Hard News: Drugs and Sex
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Couple of random thoughts.
Cannabis derivatives have excellent medical properties. It's a long time since I did any pharmacology, but the received wisdom was that not only were some of them showing much better (like orders of magnitude better) analgesia, but far better side effect profiles. The elderly are big consumers of morphine, and its respiratory depression effects are bad, whereas the 'appetite stimulation' properties of cannabis derivatives are largely positive. For medical purposes, I'm not really sure what the benefits are of smoking it, as opposed to a controlled dose in a tablet (although they do have a much higher therapeutic index, so uncontrolled dosing is less of a drama -- in contast, the difference between a therapeutic does and a fatal dose of morphine is much smaller).Also, somewhat in response to Russell, we may also find small groups of people who are genetically susceptible to poor driving in the coming years. It's one thing to say that you have gene X, therefore you need lots of folate in pregnancy. However, if you're telling people, you're not in a good place to drive, or you're not in a good place to get high, them's some interesting ethical times.
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we may also find small groups of people who are genetically susceptible to poor driving in the coming years.
We've already found them. They're called teenagers. Fortunately, the genes mutate with age, as a consequence of the thing called maturation. But the howls of outrage if you try and suggest that the driving age should go to even 16, never mind 18 (or 20, which would be even better), make it unlikely that this group of demonstrably at-risk people will be kept from behind the wheels of lethal weapons.
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Tables!! At a pub??
What is Dunedin coming to?
Tables are required so you can make people 'table suck' their spillage. No table it ends up on the floor and gets soaked into the carpet …
Carpet!! In a pub??
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Carpet!! In a pub??
It soaks up the beer and leaves that lovely dank smell (see Chicks a couple of years ago, the Crown Hotel, any other classy joint).
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And if there had been a bit of work on drafting a half useful bill then a lot more of us would have voted for it. I don't know whether it was laziness or a lack of judgement on Metiria's part but frankly the bill presneted to parliament looked like it had been drafted by someone who had been high for weeks.
So you didn't vote to send the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill, or the Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill to select committee?
And didn't have a supplementary order paper to expand the ban drug driving that would have made it impossible to charge anyone with any sort of drug driving?
That's not to say I disagree with you - I just note it hasn't stopped you in the past. The form in which a bill is introduced has such an impact on the debate (publicly, and in the select committee etc.) that a really shoddily-drafted bill shouldn't get a first reading.
The Electoral Finance Act worked so poorly, I think, in large part because the Electoral Finance Bill was so bad (it would have made it a criminal offence a political party to issue a press release) that the entire debate was around fixing it's obvious glaring problems - no-one could focus on its smaller, but still important, problems. Had the EFA in its final form been the bill that was introduced you might have gotten something workable at the end.
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The whole medical cannabis thing is being undermined by the science. By which I mean the discovery of the cannabinoid family of receptors. The subtype blocker drug Rimonabant useful for losing weight (yes pot does give you the munchies and it is down to one subtype of receptor). So the future is specific drugs to stimulate or block specific receptor subtypes, not whole cannabis leaves. After all people who are seeking not to feel sick all the time don't actually need or want to get high as well.
The other strategy under investigation is boosting our own endogenous cannabinoids (why we have those receptors in the first place, the plant ones are just chemical analogues). It will soon become obvious who wants medical cannabis out of ignorance of this and who simply wants a backdoor legalisation.
I am btw in favour of front door legalisation. Drug policy is irrational and against all the evidence and we have the harm scale completely arse about tit. We need to start pressing our MPs and MP candidates about this. Nothing will change until we elect informed people on the right side of this issue.
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The elderly are big consumers of morphine, and its respiratory depression effects are bad, whereas the 'appetite stimulation' properties of cannabis derivatives are largely positive.
I think that if it hadn't been for certain appetite stimulants, my Ian would have never survived his leukemia. One thing cancer, and it's treatments, did for Ian was to remove all appetite. And because his taste buds got all stuffed up, he either just didn't feel like eating, or he had everchanging tastes, because nothing tastes right. (Can you imagine loving hospital mince? Well, Ian loved it at one stage. I could never replicate it properly.) He selfmedicated and, I won't say his appetite returned to normal, but at least he could eat. As for morphine, Ian will be on it (or the cheap version offered nowadays) for the rest of his life. One of the many pleasant side effects of the harsh chemical treatments he was required to go through was that he was left with Chronic Pain Syndrome. And the Mary Jane won't touch that.
