I wouldn't be so sure SHM. I remember a friend being busted when methylone was still legal, the only information the police had about research chemicals was a photocopied page of an article from the Guardian. When the name "methylone" was mentioned the police officer looked blank and said "Never heard of it, is that legal or illegal?". That's the level of knowledge we're talking about regarding police.
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Guardian story - new drugs
- Thread starter Mike_Power
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I wouldn't be so sure SHM. I remember a friend being busted when methylone was still legal, the only information the police had about research chemicals was a photocopied page of an article from the Guardian. When the name "methylone" was mentioned the police officer looked blank and said "Never heard of it, is that legal or illegal?". That's the level of knowledge we're talking about regarding police.
Oh great, thanks for your consideration and understanding Mike.
i have no interest in preserving ro attacking a drug scene
As far as you're concerned the police can round us all up and consign us all to concentration camps and you couldn't care less.
Presumably you've posted on police discussion board asking for their opinions too? You may as well mate.
evening all. i spent my day talking to an NBOME user who was hospitalised recently
This doesn't sound good. In fact it sounds bloody terrible. You've found the one Nbome user in a million who'se managed to hospitalise himself? I'm getting a picture of this article already Mike. Make sure you have a picture of him looking like Leah Betts, that'll get em going.
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People have died after taking NBOMe's. Death sells don't you know!
But lets all try to offer the sort of decorum that isn't seen in the mass media or even in regular day-to-day life, shall we? Lets not treat journalists the way they treat us. Lets judge the end result, not the author. I distrust the media more than most & I'm about as anti-establishment as it's possible to be in this country but I am in favour of dissemination of information & isn't that what BL is all about?
Did anyone actually read that PMA article? That was very well researched & very well written. I've had this guys book on pre-order for a few weeks coz I've been waiting for a book on drugs that takes into account the newer RC's & the internet supply route. It does look interesting.
If there really are "Police Forums" we should troll them en masse!
But lets all try to offer the sort of decorum that isn't seen in the mass media or even in regular day-to-day life, shall we? Lets not treat journalists the way they treat us. Lets judge the end result, not the author. I distrust the media more than most & I'm about as anti-establishment as it's possible to be in this country but I am in favour of dissemination of information & isn't that what BL is all about?
Did anyone actually read that PMA article? That was very well researched & very well written. I've had this guys book on pre-order for a few weeks coz I've been waiting for a book on drugs that takes into account the newer RC's & the internet supply route. It does look interesting.
If there really are "Police Forums" we should troll them en masse!
StoneHappyMonday
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Yeah, I'm not talking about individual cops Ismene, I'm talking about law-makers (and their henchmen). I'm talking about what puts the drugs on their radar and I think seizures at customs play a bigger part than articles in the Guardian.
No Mike, I'm not talking about overt media-governmental conspiracy. I'm talking about the hegemonic nature of the war on drugs. There is no simple 'reportage'. If there was, we could have had years of happy columns reporting the spread of rave culture and the happiness it has brought to millions throughout the world. What we got was a heavily biased media and a straight link to the CJB. You do not write in a vacuum. You are not simply reporting 'the news'. You are working within the confines of a culture for whom there is no capital in reporting anything that challenges the prevailing view.
At best, an article positing the view that the government is lax and perhaps responsible for any damage by its refusal to regulate is going to come out as an article that says drugs are dangerous - ergo drugs are bad mmkay. Sure we need the dangers and the stupidity of the policy highlighting. But the parameters of your debate will determine the debate is about dangerous drugs and the implication, because it's all we are fed constantly, the hegemonic view, will be that all drugs are dangerous. And nothing else. The same view that dictates "all these drugs must be banned".
Kudos to shouting for regulation. But I'd have more time for you if you were shouting for legalisation, explicitly, too. As you're not, or certainly don't appear to be, I can pretty much guarantee your article will not come out much different to anything we've seen already. It's called editorial control. It's called hegemony.
Nick Davies is the only person I have seen successfully challenge the prevailing view in any in-depth national newspaper article. And even that was published in different times, when the wind briefly changed. It soon changed back. I don't think Davies would get that published in the Guardian today.
Good luck with proving me wrong.
Mailmonkey
Bluelighter
Ha, just appeared on my FB newsfeed...seemed appropriate (for the thread, not necessarily for you Mike)..
StoneHappyMonday
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Ha, just appeared on my FB newsfeed...seemed appropriate (for the thread, not necessarily for you Mike)..
Yep. Sometimes pictures say it easier. That cartoon is a prime example of what I mean. Do we think that Franklin, the cartoonist, had access to data that showed ecstasy and rave culture was synonymous with a trip to hell? Do we think that Franklin had any data at all?
Do we fuck.
There's your media/governmental non-conspiracy right there Mike, in that cartoon.
It's the same non-conspiracy that was responsible for the Hillsborough reporting. Did The Sun really have evidence showing Liverpudlians were pissing on dead bodies? Or did the establishment need a mouthpiece to shift the blame for the deaths away from the police (their protectors) and onto the working class scum?
There's your non-conspiracy. Right there.
This is what you think.
This is what you think.
This is what you think.
Now here's Tom with a microphone on the streets of Braindead, asking you what you think.
mahoosive bendah
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i didn't get that impression from anything this guy has written.
If you guys want a change in the status quo then a public debate needs to be had, this can't happen without ( and would mostly consist of ) media articles.
