Interesting times on Ch 4

For those interested in the war on drugs and why it's not working, take a look at tonight's documentary on Channel 4 at 8pm. Called 'Our Drugs War'.

Let's remember the government wants ideas on how we might save billions. The drugs war costs £1.5B per year. Quite a bit less than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - from which we are withdrawing. Should we consider the drugs war in the upcoming comprehensive spending review and consider withdrawing from that war too?

Let's see.

Oh, dearie me, bodybuilders at it again

Following on from the steroids worry, now it's human growth hormone. Wanna look buffed and ripped? Human growth hormone (HGH) is the stuff for the gym bunnies, steroids are so yesterday. The trouble is, as with steroids, nobody really knows what long-term, high-dose use of HGF will do to you. In the short-term it seems to do the same as steroids, i.e. you can train harder for longer and recover more quickly, thus eventually achieving that coveted look. Huge muscles, little fat and bulging veins so beloved of door operatives like the late Mr Moat. Once again, bodybuilders are proving themselves to be willing human labs, taking the drugs to get the effects they desire before any real research has come out about long-term use and side effects. And, as with other illicit/grey area drugs who is making the stuff and to what standards is unknown. So there are the risks as with steroids of dodgy gear coming out of dodgy labs with little regard for the end user's and the wider public's health. HGH has been implicated in the possible spread of CJD (Mad Cow disease) and as it's injected the usual risks of poor injection hygeine go along with it.

What should we do?

In the short term, don't ban it, regard it as a health not a criminal problem, get researching and if you are using it; make sure you trust your supplier and have a ready access to clean drugs and injecting equipment. Will this happen? Some of it might, guess which though?

BTW - this photo was uploaded from a generic site with no photo credit. No intention to suggest that the guys in the photo are using, have used any drugs.

Sick and Dead

Well, I was (though it pains me to say it) on the money in my last post, especially about Moat's last post. He's dead, killed by his own hand or that of the police, or a mix of both. We've yet to see what part steroids played in his final week but probably not a very significant one.

But what sickens me about the whole sorry saga is the disgraceful behaviour of so many people. If you want to see what a fairly representative selection of the police thought about it visit police blogs. I like PC Bloggs , she's consistently funny and informative and, despite her sometimes snidey comments about the public/media/crims/colleagues I detect (no pun intended) a deep-seated liberal disposition. She mentions 'The Guardian' a lot. But OMG you should read some of the stuff her colleagues write in response to her pieces. Bigoted, racist, stringing up's too good for them and in some cases nauseating self-pity. Yes, the police have a tough job, yes they put their lives on the line, but so do many other public servants.

I couldn't believe the ghastly TV footage of Moat's last minutes, the ghoulish print pictures and articles and now Moat's family queuing up to slag off the police. Actually, given the circs I thought they (the police) did a reasonable job: a) They found him, b) another Whitehaven did not happen, c) no one else was killed. In all probability Moat did kill himself, Tasered or not he would have done so anyway. It's what sociopaths do, it's the ultimate control-freakery because it denies us all the chance to see him in court and satisfy ourselves that he pays the price for his crimes. Shipman did the same. When they do these things i.e. suicide it's the final act of control, cant control anything else, then they control the manner of their death.

Bit of a rant there, just wanted it off my chest.

Roid Rage

Raoul Mote is no doubt a very bad man. He has already killed a police officer, wounded another and his former girlfriend. Today he is still at large, well armed and hiding out in a vast tract of Northumbria, England.

The story, awful though it is, is already following a predictable arc in our media. Inevitably he will be caught or killed - then comes the investigation in to what went wrong. In fact it's already started with the usual whining from the media about why the police haven't caught him yet. Mostly the whining is coming from the very same media who want to see massive cuts in public spending, including the police. But I digress.

The drugs angle? Anabolic Steroids. Allegedly Mote was/is a bodybuilding ex-doorman. As those of his ilk often do he apparently used steroids to assist his gym workouts. What steroids do is allow the body to recover more quickly from heavy exercise than might otherwise be possible - thus increasing the amount and frequency of training and so leading to that bulked up look so favoured of bouncers. The downside? Lots of side effects:

• Raised blood pressure.
• Increased risk of heart and breathing problems.
• Risk of blood-borne diseases through poor injecting technique and hygiene.
• Tiny testicles.
• Mental health problems.

What the media will focus on is 'roid-rage'. Yes, steroids can cause unpredictable mood swings. But what they most likely do is exacerbate pre-existing mental health or emotional conditions. So if you're very angry already, you get angrier still.

We'll see calls for more legislation, a parliament gagging for cheap votes which will support upping the legal costs of using steroids, the inevitable driving underground (further) of steroid use and zero impact on the use of steroids.

So, no change there then huh?

ACMD 2

The ACMD (UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) is the government's statutory committee, which as the name suggests advises Ministers on illicit drug matters. It has a long and mostly distinguished history of providing top quality, objective and science-based views on illicit drugs, or on drugs which are thought to be risky and government thinks may need to be legislated against. Arguably its greatest day was its delivery of two reports in the mid-eighties on AIDS and drug misuse. If you can't be bothered to read these landmark reports then all you need to know is that the key point was that AIDS was/is more dangerous to individuals and society than drug misuse. The reports ushered in officially sanctioned harm-reduction measures such as needle exchange schemes, easy and free distribution of condoms and a huge drive to encourage drug users, especially injectors in to contact with specialist services. The result was a tiny rate of HIV infection amongst English and Welsh users (Scotland and NI went their own way) at around 2% compared with rates of up to 70% + in other countries.

