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.

The idea of using sound to alter consciousness is not a new thing. There’s a belief that the repetitive beat of electronic dance music can put the brain into an alpha state. The band Coil experimented with sound on their 1998 album Time Machines, naming each track after a drug. The tracks on the album are just drones, yet they supposedly have narcotic potency. And of course, there’s the much-maligned i-Doser – the one the article above is referring to. This is an application which allows a person to download and listen to binaural tracks, the effects of which are supposed to resemble the effects of drugs.

This isn’t a new thing either. I downloaded and tried the i-Doser in 2008. My verdict? If I squint really hard, cross my eyes and meditate while listening, I might feel something slightly different from normal. I actually had the most effect in sound-experimentation from listening to Coil’s Psilocybin while going to sleep. There were visuals involved with that, however the fact that I was in pre-sleep state means that the music probably enhanced rather than caused my mental state . Other people’s mileage may vary.

Additionally, according to the article above, there is no scientific evidence that binaural beats do anything to alter brain function.

So, a question. What the hell has people so het up about the iDoser? Sure, there are videos on YouTube of teenagers rolling around on their beds wearing headphones. To which I say, there are also videos on YouTube of teenagers doing things that are actually dangerous – yet the concern-trolls focus on this? WTF? My guess is that a lot of these young people are hamming it up for the camera – and even if they aren’t, what is the issue here?

The main reason we are told not to do drugs is because they are risky. There is danger of poisoning, addiction, brain damage, hurting yourself or others, the list goes on of reasons we are supposed to avoid drugs. Now, here’s a system of supposedly altering our consciousness that doesn’t have these associated risks – and yet, it’s still a bad thing? Why?

They say that it promotes the drug culture to young and vulnerable minds. I say that children are born into a drug culture. Got a headache? Take a Panadol. Having trouble concentrating? Have some ADHD medication. Can’t get a hardon? Viagra! Friday? Alcohol! The list goes on. Our children grow up seeing people use drugs, including drugs that alter consciousness, as part of a normal life. The whole time they are told that there are these drugs over here which are ‘good’, and these others over there which are ‘bad’. In my experience the distinction is pretty arbitrary. And young people are not stupid – they see the hypocrisy of condoning alcohol and tobacco while stigmatising hallucinogens, of popping Panadol and Prozac while demonising cannabis, and they know that much of what they are told about drugs is misinformation. So to say that the iDoser is corrupting young minds into absorbing drug culture is, in my opinion, a red herring.

What I think is really happening here is that those who have concern over the iDoser are showing their true colours. It’s not the danger that’s the problem – there is none with this. It’s not the drug culture that’s the problem – we all live in one anyway. The problem is that as a society we have become entrenched in the idea that deliberately altering one’s mindstate for entertainment is somehow morally wrong, and we don’t want our kids to ever believe that it might be ok, so we construct the iDoser as yet another corrupter of the minds of children, despite there being no evidence that it causes any harm or any further use of drugs, or even that it works.

Which leads me to my final question, which this issue has galvanised for me yet again – WHY is it wrong to seek alterations of consciousness?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.