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Friday, 19 March 2010
Czech pot smokers exhale with relief over new drug law
Czech pot smokers have breathed a sigh of relief after the government clarified a law on drug use, turning the country into one of Europe's safest havens for casual drug users.
Under the more transparent and liberal law in effect since January, people found in possession of up to 15 grammes (half an ounce) of marijuana or growing up to five cannabis plants no longer risk prison or a criminal record, but can only be fined if caught.
"Our legislation says that possession and growing of marijuana for personal use is not a crime," said journalist Jiri Dolezal, slowly savouring a joint he just rolled with admirable expertise.
Now, "if the police find you carrying less than 15 grammes, you don't risk anything except a fine of up to 15,000 korunas (580 euros, 800 dollars)."
Dolezal has led a tireless campaign to relax the laws on "soft" drug use in the pages of Reflex, the respected magazine where he works.
The weekly even organises an annual contest for the best photo of marijuana grown by its readers, the Reflex Cannabis Cup, in this ex-communist country where one-third of all adults and half of youths under 24 years confess to having tried cannabis at least once.
The new law replaced an ambiguous one that made it a penalty to be in possession of "a larger than small amount" of marijuana.
"It will reduce contacts between youths and dealers who, sooner or later, offer them hard drugs," asserted Dolezal, puffing on what in colloquial Czech is called "brko" for "quill", or "spek" for "bacon fat".
But Karel Nespor, a doctor who heads the addiction treatment centre at Prague-Bohnice psychiatric hospital, is concerned about impact the eased law may have on health.
"One study found that the risk of heart attack is four times higher in the hour after someone smokes a marijuana joint," he recently told the Czech daily Dnes .
"Marijuana use also risks provoking 'cravings' for the drug," he said.
Adopted after years of wrangling, the new drug law also allows people to possess less than 1.5 grammes of heroin, a gramme of cocaine, up to five grammes of hashish, and five LSD blotter papers, pills, capsules or crystals.
Czechs can also legally grow up to five cannabis or coca plants or cacti containing mescaline, and possess up to 40 magic mushrooms.
If growers comply with the legal limits, possession is treated as a minor offence, while the possession of bigger amounts may result in up to six months in prison for hemp and up to a year for magic mushrooms, plus a fine.
In neighbouring Poland and Slovakia, people possessing any amount of marijuana risk ending up behind bars.
"Czech society is secular and more free, I would say," said psychologist Ivan Douda, who specialises in treating addicts. "Our laws are more tolerant and more pragmatic. We are closer to the Dutch legislation."
Cannabis use is technically illegal in the Netherlands, though the consumption and possession of under five grammes was decriminalised in 1976 . That amount is sold legally in one of 700 or so licensed Dutch "coffee" shops. Cannabis cultivation and mass retail remain illegal, and magic mushrooms were banned in 2008.
Douda, however, warned that the new law would not resolve all drug problems.
In recent years, he has traveled around the country, meeting students to raise awareness about the risks of using not only cannabis but also other drugs including tobacco and alcohol.
"Alcohol is an underestimated drug, while marijuana is overestimated and too severely criminalised," he said.
Neither Dolezal nor Douda feel the more relaxed drug law will transform their country into "an Amsterdam of the East".
"There is a difference between the approach in Amsterdam, which is more tolerant towards dealers, and that of Czech authorities, who are easier on the users," said Dolezal.
The psychologist conceded it was inevitable that cannabis lovers from neighbouring countries would come from time to time in search of "a more liberal environment."
Recently, Czech police discovered that a fast-food kiosk in Cesky Tesin/Cieszyn, a town on the Czech-Polish border, was selling Polish clients marijuana along with their French fries.
"Regulars were offered French fries as a bonus," joked local police spokeswoman Zlatuse Viackova.
@'AP'
More totally irresponsible drug reporting
One would think that the collective wisdom of the thousands of drug fiends inhabiting the San Francisco Bay Area would somehow inform the reporters and editors who produce the region's dominant daily, the San Francisco Chronicle, about the true nature of drug use.
But one would be wrong, for last Sunday, March 14, the Chronicle replenished the pernicious urban myth that teenagers and other young folks are routinely participating in pharm (or "pharma") parties with a Page One story titled "Pill Parties Give Teens Entry Into Addiction" (online the title is " 'Pharma Parties' a Troubling Trend Among Youths").
