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  • EADD Moderators: Shambles

Legalise drugs ffs urge scientists

I

Ismene

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Jun 17, 2005
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The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD amounts to the “the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo”, the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt has claimed.

Professor Nutt, who was dismissed from the Home Office’s advisory council on drugs in 2009 after clashing with ministers, said that UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s have delayed the development of “innovative treatments” for PTSD and depression by 30 years and also set back research into areas of neuroscience such as consciousness.

The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD amounts to the “the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo”, the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt has claimed.

Applying for a Government licence can be costly and time-consuming and many scientists are put off by a culture of “repression” surrounding drug science, Professor Nutt said.

“The laws scare off funders and most scientists are scared because they think if they break the law, they might get arrested,” he told The Independent. “I’m sure at some point someone’s going to arrest me. There is a sense of repression to the point that most people won’t do it.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...proper-study-of-their-properties-8654514.html
 
Mind altering substances are oppressed in order to control consciousness. The war on drugs is a war on consciousness first and foremost. The sovereign right to self-alter is an upcoming political battle, now that the scientific research is challenging the status quo.

I think it's unfortunate because our polity could be a lot stronger from the learning gained by allowing people to change their consciousness at will. A lot of our best discoveries have been made by people who secretly (or not so secretly) do drugs.
 
Foreigner said:
Mind altering substances are oppressed in order to control consciousness. The war on drugs is a war on consciousness first and foremost.
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Personally I don't buy into this sort of hippie conspiracy horseshit (no offence)

The war on drugs is a war on people acting like idiots on drugs, which is why they are illegal in the first place.

Haight Ashbury, Rave culture etc.

Besides, people seem to be able to get drugs for recreational use regardless, if they government wanted to stop people getting high once in a while so they can commune with the universe or whatever they WOULD.
 
I don't think the WoD has much to do with wanting to control peoples' consciousness. Although I do think that is a factor cos the WoD only really got started when they tended to be associated with hippies/lefties/anarchists/drop-outs/layabouts from the 60s, before that it was more about demonising "foreigners" with their strange aversion to alcohol in favour of their preferred DoC at the time (Mexicans/weed, Chinese/opium, "Blacks"/cocaine) - y'all've seen Hooked ;)

I also don't think it has much to do with trying to protect individuals - or even society in general - from the effects of acute or chronic drug use cos one thing everybody knows (even politicunts) about prohibition is that it increases supply, demand, profit, cost, crime and overall levels of use whilst decreasing quality controls and safety for users and everybody else. Politicunts aren't stoopid - they knew this would happen - they are just arseholes who knew that this would be of benefit to them.

What I suspect it does have more to do with is money and power (natch). Money was probably not such a large part of the plan initially but since the rise in private prisons and insane rises in police funding and powers it certainly has. And since the various intelligence agencies (well, the CIA mostly, naturally) discovered that they could boost funds and create lil strategic social problems (CIA flooding LA with crack and weapons in the 80s is a prime example). Which is where the power side comes in. Create a problem and you "justify" your needs for higher and higher budgets, more and more powers across the board (aside from medical services, obviously) for governmental agencies and keep the plebs in a state of perpetual fear. It's just standard practice for the powers that be.

Legalising drugs would mean having to admit to, at the very least, being wrong, but in truth would actually mean admitting to decades of flat-out lies and disinformation. It's this aspect which is the only real fly in the ointment for the legalising lobby. But on the plus side, there actually is a legalising lobby (of sorts) now. It may not be large or well-organised but I've never seen so many people coming our in favour of major changes in drug law than I have over the last few years. I think a certain critical mass will inevitably be reached. In terms of sheer numbers there are probably more or less enough people with enough experience of drugs to already be smelling a rather ripe rat with the standard WoD rhetoric already. Thanks to prohibition this number will continue to rise and rise.

Prohibition's days are numbered but full legalisation may still be quite a way off and I don't really see that Proff Nutt is actually calling for that anyway - surely he just means to change the law to allow research rather than for LSD, MDMA and mushies to be actually legal for all. This would definitely be a good first step - get some genuine research done into drugs cos it's criminal that the potential medical uses are just being ignored. Unfortunately, the problem with that is that such research is almost inevitably gonna disagree with most of the current propaganda which may not look so good. Frank will have to talk about something else.

Legalisation will happen - it's inevitable - but it will take time cos the politicunts need to find a way to make changes whilst admitting nothing. The WoD is over, it's now just a case of finding a way to spin it so it doesn't appear to have been lost quite so comprehensively.
 
I dont think it'll ever happen under a Tory government, just as David Cameron said the other day "prisoners will never get the vote under this government". Nothing to do with the fact that prisoners are probably one of the 'groups' least likely to vote Tory. Similar with drug users perhaps.

