poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Aus - OPINION: Artificial reasons to ban synthetic drugs
MY mother's family were battlers from Wyee. They did it hard during the Depression, working as farm labourers and tradespeople around the power stations at Munmorah and Vales Point.
Like many battlers, they partied hard when they could. As a youngster, I remember many long nights around the card table with beer and brown Muscat, Ardath cork-tipped cigarettes and even chewing tobacco.
Many of them died comparatively young from illnesses that we now know were directly related to drinking and smoking. But if you'd said to Uncle Denny in those days that they'd kill him and he better stop, he would have laughed at you and said something like: "Life's short and hard, son. You take your pleasures where you can get them. And mind your own bloody business!"
You can't tell people to stop taking drugs - just like you can't argue someone into loving you.
Most drug taking is not done to harm someone's family, to make a fool of one's self or to injure society. It's a form of self-medication, like having a drink, and a way to escape the pressures of life and the ravages of a mind that just won't stop.
Everyone uses drugs. Whether it's tea and coffee, beer and wine, marijuana and ecstasy, Panadol and Viagra or even prescribed benzodiazepines or morphine.
The problem with the current debate on synthetics is that many people are saying: "My drug-taking is OK but yours is not".
Let's test that notion.
Cigarette smokers can't reasonably condemn anyone else's drug habits without appearing to be a hypocrite.
The research is conclusive that smoking kills you. Everyone knows it. And yet the government still allows tobacco to be sold from family areas, still taxes it and uses its revenue, treats it as if it were a foodstuff and refuses to put it on Schedule 9 of the official poisons and drugs register (the SUSMP) where synthetic and natural marijuana have been put.
Drinkers are often the first to condemn marijuana dealers, ecstasy users and synthetics advocates of ruining young lives. But consider this. On the federal government website, drinkingnightmare.gov.au, it says that four young people under the age of 25 die from an alcohol-related illness every week.
Leaving aside the tragic death of the Sydney schoolboy recently, who actually took what is known as a NBOMe and nothing like synthetic LSD (LSD is already synthesised), there are no recorded deaths in Australia from either natural or synthetic cannabinoids.
Alcohol is listed under Appendix B of the SUSMP.
This position is reserved for, "substances considered not to require control by scheduling" and considered to have "low toxicity".
Their area of use is considered, "General: any use". Under state laws, alcohol is largely controlled under food and beverage legislation. How silly are our politicians? A poison that kills four young kids a week is said to be a foodstuff with low toxicity, whereas synthetic marijuana, which has not been clinically proven to be responsible for one death, is said to be a killer.
Where is the use of evidence in framing new drug laws?
Every year, one or two young people die from peanut allergies and hundreds of kids are admitted to hospitals with serious injuries from trampolines.
There are reportedly half a dozen hospital visits every day for panic attacks and heart palpitations due to strong coffee and caffeine drinks. These are the same symptoms that the Australian Medical Association and most health ministers gave for banning synthetic cannabis.
Do we ban peanut butter, coffee and trampolines? No.
We educate people in how to deal with them and encourage manufacturers to make safer products.
What is the only recreational drug in Australian society today that is in decline? Tobacco. Why? Because it's legal and we run public health programs about its use.
The problem is simple and so is the solution. If natural marijuana had been legalised in Australia 10 years ago, hardly any of these synthetic drugs would be around today. In fact, if the first synthetic cannabinoid drug called Kronic (JWH-018) had not been banned, none of these far stronger drugs would be around.
The bans that the NSW government has put in place will backfire because every time a government bans two of these products, four new ones are on sale the next week.
The NSW government is using the same model to ban synthetics that Richard Nixon used to try to ban marijuana in the late 1960s. And he was really successful with that, wasn't he? Prohibition creates drug abuse and drives the economics of drug sales in a way that proper regulation, toxicity testing and education does not do.
The government needs to make these products safe for the people who use them and stop pushing a deadly tough-on-drugs campaign, which is now starting to be seen as a tough-on-government approach.
