children vaccinated against drug addiction...

[funnelhead]

Wow this really caught my eye from the independant! Vaccination against drugs? Sorry but thats a step too far in my book. Drugs arent inherantly bad - it's the crime culture that exists to feed addiction that is bad. If i get rich and i want to sit in my room doing drugs all day and hurting no-one - well i dont see why i shouldnt.

from : http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/cri...p?story=544439 :

"Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years."

Now if that was changed to force people proven to be supporting a drug habit through crime to clean up - then that sounds more reasonable to me. At the moment though, i'm more concerned about drunken chavs on a friday night bashing my face in.

I've never done coke or H, but i like to think that if i found out i had terminal cancer or alzheimers, then i could at least go on a bender.... you shouldnt remove the choice...

And remember that humans are innocent until proven guilty...

what do people think?

[unrealrocks]

Yeah - saw this on the C4 news, great idea imo

[Rave]

Um yeah- heroin is given to terminal cancer patients, so I guess it'd be a great idea to immunise people against its effects. They also give it to heart attack victims I believe, apparently it reduces the amount of damage done to the heart somehow (as well as stopping the crippling pain of course).

If I have kids, they won't be getting immunised.

Rich :¬)

[G4Z]

yeah stupid idea, the very fact that one day you might really really need morphine for pain relief and then what happens? you die of shock from the pain... nice one.

Also its a fundemental breech of human rights, you are removing the choice for the adult by making this decision when they are a child.

[dozer]

pretty stupid, also lots of dealers getting beaten up cos people think their stuff aint working

[gobbo]

Rather strage, what happens if some one is given sterioids or cocaine (pain killer) whilst in hospital?

When my Dad had a stroke he was but on a form of cocaine, something to do with thinning blood and releiving pain i think.

[G4Z]

Novacane is a commonly used drug used in dentistry that is derived from cocaine, no doubt that would be a problem as well.

[Devilbod]

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years

The team at Scripps tested the virus on rats by injecting it into their noses twice a day for three days.

On the fourth day, the rats were given a shot of cocaine. The researchers found that cocaine had more effect on the rats not injected with the virus than those that were. Scientists hope that the virus will help stop the cravings experienced by cocaine users for the drug by blocking the pleasure they normally associate with cocaine. This anti-drug medication is expected to be available to users within the next two years in the form of a nasal spray.

Not 100% sure but it seems to be saying that it stops the 'euphoric' properties of the drugs, so you basically wont get high - you'll probably still get the effects of pain reilef and increased this and that just not the happy, happy feeling making the whole drug rather pointless.
Imagine it this way - if paracetamol had a side effect that made you high, i.e. happy, sexualy arroused, confident as well as the pain killing effect, then it would remove the high effect leaving just the pain killer.
I could be wrong that interveiw isnt very clear on it, but either way that makes it a bit of a different arguement...

[petrefax]

/\ /\ thats how i read it too devilbod (nice sig btw )

if i had kids wouldn't have them immunised. whilst i agree being a drug addict is no sort of life for anyone i feel my life is richer for the small amount of experimentation i've done

if my experiences & those of friends are anything to go by, if children were immunised against the effects of drugs then when they became teenagers they'd just find some other way of endangering themselves through highly dangerous and completely pointless acts of bravado instead (spot of trainsurfing anyone?)

[Punky]

surely this is just being used as a scapegoat for the fact that government drug education is not working. the only reason these immunisations are needed is that current drug policy is not working. surely educating children that drugs such as heroin and cocaine are NOT to be touched, but in a better way than "don't do drugs because they are bad", but telling the kids about the short and long-term effects, problems, risks etc.. and hope they use common sense and decide not to use them. this is just a fine example of ancient and unworkable drug policies that never have or will work in theory or in practice.
i know this aint too relevant, but in Holland where there is a strong ethos of education instead of draconian policies, the age of the majority of heroin and crack users are in their mid-40's, with a hell of a lot less junkies than over here. surely this is a step in the right direction? along with coffeeshops over here too
peace

[FordPrefect]

People with the urge will just find other substances to abuse, possibly even worse ones. This is just more than a little too Orwellian for my liking.

[Devilbod]

I'm going to be a little candid and hope that people won’t judge too much what I’m like today by what I used to get up to, I haven’t touch any drugs for 5 years now not even a puff.

