This is an interesting article that argues against the existence of a spirit world that can be accessed through the use of psychedelics. The writer argues from several perspectives: rationality, physicality, psychosis, validation, and danger, and challenges some dearly held beliefs about psychedelics and spirits.

My comment to all this? No shit, Sherlock.

These arguments would stand up just as well as arguments against the existence of a spirit world even if psychedelics hadn’t managed to convince a certain segment of the population that machine elves and tree spirits are real. One of the arguments that can be used to refute the belief that deliberately altering one’s mindstate using a chemical is immoral, is to demonstrate how many other ways one can achieve this, and how many of these ways are associated with trying to find god. So if the attempted outcome is the same (see god), and the route is the same (alter one’s perceptions), then what is wrong with psychedelics? Or so the argument goes. However if there are no spirits, as the writer of the article suggests, then what?

To which I reply, does it matter? Dervishes spin, gurus meditate, some people handle snakes, some chant, some listen to repetitive electronic music and dance till they see god, some take psychedelics. And all claim to be having a spiritual experience through their various techniques. If there are no spirits then which of these techniques for seeking Spirit is morally wrong again? Any of them? All of them? And if the Spirit Without is not there, then which of these techniques is legitimate for seeking the Spirit Within?

In my experience of experimenting with various psychedelic substances and techniques, I have come to the same conclusion as Mr Kent. There is no god, there are no spirits, the things I am seeing and experiencing are not coming from another world. I have had experiences which felt as if I were in another world, through the use of strong dissociatives or hallucinogens (as well as some drug-free trance techniques). I have had conversations with Mother Nature and with the Spirit of the Land, with ancestors and with inanimate objects. I have come out of ‘entheogenic’ experiences with insights which have enlightened me to aspects of my life and personality in ways which have improved them. And yes, I have also scared the crap out of myself on occasion. But you know what? It was all in my head. Is there any reason that a spiritual experience has to be external in order to be valid? Do we really still have to appeal to a higher authority for legitimacy in our own insights?

I would suggest that a more interesting question in the field of psychedelics, rather than “Do spirits exist?” is to look into why so many people are describing similar experiences when using different substances, on different continents. In his book Breaking Open The Head, Daniel Pinchbeck describes the similarities between experiences described by people in South America using Ayahuasca (the oral form of DMT) and those described by people in Africa using Iboga. Both sets of people describe conversing with the spirit of the plant and coming away with insights. So if the plant spirit does not exist, what is happening here? Are these people tapping into a similarity we all have in our humanity in order to gain revelations into themselves? Rather than accessing the spirit world, are they accessing some form of collective consciousness or internal wisdom that we can’t access in our normal mindstate?

And why is this internal wisdom considered ‘less than’ external wisdom, that we feel the need to back ourselves and our methods of accessing this wisdom by trying to prove the existence of god? I would have thought it was greater than – because it shows what the mind is capable of.

Some of you have probably heard about the recall of Pineapple Express, a brand of Kronic (synthetic pot) that’s been found to contain traces of the benzo phenazepam. From what I gather the manufacturers claim they were not aware that this had gone into the product, and sold it to the importer in good faith. Who knows what the truth is? However, Peter Dunne seems to be using this as an opportunity to grandstand his views about how all new products should be regulated and proven to be safe before being offered for sale. And something about cowboys.

So what’s not being said?

For a start Stargate, the importer of Pineapple Express, is run by Matt Bowden. Matt Bowden was at the forefront of the introduction of BZP to New Zealand and has made a lot of money from it. Now I’m not naive enough to think that the continued ability to make money from recreational substances isn’t at least in part a driver for Mr Bowden’s actions – however, regardless of motivation he has also been at the forefront of harm minimisation lobbying since ~2000. He is the driving force behind STANZ (the Social Tonics Association of New Zealand), a body which amongst other things created a voluntary Code of Practice for manufacturers and distributors of BZP based products. Bowden wanted these substances to be regulated rather than banned.

The creation of Class D in 2005 seemed like a step in the right direction – here was a category where substances that were a little bit risky but not proven to be harmful could be placed under regulation. BZP immediately went in there, and what happened? The government placed minimum regulation on it, pills continued to be sold in over the recommended amounts, with no guarantees as to what else was in them, no testing, and no health warnings. Here’s a press statement made by STANZ in 2007 in which they lay out a potential regulatory structure for BZP products, which goes much further than the minimal regulation imposed by the government. It was ignored, the market spun out of control, and eventually BZP was banned.

Now, we’re facing the same situation with Kronic. This is slightly different in that we have a potentially dangerous substance that has found its way into a product, gone through importation and been sold to customers, all without anyone picking it up. Now, this sometimes happens with kids’ toys too, but of course since this is a recreational drug we have a potential moral panic on our hands. And who better than Peter Dunne to stir it up with talk of unregulated markets and cowboys. However, do we think this will get Kronic regulated in a way that it can be tested to ensure quality and safety for customers, that it will be labelled to show what’s in it and regularly checked to make sure nobody’s sneaking anything dodgy in there? I doubt it, and here’s why.

tl;dr on that article – our drug laws are a dog’s breakfast consisting of the Medicines Act, the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, and the Misuse of Drugs Act. They contradict each other and pretty much make it impossible for governments to regulate something sensibly and within a realistic timeframe. It’s much simpler to ban it.

