is an underlying attitude that has to do with perceived locus of control, not some official position that I'm dictating all people of a political persuasion must have. And I'm not talking completely out of my ass and making things up. There's a real correlation between perception of locus of control and political beliefs.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:25AM
This has been true back centuries, with Hogarth's 1751 Beer Street and Gin Lane [wikipedia.org] depicting beer drinkers as industrious and gin drinkers as near-madness.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:56PM
Horray for victim blaming!
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Friday June 12 2015, @08:21PM
There's not much sense to it, it's mostly a random chaotic process.
A few drugs became established in society early on; alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, cannabis, opium. Accidents of history caused the relative popularity and legality of these to rise and fall. Cannabis is currently on the uptick, tobacco use falls every year (but the essential ingredient, nicotine, might survive in the form of vaporizers). Alcohol has been a near constant companion but it too has had periods of prohibition. It's been forbidden in lands ruled by Islam for hundreds of years (with few exceptions), while opium is permitted. In the West, it's mostly the exact opposite.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday June 12 2015, @10:40PM
Yes, they would. Not fantastically better (addiction is still addiction), as what Portugal experience have shown [mic.com] after 14 years of switching from making drug use a crime to a policy of harm reduction:
In regards with harm reduction [newyorker.com]:
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:06AM
You do not get AIDS or hepatitis from a dirty needle anyhow. You get those from contaminated needles. There is a difference as a dirty needle can be one you have used more than once.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:43AM
While you might be semantically correct, this is a very poorly crafted soundbite "You do not get AIDS or hepatitis from a dirty needle".
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 14 2015, @08:38AM
You are correct. It would most certainly not make a good DARE poster. I have had three DARE shirts. One was legit, one said DARE to think for yourself, and the final one said DARE - Drugs Are Really Expensive. I liked to wear the legitimate one when I was tripping and/or going out to a show. You can get "cotton fever" (name used generically - it is frequently just foreign matter in the blood that the body is unhappy about) from dirty needles.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @11:39PM
Because psychoactive drugs numb the mind and make people idle and more willing to accept the present state of things. If protecting those people --and their families-- (and yes, government does act as a paternal instrument) means a few people willing to commit illegal activity have to go to prison, then that's a worthy trade-off. Paint this as fascism, or whatever you want, but making drugs even more easily available will lead to the opposite of a politically-engaged, intelligent, independent public. Once something like cannabis becomes legal, once the realities sink in of having a large section of the public be a bunch of retarded, perma-fried stoners, it will be virtually impossible to make it illegal again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:14AM
…making drugs even more easily available will lead to the opposite of a politically-engaged, intelligent, independent public. Once something like cannabis becomes legal, once the realities sink in of having a large section of the public be a bunch of retarded, perma-fried stoners, it will be virtually impossible to make it illegal again.
I vehemently disagree. I think the establishment (i.e. status quo) is convinced that legalizing cannabis will lead to mass complacency. I probaby should not be making this comment, but the opposite is true.
Fascism has always been about a puritan ideal. A pure race, a pure economic theory, purity.
Cannabis is among a class of drugs that leads to questioning authority. This is the antithesis of fascism, so yes, your comment represents fascism. And what is up with this “perma-fried” thing? Many people consume cannabis on a regular basis and fare far more well than their alcoholic bretheren professionally.
In fact, cannabis appears to have a neuro-protective property, whereas alcohol is readily documented as neuro-destructive. I would not recommend pushing code made while high into production (my high code is shit at least), but we have to consider the properties of legal drugs, such as alcohol, in comparision to the properties of illegal drugs, such as cannabis.
Let's face it. The scrambled eggs model of “all drugs” (whatever that means) is broken and intellectually dishonest. Alcohol can fry one's brain. Cannabis? Not so much.
Those of us who want cannabis and other drugs legal are asking society to consider the hypocrisy of allowing such desctructive substances as alcohol and nicotine and denying potentially helpful substances such as cannabis and other drugs (in a professional setting) as LSD-25, psylocibe mushrooms, iboga root, etc.
I would not mind if the other drugs I mentioned, particularly iboga root, were scheduled class II. These have a medical use, and yet, they are most properly administered by a medicine woman or priestess in a controlled environment (or medicine man—I admit I'm more familiar with Amazon lore).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:40AM
I think you've confused the personalities types of people who smoke weed, and the effects of weed.
