Be Excellent To Each Other

Or: "let's fix the easy to fix things first, then sort out the more difficult ones later", as is actually the case?


Sorry - you mean that you agree that it should be legalized, yes? I'm not going 'AHA!', 'cos I think you've said so earlier, it's just this quote that has confused me. Me, I am all in favour of cannabis being legalized, taxed, and then smoke responsibily away from pregnant women and such.[/quote]

Yes, I've already said in this thread I think it should be legalised. And I'm surprised that Brown hasn't done so just so that he can tax it.

I also, quite seriously, think all other currently illegal drugs should be legalised.

Oops. My mistake.

Yeah, it's not like we don't have all the time in the world, or that the easy ones happen to be so much pissing in the wind, in the effect they have, by comparison.


I don't, but I do seriously think that this 'You've DONE DRUGHS?!?!' attitude needs to go. The statistics for the number of folks who will try hard drugs in their life-time, are quite scary. Some proper, responsible thinking is required. The attitude towards those who take drugs is much like that of a parent who has found out their 16 year old progeny has had safe-sex with a consenting person of a similar age. Y'know - shocked, appalled, instantly rewriting their own history so it can't somehow be turned around on them. I mean, I knew tons of kids** when I was about 16, who got into heroin. And yeah, they also smoked pot previously.

I will give you *ten* CUS points if you can tell me what the real 'gateway drug' in the UK is. Specifically. Not a trick question. The specific thing.


"I say fellows, does anybody have any marijuana we can inhale? I'm crazy for it! Having it big!"
"Grab 'im!"

Nah. You aren't the cop-in-hiding on this forum. However, you are seem to exist in a totally different UK to me (with respect), so I was just wondering. What was your impression of it, that one time, so long ago, that you did briefly try it? Personally, I still stick to my original opinion of it which is "It's like being pissed, but not, and you don't want to go to the loo every 5 minutes."

** That is, at least a dozen of my mates, not counting casual acquaintances etc. Fucking Thatcher.

The major downside of legalising cannabis is that we will be flooded with cretinous French and American students and assorted arseholes coming over to toke up and coo at the queen.

That and the stench. Cough.

Assuming it's smoked, aye.

With a finite public purse it's about bang for the tax payer's buck, though, and, including the negative effects on the economy, banning smoking in public places was a far, far cheaper and more effective per-pound-spent public health fix than banning cars would be.

And they're hardly pissing in the wind with it. Incidentally, there are only a few thousand deaths each year where women are killed by their partners. As that's a small number, should we not bother doing anything about it?



Why on earth not? Take them out of the hands of the criminals, make them safer, drop the price and therefore reduce acqusitive crime a squillionfold. Winner, surely?


Entirely agreed there.




No idea, mate. Sartre?



Do I really? I grew up in Gloucester, for fuck's sake, as the child of parents whose family was on the one side factory workers and on the other subsistence farmers in Ireland, and spent several years living in the shittiest bits of London that Satan could devise.

Or do you mean you've had a rosier view of the country than me?

I'm not going to get (too) involved in some ill-conceived prolier than thou pissing contest with you here, but I'm a bit puzzled as to where you get this impression of me from. Is it purely because I'm a lawyer? You'd be surprised at who they let in the profession these days, and not just us non-public school types cluttering up the place with our funny regional accents (example - LOUISE "I LOVE KILLING BABIES" WOODWARD, would you fucking believe it).



Oh knock it off. I'm not Jacqui fucking Smith.


Ditto. Except when you over do it and you've been drinking too, which is when it feels like being at death's door for an hour or two.

Also - it's the good pissed. The real ale pissed, as it were, rather than the punchy Stella pissed.

I have nothing profound to say about this, it's just one of the best examples of building a straw man that I have seen in some time. Yes, Mr. Chris, I am heartily in favour of domestic violence.


Sort out this whole OD thing first, and maybe we can talk. But meanwhile, if you smoke enough cannabis, you just might maybe throw up due to poisoning yourself. Heroin, for example, is a different matter.


*giggles* Yes! Er, no. Although, it is also responsible for nausea* so... no, I'm talking about cider. Specifically the cheapo stuff that's so beloved of tramps and teens. Although, when I was a lad, we didn't have alcopops and Lambrini, so this may well change in time. For Scottish viewers, the answer is probably Buckfast.


Sorry, my fault. I mean that although we live in the same country we appear to view a great many things very differently. I don't mean "Mr. Chris, as a member of the upper class...", but TWO exciting CUS points for the phrase "prolier than thou", which I intend to use all the time from now on.


Actually, that was just me trying to make it clear to They Who Watch Us that despite being a practising lawyer, you don't and have never etc. Redundantly as a needless irreverence. I wasn't trying to weaken your argument. Although, I must remember that in future.


Oh, well put. Yeah, I'd agree with that. A decent smoke is much like sitting down with a quality ale, to watch the world go by - it's not for lairy fizzy cunty aggro. And I'm very much an ale man.

Aside: I come from the Midlands, I do tend to walk around with my hairy bare feet, have big sideburns, like a smoke, and want little more than to be just left alone to quietly live out my life. I am turning into a hobbit, for fuck's sake...