This year, the Law Commission released its report Controlling and Regulating Drugs, in which it recommended a full review of the classification system, a focus on harm, and specifically addressing how to deal with new recreational substances. It’s widely seen as a progressive view which could genuinely reduce harm from substances already illegal, and risk from new substances.

Matt Bowden’s response: “The current regime means that the market is flooded with untested and potentially unsafe products. Consumers often have no way to find out what they are taking. Requiring the manufacturers of psychoactives to show that their products can be safely used is a vital step in minimising the harm caused by drug abuse. Stargate recommended that the same toxicity testing used for testing new pharmaceutical medicines be used and the Law Commission have adopted this suggestion as the best way forward.” So essentially, “Yay! Now let’s get on with it.”

Minister of Justice Simon Power’s response: “There’s not a single, solitary chance that as long as I’m the Minister of Justice we’ll be relaxing drug laws in New Zealand.” Essentially *fingers in ears* “LALALALALALA”

So when Peter Dunne starts talking about cowboys, and about how this wonderful idea he’s had about regulating substances and testing them is so revolutionary and great, and how the likes of Matt Bowden are putting people at risk for their own profits, please take it with a grain of salt.

I have some idea who created this situation and who’s tried to change it and who’s resisted it in favour of more harmful approaches. And yes, Matt Bowden wants to make money, but it’s pretty clear he wants to do it without killing people. Can our government say the same thing?

Apologies for the long hiatus, Tenchinage has been focused elsewhere for the last little while. However, now I’m back and absolutely stunned at the latest craziness from the Won’t Anybody Think Of The Children brigade.

Oh noes! Digital drugs!

Have a look at the use of language in that article. ‘Spaced out’ adolescents have ‘fallen victim’ to an ‘insidious new culture’ that ‘preys on their vulnerable young minds’, apparently. Some of you may even have seen the videos abounding on YouTube of people wearing headphones, apparently experiencing.. something.. while listening to these binaural sounds. And it’s enough to stir the imaginations of the overly-concerned and reach the media in more countries than just New Zealand. Apparently it’s a New!Global!Phenomenon!

So what are binaural sounds? There’s a seriously technical explanation here, but the simple one is that two different, low frequency tones are played through headphones, one into each ear. The two tones create standing waveforms that mesh in and out of phase, and our brain supposedly responds to this meshing, theoretically making it possible to alter consciousness. This technique has been used in meditation for quite a long time.
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The NZ Law Commission has set up a forum for the discussion of the issues around the review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Tenchinage drops in there about once a week to see if anyone’s said anything new..

It seems the Scientologists have found it.

Moreover, it seems the Scientologists have an agenda of attempting to get the Narconon progamme instigated in New Zealand prisons. It started with one chap by the name of Kevin Owen spamming comments all over the show about the current drug treatment programmes and their failure to deliver, strangely interspersed with links and quotes from various Dianetics sites. Then another showed up, calling him/herself Iatrogenic Doctor. This one claims to have been the main person behind the implementation of Narconon in Russia. People started going “Um, Dianetics? L Ron Hubbard? Scientology? Quack organisation!” To which the good Doctor took offence, stating that Narconon is the biggest rehab organisation in the world, achieving success rates far in excess of any other programme available today.

I’ve heard of Narconon and assumed that it was somehow related to Alcoholics Anonymous, and thus a similar programme. By the time I went searching I’d realised that this might not be correct, since every link posted by Kevin Owen and Iatrogenic Doctor led to Scientology.

Anyway, I googled “Narconon success rate”. What I got was a page containing 10 google hits – there are five links to sites claiming that Narconon has a success rate of around 70%, and five links to sites that question this claim.

Note here: Non-Narconon drug treatment programmes have a success rate of between 2 and 20%. Whether this is because the treatment is not effective or because the people in these programmes are often coerced into them by the criminal justice system, do not actually have a drug problem and have no intention of stopping use, is a debate for another day. The point here is that Narconon is claiming a success rate in excess of three times that of the most successful of other programmes, as is Iatrogenic Doctor, who is also suggesting that certain people in New Zealand government are greedy and wanting to keep funding for themselves, and that this is why Narconon hasn’t been introduced here.

So anyway, I first followed the links supporting Narconon. As it turns out, every single one of them leads to a Narconon-owned website. On these websites, it claims ‘proven results’. Here’s a link to their proof as presented. Question here: could I submit this page as an essay reference for a university course? If not, why not?

