UK - Government drug adviser under fire over views on gay lifestyle

7zark7

7zark7

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Jun 7, 2004
Messages
2,559
Location
UK
[size=+1]Government drug adviser under fire over views on gay lifestyle[/size]
Anger as Christian GP and ex-political candidate links 'destructive' gay life with paedophilia
Jamie Doward and Jenny Stevens
The Observer, Sunday 23 January 2011


The body that advises the government on its drugs policy faces fresh controversy after the appointment of an expert with controversial views on homosexuality and the role of religion in combating addiction.

Dr Hans-Christian Raabe, a Manchester GP and member of the Maranatha Community, an inter-denominational Christian movement, was appointed to the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) last week.

The committee was plunged into controversy in 2009 when its chairman, Professor David Nutt, resigned after clashing with the government over its decision to reclassify cannabis from a class C to a class B drug.

Raabe, who stood for the European parliament for the Christian Peoples Alliance in 2009 but has since left the party, is medical co-ordinator of the Council for Health and Wholeness (CHW), a Christian organisation based within the Maranatha Community.

Briefing documents for MPs produced by Raabe on behalf of the CHW extol the benefits of marriage in fighting addiction. One states: "Marriage is associated with greater happiness, less depression, less alcohol abuse and less smoking."

The CHW also makes strong claims about the health risks of "the homosexual lifestyle". A briefing document states: "The media and the gay movement portray the homosexual lifestyle as happy, healthy and fulfilled. However, the homosexual lifestyle is associated with a large number of very serious physical and emotional health consequences."

It adds: "A high proportion of homosexual men engage in a destructive lifestyle, for example contracting HIV/Aids or other STIs, and develop addictions to drugs or alcohol. There is a higher burden of depression, [and] attempted or completed suicide among the 'gay population'."


Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/23/government-drug-adviser-raabe
 
UK - Hallelujah! Christian who says family life can beat addiction is new Gov....

Hallelujah! Christian who says family life can beat addiction is new Government drugs adviser

By JAMES SLACK
Last updated at 8:43 AM on 24th January 2011

With reader comments

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349802/Government-drugs-adviser-Dr-Hans-Christian-Raabe-says-family-life-beat-addiction.html

For years, the Government’s drugs advisers have been demanding a soft approach to cannabis and other banned substances.
But, finally, that appears likely to change following the appointment of a Christian GP who takes a hard line against smoking the drug and says strong families can help to defeat alcohol and other addictions.
Dr Hans-Christian Raabe, a member of an international Christian movement who has been appointed to sit on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, says children should simply be taught to say no. His appointment to the ACMD signals a shake-up in thinking for the panel, which has clashed repeatedly with ministers in recent years.
Many of its members prefer to focus on reducing the harm caused by drugs – instead of stopping them from being used in the first place.
Under Labour, the panel twice said cannabis should be a Class C rather than Class-B drug, and even suggested the downgrading of dance-drug ecstasy from A to B.
Other advice has concentrated on reducing the harm to users by giving them the materials needed to take drugs more safely, such as free aluminium foil for smoking heroin.
But Dr Raabe, who will represent GPs on the committee, has a far stricter track record, and prefers to focus on prevention.
Briefing documents for MPs produced by Dr Raabe state: ‘Marriage is associated with greater happiness, less depression, less alcohol abuse and less smoking.’

He holds views strongly at odds with former ACMD chairman Professor David Nutt, who believes that prohibition has failed and wants a new approach to classification based on the harm that each drug poses.
Dr Raabe said: ‘Harm reduction has its place, but I’m concerned that it’s the only policy being advocated.
‘In schools, for example, where the majority of children don’t take drugs, we still need a prevention approach.’
In an article in the British Medical Journal online, he attacked a ‘flawed report’ by the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy that suggested increasing cannabis consumption showed prohibition was failing.
He wrote: ‘The only way of stopping people from dying from drug-related deaths is to prevent drug use in the first place!’ He also co-signed a letter in 2004, warning against the government’s decision to reclassify cannabis from class B to class C.
It said: ‘A person who uses cannabis by age 15 has more than a four-fold increased risk of developing schizophrenia symptoms over the next 11 years compared with a person starting to use cannabis by 18.’ Professor Nutt, who now runs his own drugs panel, has said that smoking cannabis creates only a ‘relatively small risk’ of psychotic illness.
This weekend, he complained that the ‘appointment of Dr Raabe confirms in my mind that the ACMD cannot be considered to be a body that has science at the heart of its decision-making’.
Professor Nutt was sacked by the then home secretary in October 2009 for saying cannabis was less harmful than alcohol and nicotine.
Dr Raabe was appointed last week to the post, which will last for three years and is unpaid.
He has rejected concerns that his faith would influence his advice, saying that ‘society was in danger of believing that if you are a Christian you are not fit for public office or you are biased or a bigot’.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
says strong families can help to defeat alcohol and other addictions.
Click to expand...

Family support can be helpful, but it's not quite that simple. I come from a good home, and I've always been close to my parents, but that didn't stop me becoming a meth addict.

He wrote: ‘The only way of stopping people from dying from drug-related deaths is to prevent drug use in the first place!’
Click to expand...

