Lilypad back in action
Apologies for the long gap between posts - which I see has prompted some discussion by our old friend Phil. I can assure him that the quietness of the lilypad isn’t due to fear or censorship, just a few external circumstances which aren’t worth going into.
Anyway, as Phil rightly pointed out, a number of significant things worthy of frogblog comment have happened in the last week or so, not least the interesting vote on microchipping in the house. Lots has been said about the vote - whether microchipping is a good idea at all, whether the decision to vote to amend working dogs was a good one, and what it signifies for the Green Party and the Government. Here’s the latest commentary from the Dom Post’s Tracy Watkins; your thoughts welcome.
As mentioned, we had two new members’ Bills pulled from the ballot recently. Sue Bradford’s Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill has garnered support from across the spectrum and looks set to pass its first reading in Parliament this week.
Metiria’s Medicinal Marijuana Bill is also in the works, and she is hoping that it will be a conscience vote so that MPs from all parties can vote according to their personal beliefs.
And in good news for the Wellington region over the weekend, the Trolley buses have been saved!
June 26th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Good to read you Frog.
After a long life time of contact with dogs, especially farm dogs but now urban, I consider the Labour Govts micro-chipping law supremely ineffective in preventing dog-bites-human. I applaud the Greens for trying to bring comonsense into the argument. I also consider that the farm exemption is better than none. Perhaps confusion will enable this silly law to fade and disappear.
Education, from SPCA, the Kennel Club and especially the various Dog Obedience groups is the best way to have responsible ownership. Menacing dogs must be neutered and be muzzled in public.
Joy.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Good to hear about the trolley buses, though it sounds like it isn’t a done deal by any means.
Shame the mad privatisation policy (state-funded capitalism) system, means it is in a company’s interest to let systems degrade, then threaten to close them down if government agencies don’t fork out other people’s money. It would be nice if buses were run by an agency whose aim is to provide a service, rather than one whose main interest is to keep milking the available subsidies.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:51 am
If microhips are pointless, then what about dog tags? Isn’t the former just a modern version of the latter? What exactly is the problem with microchipping dogs?
June 26th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
James, the current dog tags are a means of both identifying a dog and indicating it is registered. Perhaps most importantly, they are human-readable with no requirement for special machinery, electricity etc.
Micro-chipping a dog will change its behaviour no more than existing dog tags do (apart from adding to a dislike of vets). It might allow identification of the dog after the fact, but that hardly helps the bitee.
The additional cost of chipping a dog, if combined with the registration process, will probably deter more people from registering, thereby making it even more difficult to identify and control dangerous dogs.
So if chipping will prove to be expensive, difficult to implement and use, yet still provides no greater benefit than an existing technology, then what’s the point? (apart from political gain for those seen to be “doing something”).
My 10c worth (preparing for the demise of the 5c)
June 26th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
I’m afraid Metirias bill will not get to the select committee. Which is a shame, as then we would hear medical experts, policemen, family members, etc. explaining all the negative effects of marijuana in our society and we might get a balanced view on it for once.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
why should the effects of a drug on our community have any bearing whatsover on whether the drug is allowed to be prescribed by doctors? Surely the medical benefits for people are what it should be judged on?
And, I don’t know why you are so sure that select committee hearings will find against marijuana. Two recent previous select committee hearings in 1998 and 2000-3 heard evidence from medical experts, policemen, family members, etc and concluded that the negative effects of marijuana had been overstated and that it’s legal status should be reconsidered.
NZ Health Select Committee Inquiry into the Mental Health Effects of Cannabis 1998
Not on web? Extracts http://www.mildgreens.com/inq1.htm
Inquiry into the public health strategies related to cannabis use and the most appropriate legal status Report of the Health Committee 2003
http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz/Content/SelectCommitteeReports/i6c .pdf
June 26th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
The (I would go as far as to say shameful) farce over the doggie chipping has almost guaranteed that dog chipping is here to stay. Removing the most effectively organised opposition group by giving them exactly what they wanted was a pure work of genius. No more opposition.
Now that there are less dogs being chipped the cost per dog of administration will be higher, and mountains of ratpayers money will be spent on trying to decide of a dog is a worker or not a worker..
Well done (some) Green Party MPs, you really screwed up big time.
