England's green and pleasant land

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

Soddam for tomorrah.

Elaine

The reception to that play ‘Jerusalem’ is so culturally telling it’s frightening.

Who would be the parent of a child lost to a drug overdose who cheered that claptrap on?

How has such behaviour become so lauded?

Best pay a trip to London Assurance with Simon Russell Beale. It’s all about how city types climb the social ladder by making ostentatious show of their languid attitudes. It’s not about drugs, but isn’t that sort of desire to fit in with the attitudes of the day why people behave the way they do at plays like Jerusalem and brag about enjoying it afterwards? ‘Look at me. I’m so cool I don’t care about anything.’

It’s all about being seen to endorse morally languid behavior. Who wants to be unfashionable?

Fashionable opinion won’t resurrect 14 year old Gabi Price, 18 year old Louis Wainwright, 19 year old Nicholas Smith and 24 year old Lois Waters, though, will it? There’s no one to clap them night after night.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6645881/What-is-miaow-drug.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258384/Schools-mephedrone-Meow-Meow-ban-teenage-deaths.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259984/Meow-Meow-Woman-dies-taking-legal-party-drug-mephedrone.html

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Dear Melanie,

I cannot understand your surprise at the reactiion of doctors and other establishment charscters. It is well researched and statistically shown, that the heaviest drinkers, takers of drugs and actual suicides are within the medical profession. When they are not (most of them) spouting rubbish and dishing out pills to their naive patients, they are having a dose of their own medicine.

Watt Tyler

The social acceptance of drugs is an aim of the Marxist plotters. Anything that involves creating human misery and social disturbance where before there should not have been any - and at the expense of the Marxist feathering his own nest - began as an idea in the mind of that Marxist.

The audiences reaction shows that, at least in lascivious London, the Marxists have succeded in changing the culture. It is as if it were the last days of Rome all over again.

david elder

Maybe Jerusalem should sue the producers of this play for pinching their brand name?

steve

Watt Tyler: Have you heard of the Marxists William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman? Both advocated the legalization of drugs.

David Lindsay

Since there cannot be a "free" market generally but not in, among other things, drugs, so there must not be a "free" market generally. You can be a capitalist, or you can be a conservative (including a fiscal conservative, but that is another story), but you cannot be both.

Of course mephedrone should be made illegal. Within a single class of illegal drug, and accompanied a crackdown on the possession of drugs, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on.

All within a context in which each offence, of whatever kind, carries a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or of 15 years for life.

Sergey

Actually, William Buckley did not advocate legalization of drugs, but their licensing. He meant that drug using should lead to compulsary medical threatment of user, not their prison incarceration. See http://old.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html

Daniel Heslop

If the canard "prohibition does not work" were true, logic would dictate that we legalise everything! Do the pro-legalisation city slickers and leafy suburbanites really wish to see free sale of antibiotics, thalidomide, cyanide, every untested pharmaceutical product, new medicines, food additives etc? Moreover do they really want drug tourism on mass? Organised crime setting up here so as to peddle overseas with impunity, and all the sleaze that would follow them? Of course not, they just to self-intoxicate 'responsibly' whilst the less educated descend into hell!

William Boyd

Well I do think you're right Mel that we're a society gone soft on drugs.

But I don't think we should just be targeting estate kids and clubbers in our drug education campaigns.

How about bankers and their macho coke habits for starters? I do wonder just how much we owe our credit crunch to that particular status enhancing recreational drug.

Alcohol's a problem too (course it's a drug) and not just binge drinking. It's time the BMA knocked on the head the ludicrous idea that alcohol in moderation is good for you. Of course it's not - just drinking two pints of lager a day adds 500 more calories to our diet than most of us need or can use (20 hours moderate exercise needed to burn that off) and that's just for starters before we even think about considering the toxicity of alcohol itself.

Muppetpastor

I'd keep away from Shakespeare then, he got to most of those places first. Though I don't think any of his plays covered drug abuse, except alcohol. Wasn't it Sherlock Holmes who did loads of drugs? Opium and cocaine I believe.
If you don't like Rooster, don't go and see it. But nothing he does hasn't been done before by a better playwright.

simon

Jerusalem is a wonderful play about the real world and real people.

