We had a short (90 minute) debate yesterday evening about Drug Misuse Policy, initiated by Baroness Meacher.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has recently issued a discussion paper entitled From Coercion to Cohesion: Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment. http://www.idpc.net/publications/unodc-from-coercion-to-cohesion-treatment. For nearly 50 years, ever since the first UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the UNODC has operated as the defender of the punitive approach to drug addiction as well as drug trafficking. Some 186 countries have signed up to the three UN conventions, all of which promote a criminalising philosophy. Until relatively recently, virtually all of those countries have followed the criminalising approach without question. For those of us who believe that the war on drugs is misguided and destructive both for individuals and communities, this new UNODC document is indeed a major milestone for the UN and hence for the world drug policy regime. The aim of ‘From Coercion to Cohesion’ is to promote a health-oriented approach to drug dependence but not a soft approach; more of an evidence-based realistic one. Lord Brett pointed out towards the end of the debate that UN discussion papers are a long way off policy papers and a very long way off from a change in the Convention but we have to start somewhere.
At present Europe spends something like 34 billion Euro on ‘solving’ the drug misuse problem, mostly through the police and criminal justice system. Less than 7% of the budget is spent on healthcare and no-one can say how much is spent on education; probably little. All the speakers advocated a ‘harm reduction’ approach, some of us also advocate decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs too, because there is quite a lot of evidence that some of the harms would be reduced. But that is of course a long way from legalization, where there is very little hard evidence internationally that a fully commercial and fiscal approach would not increase the personal harm that drug misuse does to individuals. People whose heads are addled through intoxication with drugs will continue to come into the criminal justice system, we need to think through how to get them into treatment and rehabilitation in a way that is attractive to them. The National Treatment Agency has had considerable success in getting drug misusers into treatment and there are some interesting pilot schemes to divert misusers from courts to special drug courts and treatment options rather than prisons. What we really need is a comprehensive approach to reducing usage of all drugs in the 10-21 yr olds who are at risk of misuse by means of accurate education, and I mean by that not scare-mongering about commonly used drugs but give accurate information about the effects of recurrent and long term use. It is skunk, heroin, crack cocaine, powder cocaine that should be the target but also ensure better information is absorbed by kids about cannabis, ecstasy, mephedrone and other ‘party highs’ that young people try. It’s time to stop pretending that drugs can be eradicated from our society and adopt a more realistic approach to their use and abuse.
It was a constructive debate and Lord McNally’s response for the government was a very positive one. He also pledged to return for a further debate once the Government had had more time to flesh out their policy.
“Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment.”
Healthcare may mean the same as punishment noble baroness (You always have valuable topics. If healthcare means sectioning under the Mental health act, which is becoming grossly misused by many accounts, then Punishment and Health may mean exactly the same.
I have suffered a gardener, Burnard the Gurnard, recently who has attempted to persuade me to use cocaine as he is a small time trader between Spain and the UK, on which he makes a gross wage including
his social security benefits of about £40,000
per annum untaxed.
He is my ex-gardener on account of enveigling me to cross the channel with him, to carry his cocain. It cost him £1000 in car impounding fees, and his gardening job, which he did not need except for finding well heeled clients to sell the cocaine to.
Such activities attract the hardened criminal, which he is. He is involved in several criminal trades, and recycles scrap metal. He might make a fortune from scrap metal if he does not die of lung cancer first. He is a pyromaniac, has a split personality, which may be suitable for the
Hard rgus trade, and an anal hoarding complex manifest by various dumps of rubbish on the nearby heath.
He may make a fortune from rubbish dumps.
Why bother changing the law about drugs?
We do seem to entrench ourselves in international agreements which, though very fine at the time, must over time become outdated, or to have clearly failed, whereupon extrapolating ourselves from them, or the turning of such a large ship around, becomes a major time-consuming exercise.
