Matthew Perry and Peter Hitchens clash on Newsnight over drugs policy

23536

23536

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Dec 16, 2010
Messages
7,725
Location
Stop resisting!
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/17/matthew-perry-peter-hitchens-newsnight



The Friends star Matthew Perry and the British newspaper columnist Peter Hitchens have clashed over drugs policy, with Perry calling his opponent's questioning of the existence of drug addiction "as ludicrous as saying Peter Pan is real".

The pair were part of a debate on specialist courts – in which former addicts sit as lay magistrates dealing with abuse-related crimes – on the BBC's Newsnight programme on Monday night.

Arguing in favour of their use, Perry said: "I know that they work. People that go through drug court have a 55% less chance of ever seeing handcuffs ever again."

But fighting the opposite corner, the journalist and anti-drug campaigner Peter Hitchens railed against the idea and what he described as the "fantasy of addiction".

"You are making a point that is as ludicrous as saying Peter Pan is real," said Perry, who reached fame as the sitcom character Chandler Bing and has battled addiction.

At one point Perry referred to the Mail on Sunday columnist as "Santa" and told him to "read something other than your book" in reference to Hitchens's essay The War We Never Fought: The British Establishment's Surrender To Drugs.

Asked if he disagreed with the medical profession's designation of addiction as a disease, Hitchens responded: "The medical profession is constantly doing extraordinary things. The American Psychiatric Association said for years homosexuality was a disease – they were wrong."

cont. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/17/matthew-perry-peter-hitchens-newsnight
 
Last edited:
They're both wrong.

Addiction is a real disease, but it is grossly over-diagnosed. It is the only disease that can be diagnosed by non-medical professionals like cops and judges, and all of the diagnoses are welcomed by the rehab industry because that allows them to bill the government for billions of dollars.

When I was put in drug court, no doctor ever assessed whether or not I was truly addicted (I wasn't). I still preferred drug court to prison, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go on TV and praise the drug court concept (not that anyone would ask me to go on TV).

Shame on the recovery community for not denouncing this hypocrisy, and also shame on them for never acknowledging the legitimacy of recreational drug use. Just as Peter Hitchens denies the existence of addiction, the recovery people often deny the possibility of using psychotropic drugs without becoming an addict.

The voice of the functional, unabashed and unrepentant recreational drug user must force its way into this conversation.
 
23536 said:
Shame on the recovery community for not denouncing this hypocrisy, and also shame on them for never acknowledging the legitimacy of recreational drug use. Just as Peter Hitchens denies the existence of addiction, the recovery people often deny the possibility of using psychotropic drugs without becoming an addict.

The voice of the functional, unabashed and unrepentant recreational drug user must force its way into this conversation.
Click to expand...

Bravo. Fine points, well made sir.
 
They are both so full of shit I could barely watch. That old woman was the only voice of reason and they kept talking over her. Perry is a recovery industry indoctrinated fuck-puppet and Hitchens is a delusional retard. As if sadistic "deterrents" do anything more than create more dealers from their criminal records limiting job opportunities. They are both immature, arrogant, condescending plebeians.
 
It's a classic "Phony bone of contention". They appear to be having some almighty debate on a subject but all they are doing is presenting two slightly different positions based on continued prohibition. Its as if a real alternative didn't exist....which is exactly what the viewer is supposed to think.
 
"fantasy of addiction" You know I agree with this and when are we going to stop calling the earth round... Im with you Peter Hitchens and your bronze age wisdom. You have received today's assclown award with a bronze age star. Enjoy it, you have more than earned it.. or as in your case this just seems to indicate your lack of intelligence, so then you naturally deserve it.

"The Flat Earth model is an archaic belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD) and China until the 17th century. It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies"

NSFW:
ass+clown+at+kids+party.PNG


earth-space-709498.jpg


“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”


― Edgar Allan Poe​
 
Last edited:
highhooked said:
Matthew perry is an awful debater
Click to expand...

Damn, th, tha, th, t, tha, th, that English g, g, g, guy could have been torn a new one by a good debater. Instead viewers are probably thinking that his views are correct, even though those opposing his unsubstantiated bullshit outnumbered him. Pretty poor form, I don't like this video at all.
 
neversickanymore said:
“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”


― Edgar Allan Poe[/CENTER]
Click to expand...

Cocaine got rid of all that for him?

Cocaine sometimes multiplies the severity of my traumatic memories and my sense of doom.

