LATE TEENS DIE IN VIC AFTER POSSIBLY TAKING RAT POISON

[~shameless~]

With all due respect to grieving the families of the young men , but i hope this is not just some new craze the EMO's have started off,

But , i mean, well its rat poison

This could be taken in bad taste-

I'm just interested in wether this is something people do when the bottle shops closed or the bank accounts empty or something-

My thoughts are with the grieving families

[shruman]

Had no idea, pretty outa touch with 'the news'.

Davids got a pretty good view as to why they might have taken it & for once I bet his wishing he could say "u guessed it DATURA".

"Poison suspected in mysertious Vic deaths

The World Today - Thursday, 28 February , 2008 12:30:00

Reporter: Samantha Donovan

ELEANOR HALL: Police say they are baffled by the mysterious deaths of two young men in country Victoria on Tuesday night.

The 19- and 21-year-olds were walking along a road when they called an ambulance complaining of severe stomach pains.

Both were dead in an hour and a half and police suspect they had taken some sort of poison.

In Melbourne, Samantha Donovan reports.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: 21-year-old Stephen Rees and his 19 year friend, whose name is yet to be released by police, were walking along a road in Lang Lang south east of Melbourne on Tuesday night.

They started to get severe stomach pains and called 000 on a mobile phone.

Police say that just before he lapsed into unconsciousness, one of the men told ambulance officers they'd taken some sort of poison.

Officers worked on the men for an hour and a half but they couldn't be saved. Autopsies are being done today.

Police are piecing together what the men were doing in the lead up to their deaths but say there are no obvious signs of foul play.

But there are reports a friend of the men overheard one say they'd taken strychnine, a common ingredient in rat poison.

Emergency doctor David Caldicott specialises in illicit drug use.

DAVID CALDICOTT: These poor lads have attempted to consume something for pleasurable purposes. They've either misjudged the dose, misjudged the substance or completely mis-identified what they've consumed.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Police are saying at this stage that they suspect they've ingested some sort of poison. Is that something people commonly do to get some sort of high?

DAVID CALDICOTT: I think people are very keen in changing their reality and will adopt whatever product they can get their hands on to do so. That can be anything from stealing liquor from their parents' drinks cabinet to say, for example, using anti-freeze from windscreen wipers which contains methanol, another alcohol. To, there are, one of the products that are on the street at the moment is gamma hydroxybutrate which is a liquid component that is used widely in the plastics and solvent industry.

Young people, often erroneously and through their colleagues and peers, hear that they can get a hit from any of these products and experiment on their own.

Unfortunately, without a chemistry or pharmacology background, they can make a simple mistake, a spelling error. Many of these compounds have similar sounding names and so they may have gone for something thinking it was one thing and in the most tragic and dramatic way, finding out that it was something else.

I'm afraid to get any real handle on what their cause of deaths will be, it will have to be down to the coroner and an autopsy.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Is it pertinent in any way that these two men have died in country Victoria rather than in the city?

DAVID CALDICOTT: Well, I think, it is a very good question. I think one of the big problems that Australia has at the moment is this undescribed epidemic of drug use, both licit and illicit in rural Australia.

It doesn't receive the attention that it deserves. It is quite outstanding in its magnitude and it doesn't surprise me that another sad and sorry reminder of the hazards that face young rural Australians.

They're in big problems as far as employment, job prospects are concerned. As we know there are real issues as far as depression is concerned. There is not a lot to do apart from turn to illicit substances to find some way of escape.

My own feeling would be that, that would be quite consistent with this sort of presentation. That you have two young larrikin lads who have tried to have a good time with some household substance and it has all gone tragically wrong.

ELEANOR HALL: Dr. David Caldicott speaking to Samantha Donovan. "

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2175131.htm

[ThunderIdeal]

why did they have to be larrikins?

[teonanacatl]

Strychnine has a stimulant effect in low doses, use to be used as aperformance enhancing drug back in the day.

If they did eat strychnine thinking that that was a drug due to the common myths around such as acid is made from rat poison then it certianly points out a need for different and better drug education.