Our over-reliance on the Criminal Justice System to solve what are often deep-seated problems certainly manifests itself on the question of drugs, as it does on survival street sex work. As you know, the two are often inter-connected, with surveys showing some 85% or higher of street sex workers addicted to heroine or crack cocaine.
One such study – Jeal and Salisbury’s 2007 Bristol survey – revealed that the mean weekly spend of street sex workers on drugs (measured in 2004) was £724. Incidentally, the equivalent figure for indoor sex workers – by far the larger group, though J+S checked an equal number (71) of each – was £35.
It is interesting that, whilst the appalling Home Office has introduced compulsory rehabilitation sessions for survival sex workers as an alternative to a fine for soliciting, they continue to be very vulnerable to fines for drugs, so the revolving door continueth….
David Cameron has gone on record stressing the importance of tackling drug addiction in the wake of the Bradford slayings. I have heard fears expressed, however, that he prefers a ‘cold turkey’ approach of total withdrawal, which I fear is hopelessly unrealistic.
If the state provided and administered the drugs, even with no attempt to reduce them, as I’m sure you know, many benefits would accrue.
Needles would be clean and disposed of properly (needles apparently being a greater transmitter of HIV/Aids to survival sex workers than sex, and their inappropriate disposal featuring high on the list of community complaints about street sex workers as well as constituting a significant public health threat). The purity of the drugs could be established. The sex worker’s general health could be monitored, and the alarm raised if they failed to appear for their ‘fix‘. The income from the drugs would be denied to the dealers.
The sex workers’ need to engage in street sex work – a dangerous occupation compared to its indoor equivalent – would be much reduced, to the point at least that they could exercise choice. And, of course, a relationship could hopefully be established with the addict that may assist a withdrawal from the drugs at a later stage.
So in the case of survival street sex workers, I would suggest an orderly harm reduction approach would not necessarily prioritise drug withdrawal, which is to many a huge and apparently insurmountable mountain of which they are terrified, but should rather be approached more on an ad hoc basis depending on individual needs and circumstances.
Besides Jeal and Salisbury, may I also provide a link to Kate Shannon’s excellent 18-month study of 237 drug-using survival street sex workers in Vancouver, avid bmj reader already though I’m sure you are, and which I’ve posted elsewhere on LOTB, but which is among the first internationally to measure the increased risk of violence to survival sex workers arising from criminal justice interventions.
Violence to them correlated with homelessness; inability to access drug treatment; servicing clients in cars or public spaces; prior assault by police; confiscation of drug paraphernalia by police without arrest; and displacement – moving their working areas away from main streets owing to policing.
Nikki Jeal + Salisbury:
http://myweb.dal.ca/mgoodyea/Documents/Health%20and%20wellbeing/Health%20needs%20and%20use%20of%20parlour-based%20prostitutes%20compared%20with%20street-based%20Jeal%20BJOG%202007%20114(7)%20875-81.pdf
Kate Shannon et al:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/aug11_3/b2939
Stephen Paterson, thank you for so much spade-work.
I feel it to deserve, and need, some raking ready for seed-sowing:
‘Sex’ even without the Drugs is generally still a lightly-volatile subject, with violent subsidiary levels mainly ‘Propagation through Pregnancy’ on the one hand versus ‘Prostitution for Profit’ on the other.
A propos the Sex-Industry (still without the Drugs), by women-workers for normal heterosexual men;
those women-workers should be legally required to show a sex-microskills- qualifications ID card.
This ID card should give the last dates of attendance and qualification at specific training courses, i.e. in the several knacks of the ‘business’; which each such worker, even when totally ham-fisted, unfeeling, rushed and robot-like, professes to have (but does not).