To quote the previous Spectator Editor Matthew d'Ancona. writing on my blog "Touching From a Distance'

"...truly awesome ‘Jerusalem‘, Jez Butterworth’s play about England, recently transferred to the West End but still boasting a once-in-a-generation performance by Mark Rylance as Rooster Johnny Byron, a Jimmy Porter for our times. "

http://is.gd/create.php

What a stick in the mud you are.

Austin Barry

West End audiences have always been odd.

Years ago I saw an audience ecstatically cheering a play featuring an elderly homosexual pedophile teaching his 'community' of young boys how to mug people and 'groom' other kids. The low point was when another elderly gay kidnaps the prettiest of the boys and takes him home. It also featured a brutal criminal chav much like Johnny 'Rooster' Byron, with a vicious attack dog on a lead. Bloke called Sykes.

I'm not sure, though, how much we can extrapolate about our society from preening middle-class theatregoers.

Miranda Rose Smith

What is a slapper and who is/was Vicky Pollard?

Frank P

Austin Barry

What the Dickens DO you mean?? :-)

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Mr. Barry: In Oliver Twist, Fagin is the VILLAIN, not the HERO.

Miranda Rose Smith

Dear Mr. P: TOUCHE!!!

Danny Kushlick

No need to repeat myself.
Legalising and regulating drugs will save lives: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/drugs/story/0,,780581,00.html

anon

And 100 or so years ago, when drugs were legal, were most of Britain indulging in Opium and in Cocaine?
Melanie, it has been shown that after an initial spike in drug consumption in Amsterdam, fewer people these days smoke grass in Amsterdam than in other cities. Surely you should be encouraged by this even though it goes against your thesis.

JohnAnt

Here's a fairly predictable reaction from the man who's responsible for the government inertia and time-wasting on drugs policy in the first place...
"The government's former Chief Drugs Advisor David Nutt has called for new policy approaches to drugs where unsatisfactory scientific knowledge is avaliable on the substance.

Following the deaths of two teenagers taking the "legal high" mephedrone, he backed the government position against rushing to control mephedrone.

'To make it illegal without proper evidence of harm would be wrong and might have unwanted consequences, such as a switch to more dangerous drugs or alcohol' [he said].
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=12465
Public Service.Co.Uk
Nanny-government spin, financed by the taxpayer.
And did you notice the obligatory identification of alcohol with 'more dangerous drugs'?
Here's more - you can't lose a child these days without having some quango po-face spitting in your face...

'The family of Nicholas Smith, one of the teenagers who died after taking mephedrone on Monday have called on the government to make the drug illegal.

Tony and Elaine Smith said they believe their son would not have taken mephedrone if it was illegal.

"I assume that because it's a legal drug he thought it was safe to take. I am convinced he took it because it was legal, why would anyone assume it could kill you?" Tony Smith said.

"He would be alive if the ban was in place."

David Nutt said that instead there is a need for education initiatives to better ensure young people understand the dangers of 'legal highs' – including alcohol.'
Ah yes, including alcohol.
What a Nutt-case.

C. Gee

Drama never moves far beyond the old Dionysus v. Apollo tug-of-war. Dionysus has been winning for a long time.

roger

The recent 'mephedrone deaths' are not directly linked to mephedrone at all, it is merely the fact that these teenagers took a legal substance alongside methadone, ketamine, alcohol and cannabis that the media has sensationalised the story to make mephedrone look evil. There isn't even any evidence as to the cause of their deaths yet as the toxicology report is yet to be returned.
There is no evidence to suggest that this substance is in any way linked to any deaths.

Better legal and pure than illegal and contaminated with unknown and potentially more harmful substances.

daniel maris

Roger speaks sense and Mel does not.

Drugs have been around since the year dot.

We need to move drugs out of the arena of law (where the battle was well and truly lost many years ago) and into the arenas of health and public licensing, which is what we've done with alcohol and (increasingly) tobacco.

