View Full Version : Brunstrom yet again
http://cdn.digitalcity.com/aoluk_feeds/article/200801/a_controversial_police_chief_a16285221177687163a_2 00x150
Richard Brunstrom facing calls to quit after claiming Ecstasy safer than aspirin
A controversial police chief is facing calls to quit after claiming Ecstasy is safer than aspirin.
Anti-drugs campaigners condemned the comments by Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales Police, who advocates the legalisation of all drugs.
Challenged about the dangers of drugs such as Ecstasy, he said that Government evidence demonstrated it is actually safer than many legally-available substances.
"Ecstasy is a remarkably safe substance - it's far safer than aspirin," he said. "It's easy to find people on both sides of what is really a very heated debate at the moment, I think.
"But if you look at the Government's own research you will find that Ecstasy by comparison to many other substances, legal and illegal, is a comparatively safe substance.
"There is a lot of scare-mongering, rumour-mongering around Ecstasy in particular. It isn't borne out by the evidence. Ecstasy is not a safe substance and I'm not suggesting that it is.
"But it's much less dangerous than for instance, tobacco and alcohol, both of which are freely available."
What a tw*t. :smt067
Alpinestarhero
02-01-08, 08:43 AM
Maybe in small, regulated doses is escstasy ok to be ingested, im a similar way that nitroglycerine is safe for use in the treatment of heart problems in small doses (not enough to blow up, thats for sure). Even so, amount for amount, I'd rather sooth my aches and pains with aspirin, rather then go on a trip with ecstasy.
Ecstasty interfers with receptors in the brain that soak up (if you like) serotonin...with all that serotonin floating about, you feel happy, oh so happy. I'm sure it interferes with other receptos in the brain aswell, disrupting othe neurochemistry.
Aspirin works by inhibiting the enzyme Cyclooxygenase (abreviated to COX, heehee) at the site of pain, preventing the production of prostaglandins (so it also helps to reduce swelling at the same time).
I'll have the drug that dosnt mess with my brain, thanks Mr Brunstidiot
Matt
injury_ian
02-01-08, 08:57 AM
just wondering... we all love Prince philips quotes, and indeed Mr Bush, will we ever look back on brunstrom in fondness (hopefully he'll be put out of harms way soon)
Alpinestarhero
02-01-08, 08:58 AM
I think there could be a book written with quotes from all of them
Matt
the_runt69
02-01-08, 09:00 AM
just wondering... we all love Prince philips quotes, and indeed Mr Bush, will we ever look back on brunstrom in fondness (hopefully he'll be put out of harms way soon)
Could someone just shoot him and put him out of his misery
Spiderman
02-01-08, 09:28 AM
OK, generaly i agree...the bloke is a pr@!
HOWEVER...he is right that this country's drug policy is based on little more than the old "drugs are bad, dont do drugs" attitude and in some ways the fact that "x"hundred thousand people take these drugs every weekend and live to tell the tale is proof of that. Not all drugs will destroy you/your life/ make you a theif etc.
its a very samll mind that believes thats what happens when you take drugs.
Holland have a sensible approach. In many clubs they have pill testing booths (or at least they used to) where they shave some of your pill and test it for you. OK all they do is tell you how "pure" it is compared to what it should be but at leat their attitude says "OK we know you're gonna do this so we may as well tell you if what you are about to ingest is 90% MDMA & 10% rat poison....just in case the one you have is 80% rat poison & 20% talcum powder"
They treat you as an adult making an informed choice. No amount of Grange Hill kids singing "Just Say No" is gonna stop anyone from taking drugs. And no amount of the same from any Govt will either IMHO.
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 11:10 AM
80% rat poison & 20% talcum
I don't know much about drugs, but this is my objection to recreational chemical composition drugs and what has lead me to avoid them in my youth, kind of - "I'm not sticking that pill in my mouth, the guy who made it doesn't care if I live or die!" At least with a good old bag of weed you can see and smell what your getting.
It's fine to say that 99.9% of them or whatever are safe, but take your average chemists shelf with little bottles of 50 paracetamol. There will be at least 20 bottles on a stocked shelf. Thats 1000 pills. If one of them was deadly, thats a deadly paracetamol pill in every chemists shop in the country. People would soon stop buying paracetamol if it was only 99.9% safe. Can you imagine it - "Roll up, roll up ladies and gentlemen, come to you local Lloyds the chemist today and play the "PARACETAMOL LOTTERY!", 1 in a 1000 chance of winning a visit to hosptial to get your stomach pumped!"
I suppose a 1000 ecstacy pills get consumed every Saturday night and you don't hear of young people dying on a weekly basis, having said that somebody gets stabbed on the streets Birmingham every Saturday night, but you don't hear about that either, it's so common that it's no longer news worthy. Suppose you'd have to ask somebody that works in an urban casualty dept to find out how much harm recreational drugs really do.
If it's that safe, why does Holland need the pill testing booths? Great idea, but they must have had an issue that caused them to set up such a service in the first place.
There is a lot to be said for legalising certain types of drugs. E is not dangerous at its pure chemical form MDMA, in certain dosages. so yes he is right to say its just as safe as Asprin. How many people die each day due to Alcohol or tobacco, far more than E.Even the most publsised case of death from E Leah bets was because she drank too much water rather than the Chemical of MDMA. She flooded her brain to cause the coma. Infact most cases of people dying rom E are due to it being mixed with other stufff namly rat poisen etc. If you were to take medicinal quality doses of say 100-120mg of pure MDMA it would be safe for almost everyone. Yes there will be people who will have a reaction to it, just like some are to penacilin and other coman drugs. IMO if it was made by someone like GSK and sold in regulated doses, and legal to do so i would not see the problem with it. I would rather do that than get ****ed. And it would be a dam sight safer, less anti social behaviour and random violence. And yes pefore i joined the army i have had plenty of personal experiance of taking E.
Spiderman
02-01-08, 03:43 PM
Wow!