Then there’s an inter-industrial ‘value for money’ issue, too:
I could go to a ‘massage club’ and pay £50 to be ‘massaged’ for twenty minutes by a naked young woman (who is forbidden to let me kiss her or touch any of her erogenous zones);
or
I could go to a Shiatsu practitioner, pay £25 and receive a whole hour of highly-skilled gentle and understanding full-body touching and energy-balancing, and go away feeling I’d received many more times satisfaction than £25 worth, and a whole happy worldful of better results than the £2.50 per minute ‘Sex-Industry’ ‘worker’ could or was allowed to ‘provide’. [The one was doubly-beautiful (‘education’) the other doubly-dumb (‘sex’)].
{Well! That might have happened only to an old friend of mine.
(Nevertheless, Lords, Ladies and Public; some-one has to start telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, wouldn’t you think ? ) }.
I’d be interested to know what would happen if it was all legalised (and taxed), with the emphasis put on responsible use. I’d remove any defence of ‘under the influence’ and go the other way, where a criminal act under the influence of a drug (including alcohol) increases the penalty.
It would remove a lot of the issues with drug dealers, because they’d either have to drop prices to compete with government stores or give up, hopefully addict crime would go down because many of them only steal to fund their habit, and problems with impure and unknown strength drugs would also decrease. Yes, we’d get some unfortunate deaths as we do now from Ecstasy, but I consider that to be a matter of education and choice – provided people understand the risks, let them go ahead if they so wish instead of nannying them. I guess the only unknown is how many people who currently do not do drugs would be drawn into it, and that may be less than one might think – if it’s legal then it’s not as cool any more.
I am recording parts of Parliamentary debates and other broadcasts, and parts of the Drug Dependency Debate are in hand.
I would dearly love to participate in constructing an Overview Map of these Drugs and venn- or enneagram- overlapping/non-overlapping High strategy matters.
Nevertheless we could surely list here a few major cinderella factors, that always seem to be excluded from high-up Functions-of-State, and here is my first submission towards that:
(1) A national hospitals and illnesses service (NHIS) should never have been called the National Health Service (NHS).
(2) A distinctly separate daily health-maintenance and long-term Wellbeing-building service would make sense, and would very probably greatly reduce the joint-cost of the existing NHS (NIS) and such a new NHWB service (national health & wellbeing-building).
(3) The existing confusions between job-training and life-education might also be resolved, by joining into one a new Life-education service with the above new wellbeing-building service; with similar cost-savings because of the new clear distinction between (a) job-training, which should now be recognised as the increasingly-dominant purpose of schools and universities, and be 90% paid for by the Business & Economics Sector (and only 8% and 2% respectively by the State and the Student) and (b) life-education which could mean all non-job and extra-mural learning-courses and be paid for by the Individual and the State.
(4) In 1948 there was the Declaration of Human Rights, which in terms of implementation-success has become an addled egg.
[For one thing, nobody agrees about ‘Rights’, and nobody thinks to sit down peacefully together around a friendly Method III win-win-win cooperative problem solving table to write the Constitutions and Bills that would make clear not simply the graded-differences between essential Needs, mere Wants, and more extravagant ‘Dreams’ but the different Hows of best meeting those Needs, Wants and Dreams.] [For another thing the Declaration itself has a few flaws, one of which I recall was under Religion (and Children) and was worded something like “In religious differences the Child shall conform to the wishes of the Parents”; which should by now have been amended something like this “In religious differences the Child and the Parents shall resolve the matter by the friendly Method III of win-win-win cooperative problem solving as the first resort, and as a continually-accessible resort at the call of any one of the Parties; and only after that has failed shall the Parties turn to the Collaborative Conflict Resolution method, likewise continually accessible at the call of any one of the Parties; and only after that too has failed shall the Parties be called into Arbitration by the Law-system (within which one possible outcome shall be the Child’s conformity to the Parents’ wish) ].
(5) In 1978 there was the Declaration of Primary Health Care, which in terms of its new major spirit of cooperatively participative non-medical health and wellbeing building, has likewise been a lopsided bit of a disaster, continuingly so.
