Hard News: People Take Drugs
228 Responses
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I can’t agree with this sentiment. If it’s not shown to be harming anyone else, and it’s a public place, this seems like undue meddling to me
Littering doesn't harm anyone either.
Davis is an odd town, but don't knock it until you've experienced it. The smokers figured out where they could go and that was fine. Nobody objected to them smoking so long as they didn't inconvenience anyone else. The definition of inconvenience in Davis amounted to breathing someone else's unpleasant smell.
Note this is also the town where there was a noise complaint upheld for snoring, they built a tunnel under the freeway for the frogs and they refused to repair the potholes in a dead end street because they felt by that time the potholes had become an ecosystem that should be preserved.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Note this is also the town where there was a noise complaint upheld for snoring, they built a tunnel under the freeway for the frogs and they refused to repair the potholes in a dead end street because they felt by that time the potholes had become an ecosystem that should be preserved.
You're not really selling it to me. There's unpleasant smells all over public places...in rubbish bins, for instance, and in toilets.
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vangam, in reply to
There’s unpleasant smells all over public places…in rubbish bins, for instance, and in toilets.
Indeed, try driving thru Smellfast (read: Belfast) everyday.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
You’re not really selling it to me
Ok how about this then, the folks there decided that some people didn't like walking through clouds of smoke to get into buildings. They put a proposal to the city council, it was put out to public ballot and the majority imposed their tyrannical will on the minority.
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Islander, in reply to
t was put out to public ballot and the majority imposed their tyrannical will on the minority.
Heh!
Mind you, I could love a place that built a tunnel for treefrogs...when one of my family visited Big O for the first time, she wondered why on earth the leaves seemed to be __hopping__in the headlights-
next morning, looking at several dozen little squishes on the road - after I'd done my spiel about the way they'll move in a breeding swarm- she said sadly, "You should build them a tunnel-"we've thought about it, over the years...but those breeding swarms have become so rare now.
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This is why I think P/crystal meth (as opposed to common or garden 'speed') is a particular problem. Okay, the documentary is about five years old, but it does have the advantage of some evidential content:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/
Craig Y
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For reasons I can't be bothered going into I stumbled upon this guy...
Also known as Dr. Ecstasy by the New York Times. -
BenWilson, in reply to
They put a proposal to the city council, it was put out to public ballot and the majority imposed their tyrannical will on the minority.
The majority of people who bothered to respond, that is?
But sure, that sounds like due process. It doesn't make me agree with the people of that town, though.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
This is why I think P/crystal meth (as opposed to common or garden ‘speed’) is a particular problem.
My non-expert guess is that there are two issues that make this so:
1. Crystal methamphetamine versus other amphetamines, such as amphetamine sulphate. It seems to have a particular effect.
2. Means of administration. Inhaling methamphetamine vapour gives a big, immediate and repeatable rush. But the effects also last for eight hours or so, every repeat just loads in more to the bloodstream. People aren't trying to stay up for a week -- they're just trying to get another immediate rush. Staying awake for a week is kind of a side effect.
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bmk, in reply to
It's basically like the difference between crack and cocaine. It's really the same drug but the method of administration makes a huge difference to the rush received.
I have known several people who used p very heavily and only two of them ended up 'fucked' from it (one ended up in a psych ward after his neighbours saw him covering his lightbulbs with tin foil - would have been funny if it weren't so sad) and they both injected it. If smoking is worse than snorting then injecting is far worse than smoking.
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Outrageous Importune...
But I'm too middle-class...
fie on such protestations - working title
Foghorn's Lament; Buoys will be buoys...
now get writing.... -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
But sure, that sounds like due process. It doesn’t make me agree with the people of that town, though.
