That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘drugs’

“Drugs deaths up by 67% in Wales in three years” screams the BBC, ensuring that the buzzword “alarming” is thrown in*.

If you the copy/paster journalist had read the report, they’d realise that the researchers have improved their data gathering techniques this year (27 unrecorded cases in Wales in last year’s report), so the “67%” may indeed be an exaggeration.

Oh, and deaths caused by amphetamine and cocaine were down by around a third nationwide (15% to 12%, and 5% to 3% respectively).

But that sort of story wouldn’t generate clicks, would it?

.

* cf. “billowing” regarding fires and “rocking” regarding earthquakes

** remind you of the whole MMR autism thing, perchance?

From today’s news headlines:

OMG KIDS TAKING MORE DRUGS. EVERYBODY IS ALARMED!!!

Let’s take a look at that a bit more closely, shall we? Here’s the text from the actual report:

Police recorded drug offences increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08, following an increase of 18 per cent between 2006/07 and 2007/08. Increases in recent years have been largely attributable to increases in the recording of possession of cannabis offences… In 2008/09 possession of cannabis increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08. This increase continues an upward trend in recent years, with possession of cannabis offences recorded by the police rising by 90 per cent since 2004/05. This rise has been largely associated with the increased use of powers to issue cannabis warnings.

and

The [British Crime Survey] is also used to monitor trends in drug use and the figures are published annually. The BCS shows that overall illicit drug use among 16 to 59 year olds decreased from 11.1 per cent in 1996 to 9.3 per cent in 2007/08 and it is now at its lowest level since the BCS started measurement. This decrease is mainly due to successive declines in use of cannabis since 2003/04… This suggests the increase seen in recent years in police recorded drug offences is likely to be due to increase in police activity rather than in drug use.

Just thought I should highlight that. Once again: usage hasn’t risen: police have just been reporting it more.

So the drugs watchdogs have released their latest figures on drug deaths, and once more those unable to connect the dots read and repeat what is essentially a load of bollocks.

For instance, let’s take some stats from a recent copy of the Metro (27.08.09):

“As many as 1 million people… are said to take cocaine.”

Now, that’s a lot of people, no denying that. Yet in the same article comes this little fact:

“There were 235 deaths involving the class A drug in 2008.”

Do the maths on that one and you’ll come up with the result that 0.0235% of those who use cocaine die.

Now, that is not so great a number. Less than 1%. In fact, less than a quarter of a percent of people died from cocaine use in 2008.

To what, then, do we attribute these deaths? Well, for a start, cocaine that you would buy on the street is mixed with other substances, including but not limited to the following:

• sugar
• baking soda
• talcum powder
• caffeine
• ketamine
• cornstarch
• flour

Observant readers will notice that none of the things mentioned above are designed to be shoved up your nose and directly into your system. It’s not exactly a stretch to work out that if you’re going to snort this kind of stuff, it’s going to fuck you up something rotten. I can’t say that all cocaine deaths are because of the shit that it gets cut with, but I’d be willing to bet money on it being the larger portion of those 235 deaths back in 2008.

The process of adding to cocaine is called cutting, and it’s done to make the cocaine go further, in turn increasing profits for the dealer without having to spend so much on product.

Here’s a state-the-obvious: dealers don’t give a flying fuck what you’re putting up your nose or into your system, as long as they keep making money from you and others like you.

Because people who use cocaine often don’t know the exact purity and strength of the drug they’re taking, dealers will cut, and add, and improvise, until what you’re getting from them is to cocaine what shop’s own brand beans are to Heinz. It’s like cocaine-flavoured shit (the cocaine, not the beans…).

The reason you can’t get hold of pure cocaine on the street is because it’s prohibitively expensive, and would probably make your nose explode anyway. I’m not denying that cocaine is a dangerous drug; but so is opium, from which we get morphine and codeine, which are ubiquitous today in the medical world. They can be researched, harnessed and controlled for the benefit of others. No government has seriously tried this with cocaine; why the hell not? It’s been done effectively with opium and we are starting to see results from studies involving cannabis, which California recently approved for medical use.