For one thing, Governments and Professional Bodies immediately swept the whole thing under pre-existing Primary Medical Care institutions.
For another, a minority of right-thinking governance and real-life workers set about collecting normal-health information from every kind of People all around the World. This was eventually published, along with the practical-know-how for cooperatively participative needs & hows recognition and for win-win-win cooperative problem-solving therein among and by the affected-people themselves, by its two main workers Mary Johnston and Susan Rifkin, with the title “Health Care Together” (MacMillan London: Talc books ).
“Health Care Together” remains an outstandingly succinct ‘victims-participation-tactically’ and ‘governance-participation-strategically’ practical-manual.
It is in three main sections, a fairly short Introductory history and factors, progressing the reader-learner-facilitator through the main text of enablement and skilling stages, and ending with a very short overall progressive strategic ‘map’ of how this participatory peoples’ primary health care (and in that, both primary-self-care and primary- nation-care) might be achieved, and some probable barriers or obstacles to be tackled at the variously successive levels namely starting at the very lowest and smallest of neighbourhoods and progressing upwards through bigger and bigger numbers, and higher-and-higher authorities, eventually encompassing the whole Nation and becoming Internationally integrable.
Unfortunately (or ‘deliberately, malfeasantly, or unthinkingly) the whole project was in the beginning given to a British Epidemiology centre, under a Consultant Fred Abbott who, after the publication of the work, ‘disappeared’ or ‘was moved’.
And from thereon and ever after Primary Health Care has been dying a slow death under Medical-primary-care.
Nonetheless, after I had discovered this black-covers 1980 manual in an Oxfam shop in Fortitude Valley Brisbane, along with its professions- counterpart inside green- covers, circa 1985, I began raising its purpose and contents at various public-meetings and government reviews, only to find that even its outside covers information was being ignored and poo-pooed.
Noble lady, I hunted out Mary Johnston’s telephone number, somewhere down south in Victoria or Adelaide, on a small acreage as I remember, but Mary was not at home and her mother answered “Oh yes; Mary lives here; but she’s flown back to Indonesia to do another round of work with more of its villages”.
I said something like “Oh that’s wonderful, Mrs Johnston” to which there was more than a moment of silence; and then Mrs Johnston said “You know she’s in a wheelchair, don’t you ?”.
(My noble lady, i just need to take a break here, please; and I do trust that your other readers might also wish so to do).
With the halving of the threshold for drink driving now in the offing, the smoking ban, a massive rise in the prison population to new records and the adoption of some 4,000 new criminal offences since 1997, I have come to the conclusion that the nation is becoming allergic to itself.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the English in particular do not like living in the presence of other English, a trait which may have spread to England from Scotland, Ireland and, to a lesser degree, Wales.
“A national hospitals and illnesses service (NHIS) should never have been called the National Health Service (NHS).”
I am certainly one of JDSM’s readers.
His/her opinions are succinct and so well thought out that they should themselves be published more widely.
“Health Care Together” remains an outstandingly succinct ‘victims-participation-tactically”
Successor to Ivan Illich! Think on!
“85% or higher of street sex workers addicted to heroine or crack cocaine.”
The theory is that with both sex and drugs you get nothing for something. That is why the two industries work so well together.
It does not really matter whether somebody is selling sex or drugs. The punter still gets nothing good for it.
If you got something for nothing then it just would not matter.
Twm O’r Nant (et al);
‘Tis good to be ‘with’ someone else in this vastly human-populated world who is resonable (resonate-able) to the same spirit, factors, formal-argumentation, moral-reasoning and life-experience that one is one-self.
The general reader needs to be aware of certain possible contrast and conflicts of meaning and/or of sense:
‘Meaning’ refers to (mere)verbal-mind-words in dictionaries and encyclopaedias; whereas ‘sense’ refers to the sensory-experience of actually doing or having-done the thing (I think the Scandinavian thinker Wittgenstein made a strong point of this).
