Oh come on – where are we living?
It’s ridiculous that these incidents even get reported. As for having this shariah approach to teenagers with a bit of cannabis, oh please. The poor kid. It’s about time teenagers with a bit of dope were left alone, given a short sharp lecture at most, and the focus switched to this island’s burgeoning cocaine business. Many people of my generation are coked up to the eyeballs, so somebody must be selling the stuff.
www.timesofmalta.com Monday, 23 February – 08:23CET
Teenager arrested after small drugs find
AFM soldiers late yesterday arrested a 17-year-old boy while conducting a vehicle check point (VCP) in Cospicua. The soldiers from 1 Regiment’s C ( Special Duties) Company observed the individual walking towards them, behaving suspiciously. He was stopped and his immediate area searched. Two small pieces of cannabis resin were found hidden in a wall nearby. The teenager was handed over to the Police for further investigations.
And here’s more crazy behaviour:
The Times – Monday, 23 February
Not that costume you don’t…La Stella philharmonic society of Gozo formally protested to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities yesterday over a grotesque mask showing the door of St George’s Basilica of Victoria. The mask was displayed during the official carnival celebrations in Victoria on Saturday. George Cini, secretary of the society, said the protest was made because the mask could cause offence since the law specified that ecclesiastical matters could not feature in carnival. The mask included the words Porta Salutis, which linked it directly to the door of the basilica.
Mr Cini said that after police intervention, the participants offered to remove the words, but they were disqualified from the parade and did not participate yesterday. Mr Cini pointed out that this protest was filed in terms of the law, and his society had not protested when somebody produced a grotesque mask showing a star (symbol of the society) in the mouth of a lion, the symbol of the rival band. Common sense prevailed however and the star was removed before this grotesque mask was paraded in Victoria.
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It’s about time the authorities grew up and considered the effectiveness and consequences of their actions. But I’m here to take you off on a tangent. The Czech President made a real speech in the European Parliament last Thursday… and our little leaflet made a flash across democratically challenged minds.
Watch my video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljAANHPkrAE
And a guide to our satirical leaflet here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-qni6r2Q8o
And here’s some illogical “reasoning”. My goodness, you must be feeling really bad that you chose this guy to represent you.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090223/opinion/facing-up-to-a-problem
[Daphne – Yes, he’s making me quite cross. I don’t know what he imagines: that he’s going to be voted in by Labour supporters or the AD throng from Sliema in 2013? Talk about selling yourself in the wrong market.]
My dear Daphne,
Politicians have been featuring in Carnival a very long time. Wigs are worn in carnival no…..
[Daphne – And in parliament, too.]
@Kev: I find the videos interesting .
Are you one of the “pirates from Malta” ?
@Daphne
Most of the people of your generation who are now coked up to the eyeballs started with “a bit of cannabis”.
[Daphne – Actually, from what I observe, it is those who led the most sheltered lives, and who for most of their youth were under huge pressure by their families to study, conform, settle down, be good, jghixu ghall-ghajn in nies who cracked in their 30s and 40s. All the things they should have got out of their system at the appropriate age, they never did. And by that, I don’t mean cocaine. I mean fun and not bothering about what other people think. On the other hand, my contemporaries who got a lot out of their system during their teens and 20s live pretty staid lives now. If you see a man who’s gone off the rails in his 40s, you can be sure he was a dork at 20. The people in their late 30s and 40s who are now coked up to the eyeballs would never have touched anything in their youth, and went straight to cocaine in middle age.]
Daphne
Just have a look at this and forget about “dorks li jghixu ghal-ghajn in-nies”
Use of Marijuana Leads to Later Drug Abuse
Early Smoking Influences Later Drug, Alcohol Problems
A team of researchers from the United States and Australia has found that the age when a person begins to smoke marijuana has a significant influence on whether they will develop problems with drugs and alcohol later in life, independent of his or her genetic and family background.
In a large study of Australian twins, the researchers found that those who used marijuana before age 17 were two to five times more likely to use other drugs or to develop alcohol or drug abuse or dependence. The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“There is a fairly long history of research showing that early cannabis (marijuana) use is associated with increased risks for later use of so-called ‘hard drugs,’ but that research is based on the fact that most heroin and cocaine users report first having used cannabis,” says lead author Michael T. Lynskey, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and senior research fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia…………………
………………..”The early marijuana users also used other drugs at higher rates, including cocaine and other stimulants (48 percent) heroin and other opioids (14 percent) and hallucinogens (35 percent)”.
http://www.drug-rehabs.org/articles.php?aid=110.
[Daphne – Bollocks. I wasn’t 16 in a Tal-Muzew vacuum, so I don’t need to get my information from third party studies.]
