# sniffer dogs at bus station !



## gentlegreen (Jan 11, 2006)

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/disp...Node=145191&contentPK=13816200&folderPk=83726

Just caught today's Post headline.

I wonder how long it'll be before someone gets nabbed for having been in a room where a spliff was smoked ?


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## munkeeunit (Jan 12, 2006)

gentlegreen said:
			
		

> http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/disp...Node=145191&contentPK=13816200&folderPk=83726
> 
> Just caught today's Post headline.
> 
> I wonder how long it'll be before someone gets nabbed for having been in a room where a spliff was smoked ?




Hasn't that already happened many times before, usually using the drug sniffing machines which are generally oversensitive and can sniff out drugs ten handshakes down the line, or something like that.

Thankfully, compared to your average machine or copper, dogs at least seem to have half a brain, and can generally tell the difference


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## Isambard (Jan 12, 2006)

There was some interesting discussion on a few threads in them there Lunnon forums about the legality of this.

The story was typically depressing, but thanks for the heads up greenman.


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## Zaskar (Jan 12, 2006)

Calm down people.  I would be amazed if the rozzers are after the odd spliff smoking hippy, they really dont give a damn.

I suspect they are after the people who are dealing harmfull drugs to vulnerable people, surely something we should all support.....

---

Hello again Mr. Unit, hope you are feeling better after your retreat.


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## gentlegreen (Jan 12, 2006)

Zaskar said:
			
		

> Calm down people.  I would be amazed if the rozzers are after the odd spliff smoking hippy, they really dont give a damn.
> 
> I suspect they are after the people who are dealing harmfull drugs to vulnerable people, surely something we should all support.....
> 
> .


yea but no but yea but ......

Of course I support them in that, but it only takes one over-zealous junior copper .....

hopefully the dogs will not be disproportianately sensitive to spliff residue ....

.


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## Zaskar (Jan 12, 2006)

The police are not currently nabbing people who only have a small amount of grass for personal use so I wouldnt worry, unless of course you are black, asian or carrying a rucksack....

Actaully the notion of drug barons using buses is a bit odd really innit ?  Maybe they are eco friendly dealers ?

Looks more like a desperate measure by the plod to get some silly arrests that actually wont do any real good.


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## tobyjug (Jan 12, 2006)

Zaskar said:
			
		

> Actaully the notion of drug barons using buses is a bit odd really innit ?  Maybe they are eco friendly dealers ?
> .



I can understand it in an urban area. Out here in "the Sticks" motorcycle courier seem to be the preferred method.


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## Zaskar (Jan 12, 2006)

I think you have to be out of your head to even think of using a bus !


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## DaveCinzano (Jan 12, 2006)

Zaskar said:
			
		

> The police are not currently nabbing people who only have a small amount of grass for personal use



that is _precisely_ what police do at, say, victoria tube/rail, and brixton tube.


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## rubbershoes (Jan 12, 2006)

spliffheads=criminals =funding terrorism

i thought everyone knew that


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## munkeeunit (Jan 12, 2006)

rubbershoes said:
			
		

> spliffheads=criminals =funding terrorism
> 
> i thought everyone knew that



nowadays, if you're talking skunk, it's more like....

spliffheads = growing room set aside in student accomodation = student fees paid to government = reduced taxes/illegal war funded, etc....

Almost everything else still gets imported using every mode of transport along the way from yachts to buses to scooters and skateboards, even pregnant mums. There isn't a mode of transport along the way which isn't exploited.

And some of the money generated along the way ends up being cleverly diverted into funding projects such as the Stealth Bomber, which stoned students avidly insisted were U.F.O's... another thriving industry...


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## bristol_citizen (Jan 12, 2006)

This may be part of Chief Constable Port's new "zero tolerance" policy announced here a few weeks ago.
I think the idea is to bust people for possession. That's what they did on wednesday at the bus station.


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## Isambard (Jan 13, 2006)

KRS already said it but it is worth repeating: This has nothing to do with seriously tackling the anti-social side effects sometimes associated  criminalised drugs, it is about social control. 

I object to my council tax being spent in this way so some copper can have a virtual wank off in the Western Daily Press.


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## munkeeunit (Jan 13, 2006)

Isambard said:
			
		

> KRS already said it but it is worth repeating: This has nothing to do with seriously tackling the anti-social side effects sometimes associated  criminalised drugs, it is about social control.
> 
> I object to my council tax being spent in this way so some copper can have a virtual wank off in the Western Daily Press.



Yes, it is about social control, but the method of control continues to change. It's no coincidence that our estates and activist communities became flooded with heroine, and myths that the 60's were about drugs more than politics, at around the same time as the miners strike and battle of the beanfield, etc.

For the last 20 yrs drugs have been an incredibly useful and effective form of controlling and depoliticising a very edgy and previously politicised society.

Using drugs as Social Control has now begun to run it's course, and the side effects of entire estates blitzed on smack, crack, etc has begun to play upon the consciences and etiquette of the middle classes, in particular, whose kids are also now becoming junkies, and whose ear the goverment has.

So out comes the big stick to beat drugs back into its box as something which is only supposed be used addictively and habitually by the poor and politically active.


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## Isambard (Jan 13, 2006)

Interesting comments Munkeeunit, I'll have a think and come back.


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## tobyjug (Jan 13, 2006)

munkeeunit said:
			
		

> So out comes the big stick to beat drugs back into its box as something which is only supposed be used addictively and habitually by the poor and politically active.



I am somewhat puzzled by your linking of political activism with illegal drug use.
Most of the lumpenproletariat I know who are into drugs do not take any interest in political activism, (or much interest in anything).


