Guest MattP Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 You blamed Cannabis for his current state. I blame the Tory culture of aspiring. UAE and all that. So you blame Tory aspiration rather than cannabis for his feelings of anxiety, suspicion, panic, schizophrenia, paranoia and his mind and intelligent completely going? A man of profundity who can now barely string a coherant sentence together, I can assure you it isn't, it's to do with his own self control and the disgraceful way society now has allowed this thing to become so freely avaliable to those who are vulnerable. No idea if you are on the wind up here but It's not a subject to troll people about, I can assure you isn't actually funny watching someone you know and care about destroy their own life.
Buce Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 It was an incredible result, not just the facy it was remain but the scale of the vote, Clarke simply had to have something to do with that. Moray in Scotland as well, they nearly went leave, I presume it's a large fishing area. If you are going to use ridiculous soundbites like"war on drugs" I'm happy to show you somewhere that actually does have that. Cannabis has been all but decriminalised, when was the last time a cannabis smoker was dealt harsly by the courts, i.e in comparison to a country like the UAS, Saudi Arabia or Thailand, they aren't. Someone earlier in the thread made a good point about the consequences of it, one of my close friends has been completely done over by that drug, he can barely function anymore and he's not even 40, the paranoia, his speech, his depression, he can't come on a night out with us, he was a young bright bloke at 25 with the World at his feet and ten years later he's absolutely ****ed - all caused by this shit. No offence, Matt, but that's bs. A) you're not showing cause and effect. B) alcohol has destroyed more lives than all other recreational drugs combined. C) as I've previously stated, I have been a daily weed smoker for circa 35 years (since I gave up alcohol) and my life is as stable as any on here. I know many people with similar usage, all of whom are professional people with careers, families, homes etc. I could introduce you to one who is a world renowned psychologist. But we've had this conversation before, haven't we?
Guest Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 So you blame Tory aspiration rather than cannabis for his feelings of anxiety, suspicion, panic, schizophrenia, paranoia and his mind and intelligent completely going? A man of profundity who can now barely string a coherant sentence together, I can assure you it isn't, it's to do with his own self control and the disgraceful way society now has allowed this thing to become so freely avaliable to those who are vulnerable. No idea if you are on the wind up here but It's not a subject to troll people about, I can assure you isn't actually funny watching someone you know and care about destroy their own life. He hit the cannabis because of the society he was brought up in. He wouldn't have had any of those problems in the UAE. He'd have known his position and done his job. I'm not trolling your friend. You brought him up for discussion alongside the UAE as an alternative to the British policy on drugs.
lifted*fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 and the disgraceful way society now has allowed this thing to become so freely avaliable to those who are vulnerable. Alcohol. Sorry to hear about your friend Matt but he's the exception and not the rule I'm afraid.
Alf Bentley Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 So you blame Tory aspiration rather than cannabis for his feelings of anxiety, suspicion, panic, schizophrenia, paranoia and his mind and intelligent completely going? A man of profundity who can now barely string a coherant sentence together, I can assure you it isn't, it's to do with his own self control and the disgraceful way society now has allowed this thing to become so freely avaliable to those who are vulnerable. No idea if you are on the wind up here but It's not a subject to troll people about, I can assure you isn't actually funny watching someone you know and care about destroy their own life. A mate of mine ended up severely damaging his life through mental health issues originally triggered by cannabis. Not quite as long-lasting as your mate, by the sound of it, but he did end up in mental health units with psychosis several times - and was once sectioned for 6 months. Of course, many people can smoke joints till the cows come home with no ill-effects, but there's a well-established link (for some people) between cannabis and psychosis. I presume that there has to be a pre-existing susceptibility, just like some people can drink large amounts of booze without any problem and others become alcoholics. If it's any consolation for your mate, the meds for psychosis-type problems are gradually getting better - and sometimes these problems simply fade away as a person grows older. My mate hasn't become mentally ill for 16 years now and has a responsible job. It has certainly done severe damage to his career prospects and personal life (has now remained single for years, lacks self-confidence etc.). Two of my wife's friends went a similar route - mental illness at least partly triggered by cannabis, hospitalisation, years of recovery - but now doing well, if under-performing compared to what they might have done in life. I'm not being smart, smokers, as I'm well aware how much damage the legal drug alcohol can do to some people (myself included, to some extent).
