Hi,
I've posted in one of the other threads here on this subject already, am more than happy to come back and answer specific questions on why we made the decisions we made, but will be more specific AFTER the investigation is all over, bear with me that I'm limited on legal advice on what I can say publicly at the moment as the allegations against us are of a reasonably serious criminal nature, although I do not believe that I have committed any offence.
I'll flick through the thread and hit on a pile of topics, excuse the jumpy nature of the post.
We were operating on top level advice, a new legal interpretation came along so we suspended the project. It is easy to say retrospectively that some of the advice we got may not have been so good, that remains to be seen.
You do need to realise that nobody was forced to take part, they did so willingly, we took legal and ethical advice on the project, if anybody wanted to know specifics about the molecule and they couldn't work it out for themselves they were quite welcome to not take part in the trial, everybody had that choice and they used their free will and made a choice. Reality is that a lot of people knew exactly what they were taking, but it didn't end up getting sold by the gram in every corner store.
Another reality is that people were using this product in place of black market drugs, where once again, even with test kits, they don't know what they're getting.
Some of the details posted above on screening criteria are not correct, there was a lot more to it than that, we had user monitoring, alcohol and drug clinical assessments, more detail will follow at a later date.
I'm always interested to absorb constructive criticism, I think this model of distribution was better than the "pills in every corner store available to everybody" model, some may disagree, they're welcome to do so.
I think it is also superior to the "black market drug" situation.
More than happy to listen to constructive advice now or to discuss specifics at a later date.
I think you'll find I have similar views to many of you all here, I'm tryin to develop alternative models to the drug prohibition systems we have in our countries at the moment. I have got some positive change in my country and hopefully it can be used as a case study elsewhere.
It does cost quite a lot to do what we're doing, so if we can get over the "money" argument in here which I am sick of getting thrashed on in the public media every day would be a nice change.
Like most peole I have a mortgage, 1 new car that works and 1 that needs work, a family, some admin staff and some technical staff, and I've walked away from more cash than I've banked.
I don't agree that if I had told everybody the name of the chemical so they could go and read trip reports on erowid that they would then be in a better position, sure we can all google but do you really think the average person is therefore well enough equipped to make themselves a decent risk assessment?
Several govt agencies had full disclosure on what we were doing along with hospital staff in case of incident, to the best of my knowledge there were no incidents requiring attention, (other than one person fell over and the attending doctors agreed it was unrelated) overall everybody seemed extremely happy.
P.L.U.R.