Plant food, anyone? If so, you're too late. Alan Johnson, UK Home Secretary and world-renowned expert on such matters, has declared mephedrone a Class B drug, as from last Friday. The evening before the ban came into operation, the hills around Inverness were aglow with bonfires, as the local kids burnt their stocks before the midnight hour arrived and they turned into horrible little criminals.
More than two minutes with most of the mainstream media on mephedrone and you feel as if you've taken an overdose of contaminated barbiturates. Misinformation, lies and callous propaganda from politicians and their colluding buddies on TV and in the papers (the Guardian is apparently an exception on this one). To find out more, you need to look elsewhere. For general education, Erowid ('Education, education, education' was the mantra of phase one Tony Blair; shame he didn't put Erowid on the national curriculum), and for news the relevant portals on Drugs Forum, are good starting points.
The problem with mephedrone is that it is a new kid on the block, so nobody knows anything about its long-term effects (unlike substances such as MDMA and LSD, which were pretty fully researched before the politicians sagely put an end to all that nonsense). As with other substances of mind-alteration, from caffeine to crack cocaine, mephedrone has its enthusiasts and its detractors. One media lie is that it has killed twenty-something people in the UK. It has been implicated in that many deaths, but only one of these has actually been proven. My reading and the occasional anecdotal report suggest that this is a pretty dodgy substance; on the other hand, it must have something going for it, since so many nightclubbers have clearly taken to it.
If people have indeed died as a result of taking mephedrone, one thing is clear to me: the blood is on the hands of the politicians! It is they who have blindly and cynically persisted with their stupid drug policies, which prevent proper research and education, let alone open discussion, denying availability of lesser risk substances and driving the supply of drugs (apart from alcohol and tobacco) into the hands of criminal mafia. Any parents suspecting their kid has died from taking mephedrone should take the government to court.
Underlying what I am saying, and what most of our politicians are too bigoted and cowardly to get into their thick skulls is this: KIDS WANNA GET HIGH! Older folk too, but young people appear to have a particular propensity for this type of activity. And this wish ain't gonna go away anytime soon. So, far better to get it into the open, regulate it responsibly, take it out of the hands of criminals and minimise the harm. As it is, the Conservative Party is boasting it's going to be 'even tougher on drugs' than Labour, a policy that's frightening and going to cost even more innocent lives. Bizarrely, in the run-up to this year's non-event of fake democracy, the only person who seems to be suggesting anything honest about drugs is Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP. OK, so we'll all be voting for them now....
Unfortunately, a lot of older people remain part of this sorry state of affairs. It is sad that, by the time they reach 36, most adults have forgotten their own all-night clubbing, dope-smoking, pill-popping late teens, as if it never happened. Selective amnesia: does it confer evolutionary advantages (better ask alternative culture favourite Richard Dawkins...)? For the record, I hate the word 'high', but what is wrong with wanting to 'get high', so long as you're not messing yourself up big-time? Adults do a great disservice to younger people by patronising them about drugs, and marginalising them in the process. Altering consciousness appears to be one of the most basic of human drives (actually, it's not just humans; gorillas in west Africa, for example, have been reported munching hallucinogenic plants and running around madly.....). Most cultures throughout history have had substances and other means of influencing what goes on in the mind. Not to mention our psychedelic prehistory; see 'Supernatural' by Graham Hancock for starters. Meditation, fasting, chanting, drumming, standing upside down for long periods of time; sleep deprivation, flotation tanks, high altitudes; smoking, snorting and eating plants. There are loads of ways people have gone about it, and still do.
Meanwhile, around the time the mephedrone frenzy was peaking, two local teenagers died at the bottom of the road I walk to work. Their car smashed through a wall on the corner and into an architect's grounds. It was a poignant sight, to see the flowers and football shirts arrayed outside as I walked past. Strangely, such occurrences fail to create the same clamour: killer cars should be made illegal. Which leads to the main point, sort of: everything has an agenda. Sometimes secret, normally unspoken. Maybe collusive, maybe unconscious. But mind alteration isn't part of the dominators' agenda, while turn-of-the-button, no-need-to-walk-beyond-the-driveway convenience is. It's as simple and as difficult as that. Keep those antennae tuned into 'secret agenda channel'. There's always something worth listening to there.
