Friday, June 12, 2009

Banning Stuff

I see people are campaigning for a ban on various 'legal highs':

A TOP Government health expert last night urged T In The Park chiefs to ban sales of “herbal highs” — over fears the legal drugs could kill a reveller.

Professor Les Iversen claims some are hundreds of times more powerful than many outlawed substances.

He and fellow specialist advisors are compiling a list which they will recommend Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes illegal.

Because obviously festivals are famously effective at keeping out illegal drugs.

Prof Iversen said: “Unfortunately nothing will be passed in time for T In The Park. I am a scientist, not a legislator, but the dangers should be clear to organisers.
He is a scientist and has scientifically investigated the effects of the drugs, they're bad, but he cannot deduce the correct policy with respect to drugs purely by looking at what effects they have on users.

8 comments:

Obnoxio The Clown said...

That's nothing. Ed "Case" Bollocks is banning poverty.

Sue said...

What about nutmeg? Apparently, it give you a buzz and magic mushrooms, they grow in English woods...

asquith said...

What fucking clowns.

Regrettably, I see no signs that Cameron will have a more sane policy on drugs, given the outspewings of the likes of Sayeeda Warsi on the subject.

I used to like mushrooms- I did stop taking them when they were banned as I'm a bit cowardly that way & haven't got much initiative.

You'll have to excuse me, I've had a few drops tonight. Let us hope as there's no tomorrow :)

Leg-iron said...

Isn't this the guy from South Park?

'Drugs are bad, m'kay? You shouldn't take drugs 'cause drugs are bad, m'kay?' and so on without troubling us with anything as tedious as data.

I've never tried them and probably never will but 'legal highs', as the name suggests, are legal.

Cigarettes kill people. Whisky kills people. Neither have killed me yet but they're giving it their best shot. Keep trying, boys, you'll get me one day.

In the end, whether I drink whisky or smoke or try these 'legal highs' or develop a fondness for nosecandy or try that acupuncture technique with syringes on the end...or whether I live on tofu and dried apricots and let not one morsel of dead animal pass my lips and decry the booze and any form of smoke and take up the vegan hermit lifestyle while meditating in Tibet in some bizarre and improbable bodily position and try to take my mind of the extraordinary discomfort by contemplating the existential essential unreality and post-post-fencepost slap and tickle basic alternative medical properties of cheese or whatever it is they dope themselves up to find these days...

In the end, I'll die no matter what I do. So will everybody else. Except Peter 'Vlad' Mandelson who is, as everyone knows, the Prince of Darkness himself. The rest of us will die though. We can live and enjoy it or we can live and suffer it.

I say, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Oh, and it's okay to pass the port to the right but only if I'm on your right. Otherwise, no.

Von Spreuth. said...

Sue said...

What about nutmeg? Apparently, it give you a buzz and magic mushrooms, they grow in English woods...


What are commonly called "magick mushrooms" grow on pastures. Ie sheep fields, or bowling greens, well looked after road side verges, etc. Psilocybe semilanceata. What grows in woods are Clitocybe, and the most famous of all Amanita muscaria, ort fly Agaric. (Red cap white spots.) Although personaly I have NEVER managed to get a stone off them(!).

Do NOT confuse Amanita with "Panther cap" which LOOK similar, but a very much more brown rather than red, and CAN be deadly.

Be VERY carefull with woods mushrooms. That is where most of your DEADLY poisonous ones lurk.

Not only mushrooms, but if you know what to look for, there is better stuff growing in the fields and hedgerows on the way to wotk, than you could buy in a million Dutch coffee shops.

Von Brandenburg-Preußen.

Ross said...

"What about nutmeg? Apparently, it give you a buzz ".

Sue- I never knew that. I just though it tasted nutmegy.

Asquith- I don't Cameron will be any better in this regard either.

"'Drugs are bad, m'kay? You shouldn't take drugs 'cause drugs are bad, m'kay?' and so on without troubling us with anything as tedious as data.".

With data comes an aility to assess the risks relative to things which are going to stay legal and we can't have that.

Von Spreuth- you're a veritable public information broadcaster.

Von Spreuth. said...

Von Spreuth- you're a veritable public information broadcaster.

I do my best ;-))

Also, be carefull with Nutmeg. it can heve the same effects as acid, and also, with the wrong "dose" can kill through immediate kidney failure.

Even when it works, you get SEVERE urinary tract irritation and "burning". (Utheritis??)

NOT a pleasent come down AT all.

There are records in California from the 70s and 80s of people being dead as a door nail on one... hmm.. seed? whatever it is.

But then again, I am the one that falls asleep on speed.

Von Brandenburg-Preußen.

James Higham said...

This is one which went right over my head.