Sorry what? Please provide so results from say the last 10 years. I think you will see the line will remain static. Go on prove me wrong

@ ciaran masterson I suppose it’s not a epidemic at all then ? Austerity had nothing to do with it ? Toxic banks, ……. repocessions etc has nothing to do with it ? Did you know if someone takes their life in this country and doesn’t leave a not its not included in the suicide statistics ? It’s missing adventure or something stupid like that to massage the figures it’s a disgrace what’s going on at government level in relation to mental health and for all accounts it’s an epidemic in many people’s eyes

A guard I know very well told me a couple years ago that most single vehicle accidents involving young men were in fact suicides, and the charred and/ or bloody note found in the car was disposed of discreetly to spare the family further pain. Now from what you say could there be a clandestine policy to massage the suicide figs downwards thereby?

@John O’Driscoll: The idea that an illegal drug must be directly responsible for x amount of deaths to justify its illegality makes little sense. I personally agree with the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use, however, drug legislation should never be based on death tolls.

There are plenty of drugs that will do vast amounts of harm to you (psychologically, physically, etc.) without significant risk of death. Just because you can’t overdose on a drug right there and then and die from it doesn’t mean it’s safe.

@Malachi: If harm reduction rather than death reduction were to be the sole justification Malachi we’d see a lot of so-called ‘ethical’ drugs being outlawed, first and foremost ”mother’s little helper”, the benzodiazapienes, which can kill you simply by stopping taking them if you’ve been taking them long enough and in sufficient dose. As Paracelsus (father of anaesthesia inter alia) observed (my French ain’t good enough for the original)(but hell I’ll try it) ”Tous est poison, rien n’est pas poison, la poison est la dose.” Everything is poison. There is nothing that is not poison. The poison is the dose.

‘An it harm not another do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ suits my pov. I’d be up for making cannabis derived products legal, for people in medical need of them.. University of Madrid has lately proven it kills cancer as well as some advanced chemos, and a lot less harmfully also, by locking on to receptor sites on aberrant cells and triggering cell death, apoptosis. Without harming neighbouring healthy cells, unlike chemo. Would you ban the latter based on its clear and present lack of safety?

@John O’Driscoll: “the benzodiazapienes, which can kill you simply by stopping taking them if you’ve been taking them long enough and in sufficient dose”

Why would we outlaw a drug used heavily as an anticonvulsant in hospital settings? If used correctly, benzodiazapienes are a vital drug class. Not really unethical to have them legally administered or prescribed to people with epilepsy. Seizures can kill you too, so I don’t see why you’re advocating banning an effective treatment for them. It’s a risk-reward medicine, like most. The benefit outweighs the risk of side-effects for most who continuously suffer seizures.

“I’d be up for making cannabis derived products legal, for people in medical need of them.”

Agreed. Thankfully this is on the horizon.

“University of Madrid has lately proven it kills cancer as well as some advanced chemos”

Citation, please. I highly doubt cannabis kills cancer cells as well as chemo, but I’ll be willing to stand corrected with a peer-reviewed academic paper demonstrating otherwise. As for locking onto “receptor sites” on aberrant cells – I presume you mean cancerous cells? Cancerous cells do not grow receptor sites that normal cells do not have – thus targeting them is very difficult. What type of cancer are you talking about?

“Would you ban the latter [chemo] based on its clear and present lack of safety?”

Chemotherapy is a risky but effective treatment and has given many people many more years of life. It is not intended to be safe – if you let the cancerous cells proliferate 9/10 times you will die anyway, so chemotherapy is safer than the alternative. It is intended to obliterate the cancer, by any means necessary. Why would you ban that?

@John O’Driscoll:

I can’t see how I read your sentence incorrectly. Basically, you are saying that illegal drugs have not caused any deaths.

@John O’Driscoll:

It’s nothing to do with privatised prisons.

Possession of cannabis, cocaine and heroin was illegal long before prison privatisation began. Those drugs are generally much more addictive and harmful than alcohol. More crimes are committed by people who are addicted illegal drugs than people who drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.

Alcohol and cigarettes don’t cause hallucinations. People who have a few pints don’t cause harm to others as long as they don’t drive or get involved in violence. People who smoke cigarettes don’t cause harm to others as long as they don’t smoke in the presence of people who don’t smoke at all.

@Ciarán Masterson:

I agree Ciaran, also, the addictive impact of some illegal drugs is completely different to alcohol & tobacco. Cold turkey from cigs or beer is very different to cold turkey from heroin or crack and as such the actions of the addict are poles apart

