The government has moved to outlaw so-called legal highs following agitation by Joe Duffy. (Duffy, you might recall, is the radio presenter who decided last year to make magic mushrooms illegal).
Now, I don't frequent head shops, so I have no particular axe to grind here, but I was just wondering what precisely it was that moved the government to pass this legislation.
If the decision was based on a carefully-constructed study, backed by reasoned analysis, and founded on solid research, I'll be the first one out there cheering.
Well done, government. Down with head shops. Congratulations.
That's not a problem.
However, if the decision was not based on a carefully-constructed study, backed by reasoned analysis, and founded on solid research, but instead was based on the blurtings of an overbearing, populist, cynical radio presenter, well shame on them.
If it turns out that the government passed this legislation because Duffy told them to do so, it illustrates once again how lacking this country is in leadership and what an ineffectual government we have.
Anyway, I wish this initiative well. No doubt it will have the same resounding success as the banning of heroin, cocaine and marijuana.
Another example of the state inventing victimless crimes, while putting the trade of materials exclusively into the hands of dangerous criminals. All at the behest of the professional kvetchers. What we are seeing here is exactly the same situation that led up to Prohibition, the criminalization of marijuana usage (see the film Reefer Madness) and similar disastrous policies. The Methodist preachers have just been replaced by Joe Duffy and TV3 'journalists'. We seem to learn nothing. And when an actual scientist discovers something the 'concerned citizens' might not want to hear, they just get fired or silenced by whatever Scottish Puritan is in power.
Remember the words of Milton Friedman, on legalizing drugs:
"I see America with half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, then thousand fewer homicides a year, inner cities in which there's a chance for these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they're sure of the quality. You know, the same thing happened under prohibition of alcohol as is happening now (with drugs)."
Bock,I don't frequent these places either and I have to agree with you.Look at all the evidence and studies they must have about the harmful effects of alcohol and nicotine.Why don't they close all the pubs and take cigarettes off the shelves?I heard some of these idiots on the radio talking about celebrating the closure of these shops by heading to the pub for a few drinks.They can't see the wood for the trees.
Yes, yes, but more importantly tell us Bock "How d-d-d-did you FEEL when they banned the head shops?"
::
I don't frequent headshops either, I didn't even know that there is a term like 'legal drugs'. I once was in a so-called headshop in Ennis because I admired a lovely Indian throw with blue elephants on it in their window display – and bought it.
But I never even imagined that blue elephants on a throw could be legal drugs.
Considering legal drugs I look suspiciously at my bottle of Semillon-Chardonnay and my Drum roll-ups. They are officially legal drugs, or not? I mean, like a pint of Guinness?
Anyway. Isn't it very Chavista (Hugo Chávez) that the Irish government listens to the people's voice? Or such like? How very social and socialist. There's hope, or so.
The people. The ones who are downridden and oppressed by poverty, corruption and the rich who have a voice – unlike them. The people – represented by Joe Duffy who has a voice. Though a grating one.
Wait a minute! People? Duffy? Government? Drug interests? Legal? Illegeal? Headshops? Headcases?
Does that mean that one has to be a headshop-headcase populist on the wireless to influence Irish legislation? That one only needs to be on the right (sic!) side of the legal pint to have a voice?
Sorry if all that sounds confused. I'm on legal drugs (Semillon-whatever). But at least I pay, besides outrageous prices, loads of taxes on my shmilonchardny and my fags.
But that's Irish policies for you and me.
I still love my blue elephants though.
I don't know if Head shops had a VAT liability, but presumably they did, According to most media coverage they were turning over app 200k per week per shop, Thats over 40k in VAT to the Revenue per week per individual business, Thats some loss to the Revenue in these striken times.
I have no interest in Head shops but the continual driving "underground " of such places will not prevent the harm caused to the people who are intent in altering their consciousness by such means.
@True norma, it won't fully stop people who are determined to get fucked up from finding something to snort or smoke.
But it will stop people from wandering in off the streets, to try it out.