If you've read one of my six previous columns (June 15, 2006; June 19, 2006; March 25, 2008; March 26, 2008; March 23, 2009; Jan. 21, 2010) on the pharm-party myth, you may skip the lecture. But if not, it is your civic duty to sit tight and read on.
A pharm party, as such newspapers as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe have reported, and such episodic TV shows as CSI: NY, Boston Legal, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Saving Grace have pretended, are drug bacchanalias attended by young people bringing pharmaceutical drugs they've bought or stolen. They toss these meds into a bowl and then—get this—swallow them randomly, sometimes by the handful like trail mix! (In some versions of the myth, the bowls of random drugs are called "trail mix.")
To my knowledge, no journalist has ever witnessed such random consumption of drugs by young people in a party setting, yet the story continues to get major play as if these affairs are common. (Time magazine's Carolyn Banta observed suburban New Jersey kids trading for a July 24, 2005, story about "pharming parties." But Banta's kids didn't play Russian roulette with their drugs, and she presents them as savvy druggies trading for value. "Is this generic, or is it the good stuff?" one asks another.)
The Chronicle story automatically deserves its distinction as the worst pharm-party story ever published because it arrives so late with so little to add to the hysteria. But there are a half-dozen sounder reasons it deserves the prize.
1) It defines "pharma parties" as get-togethers where kids share drugs stolen from their parents' medicine cabinets, "a known phenomenon for only a few years, experts say." This, as anyone who grew up in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, or the 2000s knows, is false. Kids have long stolen and taken their parents' drugs.
2) It describes the most extreme pharma party as the kind where kids toss a variety of pills "blindly" into bowls and then consume them at random. Yet the reporter does not witness such an soirée nor does he interview an attendee. He attributes the existence of the extreme pharma parties to a therapist, but the only familiarity the therapist has with the parties is that he is said to have "dealt" with them.
3) It enlists into the story a youngish "addict," the 24-year-old Peter, to demonstrate that pharma parties are real, but listen carefully to what Peter says:
Those parties where kids all just dump the drugs into a bowl and take handfuls just to see what happens—just the idea of that scares me to death.
I mean, I was addicted so badly I went to heroin and crack, and even I wouldn't put my hand in a bowl and just take whatever.
Note that Peter never claims to have actually attended a pharm party. He merely expresses horror at taking drugs randomly. Smart young feller, that Peter!
4) The piece concedes that there are "no statistics" documenting how many kids attend drug-swapping parties, but then it reports the anecdotal findings of doctors at rehabilitation centers who say that 5 percent to 10 percent of their young patients have attended pharma parties. Who is surprised that 5 percent to 10 percent Bay Area kids in rehab have partied and swapped?
5) According to the Chronicle, "Pharma parties, where kids get together to share drugs pilfered from their parents' pill bottles, have been a known phenomenon for only a few years, experts say. But the phenomenon is getting worse." [Emphasis added.]
But the pharm-party myth has been with us a long time. Thanks to a tip by Slate contributor Nancy Nall Derringer back in 2008, I was able to trace its origins back to the 1960s and early 1970s, when the press called the random-drugs-in-a-bowl events "fruit salad parties" (Lowell Sun, March 30, 1966; Tucson Daily Citizen, Dec. 9, 1969; Charleston Daily Mail, March 13, 1970; Coshocton Tribune, Oct. 8, 1970; Billings Gazette, Jan. 17, 1971). Although these news stories claimed the parties were real, there was no evidence that they really took place. No names of attendees. No first-person accounts. No corroborating evidence.
6) Without a doubt, prescription drugs enjoy a high profile in today's culture. But are they all that more available to kids? Yes, the Chronicle reports, citing a study by the anti-drug propaganda outfit Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The Partnership says that 63 percent of American teens in grades 9 through 12 believe prescription drugs are easy to steal from their parents, up from 56 percent last year.
But the more reliable "Monitoring the Future" study from the University of Michigan reports otherwise. The percentage of surveyed students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades who say non-heroin narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet) are "fairly easy" or "very easy" to get is down or essentially flat (PDF) since the early 1990s. Monitoring the Future established the same availability trends for the two other classes of drugs kids might find in their parents' medicine cabinets: tranquilizers (PDF) and amphetamines (PDF). Monitoring the Future finds that self-reported use of tranquilizers and amphetamines is down or flat since the early 1990s. Non-heroin narcotics use has doubled since the early 1990s but has held flat for most of the last decade, according to the study.
