Speaker: Towards a realistic drug policy
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not keen on different rules or actions taken against tourists. That just panders to the worse and is undignified.
I agree. and so in consideration of the largeish tourist pop at any given time, maybe a little fine-tuning...for all.
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Here's a theory -- in my limited experience, and I wait to be corrected by someone who lives there, those Christchurch streets are somewhat empty (perhaps in fact reflecting the dearth of inhabitants) compared to the Auckland and Wellington equivalents.
That might well be it. Although last time, I recall that the people we did encounter in Chch seemed just that bit more likely to act unpredictably. Perhaps I'm just more comfortable with the K Road flavour of muntedness: those are my wasted loons.
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One thing we really need is NYs broken windows law. That will fix up the vacant or dero buildings.
Putting pressure on the owners of those buildings -- eg the eyesore that is the Occidental -- to keep them maintained would be a much better idea.
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That's exactly what I mean. The Occidental had about 50 foam mattresses piled in the front ground floor room for over a year, that's more than demolition by neglect, that's inticement.
Last I heard the police were using it for training, I don't expect that has left it pretty.
Just to the west of the Occidental a twin building to the one on the cnr was pulled down. From trademe I see it's gonna be a new strip bar, so prob owned by Christchurch's biggest beneficary and landlord to the sex industry.
The Brown building to the right was twinned with the new CGs and done by the self declared urban revitalist.
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-me-jobs/Hospitality-tourism/Other/listing-263443117.htm?key=548898
The site is currently a muddy hole, water level is high & getting higher in Christchurch. -
The best thing to do would be to start using the RMA and the long term planning process to move things* back into the city centre.
It's true that the centre of town is pretty deserted, partly because the suburbs are pretty vampiric, and also because, duh, the four aves is a bigger area than central Wellington, and only about the same population to be served. So where pretty much everything in Wellington happens on or around about three streets, in Christchurch there's probably one or two streets with any real density of things happening, and then a bunch of streets with one pub on them, in the middle of nowhere. (Imagine if, say, Mighty Mighty was somewhere up by the Basin, and then the SFBH was out on Customhouse Quay, and there's only a Courtenay Place that's much much worse than the one that actually exists.) So Christchurch seems much deader and flatter.
I'm not sure resident population makes any sense to use against crime figures for the centre of town given that most of the criminality we care about involves people who don't live there.
* That is to say, retail. Unfortunately, at the moment getting a large shopping mall established in the centre of town would be a step forward. Anything that isn't just sleazy bars. Real stuff that gets people in at weekends and during the day. Ideally, getting bits of the uni back in.
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So CPIT doesn't count? As the Uni left the Poly set up in town.
Converging threads a bit, but there is no dearth of music in Christchurch, there is at UC. The Jazz School & School of Music are only a block from each other, exactly where the southern renewal is planned. -
CPIT doesn't count so much, 'cause (a) mainly people at CPIT are from Christchurch anyway so you don't get the same free money effect a uni gives you, (b) it's smaller, and (c) more students are part time or only studying for a couple of years (vs four or five years for many uni students, and north of that for grad students) and so don't live as near and spend as much near as they would at a uni.
You also get less of a hub effect from a poly as opposed to a uni.
But it is of course a Good Thing, and it is a Good Thing all on it's own, even if it were out in Belfast. It just doesn't have the same urban effects a uni does.
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Hey guys. This is the drugs thread. The Christchurch architecture thread is here.
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Yes, it can get confusing with so many vigorous and varied debates going on eg the Dodd piece on BDO popped in another thread, after it had been done-and-dusted in an earlier thread. Maybe we need RB to dust and rearrange the shelves, when he has an opportunity.
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I'd never heard of Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology.
Is it similar to Auckland University of Technology University?
(aka Auckland University of Tautology).
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Rich of O - think respectable certificates and degrees in both practical and more academically-inclined courses.
Pkus: it doesnt publish weirdo books.
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I'm sure CPIT is a fine institution. It's just that the word Polytechnic *means* an institute for the study of technology. So why "Polytechnic Institute of Technology"?
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Keir, that really just sounds snobish & I don't see it as valid except for size, but no Uni is openly talking of moving into the City (3kms east) in any numbers.
I think the convergence of threads shows how important environment is in social policy.
Who would have guessed codine was an "opium-linked drug".
Dropping the packet from 8-5days supply is hardley a headline though. No more nanny state?http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10621154
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It's a headline for me. I may as well be swallowing jellybeans as take panadol without the "deine". Once more, the abuse by a small number limits the access for the majority.