Not wanting to to get into the whole ethical debate here, and I agree with the sentiments of the article in general, but what we have here is to me a clear case of having a backyard full of vipers which have now been joined by a family of scorpions. Well, we don't have the means (though, we should have ) to kill the snakes, but we can still squish the scorpions, they sure aren't helping matters.
What the government has done here (whether for the right or wrong reason) is to ban an idea.
The effects of tobacco and alchohol, as bad as they are, are at least
a) well known and
b) demonstrably not overly destructive to society as a whole
Therefore it's pretty safe to continue to allow them. Head shop substances, on the other hand, cannot prove that they tick a and b above, and in order for that to happen, someone has to spend a lot of time and money researching their effects.
During that time you can't sell them anyway, because there is a question mark over the products. Plus after your two years nobody is interested any more, because there's something new to stuff up your nose.
So who exactly is supposed to pay for 2 or 3 years of study for these products? Are the Headshop owners going to fund this? I doubt it. They just want to sell their junk and make their money, and that people would actually believe that when the Headshop owners tell us "they're not that dangerous, really" is pretty sad. Of course they're going to say that!
And finally, much as I fucking HATE Joe Duffy, please, he had nothing to do with this. He happened to latch onto it around the same time as the wave of public and state interest in headshops broke. A surfer catching a lucky wave on a calm day, nothing more.
Check some headlines from the UK 5-6 years ago, when they started to deal with a similar problem, it's been slowly building up here too.
Steve: I sincerely doubt anything sold in these shops can do more damage to society than alcohol consumption currently does. So, they sell paraphernalia for smoking already illegal marijuana, but when was the last time you heard of someone dying from a marijuana overdose?
This is a dangerous encroachment to civil liberties in so many respects. Why does society get so mad when it comes to the War on Drugs, seeming to forget all common sense? When Israel bulldozes the house of a terrorist, as an economic penalty for engaging in crime, the world goes nuts. Committees are formed against collective punishment, boycotts are organised (how ironic – a form of collective punishment!). But when police in America or to an extent Ireland seize the property of a family without due process of law, merely claiming it has some connection with the drug trade, people cheer it as a job well done. Things like this undermine constitutional protection, just like banning these substances and creating victimless crimes (the sole privilege of the state) is immoral and creates criminals in the first place.
Steve, is it "safe" to continue to allow alcohol and tobacco? Not overly destructive to society as a whole? Really? How many people die from the effects of alcoholism every year, ignoring the social consequences of its misuse. As Joe Duffy has said when challenges with this;
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide, lung cancer topping the bill with around 1.3 million deaths in 2004, and rising. Smoking is a leading cause of lung cancer, not mentioning the part it plays in other cancers (such as colorectal). I agree with TSW, there is an abandonment of common sense when it comes to certain drugs and the law. I can point you to a recent paper published by the lancet that rates both alcohol and tobacco as both more addictive and destructive than cannabis and ecstasy.
@TSW / @Irate
"but when was the last time you heard of someone dying from a marijuana overdose?" — Never, but then again that's because it's practically impossible to consume enough MJ to kill yourself, because it would have put you to sleep long before that.
However, I do know several people whose lives have been destroyed by constant over-usage of the drug. Yes, people's lives have been ruined by alchohol as well. And they have been ruined by World of Warcraft, too. So why do we want to allow the addition of another potential life-destroying habit into the mix?
Also, a lot of people "seriously doubted" that smoking was really all that bad for you just 50 years ago. Oops.
And as for Civil liberties – I don't understand how this is an erosion of civil liberties. Do you mean that civilians should be allowed to buy anything they want? How about tanks or Rocket Launchers (designed for Military use, ha ha)?
Re. the death rate; I would point out that we don't have comparable statistics when it comes to deaths from other drugs simply because not enough people do take them on a regular basis. And this is in part because of their illegal status.
That being said, my comment on the "non-destructiveness" of alcohol and tobacco wasn't too bright looking back; I meant it more in the sense that I haven't seen any publicans burning down their competitors, nor have I ever heard of anyone developing psychosis and bottling or stabbing someone after smoking a box of marlboro.
People can turn very nasty when they run out of cigarettes in the middle of the night.