So come and claim your award, my naive Chronicle colleagues. It's an aluminum bowl filled brimming with jellybeans, Pez, and Good & Plentys. Eat as much as you'd like, but at random only.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Nick Cave, Kylie Minougue, Shane MacGowan, Blixa Bargeld & The Bad Seeds - Death Is Not The End
(Thanx to Alan for an apt choice for today!)
Alex Chilton RIP!!!
Alex Chilton in an undated early photograph
Photo by The Commercial Appeal files
For nearly a decade starting in 1962, American Sound Studios in Memphis churned out hit after hit: including The Letter and Cry Like a Baby by the Box Tops (with a young Alex Chilton). By the 1980's, Chilton and Big Star, would foster a generation of rock bands. Chilton died Wednesday, March 17, 2010, in New Orleans.
Pop hitmaker, cult hero, and Memphis rock iconoclast Alex Chilton has died.
The singer and guitarist, best known as a member of '60s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the '70s power-pop act Big Star, died today at a hospital in New Orleans. Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today. He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.
His Big Star bandmate Jody Stephens confirmed the news this evening. "Alex passed away a couple of hours ago," Stephens said from Austin, Texas, where the band was to play Saturday at the annual South By Southwest Festival. "I don’t have a lot of particulars, but they kind of suspect that it was a heart attack."
The Memphis-born Chilton rose to prominence at age 16, when his gruff vocals powered Box Tops massive hit “The Letter.” The band would score several more hits, including “Cry Like a Baby” and “Neon Rainbow.”
After the Box Tops ended in 1970, Chilton had a brief solo run in New York before returning to Memphis. He soon joined forces with a group of Anglo-pop-obsessed musicians, fellow songwriter/guitarist Chris Bell, bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens, to form Big Star.
The group became the flagship act for the local Ardent Studios' new Stax-distributed label. Big Star’s 1972 debut album, #1 Record met with critical acclaim but poor sales. The group briefly disbanded, but reunited sans Bell to record the album Radio City. Released in 1974, the album suffered a similar fate, plagued by Stax’s distribution woes.
"I’m crushed. We’re all just crushed," said Ardent founder John Fry, who engineered most of the Big Star sessions. "This sudden death experience is never something that you’re prepared for. And yet it occurs."
The group made one more album, Third/Sister Lovers, with just Chilton and Stephens — and it too was a minor masterpiece. Darker and more complex than the band’s previous pop-oriented material, it remained unreleased for several years. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine would name all three Big Star albums to its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
In the mid-'70s Chilton began what would be a polarizing solo career, releasing several albums of material, like 1979’s Like Flies on Sherbet — a strange, chaotically recorded album of originals and obscure covers that divided fans and critics. Chilton also began performing with local roots-punk deconstructionists the Panther Burns.
In the early '80s, Chilton left Memphis for New Orleans, where he worked a variety of jobs and stopped performing for several years. But interest in his music from a new generation of alternative bands, including R.E.M. and the Replacements, brought him back to the stage in the mid-'80s.
He continued to record and tour as a solo act throughout the decade. Finally, in the early '90s, the underground cult based around Big Star had become so huge that the group was enticed to reunite with a reconfigured lineup.
"It’s obvious to anybody that listens to his live performances or his body of recorded work, his tremendous talent as a vocalist and songwriter and instrumentalist," Fry said.
"Beyond the musical talent, he was an interesting, articulate and extremely intelligent person," Fry added. "I don't think you’d ever have a conversation with him of any length that you didn’t learn something completely new."
The band, featuring original member Stephens plus Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, continued to perform regularly over the next 16 years. Big Star became the subject of various articles, books and CD reissue campaigns, including the release of widely hailed box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, released last year by Rhino Records.
"When some people pass, you say it was the end of an era. In this case, it’s really true," said Memphis singer-songwriter Van Duren, a Chilton contemporary in the Memphis rock scene of the '70s.
The band was scheduled to launch the spring 2010 season at the Levitt Shell at Overton Park with a benefit concert on May 15.
Big Star had not played in Memphis since a 2003 Beale Street Music Festival appearance.
Chilton is survived by his wife, Laura, and a son Timothy.
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