[Torsten]

Strychnine is NOT a common ingredient in rat poison - at least not in australia. Whoever wrote this piece as usual lacks basic knowledge about these things and probably just did a quick google. Problem is that we don't live in the USA so much of the crap you find online does not apply here.

So, if a neighbour overheard them that they were taking strychnine then this must have been a suicide pact cos it would take quite some effort to actually source this substance.

I don't think Dr Caldicott had all the details cos he made this into a recreational drug story rather than the suicide or prank it much more likely will turn out to be.

btw, rat poison in australia contains substances that mess with vitamin K and hence cause arteries to break. Death is usually very slow and is probably only immediately fatal if the ruptured artery is in the brain. Vit K injections can prevent death, which is probably one of the main reasons we use these compounds in australia [there is a chance of rescue].

if the substance was something like GHB then the cops would have released this straight away as they can spot test for it. It would make such a great anti-GHB story, so the authorities would not be able to help themselves but to release this news asap.

I still reckon it was a quick-acting poison without any recreational potential.

[apothecary]

Agreed Tort, I doubt if they were after a recreational substance they would've said "we just ate poison" to the medics before they passed out.

I'll wait for the autopsy.

greenhouse, please include a news article next time so people know what you're talking about thanks for covering shruman

Moved to N&N.

[incognito]

very nice mixed into ur ganja!!

nooo dont do it!!! im kidding!! ud hafto be reallly stoopid to do that!

[FungalFractoids]

Strychnine was killer in roadside deaths

March 3, 2008 - 3:41PM

The two men who died mysteriously on the side of the road in Victoria's east last Tuesday had ingested strychnine, police said today.

Strychnine, a deadly poison, is used primarily as a pesticide and is found in rat poison.

The two men, Stephen Rees, 21, of Lang Lang and his friend, 19, also of Lang Lang, who has not been named at his family's request, died on Tuesday night on the side of Westernport Road at Lang Lang, south-east of Melbourne.

One of them had told an emergency call operator they felt ill and local woman Cheryle Evans said she heard one of the men tell paramedics they took strychnine.

Police today said toxicology reports confirmed both men ingested strychnine.

Police said no other details from the report would be released as the coroner was continuing to investigate.

Strychnine can cause many symptoms leading to death, including uncontrollable arching of the back and neck, rigid arms and legs, jaw tightness, muscle pain and soreness and inability to breathe.

AAP

Edited March 3, 2008 by FungalFractoids

[Torsten]

Strychnine, a deadly poison, is used primarily as a pesticide and is found in rat poison.

Amazing how every commentator states this even though it is not applicable in this country. I don't think strychnine is registered for ANY pesticide use in australia.

[PD.]

I have often found old jars labelled strychnine on farms, when i asked what it was for i was told pest control, not sure what sort of pest though, mice i think. Arsenic has been/is also used for termites. Im not sure of the legality of such things nor do i wish to argue about it but some farmers have little regard for laws when they want/need to be rid of certain pests, plant or animal.

[strangebrew]

Strychine is used straight I think - it's not an additive and it's still available for use as a bait but there's a lot of red-tape involved.

[Torsten]

looks like strychnine is still used for killing dogs and emus, but only under license. So it is not available to the general population. And it is not allowed for use for rodents.

[ThunderIdeal]

"vertebrate poison"

guys from what i can see it is not registered for use in Victoria, so it was either carried across the border from SA or WA or was purchased some time ago.

Edited March 4, 2008 by ThunderIdeal

[Francois le Danque]

LOL at calling lang lang part of melbourne, i live near there and if here is part of melbourne then so is perth.

i don't think it has been mentioned above but the two dudes did in fact take the strychnine for psychoactive effects and had done on other occasions in the past. local news or paper or something told me.

i wonder where they got it. i can tell you if i took strychnine i would have milligram accurate scales and the antidote handy. i doubt anyone in lang lang would ever take such precautions.

anyone have any strychnos nux vomica seeds??

[ThunderIdeal]

i reckon they could get it from a pest controller in south australia.

i hope this gives anti-prohibition some good press. here's two people literally dead because they could NOT get drugs.