We all known "rebel without causes" types in uni/college. They smoked weed because they saw it as an outlet for the rebellion (i.e. because it's illegal and there's a sort of pseudo-scientific, homoeopathic mysticism surrounding it); it didn't cause their rebelliousness. Maybe being in that stoner environment brought about some of that rebelliousness, but it definitely wasn't the drug itself.
Fascism just a form of extremism, so is communism; they're an attempt at forcing the production of an ideology's utopia by any means. If banning harmful substances is fascism, then banning guns or 8oz sodas is fascism. Unless you're a Libertarian, you're probably all right with at least the former.
In regards to your other comments (i.e. perma-fried), I was referring to drugs in general, especially harder drugs than weed. I obviously wasn't clear enough. I would be for banning alcohol and tobacco if they were new to society, so this isn't hypocrisy. I'm also for legalising cannabis/LCD, etc in a controlled medical professional setting, and studying them for their therapeutic effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:48AM
*LCD = LSD
I'm using an old CRT monitor at work, so...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:00PM
Communism is not extremism, its an economic model based on the public co-owning the means of production, nothing extreme about it. Every "extremist implementation of communism" was totalitarian state capitalism, not communism.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @08:08PM
To take it 1 step further, there is a reason that the words Communism and community look so much alike.
Re: Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Kimism (top-down systems)
Entities (especially authoritarian entities) can call themselves whatever they choose.
It doesn't make that label ("Communism") true.
As an example, the USA calls itself a Democracy--meanwhile, 80 percent of its people (a supermajoriy by any count) want universal single-payer healthcare (Medicare for all) and can't get that.
Clearly, the USA is not a Democracy but is instead a plutocracy/oligarchy.
Now, want to see -actual- Communism?
Go to the autonomous region of Andalusia in Spain and take a look at the village of Marinaleda. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [jacobinmag.com]
Everyone there has affordable housing and a good-paying job[1].
In addition, the community abolished its police department because there was no need for it.
[1] In the meantime, the Capitalist parts of Spain have 27 percent unemployment--50 percent for young people.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @02:54PM
If they use money, that doesn't sound much like communism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2015, @07:07PM
Your concept of a cashless society was the final stage that Marx described, where everyone's needs would be filled from the extensive commons (assets which under Capitalism tend to become controlled by fewer and fewer individuals and are used to exploit the workers).
The cult of personality in Marinaleda isn't all that Marxist either.
Again, the purity of the system isn't perfection yet, but it works well for the people there.
So, the people there have a comfortable, civilized life unlike the exploited, often desperate masses of the rest of Capitalist Spain.
So, what happens when the money-based system doesn't meet the needs of the people?
Such an incident is described on this page. [spookmagazine.com]
Look for the word "supermarket".
From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.
.
Keep an eye on Madrid and Barcelona as well.
They recently elected Lefty anti-austerity mayors.
To those, add the Mondragon employee-owned cooperative in the Basque country, consisting of about 100,000 workers.
Spain is a very interesting experiment these days.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:27AM
Paint this as fascism, or whatever you want
I'll paint you as an authoritarian scumbag who desires 'safety' more than allowing people to exercise their fundamental liberties; to me, you're no different or less cowardly from people who support mass surveillance because they're afraid of terrorists. Your priorities indicate you'd be better off in North Korea than in any country that claims to be free.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:11AM
I think you have been trolled. I am not sure that it is possible for a thinking person (and they must be to reach this site - it is not popular) to reach those conclusions with today's readily available information. I do not even think that the politicians who seek to enact prohibition legislation believe their own comments about this. I suspect, strongly, that they say those things because their goal is control.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:58PM
Sadly, no. Please read this book to understand why: Bob Altemeyer - The Authoritarians (free download)
Drugs that make you afraid or aggressive, such as alcohol in many cases, are useful: the political leaders in a police state are adept at channelling that fear and agression to their own means and ends. They are much more skilled in this type of manipulation than you'll ever understand. Not everyone is as smart as you!
Drugs that make you relaxed or contemplative, are dangerous: a population that wonders "is that policy really necessary? why can't our leaders chill out a bit?" is a danger to a fascist police state. Besides, who's going to do the fighting for the "right cause"?
There once was a Loesje poem (Loesje poems are usually 1-2 lines long and used to be posters made by an art collective in Arnhem) about war:
"What if it became war
and no-one wanted to go?"
Now THAT's a nightmare for fascists. Both leaders and their followers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:25PM
KGIII I misread your comment and will shut up now.
That'll teach me to stay off the chocolate..
