Too controversial...

Too controversial...

Apparently my article for the paper this week is too controversial as it talks about drugs. All I'm fucking trying to do is open up some dialogue and increase awareness but they just can't be arsed with the hastle. Let me know what you guys think:


A recent Government report could change clubbing forever. Simon Stuart, thinks it’s about time.

Sat here having a quiet moment after a wicked bank holiday weekend with Derrick Carter at Basics in Leeds, feeling a little smug at the fact that I’ve gone all summer long and not mentioned Ibiza once in this column, my attention for some reason or other turned to drugs. It’s a subject that I’ve never really written about, I mean I’m not exactly an authority, but only recently upon dance music’s public face has it become acceptable to talk about drugs as a part of the whole scene. I suspect it’s got less to do with softening attitudes and more to do with the realisation that drug abuse is widespread in all walks of life.

I suppose the hesitance, somewhat understandably, has been as much down to the illegality of drug taking than to press ‘outrage’ but in the government’s recently commissioned Safer Clubbing report, drug taking was finally accepted as forming a part of many a clubber’s night out. Almost fifteen years since dance culture exploded into the mainstream and this is as far as the issues have progressed. Mainstream thought has finally awoken to the concept that it’s ridiculous to think that people are going to stop doing something they enjoy just because the authorities tell them so. Record levels of youth apathy in recent elections are no doubt testament of how irrelevant young people view politics and authority figures to be.

The report itself doesn’t so much take a liberal approach, more a new approach that encourages awareness and information. In the past it was as if trading information alone was a crime in itself. Simply trying to inform clubbers about the effects of drug taking could land people in hot water. For seasoned clubbers, much of what the report recommends will come as no surprise. What few club and drug related deaths there were in the last year most were triggered by acute heat strokes, so compulsory chill-out rooms, better air conditioning and free drinking water are all high on the list. Not exactly ground breaking stuff, but it’s a step towards a greater level of openness which I feel can only be of good. The UK may finally get some real drug research for once instead of the potted opinion and hyped conjecture that has peppered conventional thinking for the past decade - wide levels of drug use are as much down to ignorance than defiance. And far from encouraging drug abuse, freely available and independent factual information that can demonstrate the very real risks would, I’m sure, put people off altogether. Either way, I still think I’ll stick with the vodka and tonic’s.

clap clap

well done. i think you have made the good points, it may be a controversial issue but you have done well in not emphasising that. get it put on a t-shirt, or take it to somewhere that will publish it???

Theres too much truth in it mate. I think ya make the government look bad. which they are. but people dont want know the truth. they are happy to believe whatever the government tell em.
I can see why they dont want to print it.
But if its any consolation i think its good.

ditto!
me thinks its pretty good!

LMFAO!

Simon, you write for the Chronicle/Journal yeah? IMO, that pblishing house HATE drugs! They tend to take the moral high ground on anything they can, so drugs, relaxed attitudes/censorship, late-drinking, crack-whore nuns, etc, is a big NO-NO!

As far as they are concerned, drugs are evil, people who take drugs are evil, people who sell drugs are fucking Satan and should be stoned in the Bigg Market by all the puritanical areseholes who agree with them.

My opinion (and this applies to virtually everything) is that I'm an adult, I've evaluated the risks and downsides, and I'll decide whether I think something is worth it or not. This applies to porn, censorship, trying to climb down Steal Waterfall (don't try this, ever), crossing a road....

Basically, the Nanny State sucks ass big time, and so do publications that support it, and in doing so oppress free speech and thought. This is why some people die taking drugs, cos the knowledge needed to take em (more) safely is not easily available

Vive la revolution!

Rob, am I banned now too?

word. i totally agree... writing that sirt of stuff for them is a waste of time, even if it is totally true.

i couldve worded that better...
a good article IMO, but they would never print it, that's they way they are...

simon mate that is some piece of literature. maybe someday they'll publish it, but for now.....?

like ade says, its beacuse of a lack of education that most people die from certain drugs and this will continue to happen as long as the truth is withheld by people in authority.

send it to one of the nationals......u neva know.

Totally agree!

It really pisses me off that writers and journalists take the moral highground to please the publishers. They're in such a strong position to do society good yet they pedal the same pointless crap day after day, then go down the pub and get rat arsed.

In the whole of the UK last year there was a total of 36 ecstasy-related deaths, almost all of which could have been avoided with better education (they were triggered by acute heat strokes)

Compare that to an average of 436.5 alcohol and 290.3 tobacco related deaths PER 100, 000 in the North East alone.

Do the maths, the hype is fucking stupid!

you know what mate, I might just do that...

can we publish it in our MWAH! newsletter simon??

i know what u mean. my dad once said to me (at the age of 69) that he'd read a report that smoking 3 cannabis joints per day was worse for your health than smoking 20 cigarettes a day. i told him it was right what they said, however they didn't say why. basically its because the filter, that obviously filters the shit out of the tab, is removed and therefore all the nasty crap gets thru in the smoke, therefore its not the cannabis that does the harm, its the quite legal tabacco!