But in the latter part of last year it reached a low point when it produced a report on Cannabis arguing that the drug should not be re-upgraded to Class B under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. It had been downgraded to C, the least dangerous category a few years before and use had declined. The ACMD argued that upgrading did not reflect its real risks (low compared to other illicit drugs) and would result in an increased attractiveness to potential users.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister, a puritan wishing to flash his hard-man credentials and desperate to shore up a sinking premiership decided before the report emerged that it - the drug would be classified as a 'B'. This was a decision almost without precedent; minister(s) deciding on a view and action in advance of their own adviser's consideration. The ACMD disagreed, said 'no' to a regrade. The chairman of the committee was sacked for saying at a scientific lecture that cannabis was not as dangerous as horse-riding. And everyone wondered what the point of all advisory committees might be in the future.

Of course ministers are not obliged to agree with advisory committees' views, they have to take many other issues in to account when deciding on policy. But they chose to disagree about the science saying that Cannabis was a more dangerous drug than the committee thought it was. Had they come out and said, well, it does cause distress to a small number of people so on balance to avoid that we'll upgrade it; most people might not have agreed but would have taken the point. By choosing to argue the science rather than wider issues they shot themselves and the committee in the foot(s).

Now the sacked ACMD chairman, the wonderfully named psychiatrist, Professor David Nutt has set up his own independent ACMD whilst the actual one has a new chairman. The last thing drugs policy needs is yet another committee/pressure group/advisory council and no one will believe that future actual ACMD reports are a) truly independent of government pressure and b) paid any attention to by ministers. A sad decline from the brilliance and bravado of the AIDS reports.

Back again with added Morphine

I haven't posted for a long time. Mostly because I've been very ill and then recovering for almost a year and was obviously unwell - in retrospect, for some time before acute illness set in. Friends, family and colleagues tell me I look better now than I have done in two years. So that's why I haven't posted for some time. Too toxic and messed up for a year or so before the acute illness and convalescing after.

When I was very ill and in hospital, for reasons I won't go in to I suffered absolutely agonising pain and after 2 shots of pethidine and various oral painkillers which had no effect I requested, and was given intravenous (iv) morphine. The Professor of Surgery looking after me told me that the pain I was feeling was up there equivalent to that suffered during child-birth, heart attack or from kidney stones. Ouch.

Well Sister Morphine's gentle caress did the business. Although the drip ran constantly I could supplement the regular dose with self-administered extra if I needed it - which I did. I didn't find the drug induced euphoria but it did stop me feeling the pain. Although I knew the pain was still there, frankly I didn't care as long as it just stopped hurting. After twenty-four hours the cause of my pain had rested, thanks to Sister M and I only needed one dose of oral morphine after coming off the drip. Then I could cope on ordinary paracetamol-based analgesia.

This was all very interesting from a professional point of view as I had never been on the receiving end of pure pharmaceutical morphine before then. My wife tells me I did blather on for a bit whilst on the drip but subjectively I felt calm and lucid. Also very interesting was the wildly differing attitude of the various nurses taking care of me whilst I was mainlining (in a good way) that fine chemical. One or two of the nurses (all qualified I might add) freaked and kept checking on me every five minutes and ticked me off for self administering. I discovered that despite a limiter I could repeat self-administer after every seven minutes, so I just kept banging away until the pain stopped - much to these nurses' consternation. Other staff were much more relaxed and encouraged me - one even saying that, 'we really need to get on top of this (the pain)'. So from this highly unscientific study it seems that some nurses are terrified of morphine and it being controlled by the patient, whilst others, rightly in my view, see it as the nurses and patients friend.

New Puritans

O M Gosh. Is it me or are there an astonishing number of stories in our oh-so-clean media about the dangers of alcohol? I can hardly open a paper, switch on the radio or hit a news website without a constant stream of sometimes accurate/sometimes not, stuff leaking out about the horrors - alledged - of the pop. Given that hacks are dedicated boozers as a rule this is interesting.

What's more interesting is does this tell us anything about the current climate re: booze? I think it may do.

• Young people drinking too much = binge drinking. Middle classes drinking too much = dinner party. One's ok, the other isn't.
• Endless fears about pregnancy, parenthood and alcohol.
• More fears about the health/ASB impacts of alcohol.

And so on. And before I get it in the neck from my police chums - I've been to the bars where you drink and the institutional bingeing and in some cases expectation that everyone gets hammered after a shift is/are awesome.

My point is this. We can't take drugs, you can't smoke cigs, now it seems no one is allowed to drink. But as humans we seem programmed for the desire to experience altered states of consciousness, achieved in all sorts of ways be it religious ecstasy, spinning round as kids till we drop, drugs, whatever. And if the New Puritans force people away from drug #1 they'll switch to #2. Here's a lesson. In the 80's and 90's the drug Ecstasy was hugely popular - up to half a million doses taken each Saturday night. But those who took it fore swore alcohol. Ecstasy was judged to be more fun, less violence inducing (difficult to smack someone in the face when you're loved up) and an all-round improvement on booze. But the combination of crackdowns on Ecstasy-fuelled parties and the aggressive advertising and reductions in price of alcohol led people to ditch so much E and go back or on to booze. With the results we see on our streets and in our A+E depts every night. You reap what you sew. Yes there were a few sad E related deaths and injuries but they were/are as nothing compared to the damage caused by alcohol. So what will happen if the current anti-booze campaign continues? People will switch back to something else e.g. Ecstasy. So it goes.