The amount of hatred this bloke brings with anything he says or does made me think that me and Neio would have had one hell of a flmaing by now for standing on the same side of the fence as him.
But thats what i love about this forum....always full of suprises!! lol.
And Neio....thank god you're one of the few who understood why that poor girl Leah died. I was amazed at how the media decided to run with "1 E will kill you, here's the proof"
I was waiting for someone to bring her name into this discussion and i'm just glad you did it first with the right info attached to it not the hysterical "drugs kill" peeps.
phil24_7
02-01-08, 04:52 PM
As posted in another thread, I went on a course a few months back and part of that course was drug awareness. On that course the tutor told us that in the last year only 2 people have died while doing ecstasy and neither of them were as a direct result of ecstasy. One died the same way as Leah, by drinking too much and the other died by mixing drugs.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!
There isn't even any conclusive evidence of long term affects yet, only here say and conjecture.
gettin2dizzy
02-01-08, 05:01 PM
http://cdn.digitalcity.com/aoluk_feeds/article/200801/a_controversial_police_chief_a16285221177687163a_2 00x150
Richard Brunstrom facing calls to quit after claiming Ecstasy safer than aspirin
A controversial police chief is facing calls to quit after claiming Ecstasy is safer than aspirin.
Anti-drugs campaigners condemned the comments by Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales Police, who advocates the legalisation of all drugs.
Challenged about the dangers of drugs such as Ecstasy, he said that Government evidence demonstrated it is actually safer than many legally-available substances.
"Ecstasy is a remarkably safe substance - it's far safer than aspirin," he said. "It's easy to find people on both sides of what is really a very heated debate at the moment, I think.
"But if you look at the Government's own research you will find that Ecstasy by comparison to many other substances, legal and illegal, is a comparatively safe substance.
"There is a lot of scare-mongering, rumour-mongering around Ecstasy in particular. It isn't borne out by the evidence. Ecstasy is not a safe substance and I'm not suggesting that it is.
"But it's much less dangerous than for instance, tobacco and alcohol, both of which are freely available."
What a tw*t. :smt067
He only stated the truth. He's a ***** but he only used facts.
And rat poison and glass in drugs? :lol:
Yeah. Dealers love to kill off their customers AND go to a **** load of effort to do it.
If only we knew the real figures for drug use; because it is huuuuuge!
Defender
02-01-08, 06:05 PM
Could someone just shoot him and put him out of his misery
I agree as I really despise this guy.
I wonder what our police men / women think to him!
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 06:08 PM
Whilst current drug laws are not perfect, the debate over their revision has to include consideration of what would be likely to happen if currently prohibited drugs had their restrictions removed and consequently became used more frequently and by a larger number of people. In the case of ecstasy it would be possible to predict a higher number of fatalities.
For the purposes of drug classification psychiatrists are consulted regarding drug related dangers but they are only asked to rate drugs on the basis of potential for physical harm, addiction, and social harm. The damage to psychological functions is overlooked. Ecstasy can cause brain damage and also deficits in memory and other intellectual processes, some people take the tablet and 'never return' to the conscious world, others lose years of memory, the lucky ones lose hours while others have not known where they were for several days!!!
There are an estimated ten ecstasy related deaths per year. However I have recently read research into drug related deaths that revealed 202 ecstasy related deaths between August 1996 and April 2002. Researchers say this is a far more accurate figure as not all deaths reach the attention of the media and this equates to an average of more than one death every fortnight.
Somebody has already mentioned that drugs are mixed and this is very true. Ecstasy can be mixed with talcum powder, industrial cleaning agents and warfarin (rat poison). People have no way of knowing whether what they`re buying is in its pure form or if it has been mixed. Death from ecstasy is due to an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients and the first death I ever witnessed as a nurse on A and E was a young lad in his early 20`s who had taken ecstasy. In this case the pill had been mixed with warfarin which is a blood thinning agent and the poor lad was bleeding from every possible orifice in his body, even his eyes! yet he remained fully alert to what was happening to him.
I have never and would never knowingly take drugs but each to their own, we all have a choice over what we put into our bodies. Yes there is the arguement that cigarettes and acohol can kill you but thats with long term use. In my opinion Ecstasy should be a Class A drug, at the end of the day 1 cigarette or 1 drink cannot kill you, however 1 tablet CAN.....
oops! rant over lol :rant:
Defender
02-01-08, 06:14 PM
I concur Claire ;)
Wow!
And Neio....thank god you're one of the few who understood why that poor girl Leah died. I was amazed at how the media decided to run with "1 E will kill you, here's the proof"
.
yes for once i am well informed on a subject LOL . You are right though most people assume that the pill killed her.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!
.
there have been very very few direct deaths to E It is actually the inperfections that are mixed with it.
. Ecstasy can cause brain damage and also deficits in memory and other intellectual processes,
A bit like having ten pints and beating the **** out of people on a sat night then?? I wonder whichcauses the emergancy services more grief per year in cost and man hours, Alcohol and related problems or recriational ilegal drugs?? :rolleyes:
There are an estimated ten ecstasy related deaths per year. However I have recently read research into drug related deaths that revealed 202 ecstasy related deaths between August 1996 and April 2002. Researchers say this is a far more accurate figure as not all deaths reach the attention of the media and this equates to an average of more than one death every fortnight.
I really would doubt that, like you also pointed out its the other things it is mixed with that cause the issues.
use. In my opinion Ecstasy should be a Class A drug, at the end of the day 1 cigarette or 1 drink cannot kill you, however 1 tablet CAN.....
oops! rant over lol :rant:
Brunstorm is right as he looks at the biger picture. Alcohol is a depresant and alters peoples behaviour for the worst 9 times out of 10, E is a stimulent and all the times i done it and my mates or millions of others i have never seen a fight caused by it. You as an A & E nurse will be more aware than most of the social , medical and human cost of alcohol and what happens as a result of it. From minor injurys such as broken arms from falling over, to life thretening injurys from fights or drink driving to other serious mis haps. extra cost of policing kicking out times, i could go on and on with examples. However some recriational drugs do not bring nearly half of this (and less if they were pure and controlled) this, they make people relaxed and happy not violent.