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Back in the day when beer was a live brew in one big tank it the cellar and delivered by the tanker load from the brewing monopoly .... the story about the upstairs bar at the Cook was that once the band was done and everyone went home they would get out one of those big rollers they use on cricket pitches and run it up and down the carpet a couple of times to squeeze all the unused beer back into the tanks in the cellar .... as good an explanation for why the beer tasted the way it did as any .....
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And in late breaking news researchers have found spots on chromosomes 6 and 22 which appear to be responsible for some 30% of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - which may point to new treatments
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I'm generally in favour of legalisation and the occasional legal medical toke - it certainly helped a friend of mine though his recent radiation and chemo - he came close to wasting away even then - trouble was he had tongue cancer from years of non-legal/non-medicinal poking smot - roll on the legalised safe substitutes ...
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For medical purposes, I'm not really sure what the benefits are of smoking it, as opposed to a controlled dose in a tablet
Speed of action and the patient's ability to control dose would be the benefit -- although you'd also get that from an aerosol.
It's one thing to say that you have gene X, therefore you need lots of folate in pregnancy. However, if you're telling people, you're not in a good place to drive, or you're not in a good place to get high, them's some interesting ethical times.
That's certainly a very interesting point.
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poking smot
Is that a spoonerism or a potism
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He selfmedicated and, I won't say his appetite returned to normal, but at least he could eat.
From memory, there is a manufactured drug that's tested somewhat better than cannabis for appetite stimulation -- but its side-effects are markedly more unpleasant. In this case, cannabis does actually do the job well, as Ian seems to have discovered.
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<quote>Metiria's part but frankly the bill presneted to parliament looked like it had been drafted by someone who had been high for weeks.<quote>
And you can tell this because...?
Or does this just sound good.
It makes you sound like Wille Jackson or Micheal Laws more that anything. -
I quizzed Chris Fowlie from the Hemp Store a while ago about marijuana vapourisers. It seems that they work very well -- perhaps a little too well.
Staff routinely point out to people that these devices are very efficient and to go easy on dose -- and people routinely come back and say OMG I got soooo friggin' stoned and I didn't like it ...._
I guess the happy thing is that no permanent damage is done.
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marijuana vapourisers.
expensive but worth it to be rid of teh cough.
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Carpet!! In a pub??
It soaks up the beer and leaves that lovely dank smell (see Chicks a couple of years ago, the Crown Hotel, any other classy joint).
Carpet in a pub should be of the thick, highly absorbent variety.
And for bonus points, it should have an unfeasibly busy design on it so that it becomes really distracting by the end of the evening.
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It's also the view of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, which takes an evidence-based approach.
Thanks for the plug Russell!
For more of the Drug Foundation's 'evidence-based' drug policy stuff check out these new video clips - all of which are edited highlights from our February '09 Drug Policy Symposium: Through the maze: Healthy drug law ...
+ Setting the scene
+ Addiction treatment
+ Criminal justice
+ The cannabis debateAnd if you like what you see, we can send you a DVD with more footage from the symposium
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Off Topic
I watched Media 7 for the first time last night (now it is on Sky) and the bits I heard (through crying baby) were really good.
In fact, we've only had TVNZ7 for a couple of days and I have already watched an interesting documentary, Media 7 and seen some other upcoming docos that may be worth a watch. That is a vast improvement on most of the tosh on TV these days.
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And if you like what you see, we can send you a DVD with more footage from the symposium
Ah, yes, the first symposium DVD is always free, isn't it?
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Kong,
Vaporizing dope is really easy to do in a $15 P pipe and a $5 jet lighter, but it looks so ghetto. Not quite as ghetto as the popular alternative for crack smokers, a broken light bulb. The main problem with vaporizing is that the leftover browned leaves still have some latent power, so people keep them. Then when they run out of green, they revert to smoking the vaporized ones, and they're at square one again. Of course if supply was assured, then running out wouldn't happen, and the brown stuff could be chucked out or just given to guests you don't like.