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Sunday June 14 2015, @08:32AM
I was wondering why you were mostly agreeing with me but had started with the premise that I was incorrect. It is all good. I make mistakes - usually enough for the both of us. If it helps we can blame it on my writing style and the resulting lack of clarity.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:33PM
A population drug-idled and addicted is hardly a population able to take advantage of fundamental liberties. If you believe in some kind of Randian "freedom", I'm surprised you have gotten through life.
Wrt mass surveillance -- how does drug prohibition --ie policing dangerous substances-- equate with it? The government (especially the UK government) bans things all the time-- guns, media that offends people, types of alcohol, etc. I'd hazard a guess you're all right with banning at least one of those in practice.
And, wrt to the other guy saying "troll": are you that encapsulated in a bubble/hugbox, you can't imagine anyone legitimately has a differing point of view to you? I think all those gewg posts have given you a false impression of the world.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:33PM
A population drug-idled and addicted is hardly a population able to take advantage of fundamental liberties.
That's their choice. It isn't your place to send government thugs to take away their liberties whilst claiming to be protecting their liberties.
And that's nonsense, anyway. Can drug addicts exercise freedom of speech? Yes. The freedom to control their own bodies? Yes. Privacy rights? Yes. There are no rights that drugs stop you from exercising, and even if there were, it's ultimately your choice whether or not you want to take advantage of them.
Wrt mass surveillance -- how does drug prohibition --ie policing dangerous substances-- equate with it?
It's the same mentality that safety is more important than freedom; that we should act like worthless cowards and surrender our liberties in order to be more 'safe'.
I'd hazard a guess you're all right with banning at least one of those in practice.
I'm not fine with banning any of those, because I'm not a freedom-hating authoritarian.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:51AM
Drugs are emotionally perceived as a health threat. Like disease or poison, all people coming in contact with the threat and those related to them must be removed from the group.
Politicians, being those that are attracted most to power while lacking any real skills to contribute directly to society or the wisdom to understand it's a terrible job, are the most affected by emotional triggers. This is why it's so easy to convince politicians to do any sort of stupid thing as long as you can relate a sense of immediate threat to it.
On a more constructive note: being an emotional response, there's no reasoning it. The only way to argue it is to use the same means alcohol manufacturer do: Spread pictures of happy successful people doing drugs and make sure it reaches children.
The results speak for themselves.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:04PM
This is why paradoxically I think the intertwining of science and state is a mistake, it destroys the science rather than uplifting the state. Why allow them even the illusion?
(Score: 1) by termigator on Saturday June 13 2015, @01:10PM
A more modern explanation is drug laws exist to repress specific groups of people that the existing power structure fear and/or do not like. Just look at the history of US drug laws and how they have disproportionately punish minorities and the poor. Backed by propaganda on the "evils" of drugs, many people have misinformed ideas about drugs, leading them to continue the support of drug criminalization. Such misinformation starts at the grade school level in so-called drug education programs.
You may want to check out the book Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum. An informative book covering the history of the drug war and why it started in the first place.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:33PM
The police are furious that when they catch someone with a substance, who 'has the look' and is known to be doing everything up to but not including selling illegal drugs, in areas when drugs would be routinely bought by people who would ordinarily buy drugs, and it turns out that the drugs in question are in fact not drugs under the law.
From the very top the police culture is of the belief that criminals are criminals who will do crime no matter what. At the moment all the skills and resources of the police are geared toward drug related crime because low hanging fruit is the easiest fruit to pick, and drug addled crims are the easiest to nick. "But if you make it legal they'll just go and do something else" said one head of the met on national tv. At the moment the damage of drug related crime falls mostly on those involved in drug use/crime, if they go and do something else who is it more likely to effect, and if the criminal class isn't exposed to drugs how much harder will they be to catch.
By making all 'drugs' illegal everyone involved will go back the the tried and tested drugs rather than the new and mostly poor subsitutes restoring the status quo.
Its tortured logic but it makes you think. Can't wait for the day when they move on their own drugs of choice rather than someone elses. Alcohol, tobacco, caffeine. Double macchiatos and irish coffees as contraband.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @07:43PM
Consume enough caffeine to keep yourself awake for a week or two and it will start to cause some psychoactive effects. Boom, Starbucks is now an international drug cartel.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:06PM
Starbucks is expensive, and so doesn't cater to the "criminal class". The parent is right: the police want to justify their existence by harassing a class of people who they believe are no-good-niks, and keeping cheap drugs (marijuana is easily grown, it's even better than something that "grows on trees" because it's a fast-growing "weed") illegal lets the cops have a ready-made class of poor people they can harass to no end.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Friday June 12 2015, @07:49PM
Not all people caught with 5 grams of a narcotic are addicts, probably less than 5% are.