Guest Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Alcohol. Sorry to hear about your friend Matt but he's the exception and not the rule I'm afraid. I'm not so sure. The number of local entrepreneurs for cannabis has not stopped growing. The black market fed by thatcher's principals is a tremendous success. Alcohol is romanticised. Cannabis is a norm and harder drugs are seen as the cool way to go by many in the younger generation.
purpleronnie Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 I can't believe I'm rooting for May to win. But desperate times.....
Guest Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 I can't believe I'm rooting for May to win. But desperate times..... I suppose we all would like May in November.
DJ Barry Hammond Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Gove torturing the press with a 13 page / 5000 word leadership bid speech - complete with lots of "I will" references, making it feel very egotistical and apparently only 3 Tory MP's in the crowd for support. I ponder if he's managed to kill his bid before he even really started it.
Dodgy Bob Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 The potential for cannabis to bring out and worsen pre-existing mental conditions is one the strongest reasons why it should be legalised. It should legalised and its sale should be strictly controlled, just like alcohol is. There would be no more buying who knows what from your local dealer, you'd know exactly what you were getting and you'd be made well aware of the risks. Wars on drugs don't work. People still use drugs. All it does is push the market underground where it causes violence, the products are much less safe, and people are made into criminals for doing something they enjoy.
The Guvnor Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 The candidates for leadership Gove.......Hasn't helped his cause with the Boris saga or the fact he has said repeatedly he would not be able to manage the country. = unlikely Crabb..... Rumoured to have said homosexuality can be cured ? too extreme with his views= no chance May ..... Very distant from the whole EU debate, conspicuous by her absence ? is she remain or is she out, who knows, well respected by her peers, lack of conviction with her views may be against her. = Fav but fav's rarely win. Fox...... loved by the old school Tories, came across well in the debates, has a bit of history having to repay £3k expenses = not without a chance Leadsom.... Ex Grammar school same as Thatcher, was the star of the show in the EU debates, against her having only a Junior position shame as I really think she would be ideal = heart says yes fingers crossed could surprise.
lifted*fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 The potential for cannabis to bring out and worsen pre-existing mental conditions is one the strongest reasons why it should be legalised. It should legalised and its sale should be strictly controlled, just like alcohol is. There would be no more buying who knows what from your local dealer, you'd know exactly what you were getting and you'd be made well aware of the risks. Wars on drugs don't work. People still use drugs. All it does is push the market underground where it causes violence, the products are much less safe, and people are made into criminals for doing something they enjoy. There's obviously a much bigger discussion surrounding it but yes, in a nutshell you've pretty much summed it up. MattP has said that 'the war on drugs' is a 'ridiculous soundbite' but it's pretty much the term used the world over for the government trying to control drugs through prohibition. This model has failed - people still get a hold of drugs, whichever they choose and continue to use them. Prisons are full of drug-users (when actually they require rehabilitation) and criminals (who wouldn't be there if drugs were legalised and controlled properly by pharmacies, scientists and doctors). Unfortunately, what MattP can't see is the forest for the trees - his unfortunate friend who has suffered alone with cannabis issues would have probably received a lot more help had this country used the money they spend on trying to fight drug-use to instead use it for education and rehabilitation. You only have to look at the millions of dollars being generated by legal cannabis dispensaries in places like Colorado - being spent on schools, drug-education and mental-health assistance for addicts. They have also seen a significant reduction in drug-related crime. It's cold hard facts and hard to dispute. Still, you just can't explain that to some people. Whilst the government continues to criminalise and punish drug-users and drive it underground then suffering and drug related crime will prevail.
