Can we all pause and appreciate the counter productive madness of synthetic cannabis?

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NZ briefly flirted with a sane and rational adult discussion on drug policy when we passed the Psychoactive Substances Act.

The philosophy behind the policy was that chemists could keep producing slight changes to the make up of a recreational drug and that rather than fuel an illegal drug war, the industry was to be regulated.

The problem with the Bill was that once the trial period started, Politicians began to get cold feet as they released the true paradigm shift the Bill had created.

The cold feet stopped the products from being tested and it allowed rogue traders who simply wanted got make a squick buck to enter the market with unregulated product, some of it 400 times as strong as the original products sold in Dairy’s.

Because product couldn’t be tested and because retail venders couldn’t expand to meet demand, we had large queues of people having terrible times on product that wasn’t being screened. This stall by the Politicians created these issues and ultimately public fury erupted to demand the synthetics were banned all together.

So what happened?

It all went underground.

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This is what we are seeing now…

Seven deaths in Kiwi synthetic cannabis epidemic this month

Seven people are dead after using synthetic cannabis this month in Auckland, with ambulance staff saying they also see 20 users a day suffering “life-threatening effects” from the illegal drug.

The deaths have prompted the Chief Coroner and police to issue a public warning about synthetic cannabis.

Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshall said the seven dead are believed to have used synthetic cannabis recently or were found with it on them.

…imagine if the Politicians hadn’t gotten cold feet? Imagine if they had allowed the testing regime to begin and all products were regulated to within safe dosages? Imagine if the venders had been able to apply for certification and spread out that demand?

We wouldn’t be here with deaths each month.

The madness of how counter productive our drug policy has become just can’t be despised enough.

  1. We have a synthetic cannabis problem because we wouldn’t regulate it properly when we had the chance.
  2. We only have a synthetic cannabis problem because we won’t legalise cannabis.
  3. We only have a cannabis availability problem because it’s now cheaper to sell synthetic cannabis and make Meth than risk losing all your assets for an 8 week grow.
  4. And we have an exploding Meth problem because the Police have inadvertently destroyed the economic model for growing cannabis with their proceeds of crimes act evidential threshold changes!

Here’s the solution you sleepy frightened Hobbits!

Legalize a fully taxed and regulated cannabis market!

  • That would kill off the synthetic cannabis market overnight.
  • That would drain workers who are propping up the Meth trade.
  • That would generate revenue to deal with mental health addiction issues for ALL drugs including alcohol.
  • Legalising a fully taxed and regulated cannabis market would do more to hurt organised crime than any other single Government policy.

These 7 deaths in one month from synthetic cannabis is a failure of social policy. We either decide to have an adult discussion about drugs or we continue with the bullshit denial that is killing and maiming so many.

Wake up NZ.

 

 

26 COMMENTS

  1. I’d be interested in what the Green Party response to this event is Martyn, can you find out as you have their ear now please?

    While you are at it can you also ask the green’s if they are aware of the hazards of the toxic chemical omitting from the Vapour that anyone sitting in that air space is also threatened by also as greens are now more a “social” advocate than Environmental!!!

    Our friend was chemically poisoned on a work site overseas for six months and now has (ES) or “Environmental Chemical sensitivities”.

    We learned that a tenant in the flat adjacent to our friend was vapouring with these chemicals and he was afterwards very ill afterwards for days.

  2. I’d be interested in what the Green Party response to this event is Martyn, can you find out as you have their ear now please?

    While you are at it can you also ask the green’s if they are aware of the hazards of the toxic chemical omitting from the Vapour that anyone sitting in that air space is also threatened by also as greens are now more a “social” advocate than Environmental!!!

    Our friend was chemically poisoned on a work site overseas for six months and now has (ES) or “Environmental Chemical sensitivities”.

    We learned that a tenant in the flat adjacent to our friend was vapouring with these chemicals and he was afterwards very ill afterwards for days.

  3. On topics like this, I sometimes like to ask, does anybody notice the elephant in the room?

    As the question that must be asked:
    “Why do people even resort to taking drugs, including also alcohol?”

    I may try to give the answer, being, that people will generally fall into two categories. One being, they are willing risk takers, wanting to try out some substance that may enhance their emotional, mental and perhaps ‘philosophical’ personal experiences. The other being, they live a life that lacks something, or is damned depressing or stressful or nasty, they see a need to use substances to get a ‘break’ from the unbearable condition.