If you answered “HELL NO TENCHI, DON’T DO IT!” You got the right answer. And the reason this wouldn’t be accepted as a reference is that nothing is supplied that a marker could use to verify the claims. No links to studies, no research, not even names and publication dates (An independent sociology group? Who?). No peer review, no EVIDENCE, no proof. And what does this even mean?:

“During the Narconon Drug Rehab Program study, 38% of guilty findings decreased. 40% decreased after the study. As a comparison, a random selection of 10% of the prison population was tabulated. The Narconon program had reversed the trend of guilty findings having increased by 77%.”

*cough* Anyway, I could see that I wasn’t going to find anything useful on those sites, so off I went to the other ones. The first link goes to an assessment studies, and includes the Spanish study and the Russian study mentioned on the page quoted above.

Turns out the Spanish study was conducted by an organisation that no longer exists, using creative manipulation of statistics, and the subjects were, for the most part, employees of Narconon. Additionally, when the intake from the year of the study was surveyed as a whole by investigators, even with the Narconon employees included the actual number of people who claimed to be drug-free totalled 33%, less than half that of the claims by Narconon.

The site says about the Russian study:

“As usual, it is not reproduced in full – all we have are the “headline figures” which, as we have already seen, Narconon misrepresents for other studies. (In fact, it appears to be mentioned only once on just one of Narconon’s many websites.)

The qualifications and independence of its authors are questionable; one of the authors was the man who ran Narconon Russia (hardly an independent assessor!), one was a lecturer and one was a journalist, leaving only one medical doctor whose relationship with Narconon is undisclosed.”

*ahem*

And the much-touted Swedish study, which claimed a 78% success rate, was followed up by contacting enrolees and asking them about their current drug use. The bottom line figure from responses is that only 6.6% of people who began the Narconon programme had remained drug free.

In addition, Narconon seems reluctant to release their studies for peer review, verification and evidence-testing.

The Wikipedia page also says this:

Investigated in Russia

In April 2007, it was revealed that Moscow’s South District office of public procurator had begun an investigation into Narconon’s activities in Russia.The Moskovsky Komsomolets daily paper reported that legal proceedings were begun against the head of the clinic “Narconon-Standard”, for violating practices forbidden in Russian medical practices. Russian law enforcement became interested after receiving many complaints from citizens about the high fees charged by Narconon. The Narconon office in Bolshaya Tulskaya St., Moscow was searched, and documents and unidentified medications were seized.
In April 2008, as part of an investigation in Ulyanovsk into the Church of Scientology, police searched a Narconon office in the town of Dimitrovgra.

So what we have here is an organisation that will not conform to accepted standards of academic integrity in its research and thus cannot be believed when it claims such a high success rate. The programmes are considered to be expensive enough to warrant investigation in some countries, and their efficacy in treating people with drug problems is questionable at best. Never mind the link to Scientology..

And the person who claims to have been heading the Russian Narconon at the time of the investigation is now in New Zealand, pushing an agenda of implementation nationwide here as part of coercive treatment in prisons. They’re backed by someone with a vested interest in the success of Dianetics in this country – I believe Kevin Owen is the head of RehabilitateNZ, a Dianetics promotion organisation. These people are attempting to frame the drugs debate on the Law Commission website into discussion of which drug treatment method is best, with a view to implementing government-endorsed Scientology in prisons. And they wonder why Unzud isn’t interested?

I smell a Thetan that could stand some rehabilitation of its own.

The New Zealand Law Commission today released “Controlling and Regulating Drugs” which reviews the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.

The NZ Drug Foundation has an overview of some of the salient points. More comment from us later after we’ve had a chance to read the report ourselves, but at least they recognised how antiquated the law is, being drafted in the wake of moral panic about psychedelics.

In the mean time, I invite you to head over to read the documents yourself and have your say. Please make a submission or comment if you feel the current drug laws are ineffective at dealing with what we feel should be a health and education issue.

You may remember the government advisor Prof. Nutt who got sacked for reporting relative harms of various drugs and promoting evidence based drug reform. Nutt has gone on to found the The Independent Council on Drug Harms with 20 other specialists, some of whom were on the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) before they quit in retaliation to Prof. Nutt’s removal from the advisory council.

Context from the BBC article: “Prof Nutt was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson last October after publicly disagreeing with the government’s decision to re-classify cannabis as a Class B drug and not to downgrade ecstasy.”

ALCOHOL IS A DRUG.

If you are ingesting a substance with the purpose of causing a chemical reaction in your brain that somehow alters your mindstate, you are taking a drug.

The legality, the means of ingestion, whether it’s a longstanding social tradition or something that was synthesised yesterday, is irrelevant to this.

Alcohol is a drug, and if you drink alcohol you are a drug user.

Thank you.

The New York Times reports how marijuana use in “It’s Complicated” contributes to its R rating:

“The romantic comedy “It’s Complicated” arrived at the multiplex on Friday complete with an R rating, ranking it in the same category as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Basic Instinct” in the eyes of the Motion Picture Association of America.”