David

Daniel Heslop: You (perhaps understandably) misunderstand what people usually mean by 'prohibition doesn't work'. The point is not that it doesn't dissuade some people from using a drug; it probably does. The point is that its effect on people's drug-taking behaviour is generally not strong (if it were, there'd be more people taking fly agaric mushrooms than take cannabis), and that it generally creates more problems than it solves. Yes, of course there will always be a criminal black market, but you seem to believe that if offered that choice between a huge and powerful black market and a small and marginal one we should choose the former. For your support of criminalising mephedrone to be morally coherent, you must believe that enough people will be dissuaded from using it to compensate for the extra risk that will attach to it for those who will continue to use it. And if it proves to have sticking power and a black market steps in to meet demand (which may or may not happen; we don't really know yet), then we can be sure that there will be killings over control over the mephedrone market, and such deaths will be the result of drug policy, not drugs. So the question we have to ask ourselves is how many lives are we prepared to expend for the privilege of living in a society where some drugs are prohibited? Only if we can be very sure that that number is fewer than those who would have died through drug use can the prohibitionists claim the moral high ground. The onus, of course, is on the prohibitionists. Also, a society in which drug production is legally regulated will be vastly _less_ favourable to organised crime than a society in which organised criminals are the only ones able to profit from the drugs industry. Surely you can see that if the same drug is available legally from a regulated outlet and illegally from a criminal dealer, most people are likely to choose the quality-controlled legal supplier, thus depriving the criminals of much of their market. This is why most people buy their alcohol from bars and off-licences, not from shady underground dealers.

John Ant: Why exactly is David Nutt a 'nuttcase' for pointing out that alcohol causes more deaths than all illicit drugs combined? Is he wrong? Quote the source of your statistics, please. The fact is that our drug policy is fundamentally premised on punishing people who use dangerous drugs, unless that drug is alcohol (or tobacco, or, I suppose, fly agaric mushrooms etc). The point is that given that we don't criminalise alcohol users, alcohol has to represent our acceptable baseline of risk. If mephedrone, whatever its risks, turns out to be less dangerous than alcohol, then there is no rational basis on which to conclude that alcohol users don't deserve punishment but mephedrone users do. Arbitrary punishment is, of course, a very useful working definition of 'injustice' - so until the eveidence on mephedrone is in, it is at least not implausible that criminalising mephedrone users but not alcohol users is unjust, pure and simple.

Elaine: while I don't wish to denigrate the loss of lives that you reference, it has to be noted that fashionable opinion also won't bring back the tens of thousands of people killed as a result of prohibition who would not have died if drugs were legally regulated. I suggest you google 'mexico drug war' or suchlike to see what I mean (something like 5000 murders a year in Mexico, as a result of drug policy, not drugs per se). It really is more complicated than the number of people who have died from using a drug. Prohibition also costs lives.

David Raynes

Danny Kushlik

Not only do you need to repeat yourself, you need to explain yourself better-if you can. There is no evidence that in terms of TOTAL Harm and the deaths from use, legalisation of any illegal drug would save lives or drug harms in the UK. The evidence of the alcohol/tobacco market, worldwide is very much against against you.

You might also care to take a look at the statistics on methadone deaths-especially in Scotland.

User advocacy, as a basis for legalisation of the illegal drugs, has failed in the UK.

It has actually been quite interesting & enlightening watching Transform twist and turn about (legal) Mephedrone and watch your failing to come up with an intellectually coherent position.

If it were not for the associated tragedies it would be amusing.

Darryl

David - alcohol and tobacco are causing that uch harm as as well as being dangerous addictive drugs, they are sold in a drug protection racket and enjoy a monopoly with consumer protection. They are generally agressively promoted as a good. You never call for banning them, ever, even though they cause more harm than all controlled drugs, why is that David?

Why do you insist about talking about illegal drugs and legalisation. I pick you up every time on it and it never seems to register. No drug is illegal, and therefore legalisation of drugs is a meaningless concept. I will tell you waht an intellectually coherent position of mephedrone would be - allow it to be sold in measured doses with full instructions, safety advice, contra-indications to adults on an assumed-risk basis. Certainly the status quo is a diabolical situation and the only thing that could make matters worse is to prohibit it entirely.