Many influential people ( Richard Branson for example ) are calling for a re-think, how do they make thier opinions heard ? A mixture of talking to govt and newspaper and TV interviews.
As for the Nbomes, they are dangerous. No question. Its not only clever bluelight chemistry types who have access to bags of the stuff, its anyone with the internet and a credit card. To deny that some RCS are dangerous is as silly as the 'weed makes you a rapist' 1950s view point.
The vendors are selling Nbomes and etizolam to make money, not as a public service, they are not Robin Hood meets Timothy Leory, thier moral standing is not so different to tobacco companies or off licences.
What would be so bad about talking to the police ? The police i have met would rather not bust people growing or smoking weed, they see the damage done to and by drug users on a daily basis.
Obviously i wouldnt be on BL if i didnt have some interest in chems but i can see that things are not black and white.
I'm not argueing with you ismene, i just quoted you as your post is a good example of something i find frustrating. I would like to see alternative theories to the current war on drugs. I see loads of people banging on about prohibition being bad but not so many saying how they would deal with things.
The 'legalise everything' idea does not, IMO, take into account the misery and crime caused by 'hard' drugs.
tl;dr - its a tricky moral and ethical issue, there is no point deny that. When mainstream media raises the issue in an intelligent and reasonable way it should be seen as an opportunity. After all there are plenty of intelligent and articulate bluelighters, if they really want change they should engage with the media and use them to be heard, not chuck vegetables at the evil journos who, after all, dont make the laws
just sayin is all
StoneHappyMonday
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Many peoples negative views here are a direct consequence of exchanges with the media, or worse, the police.
Just saying like.
Legalize, regulate. Critics always miss off the regulate bit.
Just saying like.
Legalize, regulate. Critics always miss off the regulate bit.
mahoosive bendah
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^ see i disagree to some extent.
Are people really that stupid ?
Having to work with people that fall into the 'sun / mail reading x-factor watching' catagory i have realised that, yes, some of em are mongs.
But not all of them are letting the news papers do thier thinking for them.
but yeah, regulation is the key i guess
Are people really that stupid ?
Having to work with people that fall into the 'sun / mail reading x-factor watching' catagory i have realised that, yes, some of em are mongs.
But not all of them are letting the news papers do thier thinking for them.
but yeah, regulation is the key i guess
Mike_Power
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shall i invoke godwin's law?
On what basis do you make these rather odd statements? Show me some evidence and we can debate it. Otherwise, you just seem a bit hysterical, mate. Sort of like a parallel universe Daily Mail editorial.
anyway, deadline calls. ttfn.
Mike_Power
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cheers, nice post.
and i'm not daft - drug users rightly distrust the media - because most hacks don't have a single clue what they're talking about. I do.
Branding all journos as stupid and evil is as thick as branding all drug users as immoral, depraved, dishonest or likkle-girls-lost. And i've spoken to some sound cops, who all think privately that the war on drugs is futile and counterproductive. but they can't speak out because of the political and media climate.
the way you change the debate that produces that climate of ignorance and fear is by seizing it, reframing it, and owning it. Not by sticking to a previous generation's useless, outdated and pointlessly entrenched us/them positions.
anyway, I'm out now til Monday. I'll pop back on Monday night.
Mike_Power
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it'd be better paid and more fun tan being a hack, i tell you.
i do share the name of a nigerian guinnness spy/james bond figure, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Power_(advertisement)
i could go on a right free piss-up in Lagos strength of that, i reckon.
This was very much my opinion when I first came across journos asking to interview EADDers for articles and teevee shiznitz. Unfortunately they proved time and time again to be lying arseholes who twisted folks' words to say the opposite of what they actually said and generally made them look like stereotypical, drug-addled, braindead morons too (when in actuality only some of them were :D). Virtually everybody who allowed themselves to be interviewed seriously regretted it afterwards when they saw what had been done with said interviews.
However, the fact remains that journalists will write about this stuff with or without help from folk like us. If any given journalist manages to resist their natural instinct to fuck people over, misrepresent their words, and generally live down to the standard we expect from them - and that is a big "if - then attitudes may change. It would be great to have the views of better informed drug users represented in the media. Finding a journalist trustworthy enough to accurately convey those views has always been the big problem.
Hope springs eternal. Albeit a bit less springily with each pisspoor, pisstaking journalist that comes and goes. Maybe if we pet him and groom him and feed him happy pills to encourage him to play nice we can keep this latest one :D
Don't take it personally Mike. We can disagree passionately but I'm sure if we met I'd invite you in for a cup of tea and a chinwag.
I'm not sure I can go along with your "morally neutral, I'm not taking any sides in this" proposal. Seeing as only one side out of the two has anything to lose, you can't expect us, the losing side, to support your morally neutral stance.
People are gonna get the homes raided and their lives devastated if these drugs are banned. I'm passionate that they shouldn't be persecuted.
Have you ever seen the film Cool Hand Luke? When a guard tries to be nice to someone he's punishing Luke says "Nah, calling it your job don't make it right".
If you don't like persecuting drug users - leave the police.
True - "Make heroin legal" was probably the most powerful peice any journalist has ever got published in a mainstream newspaper. Zero chance of it being published today.
Jackeh
Bluelighter
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalcohol.socialsciences
Here's the article if anyone is looking for it.
Here's the article if anyone is looking for it.