Drugs Without the Hot Air Quotes

“as Mike Jay puts it in his book 2High Society, “we were taking drugs long before we were human”.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“The longer the government went on creating policies that conflicted with the scientific evidence, the more harm those policies would do, not least because they undermined our ability to give a consistent public-health message, especially around the dangers of alcohol. The more hysterical and exaggerated any Home Secretary was about the harms of cannabis, the less credibility they would have in the eyes of the teenagers binge-drinking themselves into comas every day. If we’re going to minimise harm, we have to have a way of measuring it, and a policy framework that can respond to this evidence. Yet even comparing the dangers of cannabis and alcohol was considered a “political” act that overstepped my remit as a scientist and physician.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“In fact, attempts to deter substance abuse through drug testing in prisons is actually making this gateway effect more severe. Cannabis and its breakdown products can be detected in urine for weeks, whereas heroin clears from the body much faster. Testing positive for drugs can result in an increase in sentence, so prisoners have found a way to reduce the likelihood of being caught: use heroin instead of cannabis. Far from protecting them, imprisoning cannabis users will make them more likely to start using hard drugs.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Many [Russian] treatment programmes will only treat [patients] for one health problem at a time, forcing them to choose between being treated for their addiction or for their TB. Since drug users' lives are often chaotic anyway, being unable to receive holistic care means that they often move between different treatment programmes, stopping and starting courses of different sorts of medication - exactly the circumstances that cause viruses to mutate. The result is one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant TB in the world, a hazard to health that extends beyond the users themselves, affecting Russian society at large.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Even in the less-obviously creative fields of hard science, LSD can be profoundly beneficial. In fact, it played a role in the two biggest discoveries in biology of the 20th century. Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA with James Watson, and Kary Mullis, who invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), had both taken the drug, and attributed some of their understanding and insights to it. Mullis has gone so far as to say: "would I have invented PCR if I hadn't taken LSD? I seriously doubt it ... [having taken LSD] I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“When we try and evaluate the success of these policies, we need to ask three questions. (A) Has the War on Drugs reduced supply? (B) Has it reduced demand? And (C) has it minimised harm?”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“As we discussed in chapter 4, on a day-to-day basis it’s considered normal to take drugs to change our brain chemistry – we drink coffee to make us more alert, alcohol to calm us down and take painkillers when we hurt ourselves. Using drugs on prescription for longer-term problems is safer than self-medicating with “recreational” drugs because the former have been through extensive trials to establish safe dosage, and because your doctor can monitor your drug use.”
― David Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“A TERRIFYING new “legal high” has hit our streets. Methylcarbonol, known by the street name “wiz”, is a clear liquid that causes cancers, liver problems, and brain disease, and is more toxic than ecstasy and cocaine. Addiction can occur after just one drink, and addicts will go to any lengths to get their next fix – even letting their kids go hungry or beating up their partners to obtain money. Casual users can go into blind RAGES when they’re high, and police have reported a huge increase in crime where the drug is being used. Worst of all, drinks companies are adding “wiz” to fizzy drinks and advertising them to kids like they’re plain Coca-Cola. Two or three teenagers die from it EVERY WEEK overdosing on a binge, and another TEN from having accidents caused by reckless driving. “Wiz” is a public menace – when will the Home Secretary think of the children and make this dangerous substance Class A?”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“A lot of young people ignore the genuine warnings that health professionals give them about the dangers of cannabis, because so many of these warnings are exaggerated. Rather than protecting people, exaggerated warnings increase the risks of harm and addiction.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Among the most vocal part of the press spreading rumours about its negative effects were the outlets owned by William Randolph Hearst, a media tycoon who had invested heavily in the wood pulp industry. Since hemp paper posed direct competition to wood pulp paper, he had an economic stake in limiting hemp production, and recognised that if controls were placed on cannabis because of its psychoactive effects, it would become more difficult to grow the plant for other purposes. Hearst’s media empire spread stories about violent attacks on white women by Mexican immigrants intoxicated with marijuana, creating a sense of moral panic and support for controls on the drug, and therefore on the plant as well.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“We use drugs for two main reasons: to experience pleasure, and to relieve suffering”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“In the context of this book, the definition of a drug is a substance that comes from outside the body, crosses the blood/brain barrier, and has an effect similar to our natural neurotransmitters”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Out of 265 deaths from paracetamol, the media reported only one, but a third of deaths from amphetamine (13 out of 36) made it into the news.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“Many people describe psychedelic experiences as profoundly meaningful, which may help them develop a sense of purpose in life or envisage an alternative to being stuck in a rut with alcohol.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“Aspirin is toxic to the stomach and can cause ulcers, while paracetamol is toxic to the liver.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“The safety of coca chewing and its place in Bolivian culture are why the President of Bolivia recently withdrew his country’s support for the UN convention on cocaine, to allow coca chewing to become legal again in Bolivia.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“Both faster onset and faster offset tend to increase the addictiveness of a drug.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“Having low numbers of dopamine receptors, for example, is associated with alcoholism and cocaine use.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“If in doubt, don’t drink and drug.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“The condition that seems to benefit most commonly from the use of cannabis is multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease characterised by fatigue, muscle weakness, incontinence, muscle spasms and chronic pain.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs

“we were taking drugs long before we were human”.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs

“Some substances rarely if ever cause death by overdose – cannabis and LSD, for example.”
― David J. Nutt, Drugs - without the hot air: Minimising the harms of legal and illegal drugs