Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Ray Gilbert,
Meanwhile you have to ask the question – How did Russell know?
Christ. They're throwing it at everything now, aren't they?
With all the usual guff:
Today police said they believed McMurdo, who has previously been charged with growing cannabis, was dealing MDVP known as "bath salts" at the time of his death.
The drug was new to New Zealand but was widely known in Scandinavian countries and parts of the United States, police said.
A North Shore man had to be tasered twice and then heavily sedated after taking the drug earlier this month.
In Toronto, two police officers suffered broken bones in their faces, hands and wrists after being attacked by a man who had taken the drug recently. There have also been reports in the United States of a man skinning himself after taking it and another stabbing himself and throwing his own intestines at police.
This doesn't seem accidental on the part of the police.
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Anyway, I'm not saying that the new regime is perfect, or that it can't be messed up by politicians, but it's better than randomly banning everything that pops its head up.
I think the big problem is going to be the MoDA as it stands. It would be stupid to have an MDMA analog that met the low-risk test and then have to ban it because it's technically banned under the MoDA.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Tom Semmens,
But it is quite another for a respectable, first world, English speaking nation tightly woven in the globalised Anglosphere to suddenly start openly and legally processing and attractively packaging the stuff up for frank recreational consumption on the weekend.
The site I linked to offers next-day delivery (by the kilo if you want) anywhere in the UK. The problem is that everything it sells could be banned tomorrow.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Grant McDougall,
My money’s on Peter Dunne to be the first politician to try to make political capital of out this.
Oh, he has, already. The "reverse the onus of proof" angle is basically what's got this through -- Dunne et al can grandstand on promising to keep us all safe. But the new system was actually devised by Ministry of Health officials who sold Dunne and subsequently Cabinet on it. And for all they've trumpeted about only allowing things that are "safe", the formal standard they've agreed to is "low risk".
It might all turn out badly, but the agreement to license psychoactive/recreational drugs subject to standard trials is world-leading.
(Woo-hoo ! This is my first post on PA in a few months after my PC died and I’ve splashed out on a laptop. It’s nice to be back).
Welcome back!
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Tom Semmens,
We’ve all heard of the silk road carry on, how chuffed would our friends overseas be when some dude shows up selling mail order class B and C drugs legally from a .co.nz address? After they recovered from fainting the Americans would probably fire a cruise missile at his warehouse, and that is not to mention what might arrive in the return mail from Mexican drug cartels annoyed at someone stepping on their toes.
Well, psychedelic drugs in the 2C class can still be legally produced and purchased in the US, ketamine is produced by the barrel in places like India, MDAI is produced in China and India (you can buy it by the 10kg lot here). Everything that has been legally sold in party pills in New Zealand is legitimately produced somewhere. Matt Bowden reckons he has 20-30 novel substances lined up for trials.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Scott Chris,
End result – little Jonny’s gonna take a trip to the tinny house rather than buy legal synthetic pot. Advance? Not in my book.
If you want no regulation or quality control of drugs, that's up to you. But personally I'd prefer to know what I'm taking and that it's properly produced. I don't want it sold in dairies or to kids. This is the same standard I'd want for any pharmaceutical I'm going to put in my body.
I also think that cannabis should be legalised and would hope that at some point the Misuse of Drugs Act will be revised along evidence-based lines. But this is a start.
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Another one, hot off the press:
Over the weekend, another incident occurred in the slew of brutal "zombie apocalypse" attacks. The 22-year-old Jeremiah Haughee's cannibalistic behavior was initially blamed on designer drug "bath salt" use, but experts say this may not be the case, according to the Examiner.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Scott Chris,
Perhaps the new regulatory regime for psychoactive substances will break New Zealand out of this vicious cycle.
Crikey Russell, I wouldn’t have picked you as being a passive advocate for prohibitionary policy.
Have you read the policy? It’s a substantial advance on what we’ve had. It provides for the regulated sale (R18) of quality-controlled recreational drugs.
I would far rather have well-understood, cleanly-produced psychoactive drugs in the market than any old shit some cowboy has managed to import or produce. Much as I think conventional pharmaceuticals or “dietary supplements” should also be subject to retail standards.
MDPV is a really good example of a drug that shouldn’t be approved for sale.
The problem is that the Misuse of Drugs Act remains off-limits, but you have to hope that will change.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to Kumara Republic,
I have just one response to the bath salts ‘epidemic’:
Not quite a comparison, given that MDPV is actually real and fairly nasty. But yeah, merrily attributing any difficult behaviour to a drug that may not even be here is extremely unhelpful.
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Hard News: Keeping our heads on "bath salts", in reply to mic weevil,
if I had a choice over what substance they were going to take I would prefer it to be MDMA or marijuana than whatever toxic garbage is currently available by dint of having not yet been prohibited.
Yes. That's the point.
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