Of course you get wickedly high the first time you try it, because it's so unlike smoking that you overdose. But one of the neat things about dope is that no-one has ever died of an overdose, the most that happens in extreme cases is that you might fall asleep. Very quickly you learn to spot what the vapors look like, and it's just like smoking, but without the burned throat, stinky smell, risk of cancer, holes in the lungs, inhaled lighter fluid, etc. It does involve shonky looking apparatus though, and it is more 'wasteful' than smoking, in that it does take more pot to get you the same high. It's silly that such a concern figures so highly, that people don't want to waste $5 worth of dope during a night of fun so that they can massively reduce the harm and pain to themselves. That's the same price as a beer, which most people would happily shell out for another one of, and wouldn't have the slightest qualm about tipping out if it got too warm. But beer is a lot easier to get than pot.
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Ah, yes, the first symposium DVD is always free, isn't it?
And then they get you hooked on this "evidence" stuff. Before you know it, you'll be so desperate you'll do anything for some "E" ...
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Kong,
A proper vaporizer does a better job, btw. The crackpipe method works but it's an art that does take a bit of time to learn, and it's easy to overheat and thus burn the stash, which means smoking some of it. The downside to vaporizers is that the electric ones take quite a while to heat up, no good for a quick session. Also they require a power socket. I think there are even more expensive gas powered ones, which would be fully portable, but really, no one wants to carry a vaporizer around - they're a strictly at-home affair. With that in mind, there are some very easy alternatives. You can put your stash in a sealed microwave bag, give it a buzz in the device, and suck the vapors out of the bag. You could just put it in a pot on the stove with a tight lid, and stick a straw in to suck out the vapors.
It all works, but the problem is that when you find a really good way of having your stash, you end up having a lot of it. If you're vaporizing for health reasons, you're still missing the point that health-wise, you're better off not taking any pot at all.
Which brings me to my final thoughts on legislation - if you really are coming from the harm minimization angle, then you've opened the door to the idea of prohibition. There is little question that the stuff does you some harm. Only total dreamers think it's utterly harmless.
Which is why I don't think that this 'softly softly' approach to trying to get the uninformed masses to accept legalization in tiny steps, starting first with medical dope, then maybe decriminalization and health programs for addicts etc, will ever work. Fundamentally, it's still buying into the mindset that the state is there to protect us from harm to ourselves. Which makes it a schizophrenic position, IMHO, so totally appropriate for a pipe-dream. There will still always be the totally compelling point (for people who have bought into that mindset) that the stuff is still potentially harmful. It is, that's a fact.
To me, the most glaring point about it is that it shouldn't matter if it is harmful to oneself . That's what's so stupid and wrong about the current laws, that there are so many goddamned things that are perfectly legal which are far, far more harmful than pot. If you open the door to the idea that it's about the balance of harms, then far from opening the door to legalization, you're really opening the door to more prohibition of those other things. To even be discussing the subject in those terms is the very reason that pot is banned.
It was, after all, the reason that piss was banned, all those years ago - because of the harms it caused to users and society. I have never really bought into the idea that it was unbanned because the harm caused by prohibition, in terms of crime, was greater. If that were so, then the equivalent harm caused by the war on drugs would have been a compelling argument to end that. But it is not. The real reason is because piss drinking is so widespread, that lots of people actually remembered the other side of the moral equation, the pleasure people get from drinking piss. And they realized that that actually matters. But for drugs less widely used, or less frequently used, it's easy to forget that, or never to have taken account of it in the first place. Then it's all about viral finger-waggling, a vicious cycle in which you can revenge yourself on others not by hurting them, but by taking their pleasures away. Humanity at it's finest, puritanical, and sad.
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And then they get you hooked on this "evidence" stuff. Before you know it, you'll be so desperate you'll do anything for some "E" ...
But after a while, the "E" just isn't enough anymore. Then you inevitably progress from Evidence to Rational Conclusions. Once you get on to "R", there's no coming back...
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But after a while, the "E" just isn't enough anymore. Then you inevitably progress from Evidence to Rational Conclusions. Once you get on to "R", there's no coming back...
Too bad the P comes before the R.
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