inckley fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 A mate of mine ended up severely damaging his life through mental health issues originally triggered by cannabis. Not quite as long-lasting as your mate, by the sound of it, but he did end up in mental health units with psychosis several times - and was once sectioned for 6 months. Of course, many people can smoke joints till the cows come home with no ill-effects, but there's a well-established link (for some people) between cannabis and psychosis. I presume that there has to be a pre-existing susceptibility, just like some people can drink large amounts of booze without any problem and others become alcoholics. If it's any consolation for your mate, the meds for psychosis-type problems are gradually getting better - and sometimes these problems simply fade away as a person grows older. My mate hasn't become mentally ill for 16 years now and has a responsible job. It has certainly done severe damage to his career prospects and personal life (has now remained single for years, lacks self-confidence etc.). Two of my wife's friends went a similar route - mental illness at least partly triggered by cannabis, hospitalisation, years of recovery - but now doing well, if under-performing compared to what they might have done in life. I'm not being smart, smokers, as I'm well aware how much damage the legal drug alcohol can do to some people (myself included, to some extent). I had a friend who died very recently and whose doctor said that his mental illness was due to his heavy cannabis smoking many years ago. He smoked very heavily as a kid - I remember thinking he smoked bongs in much the way that the kid from the Goonies used his inhaler, as if he required constant top-up. He wouldn't thank me for saying this, but I was never convinced by the diagnosis. Firstly, because he was already being looked at for depression and ME before he started smoking, and secondly because he took a lot of other drugs, especially around the time of his illness, and was never obliged to go into a great deal of detail on this. The doctor worked on an unscientific assumption that his problem was cannabis rather than coke, speed, acid or any prescribed medicine that the doctor might have been giving him. So I've always wondered at how much the research is muddied in this way. A lot of drug users, for instance, will be honest about cannabis and alcohol but lie about cocaine. The problem with the idea of a so-called 'war on drugs', however, isn't that cannabis isn't especially harmful (meaning we shouldn't be punishing people for using it) - this is a separate argument. The old, largely discredited 'gateway drug' theory is also of only marginal relevance to the argument. Obviously we have to work on an assumption that society shouldn't want people to take illegal drugs, rather than the assumption that 'some of them are alright'. This is the mistake many libertarians make. The crux of the matter is that criminalising drugs has never been an effective way of reducing consumption. This might have more to do with a broader approach; investing in rehab, using the penal system more effectively, schools / social workers having greater powers to intervene where there are parental and behavioural issues etc. and, of course, in dealing with the more extreme cases of poverty. When students of mine have ended up wiped out by drugs it usually has more to do with long-standing mental health issues, parental problems or a sense of them lacking direction in life, than with the fact that they can buy cheap and nasty hash from the park at the end of the road. I always felt that 'wars on drugs', if you like, were a bit of a cop out from doing the real dirty work.
inckley fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 All of the Tory candidates so far seem to be supporting us honouring the Brexit vote but maintaining 'access to' the single market. So more restrictions on the movement of people, but full access to the trade advantages. May and Gove have both also said that they feel they would be betraying the mandate they had been given if they opted for full membership of the single market. I'm not sure about the logic here. 52% of people voted to leave the EU, most of which - as these candidates have pointed out - carried immigration as their principal concern, rather than the undemocratic law-making of the EU, for example. So, seeing as the vote was on EU and not single market membership, the mandate for scrapping freedom of movement would, perhaps, come from 75% or 80% of 'Leave' voters (maybe more, I don't know), and virtually nobody who wished to remain in the EU. When you take the electorate as a whole, that doesn't feel like a mandate to scrap freedom of movement. It feels like a mandate to leave the EU; within which a lot of people supported leaving the single market but a lot more supported not leaving the EU at all. I'm not saying that the Tory candidates shouldn't be working on the assumption that their mandate among their supporters is to end freedom of movement, nor am I saying it would be wrong for them to negotiate on that basis. However, if Labour harbours ambitions of providing serious opposition, it might be worth them reaching out to that larger group of people who wanted to remain in the single market, regardless of whether they did or didn't wish to see the back of the EU. On a national rather than a partisan level, that might be the real mandate.