There is also the big issue of organised crime and drugs like E. IF it was legalised i belive it would have a big impact on organised crime if it was done with other drugs like canabis. If it was legal to buy like a fag and pure and a set dose then it would efectivly cut out a big section of the black market overnight. Yes they would move to something else but it would still hurt them. And yes some on here wil argue that oh but they can still OD on pure E , welll yes but what is stopping you or me downing 3L of Vodka and dying of alcohol poioning?? If E was priced right it would efectivly remove the black trade in it.
Again If a safe dose of medicinal purity was sold then we are reducing the gamble in taking it, removing the chance in bad pills and the reprucusions like kids dying after one pill (aparantly). As I have said yes there will still be people who cant have it and will react to it, but that can be said for all drugs on the market, even cold remadies.
IMO Canabis and E should be legal, Its only the media hype that has us all beliving E is a killer drug, and i am on about MDMA, not speed laced with heroin and Warfin sold as E.
A nice little earner to be had from this is the tax, how many millions of pills are taken every weekend at the moment?? if a small tax was added i would not think the government would complain too much. And i for one would be rather pop a couple of legal good quality properly dosed pills than get 10 pints of stella down my neck.
There is a serious argument for the legalisation of SOME recriational drugs, its a shame all anyone hears from is the blinkered scare mongering idiots who dont see the benifits, which if done properly could well out weigh the small costs.
Defender
02-01-08, 09:38 PM
Why do people base pro drug arguments using alcohol for justification
IMHO, they are both responsible for crime, deaths, heartache etc
How can you compare Holland with the UK? Different cultures!
Neio, are you a user ;)
Spiderman
02-01-08, 09:48 PM
good post Claire. But i do have a couple of issues with it.
Phil states this...
As posted in another thread, I went on a course a few months back and part of that course was drug awareness. On that course the tutor told us that in the last year only 2 people have died while doing ecstasy and neither of them were as a direct result of ecstasy. One died the same way as Leah, by drinking too much and the other died by mixing drugs.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!
There isn't even any conclusive evidence of long term affects yet, only here say and conjecture.
And you quote E related info.
There are an estimated ten ecstasy related deaths per year. However I have recently read research into drug related deaths that revealed 202 ecstasy related deaths between August 1996 and April 2002. Researchers say this is a far more accurate figure as not all deaths reach the attention of the media and this equates to an average of more than one death every fortnight.
But to my mind thats as ineffectice a calculation as speed related accidents are. Speed related but not caused by excessive speed in most cases.
E related but not caused by the E or MDMA itself in many cases.
Somebody has already mentioned that drugs are mixed and this is very true. Ecstasy can be mixed with talcum powder, industrial cleaning agents and warfarin (rat poison). People have no way of knowing whether what they`re buying is in its pure form or if it has been mixed. Death from ecstasy is due to an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients and the first death I ever witnessed as a nurse on A and E was a young lad in his early 20`s who had taken ecstasy. In this case the pill had been mixed with warfarin which is a blood thinning agent and the poor lad was bleeding from every possible orifice in his body, even his eyes! yet he remained fully alert to what was happening to him.
And this poor, poor lad would have at least been able to make an informed choice if after buying that pill he could have had it tested without fear of arrest or prosecution getting in his way.If he'd had that opportunity he could have decided that he would never in a million years knowingly eat rat poison so there was no way he would eat that pill.
If he went on to think he would risk it then hes a fool who get what he deserves.Fact is all he had to go on was the word of the bloke who wanted nothing more than to make a profit and may say anything to sell his crap.
Dont get me wrong his situation could have been diffrent, he could have had one from a batch all his mates had and from the guy they buy regularly from so he felt fine about doing something hes does regularly with no side effect.
And he just hit a bad one.But the pill testing booth may well have given him the chance to know that before he necked it.
Theres a point where i think that Govt should allow us to be responsible but risk taking individuals without fear of prosecution. I wonder how many people kill themselves participating in extreme sports every year.
It gives them a hell of a rush at the time, they bable on about it for ages afterwards and its a big risk to life and limb in the long term. We gonna ban extreme sports too?
No we make sure there are supervised and safe facilities for them to enjoy what they like doing.
I think old Brunstrom was just saying what we have in this thread....that there are important facts being overlooked by current policy and too many people unneccesarily criminalised for virtualy nothing and that needs to be redressed.
EDIT: By the time i wrote this Neio had posted his but i didnt see it.
Good post Neio! Who'd have thought a couple of months ago that i'd be sitting here agreeing with every word you said? :D
Why do people base pro drug arguments using alcohol for justification
IMHO, they are both responsible for crime, deaths, heartache etc
How can you compare Holland with the UK? Different cultures!
Neio, are you a user ;)
Because people are banging on about the evils of drugs such as E, when its a fact Alcohol causes far more damage to people and has the same if not more social ramifications as SOME drugs.
And no i am not a user, not any more i was before i joined the army. I made the life choice to stop. But i would if they becam legal.
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 10:06 PM
"there have been very very few direct deaths to E It is actually the inperfections that are mixed with it".
The figures I gave are based on research else I wouldn`t have quoted them! Another estimate is 7 deaths per million users but how many millions of users are there? And yes, I did say that the deaths are "ecstasy related" ie. a reaction to whatever it has been mixed with or for example overheating and mixing the drug taking with heavy alcohol consumption. Like Leah some users have died after drinking excessive amounts of water which causes the brain to swell inside the skull putting pressure on the brain stem.