And welcome back Frog, you have been missed
June 27th, 2006 at 2:57 am
“Shame the mad privatisation policy (state-funded capitalism) system, means it is in a company’s interest to let systems degrade, then threaten to close them down if government agencies don’t fork out other people’s money. It would be nice if buses were run by an agency whose aim is to provide a service, rather than one whose main interest is to keep milking the available subsidies. ”
Hear hear. In the dompost there was an article recently about the AK power cuts and comparing it to the London ‘drought’ crisis. In both cases, essential maintenance had been deferred while the companies make record profits (in London, £300 million!!!!) and the executives pocket vast sums. Then in a few years it is someone else’s problem.
The article said that ‘no-one wants a return to the engineer-led days’ but I have to wonder why. Is it just the sheer lack of glamour involved in engineering? Otherwise, it would seem to be the best way to run a railroad or any essential infrastructure…
June 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am
I would hazard a guess that the ‘no-one’ mentioned means ‘none of the people currently making a lot of money out of infrastructure’. Engineers have their faults (moral blindness being a major one), but usually want to do a job they can take pride in. That happens to coincide with what most people want out of infrastructure. When power is held by profiteers and bean counters, the opposite is true.
June 27th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
As I said on a previous thread the issue on the dogs is not whether the Greeens supported Labour or not it is how a cabal of MPs were willing to ambush their own leadership on a minor issue. This is the sort of dirty politics that the Greens supposedly eschew. Yeah right.
Not only that, these MPs justification for voting the way they did was to make the legislation “unworkable”. Well, gee thanks. As a tax payer I welcome our new money wasting Green MPs. I would far rather have th $$s wasted on unworkable legislation spend on something useful like energy conservation, for example.
June 27th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
I don’t have any worthwhile views either way on the dog chipping issue, but I am pleased to see individual MPs voting the way they believed was right rather than blindly following the party line.
One of the problems I have with party-based government is that there seems to be little room for the individuals we elect to go with their conscience or their constituents desires when they might conflict with the party line.
So right or wrong outcome, I’m glad to see the Green MPs voting according to their own conscience.
(Maybe there could have been less sudden surprise involved though.)
- Colin
June 27th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
“Why should the effects of a drug on our community have any bearing whatsover on whether the drug is allowed to be prescribed by doctors?”
Because of people like Stephen Anderson.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
“Shame the mad privatisation policy (state-funded capitalism) system, means it is in a company’s interest to let systems degrade, then threaten to close them down if government agencies don’t fork out other people’s money.”
So that explains why all of the council owned municipal tram systems in NZ went exactly the way you described, as did the trolley bus systems of Auckland, New Plymouth, Christchurch and Dunedin, while Wellington’s network was shrunk until the mid 80s (Wadestown, Roseneath and Northland routes all closed). Wellington’s was literally on its knees before the current batch of buses were bought, from a dealer that went bankrupt, with buses that spent around 2 years breaking down and needing expensive modifications because of noise and unreliability, and then radio frequency interference. It renewed the overhead wires in the CBD out of desperation but never renewed the electrics which were still from the 1930s-1950s (tram era).
Wellington has the youngest average bus fleet it has had in decades with Stagecoach. The oldest diesels are now around 15-20 years old, whereas in 1990 they were still running a lot of 35yr old extremely noisy smelly narrow door AEC reliances from the 50s, and the newest diesels were 11yo. Now Stagecoach buys new diesels at least every 5 years.
Brilliant council management, absolutely genius generalisation from an anti-capitalist and utter bullshit.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
hmm, and who is he?
Was he prescribed a drug by his doctor?
June 28th, 2006 at 11:54 am
to re-iterate Stuey’s point:
a drug prescribable by a registered medical practitioner can be abused if the drug is available on the open market, and taken without regard to the effects of use/abuse.
That does not make it less effective for the patients who are prescribed medication which they take according to instructions.
There have been many, probably countless, examples of medical misadventure due to patients being over-dosed, under-medicated and generally unsupervised with access to medication. Psychotic patients running amok are the ones that get dragged into the newspaper headlines, but the people who suffer needlessly from chemotherapy overdoses, or lack of access to cancer drugs which could improve quality of life in terminal stages, are often left to die quietly when outrage should be shown, simply because they are terminal, and “respect for the grieving” comes into play in media behaviour.
Medical marijuana use would improve the quality of life for patients with terminal illnesses, with chronic pain illnesses, and with pain/fatigue symptoms from many pathologies. If we only had the compassion to see past the drug, and into the lives of the sufferers.
