I’m trying to persuade First Capital Connect to get signs lit up between Hitchin and St Neots. http://t.co/GH1E12bK @FixMyTransport
Order christmas presents NOW - DVD copies of #thebutterflycircus at www.butterflycircus.com @ButterflyFilm
Twitter Launches Major Redesign [VIDEO] http://t.co/CpJSyyTC via @mashsocialmedia @mashable
To be Legal? Or Illegal? - It’s far too easy to be nonchalant about the drugs issues facing our kids today…. http://t.co/fLChFbG2
To be Legal? Or Illegal?
It’s far too easy to be nonchalant about the drugs issues facing our kids today. Far too easy to say you don’t care - or hold no interest - because drugs aren’t a part of YOUR life! But can you be any more careless in your thinking? Especially if you’re a parent!
I’m 37, my daughter is 17. Between us we share enough similarities and enough common ground, to be interesting - yet be equally disparate - to each other. In the 20 yrs between us - 2 complete generations if you like - not only has the way we communicate evolved beyond recognition to someone of my age group when we were 17, but the recreational aspects of our social lives have also undergone “revolutionary” changes. In the last 17-20 years peer pressure has changed, become more powerful, and has surprising allies in allegedly ‘useful technology’. The choices in not only how we communicate, but also how we obtain our information, have evolved to become more numerous than ANY of us could have imagined in such a short time frame.
In 1991 I was 17 and already a veteran of the fledgling, but by now burgeoning, underground party scene. The key to being in the ‘know’ on events/activities/parties and so on… was to be popular, to have a landline, and a diary!! If you were popular you had people calling you up to tell you who was having a party at the weekend. If you also had a diary, then you had the phone numbers of ‘party lines’ or ‘promoters’ who would at a pre-appointed time divulge the location and organisers of parties in the middle of nowhere. At those parties, the most disparate and different groups of people all came together to become one large group of ‘hardcore ravers’. Unified in one vibe, one love for the music… and for the most part, we were all on one high! Different doses and levels of intoxication admittedly between all, but for the most part, you were either ‘tripping’… or the nu-skool were ‘pilling’. Terms still used today, and possibly partly to blame - by their familiarity as expressions of intoxication - for the apathy we hold when we FAIL TO consider today’s ‘plethora’, the pharmaceutical cornucopia, that our kids refer to today with the same endearing [sic] terms.
In 1988 I took my first ‘blotter’, I was introduced to an ‘American music style’ that was making massive inroads to the UK. They called the blotter Acid, and the music was house… soon the 2 would merge, even blur, and become a movement… a unified core of belief that took the UK by storm!
By 1991, when I was 17, pressure was building to make these ‘illegal raves’ LEGAL, so as to protect the THOUSANDS of attendees under the legalised network of licencing events. Fantazia, Love of Life, Exodus - to name but a few - were at the fore of the scene and ‘ONE STEP BEYOND’ with 25,000 (official figure, unofficial is higher) became the largest ‘legal rave’ ever at that time in the UK. Some kids who called themselves ‘The Progidy’ were appearing at events like this regularly, trying to show the pioneers of the now ubiquitous synth driven soundscape such as (but not limited to) KRAFTWERK, that the sound they (amongst others) had pioneered, had not only grown up… but had it’s own ‘cult’ following. What was discussed by panicking media - and therefore in a heavily biased way - but not really seen for what it was, was how ‘drugs’ played a massive role in this ‘counter-culture’.
Well if I am honest, I’m just giving you some context. I don’t care much for the debates from back then about the inherent dangers of drugs, especially when you bring to the fore the context of today’s offerings. And that, the latter point about differences in offerings is the point of this epic rant! Historically some things are going to be slightly wrong, I was high when creating the memories upon which most of this rant relies… but anyone from my era, will understand and recall, and RELATE to what I am trying to say here. We were healthier getting high, following one vibe and one goal using illegal highs… than any child of ours today will ever be thanks to the plethora of LEGAL HIGHS available to them, on the High St in many places.
No this is NOT sensationalist. I’m not some Daily Mail reader who has decided to rant! I was there taking the drugs in the beginnings of our modern day counter culture revolution. I have also sampled some of the legal offerings being touted to people my daughters age. This is a seasoned recreational drug takers opinion. And it’s pretty damning!
I should also say that is not an argument for, or against, the legalisation of drugs. This is an opinion, you can make your own!
The scene was in its infancy, but the drugs weren’t! MDMA was discovered as a direct result of playing about with the psychedelic and amphetamine effects of different substances. There were some rogue substances, law of averages that one, but generally it was about increasing potency and yields of cannabis, mushrooms, DMT and so forth… and then mixing those genetics… those mostly natural based genetics.
The chemicalisation of newer ‘synthetic’ experiences has exploded since those days. It’s a good thing in a way because it means the discovery of new compounds blah blah blah. That’s how science works. But the absence of legalisation on the inherent groups - cannabinoids, hallucinogenics, amphetamines etc - has allowed the shady business of LEGAL HIGHS to circumvent law, stay one step ahead, explore loopholes - and so on - that ‘illegal’ substances could never hope to do in such short spaces of time! Forget law, we just don’t mess with naturalised substances chemically as we do synthetic compounds!
If back in the ‘old days’ there was first, the hippy revolution with LSD and bush weed - then we had the ‘acid house’ revolution of the late 80’s/early 90’s that is still rippling today with potent skunks and what not - what are we creating for our kids? WE ARE CREATING IT!! We are not preventing it so we are creating it.
Miaow Miaow or MDMA?
E-Drine or Amphetamine?
Methadone or Methadrone or Heroin? Well the first 2 are easy to confuse aren’t they!!
I can list so many more, but at the end of the day… THINK for YOURSELF! Is it better to legalise natural/natural based substances that we’ve used for millennia???
Or would you rather we continued to allow the misuse of plant food classification as an excuse for our kids to get high?
Think… Act… Teach.