In formal-argumentation there are set-rules & symbols: and distinctions between different kinds of language. To be brief, ‘and’ means ‘also’, whereas ‘&’ means ‘both are true’; ‘≡’ means ‘both are the same’ whilst ‘≡ with a / through the middle of it’ means both are not/never the same (my Microsoft Word 7 does not include this latter symbol, I can not apologise).
T.O.N. quotes a sub-topic then offers five sentences four of which should be given some life-experience feedback: the fifth of which invites a rather more robust little ‘summary’ critique.
1 “…with both sex and drugs you get nothing for something”. [That’s a fair sort of snapshot; but }
With unloving and unskilful industrial-market-sex-for-pleasure you get something bad for something good; and with unloving and unskilful market-drugs…you get something bad for something good.
With ‘drugs’ some tight definiens are needed, such as ‘dangerous’, ‘social’, ‘class A, B, C, or D’;
and I venture to suggest that some tight & different definiens be overtly included in ‘sex’.
2 “That is why
the two industries work so well together” ? surely there are more reasons.
3 and 4: “It does not (really) matter whether (somebody) is selling sex or (selling) drugs;
“the punter (consumer) still gets nothing good (? The Discontinuous-mind could make a fortune
out of this ‘nothing’ in a court of law)(‘from’ otherwise with a mere ‘for’ the sentence ‘dangles’
at one end)) it”.
I have to go now; but very quickly
5. “If you got something for nothing then it just would not matter” I am replacing, whilst I am out returning an overdue ‘how to protect your computer’ book to the municipal library, with
“If you got something good for something equally good then it just wouldn’t matter”.
Stephen Paterson, I broadly agree with your points.
Dave H, I am broadly in support of your legalisation strategy but not before we have invested massively in educational strategy to reduce usage. The Dutch experience undoubtedly increased marihuana use and at a time of change in the strength of the drug, far more people are harmed by the drug personally. So we would need to adopt such a strategy on hard drugs with great caution.
JSDM, you make several interesting points but as Ministers say “I’m sorry I can’t cover every point in the noble Lord’s speech”. The difficulty with the National Wellbeing Service idea is that there are remarkable few public health measures that you can apply across the board to prevent people falling ill and the healthier we are, the longer we live, the more we are likely to use the NHS for later-onset illnesses. The overall well being would increase if we were a healthier nation but NHS costs would not go down. In fact it was one of Aneurin Bevin’s big mistakes that he though the NHS would reduce ill health over time and National Insurance would therefore cover the costs. The second point is that many treatments given by the NHS are a form of ‘secondary prevention’ to eradicate more adverse effects of illness down the line. Monitoring, spotting and eradicating small retinal blood vessel problems with laser therapy in diabetes is a good example of secondary prevention to stop blindness.
Twm O’r Nant, the medicalisation of society is indeed an odd phenomenon, a consequence I think of our profound egotism. Physical sciences give way to biosciences as we seek to put ourselves at the centre of the universe.
Baroness Murphy.
Thank you for a good piece and fruitful dialogue.
One thing that does concern me is your comment:
“The Dutch experience undoubtedly increased marihuana use and at a time of change in the strength of the drug, far more people are harmed by the drug personally.”
There is as much, if not more, evidence to suggest usage of cannabis in Holland amongst locals went down after decriminalisation, and countries like Portugal can also boast the same. Usage amongst children reduced dramatically, and this after all is the result we are all after:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
The mention of “stronger strains” is something that concerns me when it comes to educated debate. To suggest the west, and indeed, the UK has advanced the botanical traits of cannabis in ten years of mass domestic cultivation is simply harmful to our international relations and displays yet more western arrogance. Cannabis has not become super strength, it is simply bad quality product in the UK. The super strength ethos is simply media hype and should be remembered to be so. The argument to keep tighter (oxymoron with current law) grips on cannabis because we have stronger strains is tantamount to arguing a case for alcohol to be kept illicit due to the harms of moonshine and hooch in prohibition America. The state created the problem, and then argues a case based on its own platform of non control. The Wootton report from 1968 hinted that this would be the result of a prohibition model in the UK and cannabis policy. Some science on the cannabis potency:
http://www.badscience.net/2007/03/reefer-badness/
http://www.badscience.net/2007/07/blah-blah-cannabis-blah-blah-blah/
Taking all other queries out of the equation, and whether you believe we have super strength cannabis strains OR that it is simply a bad product cultivated by dealers, we agree that street cannabis is dire in quality and effect; then there truly is only one way to end this stream of bad quality cannabis, and that is regulation. Without regulation, product is set to worsen from this point on.