"You as an A & E nurse will be more aware than most of the social , medical and human cost of alcohol and what happens as a result of it. From minor injurys such as broken arms from falling over, to life thretening injurys from fights or drink driving to other serious mis haps. extra cost of policing kicking out times, i could go on and on with examples. However some recriational drugs do not bring nearly half of this (and less if they were pure and controlled) this, they make people relaxed and happy not violent".
I couldn`t agree with you more!!! alcohol abuse costs the NHS millions each year!!! BUT i`m replying to a question on whether Ecstasy should be declassified?
"And i for one would be rather pop a couple of legal good quality properly dosed pills than get 10 pints of stella down my neck".
Each to their own but I certainly wouldn`t...... is your life but I happen to think life is a bit to precious to be playing Russian Roulette!! but that is my personal opinion. Yes your couple of pills might give you some feelings of euphoria and a sense of wellbeing for a few hours but do that on a regular basis for a couple of years and have you any idea of the kind of long term damage caused to a persons mental health and mental ability??
I have never considered myself to be blinkered... any opinion I have is only ever based on fact... usually a fact learnt from life experience and what I have personally witnessed.
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 10:08 PM
E is not dangerous at its pure chemical form MDMA, in certain dosages. so yes he is right to say its just as safe as Asprin.
No he's not! :confused: He's a to$$er.
That's a very naive black and white pedantic view IMO. Are we talking about the real world here? It would seem from what folk are saying very few (or none?) ecstacy pills are pure.
Brunstrom didn't say "pure MDMA is safer than asprin", he said "Ecstacy is safer than asprin", and don't give me "pure MDMA = Ecstacy" and try to tell me it's the same thing.
"Ecstacy", in the real world, is the pills folk are popping with whatever the maker puts in them. Pure MDMA being is safe is completely irrelevant to Brunstrom's statement. And until they are legally manufactured and controlled by reputable drugs companies so you know for sure what your buying is safe, it's irrelevant to the whole recreational drugs argument.
And rat poison and glass in drugs? :lol:
Yeah. Dealers love to kill off their customers AND go to a **** load of effort to do it.
Well I already said I know **** when it comes to drugs, but lots of folk on here have said it is sometimes mixed with rat poision and Speedy Claire in particular sounds like she knows her onions on the subject.
Where are you getting your information?
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 10:26 PM
Geez how the hell do i quote all these quotes lol??????
Ok Spiderman yep I know exactly what you`re saying but the thread i`m replying to is about ecstasy and should it be declassified... I`m not talking bout deaths related to speeding or deaths related to alcohol abuse or smoking. I`m replying to a question about whether a drug should be declassified!
"As posted in another thread, I went on a course a few months back and part of that course was drug awareness. On that course the tutor told us that in the last year only 2 people have died while doing ecstasy and neither of them were as a direct result of ecstasy. One died the same way as Leah, by drinking too much and the other died by mixing drugs.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!"
They were ecstasy related!!!! 2 people took what they believed to be an ecstasy tablet and died... end of!!!! one died because that ecstasy tablet was mixed and the other poor person died cos they drank too much water. That to me says those deaths were "ecstasy related" which is what the figures I quoted are based on and research says there are 7 deaths out of every one million ecstasy users.
What exactly was this course??? who was it run by? was it a creditable institution?? How can you possibly say that those 2 deaths weren`t caused by taking ecstasy??
"There isn't even any conclusive evidence of long term affects yet, only here say and conjecture."
Totally disagree...... there is a minefield of conclusive evidence out there proving the long term effects of drug abuse. I`ve watched friends lose jobs and their marriages break down due to the effects of drug abuse ie. paranoia, memory loss, depression. Go into any mental health ward and see for yourself how many of the patients are there due to the long term effects of drug abuse!
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 10:41 PM
Well I already said I know **** when it comes to drugs, but lots of folk on here have said it is sometimes mixed with rat poision and Speedy Claire in particular sounds like she knows her onions on the subject.
Where are you getting your information?
lol tis not from personal use!!!
My knowledge only comes from years in nursing and in all different areas of nursing. Unfortunately I soak up information and I`m always on different courses cos I constantly like to learn new things. A lot of the courses I`ve completed over the last few years have centred on drug and alcohol abuse purely because I`m now in District Nursing and the area of Liverpool I`m working in has huge problems caused by drug and alcohol misuse.
For my facts and figures it`s either in my head or I just opened some of my course notes to get the figures.
It`s not often i`d let myself get dragged into a debate lite this but I just felt I wanted to drag my soap box out.... not everyone is going to agree with what i`ve posted but its not a problem. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and this is mine!
Spiderman
02-01-08, 10:43 PM
Aw Calire i feel for you hun. You made a very good post to start with and its got the conversation going nicely. Tho since you were the first everyone seems to be quoting you, lol, and i hope you dont think i'm having a go at you or what you said in any way.
I was more quoting you to save myself typing things than critising your post. I hope thats come across but by the number of !!!!!!!!!s in your last post it would seem we have got you a little exasperated.
Oh and big hugs to you cos you're a nurse. I have more respect for most nurses than i do for doctors or specialists. You guys do the hard work ;)
:kiss:
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 10:44 PM
the figures I quoted are based on and research says there are 7 deaths out of every one million ecstasy users.
For sake of argument lets assume this research is accurate. A quick google tells me that there are 30 million packets of paracetamol sold in the UK every year. For sake of argument lets say that the average packet size is 25 pills. So 750 million paracetamol pills sold each year. 7 deaths x 750 = 5250 (stick with it, not finished yet). Lets say an "Ecstasy user" takes 2 pills per week, it says "per ecstacy user" not "per ecstacy pill" so we need to take 5250 / 104 = approx 50. I'm going to assume a timescale of a year and since we've allowed for two pills EVERY week I think thats fair, ie: if you monitored a million ecstacy users, two pills a week, for a year, 7 would die (Claire - what you you think of that assumption?).
If 50 people per year were dying from paracetamol would that be classed as safe? Thats a question not a statement.