There are people trapped in bad situations. There are also people who just think taking drug A might be a fun friday night.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @08:05PM
Not all people caught with 5 grams of a narcotic are addicts
Of course not, they got caught so they're probably newbies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday June 12 2015, @07:50PM
Theresa May [wikipedia.org] sets a high standard for being terrible.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by purple_cobra on Friday June 12 2015, @08:30PM
Yes, yes she is. We've had some utter dipsticks in the past (Jack Straw is the one who immediately comes to mind. Oh, and Blunkett), but I think she's mainlining whatever evil venom the past dickheads were not-inhaling. For the uninitiated - and UK politics is just as tedious for UK residents as it is for anyone else - the two big parties are the Conservatives (authoritarian, god-fearing) and Labour (slightly more left wing, prodnose nanny-state), so the choice people wanting to back a horse that will win is between a group who will bend you over a barrel because they are bigger than you and a group who will bend you over a barrel because it's for your own good. Me? I don't like being bent over a barrel and voted for a team I thought would do the least amount of damage (and no, my vote of choice did not result in a winner). There's precious little separating their policies, though I suspect the poor wouldn't suffer quite so much under Labour (see the Bedroom Tax and it's complete lack of onus on the local authority to provide housing deemed adequate) and both are wont to just randomly ram shit laws through the statue books and to hell with the unintended consequences.
Rambling aside, if aliens descended tomorrow and wiped the lot of them out, I would not be sad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:02AM
the Tories haven't been about Toryism since Thatcher, so they're hardly "authoritarian"; if you're alluding to the "extremist speech" shit, Labour's no better (indefinite detention without trial, "hate speech"). "God-fearing" has me scratching my head -- do you mean "god" as in Adam Smith's "invisible hand"? David Cameron used to say he was agnostic, now he says he's CoE (probably the least god-fearing church). The front-bench Tories have pretty much the same social views as Labour, i.e. progressive.
"Slightly more left wing": well yeah, but UK politics is already skewed pretty far to the left anyway. We're no Sweden, but we're definitely far more left wing than the US. The difference between the two parties is primarily economic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:53AM
we're definitely far more left wing than the US.
Do you realize how utterly ridiculous this statement is? I mean US is in the same right wing group as North Korea and Nazi Germany...
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:15AM
Hey now, Jack Straw is most excellent.
http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/jstraw.html [ucsc.edu]
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:12PM
Are you using the right-wing definition of "nanny-state" - pro-social welfare, pro-social safety nets, pro-universal healthcare, etc - or the actual definition - making the state into a actual nanny by using force of law to dictate what people can and can't do based on a specific religion's guidelines, especially in their bedrooms and in the privacy of their own home, what they can put into their bodies, what they can do with and to their own bodies, etc? The former isn't a nanny-state at all, but merely a non-socipathic society and an example of a meaningless scare-word defined as "anything I consider bad", just like "communism", "socialism", "politically correct", and "SJW"; while the latter is literally a nanny state.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by BananaPhone on Friday June 12 2015, @07:58PM
In GPO-land where money talks and Science walks,
it's who can pay for the laws that get the laws they want.
IOW: The drug companies don't care how they make profits.
If people get high on their products, they are happy.
If people get high on free plants, that's a loss!!
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:25AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @07:43AM
GPO? Group Policy Objects [wikipedia.org]?
/ducks
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday June 12 2015, @08:10PM
You could not become even more puritan than the United States.
Also, alcohol, sex and cigarettes banned from the UK.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 12 2015, @11:27PM
Sex? really?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:04AM
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html [independent.co.uk]
No videos of "Female ejaculation" : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 13 2015, @03:13PM
Of course not. If females got anything out of (banned) sex then they might actually want more sex. OMG!? ;-)
In other news the UK government will require pre-approvement of every uttered word on that island.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:15PM
"Female ejaculation" would require an orgasm, and everybody knows there's no such thing as a "female orgasm". They're just banning obviously fake videos depicting mythology because they could trick people into thinking that kind of thing might actually be real.
(Score: 2) by CortoMaltese on Friday June 12 2015, @08:51PM
drugs are bad...mkay?