I'd like to see his writing if he'd had access to MDMA.
 
Yeah that shit was painful. I feel like the only person who know what they were actually talking about and could back up a point was Ms. Meacher, and she wasn't even allowed to finish a sentence. Hitchens statement that drug laws aren't being enforced enough is completely delusional, and his claims that drug use has risen as a result of changes in drug policy is completely unverified. Matthew Perry, for his part, could only reference his own experience as an alcoholic and therefore serves only to reinforce the policy of prohibition (gotta keep the kids from becoming addicts!).
So all we have here is a debate over whether drug use is a health problem, a criminal problem, or a moral problem. Nobody seems capable of thinking that it's more of a LEGAL problem than anything, and that a reform of the laws could easily help address many of the issues these people are debating.
 
"The criminal justice system is feeble"

Wow.

NSFW:
693px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png


Note how the spike in the American prison population coincides with the rise of the Reagan administration and subsequent escalation of the war on drugs. The United States has the largest prison population in the world in terms of both prisoners per capita and prisoners in total. Half of these prisoners are incarcerated for drug related offenses.

I wish Mr. Hitchens would have elaborated on how exactly the justice system is feeble in this regard, and exactly how it should be inflated. Do we start mass executions of marijuana smokers? If the mass incarceration technique is too weak in deterring drug use, mass extermination of drug users is the next logical step.
 
I cringed the whole way through. Hitchens left himself vulnerable at many points, and Perry failed at pretty much every one of them. Thankfully there are a few concrete statistics that Perry could quote because otherwise he is an idiot (he also seemed slightly intoxicated). Hitchens disagreeing with modern western medicine helped reveal a huge chink in his paper-thin armor, and should have been used to discredit him.

Medically, an allergy is a relatively strictly defined thing to suffer from. Addiction has nothing to do with this group of inflammatory processes, and calling it such makes him look very ignorant on the subject. It has a lot to do with individual neurophysiology (neurotransmitter/receptor activity).

In the end I had to ask myself...why in the hell are these two idiots blathering on about shit they
are inadequately educated to represent. Is this the type of 'information' that the majority can relate to and absorb? I wish the lady had been a better speaker because she seemed (hard to tell because she hardly had a chance to elaborate) to be the better informed with regards to successful and humane treatment of drug addicts.
 
Last edited:
Shimmer.Fade said:
In the end I had to ask myself...why in the hell are these two idiots blathering on about shit they
are inadequately educated to represent. Is this the type of 'information' that the majority can relate to and absorb?
Click to expand...

I think you also need to know the context, just to blow your mind a little bit more.

'Newsnight' is the most serious, supposedly in-depth news broadcast on British television. It isn't aimed at any dumbed-down majority but is meant to be the quality news debate of British visual media. News for the educated.

As the man said, go figure.
 
edgarshade said:
It's a classic "Phony bone of contention". They appear to be having some almighty debate on a subject but all they are doing is presenting two slightly different positions based on continued prohibition. Its as if a real alternative didn't exist....which is exactly what the viewer is supposed to think.
Click to expand...

trudat
 
Peter Hitchens is a complete retard.. First of all we haven't been treating addiction as a disease as Peter claims..I'd like to ask Peter: "How exactly is ruining someones life, job, money and putting the "addict" in a cage with no treatment (detox meds) what so ever??"
 
gh0stmAn said:
Peter Hitchens is a complete retard.. First of all we haven't been treating addiction as a disease as Peter claims..I'd like to ask Peter: "How exactly is ruining someones life, job, money and putting the "addict" in a cage with no treatment (detox meds) what so ever??"
Click to expand...

And his response would probably be something (very narrow-minded) along the lines of, "They're locked up as a wake-up call to understand and realize that drug law enforcement and abstinence is the only right choice."

Peter Hitchens can gloat all he wants about his post-secondary education, but in the end, in my opinion it means fuck all if he hasn't "been there, done that". And the same goes with the rest of these so-called "experts" who base their opinions solely on formal experience, which is mainly comprised of (sometimes very outdated and clearly biased) literature on the topic of recreational drug use and drug policies.

I would much rather have someone like Dr. Shulgin (who has extensive first-hand experience, whose views I might not necessarily agree with, but respect nonetheless because the guy has probably ingested more kinds of psychotropic substances than any other human to date and wrote about his experiences at different dosages) serve as a drug czar to the POTUS rather than another cop whose opinions are probably influenced by the greenback, a lust for power, or both. That's just me though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top