ECSTASY AND THE AGONY...
Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 07:18AM More silliness in the system.
Esctasy could be downgraded in terms of the danger it is perceived to represent. The move follows recommendations from drugs bodies and the police that Ecstasy is involved in far fewer deaths than other class A drugs, such as heroin, and is several thousands times less harmful. So it's not so bad then, right?
Now the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will review the classification and is likely to recommend the drug be downgraded to class B. The body will hold a special evidence session next Friday during which it will hear the latest data on the drugs' effects on the brain and its toxicity. Its decision will be announced next year. MPs have already heard evidence from Professor Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, that ecstasy was "at the bottom of the scale of harm" and "on the basis of present evidence should not be a class A drug." The view was confirmed by Professor David Nutt, the incoming president of the ACMD in an article in medical journal The Lancet last year which suggested alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than ecstasy. Nutt said that young people already knew ecstasy was relatively safe, so making it a class A drug made a mockery of the ABC classification.
Yeah, right. Nutt could not be more appropriately named. Ecstasy is a dangerous drug with all kinds of consequences and whilst there are those out there who think it relatively harmless I they their views are harmful, don't you?
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Reader Comments (6)
I recommend it David
It helps you see/feel the beauty in life, when there's so much focus on negativity, which can be quite DEPRESSING and pointless don't you know !!!!!
I dont particularly view any re-classification as a positive move, but I believe the committee found that it had been involved in ten deaths last year, out of what must be millions of doses taken.
That is RELATIVELY safe, compared to virtually every other drug .
The only potentially positive side of re-classification would be to help research into potentially therapeutic aspects of the drug such as depression and (I believe) alzheimers.
I they their views are harmful, don't you?
No.
Ecstacy isn't harmful or addictive. Forms of it are even used to clinically cure depression. It kills significantly less people a year than smoking and drinking and that is mostly because the crap some people swallow is dodgy as opposed to the drug component they thought they were consuming. Please free up the police and my taxes to worry about much more pressing issues.
A
Agree with that last statement, but must say that I believe many many more people drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes than consume this garbage.
But yes there is a very powerful argument for decriminalization of this and similar drugs.
Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following employee statistics:
29 have been accused of spouse abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
9 have been accused of writing bad cheques
17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year
Which organisation is this ?
It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.
These are the MPs who are 'hearing the evidence'. Hat tip to Phil at the BNP's website.