co durham boy

Total waste of life , a death through a 50 quid bag of bashed up beak . Should have just did 2 big lines then flushed the rest down the shithouse .

Millhouse

DXBtoDOH

Agree.

Drugs, especially marijuana usage has come out of the shadows and you now see more and more stoned middle aged people out in public and you smell it far more in public now than you did 20 years ago. And it's not always healthy. Some people think it's no different from having a bottle of wine at a dinner party, but it risks long term psychological and mental issues.

I do wonder what the long term outcome of making drugs respectable will be. I've been traveling to the US for work trips recently and you also see so many drugged up youths begging on the streets. An American coworker said 20 years ago all the street beggars were old black men who had alcohol and drug abuse problems. Today they're all young white kids. He used to support pot legalisation but now thinks it's jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire situation. And I have to agree. I walked past one of these beggars last week, a young white chap, early 20s. His eyes were completely whacked out. Brain gone for sure. And it's all due to drugs.

Pulaski

You make two interesting points - firstly that there is some combination of denial and ignorance about the dangers of pot - it is well documented that pot use has profound impacts on the brain for at least some users, with the effects apparently worse and/or more likely for younger users. Pot users appear to run the risk of developing schizophrenia and/or suffering a reduction of IQ, there is also some evidence, unsurpringly, that inhaling the smoke increases the risk of causing cancer.

Secondly. I have read recent reports that the largest demographic of people who have taken advantage of the legalization of pot in a number of US states are "young, less educated, white, men", so while there are certainly many people in various demographics who are now "partaking", chronic and frequent usage is often by those people who can least afford to deal with mental issues and depressed IQ (not, of course, that these effects are desirable for anyone!)

Re the "out of the frying pan" angle, the risk of legalizing pot is two-fold. It is well known that pot is a gateway drug, so once you have tried that you are more likely to try something else, and secondly, and perhaps more concerningly, if the street dealers in pot have lost their market to legit "head shops", their backup plan to maintain their income is likely to be to push something else, so effectively doubling the risk of the "gateway drug" problem.

All that said, I do think its a curious paradox that smoking tobacco has been in significant and continuous decline for at least 30-40 years in most of the industrialized world, while over the same time pot usage has tracked steadily upwards.

Millhouse

hnd

caretaker

I think she probably didn't realise she still had it on her until she was in the airport bar, maybe just before boarding, then either panicked and swallowed it out of fear of arrest at her destination, maybe had too much champagne and thought the bag would hold. Definitely not premeditated or she would have wrapped it to travel and doesn't make sense because if they were serving alcohol there would have been a restroom and she could have flushed it. Too bad for her family.

Arnold S

This story, and other reports, have all been lifted from the Daily Fail, who've also seen fit to use the dark arts and copyright images garnered via her social media page.

There's loads to this that doesn't add up and even the worst thieving scrote of a skaghead still has more morals than any of the so called "journalists" there.

Pongo

Pulaski

Maybe that confirms my view, that you'd have to be mad or on drugs to want to lead the Conservative party at the moment?

scot47

Only sane one in that group is Rory Stewart. His handicap is that he is a "one-nation Tory" The fact that his dad was the boss of MI5 might be a handicap.

I rather like him and I am neither Conservative nor Unionist

I remember that in one of his books he describes how it was to smoke opium in Iran.!

scrubbedexpat141

That's one of the largest groups of cocaine users in the UK now, middle aged parents, I believe?

Amen to that. Normally I'd say just get it done ASAP but in an airport lounge before a flight you'd need your head tested, flush the lot.

Both, technically.

How'd she even get it to the lounge? Must have got it through security....

Millhouse

How funny it would be if one of our future PMs isn't granted a new US visa due to lies about drug taking on previous visa applications. Although I must say a proper US visa (not just the ESTA) is not an easy form to complete.

Pulaski

Airport security is looking for, and has equipment to look for weapons and explosives. They aren't equipped to identify retail quantities of recreational pharmaceuticals.* Try taking a couple of keys in your carry on, and it might get someone's attention on the X-ray image, but three lines in a baggie, no chance.

* This may be different in some drug-producing countries or countries with a very lower tolerance of drug trafficking, such as Thailand or Malaysia.

scrubbedexpat141

Fair point. If it was tightly wrapped or rolled it might be mistaken for something else as well I suppose.