It still remains interesting; the figures on cannabis and health:- to suffer from cannabis abuse, you need contributing factors: profuse use, developing age, environmental factors. Once more, as the current law stands, a proper harm reduction programme cannot be initiated as it will be seen to condone an illicit substance. And when children have such easy and ready access to cannabis, we need to ensure that it is harder for them to obtain and make clear the harms associated with cannabis use in youngsters. Cannabis has become feral in the UK, we are now one of the worst countries for abuse and quality, it is prohibition that has created this problem as it has with all substances. The charity Rethink were instrumental in their stance with cannabis and harm reduction in youngsters, and yet, they were credited with the reclassification DESPITE the fact they were quite clear that this was not their intention and did not advocate this; the charity simply wanted more studies and further public education with regards to cannabis. All their recommendations have not been heeded and the organisation is also somewhat dismayed at the affair:
http://www.rethink.org/how_we_can_help/news_and_media/press_releases/rethink_cannabis_ed.html
http://www.rethink.org/how_we_can_help/news_and_media/briefing_notes/briefing_cannabis.html
Interestingly though, cannabis at its worst in society still cannot compare to alcohol run at its best, the pathways to problems report that the government tried to push under the radar addresses this issue, so when concern is added to the debate of higher prevalence in cannabis use, it shifts stance somewhat on outlooks. With alcohol abuse, we focus on the individual and do not set aside a campaign to demonise the substance, with cannabis, the substance draws the attention and not the abuse. We need to treat the symptoms of abuse and not focus on differing substances. Cannabis poses little threat to society, this is invariably the closing statement of the studies, but the news headlines don’t tend to print the full results instead focusing on the shock tactics of cannabis. The figures of cannabis harms are quite favourable, and any other substance it would probably be regarded as a success, but with the social compass slightly askew, these low figures of harms act as damning evidence.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6902240.ece
“To prevent one case of psychosis, it would be necessary to stop at least 2,800 men aged 20 to 24 from smoking the drug heavily, or 4,700 men aged 35 to 39. For women, it would be necessary to dissuade at least 5,470 smokers in the younger age group, or at least 10,870 in the older one.
For light cannabis use, a single case of psychosis would be prevented only if more than 10,000 young men or nearly 30,000 young women were to stop smoking the drug.”
I am thankful to noble house for addressing the issue of drugs and the current model, it is a much needed debate and one in which science needs to play a big part; faith within the scientific community and the public is very much on the wane after last years events. As this Freedom Of Information Act shows:-
http://www.drugequality.org/ico_press_release.htm
…the previous government had no basis for decision on drug classification other than “cultural” reasons, and this goes someway to show why such confusion, and dare I say it, anger is involved with regards to drugs in the UK.
Thank you Baroness Meacher for the debate, and thank you Baroness Murphy for allowing me to reply.
With Respect, Jason.
“Physical sciences give way to biosciences as we seek to put ourselves at the centre of the universe.”
I was interested by JDSM’s comment about Laban and the 8 basic postulated positions. This is surely totally outmoded by now by the exemplary
use of Yoga and its multiple positions of bending just as far as you possibly can, and there being no (health) gain without pain.