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## munkeeunit (Jan 13, 2006)

Isambard said:
			
		

> Interesting comments Munkeeunit, I'll have a think and come back.



Cheers. I'm dealing in generalisations of course, not an air-tight conspiracy, but it seems to add up as a pattern of altering the method of control to me.


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## munkeeunit (Jan 13, 2006)

tobyjug said:
			
		

> Most of the lumpenproletariat I know who are into drugs do not take any interest in political activism, (or much interest in anything).



Duh, that's exacly the point I'm making. 

Haven't heard the term lumpenproletariat for a long time though, not quoting directly from dusty 19th century books I hope


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## tobyjug (Jan 13, 2006)

munkeeunit said:
			
		

> Duh, that's exacly the point I'm making.
> 
> Haven't heard the term lumpenproletariat for a long time though, not quoting directly from dusty 19th century books I hope




I usually reserve the term for letters to the local press just to see who comes out of the woodwork with a ranty reply.


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## munkeeunit (Jan 13, 2006)

tobyjug said:
			
		

> I usually reserve the term for letters to the local press just to see who comes out of the woodwork with a ranty reply.



Lol. As someone who uses the marxist method of analysis (not by quotation but using my very own living brain matter) I tend to assume that anyone who uses such terms nowadays is, unfortunately, probably very far removed from being able to think for themselves, and instead in some authoritarian 'socialist' party or another. Which is a real shame.

So I'm glad to hear you're using such terminology strategically (I think)


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## Isambard (Jan 13, 2006)

Mmmmm I agree to an extent that from the mid 80s onwards drugs were partly used as a social control mechanism on boken communities. But I think it was more a side effect than something even quietly tolerated

I’d say though that the government’s anti-drugs stance has little to do with the negative effects of crack or smack on middle class user and their surroundings. There have always been middle class users of those kinds of drugs.

The government’s main driving force I’d say is its authoritarian nature and desire to snuff out any social / cultural phenomena outside the control of itself and corporatism.

Of course a lot of drugs are going to be moved through Bristol. Like Mr police dude it’s a major city with a port and trains and motorways in every direction.    The effect on the flow of illegal drugs through these actions will be marginal. Have the sniffer dogs worked in London at stopping the availability of drugs? No.

Supposedly the sniffer dog will just be going for the drugs but what’s the betting that there’s going to be a general increase of hassling particular groups of passengers. I’ve seen “random” police checks in action and it always seems it’s the kids or the non-whites or the punks getting searched.

It’s happening all the time of course but this is just another step towards a state of permanent control with the government permanently checking on and controlling people.


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## bristol_citizen (Jan 13, 2006)

Anyone see 'The Thick Of It' this week, where the minister and his advisors couldn't decide whether to have a clamp-down or a liberalisation policy? They basically couldn't have given a toss which, as long as it was popular and 'played well'. 
That's where I suspect we are with this kind of tosh.


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## munkeeunit (Jan 13, 2006)

Thanks for the reply Isambard, will also reply in due course, probably tomorrow as I'm still officially resting


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## tobyjug (Jan 13, 2006)

munkeeunit said:
			
		

> So I'm glad to hear you're using such terminology strategically (I think)




Put it this way, there was one ranty reply to the press which prompted a phone call to me from a very senior police officer stating the "lady" who had written the letter highly critical of me, was not:- "what she appears to be in her letter".


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## munkeeunit (Jan 15, 2006)

*Reply To Isambard*

It looks like we agree that social control of some form is being enforced/reinstated here, but disagree on the nature and form of that control. So I think I'll give a brief potted history of the 20th century, to underline what I'm saying.

"There have always been middle class users of those kinds of drugs."

In broad terms I would disagree, the extent to which the middle classes have engaged in drug use has oscilliated throughout the 20th century, in particular.

At the start of the 20th century the major form of passifying a highly rebellious working class was to dose them with cheap liquor laced with opium, to the extent that it formed part of the staple diet.

It was only by the 1930's, as a modern middle class began to emerge, alongside increased earnings and leisure time that recreational drug use amongst the middle classes really began to take off.

Indeed the 30's are often referred to as an aborted 60's, which was put a stop to by the advent of WWII, and the reinstatement of the 'last victorian decade' of the 1950's.

In this respect I agree that the establishment fears drug use triggering wider "social / cultural phenomena" outside their control, but that this is a secondary effect to the initial effect of doping the masses on a massive scale throughout much of modern industrial history.

The ability of the state to absorb cultural phenomena is well demonstrated. The heady, idealistic days of the Hacienda quickly gave way to the mass colonial consumerism of Ibiza. The philosophy of free festivals has been smashed with the branding of Glastonbury, and the virtual prison camps of Branson's V festivals.

These "phenomena" more often than not, are rapidly co-opted by the establishment only to form the next wave of consumerism, while the true underbelly of society, and all the resentment and potential for change contained within it, continues to fester under a dead weight of privately state-sanctioned drug abuse, generally not intended to extend to the middle classes.


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## Isambard (Jan 15, 2006)

Thanks for your reply Munkeeunit.


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## Zaskar (Jan 19, 2006)

Munkee, you really should smoke less weed, the wobbly thinking really is starting to show.


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## Isambard (Jan 20, 2006)

Over on the "Tesco" thread Teejay posted up a link from NCIS (?) that specificly mentioned Bristol being used as a major transit point in the movement of illegal drugs. I wonder who they are going to pick up at the bus station on TM mind.


<edit a bit out cos DJBS is the daddy.   >


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## strung out (Apr 8, 2006)

I've never been sniffed by a sniffer dog


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