    Despite the media propagated bullshit that most Kiwis are so happy with their lives, I challenge the ‘surveys’ we so often get presented, and argue, they are not representative, and only based on questions that can be misinterpreted to serve a certain narrative.

    A fair few people long for something, which they feel they can only get through using drugs, which includes alcohol.

    Add also the apparent increase in shop raids and burglaries, where alcohol, tobacco and other stuff gets taken, we have more of a symptom of a sick and failing society, where people work and work, study and work, and are stressed out, they see a need to break out of the dreadful routine and have a ‘break’.

    Add the many living precarious existences, on benefits, as low paid, and marginalised in society, and they are another group that feels a need to get a ‘break’ through using such substances.

    In any case, we continue to have a debate about the symptoms, not the causes, and are thus talking past the real issue, which is an increasingly less humane, less fulfilling, less wholesome and healthy society, based on more technological dominance and us all being mere numbers, and endless competition, neoliberal style.

    We have some fail and get locked up and away for long times, hence one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world.

    I get sick of the news, where they sensationalise the topic and do never talk about the real issues, that are the cause for people wanting to get a ‘break’ through using drugs.

    Meanwhile, honest drug law reform is overdue, of course, but at the same time, start talking about the real issues, not the symptoms, please, those that run society, that sit in Parliament, and those that sit in front of TV cameras and mics in studios.

    • +100 CLEANGREEN…the Green Party are a real middle class cop out on this issue…pathetic!

      vote NZF or TOP if you want change

      • Please point us to NZF policy to address this issue?!? As far as I know they have just kicked the problem down the road by promising a referendum of legalization of real cannabis. The Greens, on the other hand, have policy supporting immediate legalization for personal use, and limited home growing, and saying that they support the eventual setting up of regulated, taxed cannabis market, but they think there needs to be more debate about the exact model for this.

        TOP’s policy on cannabis is good, but it nails their colours to a not-for-profit model (“grow-ops”) that may not be the best approach, given the experiences of the USA states who have a legal market. TOP’s alcohol policy though is totally ass-backwards. They would change the drinking age back to 20, and do nothing about the active promotion and normalization of drinking alcohol. The Greens policy is the opposite, keep the age at 18 – the age boundary between high school and tertiary study/ paid work – and ban alcohol advertising. Having a low age, but no ads, has worked wonders with tobacco, so I think the Greens have the better policy on alcohol, and thus the best drug policy overall at present.

  4. Imagine if people stopped self medicating to escape whatever it is they’re trying to escape.

    How do you test mind altering substances on otherwise healthy humans?

    How do you protect the testing regimes from liability if the mind altering substance being tested causes harm?

    How long should we test?

    What you are suggesting says we set up a laboratory dedicated to stone people. What are the long term effects of that experiment? What example does this set?

    Do you really think home brew products will just go away? Because not being regulated or taxed is the key to profits. Would you criminalise hybrids and analogues in our drug lab culture? That would be rather ironic.

    How about we stop taking drugs! Crazy shit I know.

    Synthetics exist because it’s cheap, it legal to possess and it of course it’s doing all the damage the original legal highs did back in its glory days, only it adds a quicker death.

    And by the way, there’s been no war on drugs, not unless the people fighting it with the equivalent of water pistols that is, is considered a combatant!

    • “Imagine if people stopped self medicating to escape whatever it is they’re trying to escape.

      How do you test mind altering substances on otherwise healthy humans?”

      Why would you need to test when there is no demand? Obvious I would have thought…

      Intoxicants have been around for as long as humans have been forming communities, and will be around for as long as we exist…. If we had governments that represented, and governed for societies greater good as a whole, then the proportion of people choosing to bend themselves into oblivion would be reduced to the statistical minimum, but we don’t, and apart from brief periods of egalitarian governance, society has chosen to return repeatedly to the tried and failed models of feudalistic administration… The growing problem of escapism within our communities requires the application of reasoned, and realistic debate, and apllication of laws that actually work… There are the people capable of leadinfg the change from what amounts to massive fraud perpetrated on the whols of society, to what actually works, but we. as a society need to grow up and see the need, and act on it for the good of us all rather than just letting plain old self interest rule the paradigm we live with now…

  5. “Can we all pause and appreciate the counter productive madness of synthetic cannabis?”

