pootling

You’ve got, on the one hand, a kind of neoconservative agenda in the world today. On the one hand, possibly because it’s seeking to appease the Christian fundamentalists, is very anti the idea of a free sexuality. On the other hand, they seem to be very fond of the idea of endless war. Now, this, to me, seems completely ass-backwards. This, to me, seems like an anti-human position. I cannot see it as any other than that. If the people who are actually pushing those values forward could just stop and think for a minute, are they really saying that sexual acts are filthy, dirty, not to be countenant, but they are quite prepared, for the sake of securing enough fuel for their automobiles, to condemn children in another country to hideous death and dismemberment? Is that what their God has told them that He wants? And, if he has, perhaps they ought to sort of check this God guy out a bit look at his record, see if he’s wanted anywhere. That sounds psychopathic to me, and I suspect it would to anybody who was remotely normal.

Alan Moore

From this interview: Part 1 | Part 2

Not long at all after my previous whinging post about the media’s demonisation of drug taking, they go and prove me wrong, widely reporting the Lancet article about the danger of various drugs. (if with sniggers and incredulous looks included).

Anyway, if you missed the evidence-, rather than hysteria-based rankings, here you are:

I’m slightly surprised that cannabis is more dangerous than solvents, but there we are. I’m guessing that the position of ecstasy is the most surprising, but that really is testament to the power of media hysteria.

This, an earlier article on the same subject has a few gems in it too:

Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University, who chaired the Commission on Illegal Drugs, said the “great majority” of drug users did not harm themselves or others.

“Current policy is broke and needs to be fixed,” he added.

But, of course:

The Home Office says it does not accept all of the report’s recommendations.

And

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the report was “worryingly complacent”.

So, I was kind of right and wrong at the same time. Right about the drugs, wrong about the unbalanced media reporting. Sort of.

Maybe drug policy’s going somewhere, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Liked this though:

I’m rather bemused by the reporting of this terrible story across the media.

Essentially, Thomas Palmer, an 18 year old at the time, got into an argument with a couple of his friends. He then murdered them with a knife, cutting one of them so deeply around the neck that his “friend” was almost decapitated.

The thing that I’m finding strange, and slightly annoying, is the way that the BBC seem to have chosen this as a moment to roll out the old cannabis-”causes”-schizophrenia debate.

Firstly, let me say that there probably was some sort of connection, and indeed this is almost exactly how it was phrased during his trial. By all accounts he certainly smoked a fair amount of cannabis. Let me add a little more to this though:

• Thomas Palmer had the first stages of schizophrenia before he started smoking cannabis
• He had not had a joint on the day of the murder
• He had on the other hand, been drinking with his friends, and they had been arguing before he killed them

So yes, cannabis could quite well have been a contributing factor. Various reports have suggested that, in people with tendencies towards schizophrenia, cannabis can cause this to occur earlier. However, looking at the stories, isn’t alcohol potentially a considerably larger factor? For example:

• Would Palmer have done what he did if he had had nothing to drink?
• Would he have argued with his friends if they hadn’t all been drinking?
• Would this event have occurred if they had all been smoking cannabis at the time instead of drinking?

So couldn’t this story just as well have been reported as “drunken teenager murders friends”? I can understand why he’s called a “cannabis addict” rather than an “alcoholic” or a “drinker”, since that makes for a more distant cause - fewer of the people reading the article will be drinkers rather than smokers, and we all like to think that bad things never happen to us. My issue is the way that alcohol and it’s effects are almost always portrayed as being a lesser problem than other drugs.

A little while back, I asked Tom Reynolds of Random Acts Of Reality a question:

Out of all the drugs that people take of a Saturday (or Monday, Tuesday etc) night, which one creates the people that are the biggest pains in the ass to deal with?

And he answered:

Alcohol. Makes you fight, makes you ill, makes you vomit, makes you suicidal, easy to get hold of, fairly cheap, socially acceptable and places a *huge* burden on the NHS.

I’d add a few things to this list. Alcohol makes you a dangerous driver, and many, many people still drink and drive. It’s also implicated (whether mentioned in the media or not) in many murders. Take this quote:

“in 2001, Kurt Finsterbusch found in a study of homicide offenders incarcerated in New York State correctional facilities that 31 percent reported being drunk at the time of their crime, and 19 percent believed that their homicide was related to their drinking” (link)

Of course, if you read the rest of the article, it also mentions the effect of “other drugs”, and I wouldn’t like to play this down. Another statistic suggests that

“approximately 53 percent of state and federal prisoners incarcerated for murder were under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they committed their lethal act.”

So, in summary: drugs are bad. They help (notice the word “help” rather than “make”) you do bad things. Alcohol is a drug too. To add a little balance, people do any drug because they enjoy them and the vast majority of people cause very little in the way of problems. However, most of the ones that do cause the biggest problem when they’re drunk, not when they’re stoned.

Finally, let me add that since cannabis can (very, very rarely) exacerbate mental illness, the most sensible thing to do is legalise it and tax it to pay for the treatment. It’s what we do with cigarettes, and it’s so effective that smokers put more into the NHS than they take out (whilst also helping the pensions crisis by conveniently dying early). This money is currently going straight to organised criminals and stoned students - why not put it into the NHS instead?

Anyway, I’m off to have a drink.

Update: The always unbiased Evening Standard, in an article bemoaning the fact that cannabis is a class C drug, has reported that Thomas Palmer “[murdered] two friends in a drug-induced state”. Well, yes, but the drug was alcohol, not cannabis. As I mentioned above, Palmer had not had anything to smoke that day. He had, however, been drinking.

Stalkers take note! If for some reason you wish to pry into my life further, now you can have a root through my books, as well as spying on my listening habits and reading my ramblings.

Library Thing is a great site that appeals nicely to my cataloging nature. Not all of my books are on there yet, but a selection is on there now, and there will be more coming.

If you’ve ever played harmonics on a guitar, you’ll know how amazingly difficult this is:

But then Tommy Emmanuel appears have got the hang of playing the guitar.