There has been overwhelming support for David Nutt, who was sacked for actually providing scientific advice in his role as a scientific advisor to the U.K. government.
But not everyone.
Burton Addiction Centre founder Noreen Oliver takes exception to Nutt’s comments on the relative safety of marijuana, with this amazing statement:
I have worked with thousands of drug users and they all say cannabis is an entry drug. We did research and from our records it showed that 99.9 per cent of the time cannabis leads on to stronger drugs.
“99.9 per cent of the time cannabis leads on to stronger drugs”
Wow. It takes guts to make up a whopper like that. But what does it take to report it without question? Katie Bowler of the Burton Mail appears to have an odd notion of being a reporter.
I wonder… if I told Katie that, according to my records, 99.9% of all automobile trips resulted in a fatal crash, would she simply print that quote unchallenged?
NTSA!
Ganja has been used thousands of years. Amazing how they gatewayed to white powders before they were invented in the mid 1800’s. We need laws preventing liars and the press from printing them.
That *might* be true if one of the “stronger drugs” in question is alcohol, which is, after all, the worst drug of them all. Really, is there anyone who’s smoked cannabis who *hasn’t* had at least one drink? But other than that possible exception, I call BULLSHIT!
But, I get what she’s trying to say, though she’s being very deceptive about it. Before anyone ever shot-up heroin or snorted a line of coke, they in all likelihood probably smoked some weed. That just makes sense. After all, how else did they get introduced to the black market which sells all drugs indiscriminately? So yes, *perhaps* 99.9% of all *hard drug users* once used cannabis, but she’s using that bit of “information” to make it sound as though 99.9% of all *cannabis users* will invariably use a hard drug.
If she’s trying to say that, Jon, then she is failing in a spectacularly indefensible way, since she specifically said the words “leads on to.”
It would be like me trying to defend the automobile statement by saying “What I really meant was that 99.9% of all fatal crashes happened after someone had been driving.”
The alcohol notion doesn’t fly either, since a large portion of the population tries alcohol before marijuana.
Just to be clear I wasn’t in anyway trying to defend her. It’s just that the statement was so outrageous I had to make something remotely rational out of it. It was that or have my head explode. Then again, it doesn’t do much good to use reason with these people, does it?
How many times are we gonna have to tell these people that the ILLEGAL BLACK MARKET DEALERS LEAD US TO HARDER DRUGS, NOT CANNABIS!!!!, before they see the light?
I can only assume they believe they still control the message,
first they tried to down play the internet as “oh you got it from the internet” Not like Faux Newts TV or The Oxy Rush Radio Show and censored school books and newsprint for the most part. They continue rotating the reefer madness in cycles the same as Anslinger started. Different arrangements of the same basic Nihas NIDA Gore File shell game.
Recently simply reversing our claims about them, and running with it. Definitely deranged. We are the Fascist apparently wanting to hurt the poor suffering drug companies. Why do we want to take their fossil fool jobs and pushing affordable health care? How communist. Free home grown medicine is somehow anti-American to trade, though our forefathers grew it, and Physicians all used it. There we go again, trying to inject reality and those damn laws of physics. Just stuff the programmed news never found to be fit to print.
Same themes of Gateway, sometimes thrown in as a “stepping stone”, higher potency was Rohm doms whispering sweet nothings in Klintoons ear. Then Walters jacked it up with BC bud crashing the gates of our neighborhoods. Fantasizing that his book predictions could be $erviced, The book Body Count, co-authored with Bennett, the Czar/Education Sec. and Diullo, the first faith based rehab master. Finally resigning to the land of GOP thimk tanks.
Haven’t heard the large breasted males or your likely to kill your brother one recently. Addictive still pops up, the non withdrawal symptoms kind. Those Califono’s rehabs like to get from plea bargain deals, to avoid jury trials and 404 gag rules and mandatory sentences. Still lumping Hemp into the mix. Besides they say we don’t need it, we have dacron and rayon from exxon and chevron and OPEC. We have drugs for medicine, so we just don’t need it now that the “it isn’t medicine” fell through.