Anna

How many people keel over dead from smoking cigarettes? Or get schizophrenia from smoking cigarettes?

I don't know how many people die of alcohol poisoning each year but it can't be anywhere near as high as instant death from drug overdoses.

And why should we legalise more poison - and even more lethal poison at that - than we have already?

Because it suits the bien pensant who can pay for proper rehab?

Such a caring bunch, aren't they?

Darryl

Anna's point reveals a misconception so deeply ironical and tragic it deserves to be written in the annals of drug war history. I'm not going to cite statistics as what I am going to say is common knowledge. Virtually ALL fatal over-dose, poisonings, and toxic reactions to controlled drugs are caused by the consequences of prohibition. Many are caused by alcohol as a key toxic component.

I'm not sure what the significance of pointing out that most deaths caused by alcohol and tobacco are not due to OD, but are lingerring, unpleasant and expensive (as compared with a much much much smaller figure of OD deaths from controlled drug misuse). In any event it is impossible to even put the deaths and harms caused due to alcohol and tobacco in the same order of merit as controlled drugs.

On so-called legal highs - there are about 5 deaths claimed to be associated with mephedrone (although I think they actually involved alcohol and even methodone as well); cigarettes kill over 80,000 each year and that is the tip of the health impact iceberg. Worldwide it runs into millions. Alcohol is indicated as a key factor in a huge amount of mental illness. Alcohol does causes many OD deaths and of course accidents. More people have dies from heroin contamination with anthrax than 'plant food' highs.

Tragic misconceptions Anna and very very painful reading for those who have lost love ones as a result of this vile was on people who use certain drugs.

Darryl

Correction to my post (or pls remove last post and replace):

Anna's point reveals a misconception so deeply ironical and tragic it deserves to be written in the annals of drug war history. I'm not going to cite statistics as what I am going to say is common knowledge. Virtually ALL fatal over-dose, poisonings, and toxic reactions to controlled drugs are caused by the consequences of prohibition. Many are caused by alcohol as a key toxic component.

I'm not sure what the significance of pointing out that most deaths caused by alcohol and tobacco are not due to OD, but are lingerring, unpleasant and expensive (as compared with a much much much smaller figure of OD deaths from controlled drug misuse). In any event it is impossible to even put the deaths and harms caused due to alcohol and tobacco in the same order of merit as controlled drugs.

On so-called legal highs - there are about 5 deaths claimed to be associated with mephedrone (although I think they actually involved alcohol and even methodone in two as well); cigarettes kill over 80,000 each year in the UK and that is the tip of the health impact iceberg. Worldwide it runs into millions. Alcohol is indicated as a key factor in a huge amount of mental illness. Alcohol does cause many OD deaths and of course a huge amount of RTA and other accidents as well as over 800,000 hospital admissions per year in the UK. More people have died recently from anthrax contamination of heroin than all misused 'plant food' highs.

Tragic misconceptions Anna and very very painful reading for those who have lost love ones as a result of this vile was on people who use certain drugs.

Venus P

Disingenuous Darryl: “I'm not going to cite statistics as what I am going to say is common knowledge.”

Pure BS. You are not going to cite statistics because you’re going to massage your argument in the most disingenuous way you can so you know it’s best to leave statistics out of it.

“Virtually ALL fatal over-dose, poisonings, and toxic reactions to controlled drugs are caused by the consequences of prohibition.” Says who? People wouldn’t overdose if all drugs were legal? But miaow miaow is legal. So this is nonsense.

“Many are caused by alcohol as a key toxic component.” And? You really want us to believe people would stop mixing alcohol with street drugs if street drugs were legalised? Where’s the evidence for this?

You say some miaow miaow deaths “actually involved alcohol”. So neither drug was prohibited and the dead victims still mixed them. How can such deaths be “caused by the consequences of prohibition”? It suggests prohibition is needed - and urgently before its use becomes more widespread and the number of deaths goes beyond the apparent five we seem to have so far.