[Torsten]

i don't think it has been mentioned above but the two dudes did in fact take the strychnine for psychoactive effects and had done on other occasions in the past. local news or paper or something told me.

There is plenty of speculation that the liquid was taken for recreational purposes, but so far what the media has said has all been speculation - mostly because it makes for better news and because of Dr Caldicott's comments. So, do you have anything more concrete or are you just lending weight to chinese whispers? In particular I am interested in your comments that they had taken this before and that they were indeed doing it for psychoactive effects.

Geez, if they really did take it for psychoactive effects then they must have been desperate.

[teonanacatl]

i wonder where they got it. i can tell you if i took strychnine i would have milligram accurate scales and the antidote handy. i doubt anyone in lang lang would ever take such precautions.

Lethal dose reported frome this site is 30-120mg:

http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemi...10.6%20Antidote

and there is no antidote.

Certainly not somthing you would want to take but not the most toxic compound around.

anyone have any strychnos nux vomica seeds??

Ive just spent the last two weeks extracting strychnos alkaloids from Strychnos lucida, good fun and very easy.

[-YT-]

"There is plenty of speculation that the liquid was taken for recreational purposes"

have heard that back in the day heads did dabble in it for psychoactive purposes... apparently the effects were plesant..? have no idea really except from what ive been told so i guess one can draw their own conclusions. have no idea why someone would intentionaly seek it out unless they know something we dont lol

[teonanacatl]

As I said up top it was used as a stimulent as well as for other medicinal reasons, back in the day anyway.

[Torsten]

I know that strychnine has recreational [and therapeutic] properties. My query was about the "two dudes did in fact take the strychnine for psychoactive effects and had done on other occasions in the past." ie, I want to know if there are new revelations or just more speculations.

[Vertmorpheus]

"So it is not available to the general population" - T.

Thats lovely, and entirely smile worthy... have you looked at your own board here of late? I may be mistaken, but I'm reasonably sure DMT isnt "available to the general population" either, or psilo spores, or crazy cacti, but its sure as hell around.. too many other examples to get into... but thats an uncharacteristically thick thing to say from a bright kinda crayon I reckon... whats next, they changed gun laws so noone should be getting shot anymore? 14 year olds arent allowed to drive, and itd be dangerous for em to try, so therefor if you read a tale about a kid dying in a hot car then its either misinformation, because well kids couldnt POSSIBLY get a car... or warped because well, as if theyd do somethign that might kill them just for FUN! Gods forbid...

a book I used to own, some 1900 era thing, Phantastica? maybe... I think it mentioned strychnine, arsenic, camphor as being used for warming (percieved, anyway, not sure about the technical side of that) pleasure, to "increase virility" and just as a game of chicken amongst drunken factory workers (yknow, from woodcuts about gin joints and ether binges?) ... who also took to loading up on ether and floor polish in later times... people are inventive, if occasionally not very bright.

"DAVID CALDICOTT: These poor lads have attempted to consume something for pleasurable purposes. They've either misjudged the dose, misjudged the substance or completely mis-identified what they've consumed.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Police are saying at this stage that they suspect they've ingested some sort of poison. Is that something people commonly do to get some sort of high?

DAVID CALDICOTT: I think people are very keen in changing their reality and will adopt whatever product they can get their hands on to do so. That can be anything from stealing liquor from their parents' drinks cabinet to say, for example, using anti-freeze from windscreen wipers which contains methanol, another alcohol. To, there are, one of the products that are on the street at the moment is gamma hydroxybutrate which is a liquid component that is used widely in the plastics and solvent industry.

Young people, often erroneously and through their colleagues and peers, hear that they can get a hit from any of these products and experiment on their own.