Your point about World of Warcraft is interesting. What if Joe Duffy decided it needed to be banned and brought on half a dozen addicts to describe how it destroyed their lives?
Oops indeed.
Thats correct Steve, the amount of cannabis needed to overdose is very large indeed. In the use of substances there is a term called the risk ratio, the amount of the drug needed to have an effect relative to the amount needed to induce death. Cannabis has a risk ratio of 1:1000, alcohol is 1:10 if memory serves me well. Why not act on the cold hard facts..ban alcohol and legalise cannabis? What do you think Joe Duffy's opinion would be on this?
If you want to look at the statistics I would direct you to the Cochrane Collaboration website, possibly the most important web-site I can think of. Its run be a very nice group of people who collect all the results from all the decent studies conducted on a particular intervention and perform a meta analysis. They give you an un-biased look at that particular intervention.
Nobody has mentioned so far that "Lowest Common Denominator" Duffy managed to do this while collecting a bloated salary on the state broadcaster payed for by the taxpayer.
Perhaps aul' Joe thought that seeing as he was making an exaggerated and undeserved salary at the taxpayers expense, in a public position with little or no accountablity, he was a member of government.
Its all about the money. That's the key. And even though the brown envelopes have been changed for a less obvious colour, it's still about the money. Nothing else, without exception; absolutely nothing motivates Fianna Fáil politicians as does the promise of money in reward for 'services' rendered.
I don't know if anyone needs to think overly long about that to see it.
Unstranger – "I don’t know if anyone needs to think overly long about that to see it."
I think that's just it. Most people do see it, plainly, but accept it. It's like some kind of acceptance has taken hold and in typical Irish fashion we say, 'Ah sure, you wouldn't trust an honest politician'.
We seem to be like Italians in that respect.
Steve: 'I would point out that we don’t have comparable statistics when it comes to deaths from other drugs simply because not enough people do take them on a regular basis. And this is in part because of their illegal status.'
I don't think this is accurate. The decriminalization of marijuana use (to an extent) in Holland demonstrates that there was no massive upturn in marijuana use after it became legally available. The fact is, anyone who wants illegal drugs now can have them. Its the same with guns and gambling. It was the same during Prohibition. Sumptuary laws have no place in the 21st Century, and are ineffective anyways. These laws violate basic principles of natural rights and are a highly dangerous encroach onto civil liberties. Drugs today are made more expensive, and of a lower and more dangerous quality, by being banned. And of course criminals have a monopoly on them thanks to government. Prohibition gave us the phenomenon of 'bathtub gin' (illegally produced alcohol) which caused problems ranging from death to blindness. That is why I believe, as do most serious experts, that there will be less drug-related deaths if they become legally available. Milton Friedman, as above, estimated no less than 10,000 fewer homicides per year in America if the War on Drugs ended.
The government is destroying lives every day pursuing these insane policies. It has become barbaric. I believe legalising drugs should be the number one priority of sensible voters, and sensible lawmakers.
On guns: some countries have a fine tradition of civilian gun-ownership and do just fine. Switzerland, Israel and Canada enjoy low crime rates of practically all kinds. I believe the former two and perhaps the third have more firearms per capita than the United States. Even in the US, assault weapons are used in less than one percent of violent crimes. A child is hundreds of times more likely to drown in a backyard pool than being shot in a gun accident/violent crime. I carried an 'illegal' firearm (a Glock) in college when I was in Dublin, and I don't regret it. Making gun ownership a crime, where it isn't now, will make criminals out of law-abiding citizens. The push for bans on cheap firearms or 'Saturday Night Specials' will hurt the poor and are racist is many respects.
You own yourself, people. Guns and drugs are inanimate objects. Only the person who uses them can do harm. The answer lies always in personal responsibility, not oppressive legislation.
thesystemworks…for once I find myself in total agreement with you.Never thought that day would come.
William – "thesystemworks…for once I find myself in total agreement with you.Never thought that day would come."
Dito, and that's twice today!
One thing about the gun ownership, when one looks at violence in Ireland, especially street violence, their seems to be a tendancy to use anything at hand, bottles knives, ashtray, screwdrivers, anything. And the possible extent of the damage caused often doesn't seem to count. I wonder if the availability of fire arms wouldn't just result in a higher death toll due to the same level of violence.