    Well, I can. About six years ago a humanoid who shall remain nameless passed what looked like a joint around with an introduction.
    ” This is not actual weed. It’s a synthetic alternative suspended in a herbal plant material and it’s A-mazing… gotta try. Best of all? It can’t be detected in drug tests. ”
    I clearly remember thinking/saying ” Yep. Nope. Thanks very much. Unless, actual weed? You know? Out door, sunshine, breezes, bees, rain water? Then yeeeaaaaah ? Nah. Fuck that. ”
    As the evening progressed, I got pissed on wine and sat there humming to the vibe so to speak when a joint went floating by…. ” Oh? Look? A wee number ? How quaint? I took hold of it, positioned it in my hand in such a way as to be a hand-chillum. ( The spit of others has never appealed unless it involves kissing. Then, that’s ok. ) I took a wee hit and immediately thought ” What the fucks this? ” Then it all went down hill from there and not in a good way.
    I felt leaden. Heavy and stunned like a mullet. My head/brain fell into a morass of sludgy mud and I felt sick. Sick, as in nausea. I had to run for it outside and walked it off thank God. In short, it was awful and it took a few goes at finding the humanoid to enlighten him/her on the error of his/her ways by introducing such a thing into the trusting camp.
    The war on drugs and drug testing, which encourages the soulless entrepreneur? The brainless though deviant aversion to the idea of the pot-ification of a $- fucked in the head society?
    A hyperNormalised logical fallacy. Speaking of which. Seen a documentary called ‘ 13th’ ? Explains most, if not all. It’s brilliant in my view. I now know what the meaning of the ‘ Black Lives Matter’ movement’s about.

    ‘13th’.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)

  6. It would help to stop referring to these substances as synthetic cannabis.

    It has nothing to do with cannabis except that its creators ride on the term as a marketing gimmick.

  7. +100 to all these comments

    imo this government and Peter Dunne should face class action and be collectively sued for malicious and harmful laws against the people ( especially New Zealand youth)which recklessly endanger their health

    laws which … on the one hand criminalise New Zealanders taking the natural herb which is relatively harmless and which is proven to have beneficial effects on the health of the elderly ( painkiller and alzheimer prevention)….and on the other offer a capitalist alternative which could
    and does kill them

    USA has an absolutely massive problem with people dying from synthetic opioid additives like fentanyl and its variations …not only added illegally to other drugs but also prescribed to the elderly

    …is New Zealand now going down this route?

    Vote NZF and TOP on this issue !

      • ‘NZ First are on their own calling for a referendum on decriminalising cannabis’

        http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/83173728/NZ-First-are-on-their-own-calling-for-a-referendum-on-decriminalising-cannabis

        ‘Why NZ First is the only route to legalising Cannabis and why we will need to start a citizens initiated referendum to get real change’

        https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/05/07/why-nz-first-is-the-only-route-to-legalising-cannabis-and-why-we-will-need-to-start-a-citizens-initiated-referendum-to-get-real-change/

        ‘Cannabis opinion polls’

        https://norml.org.nz/library/opinion-polls/

        • Get real mate. There is no way Winston can take this to National.

          So if Winston goes with National, all that commentary you put into this is invalid.

          That just leaves TOP. There REAL DEAL cannabis policy proceeded TOPs ease up in the polls. Every thing else has been a bit ho hum for TOP.

          Most kiwis certainly dismisses economics but understand weed okay.

            • “but he aint going with Nactional now is he?”… Cue his call for a referendum on retaining maori seats to be a bottom line of any coalition negotiations. which. coincidently, is the nats policy …..

              Kind of narrows his options unless he can convince enough people it was just another “freudian slip” that wasn’t..

              • And that, Stevie, nails Peters’ colours to the mast.

                If a referendum on the maori seats is a bottom line, and if Peters sticks to his word, there is no way in this Universe that Labour and especially the Greens would comply. That leaves these options;

                (a) formal coalition with the Nats (who, as you point out, share NZF’s policy)

                (b) sitting on the cros-benches, giving Confidence & Supply to “the largest party in Parliament (again, the Nats)

                (c) forcing a new election (unlikely – this would see the public punishing NZF severely)

                The first two options are the most likely.