Walters Philanthropy Roundtable, sheltering corporate taxes for Madison Ave anti drug commercials. Propaganda grants. The guy was a menace to society as a private citizen and then Boosh makes it head drug thug? But I suppose no one knew, just like they stigmatize hemp. Freepers lumping Doc Brommers hemp soap in with placenta soap, human fat soap all kinds of weird gross things for one reason.
Drug worrier, lying, anti-choice pesticide abortionist cage happy teabogin ignorant nazi offspring fascism. And I hope that they die. And their death’ll come soon. I will follow their caskets. In the pale afternoon. And I’ll watch while they’re lowered. Down to their deathbeds. And I’ll piss on their graves. ‘Til I’m sure that they’re dead.
Pissing on Drug Warrior Graves
Steve Earle sings Bob Dylan’s “Master’s of War” U2b
One thing for sure,
the drug worriers hate Soldiers,
especially those with PTSD.
Don’t want them using Ganja,
Don’t care if the war is a lie.
They hate farmers.
Care less if they go bankrupt, have no crop.
They hate sick people too,
and Americans in general.
Especially kids. The sad part is,
I can prove it. by their actions
against reefer reform of any kind.
Ganja/Hemp
Ganja 4 PTSD & Depression
Did they all really say that? Or were they led into saying it? Who here thinks the relationship between a drug counselor and a vulnerable person compelled by a court to get “treatment” is a relationship of equals? Citing this as meaningful happens to leave out all the cannabis users who did not take harder drugs, or get arrested or seek treatment. That’s a lot of people. What editor thinks this is good reporting?
I really would like to know why alcohol gets a free pass.
Q. “What was the first illegal drug you tried”
A. “Well it was merryjewanna”
Q. “Did you know that alcohol is a drug, and that it’s illegal for those under the age of 21?”
A. “umm, you don’t say?”
Wasn’t it the 1999 IOM report that showed evidence that only 70% of hard drug users ‘started’ with cannabis? I think they even gave alcohol its standard free pass.
With this logic shouldn’t caffeine be the “gateway” drug?
(Nick Zentor
November 1st, 2009 at 8:16 pm
How many times are we gonna have to tell these people that the ILLEGAL BLACK MARKET DEALERS LEAD US TO HARDER DRUGS, NOT CANNABIS!!!!, before they see the light?)
Absolutely. And what causes the black market kids? Prohibition.
Seems the annswer is clear to me.
70% is a new one on me. Many “hard drug” users got that way from Uncle Sam treating their war wounds. Or stimulating long shifts with speed. Ganja was found to file down the sharp edges of crank and anxiety of jonzing on opiates. The IOM had no new data, just verified past reports…that already cleared the Gateway Nonsense. Similar to what the WOOTTON report did. It’s physics. The properties don’t change with elections. There is no spin that can change the simple fact it is happening during prohibition. The only Gateway is Prohibition. I’ve known a lot of Ganja merchants and they had no white powder inventories or connections I knew of. The Gateway between the white powders makes more sense. If Ganja was connected socially or religiously, it would probably be with organic not synthetics. Hash, Shrooms and Peyote. But basically its all a delusion and diversion, white noise and threats, to perpetuate, not win or lose. To “treat”, not prevent or cure.
“The use of marijuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction and no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marijuana smoking”
~ The LaGardia sub-committee of New York 1944
“Most marijuana users do not go on to use other drugs.”
~ “Marijuana: Facts for Teens.”
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Washington, D.C. 1995, p.10.
Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency, although some evidence indicates that the heavy, long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug”
~ The Shafer Commission of 1970
My first illegal legal drug was probably unbeknownst to anyone, making model cars and airplanes, breathing toluene. Not huffing, not much ventilation in the winter playing indoors. Gun cleaning fluid? Lead based paints, burning plastic, radiation, open dump sites. I think Lake Erie caught on fire. Those drugs dumped by factories called toxic waste, never brought up as ingesting a drug. Still an adulteration, same as inebriation. Then in the early teens, opening packs of my parents cigarettes, from the bottom. Take one out of each pack in the carton. Resealing it. Then, giving a kid a sip of beer wasn’t the horror they make it out to be. All kinds of athletic supplements to make the gipper proud, Joe Weirder? Atlas muscles, probably steroids. By the time I got to pot, I had several underage drinking fines. I am very thankful for the Ganja Gateway out of the status weird choices.