My father used to swallow handfuls of 'AP Codeine' in the 50s for headaches. It's been available for yonks - why clamp down now?
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Who would have guessed codine was an "opium-linked drug".
'Guessed'? It's knowledge, bro.
I guess it's not a big deal if you never use it anyway, but please, everyone, pay attention to what's in pills that you take! Otherwise, how can you answer accurately if your doctor asks if you take any opiates? Or respond appropriately if you're a Pirophen fan and your sister rings to tell you she had a terrible reaction to Panadeine?
[Oh, Pirophen, how I miss you.]
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It's a headline for me. I may as well be swallowing jellybeans as take panadol without the "deine". Once more, the abuse by a small number limits the access for the majority.
To be fair, the appearance at ED of middle-aged women with gastric bleeding because they've got addicted to the codeine in Nurofen plus is pretty alarming.
OTOH, Nurofen Plus really works for me. Like you I kind of despair at how hard it is to get proper painkillers for proper pain. Panadol doesn't do anything for me either.
My father used to swallow handfuls of 'AP Codeine' in the 50s for headaches. It's been available for yonks - why clamp down now?
Oddly enough, I suspect the biggest problem is the overdose of the accompanying ingredients. Too much paracetamol is extremely bad, as is too much ibuprofen. Codeine? Not so much. It's just addictive.
@Amy
[Oh, Pirophen, how I miss you.]
Codeine, paracetamol and aspirin?
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No OTC codeine in the land of the free...
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Pirophen was my first port of call for migraines in my younger days - think it had all three. Codcomol too.
I have to be careful of the non-steroid anti-inflammatories so I avoid Nurophen Plus.
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Codeine, paracetamol and aspirin?
To reduce ability to get these will just move Pharmacies back into the category of "places to rob" much like they were way back in the day, for those that require them for baking. Aspirin restriction, is particularly harsh for many using that drug as a means to thin blood, prevent heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, as well as helping pain, reducing fever, and then the anti-inflammatory benefits.
So maybe this commitee for solving all NZ drug problems at once when "P" was the origin of it's set up, might save us all?
Yeah righto. -
Perhaps I'm just more comfortable with the K Road flavour of muntedness: those are my wasted loons.
I know that in my days of wandering CHCH by night it was fairly probable that any munters I met would be my munters
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I'm curious about the claim in the Herald about codeine-based painkillers being used as the primary ingredient in 'homebake'. Now, I'm sure that's probably true but I haven't even heard the term 'homebake' in about 25 years. Does anyone really still do it, or is this a case of a problem being manufactured to justify more laws that make it seem like the Govt is 'really cracking down on the drug problem'?
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You can still find bloody needles discarded around Manchester st, but I don't know what was in them.
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Does anyone really still do it, or is this a case of a problem being manufactured to justify more laws that make it seem like the Govt is 'really cracking down on the drug problem'?
Well I know that some still do, and lets face it we are talking a substitute for lord Opium, but certainly "P" is an alternative (surprisingly), but I do suspect many Homebake, Morphine, users have found their way onto the methadone programme and have moved on or with maintenance, can indulge as a recreation rather than dependence.
You can still find bloody needles discarded around Manchester st, but I don't know what was in them.
Needles are a means to many drugs, not just homebake and to know what was in them would be pretty diligent. I would suggest a replacement incentive could solve needles in unwanted places, like bring in your old needles to the exchange for a discount on your new ones, or trade old for new or somesuch.
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Keir, that really just sounds snobish & I don't see it as valid except for size, but no Uni is openly talking of moving into the City (3kms east) in any numbers.
I don't think it is snobbery. CPIT has 30,000 enrolled students a year. It has 6,000 EFTS. Roughly speaking, most CPIT students are part time and living in Christchurch already. Most students at the uni are full time, and a large proportion come from out of town. Quite a lot of students live near the university*, and quite a lot stay near the university after graduating. That's not really true of CPIT.
And that's not a bad thing about CPIT. CPIT is doing something different from the university, and that's good, and it's something that should be supported. But it isn't a university.
It is true that Canterbury doesn't look like moving any time soon. But, on the other hand, the buildings out at Ilam are getting old, and over the next ten-twenty years there's no reason* you couldn't move parts of the uni back into town.
* Aside from the general problems of having a split campus.
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Nothing to see here. :)As you were.
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