More than two minutes with most of the mainstream media on mephedrone and you feel as if you've taken an overdose of contaminated barbiturates. Misinformation, lies and callous propaganda from politicians and their colluding buddies on TV and in the papers (the Guardian is apparently an exception on this one). To find out more, you need to look elsewhere. For general education, Erowid ('Education, education, education' was the mantra of phase one Tony Blair; shame he didn't put Erowid on the national curriculum), and for news the relevant portals on Drugs Forum, are good starting points.
The problem with mephedrone is that it is a new kid on the block, so nobody knows anything about its long-term effects (unlike substances such as MDMA and LSD, which were pretty fully researched before the politicians sagely put an end to all that nonsense). As with other substances of mind-alteration, from caffeine to crack cocaine, mephedrone has its enthusiasts and its detractors. One media lie is that it has killed twenty-something people in the UK. It has been implicated in that many deaths, but only one of these has actually been proven. My reading and the occasional anecdotal report suggest that this is a pretty dodgy substance; on the other hand, it must have something going for it, since so many nightclubbers have clearly taken to it.
If people have indeed died as a result of taking mephedrone, one thing is clear to me: the blood is on the hands of the politicians! It is they who have blindly and cynically persisted with their stupid drug policies, which prevent proper research and education, let alone open discussion, denying availability of lesser risk substances and driving the supply of drugs (apart from alcohol and tobacco) into the hands of criminal mafia. Any parents suspecting their kid has died from taking mephedrone should take the government to court.
Underlying what I am saying, and what most of our politicians are too bigoted and cowardly to get into their thick skulls is this: KIDS WANNA GET HIGH! Older folk too, but young people appear to have a particular propensity for this type of activity. And this wish ain't gonna go away anytime soon. So, far better to get it into the open, regulate it responsibly, take it out of the hands of criminals and minimise the harm. As it is, the Conservative Party is boasting it's going to be 'even tougher on drugs' than Labour, a policy that's frightening and going to cost even more innocent lives. Bizarrely, in the run-up to this year's non-event of fake democracy, the only person who seems to be suggesting anything honest about drugs is Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP. OK, so we'll all be voting for them now....
Unfortunately, a lot of older people remain part of this sorry state of affairs. It is sad that, by the time they reach 36, most adults have forgotten their own all-night clubbing, dope-smoking, pill-popping late teens, as if it never happened. Selective amnesia: does it confer evolutionary advantages (better ask alternative culture favourite Richard Dawkins...)? For the record, I hate the word 'high', but what is wrong with wanting to 'get high', so long as you're not messing yourself up big-time? Adults do a great disservice to younger people by patronising them about drugs, and marginalising them in the process. Altering consciousness appears to be one of the most basic of human drives (actually, it's not just humans; gorillas in west Africa, for example, have been reported munching hallucinogenic plants and running around madly.....). Most cultures throughout history have had substances and other means of influencing what goes on in the mind. Not to mention our psychedelic prehistory; see 'Supernatural' by Graham Hancock for starters. Meditation, fasting, chanting, drumming, standing upside down for long periods of time; sleep deprivation, flotation tanks, high altitudes; smoking, snorting and eating plants. There are loads of ways people have gone about it, and still do.
Meanwhile, around the time the mephedrone frenzy was peaking, two local teenagers died at the bottom of the road I walk to work. Their car smashed through a wall on the corner and into an architect's grounds. It was a poignant sight, to see the flowers and football shirts arrayed outside as I walked past. Strangely, such occurrences fail to create the same clamour: killer cars should be made illegal. Which leads to the main point, sort of: everything has an agenda. Sometimes secret, normally unspoken. Maybe collusive, maybe unconscious. But mind alteration isn't part of the dominators' agenda, while turn-of-the-button, no-need-to-walk-beyond-the-driveway convenience is. It's as simple and as difficult as that. Keep those antennae tuned into 'secret agenda channel'. There's always something worth listening to there.
P.S. Good news for river toads everywhere; the charges against Bouncing Bear Botanicals have been dismissed. Not surprising, since they were all completely false anyway. Slightly ominously, the police have stated that they are continuing their investigations. Which sounds a bit like 'OK buddie, we didn't get you on that one, but we're gonna get you on SOMETHING.' Nice people.
In the pale green vortex parallel podcast, it's time for some music from that unwitting princess of the magical muse, Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes. Her fantastic cover of the Cure's 'A Forest'.