Part of what makes a drug dangerous is its content; the other thing that makes a drug dangerous is people’s attitudes towards it. The noisiest anti-drugs crowd are those that yell from the rooftops that if we legalise or otherwise control drug distribution (like cocaine, cannabis, etc) then we’ll be drowned in a wave of people all lighting up and running through the streets.

I repeat: bollocks.

Those that take cocaine already are going to continue their habits regardless of Government stance, seeing as how it’s readily available already in the UK. Those that don’t take it at all most likely will continue not to take it. And those that are addicted can be spotted more easily and helped as much as possible; but only if some authority like the Government or independent body controls the supply.

All this fannying around classifying drugs up and down various letters of the alphabet is getting the drug debate nowhere. The Government can be seen to be doing something – anything – whilst sitting about on their jacksies and not doing anything at all. They are happy for people to whip themselves up into a froth-mouthed panic about it because if people are doing that. They are too busy to notice that the Government themselves hasn’t reached any form of workable solution and doesn’t plan to.

Right then Jacqui. Here’s the deal. You want ID cards, but none of the rest of the population does, right? They’re kinda shitty as far as ideas go (what with the fourteen trillion pounds being spent on them and all that).

What you need is some public support for the idea. Now, the wishy-washy liberals certainly aren’t going to accept your “it prevents terrorism” argument. And people with actual jobs don’t care about illegal immigrants “coming over here and taking our jobs”*.

So, if you can’t get support, get an incentive.

Make some recreational drugs legal. Sell them in restricted quantities through pharmacies: each time somebody buys the limited amount of that drug, swipe their ID card and share it in a nationwide database. Thus barring them from buying for, say, a week at a time. No ID, no drugs.

This will have the following advantages:

1) it’s all restricted, safe and controlled

2) VAT on every transaction. Fuck it, why not put the EU’s maximum rate of 25% on ‘em?

3) you get lots and lots of lovely data that you can sell for even more money,** with which to pay off the quadrillions of pounds you spent setting up the system in the first place.

I’m a fucking genius.

* we all know that the only people who actually say this are the unemployed, or “orangecocks” as I call them (they spend their time watching daytime TV, eating Cheesy Wotsits, and wanking).

** or lose on a train. Whatever floats your boat.

Guest post from ‘Sensibly Ginger’
The Independent, on Thursday 26th Feb said:

“Health officials have been forced to withdraw 21,000 doses of the meningitis C vaccine from GP clinics around the UK after it emerged that some doses may have been contaminated with a blood-poisoning bacterium.
“More than 60,000 doses of the vaccine, which is offered to all four-month-old babies, could be contaminated with the hospital-acquired infection – the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium – and a third of these had already been sent to vaccination clinics before officials became aware of the problem.
“Officials within the Department of Health and the vaccine’s manufacturers are believed to have known of the problem since Tuesday but only issued an emergency recall last night after being contacted about the potential contamination by The Independent. “

Maybe that’s because ALL of the vaccines in the UK were safe, as the Independent evidently knew:

“In a statement, the Department of Health denied that any contaminated samples had entered the UK market. Two batches have been identified and are being recalled as a purely precautionary measure. These two batches passed all routine quality testing, including a sterility test.”

What has happened, as the BBC reported, is:

“The recalled batches of the Menjugate Kit, which were manufactured in Italy, had passed safety checks before leaving the factory to be transported by road to the UK.
“But a small number of samples were sent overseas by aeroplane to test whether the sample would remain secure under different air pressures.
“At the destination, these were found to be contaminated with staphylococcus aureus bacteria, but never entered the supply chain.”

So really, what it should have said is:

Novartis bend over backwards to make sure your kids are safe, and don’t die from meningitis. 

But that wouldn’t sell adverts, if all they did was inform you of the important news you need to know.

The media have fueled the fire, yet again, and are helping the public misunderstanding of science. Vaccines are safe, they really, really are. Children are now dying because parents aren’t getting their children vaccinated.

Raising worries over safe vaccines is not only a fucking stupid thing to do, it is a public health risk.