Russel Brand.....on drugs......in parliment

[Derek Smith]

TTwiggy said:

^^ I remember (only vaguely) that when my grandmother died in the mid 1980s, my mum cleared a bin-liner full of pills from her house.

This sweet little old lady was hooked on a gamut of stuff, all prescribed by her friendly GP, tested by pharma compaines and passed as 'safe' by the government.

Give me a line of charlie any day

One of the reasons that cannabis can be prescribed is that it has fewer side effects that other forms of pain control.

My father had a medical problem. The doctor proscribed a course of pills which, to my dad, seemed a little odd as he knew what their main function was supposed to be. He was told, after questioning the doctor, that they had a 'useful side effect'.

[Dixie68]

TTwiggy said:

^^ I remember (only vaguely) that when my grandmother died in the mid 1980s, my mum cleared a bin-liner full of pills from her house.

This sweet little old lady was hooked on a gamut of stuff, all prescribed by her friendly GP, tested by pharma compaines and passed as 'safe' by the government.

Give me a line of charlie any day

So instead of clamping down on other addictive drugs you want to add more? In what world does that make sense? And as a follow-up to that, when my Nan died last year of cancer we also had to clear her flat of the drugs as we were visited by the local Police who told us that it was well known on her estate that she was dying of cancer and therefore had opiates in there. We did as the police advised; bagged them all up, took them to the hospital for disposal, and put a sign on her door saying that all drugs had been removed from the flat. That didn't stop someone breaking in anyway. How frequently do people break into houses to nick a bottle of booze or a pack of 20 fags?

[poo at Paul's]

Use Psychology said:

s3fella said:

Locking the fkers up for 50 years would also stop them doing crimes.

quite right, these individuals deserve to be incarcerated for more than 50 % of their lifespan for using, in private and on themselves, a mind-altering chemical substance that is arbitrarily banned by law. If you accept that it's ethical to drink alcohol then it cannot be unethical or immoral to take other psychoactive drugs. our society has accepted that alcohol consumption is ok, so it's completely hypocritical and illogical to ban other substances.

I think if you actually listen to what Brand is saying, he is not talking about people who use drugs in their own home and private and fund it from their livelihood etc, he is talking another breaking the chain of criminality connected to drugs, ie stopping people from stealing etc to fund their habit. So the option of locking such people up, ie criminals, thieves etc, (not some chap who earns a crust and has the odd line now and then) is on the face if it a reasonable one. I mean, if thieves are just thieves, not druggies, why should they get incarcerated (as per our laws) and yet someone who is robbing st to fund a habit get off any differently?
As someone else illuded to earlier, society seems far more tolerant of illegal drug use already, than use of legal ones.

[TTwiggy]

Dixie68 said:

So instead of clamping down on other addictive drugs you want to add more? In what world does that make sense? And as a follow-up to that, when my Nan died last year of cancer we also had to clear her flat of the drugs as we were visited by the local Police who told us that it was well known on her estate that she was dying of cancer and therefore had opiates in there. We did as the police advised; bagged them all up, took them to the hospital for disposal, and put a sign on her door saying that all drugs had been removed from the flat. That didn't stop someone breaking in anyway. How frequently do people break into houses to nick a bottle of booze or a pack of 20 fags?

Well, I suppose we could get rid of all of them, and then people with terminal cancer (such as my late father) could spend their last hours on this planet in abject misery and intense agony. Yeah, that would be great.

[Derek Smith]

Dixie68 said:

TTwiggy said:

^^ I remember (only vaguely) that when my grandmother died in the mid 1980s, my mum cleared a bin-liner full of pills from her house.

This sweet little old lady was hooked on a gamut of stuff, all prescribed by her friendly GP, tested by pharma compaines and passed as 'safe' by the government.

Give me a line of charlie any day

So instead of clamping down on other addictive drugs you want to add more?

I think the point is that the current system of drugs control has not clamped down on supply to any great extent. Since the Drugs Act the amount of drugs available to the general public has increased tremendously. The way it was controlled before limited the opportunites for criminals and there was no incentive to push them. I doubt we could eer return to those days but drugs are freely available to anyone who wants them. Even little old ladies.

We do not have to go to the extent of over-the-counter sales of class A drugs. If we allow registered addicts to use the stuff then the criminal imperative has gone.

As someone pointed out, these criminals will not simply disappear but we should not make it easy for them to operate. The Drugs Act encourages criminality, as can be seen from the prohibition era in the USA. Some will not move on, others will but perhaps to other forms of criminality that does not harm they youth.

[mattnunn]

High functioning drug addicts...

I can give up anytime I want, get on the buzz man...

What a pointless waste of promising lives.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137798/Wo...

[TTwiggy]

mattnunn said:

High functioning drug addicts...

I can give up anytime I want, get on the buzz man...

What a pointless waste of promising lives.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137798/Wo...

She took an untested 'legal' high. She wasn't a heroin addict (though she may still be alive is she was).

[hairykrishna]

They were taking a more dangerous, but legal, alternative to GHB so it's not really an argument for drug prohibition is it.

[TTwiggy]

hairykrishna said:

They were taking a more dangerous, but legal, alternative to GHB so it's not really an argument for drug prohibition is it.

You know what, I'll go further - these two people were killed by drug prohibition.

They were looking for a certain type of high. The sort of high that Ecstasy might provide. Had they taken Ecstasy – a drug that is statistically as safe/dangerous as riding a horse – they would still be alive today.

So why didn't they? One can only assume, that like a lot of people with careers, they were concerned about the implications of dealing with drug dealers, and afraid of being caught in posession of a class A substance.

So, instead, they take a legal product and die. Two 'young, promising lives' snuffed out by prohibition.