Robbie Swan is the national coordinator of Eros, Australia’s adults-only association
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1589487/opinion-artificial-reasons-to-ban-synthetic-drugs/?cs=308
MY mother's family were battlers from Wyee. They did it hard during the Depression, working as farm labourers and tradespeople around the power stations at Munmorah and Vales Point.
Like many battlers, they partied hard when they could. As a youngster, I remember many long nights around the card table with beer and brown Muscat, Ardath cork-tipped cigarettes and even chewing tobacco.
Many of them died comparatively young from illnesses that we now know were directly related to drinking and smoking. But if you'd said to Uncle Denny in those days that they'd kill him and he better stop, he would have laughed at you and said something like: "Life's short and hard, son. You take your pleasures where you can get them. And mind your own bloody business!"
You can't tell people to stop taking drugs - just like you can't argue someone into loving you.
Most drug taking is not done to harm someone's family, to make a fool of one's self or to injure society. It's a form of self-medication, like having a drink, and a way to escape the pressures of life and the ravages of a mind that just won't stop.
Everyone uses drugs. Whether it's tea and coffee, beer and wine, marijuana and ecstasy, Panadol and Viagra or even prescribed benzodiazepines or morphine.
The problem with the current debate on synthetics is that many people are saying: "My drug-taking is OK but yours is not".
Let's test that notion.
Cigarette smokers can't reasonably condemn anyone else's drug habits without appearing to be a hypocrite.
The research is conclusive that smoking kills you. Everyone knows it. And yet the government still allows tobacco to be sold from family areas, still taxes it and uses its revenue, treats it as if it were a foodstuff and refuses to put it on Schedule 9 of the official poisons and drugs register (the SUSMP) where synthetic and natural marijuana have been put.
Drinkers are often the first to condemn marijuana dealers, ecstasy users and synthetics advocates of ruining young lives. But consider this. On the federal government website, drinkingnightmare.gov.au, it says that four young people under the age of 25 die from an alcohol-related illness every week.
Leaving aside the tragic death of the Sydney schoolboy recently, who actually took what is known as a NBOMe and nothing like synthetic LSD (LSD is already synthesised), there are no recorded deaths in Australia from either natural or synthetic cannabinoids.
Alcohol is listed under Appendix B of the SUSMP.
This position is reserved for, "substances considered not to require control by scheduling" and considered to have "low toxicity".
Their area of use is considered, "General: any use". Under state laws, alcohol is largely controlled under food and beverage legislation. How silly are our politicians? A poison that kills four young kids a week is said to be a foodstuff with low toxicity, whereas synthetic marijuana, which has not been clinically proven to be responsible for one death, is said to be a killer.
Where is the use of evidence in framing new drug laws?
Every year, one or two young people die from peanut allergies and hundreds of kids are admitted to hospitals with serious injuries from trampolines.
There are reportedly half a dozen hospital visits every day for panic attacks and heart palpitations due to strong coffee and caffeine drinks. These are the same symptoms that the Australian Medical Association and most health ministers gave for banning synthetic cannabis.
Do we ban peanut butter, coffee and trampolines? No.
We educate people in how to deal with them and encourage manufacturers to make safer products.
What is the only recreational drug in Australian society today that is in decline? Tobacco. Why? Because it's legal and we run public health programs about its use.
The problem is simple and so is the solution. If natural marijuana had been legalised in Australia 10 years ago, hardly any of these synthetic drugs would be around today. In fact, if the first synthetic cannabinoid drug called Kronic (JWH-018) had not been banned, none of these far stronger drugs would be around.
The bans that the NSW government has put in place will backfire because every time a government bans two of these products, four new ones are on sale the next week.
The NSW government is using the same model to ban synthetics that Richard Nixon used to try to ban marijuana in the late 1960s. And he was really successful with that, wasn't he? Prohibition creates drug abuse and drives the economics of drug sales in a way that proper regulation, toxicity testing and education does not do.
The government needs to make these products safe for the people who use them and stop pushing a deadly tough-on-drugs campaign, which is now starting to be seen as a tough-on-government approach.
Robbie Swan is the national coordinator of Eros, Australia’s adults-only association
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1589487/opinion-artificial-reasons-to-ban-synthetic-drugs/?cs=308