Bock – getting back to the original point, yes, Joe did it, but the Head Shops issue provided a nice righteous smoke-screen for the Government for a few weeks. Joe also got the gardai in Thurles to get their fingers out and tackle the Delaney thugs recently. Populism works.
On the sub-issue @thesystemworks – why did you feel it necessary to carry a Glock in college in Dublin? I'm finding it hard to reconcile the idea of somebody who wants the career and personal benefits of a college course, but is willing to gamble those benefits every day by carrying such a thing into college? I'm fairly sure that if the gun had been detected, your college career would have been abruptly terminated idem die.
Nuts
Cest la craic..regarding the gun issue.The thing about Ireland is the thugs have a safe and victim rich environment to operate in but in a heavily armed society the balance of power if you like is thrown in the opposite direction and they operate in a highly dangerous environment.As system states there are a lot of countries in the world with high gun ownership and very low crime rates.And as he states guns are inanimate objects so where there are high crime rates its not the fault of a piece of mechanical engineering.Same applies to road deaths etc not much point saying its the cars fault.At the end of the day society has got to regulate itself from the bottom up not from the top down or as system calls it Personal responsibility.And on a final note I think I would prefer the protection offered by Smith and Wesson to that offered by Fachtna Murphy any day.
Alcohol can't be banned because of its use in Religion, to demonstrate drinking Christs blood, how fucking sick is that when you consider it, eating his body and drinking his blood? And I'm a weirdo because I smoke the bud of a plant. Head shops were grand until they started the legal highs (that actually worked), but these guys have been selling legal highs for years, herbal E's and so on, it was that most of them didn't work. But whats astonishing is this: If we can ban headshops, commiting their owners to criminal status, then why is the Publican classed as the TD's best ally and friend to the state?
I've used head shops for their intended purpose, generally to pick up skins/roach and about 10 years ago the odd T-shirt "I like the Pope, the Pope smokes Dope" was one. I think we should ban Joe Duffy, Ban RTE, ban all national broadcasts with state agenda's to smokescreen society, where the fuck was Joe Duffy when it came to handing some money back, Joe Duffy became a very wealthy man off state deals in wages and scrappages, he's a Bill Cullen mouth on a stick, up the FF brigade, cause people who can't afford bread are back buying cars.
Pricks the lot of them, I don't drink, so ban pubs, they have an adverse affect on my life and the standards of general health and safety in society, every leading doctor and nurses union have said the influence of alcohol has increased and crippled our A&E services and the police are undermanned because no Garda with half an ounce of sense is wantingly going to stand the streets of any of our major towns and cities now for the mix of Cocaine/Drink and Steroid fueled mahem.
"The Leaves on the trees are for the healing of the Nations" or something like that.
I'm not surprised about being agreed with on this one. This 'War on Drugs' we are funding is all too often racist, all too often raged against the sick and the dying. Some 'war' indeed. Its an atrocity happening on all our doorsteps. We have deprived cancer patients of the marijuana that can help them respond better to treatment. We are depriving the elderly of their eyesight. AIDS victims of the substance that can restore their appetite. This is pathetic. It is making the world a worse place for the poorest and most vulnerable. Its heartbreaking.
What does that have to do with race? I don't think cannabis helps people respond better to treatment, rather eases the symptoms and pain.
@TSW:
Guns. Oh dear. My comment about people buying guns was just an example. but since you bring it up; in the US they have a constitutional right to bear arms for two very simple reasons.
One, because back in the day being a white-man on the frontier without a gun meant you would not survive, since you couldn't hunt, and couldn't effectively defend yourself against the muck savage heathen injuns.
Two, because when they drafted their constitution, they very cleverly figured that allowing the popoulace to remain armed was a handy way of ensuring that no government could get too big for its boots. Not that this has worked out too well for them, but those are the reasons.
That's why they used to hang horse-thieves as well, because a horse was also a livlihood on the frontier.