June 29th, 2006 at 6:29 am
my hopes/concerns over the medical cannabis bill are around the amount (the lack of it) of energy the green mp’s/party will put into its’ promotion in public and in the house….given the new male co-leaders public avowal this issue is way down his list of things to do…and that metiria wasn’t exactly chuffed to recieve the poisoned chalice of cannabis law reform….and given her/the greens. silence on the issue since her appointment (and the groundbreaking announcment by the british health minister on the bye-passing of medicine approval procedures for ’sativex’..the canadian developed medical marijuana product…)
(part of the reasons for my concerns have been the lack of op-ed (or any..?) pieces arguing the value of the legislation…and arguing the case to change the more unfair/cruel effects of prohibition legislation…….(this to bring the relief from unecessary suffering by those with glaucoma/chemotherapy etc etc..)
(micheal ellis..wtf was the relevance of the stephen anderson reference..?…or is that your own little personal example of prohibitionist hysteria..?….)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 29th, 2006 at 10:33 am
“Brilliant council management, absolutely genius generalisation from an anti-capitalist and utter bullshit. ”
Hey, Scott, I never said council management was anything to shout about. Merely that we exchanged one miserable state-funded scheme for another, this time masquerading as the market. Are you seriously telling us that the present taxpayer-funding of capitalist monopolies is a good system?
June 30th, 2006 at 9:24 am
I am extremely upset about the whole dog micro chipping thing. I think that comments like those of Sue Kedgeley’s (”We have to acknowledge that this is a surveillance technology—an Orwellian technology. As Tariana Turia said some time ago, it is dogs today, humans tomorrow.”) make me embarrassed to be a Green party member. It makes us all sound like a bunch of panicking paranoid retard technophobes who think that the bogey man is out to get us.
I am 100% behind the micro chipping of dogs (my dog was voluntarily micro chipped two years ago when we first got her) as I see it as simply a technological advancement over tags on collars. Further more, having had some first hand experience with the dangerous dog problem in some of our lower socio-economic areas I think we owe it to the poor wretches to make their life better if we can, but some dogs have been mistreated to the point that no amount of care, love and attention is going to rehabilitate them to the point that I would trust them with my nieces and they simply have to be euthanased. I don’t make that statement easily as I am vegan and have a serious ethical problem with the killing of any animal.
If a dog is picked up by “animal welfare services” (and that’s a topic for an entire other rant) and has lost it’s collar then the microchip will save loving fur parents like me the anguish of searching in vain for my missing family member and the absence of a microchip means that the dog is unregistered and is one step closer to death row.
This has turned out longer than I thought, so I think I will wind up cross-posting it on my blog.
June 30th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Sam - It is better than the old monopoly, the buses are newer, services more frequent, less industrial action and patronage has been growing for many years now. The system works like this. There are commercial public transport routes, open to competition, unsubsidised - you don’t know what they are, but they are self sustaining (even some rail services in Wellington are in that category). ARC has been trying to lobby to abolish the right of operators to provide such services, but they are not protected services - just like long distance coaches. Where the regional council sees the gaps, it subsidises under competitive tendering - which does provide protection from subsidies being milked with poor performance. If tendered smartly, (not by route but by area), you could see competition for those contracts.
It can be tweaked, and much more should be changed when road pricing is introduced- because then subsidies are no longer necessary.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Stuey - Stephen Anderson decided that Marijuana would be a better way to treat his schizophrenia and paranoid delusions than the regular drugs he was using.
One morning, while his father was preparing to go out shooting at the family bach, he grabbed his fathers shotgun and killed his father, four others who were in the house (including one of my friends) plus a neighbour.
Perhaps Stuey and Phil U if you could nominate the friend or family member you would liked killed by a pothead then you could ask wtf is relevant to this debate? Marijuana kills - end of story.
Perhaps you could find out about another pothead killer called Matthew Luamanu - but he’s not so well known. Threw his life away to pot.
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:51 am
Michael
A Paranoid Schizophrenic who decides not to take his medication and subsequently shoots members of his family.
What about that is unusual? Paranoid Schizophrenics are VERY likely to try to not take meds and they are quite likely to be violent. Nothing in this tale of yours has ANYTHING to do with Marijuana.