“I'm not sure what the significance of pointing out that most deaths caused by alcohol and tobacco are not due to OD, but are lingerring, unpleasant and expensive (as compared with a much much much smaller figure of OD deaths from controlled drug misuse).”

We know such deaths are lingering and unpleasant. But people tend to have a chance to rein themselves in before it gets to that stage. The difference with fatal overdoses of street drugs is that there is no second chance. Get the dose wrong and you’re a goner. Moreover, the deaths that you refer to will not always cite smoking cigarettes or alcohol as the sole cause of death, they will more often be part of an unhealthy lifestyle associated with such diseases.

These miaow miaow deaths give you your perfect situation. Both alcohol and miaow miaow are legal. According to you “Virtually ALL fatal over-dose, poisonings, and toxic reactions to controlled drugs are caused by the consequences of prohibition.”

Where was the prohibition in the miaow miaow deaths? There was none.

The status quo on miaow miaow is your Utopia: it is presently legal and the deaths associated with it cannot possibly have been, as you suggest, “caused by the consequences of prohibition” - since there was no prohibition.

And you talk about tragic misconceptions!

Darryl

Misunderstood Venus - methedrone is sold (because of prohibition and medicines law) as a plant food, it's market was borne out of prohibition. This mis-labelling is a real problem. Check out statistics on alcohol and tobacco deaths - they account for 40 times the amount of deaths than all controlled drugs and 'legal highs' put together. The public are misled to believe that alcohol isn't a drug at all - it's just a drink, how stupid is that?

Of course OD would be a lot less likely with pharmaceutical grade products compared to unweighed street products of wildely variable potency and purity (to say nothing of HIV etc - your views are so ill-informed - go and speak to any drug outreach worker about injecting users).

I told you but it hasn't registered at all, it's ignorrance that kills - Mephedrone is generally sold without controls, without instructions and without being in any proper doseage as a bag of powder. It's certainly active at 100 mg and often bought in single bags of up to 10g (even that doesn't look a lot and as much as you like goes into a bottle of coke without hassle). It's bought by people who don't even have a scale outside the bathroom.

Alcohol has to be recognised as the big killer drug and it is v dangerous for everyone around when mixed with driving, work, with many other precription and recreational drugs, or just with itself and caffeinated soft drinks as is the fashion. People don't realise how dangerous it is, but mixing it with methedrone is likely as no warning is present on either drug. It's not actually a deadly combination in moderation, but due to the nonsense of plant-food selling and the culture of alcoholic stupor being socially acceptable and pervasive, of course people will mess up. It's nothing to do with legality of the practice or otherwise - it's drug ignorrance perpetuated by the scientifically unsustainable and artificial divide policy we endure. Prohibition killed these kids. The government all but destroyed the relatively safe ecstasy phenomenon when they could have controlled it, failed to regulate drugs like methedrone which the ACMD now say ought to be classified as a class B drug. BUT, they will get it wrong again, it should be regulated with appropriate restrictions on sale (not prohibition).

Prohibition is now needed you say - that did nothing for preventing the use and harm caused by any drug - it always worsenned it. Anyway - the cat is out of the bag - speculators have orderred thousands of kilos of mephedrone and the like from China and Germany to make the killing (in money and lives) once you get your dangerous wish granted.

The reason why you will get your way is quite simple - a pounds worth of this stuff in a drink and you won't want to buy alcohol - it's as simple as that - it's the govt sponsorred drug protection racket you are buying into. And this, make no mistake is the silent killer.

BTW, 80,000 smoking deaths last year didn't turn themselves around in time did they? And go and speak to any hospital consultant - the harm caused by tobacco is of monumental proportions and catastrophic to almost every part of the body. It's not part of the unhealthy lifestyle - drinking excessively and smoking IS the significant part of the unhealthy lifestyle.