How's he going to achieve that? Laws are only followed by the law-abiding... they can't prevent someone from using drugs if they choose to do so.
 
Sweet P said:
Family support can be helpful, but it's not quite that simple. I come from a good home, and I've always been close to my parents, but that didn't stop me becoming a meth addict.
Click to expand...

Same.. cept swap meth with cannabis for 2 years, amphetamine sulphate for a while and now (kinda) alcohol! ;)
 
How screwd up do you have to be to believe to think that harm reduction is the only policy being advocated in the media?! ROFLMAO
!!BUT WAIT!!he has the answer:
...Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, says children should simply be taught to say no.
Click to expand...
So basically continue the same way as youve been doing for decades? Yeaa.... that worked well didnt it....
 
Yeah. yeah… happy families and marriage will save you from drug use.

I wonder how many of those happy families actually hide alcohol abuse and domestic violence?
 
It amuses me that the guardian article is centered around Dr Raabe's blatant homophobia, while the Daily Mail article doesn't mention this at all. It even has a headline that starts with "Hallelujah!" .. Like we're all supossed to be extatic that this man was appointed drug adviser. :D

Also this little gem made me really laugh

He has rejected concerns that his faith would influence his advice, saying that ‘society was in danger of believing that if you are a Christian you are not fit for public office or you are biased or a bigot’.
Click to expand...

I mean c'mon .. How can you say that with a straight face when you're claiming gays are more likely to be pedo's =D
 
Is this the right GP for the drugs advisory council?

The Guardian

Evan Harris
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 January 2011 16.51 GMT

With reader comments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/25/gp-drugs-advisory-council

There is only one GP on the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Until last month Dr Margaret Birtwistle served on the ACMD. She is a GP consultant to Surrey Drug Action Team and a forensic medicine examiner. Last week, the Home Office appointed Dr Hans-Christian Raabe, a Manchester GP who does not appear, as far as I can see, to have published any relevant peer-reviewed research.

So it appeared that the Home Office was not able to recruit attract any specialist GPs and thus appointed an inner-city GP. But Raabe is not just a GP. He is a leading member of the Maranatha Community, a Manchester-based evangelical Christian group.

He is also the joint "medical co-ordinator" of the Council for Health and Wholeness (CHW), a group based in the office of the Maranatha Community. Both the Maranatha Community and the CHW have strong views on drugs and homosexuality and regularly send briefing materials to MPs and policymakers.

Raabe has co-authored an article that claims: "While the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there is a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles and an overlap between the gay movement and the movement to make paedophilia acceptable."

He becomes the only member of the ACMD to declare a political interest, in that he has been a candidate for the Christian party in the European elections. Reporter Mark Easton in his BBC blog cites examples of his extreme hostility to harm reduction, which is a fundamental part of the way this country's healthcare and education professionals seek to safeguard the welfare of young people and drug users. These are not mainstream scientific views.

I would say that the problem with Raabe, in respect of his appointment, is not that he appears to be homophobic, or that his views are offensive. After all, neither homophobia nor offensive views can be a bar to serving on expert advisory committees or to participation in public debates. Nor is it a problem that he is deeply religious. There are plenty of religious people in advisory groups and engaging in policy discussions, some of them making valuable contributions. The problem is that the ACMD is an expert committee where even those members with strong policy views have them framed in the context of their experience in the field, or their scholarship, and not merely their opinions and beliefs.

His appointment has, unsurprisingly, attracted widespread criticism. It is also not a surprise that in return religious commentators such as Melanie Phillips have weighed in – in her usual understated way. ("Penalising religious people for speaking and acting in accordance with their beliefs is neither liberal nor tolerant. It is behaviour more commonly associated with totalitarian dictatorships.") Nor is it a surprise that Christian Concern has joined her in the latest example of the kind of false-victimhood that one liberal Christian group has called "shameful" – claiming that religious views are being excluded from public life. Raabe himself has said that society is in danger of believing that "if you are a Christian you are not fit for public office or you are biased or a bigot".

The CHW accused the ACMD of being overpopulated by pro-liberalisation experts in a 2006 submission to the science and technology committee during its inquiry into drug classification. This raises the possibility that Raabe has applied to join the ACMD with a conscious agenda of changing the policy stance of the council. Did the Home Office consider this when they appointed him?

Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog identifies a number of government expert committees now being populated by non-experts. I agree with him when he says: "When David Nutt was sacked for expressing views on relative harm, we were angry that government was ignoring the advice of its advisors. Now we find ourselves hoping they do."
Click to expand...
 
Sweet P said:
Family support can be helpful, but it's not quite that simple. I come from a good home, and I've always been close to my parents, but that didn't stop me becoming a meth addict.
Click to expand...

Same here. My parents don't even smoke cigarettes or drink (yes, I realize those kill way more people), but that didn't keep me from doing meth and pretty much everything else. Not to say both enviroment and genetics don't play a role, the certainly do.
 
Many people who are intolerant towards drug users are also intolerant towards homosexuality and are often racists as well atleast from what ive seen. The only surprise here is how blatant he is about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top