Looking up the Luamanu case, it would appear that you have some reason to believe that there is a connection between Marijuana and the violent death of your relative. Your father perhaps? There is no connection between Marijuana and violence. None. Cops in the states have told me and will tell you (if they trust you) that they’d rather deal with a pothead than a drunk. The pothead is NEVER violent… the pothead however, is not immune to other drugs and with the availability of methamphetamines here, that mixture is more likely. Meth will eventually create violent paranoia in almost anyone.
That “death for $30″ has a lot of bad associated with it, and I am sorry about your loss, but you aren’t placing blame where it belongs by any stretch of reason.
You HAVE to get the facts if you want to get results.
respectfully
BJ
July 2nd, 2006 at 12:37 pm
So BJ, you’re saying that a guy who hadn’t smoked several joints would grab a taxi and then run off without paying, “Freak out” when the driver looks to see where he went, repeatedly punch and kick someone in the head without provocation, then drive around for 2 hours in the taxi without having an accident until he returned to the scene and saw the police. (That was the jist of the statement he gave to the police.)
Remember that Luamanu ruined his life too that night - he could have been playing in the NRL now, even been a Kiwi (I’ve been told he was that good - he was captain of Wellington under 20s at age 18.) Instead he spent his 19th birthday sitting in the dock of a trial that sent him to prison for life. Don’t let someone else ruin their lives and others by making marijuana more available.
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Michael, whatever he SAID, those actions are not consistent with the behaviour of people who smoke marijuana. Of course there is no real knowing what the hell he DID take, but if he were stoned he wouldn’t be violent. Given what he did, I doubt that he himself even knows what the hell he took.
Whatever he did with his life and to your relative, the actions and indeed the level of activity itself, is wholly inconsistent with any marijuana use I have ever encountered. It fits with heroin addiction, or P addiction or P-laced Marijuana. It fits with a whole raft of OTHER things, but not with Marijuana alone.
Again I am sorry, but you aren’t placing the blame for this occurence at the right door, and knowing that you are still hurting doesn’t make it any easier for me to argue this with you…. but attacking the use of Marijuana when something else was certain to be the cause, that is not going to solve anything.
respectfully
BJ
July 2nd, 2006 at 6:18 pm
so, Michael Ellis, do you always base your opinions on what the law should be on single isolated anecdotal cases, or do you normally base your opinion on scientific research/statistics, but it’s just in the case of marijuana that you have blind prejudice that overrides?
July 3rd, 2006 at 6:57 am
Stuey
I think he lost his father to the “isolated anecdotal case”, he hasn’t said for certain, but the records I COULD dig up left me with that as a best guess.
Not a good thing. I know it wasn’t marijuana that did it, but HE doesn’t care. He wants to blame something and someone. I am trying to help him look for the right place to be putting blame, but he’s not going to listen to simple reason… or aggressive argument.
My best guess, as this has been fairly common, is that Luamanu got hold of some joints that were laced with P, so rather than getting mellow the way marijuana does, he got an amphetamine high.
It means that legal and controlled access to this controlled substance that actually permits some oversight and regulation of the contents of whatever the hell is getting into the hands of these kids, is more important than turning everyone who smokes a joint into a criminal. Legal Marijuana keeps the P pushers out of the picture.
It doesn’t bring his father (or brother) back.
I don’t blame him for being angry, but I want him to direct it properly. He could be a powerful force for good if he could get to the point of actually studying the problem, rather than focusing solely on the statement of a killer who almost certainly doesn’t remember and possibly never had any idea, what chemicals he was putting into his body.
respectfully
BJ
July 3rd, 2006 at 1:40 pm
BJ - My father and brothers are alive and well. But I sat through the whole case and heard all the evidence the crown presented. The defence offered no evidence to the contary. I should also point out his brother gave the same evidence regarding the use of Marijuana (he supplied it) at the league club. He was described as being ’stoned’ by the first driver who refused to take him.
Given this was 1998 and Luamanu was a person with no income I doubt P or Heroin was a factor. And he wasn’t trapped when he confronted my uncle - it was an alleyway, he could still have run away.
I’ve given facts in two cases - one high profile, one not so - where Marijuana contributed to the deaths of others. You’ve just said ‘when I/friends use marijuana, I’m/they’re not violent’. Then you question the memory of users, so how do you know what you really did! Not a highly scientific rebuttal.
Amsterdam is a city plagued with hard drugs and crime - other European cities do not have the same issues. More research you overlooked.
Anyway, my point is that Marijuana isn’t safe for use in everyone - neither is alcohol - but licensing drug dealers and making it a medicine isn’t a solution for marijuana.