Can't really see that much of a problem with the initial back n forthy up there...apart from some iffiness regarding "have taken it for pleasurable purposes" but then, if you took it to die, a> im sure youd research it first and work out that its not a very peaceful end, b> why then call the ambos when you started feeling sick? Sounds to me like they took it for some reason OTHER THAN DYING... and didnt anticipate the pain involved... lots of kids tell other kids about butane but not many talk about solvent collapse or the like.... otherwise Dave is just saying that people take poisonous things to get high sometimes... well shit, dont they? Isnt half the shit we talk about around here reasonably likely to make you pretty damned crook if you take too much, or poorly ID it and take the wrong thing, or take it without the proper prior study? I recall T sayin something a while back along the lines of basically selling only as much of a product in one "unit" that is unlikely to get anyone into a medical emergency situation... surely thats evidence enoug htaht even legal, retail materials can make you very sick indeed if you take too much.

as was mentioned by PD, theres whats on the shelf at bunning$ and theres whats on the shelf at home... some old homesteads have stores that have been being built up since the late 1700s or a touch after, and I've seen strychnine, arsenic, DDT, bigarse sacks of ammonia nitrate that ppl stocked up on before it was a licensing thing, old stashes of runny geli, carbide, cordite packs, small arsenals, steel opposing traps and all kinds of things taht theyre not MEANT to have... but nevertheless do... onceuponatime ppl mixed their own shit, they didnt buy "tomkat" they bought a big box of death and mixed it with grain or molasses then left it here n there... Unless ol Dave is around "our" generation, chances are hes a touch older and if you ask any passing baby boomer about strychnine theyll say "rat poison" "rabbit poison" or "didnt they used to put that in LSD? couldnt say, i was written off on mandies for most of the 60s". Plenty of rural supply places, the older more established ones, still keep certain "classics" on hand, sometimes deliberately decanted into more "legit" containers, as the "old timers" simply prefer to use it... hell a frangi farmer from Gympie told me awhile back that he picked up some "insert very much unavailable previously relied on commercial organophosphate" to dose bread with to stop cockatoos mangling his stock, not only that but he admitted that he basically went in there to find somethign to kill cockies and was told a few times before he caught on that "yeah mate, this is just the stuff for cockerroaches"..."no mate, COCKIES"... "uh, yeah...COCKIEroaches" .... "ahhh!".

I really dont think its matter of deliberate misinformation, I cant see how it poses much of a risk to anyone by having said any of it, and its not worth getting personally snippy about it either...if Frank is in that neck of the woods, word gets around and local juornos might not have the finesse sometimes but they stand a better chance of knowing who to ask about the ppl involved in any given incident than some hotshots from the bigtime...other tha nthat, the local grapevine coughs up a lot, not all of it true, but having lived in fairly "close communities" for a large part of my life, there is such as a thing as "everyone knows"..... poor Dave, hes human, as are we all, and made a wee slipup, he opened his mouth without saying "no wait, i dont have the balls to have an opinion without googling for three hours first, can i get back to you?" and he didnt attach a lengthy inventory of disclaimers and "but remembers...".

Lets have his balls cut off eh? He couldve said "oh yeah heaps of dealers cut their shit with it" or "yes its commonly used as a recreational"..."common inredient in LSD" any one of an umber of commonly passed out myths... I'd say hes been put on the spot and asked for an opinion along the lines of "why do you think two kids from the sticks would take strychnine?" and hes basically said what is true enough... that some ppl decide as all drugs are chems, all chems are therefor drugs (i never said it made sense, but since when do kids looking to get high make much sense anyway)...and anything is worth a crack esp in that misguidd teenage "hang on, that rings a bell".. I know I've found myself eyeing all kinds of silly shit with a speculative eye over the years...aerostart... chook miticide... nutmeg... hell I once even drank Melbourne Bitter

I'd have to be pretty hard up to think about dosing on something like that now, but then people from fairly similar backgrounds in the same area as myself are known to still get stuck into spraypaint, lighter gas, dodgy speed, childish brug potions, eating three packs of codeine or sniffing petrol, wrapping your head in gladwrap and jerking off, trainsurfing, and kicking people to death in the street...living on TI I saw teenyboppers (or whatever the reggae equiv would be ) eating GIJI GIJI beans, just one or two, as a "rite of passage" thing.... noone said kids make sense, kids that are disaffected enough to consider eating things kept in grandads shed for fun even less so.... but its a bit daft to say that "no, theyd NEVER be able to get hold if it, its illegal!" T, esp given the nature of your site eh, or "no, theyd certainly NOT have taken it with the intent of getting off", even on the basis that well, its lethal poison. GHB is relatively lethal too, I imagine, if you just crack a jar of it and start knocking off teaspoons of it because some kid in the area said something about "yeah ppl used to take that to get high and its in blotters n mushies n stuff".