Now, as it happens I agree 100% with their right to bear arms, because of their historic reasons. But I would vehemently oppose the introduction of the same rights here, because our historic reasons for having guns were purely military and as a society we wouldn't be able to handle it.
Now, as for the other point about mj and legalising it –I really think we're getting off track as regards the OP, but I'll bite anyway. I'm not here to preachabout the "evils" of mj, any more so than of any other narcotic substance.
And I fully agree that tobacco and alchohol can be, as IC pointed out, deadly, and you know, perhaps they should be banned. But I don't think that I have any kind of moral right though to tell people that they can't have a drink so I won't even try.
But when it comes to mj, and other illegal drugs, relatively harmless though they may be, making them legal will only legalise existing criminal elements. You do realise of course that the same people who import grass into the country also import heroin and cocaine, amongst other things, and are not above killing people who get in their way, don't you? That the global trade of these substances is so firmly in the grasp of criminals who will go to war to prevent it being taken from them?
What do you imagine would happen if this were to become legal…that somehow magically "the government" or some new "department of stoned" would just start growing it and selling it in the shops and everyone could get toasted, nicely toasted, in a cloud of fragrant smoke, and the drug dealers would be out of business?That's a bit naieve, isn't it? I mean, most people reading this post own something that was built in a sweatshop by kids working 18 hours a day for a pittance, be it a t-shirt or shoes or maybe the heatsink on your CPU. Yet the factory owners who by international treaty arte criminals, are legally allowed to sell the goods into your country because as a matter of expediency, it allows us to get what we want cheaply – why do people think it would be any different with drugs like mj?
Holland is always touted as a great example of how legalising mj works – but that completely ignores the fact that a large percentage of the mj sold in the legalised cafes is, in fact, illegally supplied and comes from OUTSIDE the Netherlands from organised drug cartels. So iIn fact all they did when they legalised it was to "solve" the problem by ignoring it.
Also, the thing in mj that helps cancer patients respond to chemo and Adis victims eat is called THC, and its easily synthesised. So we don't need mj for these people. Just THC.
Finally the notion that alchohol consumtption increased during Prohibition is just that; an unproven idea. Its never been actually shown to have had a detrimental effect on the health of the populace and in fact research exists that shows it actually improved because people on average did drink less.
Steve — Interesting points worth thinking about. For now, I'm just wondering where home-grown fits into that argument.
Steve: there was a decline in alcohol consumption during Prohibition, but it wasn't spectacular. Church membership and attendance went up, but problems relating to alcohol that the messianics claimed would end if alcohol were banned (street violence, 'idleness' etc.) showed no signs of diminishing. Everyone agrees that the benefits were more than offset by the problems. Milton Friedman, who was in college during Prohibition, assured people that he and his friends had no problem obtaining alcohol at the time, mostly from waiters at nearby crooked restaurants. Organised crime benefited greatly from all this, of course, thanks to their new-found monopoly given to them by the government. And countless people died from impurities in home made alcohol. Police corruption also became an epidemic. Today, half of all police officers convicted on corruption charges are involved in incident related to the illegal drugs trade. The former chief of police in Seattle, Norm Stamper, has written well about this and is a passionate opponent of the War on Drugs. The reality is that a sick relationship always develops in these cases, between police and drug dealers, or the police and the likes of Al Capone in the 1920s. This would end if the trade were made legal. And I am talking about all drugs, not just marijuana. While marijuana has the strongest case for legalisation, I see no reason why it cannot extend to cocaine and heroin.
As for the organised criminals remaining in business, it seems like a good point on the face of it but it is really very hollow. Legitimate businessmen would flood into the market and quickly dominate. After Prohibition, it did not take long for this to happen. If the drugs trade got legalised in more places in the world, less and less of the supply would have to come from professional criminal sources. Prohibition did not exist in the countries where America imported much of its alcohol from. The people of America after Prohibition did not end up funding foreign criminal cartels when they bought their scotch or Caribbean rum. We in the UK would not be funding criminals if we could import magic mushrooms from legitimate businessmen in the Czech Republic, if the trade were made legal EU-wide, for instance.