johnny the fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Someone please explain to me why the EU is the one institution that will never be flexible and all the different types of cultures and country's of europe have to fit and adapt to its view of the world ? this is why it must change or die ...it won't... so its RIP Brussels .. ignoring the many different concerns of various peoples of europe is arrogance of the highest order. glad we are shut of it..
inckley fox Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 I think we've moved OT. No, I don't think so. One of the big dividing lines between May and Gove lies with social liberties. In 2013 May followed in the same vein as her Labour predecessors by ignoring her advisors in order to ban khat, much like the Brown government had rowed back on Blair by changing the classification of cannabis. Gove has never, to my knowledge, called out for the decriminalisation of drugs but he does tend to be far more socially liberal than most Tories. The point I was making, on top of this, was that the real solutions for the drug problem probably don't lie in the places May, for one, might claim them to. She as Home Secretary (and former Shadow Minister for Families) should probably have looked for a broader approach to this problem than she has: in rehab, schools and social services, rather than in the fact that people can buy drugs if they want them. Not that any of this especially favours Gove. As I said, schools as well as homes have to be the key arenas through which we try to reduce drug consumption. When he was Education Secretary he continued to push the 'parent power' populism of the Brown era; the creation of academies which didn't follow LEA guidelines or a national curriculum meant that most children were under less of an obligation to be educated about drugs than before. Now I'm not saying that, in previous eras, our approach to educating children about drugs was always effective, but it certainly has to be there. So from my point of view, at least, we're still pretty much 'on topic', even if it's implicitly rather than explicitly so.
Guest Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Someone please explain to me why the EU is the one institution that will never be flexible and all the different types of cultures and country's of europe have to fit and adapt to its view of the world ? this is why it must change or die ...it won't... so its RIP Brussels .. ignoring the many different concerns of various peoples of europe is arrogance of the highest order. glad we are shut of it.. Wrong thread.
Spiritwalker Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Alcohol. Sorry to hear about your friend Matt but he's the exception and not the rule I'm afraid. I can tell you that the guy that Matt describes is very similar to someone I know well, so this is not an isolated case. Alcohol does ruin many lives but it doesn't cause psychosis.
z-layrex Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Crabb looks a good bet at around 20/1. Worth a fiver. Needs to come out of his shell, so to speak, but he's fresh and has no major baggage that i'm aware of. Apart from his rampant homophobia.
leicsmac Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 I can tell you that the guy that Matt describes is very similar to someone I know well, so this is not an isolated case. Alcohol does ruin many lives but it doesn't cause psychosis. Ruined life is ruined life, exactly how it is ruined is irrelevant. The cause and the numbers of ruined lives due to that cause are more relevant.
Buce Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 Alcohol does ruin many lives but it doesn't cause psychosis. You are talking nonsense. http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/197/3/200
Strokes Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 I've seen a life devastated by drugs which started with cannabis, I'm not sure any war drugs would have done to stop this. He was hellbent on destroying his life and disregarded the damage left behind. Sometimes you have to accept you can't help people, they aren't always approaching things in a recreational way. In controlled circumstances cannabis and ecstasy could be made far less dangerous and that is something that should be considered.
Spiritwalker Posted 1 July 2016 Posted 1 July 2016 You are talking nonsense.http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/197/3/200Unless I've misread that article, it suggests alcoholism has a 0.4% of inducing psychosis.I would be suprised if the level of cannabis induced psychosis is not at least 10x that level.
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