Needless to say I have a rather large personal knowledge about drugs and I'm still coming to terms with the damage that I have done to myself due to drugs.
I suffer from mood swings that are brought on quickly and without reason, I suffer from paranoia and now in my later life finding it very difficult to socialise, and these are all down to the drugs I did as a teenager. I should say that I’m not some nut job though I coming to terms with things and sorting them out one step at a time but still I’m a lot more grumpy and negative than I used to be.

I started off at the deep end at the age of 15 with LSD in the form of magic mushroom - free and easily attainable if you know where to look, I then did hash and grass and other forms of LSD such as microdots and tabs, after a very bad incident or bad trip while I had moved away from home and was going to college, I wont go into details because I'm still haven’t fully forgiven myself for what happened, I had a break away from Acid but I still did pot but by the time the bad trip happened it was about 2-3 years after I first got high, at the time I nearly lost my mind, almost tried to kill myself and it took a long while to get back on my feet.
I went back to the same college and about 6 months I got into the club scene and then started to do Ecstasy and speed after all they weren't as hardcore as LCD, no bad trips with them..Stupid is the only answer to that.
I was a complete pill head and was a regular at a night club that had all the big names every week, I also started to go to other club during the week and pretty soon I was going out maybe 4 times a week, each night I would do 1-2 pills and a couple of grams of speed and some times coke.
This continued until I ran out of money, was living homeless on someone’s couch and my whole life revolved around drugs, music, parties and not much else. Things where getting out of hand too, I’ve had a shot gun waved in my face in a car park of a night club and seen a few things happen that aren’t very nice.
One day I got saved by my mother I hadn’t seen her for several months and she came looking for me and purely by chance she bumped into me walking down the high street on the way to sign on for the first time, I needed the money because I had a debt agency chasing me and was about to get black listed.

She took me home and I went on probably the biggest come down you’ll ever hear about which lasted about 6 months. I then got my **** together, got a job, went back to college, and sorted my life out by then I was 21.

My Mum didn’t know I was on drugs at the time or even after until about 3 years ago when I told her the truth for the first time, she probably put it down to alcohol and rebellious teenager at the time I guess and I was lying to her how could she know? I covered my tracks. Any signs that I might have been doing class A drugs could be explained away easily enough with alcohol, hangovers or just by staying away from home for the night, she did guess that I was probably doing hash at the time because the evidence is easy to find – extra large rizlas etc. So that was out in the open and acted as a nice cover for the hard stuff.
My Father is a whole other subject but needless to say he wasn’t a big presence in my life and never will be.
I wouldn’t say I came from a broken home and there were plenty of people I could have turned too to talk about it but I was having too much fun, had loads of friends and good times aplenty.
I’m not a complete fool either aside for English where I suffer from dyslexia I’m intelligent enough to get by in life. I knew that drugs where supposed to be bad as well but that just added to the attraction a little – being naughty I guess.

As it happens I do know one thing I have what you might call a weakness for addictive things and that is also apparent in relatives and family members so it is in the genetics on both sides of my family, but now I’m aware of it I’m a lot more careful around even some things like alcohol because the risk is there, I still smoke and have a sweet tooth but hey nobodies perfect.
I also now know that I was just trying to fit in, have friends and enjoy myself probably a little to much.

What I can say is this though, it cost me 6 years of my life a **** load of money and a fair amount of problems later on in life, I failed at college and in the 3-4 years I was there I got an AS in Maths but I was lucky and with a little help I got back on my feet.
I have found out since that two of my friends from the time have been admitted to mental hospitals another one has had a Heroine overdose and one has become part of an ott religious cult trying to ‘atone for his sins’ the rest are all living at the bottom jumping from one job to another because they messed up there education and are stuck in the situation there in. A few of us are trying to make a different choice and starting a more normal life, and a lot are still off there faces as much as they can possibly manage.