The fatal OD's caused by 'street drugs' are avoidable - but not with prohibition! We still don't really have a confirmed methedrone death, but since 1900 we must have millions of tobacco deaths - so why are you attacking methedrone? Tobacco has no positive uses at all - cathinones and MDMA are potentially very useful drugs for psychotherapy, counselling, bereavement and relationship work - they can really help people if used properly.

Venus P

Darryl, I know the rotten stuff is sold as a plant food, but that‘s just to sidestep the law. You say “OD would be a lot less likely with pharmaceutical grade products”, but how do you know this?

You acknowledge that people abuse guidelines on safe alcohol drinking, but then suggest people wouldn’t do the same with miaow if it was sold at pharmacies.

What’s to stop people taking pharmaceutical grade miaow and shoving enough of that up their bottom (sorry, readers, this is how some of this muck is ingested) or injecting it to give them a fatal overdose?

I know that over long periods of time alcohol and tobacco can contribute to fatal diseases, but they do not represent the sort of instant fatal overdose risks presented by miaow.

Of course drunk driving can cause fatal crashes, but it’s illegal to drink and drive. If people abuse alcohol laws and alcohol guidelines, why would they all behave themselves if miaow was the sort of thing they could pick up at the local shops? We have enough risk as it is.

You acknowledge that people mix alcohol with prescription drugs upon which there is a clear warning not to mix them with alcohol, but then reverse this logic when it comes to miaow:

“mixing it with methedrone is likely as no warning is present on either drug”.

Mixing prescription drugs with alcohol despite clear warnings to the contrary already happens, so a warning on mephedrone won’t stop people mixing it with alcohol, will it?

“Prohibition is now needed you say - that did nothing for preventing the use and harm caused by any drug - it always worsenned it.” Says who? You.

“Anyway - the cat is out of the bag - speculators have orderred thousands of kilos of mephedrone and the like from China and Germany to make the killing (in money and lives)”

- so you acknowledge it kills people, but then, despite all these people getting their wish, it’s my fault for wanting to stop them:

“once you get your dangerous wish granted.”

“The reason why you will get your way is quite simple - a [few] pounds worth of this stuff in a drink and you won't want to buy alcohol - it's as simple as that.”

It clearly isn’t as simple as that if you’ve spent half this chatboard suggesting that people who have already fatally overdosed on this drug were mixing it with alcohol.

Why didn’t they stop with just the miaow if it‘s true that “a [few] pounds worth of this stuff in a drink and you won't want to buy alcohol“?

One minute you say that “mixing [alcohol] with methedrone is likely”, the next you say: “a [few] pounds worth of this stuff in a drink and you won't want to buy alcohol”.

You're just just one sanctimonious contradiction after another.

Darryl

Venus - most OD's occur when users get unusually pure drugs, especially heroin or through inexperience and lack of info. If it happens with 'drone' then it's because it's sold like sherbet and naievity.

This would generally be avoided with prescription graded labelled drugs. You are suggesting that OD is just as likely where supplies are unregulated, criminally sourced and sold without a leaflet as a bag of powder as compared with the regulated legal supply of measured doses of quality product with full advice. No, Venus - you are simply wrong and cling to the point that some people will ignore all of the rules and kill themselves. You would not give people the chance to even know what is advised, that's what is so ridiculous. Obviously not knowing what you are doing is much worse than knowing.

We cannot police society around the most reckless of individuals, the lowest common denominator. Anyway, it's only the culture of drug ignorrance that fuels much of this personal misconduct.

People ignore guidelines on drinking because the pervasive culture says that you can get away with it, that drinking is cool, drinking is sophisticated. People buy into this as it has a virtual monopoly of legally available drug without social opprobrium. People think that because cannabis for example is a Class B drug, then alcohol must be several degrees less harmful, and that is wrong. If people could choose from a hundred types of recreational drugs with full knowledge of them, they would be able to minimalise the harms caused by the variety. Pounding yourself with drink on a daily basis is just madness - far better if we could mix and match with drugs like David Nutt's proposed 'synthetic alcohol', cannabis and all manner to tested designer drugs. There are much better drugs out there for all occasions - see the work of Alexander Shulgin for example. I say we should bring them in from the cold - it's not drug use that is the problem, it's drug misuse caused by ignorrance and selective arbitrary prohibition.