I also dont think its am atter of "dying because ofa lack of drugs"... theres been plenty of times I couldnt get drugs, I sure as hell didnt actually start huffing the engine starter, or sucking chrome paint, but I did try the nutmeg and the miticide... but thats dow nto me, not because society at large somehow "owes me" the right to get high for no good reason other than boredom or social maladjustment or cos im a 19yo dropkick with nothing better to do. I certainly dont think society has much right to tell me what i CANT take, but somehow I dont think all deaths stemming from basic ignorance would end tomorrow even if EVERYTHING was made legal, hell, even mandatory... people drop dead from readily available, mostly legal things all the time, even when they do "know what theyre doing". Anyrate, I dont know that id want to be part of a society that made things like meth, heroin, pills not only legal, but ensured affordability AND failed to set an 18+ limit because " the kids deserve drugs and we are somehow wronging them by not making them freely available".

Sounds to me like this is more a case of stupid kiddy drug myths crossed with the soul destroying ennui that comes of living in modern times, that do the rounds ad nauseum in the sticks or in the burbs... and even if the "powers taht be" came out tonight and cleared it ALL up,factwise, it wouldnt help... thered be the hardcore that would say "well they wouldnt warn us off that and tell us that that stuff doesnt really get you high unless they wanted to stop us doing it, right?". You think if channel 10 ran ads all tomorrow saying "remember kids, rat poison is no fun despite some kids recently eating it" youd be able to find a box of ratsak for the next couple weeks? Theres a reason the bulbs n gas and paint are under lock n key in a lot of places now... because kids learnt about em in the positive sense from their peers, or the admonishing sense from the media... I know I wouldnt be quite as interested in plants of this nature as I am today if i hadnt grown up in FNQ reading all the articles about "roomful of uni students brug selves to death"... kids cant process risk properly, its part of being a KID... and if someone tells you not to go into that room... what you going to do as soon as you get the chance?

A lil personal accountability goes a long way... as does remembering (as I have so often heard here...) that theres the letter of the law, and how shit actually goes in in real life.

VM

[Torsten]

Thats lovely, and entirely smile worthy... have you looked at your own board here of late?

My beef is with the media and the way they make assumptions about young people. Sure, i know heaps of things are 'gettable' that are assumed to be unavailable, but that's not what I was talking about. My point was that strychnine is not used in rat poison in australia and hence the constant headlines about 2 kids take rat poison and die' really shit me. If you think that sort of reporting is Ok then that's fine, but I don't.

Furthermore I don't like how the media put spokespeople on the spot and make them talk about stuff that they only have half the story about. The good Dr's comments had a heavy slant towards rec drugs and particularly GBL which showed that he knew about the same or less than most of the audience about what had actually happened here. Mind you, he probably picked the most likely scenario and ran with it and who can blame him. But for media to use that as more padding to balance out for their poor research shits me.

"DAVID CALDICOTT: These poor lads have attempted to consume something for pleasurable purposes. They've either misjudged the dose, misjudged the substance or completely mis-identified what they've consumed.

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Police are saying at this stage that they suspect they've ingested some sort of poison. Is that something people commonly do to get some sort of high?

DAVID CALDICOTT: I think people are very keen in changing their reality and will adopt whatever product they can get their hands on to do so. That can be anything from stealing liquor from their parents' drinks cabinet to say, for example, using anti-freeze from windscreen wipers which contains methanol, another alcohol. To, there are, one of the products that are on the street at the moment is gamma hydroxybutrate which is a liquid component that is used widely in the plastics and solvent industry.[/i]

Young people, often erroneously and through their colleagues and peers, hear that they can get a hit from any of these products and experiment on their own.

Can't really see that much of a problem with the initial back n forthy up there.[/b]

Except for the fact that all of it is speculation and rather flimsy at that.

why then call the ambos when you started feeling sick?

oh yes, no one who commits suicide ever calls the ambos

Sounds to me like they took it for some reason OTHER THAN DYING.