At the Science universities which also instructed Physical eucation they seem to have moved across to Bio-physics, the analysis of body movements in a variety of ways.
That brings us back to the Noble, and very learned ,baroness’ loathing for sport, since much of that analysis which is helpful to
movers, and jumpers and runners, and the like, is used by sportsmen and women to improve their own performance, to see exactly how they may improve their movements.
If only it were used by the orthopaedic departments of hospitals who still believe
in wear and tear of the body as the main excuse for getting out the knives to tear apart vast numbers of people for hip replacement and knee replacement, whereas in fact their real need is for biophysical analysis.
How many really,really fat men say that their knee replacement surgery is due to “wear and Tear” and an “old sporting injury”, whereas in fact it is entirely due to the changed centre of gravity of the body due to a disgustingly fat stomach????!!!
The number of excuses the orthopaedic dept is very happy indeed to provide, beggars belief, in order to maintain a constant flow of customers through their “free clinical surgery” doors.
If they all had to pay, there would not be a third as many, although if we all drank coca cola we might still be as fat.
There is an answer to that too.
“Eight (8)elements of movement” I tried to say; not “positions” (darling); and these can be used to analyse or synthesise any sort of movement, including Yoga with which they neither compete nor clash.
Each body-movement ‘function’ has an equivalent brain-mind ‘function’, and divides ‘see-saw-like’ into two elements thus:
Weight (‘Sensation’ & ‘Attention’) into Firm or Gentle (stipulative synonyms Strong or Light);
Space (‘Thinking’& ‘Intention’) into Direct or Flexible;
Time (‘Intuition’ & ”Decision’) into Sustained or Quick;
Flow (‘Feeling’ & ‘Progression’) into Bound or Free-flowing.
Other leaders than Rudolf Laban, in this arguably most essential of all human areas of know-how and knowledge, have provided subsidiary advices, such as
(“)To truly succeed (at piano-playing)you need to practice slowly; and then more-slowly; and finally very-slowly” (Hanon, or perhaps Czerny).
So I tutored my home-organ and piano pupils to keep halving the speed until they felt competent, then double the speed and if that is still too fast (namely to retain all the qualities and accuracies of the passage)to lower the metronome a fraction and half that playing-speed; and so on backwards and forwards.
In Brisbane I attended English & Ethnic dancing classes under a New Zealand choreographer (I was always the only man present) wherein she too was using the ‘half-the-speed’…’now double it’ technique, with later public-audition-winning success.
What we all seem to be wanting here is a sufficiency of human-movement support services such that no matter what your present fitness and abilities level(s)* you can find and enjoy an holistic-body-movement programme tailored especially and affordably for you.
It has proved useless leaving that to the ‘The Health Sector’, ‘The Education System’, ‘The Market’ and ‘The People’.
I can think of no more appropriate Place for this to be started, nurtured, and guided down to Earth than our very own House of Lords; my lady.
* Every – one has some bodyparts as fit as fleas, fiddles or Mallee-bulls; but has at least one bodypart that’s impaired, sick, architecturally-altered, ‘crippled’ or ‘been removed’; hence one’s contrasting levels of movement-ability, and the subsequent categorical need for an holistic movement-plan ‘tailor-made’.
I understand the difficulty in this area of policy. It does however seem ridiculously draconian to criminalise one set of drug users whilst advertising and promoting drugs for another set of drug users.
Alcohol is an intoxicant, rendering one unable to drive. Cigarettes cause cancer and death. Marijuana by any standard is comparitively harmless, yet one faces jail and worse for posession of even a small amount. Teenagers are criminalised as are the sick and peaceful folk who would simply like to unwind and escape the horros, that succesive governments cause our lives in the first place.
Not to mention the fact that in order to acquire such materials, one may encounter all sorts of unsavoury characters (willing to sell to all and sundry, including children). When will this new politics we are promised emerge, whereby we are able to police our own bodies without the hypocrisy of goverment intervention emerge I wonder?
