Mystery of the Leaping Fish
The main character is a private detective named Coke Ennyday played by Douglas Fairbanks (cocaine stardom). Coke Ennyday wears a bandelero of syringes strapped around his chest from which he regularly takes one and injects himself, bringing on a fit of maniacal laugher each time. Coke is pretty twitchy also. A clock on the wall divides his day into four parts – sleep, eat, drink and dope. On his desk is a big box labeled Cocaine from which he takes a massive hand-sized snort every so often, covering himself with so much powder he has to use a whisk brush to clean his face. This is a doper’s fantasy galore – there’s even bricks of smuggled opium, which Coke eagerly helps himself to a big taste, of course.
Great sound track as well, with doper songs from the 20s and 30s. This movie is a drug-addled gem!
You can watch or download The Mystery of the Leaping Fish at the Internet Archive
Another funny video taken during this years Glastonbury Festival in England. Underground artist Banksy dresses up like a hippie and carries a sign reading “Drugs for sale” and he heckles Prince Charles to join him in hempifying England.
Filed under: Good Stuff
… well not kicking, but still alive!
Hope you’re doing well too.
Enjoy the summer of 2010 as much as possible.
Peace and love people!
Thoughtful article detailing Afghanistan as a Drug War written by Alfred McCoy, the fellow who put heroin politics on the (relatively) popular map with his 1972 book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.
Former Police-man, the King of Pain himself, Sting expresses himself strongly in a public letter entitled Let’s End the War on Drugs:
For too long, the War on Drugs has been a sacrosanct undertaking that was virtually immune from criticism in the public realm. Politicians dared not disagree for fear of being stigmatized as “soft on crime.” Any activist who spoke up was dismissed as a fringe element.But recently, I discovered just how much that’s changing–and that’s how I came to speak out on behalf of an extraordinary organization called the Drug Policy Alliance…
Their work spoke directly to my heart as an activist for social justice — because ending the War on Drugs is about exactly that.
One voice, many voices, a virtual choir, of thousands, millions, billions, singing, demanding, “Change! Change now! Change today! Change Tomorrow! Change because we won’t stand for this shit no more!” Ahhhh, yeah, I like that.
In case you’re not getting enough laughs on a daily basis… enjoy!
And now seriously folks, the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network has produced On the Road to Activism, an excellent 76 page report on drug user activism (with a special focus on Eastern European countries). Download your copy here – it’s worth it just for the fantastic photos of junky graffiti.
And on an equally serious note, check out The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition (2008) by Harvard University Department of Economics Professor Jeffrey Miron. Although focused on U.S. stats regarding the wastefulness of prohibition, it addresses the potential for Tax Revenue from Drug Legalization which is the sort of exploration that is critical when arguing for realistic alternatives to the dismal status quo.
I happen to have been reading the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Mate for the past couple of weeks (its sits on the toilet paper stand in the bathroom awaiting my return). Good shit – the book, that is. It was a Christmas gift which arrived with a couple other books in the mail and if I wasn’t a constipated junkie I’d have probably finished it by now. The good doctor really puts some of the biological and neuro-chemical realities into plain explanations and always with compassion for the “hard core drug addict”. As well he certainly debunks the psuedo-scientific crap that passes for much of the so-called addiction science. The book has been quite a hit up here in Canada over the past year or so. I’m about half way through it and its actually quite a bit better than I expected it might be. I wouldn’t be mentioning it here if I didn’t think it is actually a worthwhile read.
Dr. Mate expresses this sort of sentiment, and therefore he’d certainly agree that: Drug dependence isn’t a moral issue
I mention Dr. Mate’s book because today I got an email with a link to this Addiction Compassion interview that Dr. Mate gave to Seattle’s Real Change Newspaper (in linked article check out the “photo slideshow of the darker side”) last December.