The article goes on to say that there is no violence and the bedroom scenes are decidedly tame. The only real reason it’s R-rated is due to the marijuana use, and apparently this is making some conservative segments of America happy with the ratings board for a change:

Dan Isett, director of public policy for the Parents Television Council, which also monitors movies, said “It’s Complicated” was a “rare instance” of the board getting a rating correct.
“The last I checked, smoking pot was still illegal, illicit behavior,” he said. “Too often material gets rated lower than it should be.”

Of course, Mr. Isett ignores that activities like physical assault and shooting people are also illegal, but that they routinely show up in PG-13 movies, and I’d wager such an act of violence causes more harm to society than smoking pot.

An article in the Wall Street Journal is reporting that some advisors are saying “the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade”.

Interesting points:

Forbes magazine put Mexican drug lord Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman as No. 401 on the world’s list of billionaires.

Imagine if some of that profit went towards treating drug use as a health issue?

Mexico’s deputy agriculture minister, Jeffrey Jones, told some of the country’s leading farmers that they could learn a thing or two from Mexican drug traffickers. “It’s a sector that has learned to identify markets and create the logistics to reach them,” he said. Days later, Mr. Jones was forced to resign. “He may be right,” one top Mexican official confided, “but you can’t say things like that publicly.”

It seems Prof. Nutt isn’t the only one being sacked for being rational about the drug debate.

Oh, and by the way, if you think it’s just those of us that can responsibly use drugs that are after a lift of prohibition, think again. The very same people who’ve been on the front-line of the war against drugs are saying the same thing.

Update: It seems Joaquin Guzman is also the #41 most powerful person. Would he still be the world’s most powerful person and the USA’s most wanted man if it wasn’t for prohibition?

Currently there is a big hoohah about the Australian web firewall. Why is this of interest to us, as proponents of drug reform? Well, in the linked article it says:

“Content defined under the National Classification Scheme as Refused Classification includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”

Notice the reference to content that’s related to drug use. Do you think Erowid will be filtered? Given that there is a plethora of drug information which includes chemical synthesis, I wouldn’t be surprised. Especially since Australia has in the past been one of the few countries that refused classification of Fallout 3 due to it depicting drug use. This seems strange because plenty of games have power-ups (mushrooms from Mario Brothers anyone?), perhaps the mistake Fallout 3 made was to depict this as actually have a realistic method of implementing these power ups? And surely the impacts of negative consequence and addiction in the game probably scared the censors too, since it’d be terrible thing for people to be forewarned of the potential dangers of drug use right?

Now the Australian government can prevent the public from doing their own research about drugs, and they won’t have to be pestered by the public finding out the relative safety of illegal substances versus alcohol in society. Instead, they can feed people whatever misinformation they like.

One of the events that catalysed the creation of DrugR was the sacking of Professor Nutt, a drug advisor in the UK, who refused to cow to political pressure to stop being rational about a drug policy based on scientific evidence of relative harm instead of moral judgement. Among the papers that Prof. Nutt has published is a relative ranking for a number of legal and illicit drugs. And it’s no surprise to us that alcohol and tobacco are some of the worst whereas MDMA and LSD are among the safer choices.

I’d like to quote a bit from the introduction which struck me in particular:

“Most other countries and international agencies—eg, the UN and WHO—have drug classification systems that purport to be structured according to the relative risks and dangers of illicit drugs. However, the process by which harms are determined is often undisclosed, and when made public can be ill-defined, opaque, and seemingly arbitrary.”

This is actually one of the sources of my many frustrations. During my formative years, school taught me about drugs… except they blatantly told lies which, due to them also teaching my science, I could see through. I did my own research and began to mistrust what authorities said about drugs. Obviously not everything is scare-mongering, and drugs do have risks and harms, but rarely do these match with what drug classification schemes dictate. I would like to trust that my government ad my best interests in mind, but given the buy-in by the alcohol and tobacco lobbies it’s obvious that the government is mostly about maintaining the status quo. Which is somewhat of losing platform when the only constant is change.

The paper is also the source of this often-displayed harm graph. A relative ranking of the drugs they assessed:

You’ve got to wonder if the people behind the drug-classifications schemes are smoking crack.

If your interested in reading the original paper, which I highly recommend, it’s available for download here.

This is not news. The fact that ecstasy is part of an illegal and therefore unregulated market has left users exposed to this problem for years. What has suddenly made it news in New Zealand is the fact that since the banning of BZP a year ago, the problem has become much more marked. Previously, users had a legal, semi-regulated alternative. Adulterated pills certainly existed, but the ability to walk away from them put users in a much stronger position, in that producers who wanted return custom would have to have a reasonable quality product.

Now, it’s much easier to put a variety of different substances into a pill than it is to illegally import MDMA, and the vast majority of pills available on the market today are adulterated with other things. The problem here is that there is no longer an alternative, and people are now dealing solely with this unregulated market. Anyone who thinks the banning of BZP has stopped people seeking substances is delusional. As predicted, it’s simply created a situation where there’s a demand for a scarce substance, all of the advantages are in favour of the supplier, and people are taking what they can get from people for whom there is absolutely no comeback for supplying goods that are ‘not as advertised.’

