Peaches Geldof dies age 25!!!

[beorhthelm]

Believe it or not, aspirin is not lethal if taken under controlled circumstances. ALL deaths from aspirin are caused by either contaminants or because of not knowing how the unquantified potencies will react with the body.

do you see the problem with your argument?

 

[father_and_son]

Believe it or not, heroin is not lethal if taken under controlled circumstances. ALL deaths from heroin are caused by either contaminants or because of not knowing how the unquantified potencies will react with the body.

Legalising it completely would be barmy, but decriminalising it to allow addicts to get clean and quantified heroin with guidance and help from medical professionals would save lives, perhaps even Peaches. I would bet she died because she took a quantity that she had taken in the past, but she hadn't taken for some time - so she clearly did not know that her body no longer had the tolerance to cope with it. This could have been avoided if her addiction was treated as a health problem rather than a criminal one.

A clean and quantified synthetic opiate is available from medical practitioners for confirmed addicts... its called methadone. In order to gain access to it through legal and controlled channels you must already be an addict, which means having had exposure to the unregulated version on a persistent basis. Obtaining it means entering a program to resolve your addiction and therefore is not an option for someone no prepared or not yet ready to face that challenge.

How do you control access to your decriminalised drug without making it readily available to anyone who asks for it? Who's paying for this?

What proportion of addicts (to anything... drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc) are willing to register as an addict? What proportion with a problem even admit it's a problem?

Your logic is flawed because all it does it make it easy and safe for someone already addicted to maintain that addiction. How then do you propose to motivate people to beat their addiction if you have removed the danger, the difficulty of access and the stigma? - there are no longer consequences.

 

[jackanada]

A clean and quantified synthetic opiate is available from medical practitioners for confirmed addicts... its called methadone. .

Methadone is used because drug companies can make money from it. It is just as addictive as Heroin and is also more toxic.

 

[Nibble]

I played a heroin addict last year and spoke at length to a doctor who deals with addiction and was overseeing facts on the job. He was of the opinion that methadone just doesn't work.
He cited the example of Newcastle where North of The Tyne addicts are treated with Methadone and South of The Tyne they are treated with a program whereby pure heroin is administered in a surgery in decreasing doses over a fairly lengthy period. In the latter program the patients were able to achieve some semblance of order in their lives even before the program had ended. It had a 67% success rate. The methadone program had only an 8% success rate with most of the patients turning to alcohol during the program which then became a problem or the methadone, which is terribly nasty stuff, caused more problems than it solved. Most returned to heroin.
Interesting.

 

[El Presidente]

I played a heroin addict last year.

Did you win Nibster?

 

[Nibble]

Did you win Nibster?

SMACKed him down.

 

[jackanada]

As an aside diacetylmorphine was marketed as Heroin to appeal to women.

 

[father_and_son]

Methadone is used because drug companies can make money from it. It is just as addictive as Heroin and is also more toxic.

But the same drug companies would be manufacturing the clean and controlled heroin. They won't be doing it as a public service so the argument is meaningless.

If it didn't give the addict the same "hit" as heroin, they wouldn't use it, so inevitably it will be as addictive.

The issue is whether access to a managed quantity of a drug would in any way prevented Peaches' or Paula's deaths. And I will argue that is would have had zero bearing on either.

 

[jackanada]

But the same drug companies would be manufacturing the clean and controlled heroin. They won't be doing it as a public service so the argument is meaningless.

They wouldn't make the same profits. As part of the settlement at the end of the second world war the Bayer group gave up a large part of its trademark rights to a number of drugs, including Aspirin and Heroin.
Further Heroin can be made very efficiently from the opium poppy. A legal trade in opium poppies would do more to stabilise Afghanistan than anything tried... well, ever.

 

[Pavilionaire]

12 Nov 13: Peaches Geldof "owns" Katie Hopkins in TV debate about good parenting skills.

07 Apr 14: Peaches Geldof found dead of heroin overdose by 11-month old son.

 

[father_and_son]

They wouldn't make the same profits. As part of the settlement at the end of the second world war the Bayer group gave up a large part of its trademark rights to a number of drugs, including Aspirin and Heroin.
Further Heroin can be made very efficiently from the opium poppy. A legal trade in opium poppies would do more to stabilise Afghanistan than anything tried... well, ever.

Why wouldn't they make the same profit? Where has the sudden corporate altruism come from?

 

[beorhthelm]

They wouldn't make the same profits. As part of the settlement at the end of the second world war the Bayer group gave up a large part of its trademark rights to a number of drugs, including Aspirin and Heroin.
Further Heroin can be made very efficiently from the opium poppy. A legal trade in opium poppies would do more to stabilise Afghanistan than anything tried... well, ever.

methadone, heroin and most other similar drugs no longer have valid patents, so any pharma company can make them and sell under a generic name, which i believe methadone is anyway.

 

[El Presidente]

12 Nov 13: Peaches Geldof "owns" Katie Hopkins in TV debate about good parenting skills.

07 Apr 14: Peaches Geldof found dead of heroin overdose by 11-month old son.

Out of interest, where do you stand with Katie Hopkins on the more important Y/N/M issue?

 

[father_and_son]

They wouldn't make the same profits. As part of the settlement at the end of the second world war the Bayer group gave up a large part of its trademark rights to a number of drugs, including Aspirin and Heroin.
Further Heroin can be made very efficiently from the opium poppy. A legal trade in opium poppies would do more to stabilise Afghanistan than anything tried... well, ever.

Gave up? Or had them confiscated?

From Wikipedia...

As part of the reparations after World War I, Bayer assets, including the rights to its name and trademarks, were confiscated in the United States, Canada, and several other countries. In the United States and Canada, Bayer's assets and trademarks were acquired by Sterling Drug, a predecessor of Sterling Winthrop.

The Bayer company then became part of IG Farben, a German chemical company conglomerate. During World War II, the IG Farben used slave labor in factories attached to large slave labor camps, notably I.G. Auschwitz, and the sub-camps of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other extermination camps. After World War II, the Allies broke up IG Farben and Bayer reappeared as an individual business. The Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison during the IG Farben Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release.

 

[Triggaaar]

If it didn't give the addict the same "hit" as heroin, they wouldn't use it, so inevitably it will be as addictive.

How addictive something is, is not directly & proportionately related to how good the hit is. It's the consequences of withdrawal that makes it addictive.

 

[El Presidente]

How addictive something is, is not directly & proportionately related to how good the hit is. It's the consequences of withdrawal that makes it addictive.

That's what the pope says too.

 

[Billy the Fish]

If it didn't give the addict the same "hit" as heroin, they wouldn't use it, so inevitably it will be as addictive.

It doesn't though. I think that's why it's generally accepted that the mathadone programme doesn't work, as nibble has already said.

 

[Bold Seagull]

As an aside diacetylmorphine was marketed as Heroin to appeal to women.

Is that true?

I always thought it was from the German word 'heroisch', translated to heroic or feeling heroic. Didn't the German company Bayer name it? Originally marketed as a cough medicine!

 

[Nibble]

I think you could both be right. It definitely comes from the German but I'm sure I saw a program about it being specifically market to women in some form or other.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Out of interest, where do you stand with Katie Hopkins on the more important Y/N/M issue?

Y

She's like a sexy young Thatcher!