I think (but I don't know for sure) that the 30 million packets of paracetamol does not include sales of paracetamol based products such as cold and flu remedies and other branded pain killers, so I reckon you could easily double the estimate to 100 deaths without being unreasonable.
For comparison 600 people a year in the UK die on a motorbike. You could conclude that ecstacy is 5 or 10 times safer than riding a motorbike. That said I guess a large proportion of those killed on motorbikes were numpty's, the majority are on country roads with no other vehicles involved. I control my actions on a motorbike, I don't control what goes in an ecstacy pill, so in terms of my own personal safety, I'd still rather jump on a motorbike than take an ecstacy pill.
I'm not drawing conclusions here, I don't know enough about drugs to do so, just doing the mathematics (albeit with some big assumptions) to make what I think is a fair comparison to our most common drug, paracetamol, and let you draw your own conclusions.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!"
They were ecstasy related!!!! 2 people took what they believed to be an ecstasy tablet and died... end of!!!! one died because that ecstasy tablet was mixed and the other poor person died cos they drank too much water. That to me says those deaths were "ecstasy related" which is what the figures I quoted are based on and research says there are 7 deaths out of every one million ecstasy users.
but it was not the ecstacy that killed them,
there is a minefield of conclusive evidence out there proving the long term effects of drug abuse. I`ve watched friends lose jobs and their marriages break down due to the effects of drug abuse ie. paranoia, memory loss, depression. Go into any mental health ward and see for yourself how many of the patients are there due to the long term effects of drug abuse!
not just ecstacy though?
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:00 PM
Aw Calire i feel for you hun. You made a very good post to start with and its got the conversation going nicely. Tho since you were the first everyone seems to be quoting you, lol, and i hope you dont think i'm having a go at you or what you said in any way.
I was more quoting you to save myself typing things than critising your post. I hope thats come across but by the number of !!!!!!!!!s in your last post it would seem we have got you a little exasperated.
Oh and big hugs to you cos you're a nurse. I have more respect for most nurses than i do for doctors or specialists. You guys do the hard work ;)
:kiss:
ha ha ha... if you could see my hair now, it was neatly pulled back in a hair clamp.... now i have bits falling out all over the place where i`ve tugged at it lmao. Nope I honestly don`t take anything personally. I know that out of all the members on here each and everyone of us is going to have differing opinions and experiences so I really don`t think anyones having a go at me. Different opinions is what makes it interesting and is what makes a debate a debate. How boring would it be if we all agreed!
The use of all the exclamation marks is purely cos you can`t see my hands up in the air and the expression on my face... tis one of the problems of non face to face conversation.
And many thanks for your kind words :-D
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:06 PM
Hovis they died as a result of taking what they believed to be an Ecstasy tablet? whether that tablet was pure or mixed with some other substance is, to me, irrelevant. Somebody bought an ecstasy tablet and digested it.... sadly they died... that to me equals an ecstasy related death. They died because they took an ecstasy tablet.
An yes I totally agree with you... its not just ecstasy that causes mental health problems, cannabis does as does cocaine but the original thread was about Brunstrom and his comments on ecstasy
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 11:07 PM
lol tis not from personal use!!!
My knowledge only comes from years in nursing
Thats the wrong end of the stick Claire! ;):D
I was quoting gettin2dizzy's comment about rat poison in ecstacy being laughable when I asked...
Where are you getting your information?
Your [Speedy Claire] information seems to have come from an informed source. Read my "mathematics" :smt103 above and see what you think?
Hovis they died as a result of taking what they believed to be an Ecstasy tablet? whether that tablet was pure or mixed with some other substance is, to me, irrelevant. Somebody bought an ecstasy tablet and digested it.... sadly they died... that to me equals an ecstasy related death. They died because they took an ecstasy tablet.
i see what you are saying, but........ ecsatasy, did not actully kill them
in the same way that if you drunk what you thought was lemonaid, but was antifreeze or somthing, would you class this as lemonaid releted death?
markmoto
02-01-08, 11:15 PM
if you ask me alcohol should be made illegal there is no other drug that makes otherwise sane people act insanely!! i wonder how many alcohol related deaths there are a year hmmm alot i would suspect. at the end of the day people have free will and if they choose to pop pills and consume alcohol aswell then its there funeral!! in my book you only have one body so dont abuse it!
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:18 PM
No worries Ralph :D
Some info you read will say that it isn`t mixed but i`ve read enough to make me believe that it definitely is. The problem is basically due to the fact that it is obviously manufactured at illegal laboratories where there is no quality control in the manufacturing process. Chemicals such as paracetamol and calcium carbonate are often mixed with Ecstasy. This can cause bad reactions but other ingredients that are known to be added are rat poison and glass bits. The latter is mixed with Ecstasy so that the abuser can get a 'high' faster when the drug enters the blood stream through the cuts in the internal organs.
Tho i`m in no way saying that all manufacturers/suppliers would go to those lengths some will and do.... is really scary and dealers aren`t bothered if a user dies, for every user who dies its a sad fact that there`ll be another 2 queuing up ready to buy.
Defender
02-01-08, 11:24 PM
Of course discussing anything Brunstom says gives him some credibility and the guy should have been kicked out of his job before now.
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:26 PM
i wonder how many alcohol related deaths there are a year hmmm alot i would suspect.
Hang on where`s my last course notes......... 3,260 deaths relating to alcohol every year in England with more in the North West than in any other region :-D
geez how sad am I lmao :confused:
geez how sad am I lmao :confused:
but you type in pink.............. which is nice
markmoto
02-01-08, 11:30 PM
Hang on where`s my last course notes......... 3,260 deaths relating to alcohol every year in England with more in the North West than in any other region :-D
geez how sad am I lmao :confused:
I rest my case
markmoto
02-01-08, 11:30 PM
Of course discussing anything Brunstom says gives him some credibility and the guy should have been kicked out of his job before now.
