No Smoke Without Fine?

They should ban Hobnobs in my opinion.

Tasty little buggers and you keep coming back for more.

Pistachios as well! The ultimate torture is having just one.

 

I managed to stop smoking weed quite easily but had to go on a 6 month Rich Tea program to ween myself off the Hob Nobs.

 

Alcohol and tobacco are far, far, far more dangerous and addictive than cannabis, this is a fact that the government chooses to fire it's scientific advisors over. The immediate effects of alcohol intoxication present far more antisocial and potentially dangerous situations than the effects of cannabis too. These are all scientific facts that the government do not want to allow to be true.

Yet it's so hard to have this debate from a serious standpoint without sounding like a pothead or a first year university student (these are possibly interchangeable).

 

First year? My mates in his third and final, and this is still highly applicable!

 

Aye, this is completely true. The scientific advisor is Professor David Nutt, and his findings showed that Alcohol is 5th on a list of dangerous drugs, tobacco is 9th, Cannabis is 11th whilst ecstasy is a lowly 18th!

When asked about the number of deaths INVOLVING ecstasy (i.e. anyone who dies with traces of ecstasy in their system, regardless of other drugs in their system or what they were actually doing at the time). He retorted that in the UK there are in fact twice as many deaths DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED to horse-riding every year!

The government asked him to resign because 'his statements did not fit with the overall message of the dangers of drugs which the government wishes to portray' (notice they do not directly say his findings were wrong).

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As for the uni student/pot head comment...My flatmate remarked that, if so many people had tried cannabis, and not had a negative experience, then why hasn't it been legalised before: My response was that I would happily speak to friends and family about the legalisation of drugs, but would I speak to my boss at work about it? Probably not, because cannabis is an illegal drug and regardless of it's dangers (or lack there of) it is pigeon-holed and forced under an umbrella term.

If you smoke weed and dabble in pills, surely you're only a spoon and a filter away from smack-addiction!!!

 

Yeah I read the full, now 'infamous', report from David Nutt around the time of his departure expecting to find some sort of outrageous statement but found nothing but science. The British government in particular has such an embarrasing way of handling things it doesn't understand, sort of like the Australian government's Internet policies. Pompous, clueless gasbags with absolutely no potential to grasp the very thing they so ruthlessly police.

Have some rep btw, I had no idea about the horse death comparison - hilarious!

 

*Potential spoiler if you haven't seen the film, although if you read this it wont ruin the film* :
You seen that film?! We'd end up possibly murdering people during 18 hour jumps where we have no recollection of the time!

Back to the main debate of the drug situation:
Cannabis is easy enough to get a hold of despite it being illegal, I'd probably smoke it more regularly if it was legal (nowadays I only smoke it when I'm back home with a couple of friends who love the stuff). There is definitely an element of 'we smoke because it makes us cool because its illegal' about cannabis. If it was legalised I think people would stop smoking it to be cool, and instead smoke it because they want to. Although, I'm probably against legalisation of it. You all say its not addictive and that it doesnt have any negative impacts, but my friend got straight A*'s at GCSE, started smoking **** load of pot during his A levels and changed, a lot. He didn't really give a **** about stuff he used to and had absolutely no motivation. He might have found more motivation when he was at home and not stoned, he was pretty much stoned everyday at college though - the twat

 

Haha, I seem to remember a lecturer or three who you could describe as applicable too .

 

I think you're right that the way/reason it is smoke would change. I'm the same and only ever smoke it when I'm back home, and even then I wouldn't be a bit smoker, I suppose I treat it like someone might treat a glass of whiskey, nice to come back to after a night out to just chill out and have a bit of craic with your mates with.

There isn't an addictive chemical in cannabis such as nicotine or like in heroine, where your body will go into shock from not smoking it. Much of the addiction is mental, like people who say they are addicted to chocolate.

Also, if cannabis was properly regulated and legal, surely it would be easier to stop people like your friend from getting into the cycle that he did. Would his parents not have stepped in had he been drinking a bottle of vodka every day? I think so! It's just that because it's illegal, it is pushed underground and under the carpet. Addressing the issues of cannabis reliance can't be addressed until it is no longer seen as negative to admit to smoking it!

 

That is a very good point. Knowing his parents, they would have stepped in. But unfortunately, there are numerous of parents out there who wouldn't notice the decline of their son/daughter and wouldn't step in and the cycle would continue and potentially get worse. As far as I'm aware that friend of mine still hangs out down the local skatepark, skating and smoking with all his other stoner friends. I think the skatepark could get a lot more populated if it was legal, it would have to be discussed a lot in schools and for parents to look out for, to prevent kids going down his path.

 

I stopped smoking weed when I found that I couldn't concen...

Do they still make Wham bars?

Where was I?

 

I got A's and A*'s at GCSE level then stopped giving a crap about work and life in general at college too - but I wasn't smoking or drinking at all. I obviously don't know your friend but the smoking could have been a side effect of his lack of care rather than vice versa. Either way you could still easily tell the same story about alcohol as it is often the case.

 

I think it's about time that it's actually TALKED ABOUT in school, not vilified or demonised but discussed! One thing they never tell you, is that drugs and their usage feel good! That's why in my opinion, there is a connection between people trying soft drugs such as cannabis and 'harder' drugs. Kids smoke 'evil' weed, realise it's not as bad as people would have them believe and then think, well, I wonder if pills/coke/speed is the same? I know I did!

