A Bitter Pill to Swallow

[-YT-]

Taken from the Sunday Mail - Adelaide

Some Governments decisions are so farcical you'd think they were on drugs. Last month, Dr David Caldicott and his team were available to attend the Two Tribes dance party at the Wayville Showgrounds. His group the Royal Adelaide Designer Drug Academic Research (RADAR) unit, made up of nurses, doctors, scientests and police were preparing to continue their ground nreaking work into the use and abuse of designer drugs.

But the States Department of health again withheld a license to heldle illict substances. This meant RADAR coundnt invite users to submit their pills for testing, couldnt tell them whats inside those pills and couldnt warn them of the risks. More importantly, they couldnt be on hand if something went wrong in the heat of the night. And, by the way at the Two Tribes event, six people were admitted to hospital.

I'm not a drug user, although like many of my generation, I've done this and that and see them as being part of the landscape of youth. One thing I'm sure of is drugs-are poison. Polictical poison that is , and no politician wanting to hold a seat will go near them. For John Howard the safest drugs policy is one of unremitting war waged by the police.

Education and harm-minimisation are simply hippy-trippy appeasements to a brainless minority. If you ask me, given the license decisions, it seems the Rann Government is succubing to some of that Federal pressure. I'm amazed at the backlash to Dr Caldicott's work. Some people have said the group is actually encouraging drug use. Others think a policy of "bugger the druggies, let em "die" is more effective.since 2002, the RADAR team has been attending raves and effectively piggy-backing on the practice of pill-testing carried out by drug users.

What most of us dont realise is lots of party goers are already testing their drugs using easily obatained kits. They want a "trip" -not a trip to the hospital. The RADAR group is simply taking their data, giving them a sound idea of what's in their pills, and asking them questions about their habits. The team is gaining valuable insights into the ever-changing world of party drugs. And i have to wonder, how can this be a bad thing? If you think the average party drug user is some washed-out dead beat, think again. According to research, he or she is typically tertiary educated , holdind down a well-paid job and in a risk taking phase of their lives. They might do it for 3 to 5 years, usually between the ages of 18 and 30, before leaving it all behind for lives built around families and career paths.

But is Dr Caldicott being soft on drugs? No. Drug users will take however much we say it's wrong. RADAR has simply stepped forward to keep them alive while they're doing it. RADAR says it's research strongly supports the international evidence that a policy of zero tolerance is polictically expedient but useless. In spite of continued busts. Australia is still swamped with designer drugs ( the UN's Global Report on Amphetamines says the country has the worlds highest per capita use of ectasy) Police raids in Adelaide area recently yielded four types of pills.

Yet at a typical rave, RADAR identifes 80 types of pills- ones that can be logged and analysed so doctors can manage potential overdoses. South Australia's pills are really, really bad, says Dr Caldicott. They've got horrible contaminants such as LSD, Ketamine and in some cases poisons. And because of the low purity, poeple are double-dropping-taking more pills to achieve the same effects. The Red Mitsubishi pill had such terrible effects because of double droppers were unaware that it was unusaully pure, and they overdosed.

RADAR research figures (obtained for free because it's voluntary work) are so rare and valuable that the rest of the world-including renowned academic publications- are seizing on the data. And how does our Government react? By denying them licenses to continue their work.

I can't help feeling there are dark forces working against this team, buoyed by moral and religious objections, shored up by a lack of political will. The refusal of the license is a sad testimony of this. This state was once renowned for its fresh perspective and bold social policy. If Don Dunstan were around i wonder if there might be some more progressive discussion instigated at higher levels?

Or as he chillingly puts it "Now we can only sit and wait for the bodies to arrive"

by Amanda Blair

P.S. in the pic of Dr Caldicott he is looking at some pills in his hand and i noticed on his t-shirt the chemical structures of designer drugs MDMA,2CB, Mescaline- quite interesting

[Nex]

I did read this the other week..

Vote for RADAR...

beside s.a. having shit e's is looks like s.a. is the leaders of not just smoking pot, but Meth... "WE ARE THE LAST LAB RATS"... left on this planet.. time to move to another..who's with me..

[apothecary]

I'll be offering shirts like that for sale shortly (hopefully).

Black shirt with white chemical structure.

[-YT-]

"I'll be offering shirts like that for sale shortly (hopefully).

Black shirt with white chemical structure."

Well be sure to keep us informed as i'll be defineatly getting sum :D

[-YT-]

I remember that RADAR went to enchanted forrest Last Year but weren't allowed to test pills but i also heard that they had been and asking questions and such so much so that Enchanted Forest got so much publicity all bad and about how everyone there was on atleast some kind of drug and some stupid calculations like if 8,000 people went and each had 3 pills thats 24,000 pills etc. Anyway as far as i know thats the last outdoor Enchanted went too commercial

[Darklight]

The work they do sounds incredibly valuable but I'm sure I heard one of them talking on tripleJ last week, claiming that they found " 80 new types of pills " at a recent event, and that this mean there was a cause for concern. A Dr Caldicott or someone...