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Friday June 12 2015, @08:56PM
If they are concerned about deaths. Why don't they push for labeling and purity value?
It would add some expense, but then consumers have better idea what there getting. I don't think there would be very many people against the idea.
Only thing that I think would be challenging is labeling it in a way that it is clear to users what ingredients are. Example product has ingredient A that is 98% pure. The remaining 2% is solvent(s), precursors, catalysts etc. I would expect it would be good to have shortcuts/notations to describe items as solvents/precursor/ etc
I know i would not really know what ethylmethlbiphenamaline(randomy chem string) would be or do. But that it was a solvent for A is a little clearer what it is. A user probably doesn't want any solvent but could probably tolerate some of the precursors(depending on substance of course).
This type of labeling would be good on certain foods and many medications.
tl;dr more information is better then banning.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @10:08PM
In related news, I bought a box of pseudoephedrine-based decongestant at the chemists today. The pharmacists behind the counter asked a series of standard questions about any other medications, side effects, had I taken them before. I then handed over some quids. I understand that in the US it's much harder to do this since pseudoephedrine is a common precursor to methamphetamine... a drug that's never really caught on over here as far as I can tell because it's much much easier to just go buy some coke.
I'm in my 30's and, maybe it's just the circles I move in, but everyone I know looks on legal highs as the untrustworthy alternative to known, "tested" drugs, or for those poor souls who want some harmless mind alteration but aren't fortunate enough to know a reputable drug dealer. Some friends who've tried various "legal" weed substitutes as a lark have uniformly derided them as shite (for various reasons). The legal high stimulants are always invariably compared to some cheap speed cut with caffeine or some other similar psychoactive-with-slight-but-nevertheless-unpleasant-side-effects additive for the sake of variety. It's the drug equivalent of "it's like someone dissolved a choc ice in a bottle of bleach. This is childrens booze!". And who in their right mind would stagger down to their local corner shop to buy a mystery drug when all the local dealers offer door-to-door delivery?!
Only reason this is becoming A Thing is because... hey, tory party in for a term now only without the lid dems saying "fuck no!" to the snoopers charter and a PR department still attempting to cater to the vanishingly small UKIP right-wing little hitler demographic. So cue lots of headline-stealing stories about how the tories are doing a great job of Getting Something Done what with all of those meow-meows that children these days are getting free with their breakfast cereal which is the cause of the decay of moral fibre in this country and in my day we'd have just strung 'em up kids these days don't know they're born should've been put into the bally army that'd teach them some respect!
Do I have a coherent point? Not really, because it's not a coherent policy; deaths and illness from cars, smoking, alcohol, fish'n'chips and even the odd bad batch of ecstasy still knock the ill effects from designer drugs into a cocked hat. But a periphery demographic somehow think that legal highs are somehow a terrible problem so we now have poorly planned laws to grab column inches away from stories about our poorly planned drug policies, such as the tories reducing funding to narcotic treatment programmes for people with actual problems in what is fast becoming one of our more schizophrenic national foibles. Some poor sod is found dead in a back alley from a skag overdose and it'll barely make the local paper, some prat of a teenager drinks 30 vodka red bulls and is hospitalised and no-one bats an eyelid but someone ingests some random chemical cocktail at the weekend and all of a sudden it's the end of civilisation.
Article from the daily mash that highlights the legal illegality of legal highs pretty succinctly.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/police-send-out-clear-message-that-legal-highs-are-not-legal-2015060198787 [thedailymash.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:17AM
12.6% of the voting public is hardly "vanishingly small". And for a party the prime minister called "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", I don't think the Conservatives are at all interested in bowing to their interests.
To "little hitlers", if 12.6% of the UK population was readily getting their supply of Zyklon-B out of the garage on the 7th May, I'd be fucking amazed. I think all that weed's done something to you, bro!
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Sunday June 14 2015, @06:27AM
I understand that in the US it's much harder to do this since pseudoephedrine is a common precursor to methamphetamine...
Yes, it's a big enough pain in the ass that one would almost rather buy the more readily available methamphetamine and turn it into pseudoephedrine. [boingboing.net]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 12 2015, @11:41PM
Sounds so familiar. People in power ignoring reality because it doesn't match their agenda or thought process.
Let's hope UK stays on the scientific approach and leave the moral righteous extremist but really detrimental policies to the US political class.
As Mr Spock would have said "You are being irrational".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:34AM
> Sounds so familiar. People in power ignoring reality because it doesn't match their agenda or thought process.
People not-in-power do that too.