Let us beat a dead horse(drugs stuff)
A few weeks ago in the UK, a scientist enlisted by the government as an adviser on drugs policy likened the use of ecstacy to horse riding, in terms of the harm brought about from it. Jackie Smith ordered him to apologize and decided to ignore his advice and reccomendation that ecstacy be reduced from a class A drug to a class B.
How fucking dare she. He has came to this opinion via scientific research, supported by objective evidence and facts. Yet she refuses to look at it because it doesn't fit with her views on drugs, and indeed the views of the country.
E hit the news big time in the UK during the nineties when a young woman called Leah Betts (I think it was) took the drug and eventually died. There was mass paranoia and a total moral panic within the media, which reported on and showed E to be a very dangerous drug. And most citizens of the UK tend to share this view, as they based their opinions on information given from the government and media.
However it turns out that ecstacy is actually a rather safe drug. The girl who's death sparked the outrage didn't die due to the drug alone, it was her water intake that eventually led to her death, as I am sure some of you will know, consuming large quantities of water over a short time is potentially fatal. It is likely the drug causing her to feel dehydrated and her subsequent water binge that killed her, but neither alone.
This however was never reported en mass. Around 30 people die each year in the UK in relation to ecstacy use. 30. Take some time to take that in. Very few people who take it actually die. The fact of the matter is, the government message on this drug and indeed others is grossly misinformed and hence the UK populations views on the issue are often misguided and factually ignorant.
The whole "are drugs bad?" debate has been had on here, so I want to switch the focus slightly. Should governments rely soley on scientific evidence to form drugs policy? And should the media use scientific evidence as the basis for reporting on drugs?
I believe the answer is yes. Many will have been shocked at what the advisor said regarding ecstacy, however his opinion was born out of research and facts, you simply cannot write off such opinions for the sole reason that it is supported by actual evidence. Surely it is the responsibility of the state when informing the public to the dangers of X and Y that the information is based on solid scientific evidence. Instead we have had a long history of disinformation, or highly selective information regarding drugs.
I don't want this to descend into a pro drug v anti drug debacle, the focus of this thread is on the reporting of drug information and the integrity of that information. When I heard that bitch write off that scientists opinions I was disgusted. I don't take the drug and likely never will, that isn't the issue though, she thinks her opnion (which almost certainly isn't based on any objective evidence) somehow supercedes opinions born out of research and facts and I think that this is irresponsible for an elected officlal.
Drugs are something most politicians don't want people to use, so they disinform or only paint a part of the picture. However people still use them. Surely some of you must agree that if people are still going to insist on using drugs, they should be informed upon the whole picture, not disinformation, fear mongering and distraction. I believe a failure to do this is irresponsible. This isn't the 50's. Government attitudes need to be able to change and adapt to new ways of thinking and if new opinions which disagree with current opinions can be demonstrated to have some factual, scientific bases then they must be considered with the same regard as others.
