Posts by Bill Smith
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Hard News: Drug Intelligence, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
"If you wanna geek out on acetone toxicity, LD50 is 5g/kg*, so 350g for a 70kg person, which would be around a Kiwi pint. I think you’d do well to swig that much"
Yes and the LD 50 of Cannabis between 20,000 - 40,000 joints in fifteen minutes.
Waters LD 50 6 liters in one hour which sounds ridiculous but has been cited as the cause of death for a few MDMA users.
Alcohols LD 50 is 5 to 8g/kg (3g/kg for children) that is, for a 60kg person, 300g of alcohol can kill, which is equal to 30 standard drinks about 1 litre of spirits or four bottles of wine.
I know some will say I can drink more than that, but this is the piont where 50% Die.
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Hard News: Drug Intelligence, in reply to Russell Brown,
It would be pretty safe to say a legal frame work would go a long way to quality control. But if you don't give the consumers what they want,there will always be someone waiting in the wings selling on a promise.
I remember 12 years ago at the height of the party pill market, we were doing some major work on a premises manufacturing products with BZP. I was quite taken back to see this multi million dollar production, was carried out using concrete mixers. There was all manner of ingredients some of which were B and C vitamins, cayenne pepper and of course BZP, it isn't too hard to see consistency via this method would be challenging.
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Hard News: Drug Intelligence, in reply to ,
Yes Steven, there's nothing but strange when it comes to how we treat Alcohol and Tobacco in our society.But that doesn't mean I would advocate for their prohibition either, even though I haven't drank in 16 years myself.
We see studies like the Dunedin study tell us that no harmful effects to physical health from Cannabis use, other than Gum disease have been observed in over 38 years. This result is tempered with their fear that Cannabis users are likely Poly-Drug users, which opens them to higher risks of the co-use of Alcohol and Tobacco.
Cannabis users are too often disregarded as wack jobs that should just shut up and go away and just take the legal drugs we supply already. But I would say the average Cannabis user knows more about the drug they are using than the average Alcohol user, who in most cases just don't want know.
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Hard News: Drug Intelligence, in reply to Moz,
"I'm somewhat annoyed that no-one has submitted an ethanoloid drug for consideration (are there such things? Which effects do you focus on?). "
Yeah Moz, The biggest hurdle here would be that Governments don't recognize Alcohol based products as being Drugs, only scientists and those left to pick up the pieces of broken lives, classify Alcohol as a Drug.
The misuse of the word drug has done arguably more damage than the misuse of drugs. With the ban on animal testing,we only have the human trials of the drug Alcohol to fall back on and at only 3.3 million deaths per year it shouldn't have any problem passing.
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Hard News: Drug Intelligence, in reply to Shane Le Brun,
"So what MoDA regulated products would pass the low risk test, MDMA? Cannabis? shrooms? BZP?"
I don't think there was ever any intention to have any drug be able to pass the low risk test.
Alcohol In 2012, about 3.3 million net deaths.
Tobacco 5 million net deaths per year.
It is estimated that in 2014 there were 207,400 (range: 113,700 – 250,100) drug-related deaths with overdose accounting for up to a half of all deaths and with opioids involved in most cases.
It is very obvious there's no achievable bar set which relates to safety and when the wider population finally wakes up to this fact, we can truly discuss the political motives that drive prohibition to the benefit of huge multinationals. -
Hard News: Starting the cannabis…, in reply to Russell Brown,
"That's really quite astonishing."
Not really, the Police strategy to control Meth is to crack down on Cannabis users and this seems to be working well for them, as there's now more Meth being used in the south than ever before.
Meth-Heads are crazy Mother-Fers and in a defacto way, doing the Police"s work for them, as they hunt out Cannabis dealers and growers to do violent stand-overs for their stash of Cannabis, or any money they may have.
About 6 months ago in Dunedin, there was a group of four such scum using all their known contacts in the Cannabis world to finance their out of control habits and this was due to the fact they had burnt their suppliers of Meth and would go to any lengths to reestablish their supply .
These four masked men went from house to house beating,torturing by pouring petrol over peoples heads and in their mouths as well as one person having a lit cigarette stumbled out in his eye. Three of these guys ended up in jail for other reasons as they were already on the run,yet no one came forward over their crimes against Cannabis users.
B-P in Dunedin have done the same beating people for selling Cannabis on their patch, fining them and taking what they want. It is quite ironic that when a B-P gang leader gets caught with a pound of Cannabis in his car with other gang members present and gets 140 community hours as a sentence. This gang doesn't have fortification, yet is located between the two entrances to primary school. This gang was awarded a lawn mowing contract by the Dunedin City Council.
This doesn't add up when a pillar of society gets two years jail for two Cannabis plants, which only came to police attention after they were victims of a violent home invasion.
If you are a Cannabis user you're a soft target for both the Police and the criminal underworld I can't but wonder if this is part of the Police's crime-stoppers force, or another twist on one of their Mister Big operations..
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Hard News: An interview with Ben Goldacre, in reply to Joe Wylie,
"Actually, if you think about it – as a doctor, if you qualified in 1976, then almost every single treatment you prescribe came on the market after you left formal education at medical school. And yet you're expected to know about the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, you're supposed to know which is the best treatment. As a doctor who trained in the 70s, almost all of the modern treatments that you prescribe were basically self-taught. Now, that's no way to run a health service."
Never a truer word spoken, if you are a bad researcher, your chances of being a competent Doctor is seriously compromised. keeping abreast of new developments in any fast paced field, is paramount to successful outcomes.
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Hard News: Medical cannabis advocacy you…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I believe this ones right on topic and a bit of a, 'WHO DUNNE IT'..
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Hard News: Medical cannabis advocacy you…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Hey-Joe, cool video they love their GREENS.
Something else you may be interested in with all the talk of Cannabis and its tenuous links to schizophrenia and this involves diet as well. It's very interesting to find that there's believed to be a link, between gluten and schizophrenia.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/60-years-research-links-gluten-grains-schizophrenia
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Hard News: Medical cannabis advocacy you…, in reply to ,
The Human body produces its own cannabinoids, endocannabinoids. When a baby is born the first breast milk contains endocannabinoids as a kick starter.
In fact the only reason Cannabis works for us is that our bodies are regulated by cannabinoids. Its just a quirk of nature that a plant produces these compounds so necessary to us and in doing so, some would say we have entered into a symbiotic relationship with this plant, one of Mutualism. This relationship gives us pleasure and health benefits, in return we have guarded its existence for thousands of years.