When people say that pot doesn’t lead onto other things I laugh at there stupidity, it doesn’t directly but it does make it too easy – pot dealer usually deal a bit of this or that on the side to make a little extra money or they now someone else that does so the choice is there, and because you’ve tried one type of drug your more likely to try another. It’s down to an individuals will power whether they do or not, some people try it and never look back, some people try it and then have another go… And when you’re a teenager it’s too easy – look at teenage parties where everyone tries to out drink each other, how many of us have boasted how much we drank on this night or that night?
Hash as well does have side effects I’ve seen it with my own eyes – people just cant be bothered to do anything, they tend to let life just pass them by, they don’t care. And hardcore users even get mightily pissed off if they don’t get there daily fix.

Speed and Ecstasy all have side effects that go off the chart in terms of later on in life, and the immediate effects is that a user doesn’t give a monkey about anything in the future, its all about the now – which club, what drugs, which dance CD in the car… It also makes you thick, a little foggy in the brain department and the more you use the less able of intelligence you seem to be. And I’ve already skimmed on a couple of the later on in life side effects – paranoia, mood swings…

And I’m of a strong belief that alcohol is as bad as taking drugs and can ruin someone’s life just as easily I have seen that with my own eyes too. But before someone thinks I’m some kill joy nut, I’m not I just feel things need to be tougher or better managed both in the law and in general.

So after reading that do you still think it’s a bad idea to possibly stop the whole point of taking these drugs?
And if your still not convinced how can you prove that someone is taking drugs, they get caught? Fair enough, but I didn’t get caught. You can see the signs? What signs? How do you tell? You cant with out seeing it with your own eyes, every symptom can be explained away, how can you tell that your child is lying to you because if there good at it you wont know.
Anyway I don’t mean to make a few of the parents paranoid but you can see my point.

Overall that report is a little too vague to agree with it totally – if it is drug specific then that would be great otherwise it might be a little too dangerous, it might be also better if it was time based: say out of you system by your mid to late twenty’s that way people would have a choice and hopefully be able to make a better choice and understand the risks better, new drugs would appear and the problem would have to be addressed again, but if they can do it once they can do it again.
Would I give it to my kids (fear the day that mini devilbods appear! )? If it met some of the thing I’ve said above then probably yes! It would give me piece of mind and the knowledge that my kids won’t be as stupid as me and that I can trust them more. If they got upset by my decission later on in life then I would explain it to them and hope that they understood.

Anyway sorry if this is a little too candid as I’ve said I haven’t done drugs in several years but you can understand my worry because some people can be very prejudice against people that have taken drugs, the only vices I have are smoking and Coca Cola, oh and my Motorbike. The only time I feel like going on this little rant is on the off chance that someone will think twice or even three times before making the same sodding mistakes that I did and wasting a whole lot of there lives ‘having fun’ and paying for it later. And if you do drugs for god sake be careful and don’t be afraid to talk to someone about it.

Bod.

[Punky]

Needless to say I have a rather large personal knowledge about drugs

I started off at the deep end at the age of 15 with LSD in the form of magic mushroom - free and easily attainable if you know where to look, I then did hash and grass and other forms of LSD such as microdots and tabs

well, seeing as you start out claiming to know a lot about drugs, here goes some problems i've found:
as you said above, you started off with "LSD in the form of magic mushrooms". the substance in shrooms that gets you off your tits is Psilocybin. this is a completely natural compound. REAL LSD is a synthetic subsance called 9,10-Didehydro-N,N-diethyl-6-methylergoline-8ß-carboxamide, created in a lab (originally by the US Gov.t if i my memory serves me correctly) and completely unrelated to to mushrooms. if you claim that shrooms and acid are one and the same, but in different forms, then your claim of "Needless to say I have a rather large personal knowledge about drugs" is put into disrepute somewhat.

Now, i don't want to turn this into yet another weed debate, but one of your comments needs setting straight.

When people say that pot doesn’t lead onto other things I laugh at there stupidity, it doesn’t directly but it does make it too easy – pot dealer usually deal a bit of this or that on the side to make a little extra money or they now someone else that does so the choice is there, and because you’ve tried one type of drug your more likely to try another.

this is an effect of prohibition. surely if cannabis was legal and had a safe, regulated supply, then this problem would not happen? my dealer sells me my weed, but he also sells pills, coke, speed and various other nasties. i'm not tempted into buying then as i'm not a retard, but the choice is there. now, saying that people who say cannabis isn't a gateway drug are stupid just reflects your own stupidity and narrow-mindedness (you should be in government). they have the willpower and common sense not to go down the path you CHOSE to go down. no-body forced you to drop those pills, or to snort a line of coke. it was all your own decision, and if the peer-pressure or whatever 'made you do it', then i feel very sorry for you, you must have a very low level of self-esteem and lack of personal control and respect. self-destruction is not top of my list, and neither is it on the long term aims of a lot of regular cannabis smokers i know (and i know a fair few).

