Reduced harm nicotine products are considered a threat to the cessation industry so are to be prohibited. A current consultation on nicotine proposes to prohibit all recreational nicotine products (except tobacco) by making medical licensing compulsory. This will remove self determination and freedom of informed choice and replace them with patronising and 'treatment' paid for by the tax payer.
This happens with other drugs which are monopolised for the pharmaceutical industry. By prohibiting commercial recreational drug trade citizens are turned into a captive market and the health industry is used for peddling drugs for private interests rather than cures or the greater public good. Medics prescribing nicotine (or methadone, etc.) replacements are drug dealers, sustaining addiction (which they call disease). Although this may be considered a way to reduce the harm of some substances, it is a breach of medical ethics and means that health services are mopping up after bad legislation. Prohibition causes more harm than actual drug taking and it is essential to recognise that some people enjoy taking drugs, including caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, ecstasy, heroin and all the rest. This can not be considered medical treatment and has no place in health services.
If recreational drugs were properly regulated, commercially available, taxed and monitored by a national drug agency and if the Misuse of Drugs Act didn't impose subjective and unscientific control categories on them then the artificial health claims would be obsolete.
People need clear, honest assessments of risk and for those who decide they will take recreational drugs, encouragement to take the least harmful.
Allow properly regulated, safe and easy access for adults to recreational drugs - they are not medicines and should not be monopolised for the profit of health and pharmaceutical interests.
Why the contribution is important
The Medicines Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act are used to turn lifestyle choices into medical problems and to artificially expand the health industry at taxpayer expense.
Is this idea inappropriate? Please login to report this idea to a moderator
Current tags
Heroin is now available on prescription which has been kept quiet by the NHS/Government!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8257843.stm
It started as a trial but is now in full force??
Junkie Britain now paid for by the tax payer?!?!?! MADNESS
---------------------------
That was a trial, it is not policy across the country.
It's cheaper than banging them up in prison at a cost 38,000 grand a year. It also works out cheaper than keeping them on a reduced dose of methadone and street heroin with all the crime that goes with it. Sounds as if you're happy to see addicts locked up?
Whichever method is used it is going to cost the tax payer, but surely one which cuts offending, cuts the amount of street heroin used, cuts the HIV/Hepatitis rates down is a good thing no?
Addicts don't have to cost the tax payer anything, we can buy our own gear and that's how it's usually done. The problems occur when the state destroys the regulated and safer commercial market in order to claim more medical victims.
More control over lifestyle choices isn't going to help anybody but the most out of control addicts and they are a minority who usually have other compounding problems that aren't helped by having responsibilities for their own health removed.
Commercial regulation is what we need, not medicine or living outside the law.
My use of nicotine in whatever form is not medicinal in any way, shape or form, just as my use of caffeine isn't.
To suggest that heroin be included is foolish. Not only is it highly addictive, but the ability of a person to conduct their lives whilst in the thrall of this addiction is severely diminished. Likewise cocaine. Cannabis has been shown to cause psychosis.
Nicotine however, is on the cusp of this arguement. Its use through the burning of tobacco has proven and serious health risks. The inhilation of nicotine however, has none such risk (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8614291)
Delivery methods that do not involve burning organic materials are being labelled "medicinal uses" as if to assume that anyone using nicotine in any way but smoking is attempting to quit.
I like the effect nicotine has. It calms me, I am less irritable and can concentrate better. I do not like the effect that cigarettes have - the cough, the lethargy etc. My recreational use of nicotine is on the verge of being restricted. If these reclassifications of nicotine deliverers are passed I will be faced with two choices: A dangerous, outdated, and potentially life threatening method available through many retail outlets with no questions asked, or a Dickensian consultation with my GP where I stand like Oliver and say "Please sir, can I have some more"
Please log in to add comments and rate ideas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8257843.stm
It started as a trial but is now in full force??
Junkie Britain now paid for by the tax payer?!?!?! MADNESS
Please login to flag this comment as inappropriate