                So by Peters’ own words, he had indicated who his likely coalition partner will be, post-election.

                National would govern for a fourth term. Thank you, NZ First voters.

                • likewise if NZF goes with Nactional you will see “the public punishing NZF severely”…as they did last time…it was almost the death of NZF

                  …so something will have to give…Labour compromise or NZF’s bottom line going for a slide ( maybe just the Maori voting on Maori seats)…whatever it is not worth dying in the ditch over…there are far more important issues at stake

                  • …whatever it is not worth dying in the ditch over…there are far more important issues at stake

                    RB, considering what is at stake here, I think you might want to re-read what you put. I don’t think you quite realise the significance of what your wrote. (Hint: Anzac Day.) I’ll leave the rest up to you.

                    • every Party has their drawbacks ….the most important issue is that Labour, NZF and the Greens hold it together and beat Nactional…

                    • RB, until a couple of months ago, I would have agreed with you.

                      However, recent comments by Peters leads me to question whether a vote for NZ First is indeed a vote to oust National. I hold reservations on this point.

  8. ‘Seven New Zealanders Dead After ODing on What Police Call Synthetic Cannabis’

    https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/wj8yb9/seven-new-zealanders-dead-after-oding-on-what-police-call-synthetic-cannabis

    …””Is there something new on the market now? If there has been this spate of deaths in the past few weeks, as the Coroner and the Police are saying, are we dealing with a new substance?

    Are we in fact dealing with a substance like fentanyl, which is causing huge overdose deaths in North America?”…

    ‘Prince’s death drug prescribed to New Zealand’s elderly’

    https://drugs-forum.com/ams/princes-death-drug-prescribed-to-new-zealands-elderly.26068/

    “The drug that killed popstar Prince is being prescribed to New Zealand’s elderly in record numbers, prompting a warning from the Government health watchdog.

    The spike in prescriptions of fentanyl – a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin – is being described as “opioid rain” by alarmed medical professionals.

    An investigation has found rates of prescribing have doubled in rest homes in four years, while doctors are dishing out strong opioids to already frail over-80s around 10 times more often than to those under 65. Prescription rates varied wildly between regions. This is despite research showing the effects of strong opioids are worse in the older population, and are more likely to cause falls, mental health problems, constipation, nausea, and overdose…(and death)

    ….and is this happening in New Zealand?…are NZ doctors being bribed?:

    ‘One company symbolises everything sickening about the opioid crisis’

    https://www.businessinsider.com.au/opioid-crisis-and-insys-therapeutics-fentanyl-spray-2017-4?r=US&IR=T

    “Insys Therapeutics makes a spray version of the powerful opiate fentanyl, which is many times stronger than morphine.

    The company pays speakers fees to doctors, some of whom have had their licenses suspended or face jail time for overprescribing the drug. In Connecticut, a nurse admitted to taking kickbacks in exchange for prescribing the drug.

    Insys faces federal inquiries and questions from lawmakers about its practices, including alleged promotion of the drug for off-label uses…

    ‘Ex-Insys executives arrested for bribing U.S. doctors to prescribe painkiller’

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-insys-court-idUSKBN13X27M

    “Reuters) – Six former Insys Therapeutics Inc executives and managers were arrested on Thursday on charges they engaged in a nationwide scheme to bribe doctors to unnecessarily prescribe a drug containing the opioid fentanyl, U.S. prosecutors said…

  9. Perhaps some other ‘synthetic’ stuff also needs urgent attention? We need to rid the world of plastic waste, would anybody care remind the Greens about other important topics, besides of social security and swimable rivers:

    https://sciblogs.co.nz/guestwork/2017/07/20/pristine-paradise-rubbish-dump-pacific-island-23-years-apart/

    The way we are as consumers going, we will surely stuff up this planet very, very soon, unless urgent action is taken. Fish also gobble up microbeads, it ends up also in our food chain, and our bodies, eventually.

    This is just ONE of hundreds or urging topics, but our government is obsessed with ‘growth’ and immigration, and almost no party dares speak out any criticism against all this, so drugs are a side issue, really.

  10. If synthetic cannabis is legal why is natural cannabis illegal ?

    Hopefully the manufacturers and suppliers of this synthetic cannabis which has caused 7 deaths in Auckland last month will go on trial for murder ?

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