* See, I read books too! Smileyfac

I didn't suggest with any words there that you were in favour of it, merely that, according to some of the logic displayed so far, we should do nothing about it, as there are far weightier, in numbers at least, issues which could be dealt with first. See?



And, indeed, booze.


Nooo - cider? Really? I think we started on those little stubby bottles of lager, and 20/20. And Archers and lemonade. Which is all precisely 0% less gay than cider, by the way, to pre-empt you there.


That is one of the splendours of living in a free society. You are free to be entirely and gusset-strainingly wrong.



Ah. Right. Well, in that case, I *am* Jacqui Smith, and don't forget it.



See, in the important things, we agree. I don't know about you but I feel warm and fuzzy about that.


As long as it's not actually Tom Bombadil.....

Also, due to my hairy feet and prediliction for ale and food, Mrs C does tend to refer to me as a hobbit.

To celebrate this exciting raucous debate, I just watched the fabbo Homicide: Life on the Street episode where two of the detectives quit smoking (or try to) to the intense annoyance of their partners. Hilarity ensues!

Cider is the classical one for getting proper fucked up, on the cheap. That's what you want. Although, we did also drink 20/20 and Archers and Lemonade - because it was what the girls drank, which we laughed at them for, all girls and all boys, heh.

Y'know, "gusset-straingingly" is a really hideous adverb. Yeesh

I think if I were a hobbit, I'd be Bilbo. Although, I've just remembered that bit in Fellowship, where he asks Frodo if he can hold the ring, just for one last time... *waits, variously*

Snakebite, my good sir. Snakebite. Snakebite and black, indeed.

In the west country, Cider is the very opposite of gay. Which is more than can be said for Archers and lemonade, anywhere.

Fun story: While working in a bar, I accidentally managed to charge someone £20 for 3 of them. They weren't happy, but I had the till on my side. Sadly, it seems I didn't know how to work the till - or rather, the cancel button on the till.

Can't stand blackcurrant or blackberry.

Then only drink 1/3rd of it.

Alright, briefly*, because this is getting circular.

As long as not every single place in the country is full of nasty, smelly smokers, anyone who wishes to avoid evil, dangerous passive smoking can do so. I'm not arguing for smoking to be made compulsory, I'm suggesting people should have choice.

To go back to your punching metaphor, Mr Chris, the equivalent of me walking up and punching you would be walking up and blowing smoke in your face. I said earlier I don't think this is acceptable. If, however, you choose to come somewhere, such as a pub or a private house where people smoke, you have made a choice to "risk" it. Unless you were doing so for several hours several days a week the risk would be minimal. As for smoking when you run past people outdoors, there's no way you'll get enough to harm you. It may be unpleasant to you, but frankly that's a downside of living in a crowded place, which the UK in general is. I doubt you find it any more unpleasant than I find the overpowering smell of cosmetics or the smell of traffic. The only reason I keep bringing these up is to make the point that I accept these, they are part of life. I'm not so intolerant of others's freedom of choice as to try to ban it.

If you wish to ban something to help the nations health, ban alcohol and unhealthy food. Drunk people injure and kill others far more commonly and directly than smokers, and it's been shown that an unhealthy diet in parents leads to an unhealthy diet in kids, causing damage to the kids in the same way** smoking around them would.

The above paragraph is to be taken as rhetoric, not support for said bans. I hope that's obvious, but with the amount of point-twisting and and straw-man arguments here, I'm going to flag it up. For the record, I don't smoke, eat badly, drink excessively, and smoke the filthy weed once in a blue moon.

Well, unless anyone comes up with any startlingly original points, I'm done with this thread, it's even starting to bore me, and it's something I can normally argue about until I'm blue in the face.

*Not briefly, as it turned out.

**Bad phrasing I know. I'm not trying to suggest that it causes damage by the same mechanism, or to compare the degree of damage. I'm trying to imply that it's another area where educated free choice should be the order of the day.

Excess of alcohol and excess of food. Having one drink, or even a couple, is harmless to everyone around you. It's only when people overindulge and then go on to do stupid things that they injure others, and even morbidly obese people only harm themselves, not anyone else.

Neither alcohol nor junk food are inherently "unhealthy".

Mm. I'm currently drinking a Smirnoff Ice, and had a McDonalds yesterday. Hideous white trash crap, but its existence doesn't necessitate an addiction. Although... hmm. There's chocolate of course.

I'm no expert on chocolate. How pure can chocolate be? I have some 80% Lindt (I think) downstairs for a night when I just want to throw myself down, have a good cry, and have a nibble with a movie.

Baby killers-FTFY.

Where's the picture of that mong running when Stu* needs it?







* Please oh please get this joke.

The Daily Mail's a character, eh?


Emphasis mine.

It is unknown if the Taliban then went on to turn a Smirnoff Ice into a barrel of 200 year old rum, which is equally as likely, and similarly - with hilarious inappropriateness - messianic.

If they can turn cannabis into heroin they wouldn't have bombed it, they'd have gone in and taken over.