It would need a miracle like a Lib Dem/Green party coalition to recognise the WoD has failed and really open up a proper debate, and put new bills through parliament IMHO.
 
I don't think legalisation would mean them having to say they were wrong. Well, it would, but not for a good 40-100 years after legalisation. When all the culprits are dead. That's how these things work.

What would happen would be the 'experiment' would initially be our responsibility and our fault if anything went wrong. The do-gooders who legalized the craziness. Then give it a generation and drugs would be a pretty mainstream item on the news. In the economy and politics section of the news, not the social horror bit.

Yeah, to an extent it's about consciousness control.
 
Fantastically well said, Shambles. I couldn't have done so better myself.

Glad that David Nutt is still standing his corner, which is a very rational and sensible corner. Unfortunately, irrational interpreters like those in government seem to get his message wrong. Completely wrong. If they'd got it right, he might still be on the ACMD. His argument for medicine stands without even touching on recreation, and yet the media seem to confuse the two, possibly intentionally, for the sensationalism.
 
^ exactly! It's got nothing to do with recreational use (technically just abuse) of those substances. It's a damn hard image to shake off though after decades of them solely being drugs of abuse. Plenty other in-use medicines are drugs of abuse too but apparently viewed as legitimate because big pharma put them on the market and promotes them...
 
Ceres said:
^ exactly! It's got nothing to do with recreational use (technically just abuse) of those substances. It's a damn hard image to shake off though after decades of them solely being drugs of abuse. Plenty other in-use medicines are drugs of abuse too but apparently viewed as legitimate because big pharma put them on the market and promotes them...
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This is also an excellent point. But it seems it could be surmountable - "Medical Marijuana" in America being a good example. There's just no getting around the fact that "medical" weed and stoner weed are the exact same thing and both get you twatted. The fact that a coupla US states have gone even further and actually decriminalised cannabis for everybody - for recreation and medicinal use - was a massive step forward. Especially given how utterly rabid the US has been in regards to weed in the past century or so. I can see more states going down similar roads when they see just how much tax is being raised, how much pressure it's taking off law enforcement (not to mention the knock-on effects that getting LE involved in busting folk for spliff costs both financially and societally) and - most importantly - how little effect it has on anything else. People smoked weed one day and it cost the taxpayer money, they smoked weed the next day and paid tax on it. Simple as that.

(actually, i dunno if they do pay tax on it everywhere but i know they do in some jurisdictions - in at least one case it was purely a financial decision cos the local police department was virtually bankrupt and managed to pass a local law allowing taxable sale of weed and profits ensued)

Full legalisation may be a hard sell, but making medical research and use legal would surely be an easier one. Once people see for themselves that Cousin Kelly who was in acute psychological distress over a fatal disease diagnosis was given peace and acceptance with a lil LSD therapy, or Uncle Frank who went off to war and came back with PTSD and has been in and out of institutions ever since found his own peace and acceptance via the medium of MDMA therapy, or Auntie Bess who suffers from those nasty cluster headaches so bad she's tried suicide just to make the pain go away is now all better cos she takes her monthly dose of psilocybin to keep 'em at bay, it's kinda hard for the government to step in and say that actually their now far healthier/happier relatives are in fact drug addicts risking death and insanity at every step.

Of course such changes might actually make it harder to achieve full legalisation cos they could simply be prescription-only drugs given out only under medical supervision which would suggest recreational users were actually just abusing prescription meds turning it into a medical issue rather than a simply hedonistic and/or self-exploratory one. But at least people would be getting meds that can genuinely help when nothing else can. I do hope sense is seen and medical research is allowed... but I very much doubt it's top of any agenda at the moment. What's needed is more science/medical professionals to step in and add their voice too cos Prof Nutt - much as we <3 him - is labelled as "That nutter who wants to legalise drugs and think children should be fed MDMA if they ask for horse-riding lessons" and unlikely to be taken very seriously. And probably none too popular with the government either. More people from more areas - police, judges, social services, various medical professions, the more the better really - need to speak out cos we know that there is appetite for change amongst most thinking people now. Especially those that deal with it all day in and day out.

Change is a-coming. As I said up there, I think it's mostly just a case of politicunts finding a way to spin it so it looks like they're the ones making the decision. Or at least, as SHM suggested, that they can find a suitable group of "rebels" who can be persuaded to push changes through parliament then take the fall should there be any major fuckups along the way. I must admit it's hard to think of any party being able to do it alone though. I suspect there actually is cross-party support... just not in anywhere near sufficient numbers to make a difference yet :\
 
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