And I’m of a strong belief that alcohol is as bad as taking drugs and can ruin someone’s life just as easily I have seen that with my own eyes too.

well, considering alcohol is a drug, and a very dangerous one at that, i aint surprised at this. i drank before i smoked cannabis, so i could say alcohol is a gateway drug. i also smoked tobbacco before cannabis, so the same could be said. you smoke, so you are still guilty of being a drug addict.

your post goes entirely with the current government ethos of only telling the bad sides of drugs, combined with general mis-information and nanny-state, Orwellian laws. when i'm older and i have kids, i will NOT let them have these injections. i would hope that they would listen to me and be clever enough and respectful enough of me and their own bodies not to get involved in class A's. my parents know i smoke cannabis, but they turn a blind eye. however, if i was coming home pilling my face off or tripping on acid, they would have gone mad.

its all about knowing where to draw the line. its just a shame that you stopped, snorted the line and carried on.
peace.

[Devilbod]

then your claim of "Needless to say I have a rather large personal knowledge about drugs" is put into disrepute somewhat.

You may go round using the correct names, youd be one of the first people that I know that did this. Most people generalise when it comes to drugs Acid, LSD, Magic Mushrooms, basicly the ones that make you see stuff althought to my experence that isnt neccacarly true. In fact in reference to magic mushroom I was talking mainly about 'Liberty Caps' or Psilocybe semilanceata if you realy want to get techinical because they are the most common found in this country and apart from the obvious side effects dont require much in the way of preperation unlike taking Fly agaric which was the other local favorite, but talking to much of that can worse case kill you and too little makes you sick.

I agree it is an effect of prohibition on the point about hash, I sorry if my comments seem a little harsh but it's too easy for a teenager to fall into that trap, I'm glad you not tempted but a lot of poeple do get tempted as I said I was a teenager at the time and having to much fun at the time, got easiliy carried away. In my defence the area I was living in breed this type of thing and I can only name a few kids from my entre year that didnt do drugs by the time they left school, who want to be the one that didnt follow the rest? Sad as it may seem at the time it didnt seem to hurt anyone and so people got carried away, and as I've said I was a kid at the time. I obviously offended you with that comment and I appologise for that.

When it comes down to alcohol I was talking about alcoholics and the current state of binge drinking culture thats appearing. It appears you agree with what I said to some degree anyway.
I admit I dont have any answers about it, Better policing? Better laws? most of the time they seem to make the problems worse. This new idea of stopping the effects of drugs to me seems a good one.
The other point was that how do you know what you children are getting up to away from home - say in Uni you might not and that makes it difficult to make sure they are being sensible, wouldnt it break your hart if you found out later on that your children got into class A drugs because they thought you would understand?

I've only seen the bad side sorry maybe youd like to show the good side? But because I've only seen the bad side I'm am anti drugs because of it.
As for the line well I was too off my face and to stupid myself to realise I was crossing it.

[Rave]

I personally wouldn't take most drugs because I have an addictive personality. I eventually managed to stop smoking but I still drink a lot more than I really should. I've smoked cannabis a fair few times and eventually stopped because I was just getting paranoid every time. I suspect that it's hard to get anything other than proper strong skunk nowadays, a bit of the weaker old style weed probably wouldn't screw me up so much. Still, on the one occasion when I did have quite a good experience with weed, it made my brain work in a way it had never worked before- it felt like it had 'opened the doors of perception' to use the old cliche. The thing is though, the next day I couldn't really remember any of the things I'd thought about, so I realised there basically wasn't much point. Unless I was going to be stoned permanently, there was no benefit to it.

I know people who smoke regularly and still function perfectly normally and healthily. Just because a lot of people can't handle drugs doesn't mean you should deny that freedom to everyone else as far as I'm concerned. It is perfectly possible to use any drug, even the 'serious' ones like coke or heroin, without getting addicted to them.

Rich :¬)