This link is to some actual facts about cannabis.
The ACMD "top twenty" list of drugs was a form of opinion poll amongst interested scientists and clinicians and was not a rigorous study, as many of Professor Nutt's supporters have assumed. "Look before you lynch" would be good advice to the Home Secretary's more strident critics.
It is also strange that Heroin, a licensed drug, given to thousands of patients every year, should be classed by the ACMD as more dangerous than Cocaine, which is no longer licensed for any medical use. Give a severely wounded person a proper dose of strong opiate, such as heroin, morphine or one of the stronger synthetic opiates, you will buffer them against the shock to some extent and this may give you time to save their life. Give them cocaine and you may make them oblivious to, or at least heedless of, the pain, but the physiological effects of the shock will be magnified and the cocaine will swiftly finish them off. Long term abuse of Cocaine causes aortic anuerisms and these kill, very suddenly, and are well nigh impossible to treat. Cocaine gives its abusers a tremendous feeling of confidence in all their decisions and ideas, even if these are actually quite garbled, and yet the first physical warning the user feels that his habit might be about to kill him, is a sharp pain in the back. He then has about twenty-five minutes to:
The ACMD "top twenty" list of drugs was a form of opinion poll amongst interested scientists and clinicians and was not a rigorous study, as many of Professor Nutt's supporters have assumed. "Look before you lynch" would be good advice to the Home Secretary's more strident critics.
It is also strange that Heroin, a licensed drug, given to thousands of patients every year, should be classed by the ACMD as more dangerous than Cocaine, which is no longer licensed for any medical use. Give a severely wounded person a proper dose of strong opiate, such as heroin, morphine or one of the stronger synthetic opiates, you will buffer them against the shock to some extent and this may give you time to save their life. Give them cocaine and you may make them oblivious to, or at least heedless of, the pain, but the physiological effects of the shock will be magnified and the cocaine will swiftly finish them off. Long term abuse of Cocaine causes aortic anuerisms and these kill, very suddenly, and are well nigh impossible to treat. Cocaine gives its abusers a tremendous feeling of confidence in all their decisions and ideas, even if these are actually quite garbled, and yet the first physical warning the user feels that his habit might be about to kill him, is a sharp pain in the back. He then has about twenty-five minutes to:
A/ Realize something is actually wrong.
B/ Seek help.
C/ Actually reach an operating theatre and a surgical team who know that he's having an anuerism.
D/ Get it successfully repaired.
Cocaine users are often very bad at accepting that something is going wrong, so their chances of making it to the operating table in time are very, very slim. The cocaine-induced death rate may be grossly under-estimated.
Also, Medawar observes that most Heroin addicts know that they have a problem and wish they could stop taking it, whereas most Cannabis users won't accept that there is any problem at all with Cannabis and fly into a furious rage with anyone who even suggests that there might be. Which of those two attitudes evidences the most dangerous delusion?
Don't take heroin or any opiate recreationally. Don't delude yourself, either, that because you are taking Cannabis or Cocaine instead, all is rosy.
If you are taking amphetamines, please try not to drive any sort of motor vehicle -and there's no point in your harbouring any ambitions to have sex with anyone, because it will shrink until it's so small you start having nightmares about it.
If you are taking meth-amphetamines: good bye.
Cocaine Update: If taken with alcohol, Cocaine forms a third drug, cocaethylene, which remains in the liver and is implicated in heart disease. Not that cocaine on its own, isn't. NB: this article comes from the Observer (part of the Guardian group) which rarely troubles its affluent "professional class" readership with anything particularly negative about social drug taking.
Cocaine kills. It can take a few years, and the massive explosion, not just in the number of users, but the amount that each user consumes, is a few years old. Looking on the bright side, anyone wanting to become a Television Producer is about to find an awful lot of vacancies advertised in "Guardian Media" and "Aerial".
Also, Medawar observes that most Heroin addicts know that they have a problem and wish they could stop taking it, whereas most Cannabis users won't accept that there is any problem at all with Cannabis and fly into a furious rage with anyone who even suggests that there might be. Which of those two attitudes evidences the most dangerous delusion?
Don't take heroin or any opiate recreationally. Don't delude yourself, either, that because you are taking Cannabis or Cocaine instead, all is rosy.
If you are taking amphetamines, please try not to drive any sort of motor vehicle -and there's no point in your harbouring any ambitions to have sex with anyone, because it will shrink until it's so small you start having nightmares about it.
If you are taking meth-amphetamines: good bye.
Cocaine Update: If taken with alcohol, Cocaine forms a third drug, cocaethylene, which remains in the liver and is implicated in heart disease. Not that cocaine on its own, isn't. NB: this article comes from the Observer (part of the Guardian group) which rarely troubles its affluent "professional class" readership with anything particularly negative about social drug taking.
Cocaine kills. It can take a few years, and the massive explosion, not just in the number of users, but the amount that each user consumes, is a few years old. Looking on the bright side, anyone wanting to become a Television Producer is about to find an awful lot of vacancies advertised in "Guardian Media" and "Aerial".
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