Perspective March 24, 2010
Posted by Sharny in : Essay,Politics,Rants,Society , add a commentThere’s been a lot in the British media lately about the fairly new legal drug mephedrone. Charlie Brooker did a humourous piece on the fuss being made in his Guardian colomn and his points very accurately demonstrate why making it illegal will do nothing to help. However, under our current classification of drugs in this country it should be illegal, the effects are similar to those of a couple of class As and Bs.
The recent furor has come about after the deaths of two young men. Naturally when people’s kids start dying you get sobbing parents explaining how their kids didn’t think it was a risk and about how lovely their children were which throws anyone middle aged, middle class, or both into something of a rage against the drug. What people seem to completely wash over is rather an important point: they didn’t just take mephedrone on it’s own, they took as part of a cocktail with the opium substitute methadone, which was also combined with alcohol.
So a couple of idiots take a load of drugs at the same time, and of course it’s not the legal high alcohol that is targeted, woah no, it’s the legal high mephedrone. There has been so much in the media lately about “legal highs” as this scarey word. Oh my god, people are getting high and it’s not illegal! We must put a stop to this! No one should be allowed to get high! Not ever! It’s morally wrong!
Not once have I ever seen mention in a news article of the most highly consumed legal highs in the world: Alcohol and Tobacco. Or for that matter caffeine, which many people in the western world rely on to get them through the day. If people were relying on mephedrone or even something like cannabis to get them through the day it would be calls for a intervention. But not goood ol caffeine. When it comes down to deaths, mephedrone can be associated (but not even be declared as the main cause) for no more than a handful of deaths in the short time it’s been available. Tobacco on the other hand is responsible for the deaths of one jumbo jet full of people every hour, every day, 365 days a year. 5.4 million people.
Alcohol doesn’t look much better in this standing, claiming 1.9 million lives every year. As a direct result of it’s use. Not combined with other things. We’re talking over 7 million lives claimed every year from legal highs. And you know why that doesn’t get on the news? Because there aren’t sobbing parents. Because it’s not new and it’s not scary. But it should be scary. 7 million deaths is scary. The fact that our drug classification is based not on science, not on health risks, not on dependence. Not on anything other than supersition. That’s scary. That is petrfying.
Some kind of confirmation of what I always thought August 25, 2007
Posted by Sharny in : Politics,World , add a commentI’ve always argued that one of the best ways for a government to control their people is through fear. It seems to be a very tried and tested method for rallying the people against something, whether its Hitler’s Germany joining against those “evil” Jews or the US and the so-called “war on terror”.
A recent study may shed some light on why it works so well and particularly confirms what I always feared. The link has more detail on the study but it essentially pac-man rigged up to a shock machine and presumably they study brain waves etc. It would appear that the closer and more imminent the danger is then the less free will you have, from the article: “The closer a threat gets the more impulsive your response will be,” he said. “In effect, the less free will you will have.”
That is quite a dangerous thought really, perhaps it goes to explain why the 45 minute WMDs threat from Iraq was such an effective way of luring us into war and of course why everyone is so irrationally afraid of terrorists and all these imminent attacks. I think this has proved to be a very effective way for governments (particularly George Bush) to get support for doing small and quite useless things whilst ignoring actual big issues.
It seems that now America is catching up with their free thought, as Bush’s approval rating seems to have plummeted people are finally catching up with how useless he really is. Still, it doesn’t stop Fox from trying, I suppose if they can convince everyone to be afraid of the horrifically imminent attack from Iran’s then Bush may just be able to win back some zombies.
All this leaves me wondering, what’s to stop all the other countries of the world being afraid of imminent attack from Bush’s weapons of mass destruction?
