Say no to drugs!

I'm against drugs. The reason I say so on this blog is a way of providing "nutritional facts" as well as standing on the soapbox. Being open will probably save me and others embarrassing moments. I picture myself meeting someone in a gardening context, getting along real well with this person untill she or he reveals that most of her indoor produce is cannabis, and expects me to find this a good thing. Being a shy and polite person (I know this isn't always apparent - you do get more courage in cyberspace) as well as really concerned about what others think about me I'd have a really hard time getting out of that situation. I prefer to put my cards on the table at once.

Last week I took a look at a british documentary about drugs. A british team of scientists have made a ranking out of the twenty most dangerous drugs. Very interesting - especially since they added alcohol and tobacco to the list. It's food for thought that both where considered more dangerous than cannabis. It was a close shave between cannabis and tobacco though, tobacco was on place nine and cannabis och place eleven.

Alcohol and tobacco proves one thing; a drug doesn't become less dangerous if it's made legal. It may not even be more easy to handle - you just don't have to hide what you are doing. Not that my smoking friends ever have tried to hush away their liking for cannabis, but neither do they smoke joints in the open. An illegal drug is harder to come by - it's not always possible to buy it on impuls, and you need to know who to ask, an information that can be hard to retrieve. It's not like buying chocolate.

I say chocolate deliberately. It may seem harmless, but contains both theobromin and coffein that are addictive. I especially missed coffein in the documentary, partly because it scores high in spidertests (you give a spider some substance and see how manage to weave a net, a spider on coffein works fast, but doesn't manage to make a net - only a frantic succession of squares), and partly because it's more common than alcohol (perhaps it was not considered dangerous enough).

The most important thing is that we start to listen to the information available. That coffein*, cannabis, tobacco and alcohol are dangerous are old news. This goes for heroin (number one on the list) and cocaine (number two and a popular party drug) as well. The snag is perhaps that you do notice the good thing (the intoxication) about a drug at once, but the bad things are growing on you - sloooowly. When you do notice something is wrong it's very often too late, either your body has been permanently harmed or you are stuck and will make things worse continuing using the drug you've fallen in love with.

Grow real vegetables at home - they taste better.

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*It's fairly easy to get coffee shivers by drinking a few strong cups of coffee, and it's possible to drink oneself to death by drinking espresso. For my own part I start to stink gasoline, so it's purely from vanity that I stay off both coffee and tea. I still eat chocolate, though.