If I was looking at this law I’d make it illegal to be in a public place in possesion of marijuana with stiffer penalties than present. Also being under the influence in a public place would attract an instant fine of say $500.
But I know I’ll have the last ‘laugh’ here - Met’s bill is doomed as UF, most of Labour, Heather Roy, Jim Anderton and all the Nats will vote against, whether it’s at the first reading or the second reading.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:00 pm
aha, so you think the solution to the “drug problem” is to have stiffer penalties. It doesn’t work mate. It just increases the disrespect for the law and has no effect on usage rates. How many of us are you going to jail? Over 50% of kiwis have tried mj and about 10% use it regularly. Are you going to jail us all?
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Michael
Very good that your immediate family is well. The coincidence of the name of the victim and your own is merely coincidence then?
Since that is the case, you simply have no excuse for your attitude or ignorance. I just said that Marijuana doesn’t make ANYONE violent. No medical nor psychopharmaceutical effect to create either paranoia OR violence.
The practice of lacing cannabis with other drugs isn’t exactly a new one. The drugs can be of many and varied types, but they have ALL been used… before P there was PCP or “Angel Dust” … the contaminant is CHEAPER than the marijuana and often not disclosed to the buyer of a joint. So your argument that it is Marijuana is STILL unsupported by actual evidence. Luamanu should have had a blood test at the time and the test should have included the full spectrum of controlled substances. People who want to demonize marijuana have a field day with anecdotal “evidence” like this, but the facts about the drug are very VERY different.
Shades of “reefer madness”.
Personally I do not use it. I have my own reasons, but I have long experience with people who HAVE used a whole laundry list of substances, and of them MJ is the one that does the least harm, including alcohol and tobacco.
Amsterdam? Do you really wish to take their example ?
A repressive policy does not necessarily result in less drug use. The legality of drugs is no determining factor for levels of drug use.
Drug use in the population of 12 years and older in the U.S. and the Netherlands (1997)
Ever used Used past year Used past month
USA Neth USA Neth USA Neth
tobacco 70.5* 67.9 32.7* 38.1 29.6* 34.3
cannabis 32.9 15.6 9 4.5 5.1 2.5
cocaine 10.5 2.1 1.9 0.6 0.7 0.2
inhalants 5.7 0.5 1.1 0.1 0.4 not meas.
alcohol 81.9 90.2 64.1 82.5 51.4 73.3
heroin 0.9 0.3 0.3 0.1 n meas n meas
Also to the point…
Shafer, R., et al, Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding, Chap. V, (Washington, DC: National Commissions on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, 1972)
(That’s the Nixon-Shafer report for Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse)
“In examining the relationship between marijuana and violent crime, President Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (the “Nixon-Shafer Report”) concluded, “Rather than inducing violent or aggressive behavior . . . marijuana was usually found to inhibit the expression of aggressive impulses.”
Zimmer, Lynn and Morgan, John P. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, The Lindesmith Center, New York, 1997.
The Netherlands, which has permitted the possession and retail sale of marijuana since 1976, ranks lower than the United States in the percentage of people who have ever used marijuana in every age category, has a higher age of initiation among those that do try marijuana, and fewer adolescents in the Netherlands than in the United States use other illegal drugs.
You seem to be in possession of a strong opinion that is unsupportable. I am presenting facts. I already disposed of your first example quite thoroughly, and only an absence of accurate reported data gives me difficulty with the second.
Don’t believe me?
So listen to a Dutchman.
http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/reinarman.devil.html
The US DEA is LYING. They have been lying since 1936 when “Reefer Madness” first came out. If you listen to them or their shills you will be unable to discern the truth because the truth is not in them. Nor can they bear to admit that their pet project is totally without merit or redeeming features. In their ideal world we would all wear control collars and evil thoughts (and they would decide what those might be) will result in punishment.
I don’t think you will win friends and influence people here with your claims.
BJ
July 4th, 2006 at 12:13 am
BJ:
Michael Ellis is worth heeding on this subject. What he has to say does not detract from a person’s choice to use marijuana as freely as (s)he might wish.
Some people do get into trouble with marijuana. It can exacerbate mental illness (in some cases, terminally!)
eredwen
(whose family, including a psychiatrist, has read widely on the subject)
July 4th, 2006 at 1:06 am
BJ said:
“Since that is the case, you simply have no excuse for your attitude or ignorance. I just said that Marijuana doesn’t make ANYONE violent. No medical nor psychopharmaceutical effect to create either paranoia OR violence.”