Another of the books within that Christmas package is a fantastic gem entitled Raise Shit! : Social Action Saving Lives which is a collaboration from three people regarding the first decade of VANDU, the drug users’ group in Vancouver. One of the big struggles (and victories) VANDU was directly involved in was establishing the first “official” safer injection site – INSITE slideshow (see post directly below). However, in the battles leading up to the opening of Insite less is known about VANDU operating an “illegal” injection site for the proceeding six months in their effort to force the issues. Raise Shit! provides background details about that sort of drug user activism throughout VANDU’s first decade:
Revealing a social justice movement that culminated through community activism in Vancouver’s downtown east side, [Raise Shit!] documents the opening of the first official safe injection site. Told from the point of view of drug users–those most affected by drug policy, political decisions, and policing–this narrative is conveyed through a montage of poetry and photos of early Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users meetings, journal entries from the Back Alley–the unofficial safe injection site–and excerpts from significant health and media reports. Chronicling the harms of prohibition and emphasizing the concepts of kindness, awakening, and collective action, this recollection spotlights a community of prophets who rebuked the system, bringing hope into situations of apparent impossibility.
- review from Flipcart, India’s biggest online bookseller
We can learn a lot about social organizing from Raise Shit! VANDU did not begin because of a conscious decision to start a drug users’ group but rather it arose out of drug users coming together (in a park and a church basement) to talk about the dire issues that they faced (such as overdose, HIV and police abuse) and their anger regarding such threats to their survival. By collectively identifying their issues, users realized they would need a group in order to struggle to address their issues in a sustainable manner.
Filed under: Drug Politics
A B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld an earlier B.C. Supreme Court ruling deciding drug users should have a fundamental right to health services such as Vancouver’s safer injection site, InSite. This is a major legal ruling legitimizing harm reduction services since the federal government had been trying to find a legal way to shut down InSite.
What isn’t much reported, or even realized, is that there were several legal arguments, and sub-arguments, within this so-called InSite case. What is reported is the main one about InSite staying open (drug users shouldn’t be denied relevant health services simply because they use illicit drugs). However, two Vancouver drug users made a very fundamental, and radical, legal argument which hasn’t received much attention at all.
These two drug users with VANDU argued that not only should the drug laws not cause a service like a safe injection site to be closed, but more fundamentally, they posited that the current drug laws themselves cause much greater harm to the community than benefit. As such, not only should InSite remain as a service, but society needs to recognized what is really causing the harms that make services such as InSite so necessary. They were asking the court to decide that the drug laws themselves are harmful and that they stand contrary to people’s fundamental right to health and well-being.
VANDU is taking a broader position, arguing that by using the criminal law to protect people from the harms of addictive substances the federal government has actually created a regime that is far more harmful, and violates the principles of fundamental justice in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
- from Dead People Don’t Detox
Essentially the judges dismissed this radical position, stating that it wasn’t really necessary to make such a sweeping determination, in order for them to rule on the question of whether InSite should be regarded as a fundamental health service for drug users.
InSite has received an enormous amount of community support and now won a second legal victory, however it is expected that the Stephen Harper’s Conservative-dominated federal government will likely still challenge InSite at the Federal Supreme Court level in its reactionary efforts to shut it down (Rudy Giuliani spews some crap also).
Filed under: Dope, JUNKe life, harm reduction | Tags: filtering drugs, mophine
Here’s a link you won’t want to miss:
Basically that’s a link to research reported in the Harm Reduction Journal about filtering out the particles from crushed morphine pills. One big concern people sometimes have is that filtering will block out lots of the morphine along with the insoluble particles. The good news is that filtering leases the morphine and just removes the crap particles. In fact, even after double and triple filtering, still up to 90 per cent of the pill’s morphine dose remained in the solution ready to inject.
One problem with filtering is that coarse filters, such as cigarette filters, still let through lots of small particles. However, using really fine filters often get blocked because they remove so many particles. But there is a sensible solution – filter twice. The first time use a cigarette filter, and then the second time, run the mixture you got back through the cigarette filter into a very fine sterilizing filter. Since all the big particles are already removed by the cigarette filter, the mixture can go through the sterilizing filter and get the very fine particles removed.
In the end you’ll be left with a solution which is essentially free of tablet-derived particles yet still retains upwards of 90 per cent of all the morphine. Doubtless lots of people have been filtering this way already, but now we’ve got actual scientific proof that this method works great. It keeps us both health (particles removed) and high (no loss of dose).
