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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 9:30pm The man's name was David Nutt. This is a serious question.We should question whether that man chose his profession because he is in fact a psychopath that wanted to tell other people they are mad. Was Mr Nutt's decision to become a pychopharmocologist influenced by the fact his name is Nutt. This question is serious. It deserves an answer if only to refute this possibility. |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 9:39pm Look, I have another serious point to raise about psychopharmacology.POISONING. There are poisons which cause transient psychosis. There are people who poison people. In some cultures, as we all know, if you piss off a waiter they are likely to contaminate your food. This issue is rarely addressed when discussing psychiatric issues. Instead, various hypotheses about adverse affects of drugs are put forward. It is stupid to dismiss the fact that perhaps psychosis is initially caused by a deliberate act of poisoning. I know for a fact that waiters in some country do this time after time to tourists who piss them off. It also happens in the uk. I know the name of the poison they use, which I will not say, and it does indeed cause temporary psychosis. Why is this fact not ever acknowledged. |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 10:04pm Oh look. Lady Neidpath has just appeared to air her views on the programme. What's a need-path exactly? Someone with a harmful addiction? This is not coincidence. Again and again this phenomenon occurs and I believe that the choice of these people to pursue their chosen vocations is an indication of their pychpathological nature. Or is it instead, the fact that whoever chose the speakers for BBC2 was taking the piss? |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 10:31pm What was the number of deaths caused by alcohol per year 40,000? what about all the drink driving deaths, all those poor unfortunites that drink too much go to sleep and be sick and choke, suicides, the list is endless. The W.H.O. puts alcohol at number 3 as the cause of death behind heart disease and cancer, yet a lot of the heart disease and cancer is caused by the use of alcohol.__________________ Eamon D |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 10:42pm In terms of harm reduction the current legislation effectively encourages the development of synthetic drugs (which are legal) to replicate drugs such as mdma. Perhaps a less prohibitaive approach would reduce harm by encourage users to use substances that are well researched rather than new unresearched drugs. |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 11:14pm If only the politics surrounding drug use could change in the face of scientific fact. I wish the programme went into greater depth on the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances. It is also a shame that it only touched on the dangers of mixing drugs, and failed to even mention that what people take as ecstasy rarely contains MDMA. I have been interested in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for decades. What has kept me from experimenting has been: 1) the lack of a source of pure, unadulterated substance of a precise dose; 2) the unavailability of trained and experienced guides/therapists; 3) the law. Breaking the law causes anxiety, and if I am hoping to help myself why would I subject myself to extra stress and danger? I hope the laws change and that these substances will be available to people who might benefit from taking them. Anything can be abused, but used responsibly these substances (from the literature I have read) could make an important contribution to people's lives, not only clinically but also to enhance creativity and expand awareness. |
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Posted: 05 February 2008 at 11:56pm Earthplane is right, E's rarely contain MDMA no more, the effects of even taking pure MDMA and E's are different, if the government legalises and, regulates less-harmful drugs and puts tighter restrictions on harmful drugs which are legal (Lets face it, its going to be impossible to ban alcohol), then the country would be much better, as a starting point there would be a huge decrease in crime.Regulated and well marketed less harmful drugs, would be even less harmful than what they are as we would be taking the REAL thing, and not an adulterated fake made-in-a-kitchen-by-a-scum-bag-trying-to-increase-profits drug. Why does the use of cannabis in the Netherlands work? Not long ago they where thinking about legalising MDMA because of its popularity and the appearance of some new adulterated and contaminated E's that appeared in Amsterdam for a while. Just for the record and before anyone makes a comment about my comparison in the Netherlands, their strict regulations (You can smoke it in a licensed coffeshop but not in the street) does help. Cancer and smoking related illnesses in the Netherlands are a fraction of what they are here. And taking it in a step further, AIDS percentage in comparison to the UK is minimal in Netherlands, (Legal Prostitution) Illegalising something just makes it more dangerous, when these things are not that harmful (You are obviously not going to legalise murder), tighter regulations and quality control allows willing users to be safer. |