+1
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 11:31 PM
i see what you are saying, but........ ecsatasy, did not actully kill them
in the same way that if you drunk what you thought was lemonaid, but was antifreeze or somthing, would you class this as lemonaid releted death?
Hovis, are you just arguing for arguments sake here? Your being needlessly pedantic...
The average bottle of lemonade doesn't contain anti-freeze.
The average ecstacy tablet contains MDMA PLUS some other ingredient.
The average pork sausage contains other ingredients, but we're not going to start labelling them, "pork, plus a bit of bread and some offal, sausages" are we?
Foodstuffs are subject to strict quality control and labelling, ecstacy is not.
They are called "Ecstacy" tablets, not "MDMA tablets". It's just a name. Go and create a new cocktail of lemonade and anti-freeze of you want. You could call it "Orgasm", and the media will report on all the "Orgasm" related deaths. Then you could argue that actualy "Orgasm" is perfectly safe, it's only the anti-freeze in it that kills you.
If the ingredient that caused the death is known to be found in ecstacy tablets, then it's an ecstacy related death. The person would not have ingested that ingredient if they had not taken ecstacy, or if it was not a unethical practice of the makers of the ecstacy tablet to use that ingredient.
I stick with what I said earlier.
That's a very naive black and white pedantic view IMO.... and don't give me "pure MDMA = Ecstacy" and try to tell me it's the same thing.
"Ecstacy", in the real world, is the pills folk are popping with whatever the maker puts in them. Pure MDMA being is safe is completely irrelevant to Brunstrom's statement. And until they are legally manufactured and controlled by reputable drugs companies so you know for sure what your buying is safe, it's irrelevant to the whole recreational drugs argument.
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:37 PM
but you type in pink.............. which is nice
:smt046
Hovis, are you just arguing for arguments sake here? Your being needlessly pedantic....just trying to point out that it was not directly E that killed them
The average bottle of lemonade doesn't contain anti-freeze.
.
you been in my garage?;)
markmoto
02-01-08, 11:43 PM
just trying to point out that it was not directly E that killed them
I see what your saying but its a picky point mate the people who bought E and have died from it didnt think about the other ingredients they bought it for the E value so in effect E killed them!
-Ralph-
02-01-08, 11:49 PM
The average bottle of lemonade doesn't contain anti-freeze....
you been in my garage?;)
They are called "Ecstacy" tablets, not "MDMA tablets". It's just a name. Go and create a new cocktail of lemonade and anti-freeze of you want. You could call it "Orgasm", and the media will report on all the "Orgasm" related deaths. Then you could argue that actualy "Orgasm" is perfectly safe, it's only the anti-freeze in it that kills you.
You have Orgasm in your garage?? Is it a Ducati 1098, a nice calendar, or an adventurous partner? How many Orgasm related deaths amongst visitors to your garage so far then?
Speedy Claire
02-01-08, 11:53 PM
Have looked for a description of "Ecstasy Related Death" and this is the best I can come up with....
"The description ‘ecstasy-related death’ means that ecstasy was mentioned on the death certificate or that it was found in the toxicological analysis (often along with other drugs) "
-Ralph-
03-01-08, 12:09 AM
Have looked for a description of "Ecstasy Related Death" and this is the best I can come up with....
"or that it was found in the toxicological analysis (often along with other drugs) "
Well we couldn't expect the official definition to make any bl00dy sense could we! What if the person took Ecstacy and over dosed on Heroin on the same night? To me an ecstacy realted death should be one that would not have happened if the person had not taken the Ecstacy tablet.
And yes that should include someone hit by a car 'cos they wandered into the road whilst high on ecstacy. Such incidents are included in alcohol and other drug related death statistics, so to reach meaningful comparison you have to include them, even though there's nothing to say the same person wouldn't have wandered into the road completely sober (my cousin has a sleep disorder and does exactly that kind of thing!).
Does the 7 in a million include these?
(Before anyone says, "Ralph, you've got a cousin for everything!", I do, there are 12 of the buggers!)
Ralph, You say MDMA is not E and that E is MDMA mixed with other stuff, well Yes and no. To argue as you do that E is dangerous you can only take into account it as its chemicla alone and conduct studies on this alone to get an acurate understanding of it.
If you start basing all anti E arguments on the street stuff then its flawed as you are not understanding what the MDMA does buy taking other unknown cemical and factors into the equation. So for the sake of this argument on E being safe only Pure MDMA can be used.
And this is my whole point if it was legalised then it would be only pure MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine), sold as E. not that plus anything else.
Speedy Claire
03-01-08, 09:44 AM
i see what you are saying, but........ ecsatasy, did not actully kill them
ok the way I look at it and to put it simply is......
A person takes an ecstasy tablet, they have a severe reaction and die. Would that person have died anyway from those same causes if they hadn`t taken the tablet?
If the answer is yes then its not an "ecstasy related death" if the answer is no then its an "ecstasy related death"!
Spiderman
03-01-08, 11:53 AM
ok the way I look at it and to put it simply is......
A person takes an ecstasy tablet, they have a severe reaction and die. Would that person have died anyway from those same causes if they hadn`t taken the tablet?
If the answer is yes then its not an "ecstasy related death" if the answer is no then its an "ecstasy related death"!
But then surely we should put every instance of drunken vandalism or assult down as an alcohol related issue too to get a picture of the true extent of the problms caused by this drug. Including all those who get their drinks spiked with date rape drugs.
If they hadnt been drinking then they wouldnt have been in an environment whereby theu could have had their drink spiked so its all down to the fact that they drunk some alcohol. Or is it????
Again i'm not having a pop here i just feel this conversation is descended into symantics and how far you can push the whole "cause and effect" thing.
I was disgusted that those kids who threw rocks and bricks at a dad in the park with his kid and he died of a heart attack were let off on appeal cos their lawyer arrgued that it couldnt be proven that the stones or bricks being thrown at him caused his heart attack. WTF????? clealry they did but the judge decided they should go free.
