C.E.P.T.A.
The CAMPAIGN for EFFECTIVE PREVENTION and TREATMENT of ADDICTION.
8c. How Drugs Affect Us – Facts or Opinion.
* Professor C Heather Ashton, Emeritus Professor of Psycho-pharmacology at the University of Newcastle, stresses the profound lifelong effect which cannabis usage has on memory, and is credited with observing that the difficulty in trying to convince a cannabis user of this, is literally because such a user has permanently lost all memory of just how much better they used to be than they are now !
* Dr Gabriel Nahas, the eminent brain researcher said: “The poisonous nature of intoxicants is not determined by debate. We cannot vote for or against the toxicity of drugs”.
* It is the opinion of many psychiatrists, and politicians to whom they have passed their opinions, that the prescribing of free methadone reduces crime because, they say, it takes away the necessity for an opiate addict to fund his drug supplies from acquisitive crime.
But, authoritative surveys here and abroad reveal that a majority of users of prescribed methadone also continue with other drugs and with a life of crime - in order to pay for them !
So as taxpayers we get quietly robbed by the government's costly methadone policy, in addition to being robbed by the uncured heroin and methadone addicts who commit most of the acquisitive crimes.
* Unproven opinions have sold politicians the idea that the drug problem is basically created by the wide availability of illegal substances. But, as for all other commodities, the drugs market is based on Supply AND Demand. Nevertheless. successive governments have concentrated their resources on curtailing Supplies - and failed miserably to do so. But without Demand, Supplies would automatically dry up.
The reason is clear. Current psychiatrically promoted pharmaceutical treatments of addicts fail to reduce Demand because they do not produce cures, as a result of which politicians feel they have no option but to concentrate on the more difficult problem of curbing Supplies.
BUT, Demand can be cut by effective
Positive Prevention and by D.I.Y. Curative Treatment which delivers comfortable
lifelong abstinence, and both of these have been available in the
So clearly some other factor is also at work! The intentions of vested interests perhaps?
*
At over 150 centres in at least 40 countries all forms of drug addiction are cured for life in 69+% of cases. This includes curing the huge numbers of methadone addicts.
(Oh dear . . . . what a lot of
profit methadone producers will lose when
* Dr C R Schuster, Former Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse emphasised that:
“The fact that there are over 77,000 admissions a year to treatment programmes for cannabis use, and that annually almost 8,000 persons require emergency hospital care for cannabis use, is sufficient evidence of the drug’s dangerousness.”
*
When the late Sir William Paton, Professor of Pharmacology at
“Cannabis is a drug with a multi-faceted action on nearly every bodily function: brain, heart lung and endocrine system. No true scientist can refer to it as ‘a mild intoxicant’”
* The late Dr Robert Gilkeson, the famous neurologist and Brain Researcher emphasised publicly that:
“Cannabis makes great people average and average people dumb . . . and causes more organic brain damage than any other drug of abuse, except perhaps PCP (Angel Dust) or the end stages of alcoholism.”
* Dr Robert Dupont, Founding Head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, changed his original opinion when faced with indisputable facts from research and grass-roots surveys.
He said:
“I have been apologising to the American people for the last 10 years for promoting the de-criminalisation of marijuana. I made a mistake. Cannabis combines the worst effects of alcohol and tobacco, and has other ill-effects that neither of these two have.”
* Because it suits their commercial vested interest purposes, the psycho-pharmaceutical fraternity have for years been pushing the totally unproven opinion that drug addiction is ‘fundamentally incurable’. As a result they have never come up with a clear definition of what a cure is.
But such a definition is vital to success because it stands as a goal towards which a recovering addict can aim. Therefore, those who train addicts to cure him or her self define an attainable cure as follows:
A real cure results in comfortable lifelong abstinence, and is defined as: a fully employable former drug user or addict:
1) who has not used his or her original addictive substance(s) for a period significantly longer than 12 months,
2) who has not replaced such earlier usage with another addictive substance (such as methadone, etc.),
3) who remains fully convinced that he or she will comfortably abstain for life,
4) who is now taking responsibility for his or her own life,
5) who neither wants nor needs further rehabilitative support, and,
6) who is now willingly contributing to his or her local community.
*
It is a fact, and not an opinion, that the current government’s increasingly liberal
drugs policy is "not working". Nor are the increasing numbers
of unemployable heroin addicts to whom the government pays weekly unemployment
benefit and gives daily supplies of methadone. All paid for by you
and me . . . . the
* For the facts about heroin & methadone drug use in England read ‘The Big Issue in the North’s’ August 1999 “Drugs at the Sharp End” survey report. Because many MPs have false opinions about the drug scene, after you have read it, perhaps you would like to pass a copy of this revealing report to your local MP.
Copies are
available from “BIG ISSUE in the NORTH”,
© Copyright C.E..P.T.A. and E. Kenneth Eckersley, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 & 2005. All World Rights Reserved
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