(disclaimer)
**just like to say i'm not condoning the use of illegal substance thru this example**

in the words of gizmo, "I don't condone drugs.....!"

No problem mate, go for it

cheers mate i'm busy doin it now. saves some work for me!

More controversy! OK maybe not, but this is what I'm talking about - this is what writers should be doing with their skills. Zoe Williams from today's Guardian, it's funny and worth the journey

The National Union of Students, whose function - as far as I could ever work out - has always been to introduce students to new taste sensations by holding parties with cream-based cocktails, has a new strategy. From this term forwards, it will endeavour not to encourage the little critters, but to stop them drinking. The new slogan is "If you do drink, don't do drunk", which injunction defies all kinds of natural laws - like cause and effect.
Obviously, the imperative behind all this is kindly - the NUS worries about youngsters, many of whom, as a direct result of booze, will fall over, have unprotected sex and maybe deliver to trusted friends some home truths which aren't true at all. The NUS is evidently shaken by the results of a recent survey, which it conducted jointly with the Portman group, the alcohol research organisation. One of the survey's starker figures is that "more than a million 18 to 24-year-olds consume alcohol purely to get drunk every week", in shocking contrast to older drinkers like us, who consume alcohol purely to feel full of physiological and psychic pain the next morning.

Now, this is not going to be an effective campaign - nobody likes to be preached to - but people who have only just escaped the quotidian preaching of a brace of parents like it least of all. Conceivably there will be three or four students in the country who will take it seriously, but they will be of a feeble-minded stamp who never get lashed up properly in the first place.

That's not a good enough reason to dismiss the campaign, of course. If you discarded any campaign that probably wasn't going to make any difference in the long run, public information services would be reduced to telling us to buy things and smoke more.

No, what's wrong with this is the notion at its core - that the drinking culture in Britain is "growing", and that this is an especially bad thing for the young. Of course, we have a worldwide reputation for liking a drink. I saw an American comedian (Reginald, he was called) last week who said, "You people drink like the Americans eat," expecting to get a laugh out of that, when in fact it is demonstrably true, and furthermore is not something I can imagine being ashamed about.

However, the days when the prime minister, or the prime minister's spouse, or anyone else anywhere near senior public office could be drunk all the time and still be looked upon with fond indulgence are over.

The consumption of units per capita might be on the increase thanks to decades of pioneering females proving that we could drink too, but the drink culture is not growing but shrinking.

Where once we had an ebullient, carefree love of all kinds of quality tipple, both the government and the media now chunter grimly and puritanically, getting into a twist about girls on alcopop binges. The real change in the culture has nothing to do with drink; it has more to do with public health information segueing into public badgering, as if our continued insistence on making our own lifestyle decisions could be undermined given the application of enough po-faced pressure.

As for students, they may be young, but they are also adults. They know what alcoholism is, they know what safe sex is, they know that you shouldn't fall out of windows (though, if you're going to, you'll break fewer bones if you are drunk and floppy). Sure, some of them will have accidents while they're drunk, involving boiling water or stairs, and some of them will have fights (all of which events will go relatively well for 21-year-olds, whose skin regeneration is at its fastest). This is the optimum time in life to over-drink. Students won't lose their jobs, their relationships will not fall apart (well, they probably will, but there will be plenty more where they came from), and they will not get hangovers (leastways not serious ones, only headaches). They are, broadly speaking, more alert than they will be in a decade, and they have a faster reaction time.

I was in Edinburgh last week, witnessing proper grown-up drinking at first hand. Leaving aside the obvious drunk capers, on Saturday there was a party with an inconvenient glass window looking on to a balcony. Anji Hunter smacked straight into it; then Lord Alf Dubs did the same; Esther Rantzen made straight for it, but was saved by her razor-sharp companion; Nicholas Parsons walked into it; Martha Kearney saw Anji Hunter go into it, then five minutes later did exactly the same thing herself. These people weren't even drunk, yet they couldn't tell the difference between glass and air. I swear to God, if they'd been properly steaming, we'd have lost three broadcasters, a former spin-lady and a lion of a Labour peer in one evening.

The lesson here (apart from it being a good idea to get some safety stickers for the glass) is that it's the middle-range to older citizen who is truly in danger from booze. Young people can't do a lot - they can't find their way around Soho or sound officious on the telephone - but they are brilliant at drinking. Let them get on with it.

Mate, I know the paper rounds up your way are hard as fuck, but didn't you just have your 26th birthday party? How do you age 43 years so fast?

Simon, ta for giving us posts we can actually think about, and put some thought into the replies too, makes a change!

Is no-one feeling radge today, it is Tuesday... seems quiet in here, too quiet!

me dad was 69 u plank!

Who do u write for mate????