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Posted: 06 February 2008 at 11:55am These are some of the discussion points that were e-mailed in during the debate and that we didn't have a chance to address:"To the panel.. I am amazed that you state one ecstasy a tablet is less damaging than alcohol.. tell that to Leah Betts family, she died using her first ever tablet. You should also explain...to your listners..that Ecstasy tablets..contain various amounts of MDMA...and without testing them each and every time which is hardly practicle...the user will never ever know the exact content of the Ecstasy tablets they take....your panel and programme has sent out the wrong message..and has probably boosted the Ecstasy Market ten fold... the dealers will be rubbing their hands...!! DP" "I feel it is naive to classify drugs based on their individual effects as many drugs are used in combination with others. I am interested in particular on the combined effects of ketamine and alcohol which I know cause a more sever intoxication than ketamine on its own. Is there current research on combined effects and, if so, what are they?" "I have personal experience of addiction and found your programme very interesting. The current class puts Ecstasy and Cocaine together in levels of danger ( I always think of the class rankings in terms of how dangerous they are). All I can say is that my past experience of drug/alcohol consumption and addiction fits pretty much to your findings, and I totally agree with your findings that Ecstasy and Cocaine should be ranked totally separately, In my experience Cocaine was by far the most destructive drug. But Alcohol also became very destructive, so I do hope your findings are taken further. Further to the comments i sent in earlier (below) I want to add that I truly believe a re assessment of Alcohol and how it's viewed in society needs to take place. The lady who is the expert on alcohol (sorry I can't remember her name!) said that Alcohol would be ok in moderation, yet clearly the general public can't moderate their intake, as shown in figures on binge drinking and alcohol consumption in general. Is this because Alcohol has an addictive nature? In which case surely it becomes as dangerous as any other drug that is addictive, and should be classified accordingly. Alcohol became as addictive to me as Cocaine was, yet is the hardest to remain abstinent from now because of it's wide acceptance and consumption in our society, most people don't see it as a drug, and don't realise how harmful it can be. K" |
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Posted: 06 February 2008 at 12:28pm More tremendous information for my research, thank you. |
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Posted: 08 February 2008 at 2:17pm A few more issues that were e-mailed in during the webcast debate:"Seen the TV; read the article (Lancet). Excellent that you're opening this debate: I hope it fuels considerable ongoing discussion. As a qualified - but not practising - statistician (lies, damn lies....), I have four issues with the scale you're using: 1) (as you admit in the article): currently all the 9 parameters are equally weighted. One option could be to evaluate the extreme end points of each scale, at least to weight the three Social Harm parameters against one another: for instance evaluating a score of 3 for health-care costs as the full cost of supporting one individual's heroin addiction, and scaling social harm in terms of typical police + insurance bills resulting from recorded incidents. Whether or not to extend this scaling into comparison of social costs against individual physical harm is probably not a scientific decision: while harm to an individual may not be valued by society as the resultant social harm costs, if the scale is to act as a deterrent to individuals against the use of certain drugs, then what matters to them - their own health - should surely be weighted relatively highly. Rating the two forms of harm equally is therefore probably reasonable. 2) I question the use of dependence as a parameter in its own right. Dependence surely impacts the likelihood (risk) of incurring the physical or social harm attributes. Hence an alternative (to my mind better) measure might be to use the dependence score as a multiplier of the other harm scores, e.g.: Total score = Dependence * (Physical Harm + Social Harm). Without changing the other weighting, this does not significantly change the order, mainly shuffling some of the middle order places.... but notably moving Tobacco up from 9th to 7th on your list (to my mind its current placing seems unnaturally low, given also its health-care costs to society and likelihood of chronic health effects, but that's becoming subjective!). I could see an argument for not wishing to overcomplicate the scale at this initial launch, but would suggest that the more use is to be made of it, and as it gains credibility, the more considered - and if necessary complicated - it should become. 3) I also question the positioning of the "Intravenous" parameter. I understand the reasons stated in the article for separating out the intravenous use of drugs, but wouldn't it be better to actually have two entries for each drug, producing one score for (for example) Amphetamines taken intravenously, and a second score for the drug taken orally, rather than simply adding in an extra parameter with equal weights to the rest? I recognise that this could be extended and lead to a significant lengthening of the table, but it would also add to the educative use of its output to demonstrate the relative risks of intravenous use. 4) And on a specific re Alcohol, I note the "NA" in your detailed results for Intravenous use. I can't see reference in the on-line article to explain the difference between that and the "0" scores accorded some other substances, but if its score should be real but is unknown, then the fairest mean score for Physical Harm should be the average of the two known scores rather than an assumed 0 - in which case its mean score would rise from 1.4 to 2.15, lifting it above Methadone into 4th place - whether using the original, or my proposed scale. No doubt the debate will rage on - which is all to the good - but I hope these points may be considered a useful input to any future work on such ranking scales." DL |
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