The amphibious one over at Frogblog has pointed out the extraordinary consensus in the blogosphere of the matter of Simon Power’s knee-jerk dismissal of the findings of the Law Commission’s report on Controlling And Regulating Drugs (PDF). While everyone is unanimous (including me) in their opinion that Power has been far too dismissive of the [...]

I have to say I am amused by the frenzied reaction to the story of the Chinese drug dealer who was drawing a sickness benefit and living in a state house. Does anyone actually think this is an abnormal situation? Judging by the reactions over on Kiwiblog, I would say the answer to that is [...]

I support strong measures to persuade people to stop smoking. It is a nasty habit with extremely serious health consequences. But I have to say that I find it impossible to approve of the current drive to ban smoking in most outdoor places.
Make no mistake, I hate it when I’m sitting at the beach, enjoying [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article.
Thanks to Crusader Rabbit for pointing me to this lovely bit of medical spam at News.com.au:
Energy drinks’ ’serious’ heart risk
JUST one energy drink can cause “serious heart conditions”, a world-first study has found.
The report, according to Adelaide Now, has [...]

Moves are afoot in National’s “War on Drugs” to restrict the sale of codeine in all its forms, including the combinations with paracetamol (Panadeine, Codalgin et al.). The Herald reports:
Public access to a widely-used class of painkillers containing codeine is likely to be restricted within months because of what is said to be an increase [...]

There is a fair amount of news about drug addiction at the moment, with John Key announcing a (somewhat laughable) $7 million boost for P treatment. Garth George, in one of his best columns for some time, points out that the real killer in terms of drug addictions is, of course, alcohol. He laments the [...]

Force Quit is what you do on a Mac when a program freezes to remove the offending program from memory. Force quit also appears to be what the DHBs have in mind to achieve their goal of 80 per cent of hospitalised smokers be given advice and help to quit. Most DHBs are way under [...]

Fancy an emetic? The Herald is running a series of articles on child abuse today. Here is a nauseating recitation from a single article:

An average of eight children are killed each year, and many more end up battered in hospital at the hands of family members.
Children under two are especially vulnerable; each year 59 are admitted [...]

No, not methamphetamine. That’s already banned. John Key is proposing to reclassify pseudoephedrine to a class B2 drug. This puts it into the same class as Ritalin. In order for me to prescribe pseudoephedrine, I would have to now fill out the same laborious forms as one does for morphine and Ritalin. Considering that pseudoephedrine [...]

So John Key is going to make pseudoephedrine only available on doctor’s prescription. And he’s not stopping there, either:
Mr Key has asked for Medsafe to consider a total ban on pseudoephedrine, which is used to make the illegal drug “P”, pure methamphetamine.
Unfortunately Mr. Key is being poorly advised on this matter by his science advisor, [...]