What’s the matter BJ?
WHY the ARROGANCE of tone and content (noticeable in your contributions throughout this thread)? It is unlikely to get your message across on frogblog.
As (you) Americans would say “LIGHTEN UP BJ ! ”
eredwen
July 4th, 2006 at 1:10 am
Eredwen
He is saying that we need to throw the book at users. I don’t see that as “not detracting” from people’s choices. It CAN exacerbate existing mental illness, and it is no substitute for an effective anti-psychotic medication, but what HE is claiming is that it causes otherwise normal individuals to become violent, and that is simply and purely false…. as is his unsupported assertion about Amsterdam and the Dutch. The DEA is spreading lies about them as well, they cannot STAND to see that there is an alternative model of treatment and freedom for MJ that works better than throwing all the ratbags in cells.
I’ve seen what “illegal” does, and I’ve seen what MJ does and the “illegal’ is a heckuva lot worse than the weed.
respectfully
BJ
July 4th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Yes, Eredwen, some people get into trouble with mj, but it is a very small number, and on balance not representative of the the wider community for whom it can have profound medical benefits.
Don’t believe me that it is a very small number? This was the conclusion of the 1998 Select Committee Inquiry which was specifically set up to look at the mental health effects of cannabis and which after considering volumes of evidence concluded that the seriousness of those effects has been overstated.
Anyway, why should the negative effects on the very few override the medical benefits for the many?
And even if cannabis was incredibly dangerous that is still not a reason for NOT allowing it to be prescribed for patients who could experience a medical benefit - after all morphine is allowed to be prescribed.
July 4th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
bj and stuey,
Perhaps when you have each taken a deep breath you might quietly re-read what I actually said !
e
July 5th, 2006 at 7:35 am
Eredwen
I looked at what you said.
You said I should pay attention to this:
Marijuana kills - end of story.
and this:
…another pothead killer…
…and ignore our own party’s efforts to decriminalize this particular drug.
So after my deep breath I have to conclude that I am still in my right mind. I don’t accept statements like that, which are FLATLY wrong, without pointing out the errors. Heckfire, there IS no known “lethal dose” of marijuana. You can overdose and kill yourself with Aspirin or Bourbon or cough medicine, but MJ won’t do that in any known quantity. I daresay it causes a heckuva cancer problem if you do too much but that doesn’t keep tobacco off the streets.
Simply, Flatly Wrong. Also wrong about the approach which actually best controls availability to kids.
See, I grew up with the lies from the government. I grew up with lies about Vietnam, and I grew up with lies about the evil weed. I learned by watching the kids at my University in the late sixties. Hell, they took EVERYTHING, and you can learn a lot just by watching. The Potheads went on to pre-med, no problems. One Guy on LSD wound up in a padded cell for 3 weeks and didn’t graduate, most survived their trips with varying degrees of minor short term disability. The boozer crashed an airplane during flying school… managed to graduate though. The drop out rate on the speed freaks was low at first, they were high achievers, driven, but they burned out and dropped off by the time we hit our senior year. Sometimes they’d be violent. Th I could see this every damned night. I know what the drugs do because I lived with a lot of people who did a lot of different drugs. Beats reading by a long long way. Then my brother did Heroin, as well as MJ and Tobacco and Booze.
What happens is that the government lies and the kids know there’s a lie. So when the government tells the truth, as with P, the kids think it’s just another lie. It undermines EVERYTHING we try to do. Lying like this, for a government or a parent, is the most counterproductive thing you can do, and to me, accepting a lie lying down is almost as bad as the original sin. Lying IS the original sin.
Communication is the most difficult trick we humans haven’t quite mastered. Each of us has our own model of reality and our specific and unique ability to manipulate it to make predictions about what will happen. One of the things that sets us at the top of the food chain is the magnitude and quality of our ability to communicate with others what we’ve discovered, and yet it is incredibly fragile and hard won. It takes years for a child to learn to talk. It takes decades before we learn the things we really need to know to have a civilized society. Lies tear apart the threads of communication that we so laboriously have woven together into a society.
Michael Ellis is not however, lying. He is repeating someone elses lies. Having seen the lies in their original form I find nothing at all amusing about them, but I will not EVER tolerate them in my presence unchallenged.
respectfully
BJ >
July 5th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
BJ:
As my young adult kids would say …
“Whatever!”