I’ve never taken drugs. Well, not the illegal kind anyway. I prefer to walk up to the counter at the pharmacy, recite my request and wait mournfully to be told that Discovery isn’t paying. As a kid in primary school, I regularly took overdoses of my asthma pills (Microfillin; active ingredient theophylline) in order to […]
war on drugs
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle, News/Politics
The Silk Road: should drugs be legalised?
Please excuse the brief nature of this blog, the subject definitely merits a longer discussion at some point, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the recent closure of The Silk Road drugs bazaar and the arrest of the person whom the FBI believe to be its founder, Ross Ulbricht, and more generally on […]
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle, Tech
A little known history of cocaine (Part 2)
For part one of this series click here. As I noted in the last part of this series, cocaine became a “medical miracle” at the same time as medical science was legitimating itself as a modern form of enquiry. At first cocaine was lauded, especially between 1884 and 1899, as the first real topical anaesthetic […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The problem with legalising drugs
While the US elections dominated the news for the last week, two US states – Washington and Colorado – took the opportunity to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. For proponents of legalisation and for those who believe that the “war on drugs” has failed, this was seen as a major victory. But having thought […]