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 01:36 PM
I did a bit more thinking about ecstasy, and noticed that it is a chirally active molecule. For those who dont know what that means, basicly it comes in two forms, a left-handed form and a right handed form, if you like. This is quite alarming to me, since someone synthesising it would have to make sure they got the right "hand" (or, to be posh, enantiomer) in order for it to intereact in the correct manner in the body. The wrong enantiomer could interact in an entirly differant manner. Remember thalidomide? Same reason (the chirallity reason) ment that both forms where made in the body and this caused the birth defects when the wrong enantiomer did its thing in the unborn child.
Also had a look at LD50 values (the dose required to kill 50% of a given population, or (more accuralty) the dose that provides 50% inhibition) which was between 100-300 mg per kilo of rat, and reckoned to be 10-20 mg per kilo of human. Aspirin, by comparison, is 400 mg for every kilo of human (oral dosages)
So there you go
Matt
Luckypants
03-01-08, 01:46 PM
clever stuff...
Matt
Very good post Matt and shows how dangerous a little knowledge can be.
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 01:49 PM
Very good post Matt and shows how dangerous a little knowledge can be.
Just thought I'd offer my semi-professional analysis...
Matt
Spiderman
03-01-08, 02:01 PM
If you can beat em with facts them baffle em with science eh Matt? lol.
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 02:05 PM
If you can beat em with facts them baffle em with science eh Matt? lol.
Why the hell not, thats my perogative as a scientist :D Anyway, there was a fact...aspirin is 20-or-so times safer than MDMA...
Oh, i just worked out how you could make MDMA too, but I'll keep that info to myself
Matt
Spiderman
03-01-08, 02:07 PM
Why the hell not, thats my perogative as a scientist :D Anyway, there was a fact...aspirin is 20-or-so times safer than MDMA...
Oh, i just worked out how you could make MDMA too, but I'll keep that info to myself
Matt
Ah you and i could have been very good friends and i could have made you a very rich man.....many many years ago that is.
FACT
lol
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 02:11 PM
Im sorry, I wouldnt use my superpowers for destruction, no matter how much money there is involved :king:
Drugs are bad, mmmmmmkay
Ok, i'll shut up now and let you all resume discussing this issue in a lesser scientific manner
Matt
gettin2dizzy
03-01-08, 04:17 PM
I did a bit more thinking about ecstasy, and noticed that it is a chirally active molecule. For those who dont know what that means, basicly it comes in two forms, a left-handed form and a right handed form, if you like. This is quite alarming to me, since someone synthesising it would have to make sure they got the right "hand" (or, to be posh, enantiomer) in order for it to intereact in the correct manner in the body. The wrong enantiomer could interact in an entirly differant manner. Remember thalidomide? Same reason (the chirallity reason) ment that both forms where made in the body and this caused the birth defects when the wrong enantiomer did its thing in the unborn child.
Also had a look at LD50 values (the dose required to kill 50% of a given population, or (more accuralty) the dose that provides 50% inhibition) which was between 100-300 mg per kilo of rat, and reckoned to be 10-20 mg per kilo of human. Aspirin, by comparison, is 400 mg for every kilo of human (oral dosages)
So there you go
Matt
Don't worry; they don't try and produce just the one enantiomer, one works, the other is redundant and has no effects.
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 04:51 PM
Don't worry; they don't try and produce just the one enantiomer, one works, the other is redundant and has no effects.
Are you sure of that?
Matt
gettin2dizzy
03-01-08, 04:57 PM
Positively. :) (I had no idea before, had to google ;))
phil24_7
03-01-08, 05:52 PM
That's a very naive black and white pedantic view IMO. Are we talking about the real world here? It would seem from what folk are saying very few (or none?) ecstacy pills are pure.
I would say 99.9% of all 'E' tablets sold are mixed or "cut" with something. 99.9% of the time this is with another drug like speed or heroin.
Very rarely is it produced with things like rat poison anymore as it's BIG business. You think someone's gonna produce a batch of E's that kill everyone? If they did that they would have no more milti-million pound business, these drugs aren't made in some dodgy back street in soho, they're made in labs in places like holland.
Brunstrom didn't say "pure MDMA is safer than asprin", he said "Ecstacy is safer than asprin", and don't give me "pure MDMA = Ecstacy" and try to tell me it's the same thing.
Your right, pure MDMA is only available in powder form (due to most tablets being cut) and is not sold as ecstacy.
"As posted in another thread, I went on a course a few months back and part of that course was drug awareness. On that course the tutor told us that in the last year only 2 people have died while doing ecstasy and neither of them were as a direct result of ecstasy. One died the same way as Leah, by drinking too much and the other died by mixing drugs.
So that makes precisely 0 deaths as a direct result of taking E out of the several million people who take it!!"
They were ecstasy related!!!! 2 people took what they believed to be an ecstasy tablet and died... end of!!!! one died because that ecstasy tablet was mixed and the other poor person died cos they drank too much water. That to me says those deaths were "ecstasy related" which is what the figures I quoted are based on and research says there are 7 deaths out of every one million ecstasy users.
The thing with this is, 1 person actively chose to mix the ecstacy with other drugs by taking them at the same time i.e. Ketamine, cocaine... not the pills being mixed with other substances! The other drank to much water which they could've quite easily done by taking any other stimulant and getting hot.
What exactly was this course??? who was it run by? was it a creditable institution?? How can you possibly say that those 2 deaths weren`t caused by taking ecstasy??
It was organised by JD Wetherspoon and I had no reason to believe the guy running the course was anything but reputable, he even legally allowed to carry drug samples with him, can't remember the name of the course off hand.
"There isn't even any conclusive evidence of long term affects yet, only here say and conjecture."
Totally disagree...... there is a minefield of conclusive evidence out there proving the long term effects of drug abuse. I`ve watched friends lose jobs and their marriages break down due to the effects of drug abuse ie. paranoia, memory loss, depression. Go into any mental health ward and see for yourself how many of the patients are there due to the long term effects of drug abuse!