I'd put pleasure at the top of the list of unlikeliness.

Suicide, prank or accidental poisoning would be on par with each other somewhere far below pleasure.

lots of kids tell other kids about butane but not many talk about solvent collapse or the like.... otherwise Dave is just saying that people take poisonous things to get high sometimes.

This is lang lang, not some university dorm. I'd be surprised of these kids knew more drugs than they had fingers. Cos if they'd known about strychnine then they would have also known about the precautions. FFS, this isn't some obscure compound no one has ever heard of. The first thing that everyone knows about strychnine is that it kills.

as was mentioned by PD, theres whats on the shelf at bunning$ and theres whats on the shelf at home... some old homesteads have stores that have been being built up since the late 1700s or a touch after, and I've seen strychnine, arsenic, DDT, bigarse sacks of ammonia nitrate that ppl stocked up on before it was a licensing thing....

see my first reply. yawn

[teonanacatl]

Perhaps the use of 'rat poison' is just generic not particularly aimed at what we currently have in our rat poisons in OZ. Strychnine has in the past been used as a rat poison, when I tell people Im looking at strychnine the first reply is "isnt that really poisonous?" closely followed by "thats used/was used in rat poison yeah?".

[husk]

I know I've found myself eyeing all kinds of silly shit with a speculative eye over the years...aerostart... chook miticide... nutmeg... hell I once even drank Melbourne Bitter

hey... what's wrong with MB!?

maybe it tastes better closer to VIc!

peace x

[Vertmorpheus]

"2 kids take rat poison and die"

scans much better as a headline than...

"2 kids (both legally adults) take (somehow ingested, for entirely unknown reasons beyond reasonable speculation) + (we will never know the precise reasons why given that theyre not very talkative at the moment) rat poison (well not a currently commercially available one but rather a chemical just about synonymous with it to the lowest common denominatior of our readership, due to the fact it was until date 19XX commonly used as a potent rodenticide until it was found to have undesirable follow effects) and die (for unknown reasons and for now we'll avoid causing the families sensationalist added trauma by suggesting their offspring were suicidal AND lacking in conviction of any kind) note : all information contained in this article is speculation, inference, extrapolation and moderately informed opinions concerning the incident at hand with a view to its place in a wider human trait, that is, taking potentially lethal agents to achieve an altered state of consciousness for recreational purposes"

Newspaper are not an altruistically provided community orientated source of impartial and wherever possible entirely correct academia... did you just work that out ? theyre a product, and a pretty shitty one at that inasmuch as you are paying to read ads half the time, bullshit another quarter, and bias the rest...It'd be lovely if everyone got their facts straight or just kept their features shut, but its never going to happen...this place would get real quiet at the very least... and whereas journos get PAID to do just that, we're just a gaggle of onlookers far removed from the situation... and if you can have a go at making sense of what is a senseless situation from any angle, then so can I, so can anyone else for that matter. Riding around on a high horse (horse riding doesnt strike me as much fun and it kills a lot of people, turns more into baked potatos, btw) when you're not doing anything different to anyone else is a bit laughable.

Just because someone said "drugs" and "bad" in the same sentence doesnt mean you have to take it personally, get smarmy towards ppl that were merely doing what you're doing yourself, or try to make yourself seem bigger by attempting to belittle others. Things can, believe it or not, be within your field of interest without being in your field of expertise. The media, me, dave, are no better informed than yourself... well.. apart from knowing that you can still get strych in out of the way areas pretty easily and that ppl have associated some potential for recreation to it for donkeys years now... you were a bit behind the herd on those points.