Never I fear. I’m sure the coalition government will repeat the failings of it’s predecessors and ignore expert advice. The Portugese are more in tune with the 21st century the English. How much longer can the country actually afford this awful, draconian, fasistic war on drugs? or should I say War on certain types of drugs!!!
Essentially we’re about drug-free natural (self-assisted) health here and, I suggest, at every level of fitness and at some levels of illness and impairment too.
“There’s no gain without pain”.
There are sliding-scales of ‘pain’, and of ‘discomfort’, and of ‘pleasure’.
Some ‘pain’ is enjoyable; take for instance the discomfort making you stretch ever so slowly and gently after you’ve been sitting at the computer for three hours (NB which should have been no more than one hour at a time, but let’s not be red-herring’d); back-pain slowly transforms through ‘discomfort’ and into ‘gentle stretchability’.
A leg-wound healing, but driving you mad with a new need to scratch it.
Carefully (but as quickly and strongly as bearable) you have a strong urge to scratch it, until it is bordering on painful from the scratching alone.
There are ‘bad’ pains, that are telling you ‘Stop! this is torn flesh we’re into here !, this is an injury, Stop!;
And there are ‘good’ pains that simply say ‘that’s far enough’ or ‘tricky but on-the-mend.
A parallel is in learning a new skill, which always feels ‘awkward’ or ‘wrong’, until you’ve achieved some progress.
And here, I think, is where formal-argumentation’s ‘mind-microskills’ can help:
whilst learning a new skill feels awkward, feeling awkward does not necessarily mean you are learning a new skill.
Not ‘preaching at you’; simply passing the time-of-day in your obviously drug-free company.
Most of these thoughts are truisms; but like The Lord’s Prayer they can be frequently remindful.
Thank you.
jsdm.
At last someone that is prepared to speak out. Instead of spouting the old “Drugs are bad and make you a criminal” USA/drugs company funded party line.
We all know drugs legal, prescribed or illegal can cause untold harm and deaths.
But the current cost in money and wasted potential (Who will employ someone with a criminal record for drugs) to the UK ecomony cannot continue for much longer.
How the government can sanction alcohol (40,000 deaths) & tobacco (114,000 deaths) and still criminalise cannabis (1 death) when it could be a massive untapped tax revenue source to help clear the countries debts is beyond me.
I have been on strong prescription pain killers for most of the last two years and I know canabbis works just as well but I cannot risk using it as a full time alternative medication as I would loose my very well paid job if I got a criminal record for possession or growing my own for personal consumption.
So from a purely selfish point of view I would love to see decrimilisation and a 5 plant permit for personal use grows to be implemented – then I wouldn’t have to deal with criminals to obtain pain relief (or some social smoke) or look over my shoulder every time I want to smoke a joint. Afterall I’m paying for it with my tax-paid salary.
If I’m not hurting anyone else & I’m personally responsible for what I am doing to my body I should be allowed to what I want to, isn’t that true empowerment?
Feel free to contact me on this subject.
Baroness Meacher.
I would like you to read this item and raise this in the next PMQ’s if possible, this does not just cover the prohibition of a substance that is scientifically less damaging than alcohol but raises real questions about the mechanisms the government have used to suppress information that is in the public interest which also undermines the legitamacy of the current drug laws…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2010/06/home_office_error_reveals_how_foi_request_handled.html
We could be saving up to £19 billion in prohibition costs and thousands wasted lives & un-deserved criminal records.
Dealers are the criminals, not people who use drugs, they should be helped if they require it.
“policy making a long way off” WHY? It has long been understood by MP’s, Police and many if not all drug dependance charities that prohibition does not work and never has. A long way off to EDUCATION and TREATMENT just keep locking them up until the MP’s and Lords pluck up the courage to admit the last 20 years on this issue have been a complete sham and that not even getting started on the billions wasted by our docile UN and British so called goverment