All of this evidence is created with a biased approach and an answer in mind before they start, add that to the fact that ecstasy hasn't been about long enough for any long term studies. They only concentrate on the upper end of the HEAVY users, not your average users, they only contain small numbers and not a large enough cross section of the population.
Anyone can create a study and more or less guarantee the outcome of it by controlling it properly!
Are you talking about drug abuse, or ecstasy abuse because as far as this discussion goes it has to be from an ecstasy point of view.
I'm not saying it doesn't have any effects, but they have not been proved for long enough and it has not shown if it is long-term or short term, if certain people are more susceptible to it etc.
Hovis they died as a result of taking what they believed to be an Ecstasy tablet? whether that tablet was pure or mixed with some other substance is, to me, irrelevant. Somebody bought an ecstasy tablet and digested it.... sadly they died... that to me equals an ecstasy related death. They died because they took an ecstasy tablet.
No 1 died because they drank water (god help us all!!) and the other died because they decided that ecstacy on it's own simply wasn't enough!
An yes I totally agree with you... its not just ecstasy that causes mental health problems, cannabis does as does cocaine but the original thread was about Brunstrom and his comments on ecstasy
independentphoto
03-01-08, 05:53 PM
I've not even bothered to read the whole debate on here (Sorry:rolleyes:) since it's so long and there are bound to be differing views. I'll simply respond to the original post. Thank you very much "ya bam" as we tend to say up 'ere.
I spent a very worrying 4 hours in A&E (along with her parents) when Quedos had such a lovely little pill popped in her drink one evening by some twerp who knew nothing about any possible medical conditions or medications etc that she might have been on. They simply thought it would be hilarious to watch someone go silly from the other side of the room.:(
The most upsetting thing about the whole night was when a mate of mine, who happens to be a Paramedic appeared and enquired why we were in. Upon being told the tale, he simply shrugged his shoulders and commented about it happening every other night since the stuff is cheaper than drink in some places.:smt013
I vote for "Orient Express" treatment of this particular clown:smt066.
Rant Over
Garry:rolleyes:
phil24_7
03-01-08, 06:02 PM
Very good post Matt and shows how dangerous a little knowledge can be.
If you can beat em with facts them baffle em with science eh Matt? lol.
Pesky student. Too smart for his own good!
add that to the fact that ecstasy hasn't been about long enough for any long term studies.
nope wrong it has been around for at least 50 years, and in use since. 50 years is long enough to do tests on the pure stuff. even cancer drugs dont spend that amount of time being tested. So it has been around long enough to carry out proper clinical experements. It just has not been done, why probably because like me and a few others on here have been saying its safe in pure properly dosed versions.
but we cant have the so called killer drug being proven to be safe can we ;)
phil24_7
03-01-08, 06:54 PM
I stand corrected, should've really said it's not been a popular drug for long enough, still didn't realise it'd been around that long though.
yep its been with us for a long time:
http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/b/Q/x1.jpgMDMA was patented in 1913 (patent #274.350) by the German chemical company Merck
see here for a history of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1W9T5vq9wI
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 07:56 PM
yep its been with us for a long time:
http://z.about.com/d/inventors/1/0/b/Q/x1.jpgMDMA was patented in 1913 (patent #274.350) by the German chemical company Merck
see here for a history of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1W9T5vq9wI
Merck are a big company :o they do alot fo the LCD materials you find in your gadgets, and all sorts of other stuff
Matt
Alpinestarhero
03-01-08, 07:58 PM
Pesky student. Too smart for his own good!
I'm so eager to go overboard and post my proposed route of synthesis, it involves oxazolidinones and a wolff-kischner reduction
Matt
STUFF
Matt
oi spotty............ just tell us how to make MDMA
Spiderman
03-01-08, 08:32 PM
I've not even bothered to read the whole debate on here (Sorry:rolleyes:) since it's so long and there are bound to be differing views. I'll simply respond to the original post. Thank you very much "ya bam" as we tend to say up 'ere.
I spent a very worrying 4 hours in A&E (along with her parents) when Quedos had such a lovely little pill popped in her drink one evening by some twerp who knew nothing about any possible medical conditions or medications etc that she might have been on. They simply thought it would be hilarious to watch someone go silly from the other side of the room.:(
The most upsetting thing about the whole night was when a mate of mine, who happens to be a Paramedic appeared and enquired why we were in. Upon being told the tale, he simply shrugged his shoulders and commented about it happening every other night since the stuff is cheaper than drink in some places.:smt013
I vote for "Orient Express" treatment of this particular clown:smt066.
Rant Over
Garry:rolleyes:
That sucks big time!! If i ever saw someone spiking a drink i'd give them one hell of a kicking.
Its just wrong, end of.
And you'd send em on an expensive luxury train journey :confused:
Or do you mean Midnight Express? ;)
phil24_7
03-01-08, 09:48 PM
oi spotty............ just tell us how to make MDMA
+1, it's not like any of us are smart enough to actually make it!!
my freind died whilst on E but i recon it was the bottle of vodka he downd b4 doing the pills, but i guess you could say his death was ecsatsy related, but i doubt he would have died on just the pills
-Ralph-
03-01-08, 10:19 PM
Anyway, there was a fact...aspirin is 20-or-so times safer than MDMA...
Well I'm glad we got that settled. Brunstrom was talking b0ll0cks then.
Speedy Claire
04-01-08, 01:01 AM
ok i`m back :D
fortunately tho after being out and having had a few glasses of wine my fight has gone lol. Some extremely scientific posts been added which are way over my head. I`ll return tomor with a clear head but i just wanna say Hovis... I`m sorry to hear about your mate, as you say i`m sure they died due to the combination of ecstasy and alcohol and Neio... some cancer drugs have actually been around and consequently been under trials for that long!!! My actual speciality is palliative medicine
Nite Nite :-D
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