There is nothing to stop a person from self-administerring a massive 'drone' emema as you choose to depict. But this is more likely now than if it was bought from a chemist as a Saturday Special Suppository.

You cannot really control total irresponsibilty, but you can seek to prevent ignorrance and accidental OD.

Why do you describe it as 'muck' anyway? It is usually sold as quite a clean product for now, but come prohibition it will be cut with muck. It's not a rubbish drug you know - people really like it, feel they benefit from it. It just needs using responsibly, and that is the rub - it's sold as plant food for heavens sake - this is mental. You would have it sold by dodgy people cut with who knows what in paper wraps. No, please no.

By the way - a single retail unit of spirits is a lethal dose and over 30,000 people a year are admitted to hospital in the UK with acute alcohol poisonning.

You don't know if mephedrone can kill so easily as the reports have not been released, but almost any drug can be misused fatally. What would be really stupid would be if painkillers were sold as bags of pure aspirin, paracetamaol and codeine without instructions - it would be carnage.

Your 'enough risk as it is' point really winds me up - you want to persecute all users of mind-alterring drugs, except alcohol, tobacco and prescription mind-alterring drugs. It's discrimination - if you want to be protective or pious, at least be fair and equal. If you want a drug free world, start with the real problem drugs and stop attacking other people for their interests until you get this house in order - for it looks to me like unpleasant scape-goating.

I'm not going to get into the drink mixing thing here - I have explained that alcohol is seen as a social non drug, and it's hardly surprising people will mix it. The ecstasy generation posed a threat to nightclubs as alcohol consumption went right down - so they charged more entrance and told people to drink gallons of bottled water. These drugs are in competition, and if you just stopped and thought about it, they could almost destroy the drinking institutions and culture. Cannabis is illegal for the same reason, you can grow a plant and a few pennies worth will give you the buzz for the whole evening. It's a threat to the revenue and the alcohol dealers - this is what it's about, a drug dealers protection racket. If the government gave a toss about health in the UK would they seriously allow smoking tobacco?

I'm not being sanctimonious - that really is the cat calling the kettle black. Miaow.

Rob

Actually the reason mephedrone is so popular is because there is absolutley no ecstasy on the streets anymore - due to a clampdown on the chemicals needed to make it from south east asia. Most dealers are actually selling mephedrone not ecstasy.
It's odd that the hundreds of people (mainly teenagers) who die from alcohol poisoning never make the papers, yet a handful of peple die from some legal high and everyone is having an emotional breakdown.

Polly Gamma

Far from being pushed into retreat by Government’s greater focus on drugs, the libertarian tendency has stepped up its efforts, in effect encouraging the drug suppliers. Youth and parents alike face a sustained barrage of (mostly) pro-drug material on screen and page. The impression is given that ‘everyone’ is into drugs – as if drugs were today’s style accessory. Parents become fatalistic, youth become intrigued, and both become deeply confused. The excitement, positivity and richness of a drug-free lifestyle hardly gets a mention. The road to clarity and healthy living is set to be long and hard, it seems.

Things that are not mentioned in the propaganda:-

QUESTION
Why does cannabis cause so much damage?

ANSWER
THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) is fat soluble and accumulates in the fatty membrances of cells, slowly being released over weeks. It interferes with the production of new cells by preventing the DNA in the chromosomes in the nuclei from replicating properly, and kills cells by blocking the channels carrying energy-supplying substances inwards and toxins outwards.

“Marijuana is a drug with a multifaceted action on nearly every bodily function; brain, heart, lung and endocrine – no scientist can refer to it as a ‘mild’ intoxicant.” – The late Sir William Paton, Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University.

“It makes great people average, and average people dumb – and causes more organic brain damage than any other drug of abuse except perhaps PCP (angel dust) or the end stages of of alcoholism.” – Dr Robert Gilkeson, Neurologist and Brain Researcher.