Now I know they just got their funding cut or their permission revoked, but that sort of unsubstantiated claim is just bloody sensationalist and undermines whatever good they are doing.

80 types of pills indeed :confused: Would that be 80 different pills with different patterns on them? 80 different formulations of half a dozen compounds or differing amounts of the same compound? Or has some major UFO dropped over half of Shulgin's 140 PihKal compounds over the country recently and nobody but them has noticed? Each of these scenarios surely presents a vastly different set of circumstances...

If they want people to be informed of the real issues, as they claim, then they can at least release better information than that which sets sixty minutes and their ilk frothing at the mouth

[apothecary]

Probably 80 types of 5 or 6 different compounds with different categorical (16 * 5 = 80?) impurities, contaminants and cutting chemicals.

e.g: >50% MDMA x,y impurities or >50% MDA y,z impurities etcetc.

[ 24. April 2005, 14:31: Message edited by: apothecary ]

[Darklight]

apothecary:

Probably 80 types of 5 or 6 different compounds with different categorical (16 * 5 = 80?) impurities, contaminants and cutting chemicals.

Yep that's what I figured, but who is to say we're right. Like I said, they went for sensationalism, not clarity or accuracy

[apothecary]

Give me 15 minutes. I'll find his email address and you can ask him yourself.

[apothecary]

Most likely

[email protected]

EDIT: scratch that.

Apparently as a research fellow he gets no email address :/

EDIT2:

Scratch that again.

[email protected]

I advise you ask him things you are curious of, and possibly invite him to discuss it further here? We already have a Dr. Hanes participating in discussion, another person from the scientific community wouldn't hurt!

[ 24. April 2005, 15:49: Message edited by: apothecary ]

[apothecary]

And todays "hypocritical government statement of the day" goes to: THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT!

(who would've guessed).

I just finished watching tonights episode of Oz.

At the end of it, there was an ad showing a girl who had ODd on E, a guy who had cracked his teeth from the grinding, and a crying girl on her come down.

The punch line of the ad was "Ecstacy - You don't know what it'll do to you."

Hmm...maybe they would if you'd let an appropriate party (like the one in the article) to tell them?

[Darklight]

apothecary:

I advise you ask him things you are curious of, and possibly invite him to discuss it further here? We already have a Dr. Hanes participating in discussion, another person from the scientific community wouldn't hurt!

You're quite right, I'll get off my arse and do this later sarvie. If I'm prepared to put the effort into bitching I should also be prepared to put the effort in and find out what's going on

[Benzito]

Yeah, there is a whole series of those advertisements! For speed, pot, and pills, that I've seen so far anwyay.

I just love the slogan "you don't know what it will do to you". I just sat there and thought, 'well you just paid for air-time on the television, why didn't you tell us then?'

But of course they aren't going to educate us, just scare us.

Stupid bastards tell us that we don't know what drugs will do. Why don't they find out?

[Darklight]

Apoth- thanks for the suggestion I do something positive about this question instead of just whinging ( it's always good to be reminded of priorities )

I received a comprehensive reply to my question less than eight hours after it went. The clarification was that the pill testing was able to test up to 80 different types of pills in one session, rather than the 4 or 5 in the average and rare police bust. The ensuing media hype unfortunately didn't bother making the finer distinction between individual pill type and individual drug type, thus the ambiguity

I've asked for approval to cut and paste his entire email in the body of the thread.

It's so good to see professionals who are responsive to both feedback and future implications of their work- in any field, and I'd like to thank the people involved for their efforts.

[apothecary]

Darklight:

Apoth- thanks for the suggestion I do something positive about this question instead of just whinging ( it's always good to be reminded of priorities )

I don't know if I should say you're welcome because I was just as curious as you are, however I felt you could probably word it nicer than me. I think I'll just say that I live to serve

I received a comprehensive reply to my question less than eight hours after it went. The clarification was that the pill testing was able to test up to 80 different types of pills in one session, rather than the 4 or 5 in the average and rare police bust. The ensuing media hype unfortunately didn't bother making the finer distinction between individual pill type and individual drug type, thus the ambiguity.

 

Did we expect anything more than hype and ambiguity from establishment media? (not that left leaning media is much better)

I've asked for approval to cut and paste his entire email in the body of the thread.

Looking forward to it. If he says no...perhaps you might accidently slip and click the forward button and then slip again hitting the keyboard in the exact sequence that forms my email address? :D

It's so good to see professionals who are responsive to both feedback and future implications of their work- in any field, and I'd like to thank the people involved for their efforts.

Definitely. Out of curiosity, did you invite him to participate in discussion here? Like I said, Dr. Hanes seems to fit in nicely (even if he is a bit quiet) here, and the more scientific members we get the more credibility we attain and the better research can be done!

 

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