So what can be done about this situation?

Well, if this were a legal market, the government would step in under the Consumer Guarantees Act, or would regulate the market in the interest of safety. But this is not a legal market, the majority of people think that drugs are bad and therefore anyone who gets hurt obviously deserves it, and the government is afraid of taking steps to make people safer when breaking the law, because it will mean they are seen as ‘encouraging’ drug use. So the government will do squat to ensure the safety of users.

That leaves it up to the users to ensure their own safety as much as they can. This is no mean task. How does one know, when purchasing a substance, that its contents are the relatively safe MDMA, and not Ajax (as stated in the article), some other chemical such as BZP or 2CB, or even Panadol?

Well, according to this report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, there are three useful ways of checking the contents, and therefore the safety, of pills sold as ecstasy: pill reports, colour reagent testing, and chromatography. All of these are available in New Zealand, although chromatography is not as available as it seems to be in Europe (see the section of the report relating to ’15 minute’ chromatography tests at dance parties). Chromatography is still a lab-based test, which takes time and is therefore not particularly useful to a user who wants to know what’s in their pill before they take it.

So that leaves us with pill reports and reagent testing. Pill reports are definitely useful in terms of informing people of ‘bad’ pills, but an inherent problem with pill reports has arisen in the last year – duplicate batches. A type of pill can be reported as ‘good’, and sometimes these pills have even been chromatography tested to contain MDMA – and immediately the colour and stamp of the pill is copied as someone cashes in on the reputation of the ‘good’ pills. The user has no way of knowing from the reports which type they have, and therefore can’t use reports as a definitive guide as to the safety of their substance.

Enter the testing kits. Erowid has a comprehensive FAQ regarding Marquis, one of the more common kits available (yes, these are available in New Zealand). A word of warning is included here. It’s true, Marquis will not identify MDMA in a pill, only the possible presence of MDMA-like substances. Nor will it indicate the amount of the substance contained in the pill. Therefore, it would be very unwise to use Marquis to ‘guarantee’ that a pill contains MDMA. However, what it can do effectively, is identify pills that do not contain MDMA, and also the presence of adulterants. Apparently BZP is very easy to identify using Marquis.

So hypothetically, a user could test a pill with a reagent kit, and find out that their pill doesn’t contain MDMA, or may contain MDMA but also has something suspect in it. What now? Well, the user then has to make a decision about their own safety. If they have bought the pill there is the option not to take it. The sensible option would be to send the pill to the testing lab (yes, New Zealand has one) so that it may be analysed using chromatography and others warned of the contents. If the user has not bought the pill but is testing for the purpose of buying, they have the option to not buy the pill.

This is an unregulated market. Yes that’s right, the wet dream of neoliberals everywhere. In basic economic terms it’s a supplier’s market because of the scarcity/demand thing, and this is leading to charlatans making profits from those desperate to purchase, while disregarding the safety of their customers. Sooner or later there will be a death, and those who think drugs are bad will be quick to blame the users and use it as justification to continue with the draconian system that has created the unsafe market in the first place. The only way to change this situation is to be willing to not make the purchase if the product is not of the quality the purchaser expects.

I recommend that anyone with an interest in the quality of pills sold as ecstasy, and therefore the safety of those using these pills, buy a testing kit and use it to identify adulterated pills and those not containing MDMA, and refuse to purchase anything that is not as advertised. Furthermore, refusing to purchase any further releases from the people who supplied those dangerous pills will send a message that users do care about their own safety, and will not allow a situation where they are being fleeced and their lives put at risk. I repeat, the government is not going to help in this situation, it is up to those who suffer the consequences of their decisions to keep themselves safe.

And if a pill does appear to contain an MDMA-like substance? That is still no guarantee that it’s safe to take it. Chromatography is the only effective way of identifying the contents of a pill. Therefore, the more pills that get donated to labs for testing, the better, the more information makes it back to the users.

Of course, to not take the pill or to walk away from a purchase takes willpower. To donate a pill for lab testing takes willpower too. I’d like to suggest that anyone who finds themselves unable to do these things after discovering that their pill contains unidentified substances that are not MDMA, might want to consider their drug use as a whole in the context of the risks they are prepared to take, and consider the potential consequences of a bad decision made for the sake of a fun night out.

I’m a parent. As a parent, I’m responsible for the welfare and upbringing of a child. I have been told that advocacy for responsible use of recreational drugs, for decriminalisation of many currently illegal substances, and for education of my child about substances that are currently illegal, is irresponsible. Apparently, I should not be encouraging my child to break the law and take risks with health, and by educating children about substances other than the legally sanctioned ones, I am doing this and thus being an irresponsible parent.

So lets compare a legal drug with an illegal one shall we?