I really would like to know why alcohol gets a free pass.
It has an infrastructure. Same with Pharmaceuticals/Chemical foods. All the steel and fossil fueled paraphernalia to get booze into a bottle. Not necessary growing a plant in the herb garden. Don’t need no test tubes or pipettes or centrifuges and buildings fabricating white powders. No roads to the back woods to clear cut a forest. No dynamite to flatten mountain tops for bits of coal. Don’t need 90 million pounds of poisons like the cotton crop does. No wars in the Middle east protecting oil wells. No plastic rings or aluminum. No sheet metal I beams or dead trees required with Hemp. Taxes paid on jobs not paid picking buds from the back yard. Trucks and Trains and Ships hauling and leaking crude oil to get the booze product to the stores shelves and refrigerators, Ganja and Hemp grow in most climates, or indoor bud. Minimizing the carbon footprint. Drugs like dioxins, PCB’s, Cliarence Thomas’ DDT, saccharin from coal tar. Many things not discussed behind the pot smearing campaign. Plus booze and drunk drivers sell more hospital rooms and ER pain killers and gauze. Same corporate politics, media and church, different day.
“Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor’s Committee
(1944 – LaGuardia)that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects” “the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is
socially damaging, if not unworkable”
~ 1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT
Apparently, two members of the advisory council that Nutt headed have quit, and the rest of them are all considering quitting.
What editor thinks this is good reporting?
Usually any and all “good reporting” is edited… out.
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
Who here thinks the relationship between a drug counselor and a vulnerable person compelled by a court to get “treatment†is a relationship of equals?
SNL answered that, about Biraq Obomba… Done Nothin…
Are we still court ordering born again conversions to cure addictions?As silly as a fair Ganja tiral with a jury of ones peers, or narcotic burlap.
Faith-Based Rehabilitation
Over the door of one church-based drug treatment center in Houston, a sign printed in foot-high letters announces: “Drug Addiction Is NOT a Disease. It’s a Sin.” At another, clients pass by a poster of an addict in a hospital bed, ripping IV tubes out of his arms and throwing his pills in the garbage. An angel hovers nearby, offering her protection from this plague of prescriptions.
And at a Christian young adult home in Corpus Christi, police recently took the unusual step of arresting a supervisor after teenagers complained that they were beaten and roped to a bed, all in the name of Christian discipline. More arrests are anticipated, authorities say.
These are some of the results–expected and unexpected–of Gov. George W. Bush’s “bold new experiment in welfare reform.” With his conviction that religious groups can transform lives in ways government can’t, Bush sponsored laws in 1997 that allow churches to provide social services their own way, outside the intrusive glare of the state.
* Bush. Religious drug treatment in Texas
* Bush’s Born-Again Drug War
* Bush Faith-Based Plan Undermines Safety & Science
* Warning To States on Funding Faith-Based Charities
In a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the civil rights group, a 23-year-old Catholic man from Genesee County is asking a federal judge to set aside a drug conviction, saying he was punished for not completing a Pentecostal rehabilitation program. Joseph Hanas was 19 when he pleaded guilty to a marijuana possession charge in February 2001 in Genesee Circuit Court and was placed in a diversion program for young, non-violent offenders.
* ACLU Sues Over Faith-Based Rehab By Norman Sinclair
The Detroit News December 06, 2005
A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled that giving direct state funding to Faith Works, a drug- and alcohol-addiction program that relies on Christian teaching, amounted to government support for religious indoctrination. Faith Works, which Bush visited and lauded, has received close to $1 million from the state, mostly under the governorship of Tommy Thompson, who is now US secretary of health and human services.
Warning To States on Funding Faith-Based Charities
Christian Science Monitor January 16, 2002
addiction is a sin.jpg
Jon Ferry of the Vancouver Province is also giving David Nutt a hard time.
I’m worried about my children developing a taste for paint during their finger painting classes.
You’d be hard pressed to find a paint sniffer who hasn’t taken pre-school.
It’s safer to just not send them.
—–
Meanwhile, I work with cons and from their records I can tell you that 99.9% claim they’re innocent.
IT MUST BE TRUE.