@Ciarán Masterson: dear oh dearie me did I suggest that Anslinger and Hearst and their bogus racism-fuelled campaign known to the cognoscenti as ”Reefer Madness” was contemporaneous with privatising prisons? No, that latter phenomenon, whereby private unsworn entities mete out ‘justice’ as agents of the state (akin to Blackwater mercs in I-rack) is more recent, perhaps, in at least its explicit reality, though chain-gangs were always used for the profit of the county sheriff who hired them out as slave labour well before even the corrupt newspaper and wood-pulp baron and his self-serving accomplice whose vast budgets had been threatened by the repeal of the Volstead Acts really got going. Educate yourself sir. Cannabis in the 19th century was virtually omnipresent as an ingredient in medicaments. MDMDA was origjnally supplied as an aid to marriage troubles by doctors. Laudanum was the go-to pharmacological solution to the troubles of those who in the Sixties turned to ‘mother’s little helper’, valium, and let us not speak of opium, in respect of which the British made war on China so as to force their populations to avail of the poison.
I do not deny for one minute that all drugs, in fact, all substances, even water, are harmful, and often lethal, when taken in unsuitable quantities. And in the case of some, like heroin, that might be one micro-gramme for the susceptible. ”Alcohol…does not cause hallucinations”??? Tell that to an end-stage alcoholic dying in fear of the rats that he sees though they be only in his imagination. Sure ”People who have a few snorts of cocaine” don’t cause harm to others as long as they don’t drive or get involved in violence. And that itself was once so respectable that Queen Victoria’s Royal Warrant appeared on bottles of elixir containing it; and Sherlock Holmes fictionally used it to sharpen his mind considering cases before it, though Watson knew of and warned of its dangers to his friend.
You are seriously justifying alcohol and cigarettes to me while decrying other drugs on the basis that the former do no harm provided provided provided? Man, have you ever heard that when a violent person has a few pints or shorts they go home and attack the spouse, but should they instead have a few spliffs, they’ll go home and attack the fridge? For I’m afraid that is the level your argument forces me to take. Good night now I’m for me Complan got work in the morning.

To which I explicitly refer, in the next statement following that one; to my knowledge at least, Nick. You are being obdurate if not obtuse, quite evidently so it seems. Debate the substantive points made.

On the basis of your previously stated sole criterion for banning I would suggest you’d ban the more harmful ethical drugs. I didn’t suggest I’d ban them.

You may Google yourself the University of Madrid molecular biology depts research on the efficacy of THC in killing cancer. I’ve lost my father and a friend to it both in the past twelve months, hence my interest on the subject.

Cancer cells are aberrant cells. They do not die and contain mutations that otherwise make them useless to the organism and impinge upon useful cells. That is what I said. Can I ask that those who engage in argument stick to the substantive points? Saves time. Thank you.

Giving up heroin through cold turkey has been likened to a fortnight of the flu Nick Allen. By contrast giving up cigarettes whenever I’ve done it turns me into a screaming ab-dab. Nicotine is one of the most viciously addictive drugs there is. Its deadliness as a poison testified to by the fact that the assassins in the court of Louis Quatorze used coat their dagger blades with it, so that a single Nick would result in the victim dying from respiratory failure in minutes if not seconds. We don’t die when we smoke tobacco (at least, not for a longish time) because the way it’s ingested via our cheek cells, the nicotine, is metabolised rapidly. Though when we start smoking we may get th sensation of passing out, which is our bodies succumbing in part to the unused toxin. Cannabis, unlike tobacco, is not physically addictive, but may be mildly so, psychologically. Certainly reports I’ve read – as we’re all so find of making unattributed assertions tonight – might indicate a few days irritation. Maybe if they don’t actually pose the risk of killing you in the process, as Valium does, withdrawal from any drug bar the likes of that is all relatively inconvenient, annoying, rather than agonising. Others may wish to testify.

Oh one last, Malachi, thanks for making my point, indeed, banning anything that might offer surcease to end stage sufferers of a disease on the grounds of its perceived lack of “safety” is ludicrous indeed. Provided it does not increase their distress and discomfort. I’ve seen what morphine does to end stage patients. I’ve seen what cannabis does. I’ve seen a friend of mine, a scientist, prefer the latter, together with paracetamol, to the former, because it meant he was in possession of his faculties right up to perhaps an hour before he passed, and moreover did not suffer the hideous constipation and organ degradation, hallucinations and fear induced by morphine. He reckoned the max 10% loss of pain relief he experienced was a price worth paying. Goodnight again to all.

@John O’Driscoll: “On the basis of your previously stated sole criterion for banning”

I didn’t give any such criterion for banning drugs. Read my previous comment. I simply stated that the fact that a drug is unlikely to kill you does not make it safe and that the law should take that into account.

“You may Google yourself the University of Madrid molecular biology depts research on the efficacy of THC in killing cancer.”

I just did. This research involved literally sticking catheters into the heads of the test subjects and infusing THC into their brains. It also only involved nine test subjects, the average survival rate of the subjects was 24 weeks. Two of the subjects survived for a year. Hardly earth shattering stuff, and incredibly invasive. This is nothing like smoking joints at all, and it’s not even proven to work – the evidence is weak to say the least.

“Cancer cells are aberrant cells. They do not die and contain mutations that otherwise make them useless to the organism and impinge upon useful cells.”

You seemed to imply that there were receptors on the ‘aberrant’ cells that were not on normal cells – and that the cannabis treatment involved targeting these receptors through the active ingredient in cannabis, delta9-THC, in order to trigger programmed cell death. Is that not what you were saying?

“He reckoned the max 10% loss of pain relief he experienced was a price worth paying.”

I respect his choice.

John

The substantive point is that you said that no illegal drugs have caused death, regardless of where you positioned the comma. This is simply incorrect. If you don’t mean this and simply got your written English incorrect then fine but don’t try and waffle your way our if it