Remember a good “meal” is the result of careful preparation! Happy cooking!
Earlier post about filtering and injecting
Well, at least the world isn’t totally nuts. Every so often lights of sanity shine through the doom and gloom of business as usual. One such ray of sanity is the Czech Republic’s drug decriminalization law which goes into effect on New Year’s Day.
While there has been decriminalization in the Czech Republic for the past year, the actual amounts allowed for personal possession were not clearly stated. Instead their policy simply stated “small amounts”. Of course, that was open to all sorts of interpretation and confusion and needed to be clearly defined. Now that is what the parliament of the Czech Republic has done. Here’s the precise quantities they are allowing for decriminalized personal possession in the Czech Republic:
Under the new law, possession of less than the following amounts of illicit drugs will not be a criminal offense:
Marijuana 15 grams (or five plants)
Hashish 5 grams
Magic mushrooms 40 pieces
Peyote 5 plants
LSD 5 tablets
Ecstasy 4 tablets
Amphetamine 2 grams
Methamphetamine 2 grams
Heroin 1.5 grams
Coca 5 plants
Cocaine 1 gram– source is Stop the Drug War Chronicle
Considering several examples of decriminalization policy changes in several countries over the past decade it is not too crazily optimistic to hope that this trend represents the first victories of us beginning to win the war on drugs one country at a time.
Recently the Economist reported an overview of the international drug policy situation entitled Virtually Legal and similarly a synopsis of the current situation is found at The Lippard Blog
Christmas comes but once a year and thank goodness for that. Christmas is such a tough time for many, and for junkies and tweakers it is doubly tough. Its rough and tough and all too much for some. So much of the expectations of society come crashing down on a drug user at this time of year and if they don’t watch out they can get flooded with feelings of uselessness, failure and self-disgust. Not only can’t they afford to buy presents for loved ones, a major reason for their immediate poverty is that every last penny goes to dope for themselves. That sort of realization, in the light of Christmas and its family values perspective, can be a heavy load to hoe.
Families (many of them anyways) get together at Christmas. But woe is the strung out junkie. They don’t feel like going on dismal display for relatives to appraise critically. Even if a user can find the money to make it back home, and get enough of a stash together to make it through the holidays, they know that they’ll likely stand out like a sore thumb amidst the yuletime cheer. Yet if they phone in some bogus excuse for why they won’t be coming home for the holidays, that too is just another reminder of their failure in the eyes of their family. They know there will be gossip about why they aren’t wolfing down the turkey with the rest of em.
Sadly a lot of suicide is brought on by the pressure of the holiday season. And a lot of depression. And a lot of over-using just to try and blot out the sadness and worthlessness one feels as a junkie during Christmas.
Even for those users who have come to accept themselves and have developed a pretty thick skin in the face of societal condemnations, making Christmas happen is quite an effort. Money is always so hard to come by to begin with but a user has to dig pretty darn deep to manage to get presents for the essential relatives and keep themselves well in terms of their habit at the same time. It takes a lot of planning to pull off a reasonably successful Christmas at the best of times but for a user they’ve really got to have things will thought out and have a bit of luck thrown in as well. It isn’t easy to get together enough drugs in advance to sustain oneself throughout the entire family affair that often takes place in a city which the user isn’t familiar with so that they could score easily in an emergency. Nothing is worse than needing to get well and having to make excuses to a living room of celebrating relatives about why you’re got to borrow someone’s car so you can go downtown for awhile just as the turkey is bubbling away in the oven. Yes, of course I’ll be back before dinner… yeah right!
Somehow thousands upon thousands of us manage to make it through the holidays without a major bummer. You can be damn sure a lot of work went into pulling that off. Right now we’re planning for the family visit and trying to make sure we don’t find ourselves short at precisely the wrong time. That’s a whole lot of stress on top of the normal stresses of this season. Here’s wishing well to all those users out there struggling to pull off another Christmas for themselves and the sake of those they love. And a remembrance for those who won’t be making it home for Christmas.