No. Just as I wouldn't really want to live anywhere that classes some drunk pissing in public (which we can all agree is gross and unsanitary) as sexual offending -- especially if we ever end up with the kind of compulsory sex offender registration that makes Garth McVicar jizz in his pants.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
No. Just as I wouldn’t really want to live anywhere that classes some drunk pissing in public (which we can all agree is gross and unsanitary) as sexual offending – especially if we ever end up with the kind of compulsory sex offender registration that makes Garth McVicar jizz in his pants.
I know of one case in America -- a friend of a friend -- where precisely that happened. Guy took a leak down an alley by a bar in a California town, got sprung, wound up on a 10-year sex offender register. Completely and utterly insane.
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BenWilson, in reply to
If smoking is worse than snorting then injecting is far worse than smoking.
Not so sure about that. Smoking (well, technically vapourizing in the case of P) is a virtually immediate hit, and you can have any quantity you like. So there's really no difference, other than needle tracks in the arm. I expect smoking is safer, less chance of infection, or killing yourself accidentally with bubbles or bad drugs.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I know of one case in America -- a friend of a friend -- where precisely that happened. Guy took a leak down an alley by a bar in a California town, got sprung, wound up on a 10-year sex offender register. Completely and utterly insane.
Whereas a lawyer friend of mine here in NZ managed to acquit a client from all charges for public urination. The judge threw the case out as a complete waste of court time. I think he took exception to the hyperbole in the police report which described a "raging torrent" of piss, and figured that they were just vexatiously charging someone they didn't like whom they couldn't bust for anything real.
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bmk, in reply to
No there is a limit how much you can put in a pipe, lungful. Whereas you can dissolve a lot into a needle. The heavy users I know who smoked would smoke furiously for an hour to get high whereas the injectors would have one quick injection to instantly consume an equivalent amount of meth.
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bmk, in reply to
Smoking is definitely safer cause alluding to my previous point you can in one needle have a lethal dose where you cannot smoke a lethal dose as your lungs will cough etc and prevent anymore being injested.
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BenWilson, in reply to
They can't have been smoking that furiously, it vaporizes very quickly. But yes, I suppose when you're taking enormous amounts, injecting is quicker. But we're talking really, really huge volumes. A gram of P could be vaporized in a few minutes. That's a pretty large dose. Hardened users would expect it to last a weekend. It's usually sold in "points", which are 0.1 of a gram, your standard session.
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bmk, in reply to
It's not a matter of vaporising speed but lung capacity. Even a point makes a lot of smoke and requires numerous melts. I have watched people smoke a point as fast as they can - vaporise - breathe in - breathe out - repeat and this process takes a lot longer than to inject the same amount.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Depends how much air you take in, but yes, I take your point that you could quite possibly mainline 10 grams in go, which would probably take many hours to smoke. Your anecdote that the injectors fucked themselves up is probably most of the reason that it's not a popular method. Smokers seems to have no problem getting sky high and become total addicts, without the risk of accidentally stuffing up the dose.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
I just tagged your house. Looks sweet, bro.
All good. I'll just stick askew's name on the bottom of it...et voila! 10k on the property value.
20k if I bung another backhander to my ex-cop friend to cause a few more of his other pieces to 'go missing'.
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3410,
Depends how much air you take in, but yes, I take your point that you could quite possibly mainline 10 grams in go, which would probably take many hours to smoke.
Don't take air in if you mainline; you'll die. ;)
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BenWilson, in reply to
Don't take air in if you mainline; you'll die.
Not even through your mouth?
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3410,
Well, yeah, apart from that.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
Funny you should say that. The Declaration of Helsinki has been moving medical research toward that very position. The implication being that placebos are not permitted where proven interventions are available....OTOH if it's adopted it's going to make it damned hard to ascertain what does work.
As I understand it, one of the biggest obstacles to researching the placebo effect is that it is difficult to monetize.
Research costs money, which requires funding. Funding for drug tests is usually at least partly provided by Pharma companies, their return on investment coming when the drugs hit the open market.
Nothing to sell if you're giving out placebos, therefore no drug companies lining up to fund your research.
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