I also had no idea that people are known to take a fatal agent, lose nerve in the face of pain or discomfort, and call for an ambulance! thats amazing.... I could learn about plants and weirdos a few places online but only here could I hope to find something as remarkably informative as that In which case, anytime you ever hear of anyone dying as a result of doing anything a bit silly, and probably not much "fun" ina grown up sense of the word,(say drunken punchups, train surfing, drinking too much, taking hard to dose drugs) BUT before dying they take time to call an ambo... well... I just hope you set about suggesting to anyone that will listen, from a reasonably well read "print" media platform and a percieved position of some kind of "authority on the subject" (of a kind, given you didnt realise that plenty of places still have rat poison on hand based on strychnine, didnt see mto have heard of it being taken for poorly informed fun in the past, etc) that they must have had suicidal intentions. Meanwhile, if someone lives somewhere so inherently backwards (by your own description) that they CAN get onto strychnine but CAN'T get anything else, then I'm quite sure they'd have some idea that RAT POISON (and it still is a rat poison, purpose or restriction of sale doesnt change potential or actual application by default) wouldnt be the most comfortable way to go... thats why I wondered why would they dosethen get nervy and call the ambos, IF they sourced it from somewhere local or a rello, whatever, then theyd KNOW it isnt as preferable as other means of death used in rural areas ie necking yourself in a silo or swallowing a .303.

By all means crap on about the sin of speculation, but you really don't have to take the tone of "I'm allowed to do it, but noone else is, and certainly NOT people paid to do just that to produce a product to be sold to drogues, or anyone else that found it vaguely of interest"... I'd say making a statement along the lines of "well its not on the books anymore so they MUST have gone to some massive lengths to source it!" when its still a pretty common article in a lot of sheds around the place is poorly informed speculation too, as is accusing regional youth of being simultaneously ignorant BUT somehow unfairly portrayed as ignorant by Dave n Co....and it's also, more importantly, me just taking a snippet of what you said and using it to represent a wider picture...the details of which I can't quite come to grips with, but about which I still feel like offering comment... as is my right whether I speak on my own behalf, or write for a paper that prints NEWS... not "100 PERCENT VERIFIED FACT"...most articles now mirror the questions the public have rather than the answers themselves, as they often dont have them... a poorly understood incident oddly enough raises more interest than a neat lil package of understandable, predictable cause n effect.

Otherwise, Dave was asked "why would kids take something like that" and replied "well probably because some kids are poorly informed but desperate to get wasted anyway, so they take potentially toxic things"... true, isnt it? dont many adults do the same? or am I being poorly informed and I can actually drink endless amounts of GHB with no dramas? theres few things that are any "forbidden fun" at all that dont carry SOME element of potential danger, whether from illness or death... from what I can work out you reckon that someone say taking too much brug due to going by urban myth, who then calls an ambo but dies anyway, MUST have been suicidal? maybe Dave decided he could basically accuse the "kids" of being just that... OR that he could have made the fairly vicious allegation that "no its no fun, they must have been suicidal".

I also wonder why living in a remote area means you are automatically ignorant... theres plenty of dumbfucks with big city backgrounds, and those cunning little blokes in the amazon probably learnt what they have about drugs by means OTHER than just trying to kill themselves, failing, but having a blast in the process.

I think your issue is with thinkin you're allowed to be very definite sounding about your poorly informed idle speculation, for free, but noone else is allowed to do the same,let alone for the motivation for cash, to make a product known by anyone with any kind of critical faculty at all and quite a few without, to make the maximum amount of noise with the minimal amount of substance. The beef would seem to be with a lackwitted readership that allows them to act like that, then those simply producing a product for profit. Few ppl live in a world of chemical academia, and really couldnt give a spare shit about what is or isnt really used as rat bait anymore... they just want something to read over a cuppa n a coffee. If they want the facts they get inspired by the story to do their own digging, to read a big persons book or website, etc. Thats how its always worked, and I really would be surprised to learn youd only JUST worked that out.

remind me to make a note before taking a quiet drive for recreation that "im going out for a fun drive, but things might get a bit out of hand unexpectedly and i might end up dead but if i do, it ISNT suicide its just an accident in the pursuit of fun due to not having all the facts or a lot of experience behind me"... otherwise anyone with half a brain will just HAVE to assume I must have offed myself.

lets all just hope you or someone you love never drop dead doing something for fun that is known to have a high potential for lethality when approached without proper prep, otherwise I might have to get online and tell anyone within screenshot that you topped yourself, it would seem like the intelligent, adult and above all civil thing to do.

I'll see your yawn, and raise you a stretch.

VM