Alcohol risks harm not only to the user but to those around them, is addictive with withdrawal symptoms that can kill you, you have to keep dosing with it in order to feel the effects throughout a normal evening socialising, it’s hard to judge the dosage of, it can kill you by overdose, it kills around 1,000 people a year in this country, and it has a misuse risk rate among users of approximately 25%.

Compare this with, say, LSD, a Class A drug. It’s not associated with violence, it’s not addictive and therefore has no withdrawal symptoms, one dose lasts 8 or so hours, it has well tested measured effective dose rates, it’s virtually impossible to overdose on, and it has been associated with a total of two deaths in New Zealand, which were both found to be in association with other drugs.

Here’s a graph you’ve probably seen before – the drugs harm graph. It shows there are only four drugs available that are considered by experts to be more dangerous than alcohol. Yet those who say they have my welfare and that of my child at heart, find it necessary to reduce our choice of intoxicant to this – we may use alcohol, or nothing.

But, I am the irresponsible one for wanting my child to have a wider choice of safer substances and a better education in their use.

I am happy to be an irresponsible parent if it means my child has a better chance of surviving.

I found out this morning that just before Christmas in 1675, King Charles II of England banned coffee. It’s possibly the first banning of a mind-altering substance in western history. He did it in response to this:

The Women’s Petition Against Coffee. If I may paraphrase, the women’s argument makes three points:

1) that drinking coffee makes men less interested in sex
2) that men under the influence of coffee talk grandly and at length about pointless things
3) that gathering in coffee houses and talking about politics may be harmful to the government.

Of course, the men defended themselves with some points of their own:

1) that coffee makes them more vigorous, like the Turks, and that they are merely expending their sexual energy with other women
2) that they talk grandly and at length in coffee houses because they can’t get a word in edgewise at home.
3) coffee stops them farting during sex.*

* I kid you not.“by drying up those Crude Flatulent Humours”, no less.

King Charles, perhaps sensibly, ignored the stuff about the Battle of the Sexes and focused on what mattered to him most:

“”A PROCLAMATION FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF COFFEE HOUSES: Whereas it is most apparent that the multitude of Coffee Houses of late years set up and kept within this Kingdom…and the great resort of idle and disaffected persons to them, have produced very evil and dangerous effects; as well for that many tradesmen and others, do herein misspend much of their time, which might and probably would be employed in and about their Lawful Calling and Affairs; but also for that in such houses…divers, false, malitious, and scandalous reports are devised and spread abroad to the Defamation of His Majesty’s Government, and to the disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm; his Majesty hath though it fit and necessary, that the said Coffee Houses be (for the Future) put down and suppressed…” King Charles II of England, December 23, 1675″

He also lifted the ban less than a month later after a huge public outcry.

So what does that have to do with LSD?

There is no doubt that LSD was tied in with the 1960s counterculture. This timeline is interesting reading, as it ties in political events, the music scene, social movements, alternative lifestyles, the Vietnam War and events in the history of LSD over a period of several years.

Given that scientific research was inconclusive as to the benefits and dangers of LSD (that essay is unpublished but historically accurate, and includes discussion of the public effect of Timothy Leary’s evangelism for societal change through chemistry), the United States government also largely ignored the Battle of the Science and focused on what mattered to them most – maintaining the societal status quo.

The official line from the US Department of Justice about the relationship between LSD and the counterculture is this:

“During the early 1960’s, this first group of casual LSD users evolved and expanded into a subculture that extolled the mystical and pseudo-religious symbolism often engendered by the drug’s powerful effects. The personalities associated with the subculture, usually connected to academia, and the propaganda they circulated soon attracted a great deal of publicity, generating further interest in LSD … As a casual drug of abuse, LSD has remained popular among certain segments of society. Traditionally, it has been popular with high school and college students and other young adults. LSD also has been integral to the lifestyle of many individuals who follow certain rock music bands, most notably the Grateful Dead. Older individuals, introduced to the hallucinogen in the 1960’s, also still use LSD.”

Some people were less diplomatic. Vice President to the Nixon Administration Spiro Agnew, for example, on protestors against the Vietnam War:

“The leaders of the Vietnam Mobilization were described as “hard-core dissidents and professional anarchists;” others were called “ideological eunuchs” and “vultures” who “prey upon the good intensions of gullible men.” Agnew insinuated that the youth who protested “overwhelm themselves with drugs and artificial stimulants” and, as a result, “subtlety is lost and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored.”

But the real attitude towards LSD amongst those charged with conserving societal values in the 1960s, I believe, is best described by Jay Stevens in this excerpt from Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (which, incidentally, is well worth reading):

“The real reason LSD needed to be eliminated wasn’t because it was making a tiny percentage of its users crazy, but because of what it was doing to the vast majority. Contrary to what Captain Tremblay believed, LSD wasn’t attracting nonconformists so much as it was creating them.”

“LSD was eroding the work ethic, it was seducing the young into religious fantasies, it was destroying their values. “We have seen something which in a way is most alarming, more alarming than death in a way,” testified Sidney Cohen. “And that is the loss of all cultural values, the loss of feeling of right and wrong, of good and bad. These people lead a valueless life, without motivation, without any ambition… they are deculturated, lost to society, lost to themselves.”