If we want to stop kids taking drugs irresponsibly, then we need to stop using bullshit rhetoric about them!

...As for Wham bars...Yes, yes they do, and they're still immense!

 

I'll add my two pence to the debate.
Before the Misuse of Drugs Act in the 70s, Britain had everything legalised, if you were an addict you'd simply go for your fix from the doctor who would give you a weeks supply (check out someone called Dr John Marks for example who did this right up until the 1990s through a special Home Office License in Liverpool).
If you look at the case, he spoke of that addiction isn't lifelong, people generally mature out of it after about ten years and if could keep them alive for that long by supplying pure non-cut drugs that they would eventually grow out of it.
Interesting of note is that while he prescribed heroin to addicts that the Police reported a 96% reduction in acquisitive crime among a group of addict patients. Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero. But, under intense pressure from the government, the project was closed down. In its 10 years' work, not one of its patients had died. In the first two years after it was closed, 41 died.
Transcript of a television interview
Guardian article which mentions it as well

We were pressured into criminalisation from, you guessed it, the American government - as was most of the developed world. Unfortunately the reason we wont decriminalise is because drugs are big business (the pharmaceutical companies synthesize a drug, then when it hits the street and there are addicts, they synthesize a variant of a drug to wean these addicts from the other drug, all the while raking in millions of £££). The prohibition of drugs also funds the war industry, which is the biggest legal industry in the world - without criminals raising money from drugs, there would be no terrorists to fight and hence no reason except human greed to go to war - that's why I believe we wont ever legalise drugs.

Not that I agree with this mind.
SWIM has tried a whole cacophony in SWIM's time - especially quite a that few Dr. Alexander Shulgin synthesized and documented in his books PHIKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved) & THiKAL (Tryptamines i Have Known And Loved) without any detriment to mental or physical health.
Shulgin himself, has done them regularly without any ill health directly linked to his use of substances (he's now 85).
Another example, Albert Hoffman, the man who synthesised LSD regularly used it up until his death in 2009 at the ripe old age of 102 without any ill effect.
The Mayan people to this day regularly ingests DMT in the form of ayahuasca as they have done for thousands of years and they are still around, without any detriment to their health - in fact a recent study (in the 90s) was carried out at the University of New Mexico with the drug by Rick Straussman.
He wrote a book called "DMT: The Spirit Molecule", it's definitely worth a read, someone has wrote an indepth review summing up chapter by chapter what he speaks about can be found here.

Below is an interesting extract from the review and the book:

"Discussion of the Personal level continues in Chapter 11. Here DMT, "as a true Spirit Molecule, gave our volunteers the trip they needed, rather than the one they wanted." (p.156) Some were able to work through difficult personal problems with the aid of the powerful, lucid-dreamlike, DMT-induced state. Some described the benefits as "purely energetic"; some "cumulative". One said that between the 3rd and the 4th dose (in a tolerance study that involved four sequential 0.3 mg/kg sessions separated by 30 minute intervals) "something changed" (for the better.) "I just gave up." (p.161) Strassman mentions the great potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy, not only in the area of problem solving but also in what he terms "structured voluntary traumatic experience." i.e. in a safe and supportive environment people could use DMT to "promote absolute loss of control", so as to contact, and permanently let go of, painful emotions. One young female volunteer was actually able to do this. In a moving account she describes how, during the DMT sessions, she was helped by "presences" - "DMT elves", to release the trauma of childhood neglect and rape . "I feel like I have a new body" she said, one month after her healing experience. (p.171)"

By criminalising everything, without further studies, we're denying ourselves the abilities to further study these drugs for the good they could do to humanity and we vilify those who use them.

 

I'm not paranoid and who said I was?

 

Exactly, as long as you are smart enough about it not take pills/coke/speed regularly then it doesn't really do any long term harm (as far as I'm aware, haven't done much research into it. Mind my more drug appreciating friends claim to have done research on the long term affects of what he takes and claims theres nothing major).

Unfortunately too many people get such a buzz from the pills/coke/speed that they want it again and again. It's the only way they can really enjoy life as everything else in comparison is somewhat more boring after trying these.

It needs to be spoken about as most people are pretty unaware of the truth about drugs.

 

If anyone is interested in unbiased information including a FAQ, basics, effects, health, law, safe dosage (if you are going to use) and trip reports from people who have taken the drug before; http://www.erowid.org/ is certainly a better read than the likes of Frank!

 

The thing about lesser substances being less enjoyable is certainly I've been told on numerous occasions. I wouldn't see myself as a persistent drug user. I've experimented with most things (draw the line at the obvious ones) and often found that their negative effects are exaggerated and their positive effects played down. Personally, euphoria inducing drugs like ecstasy/MDMA/Mephedrone are the one's I've enjoyed the most, purely because of the ridiculous levels of empathy you have with people around you. I drink and do drugs to have fun with my mates and meet new people. I found that the feelings I experience with alcohol were simply increased 10 fold with these other substances. Having said that, I've probably only ever done them (as a collective) no more than 15-20 times in a period of 8 years.

Common sense is key when it comes to the policing, classification, discussion and usage...The problem is, it's the thing we lack the most!

 

Toonsi, I won't quote it as it's massive, but that ^^^^ was a decent read...Add to that the fact that Freud, the father of modern psychology swore by cocaine and often prescribed it to patients and suggested it's prescription to colleagues AND the fact that MDMA was prescribed as medication for couples involved in marriage guidance in America as late as the 1950's!!!