I find it unsettling that the powers that be still think that Malta needs roadbloacks. And to top it all, by armed soldiers. Why? This isn’t the Gaza Strip.
[Daphne – They do so to guard against the risk of having a public building blown up by a teenager with a bit of cannabis.]
Frontier-state pirates, John, no joke. Ejvril Dojl doesn’t think it’s funny.
@ Ray Borg, you’re so passé. By the same token even beer leads to more drug use. The only time cannabis leads to more potent drug use is in times of shortages when pedlars push heroin. The whole ‘war on drugs’ is a farce that will one day be ridiculed, just as today we ridicule the numerous frenzies of the past.
Daphne
My oh my! It would take till kingdom come to list all the references and quotes you use in your comments. It is your prerogative to choose those that support your arguments. It is my prerogative to choose those that support mine so here comes another one:
National Study Shows “Gateway” Drugs Lead to Cocaine Use
The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia (CASA) released a study Oct. 27 showing that children (12 to 17 years old) who use gateway drugs–tobacco, alcohol and marijuana–are up to 266 times–and adults who use such drugs are up to 323 times–more likely to use cocaine than those who don’t use any gateway drugs. Compared with people who used only one gateway drug, children who used all three are 77 times–and adults are 104 times–more likely to use cocaine.
“This study–the most comprehensive national assessment ever undertaken–reveals a consistent and powerful connection between the use of cigarettes and alcohol and the subsequent use of marijuana, and between the use of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana and the subsequent use of cocaine and other illicit drugs,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s president and former HEW secretary.
“An increasing number of American children and teens believe there is little risk in chugging a beer or smoking a tobacco or marijuana cigarette. With the recently reported rise in drinking and using marijuana by children and teenagers, this report is a wake-up call for parents to discourage their children from smoking and drinking and for governors and mayors to enforce the laws prohibiting the sale of cigarettes, beer, wine coolers and other alcoholic beverages to minors,” he said.
The CASA study establishes a clear progression that begins with gateway drugs and leads to cocaine use: nearly 90 percent of people who have ever tried cocaine used all three gateway substances first. More than half followed a progression from cigarettes to alcohol to marijuana and then on to cocaine
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol20/vol20_iss10/record2010.24.html
KIndly note that Tal-Muzew do not feature in the two reports I brought to your attention.
[Daphne – Ray Borg, something tells me that you come from a generation older than mine. Either that, or you moved in very different circles. I don’t need to refer to studies because I have real, life experiences to go on. The people I knew who died of heroin overdoses did not do so because they smoked a joint like practically every other teenager in the western world and Malta. No, they got onto heroin because they had their own particular demons to battle, and they chose to battle them that way. I also knew a couple of people of my parents’ generation who drank themselves to death. It is a dead cert that they didn’t start with a joint. I am telling you – from experience – that the people I see about me now acting what my mother used to call ‘with it’ are the very ones who were not ‘with it’ at all at the very time of their lives when it would have been appropriate to be. They obviously feel they missed out.]
I think, Ray Borg, the report you mention is a wake up call to stop this farce and bundle you people with it. Aren’t you sick and tired of recycling this ancient dogma? The more you prohibit substances, and the more enforcement you throw at it, the bigger the prohibition problem becomes, but idiots like you find that hard to understand because cobwebs have taken over your brains. Others think they know the market so well they fail to realise that banning is another way of deregulating… but I will not go through this old stuff again. One day it will become self-evident – pity we won’t be around by then.
@ Kev
Calm down brother. There is no room for insults in such a debate. What is at stake is our children’s future. I do not know if you are living in Malta or not but if you are check with Caritas about the drug problem among 11 and 12 year old children who are already smoking joints and drinking their brains off. If you think that the reports I quoted come from people whose brains have been taken over by cobwebs you must really and truly fit the idiot label you stuck on me.
[Daphne – The really serious problems are not among children but among adults, who are way out of the care and control of their parents.]
Elementary, my dear Daphne. Children grow up to be adults.
[Daphne – Yes, and? I’m telling you that sometimes, just sometimes, the problem stems not from neglecting your children and exposing them to drugs, but from over-protecting them and controlling every aspect of their lives. At least, that’s what I can see from the results of my own generation. Those who weren’t ‘cool’ when young sometimes try to make up for it at 40.]
… to add to what Daphne said – it’s like protecting children from germs to the point that their immunity gets lazy and out of practice… no, that would not do as an example, would it? Not to people like Ray Borg who’ve lived their lives cocooned in a turd they thought was the whole world. Continue reading more studies, Ray Borg – most of them were written by ppl like you anyway.
[Daphne – ‘Cocooned in a turd’? ppl? You must be having a bad day, Kevin.]