Thursday, June 28, 2007

Gift for gangs

It's richly ironic that at a time when worries about gang culture are foremost the government has gifted them party pills. And let's not forget who nagged them into it.
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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lindsay - I know all the arguments about banning a substance but making it legal is condoning it's use. BZP is not harmless and there are enough idiots who think that it is, and in searching for that something extra in their lives, are causing irreversible changes to their brains' chemical and neuronal structure. What this holds for their future is unknown, and what the cost to society will be is still to be seen.

5:11 PM
Lindsay Mitchell said...

There are many activities that are legal but not harmless. Smoking tobacco, abortion, bingeing on alcohol, unprotected sex, playing the pokies compulsively. Let's ban them all.

6:00 PM
Anonymous said...

You forgot overeating, extreme sports and religion.

Brian Smaller

7:01 PM
Anonymous said...

mawm said...

Lindsay - I know all the arguments about banning a substance but making it legal is condoning it's use."

It is not up to anyone else to "condone" or permit what consenting others may do or not do.Warn them,educate them about consequences yes....but leave the force out of it.This stupid action of that inbred throwback authoritarian Anderton has just put more people in harms way,will enrich gangs and other criminals by gifting them a revenue source that will cause other crimes to be committed around it and will waste police time that should be spent on actual crime...have these noddies never heard of the prohibition failure?

8:21 PM
Richard said...

mawm said... Lindsay - I know all the arguments about banning a substance but making it legal is condoning it's use.

BZP is already legal, so the government can't make it legal. Even if it could, to legalise something is not to condone it.

For example, to allow people freedom of choice is not to condone any particular choices people may make.

To defend freedom of speech is not to defend anything anyone ever says.

Explain to me, mawm, how it is any of your business, or any of Jim Anderton's business, what I do in my leisure time.

10:09 PM
Anonymous said...

I agree with Richard on this matter: what right does Anderton have to tell me what to consume?

These lot of Socialists are killjoys.

5:00 AM
Anonymous said...

I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that Anderton has such a disfuntional family himself. Drugs featured quite highly in his kids' lives if I remember correctly.

Brian Smaller

7:21 AM
Anonymous said...

Explain to me, mawm, how it is any of your business, or any of Jim Anderton's business, what I do in my leisure time.

Because Richard I've spent my adult life saving lives of people who are idiotic enough to ingest, inhale or inject crap into themselves. I have had enough violently deranged people abuse and attack me, vomit on me and bleed on me. I have seen what happens when you take one of those little tablets that you don't know the contents of, that you don't know what is going to do to you just so you can have a high or rush. I also have to pay for your stay in hospital and psychiatric therapy later in life. Is that enough for you?

6:07 PM
Richard said...

mawm said... Because Richard... Is that enough for you?

Not good enough, mawm.

I am not one of the people you refer to, so the question - How it is any of your business, or any of Jim Anderton's business, what I do in my leisure time? - remains unanswered.

It seems that you are in a line of work where you see a very biased sample of drug users. In NZ, drug use is both normal and socially acceptable. 90% of adults in this country are drug users.

As for "those little tablets that you don't know the contents of" - that's what you get when you make a product illegal. Or even just threaten to make it illegal. The next generation of party pills (BZP-free) is already on the market, and guess what? The manufacturers aren't letting on what's in their pills. If a drug is legal, however, you will always find a label telling you that the active ingredient is, e.g., "5% alc/vol".

As for having to pay for my stay in hospital later in life, you will have to do this regardless. Welcome to the public health system.

9:46 PM
Anonymous said...

Because Richard I've spent my adult life saving lives of people who are idiotic enough to ingest, inhale or inject crap into themselves. I have had enough violently deranged people abuse and attack me, vomit on me and bleed on me. I have seen what happens when you take one of those little tablets that you don't know the contents of, that you don't know what is going to do to you just so you can have a high or rush. I also have to pay for your stay in hospital and psychiatric therapy later in life. Is that enough for you?"

You have just given excellent reasons why prohibition should be ended and why free-market scrutiny of the product is so necessary.

11:48 AM
Anonymous said...

Richard - what you do with your leisure time, and with yor brain, does not concern me at all.

What does is the expectation that, if you have an adverse reaction to whatever crap you have taken, society must pick up the pieces at tax payers cost - not your own.

And the danger to me and my family that you are on the road, the deaths of other innocent victims of your selfishness,- the cost that once again has to bourne by society and not by you.

The additional cost in your health care when you are psychotic or schizophrenic, or presenting with Parkinson's disease at an early age.

The fact that you cannot work a normal span and fund your own retirement so that you once again have to sponge off society.

This is what concerns me as a tax payer and what should concern the goverment

Warn them,educate them about consequences yes..

James - no matter how many warnings or how much education you give people they will still blieve that it will not happen to them. Good examples are smoking, binge drinking and overeating.

You have just given excellent reasons why prohibition should be ended and why free-market scrutiny of the product is so necessary.

James you would whine just as much if these tablets were properly scrutinised. Look at the outcry about scrutiny of the over the counter herbal medicines - most of which have no quality control, are of dubious origin and content and there have had no formal scientific testing of what they do, side effects, etc. Can you imagine the outcry if the Medical Profession were to prescribe a drug that was not properly tested and people saw the effects - Thalidomide comes to mind.

Your arguments are for no control - so lets take that further. Lets have no control over opiates so that heroin is freely available; in fact no control over heart drugs, anaesthtic agents, barbiturates and even muscle relaxants. You just never know how much Darwinian selection we would see. Lets make antibiotcs available OTC and in no time at all mess up what little we have to prevent bacterial infection running rampant.

Where do you draw the line?

Personally mine is where their exists a certain amount of danger and were there are permanent sequlae as a result of a drugs use.

3:46 PM

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