OK, now you’ve read this, go back and read what King Charles had to say back in 1675, about why he banned coffee. Swap ‘tradesmen’ for ‘white middle class’, ‘coffee house’ for ‘LSD’ and ‘kingdom’ for ‘country’. See how it reads.

Personally, I think he was more honest.

An Australian ex-minister is backing drug reform. He mentions the prohibition of alcohol and its complete failure as a comparison. This is pretty common, and I agree – but I take issue with one of his statements:

“Why do they think prohibition of illicit drugs will work any better?”

So what’s the problem with that statement? Well, it implies that prohibition is a new thing by putting it in a future tense – ‘will work’? How about being realistic and saying ‘didn’t work’ or ‘hasn’t worked’? I know, semantics. But let’s have a look at some dates* around prohibition of some substances:

Opiates and cocaine – Harrison Narcotics Act 1914 – still prohibited.

LSD 1965 through to 1970 – still prohibited.

Cannabis 1911 (South Africa) through to 1935 (USA) – still prohibited.

Psilocybin 1921 (Belgium) through to 2008 (Finland) – it should be noted that psilocybin mushrooms are not prohibited under international law, but they are listed as Schedule I under the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances -still prohibited in most countries.

MDMA 1985 (USA followed by UN) – still prohibited.

Amphetamine 1971 (Controlled Substances Act USA, followed by UN) – still prohibited.

Alcohol – 1919 – repeal of prohibition in 1933 when it was realised that prohibition of alcohol increased criminal activity and public harm.

I think that’s a pretty long and comprehensive history of prohibition of drugs. Some of them have been prohibited since before alcohol was. It only took 14 years for the harms associated with alcohol prohibition to become apparent enough to change the law. Yet with other drugs, it’s been allowed to go on, and on, and on.

Why does anyone think prohibition of other drugs has been any different from prohibition of alcohol? This report details some of the issues around prohibited drugs, and points out that they are the same issues that were encountered with the prohibition of alcohol. For those who don’t want to read the whole report, please at least read this page, which makes policy recommendations for dealing with illegal drugs, the first of which is recognition that prohibition doesn’t work.

Then have a look at the date at the top. Yes, that’s right – this report was made in 1972. Even back then it was recognised that prohibition was a failure – and why not? There’s a long and rich history of crime, death and addiction to draw on for evidence. Yet these recommendations have been resoundingly ignored by governments and the UN for nearly 40 years.

To me, this makes no sense. It makes no sense to go on considering prohibition in any kind of future tense, because in order to be realistic about drugs, it shouldn’t even be considered as an option any more – and there’s ample history to back that statement up. There is no place in the present world for dithering about whether or not prohibition ‘will work’ or ‘is working’ – it didn’t. It hasn’t. Time for a new approach that actually has a future.

* There are no references attached to these dates as the information is in the public domain and simple enough to find for anyone interested.

More moral absolutes by “Scientific” Blogging. On the potential for drug screening of academic students, with comparison to the anti-doping rules in sports:

It could happen, says an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. And maybe it should. Everyone recognizes the illegitimacy of chemically enhanced academic performance but these drugs will be near impossible to ban.

Illegitimacy? If someone contributes to a field of science and advances our understanding, but all of a sudden we realise they were taking a nootropic substance, does that make their research invalid? Unlike most sport, science and technology isn’t a game (… even if it sometimes feels like it for me!), so throwing in these assertions is really just sloppy reporting and showing how deeply the ingrained “drugs are bad” mantra as penetrated many facets of our society.

In fact, why not look at one the most prolific mathematicians of all time: Paul Erdős. Erdős was known to take amphetamines, and once his friend Ron Graham expressed concerned and bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.

Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: “Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper.” After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit. (Book reference, via Wikipedia)

Does this long-term habit of taking a stimulant mean that a large portion of mathematical theory is now invalid? No, no it doesn’t.

Sometime today, Transform UK (for those who don’t know, these guys are in my opinion one of the most switched-on groups of drug reform lobbyists – check out their website!) are launching a book that proposes specific models of regulation for all types of currently illegal drugs.

One of the problems in drug reform debates is the ‘unknown quantity’ factor – it’s never been tried, and predictions range from “OMG total chaos!” to “Less health problems, more money for government = WIN!” and everything in between. This book offers some answers to the question “What could a post-prohibition regime look like?” – and explores regulation models along with the principles and rationale for them.

I strongly suggest downloading and reading this book, along with their other two major publications, Tools For The Debate and After the War On Drugs: Options For Control.

Transform UK successfully move beyond emotive ideology and reframe the argument in a rational way. Recommended reading.

Drug testing in schools, a controversial topic at the best of times.

The gist of the article is that more kids have been caught with drugs in schools in New Zealand (particularly cannabis) than ever before, police having brought in sniffer dogs and drug testing.