“I have been apologising to the American people for the last 10 years for promoting the decriminalisation of marijuana. I made a mistake. Marijuana combines the worst effects of alcohol and tobacco and has other major ill effects that neither of these two have.” – 1986 Dr Robert Dupont, Founding Head of NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse USA).

Legalisation is a surrender to crime by those who believe resistance is useless. How would it be possible to keep all personnel on aircraft, trains, buses, cars and in hospitals drug free? (The half-life of the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, THC, is seven days. The substance is fat soluble and traces can be found in the body up to 12 weeks after use. Pilots tested in flight simulators were unable to land planes accurately up to 50 hours after smoking just one 3mg joint).

Babies born to cannabis-smoking mothers are ten times more likely to develop a form of leukaemia. They are also smaller, hyperactive, have learning deficits, and suffer low attention span, anger and disruptiveness.

Cannabis and tobacco together cause lung cancer much faster than tobacco alone. Rare head and neck cancers which used to only be seen in the 60 plus age group are increasingly common in young cannabis users in the USA.

Fewer white blood cells (the body’s immune system) are made, and many are abnormal. You will catch more infections – sometimes mild like tonsillitis or athletes foot but sometimes more serious, and you will stay sicker for a longer period of time. HIV positive people should avoid cannabis.

SPECT scans on real people, show decreased blood flows which strongly suggests dead of damaged brain cells. You won’t notice because the brain doesn’t feel pain. Dead brain cells are never replaced. Learning processes and memory are badly affected. You don’t learn so well from the past and can’t visualise the future very well – so you live “in the now”.

It’s not just physical effects. Relationships can break down. You feel aimless, empty. You think through treacle. School work is affected. You can’t be bothered about yourself or anyone else. Exams you would have passed you just fail – and that could hold you back in later life. You could be denied a visa for foreign travel if convicted.

Schizophrenia can be precipitated or worsened. Cannabis psychosis is not uncommon.

Physical and psychological addiction have both been observed. There is no foolproof way of curing either.

“Someone knows a guy who smoked it in the 60’s – He seems ok, maybe a little vague and dead eyed but ok”..
The strength of cannabis, (i.e. the amount of THC in it), in the 60’s was 0.5%. Today it averages 5% but ‘skunk’ or Nederweed (genetically engineered) and commonly available on the streets, can be between 9 and 27% - a very different drug from the one that fuelled the hippy generation.

Is there anything as parents that we can do?
Yes, indeed! Take an example: in 1979 use of all drugs in America was very high. Between 1979 and 1991, thanks largely to the parent movement, the number of users dropped from a peak of 23 million down to 14 million; a 60% reduction sustained over a 12 year period – this was no short-lived ‘blip’ in the statistics. Use of cannabis halved. Daily use of cannabis fell by 75% and cocaine use be 50%. Ordinary parents had become sick of trendy justifications for drug misuse and sparked off a major rethink in policy. A sustained collaboration between Customs and Excise, Police, Educationists, Social Workers and others, together with the parents and young people themselves, combined potently in the fresh recognition that use of drugs is not normal and not socially acceptable.

Children do listen when told of the dangers or disapproval of drugs. A survey amongst students in 1992 showed the greatest deterrents to using cannabis were concerns about physical and pysychological damage and parental/social disapproval.

A warning retrospective
Since 1991, use in the USA started to climb again. In particular youth use is said to have tripled by 1996. Why? Becauses the US Government thought they had the problem licked and switched the funds elsewhere; because rap music started a new musical campaign in praise of pot, and because those who would legalise drugs climbed on this new ‘bandwagon’. What happened to the parents and all their allies? They took their eye off the ball. The lesson is ‘stay awake!’. Parents can make a difference – but they need to be aware and involved in drug prevention.

Kristian

Mephedrowne has so far killed 3 people - do you think we should consider the banning of alcohol as it kills about 30 a day?

Claire Macdonald

What I cheered for in Jerusalem were Mark Rylance's astonishingly energetic performance and Jez Butterworth's writing. Not all social breakdown is in city centres. Kathy Gyngell is one of the few people who speaks intelligently and passionately about drugs- more power to her.