"They had everything to live for"

From The Daily Mail:

It was initially believed that the women, who had been carrying out renovation work, may have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, but that possibility was soon ruled out.

The corresponding paragraph in yesterday's paper edition is slightly different:

Initially, after a friend found their bodies a fortnight ago, it was feared that the two women, who had been renovating their £110,000 house in Macclesfield, Cheshire, may have been overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Bonus points for having five commas in one sentence.

Just horsin' around

From The Daily Mail:

An event rider collapsed and died in the grounds of her country home after apparently being kicked in the chest by one of her horses.

Mother-of-three Jo Lomas, 49, was found only hours after finishing third in her class at a showjumping event. It is suggested that while she was releasing two horses into a paddock beside her home, one bucked in excitement and struck her.

Illustrating yet again the dangers of equasy...

That whole 'legalising drugs' thing

Mummylonglegs stepped up to the oche, and I left a comment as follows (repeated here for posterity):

Completely agreed. And with drugs, there is a sliding scale, and I would suggest legalisation as follows:

1. Magic mushrooms - available from any greengrocer who can tell a poisonous mushroom from an edible one.

2. Mild cannabis - available from normal tobacconist/off-licence, over-18s only.

3. Ecstasy - available only at chemists, max. two tablets per customer Fridays and Saturdays only, over-18s only.

4. Cocaine - same as ecstasy - max. 1 gram per customer.

5. LSD - same as ecstasy, two tabs per customer but with six monthly renewable certificate from psychiatrist to say you are not nuts.

5. Heroin for injection - available with monthly repeat prescription from doctor at pharmacists.

6. Crack, still illegal, obviously.

And so on, I'm sure I've missed a few, but you just slot them in. All of these to be taxed like booze or fags, to be handed out with tedious leaflets with helpful advice for safe use and an admonishing glare.

A Triumph Of Free Markets

From a surprisingly detailed article in this morning's Metro:

Mephedrone replaced by NRG-1, Sparkle and MDAI after reclassification

A host of new legal highs are already competing to replace mephedrone as the next big party drug – with some being sold for a pittance. At least three new options are being rushed to market by online pushers who have little awareness of their dangers.

It follows the classification of mephed­rone, also called meow meow, as a Class B drug at the weekend after being linked to 26 deaths. Since it was made illegal, mephedrone has gone from £15 to £35 a gramme.

Drug MDAI costs £25 a gramme and is thought to be the most likely replacement. It was developed as an anti-dep­ressant in the 1990s and replicates many of the effects of MDMA, or ecstasy...

Well worth reading in full.

This probably wouldn't have happened if Ecstasy were legal...

From The Metro:

A mother of two has died after taking the drug ecstasy at home. The unnamed 31-year-old was admitted to hospital shortly after collapsing when she took the drug at her Blackpool home in the early hours of yesterday. Lancashire Police believe a lethal batch of ecstasy tablets may be in circulation on the Fylde coast and urged the public not to take them.

Bansturbators of the week

From the BBC:

Council advises ecstasy downgrade

The body that advises the government on illegal drugs is to recommend ecstasy be downgraded to a Class B drug...

The Home Office has made it clear it will reject the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' recommendation. Last month, the Home Office restored cannabis from Class C to Class B, against the wishes of the advisory council...

The Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales has expressed opposition to suggestions that ecstasy should be downgraded to a Class B drug...

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling* said it called into question the government's choice of advisers...

* I hereby withdraw the half-a-cheer I awarded him earlier in the week.

Tabloid Editors: 1 - Commonsense: 0

According to the ticker that run along the bottom of BBC's News 24 Channel, Professor David Nutt has been forced to resign/has resigned. Maybe I misread it, just thought you might like to know.

Presumably in protest at the fact that they're now going to ban horse-riding, seeing as of how it's so dangerous, innit?

UPDATE It would appear that I totally misread it, oops, nothing to see here.

@ EV, of course you can compare the relative mortality statistics of 'active' and 'passive' activities, why on earth not?

I didn't know that horse-riding was that dangerous...

From The Telegraph:

In the article, titled "Equasy: An overlooked addiction with implications for the current debate on drug harms", Prof Nutt wrote that "equasy", short for "Equine Addiction Syndrome", had caused 10 deaths and more than 100 road traffic accidents a year. Through hunting, it also led to "gatherings of users that often are associated with these groups engaging in violent conduct... Dependence, as defined by the need to continue to use, has been accepted by the courts in divorce settlements ... Based on these harms, it seems likely that the ACMD would recommend control under the MDAct perhaps as a class A drug given it appears more harmful than ecstasy."