P.S. I see no reason to make criminals out of sweatshop owners. It hurts the children. The progress of private enterprise and the accumulation of capital is what will end child labour, as it did in Britain (don't let the statists fool you into believing the law did). Only when it becomes economically unnecessary for children to work will child labour end. When Britain introduced regulations on child labour, child labour did not stop. The children just went to smaller, out of the way enterprises that were not inspected as much. Or they roamed the country as prostitutes. Prostitution exploded in Britain after every major child labour regulation. Again, the government will not solve this problem as long as it is economically necessary in households in poor countries for children to work. The factories, harsh as they may be, provide a better wages than anything else open to children. It is often the only refuge from starvation. It may sound cold, but we in the UK had to go through this stage ourselves in the early stages of industrialisation. Countries going through the wonderous early development of industry experience this phenomenon. But the children are of course better off – prior to industrial development things would have been much worse for the average family toiling (children included) on small farms or in cottage industries. But these children have always been less noticeable to the Charles Dickens-type people in the world.
William – "I would prefer the protection offered by Smith and Wesson to that offered by Fachtna Murphy any day."
There' a t-shirt to be had out of that.
@Bock, actually I would have zero problem with someone who grows their own, nobody gets hurt and its their business. OK, sure, you had to buy the saplings or whatever they are called, from someone but it's a once-off evil in that respect.
@TSW: If my argument is hollow, yours is thoroughly broken.
"Legitimate businessmen would flood into the market and quickly dominate. " No, they wouldn't. That's the point.
All you would do is legitimise the existing suppliers. Why would you invest millions of euros (or dollar or whatever) building growth facilities, creating supply chains, storage facilities, etc, etc, when you can just have the stuff delivered to your store pre-bagged and ready for sale, from someone *who already grows it?*
Answer: You wouldn't, unless you were insane and wanted to lose all your money.
Why is it, do you think, that Tesco and Dunnes stores buy their stock from 3rd party suppliers who simply put "Tesco" on one tin of beans and "Dunnes" on the next?
Again, I will cite Holland, where years after legalisation they are *still* not legally growing the vast amount of mj that is being sold in the cafes, they are buying it in from existing narcotic supply chains. But they simply turn a blind eye to it, do not regulate it, and can therefore pretend that as a problem, it doesn't exist.
Where is your army of legitimate business men?
As for the child labour stuff, well, perhaps that is an argument for another day because it's a minefield in and of itself, suffice to say that if you actually don't have a problem with it then it will sure be one hell of a debate!
'I think I would prefer the protection offered by Smith and Wesson to that offered by Fachtna Murphy any day.'
Its a great quote and reminds me of my first real experience with guns. Walking the streets of Baltimore (the mostly bad one in Maryland, not the pleasant spot in Cork) I and a friend were approached by a number of coloured men, guys you would definitely hide the silverware from if for some reason brought them to your home. A knife was held up to me and I was asked for my money, not very politely. My friend Avram pulled out his pistol. Suddenly, a yeshiva bochur and my 14-year old self were a a match for a group of big, black street kids who had probably mugged hundreds of times before. A gun is a great equaliser.
The Latin maxim 'Lex injusta non est lex' has always appealed to me. Which is why I carry firearms where I'm forbidden. Its to fight an unjust system in my own, quiet way. But at least I did something, I can say to myself.
P.S. A drug dealer indeed becomes a legitimate businessman if drugs are legalised, if he engages in no other illegal activity. I haven't got a major problem with that. Its still a much better situation than we have now, in terms of monitoring the product and such. That businessman can now be sued in court should impurities exist in the product, which they do now in abundance, for instance. As the years go by, the criminals will be replaced with legitimate businessmen. After all, you can imagine the tobacco companies, with all their resources, just waiting to buy them all out.
Wow.
You actually carry illegal firearms because your own sense of justice supercedes the laws of the society you live in, and you rationalise that your own personal feeling of "protection" trumps my right to bring my kids into town with reasonable confidence that Charles Bronson isn't walking around the place.
How is carrying a gun helping you to "fight an unjust system"? Did the gun in your story go on to become the mayor of Baltimore and institute massive social change that got gangs off the street? Did brandishing the gun at the youths make them decide to change their lives? So you didn't get robbed, good for you, do you think it would have been worth your friend taking another man's life over a few dollars?
