Hello Ismene,
This will be my last post on Bluelight for a while as I have other projects to attend to. I’ll quote two interviews from my book that best sum up where we are, as far as I see it.
Before I do that I think it’s important to note the selfishness of your position. Just because
you are informed about the dangers of super-potent psychedelics does not mean that the wider world of drug users are. Some people are dying and overdosing, and a brisk: ‘Their problem, do some research’ – just doesn’t cut it for me.
My factual reporting that the laws prohibiting the use of drugs such as MDMA, LSD, cocaine, heroin, mescaline, mushrooms, amphetamines have prompted unprecedented innovation in the drugs market is indisputable. Potency is likewise increasing in direct relation to the number of new laws. Fact.
I believe the emergence of RCS in general and NBOMEs in particular on to the wider market is of grave concern and has already lead to many casualties, and will lead to many more.
Yes, “we all know that overdoses kill” but not all the world reads Bluelight. Your netbubble is as transparent as it is seemingly limiting to your understanding of the wider context these issues are now playing out in.
On the NBOME deaths, as a source, I trust Erowid and I use them; they have been working in the service of harm reduction for years and do not use scare tactics. Neither do I.
The emergence of the RC market from the obscurity of the raids of your namesake, Operations Ismene and Webtryp, to the physical high streets of the world, concerns me, and I think that any rational observer without an agenda would agree. It concerns me so much I spent a year writing a book about it.
My conclusion is that the only rational way forward is to reduce demand for RCs by experimenting with policy around traditional recreational drugs just as Portugal has.
I’d rather have people on acid and Ecstasy than any of the NBOMEs, and many of the 2Cs and 5-MEOs any day. I’d like that LSD and MDMA sold pure and labelled.
But even there, there’s a conflict, and that’s what the two good interviewees in my book showed me. One was with the biggest vendor of LSD and MDMA on the Silk Road, and another was with the Admin of SOS. I quote them below in full, as I did in my book, as they are reasoned, intelligent opinions that I agree with.
But my viewpoint is not black or white, there’s no simple answer.
I’d say it’s been nice debating with you, but it’s not really been a debate. You’re angry, and I get that, but I can’t engage with it or your points, never mind threats by others to be thrown down a lift shaft or to be told to get a new job.
So, here’s what I believe. (This is what journalists do – look out for it from now. They quote people from both sides of the debate in an attempt to foster understanding, as I did when I quoted in the Guardian a user who had cured their depression using MXE, and as I did on Radio 4 last week when I said many people enjoyed using ‘legal highs’ as the media insists on calling them.)
Admin from SOS said in Drugs 2.0:
“I don’t think it’s up to the government to judge any person for what they do with their own body in the privacy of their own home. In my opinion, the primary role of the government is to prevent violence. Is the prohibition of a substance absolutely guaranteed to prevent more violence? If the substance is sarin, I think the answer is yes. If the substance is marijuana? Absolutely no. The same goes for cocaine, heroin, 4-AcO-DMT, mephedrone, etc. Information should absolutely, unequivocally be free.
“It should never, ever be illegal to receive information. It should never, ever be criminal to give information. This is absolutely my most strongly held conviction, and one from which I doubt I will ever stray.”
Silk Road: MDMA dealer, quoted in Drugs 2.0
‘The biggest issue I have with legalization is quantifying the pros and cons, what information do you base your decision on? Which metric is most important? Is it addiction rates, acute risk, economic cost, family breakdown, crime rates? It’s easy to look at the gruesome prohibition-fueled civil war in Mexico, the private prison industry in the US, the gang-fighting over drugs that goes on in every city and draw the conclusion that legalization is the only humane and reasonable alternative, because all of those injustices are blatant and gruesome. It’s harder to weigh the less apparent consequences, the subtle personal issues that easy access to drugs brings,’ he said.
‘As a dealer/vendor I get to see a much closer view of these problems, both in myself and others, and frankly it often upsets me. Many times I’ve had to stop selling to clients because they developed serious addiction issues. I know people who use MDMA every week and suffer serious memory and cognitive problems because of it; people who can’t stop using coke despite not even enjoying it any more, people who have to pop Oxycodone just to make it through the day.
“Seeing it really wears me down. How many more people would there be like that if they could pop down to the convenience store and pick up an eight-ball of cocaine? Would they ultimately be better off if given access to whatever they wanted along with subsidized harm reduction and treatment programmes if needed? It’s not an easy question to answer at all. I used to think that people should ultimately have agency over their own bodies and what they put in them, that the world was overwhelmingly worse off with prohibition than without it. I still feel that way, but over the past few years my view has become much more conflicted.’
Where do you stand, Ismene? What’s your opinion or solution? Because so far, you’ve only stood on the sidelines and criticised; a bit like a miserable cheerleader with no pom-poms.