... David Raynes, an executive councillor at the National Drug Prevention Alliance said: "Professor Nutt has made numerous unwise comments prejudging the ACMD review of Ecstasy. Is he on a personal crusade against the laws enacted by Parliament?

Professor David Nutt - you rock!

Rather disappointingly, the National Drug Prevention Alliance/Positive Prevention Plus appears to be a proper charity run by nut cases ... but half their income (Note 2, page 4) was from Drug Free America, who in turn are a USA-based fakecharity, who got $1m dollars - the bulk of their funding - from "Public Support and Revenue", see page 13.

Bingo. What complete and utter shits. If the US government has something to say, then it should say it, trying to influence UK drugs policy like this is totally underhand.

Reader's letter of the day

From today's Metro (letters unfortunately not available on line):

Graham Bates' criticism of downgrading ecstasy to a class B drug and his simplistic solution to tackling illegal drugs will solve about as much as the current policy has: absolutely nothing. Research has shown that ecstasy is less dangerous than unclassified substances such as tobacco, alcohol and solvents...

The only people who benefit from any kind of prohibition are criminals. I think all drugs should be decriminalised - the government could then generate billions in extra tax revenues, ensure a degree of quality control exists, create thousands of [legal] jobs, allow the police to concentrate on more pressing matters and, most importantly, take power and profits out of the hands of criminal gangs.

A Morris, Cardiff

"Cocaine is killing in record numbers"

More judicious manipulation of the stat's in the press release triggered this story, also parrotted in The Daily Hatemail, who top it with that classic journalistic flourish "Cocaine and Ecstasy deaths up 1,200% since records began in 1993".

Excerpt: The Office For National Statistics figures show drugs poisoning killed 2,640 people in England and Wales last year, up 2.7 per cent from 2006. Cocaine claimed a record 196 lives last year, up from just 11 when the figures were first recorded in 1993.

If you go to Table 2b on page 84 of the full report, it says that there were 1,958 deaths where only one drug was mentioned on death certificate. The figures given add up to 1,605; the ones that mention an illegal/non-prescription drug add up to a princely 762 (if I've classified them correctly).

Horrifying is the number of deaths (167) from methadone, which is supposed to be a legal/safe substitute for heroin/morphine (587 deaths), especially as ten times as many people take heroin (according to that Horizon programme). MDMA/Ecstasy looks like a pretty safe bet (28 deaths out of half a million people who take it), but as ever, cannabis is tip-top of the list of safe drugs - one or two deaths out of millions who enjoy it regularly. Which is why The Powers That Be have to perpetuate the myth that it drives you mad; the scare story that it kills you will never stick.

BTW, the 'drugs charity' DARE mentioned in the Hatemail article is probably just another taxpayer-funded quango - it got a fair bit of money of Nottingham and Mansfield councils etc (see page 15 of the 2007 accounts). It spent a third of its income on 'education and publishing' and pissed away the rest on 'administration costs' (page 7).

Addaction (also mentioned in one or other of the articles) is a quango, as previously covered.

Coalition of the willing (2)

UPDATE 24/05/08 - the online poll over here is currently standing at 24 'ayes' and 23 'noes', most heartening indeed! Why not drop in and have your say?

Coalition of the willing

Let's look at a list* of some of the main things have been made illegal (or might be made illegal) for no good reason (whether such a ban is actually enforced or not in practice is by-the-by) and the two most stupid traffic regulations:

Smoking in pubs and clubs
Drinking alcohol on public transport
Smoking cannabis
Fox-hunting
Patio heaters
Plastic carrier bags
Taking ecstasy tablets
Brothels
Traffic lights
National speed limit on the motorways and major roads
-----------------
Update:
Allow handguns for sporting purposes
Scrap ID card scheme, national ID database and interviews for passports
Allow local councils to subsidise post offices via a precept on Council Tax, subject to local referenda
Allow trading and collecting ceremonial swords
Allow shops to use pounds and ounces
-----------------
The reason why 'they' get away with it is because the majority of people don't smoke (either tobacco or cannabis); the majority of people don't work in or admit to visiting brothels; didn't used to go fox hunting and so on. But surely, a majority of people would like to at least some of these bans lifted (those particular bans that affect them personally) or to see more humane traffic regulations? OK, there may well be a minority who don't do any of these things, who don't mind being stuck at traffic lights and who are basically total kill-joys, but let's ignore them for now.

