“Tough on Drugs” is a Useless Policy
The World Health Organisation recently completed a huge survey titled, Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys.
Description: Alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use cause considerable morbidity and mortality, but good cross-national epidemiological data are limited. This paper describes such data from the first 17 countries participating in the World Health Organization's (WHO's) World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative.
Here’s the interesting part:
Drug use does not appear to be related to drug policy, as countries with more stringent policies (e.g., the US) did not have lower levels of illegal drug use than countries with more liberal policies (e.g., The Netherlands).
[...]
Nevertheless, the study did find clear differences in drug use across different regions of the world, with the US having among the highest levels of legal and illegal drug use of all the countries surveyed.
For those demanding Australia to toughen up on drug policy, you are WRONG. More punitive actions WILL NOT help the drug problem. Please, please, leave it to medical and related experts who don’t have a political or religious agenda.
Five Defining Characteristics of Stupidity
Rick Shenkman an associate professor of history at George Mason University defines stupidity as 5 basic types. What first struck me was how many Zero Tolerance buffoons fit neatly into the stupidity types. Read the definitions whilst keeping in mind the people who regularly call for tougher drug penalties or implementing Zero Tolerance and the penny will drop. At least 4 of 5 definitions will apply to these people.
Five defining characteristics of stupidity:
First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge.
Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events.
Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts.
Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests.
Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.
-Rick Shenkman, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, associate professor of history at George Mason University
Chris Pyne: Stupidity Has No Bounds
I recently found an article that Dr David Caldicott wrote in 2007 about the ex federal minister for ageing, Chris Pyne and his complete lack of knowledge on issues he reguarly comments about. It’s a doozy especially where Pyne declared that ecstasy was cut with “hydrochloric acid”. He wrongly came to that conclusion from the technical term for MDMA because it exists as a “hydrochloric salt” like many other chemicals. He put the two together and came up with “Ecstasy is cut with hydrochloric acid”. If that wasn’t bad enough, when asked where the hell he got his info from, he said the newspapers! Maybe the reports on the subject, that the government commissioned, had too many big words. Recommended reading.
Some Daily Telegraph Readers Are Disgusting
Yesterday, a Daily Telegraph article about a student who died from a drug overdose was met with this comment:
Oh well, one less drug addict off the streets. It isn't the dealers we need to worry about. It is the addicts who will kill their own family just to get their next hit.
-Posted by: Andrew B of The hills district
Georgia Chant, was a 15-year-old student at Barrenjoey High School on Sydney's northern beaches. Since she died from a drug overdose, this rabid, lowlife felt it was important enough to go out of way to write his comment. What if her family reads this? What if it was his daughter or sister? You, Andrew B, of the hills district [sic] are a clueless wanker. I would happily do jail time just to get you alone in a room for 10 minutes. You freak.
Some Daily Telegraph Readers Are Spot-On
In response to a Daily Telegraph article last year, this comment has to be one the best I have read.
Readers Comment:
Anti-drug's campaigner, Carly Crutchfield. Is she anti-drugs, or just anti-illicits? She stated, "Young people do not try to hide it and do not think it's wrong".
Why would she believe that young people should think drug consumption is wrong and hide it away when the Drug Cartels of tri-methyl-xanthine/caffeine, ethane hydroxide/ethyl alcohol and nicotine constantly target the young and we have our media, our sporting personalities, our celebrities and yes, even our so-called anti-drug campaigners, stating that it's 'okay to consume these drugs',. They don't give a damn when the drug dealers say you can 'party on these drugs'., while not one drug dealer has to put out any warning signs on the drugs they deal and advocate to children as well as adults, while helping the Government to eradicate the 'competition', the so-called 'illicits'.
The 7.30 Report stated that Police knew 30 days before Annabelle Catt's death that there was the toxic amphetamine PMA in a batch of street ecstasy, but no warnings were given and no drug testing by consumers is allowed. If Mr. Debnam wants to intervene early, then he needs to intervene on drug abuse only, and not just on choice of drug.
-Posted by: D.Nentwig of NSW