Logic says that bringing in sniffer dogs and drug testing is likely to catch more people with drugs than just guessing, which is what they were doing before. Yet, for some reason the fact that more people have been caught seems to be evidence of some kind of drug epidemic. I’m not sure I agree with the reasoning here.

I suggest that the number of kids with drugs in school has probably increased along with the number of people using drugs in wider society,* and that catching more people is a sign of nothing other than they’ve got better at catching them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone the use of drugs in children. I think anyone using drugs (including the legal ones such as caffeine and alcohol) before their brain, personality and identity has finished developing is taking a gamble with their future mental health, never mind the obvious difficulties associated with being stoned while trying to learn. All drug taking is risky, but kids aren’t equipped to assess those risks accurately.

However, prohibition is obviously not stopping them. It’s good to see some schools using ‘alternative action contracts’ – which involve some drug testing, some community work, some study into the use and abuse of their drug of choice, and at least some counselling. But most schools seem to be taking a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach, which kicks kids out (read: marginalises them) for using drugs, and places drugs squarely on the ‘crime’ side of the fence.

“Fair enough,” you say, “Drug use is a crime.” And you’re right. But sadly, giving the kid a bad school record so that the only schools that will take them are those that desperately need students, labelling them ‘druggie’ at an early age and then walking away going “Hey, we got rid of the deviant element, we’ve done our job, the kiddies are safe from these criminals” does not actually address any of the reasons these kids are using drugs in the first place.

Drugs are a health issue. They affect mental, physical and social health if abused. Those kids smoking drugs in the playground are not invading anyone else’s human rights, hurting others or stealing – where is the victim of this crime?. The only reason what they are doing is a crime is because legislation has made it so – but the effects on their health and learning are measurable and tangible. The victim of this crime is the same person as the perpetrator – yet the system continues to punish them as criminals instead of offering them help as victims.

To the schools, I suggest that continuing to condone punitive approaches to dealing with drug users is going to continue to achieve the same result – which is to discourage nobody, marginalise those who get caught, and set young people against those who would be educating them at an early age. Even the alternative contracts are seen by youth aid workers as ‘fair punishment’ – not ‘offering help’ or ‘addressing the issue’. It’s all about punishing people for wrongdoing.

Because if people do wrong, they’re bad people, right? And if they’re bad people, we don’t have to care about helping them because they don’t deserve it, right? It’s so much easier that way.

Schools are (in part) the places where people’s attitudes are formed. I wonder how many people caught up in this sniffer-dog, drug-test, expulsion/punishment situation will go on to have a friendly and cooperative, mutually beneficial relationship with society?

* Drug uptake has consistently increased under prohibition.

Much has been written all over the internet about the sacking of David Nutt, the chair of the UK Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs, for his stance that cannabis, ecstasy and LSD are less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. Two of his fellow committee members also quit in protest, and more may follow.

I don’t think I need to say much here at all, but I’d like to point interested people to places where information is available. I’ve been watching the story unfold and have found it interesting to watch the government and popular press go into damage control mode. There have been some blatant attempts to cast doubt* on the science behind the paper that got him sacked.

I think probably the funniest bit was from the Home Office: “The home secretary expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt’s comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs.”

So, by presenting the scientific evidence to the public directly, Prof Nutt was damaging the clear message the government gives the public? Which clear message is that then? This one? (FRANK – which is, frankly, laughable). Or do they mean Gordon Brown saying that skunk is lethal? Because that’s such a clear message to all the people who’ve smoked it and not died. Obviously giving people facts is sullying this clear message. Oh and by the way, England – ‘new’ skunk has been around in Unzud since the mid-90s. Just saying.

I think these two articles are worth reading even if you don’t read anything else:

Bad Science on the Nutt Sack Affair.

BBC article on the politics around the sacking.

Anyway, if you think the whole Nutt thing is crazy like a crazy thing, there are a couple of things you can do: Join the Facebook group (25,000 as at today – that’s 20,000 since I joined it). Facebook doesn’t change anything but it does bring together a large group of similar-minded people, create networks and provide information as it comes to hand. And Sign the petition. You can do this if you’re an expatriate so you don’t have to be living in England. There are 5,000 signatures on it currently. Even if it doesn’t get Nutt reinstated, the response to this sacking will make governments worldwide aware that people are not just sitting there letting the wool be pulled over their eyes by politicians who would feed us misinformation about things that affect our health.

Because for once, it’s not just the folks with an interest in drug policy who are taking notice.

* Daily Mail. Nuff said.

For why drug addiction should be framed as a health issue, not a criminal one.

Cost of controversial new treatment for long term heroin addicts in the UK, that seems to be achieving results not only in reduction of crime (66%) but in changing addicts’ attitude towards their addiction? $22,000 per year US (that’s $29, 089 NZ).

Average cost of imprisonment in New Zealand? $90,977 per year.

These heroin studies are being undertaken in other countries, with similar results.

Compare and contrast.