To sum up, would there not be any mileage in a political party saying that they'd lift all these stupid bans and regulations, in one fell swoop - lock, stock and barrel?

For sure, there may be hippy dope smokers who support the fox-hunting ban; there may be women who hate traffic lights and quite like plastic carrier bags but have a moralistic aversion to brothels; there may be those who used to enjoy lighting up in the pub who believe (erroneously) that ecstasy is a dangerous drug - but have we not reached the tipping point where all these narrow groups could declare an armistice and all do their own thing and let others get on with doing their own thing?

* Please leave a comment if I've missed anything important off the list!

UPDATE 24/05/08 - the online poll over here is currently standing at 24 'ayes' and 23 'noes', most heartening indeed! Why not drop in and have your say?

More ecstasy statistics

At last, a sensible article on this topic in The Times!

None of this is new*, of course, but encouraging none the less.

* My posts on the topic are not particularly original either, I hasten to add.

"Brunstrom drugs views dangerous"

Labour MP and all round idiot Chris Bryant comes up with some super policy-based-evidence.

Yes, agreed that drugs can cause harm to the user, as can hang-gliding, pot-holing, DIY, taking legal medication. But the vast majority of the harm is caused by the fact that certain drugs are deemed illegal, which is easily fixed.

Maybe fellow Labour MP Harry Cohen could have a word? Explain the whole concept of evidence-based-policy?

"Drugs legal in 10 years claim"

The Chief Constable of North Wales is an unlikely figurehead for the legalisation movement, but hey, he knows a damn' site more about evidence-based-policy than most.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Richard Brunstrom, you rock!

Legalising ecstasy tablets: policy costings

Tablets taken per weekend - 2 million, deaths per annum around 20 (according to stat's used in a House of Commons debate back in 2000 - scroll down to para. 123).

Cost of a tablet, about £3.

Assuming these could be sold legally (in chemists, one at a time, together with safety instructions) for £2 (a few pence production costs, plus mark-up, plus £1 tax), that'd lead to annual tax receipts of £100 million, deaths would no doubt be halved, and illegal activities would be reduced etc etc.

The value of one life saved in official cost-benefit analyses is around £1 million (scroll down to page 5 of this), so d'you see what we could achieve here? We could save ten lives per year and earn the government £100 million, while taking £300 million gross income away from criminals.

Good, eh?

HM Govt online survey on "drugs"

Via Sanbikinorian, HM Govt is doing some twatty survey on "drugs" for you to fill in online. Here are my answers, for what it's worth. You can either guess the totally dumbass questions or go online and fill in the damn' thing yourselves:

Q1. Tell [young people] that heroin is harmless if it is clean and pure and prescribed by a doctor. Remind them not to share needles. Tell them not to drive a car while drunk, stoned etc. Remind them to drink lots of water if they take E's. Tell them to buy in lots of snacks before smoking dope. Tell them not to mix alcohol and dope, it just makes you spew up. Tell them never to take LSD when you are on your own in case you flip out. Tell them that taking cocaine or crack just turns you into an insufferable arsehole and makes your nose bleed. And other practical sort of stuff that makes the whole drugs experience pleasant and enjoyable.

Q2. See previous answer.

Q3. Yes, the police have these powers, but they do not exercise them because of political correctness. They'd rather be out fining motorists who exceed the speed limit by 1 mph.

Q4. Why on earth should drug users be given priority in housing or employment? There are plenty of other hard working people who deserve that housing or those job opportunities a lot more. "Drug free" is not the issue here, the issue is crime free. I don't care if people take drugs, I am more scared about being mugged by some junkie or shot by a drug dealer.

Q5. Legalise it, regulate it, tax it, like alcohol or nicotine. Problem solved.

Q6. Drugs are enormously good fun. Sure, they can kill you. Like climbing Mount Everest or crossing the road. Or dying of a broken heart. Dear Government, please stop trying to BAN EVERYTHING, show some liberal credentials every now and then.

Q7. This is all a complete lie. These "serious health effects" are vastly overhyped. If proper leaf cannabis were available in off licences like cigarettes or booze, there'd be no need for people to invent stronger stuff.