And if you think that it's OK to simply legitimise criminals, in the hope that they will somehow magically be reformed and start filing VAT returns and cease all other criminal activities…please, give me a break! I'd love to see the Colombians, Mexicans Afghani warlords and so forth, who have gone to war against their own government and in some cases, won for trying to interfere with their rioutously profitable enterprises, suddenly agreeing to give their factory workers pensions and VHI.
And last I checked, you can't effectively mass-produce mj OR opium in a Northern European climate without massive investment which will simply not happen because the bloody supply already exists from elsewhere.
Steve…why should he and his friend hand over their property to anyone!!.What if the scenario had been that he was walking with his wife and they wanted to rape her.Given your philosophy no doubt you would expect that he stands back and offers them a condomThe right to self defence is an absolute right and to fuck with stupid laws when it comes to that.Much better to end up being judged by twelve than carried by six.
We can start a discussion about illegal firearms on a new thread if you like. This one is about head-shops.
I see some of the head shops in Cork are open again, was hoping someone would call Liveline to gloat.
@William – My philosophy as stated is simply that a man's life is worth more than a bit of money, at no point did I intimate that he doesn't have the right to protect his property.
If someone threatened to rape my wife I'd tear their throat out with my teeth and to hell with their knives, but carrying a weapon designed solely for the purpose of ending another human's life is predisposing yourself to using it at some point. As such, it has no place anywhere except a combat zone where it can be reasonably expected that other people will be actively trying to fuck you up. As bad and all as Irish cities may be, they are not that bad!!
So your choice of parallel doesn't fit.
@Bock, Very kind of you to offer, I was hoping we could steer it back to the headshops eventually, I will stop talking about guns now, sorry!
Nicotine is one of the most addicting substance in this world so avoid smoking cigarettes.~~`
I've smoked, snorted and chewed on my fair share of illicit substances over the years but I have to agree with the ban on head shop products. At least with alcohol, cannabis, MDMA etc the short term and long term physical and mental impacts are known. Papers have been written about them. You take these drugs and you know what will or can happen and more importantly, if you end up in the casualty room the doctors will know how to treat you. The head shop products are being marketed as being safe, harmless and natural (in some cases). This gives a false sense of security to younger experimenters which IMO is wrong.
I experimented with Smoke and Spice because they were touted as being 100% natural alternatives that had "no adverse effects". Total bullshit. I had two very bad experiences with both Smoke and Spice which involved partial loss of consciousness, involuntary spasms, loss of vision, difficulty breathing and a rapid and severe drop in blood pressure. It took a few weeks to get over this and the doctor said that I had developed anxiety from the experience. The whole experience was so bad that I quit taking any recreational drugs because of it which looking back was a blessing as I feel healthier now than I have in decades:)
I can't stand Joe Duffy either but I think the Head Shops are more dangerous than dealers. Plenty of kids will try something they can buy over the counter legally but will shy away from dealing with a scumbag street dealer. Glad to see Head Shops go out of business.
@Grim,
glad to hear you managed to put it all behind you, just as a matter of interest, did you (or anyone you know) ever go back to the HS to complain that what they gave you was pure poison? And if so, what was the response?
Just interested to know…
I'm glad for anybody who quits taking drugs, as well as smoking cigarettes and recovering from alcoholism. That does not mean I will ever desire a ban on all those products.
Joe"im from Ballyfermot,man of the people"Duffy on 350k a year. Think he gives a shite about peoples problems? This is the same Duffy who devoted an almost complete Liveline programme to Bertie Aherns"retirement" with a brain numbing conversation with older brother Maurice Ahern about how great a man Bertie was. In a subsequent election the people of Dublin told Maurice where exactly he should go. Joe Duffy….Fianna Fail election agent.
The only reason this shite was passed is because the government realised they would get brownie points for it. As usual, like the Syringe legislation in the 90s, it was jumped on and passed in no time, without any proper thought. Its amazing that with all the protests that have occurred in the last number of months, the only thing the government have listened to is this! They truly are looking out for our health!