uziq
Member
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first off, i already linked another study with a completely different methodology, which took a toxicological view on the matter rather than an epidemiological one as in Nutt and other groups who repeat his line of research. you didn't engage with that at all, so sure. it rather inconveniently finds that, no surprises, alcohol is very toxic, and states that in government guidance and public policy, the risk of alcohol is systematically undervalued whilst other illicit drugs are overvalued.

i was switching between 2 versions of the australian 'low-risk' website, one from 2016 and one from 2017, hence the discrepancy in the numbers. the one with the infographic image detailing what a 'standard drink' is has different numbers to the latter.

both of those links are technically out-of-date, anyway, at least in terms of the UK, where newly publicised guidance in 2018 says it is better to drink no alcohol at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 … ajor-study
Even the occasional drink is harmful to health, according to the largest and most detailed research carried out on the effects of alcohol, which suggests governments should think of advising people to abstain completely.

The uncompromising message comes from the authors of the Global Burden of Diseases study, a rolling project based at the University of Washington, in Seattle, which produces the most comprehensive data on the causes of illness and death in the world.

Alcohol, says their report published in the Lancet medical journal, led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016. It was the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability in the 15 to 49 age group, accounting for 20% of deaths.

[...]
Moderate drinking has been condoned for years on the assumption that there are some health benefits. A glass of red wine a day has long been said to be good for the heart. But although the researchers did find low levels of drinking offered some protection from heart disease, and possibly from diabetes and stroke, the benefits were far outweighed by alcohol’s harmful effects, they said.
[...]

Dr Robyn Burton, of King’s College London, said in a commentary in the Lancet that the conclusions of the study were clear and unambiguous. “Alcohol is a colossal global health issue and small reductions in health-related harms at low levels of alcohol intake are outweighed by the increased risk of other health-related harms, including cancer,” she wrote.

“There is strong support here for the guideline published by the Chief Medical Officer of the UK who found that there is ‘no safe level of alcohol consumption’.”
another lancet article, another big study group, another method -- no david nutt.

but i look forward to you rebutting yet another paper by yet another research group published yet again in the world's top journal of medical letters. you should really switch industries, you've got this drug harm thing down pat!

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 21:52:29)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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OK, good luck convincing the world not to drink at all. There's no safe level of breathing, or taking a bath, so what?

But David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, said the data showed only a very low level of harm in moderate drinkers and suggested UK guidelines were very low risk.

“Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention,” he said. “There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving. Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”
You should probably kill yourself, since being alive carries a risk of death.

Still waiting for some non-Nutt evidence that alcohol is provably worse than crack cocaine.

Lets use his methodology to prove that family cars are more dangerous than sports cars:

Lets say in an average year 1.2 per 1000 family cars are involved in crashes, compared with 1.9 per 1000 sports cars.
But if you factor out the 75% of family cars which aren't crashed because they are driven carefully and within the law, and which therefore don't count, that makes for 1.2 per 250 family cars against 1.9 per 1000 for sports cars.

ZOMG 4.8 per 1000 family cars crash vs 1.9 per 1000 sports cars! So family cars are 2.5 times more dangerous than sports cars! We must ban family cars and get people into sports cars - statistics prove it.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-02 22:03:03)

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uziq
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well now you're sounding just like me when i talk about doing, you know, certain illicit drugs. more chance of dying riding a horse, etc.

i am perfectly comfortable with that line of argument and justification. i'm not teetotal myself, after all. knowing the risk/harm doesn't mean one abstains entirely. it just means i see no justification for locking someone up for 5 years for their decisions, whilst someone else can drink themselves into cirrhosis, or cancer, or get behind the wheel and kill someone else, seemingly with no restrictions on their choices.

incredible how you'll cherry-pick the arguments to suit your own prejudices and protect your own habits.

i also don't think anyone has ever said alcohol is worse than crack cocaine. you always do this silly hissy trick. as soon as someone points out that alcohol is keeping some very bad company in terms of harm/toxicity and risk, you start spluttering about people injecting heroin. everyone knows that crack cocaine and heroin are life-ruining substances. the fact is that there's about 15 substances that will get you serious jail time that fall far below alcohol in terms of harm to self and society.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 22:13:58)

Dilbert_X
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Meanwhile, I have made the momentous decision to switch my beer supply from bottles to cans.
They should be more environmentally friendly, lighter and more efficient to recycle etc. than glass.

And having conducted a double-blind test (I shut both my eyes at the same time) the beer quality is indistinguishable - when drinking from a glass.
(Not being poor I don't drink from a can or bottle)
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uziq
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drinking alone must be a blast.
Dilbert_X
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uziq wrote:

i also don't think anyone has ever said alcohol is worse than crack cocaine.

uziq wrote:

https://journals.sagepub.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/sage/journals/content/jopa/2019/jopa_33_7/0269881119841569/20190621/images/large/10.1177_0269881119841569-fig2.jpeg
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Dilbert_X
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uziq wrote:

drinking alone must be a blast.
It must be.
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uziq
Member
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Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

i also don't think anyone has ever said alcohol is worse than crack cocaine.

uziq wrote:

that's an australian drugs harm ranking, which i cited for your benefit, based on australia's stats and supplemented with 'prevalence of use' data pertinent to australia. do keep up. i thought you were an academic mastermind cutting down published research at one stroke? that's not a 'global objective drugs ranking'.

crystal meth is not that much of a global health issue. evidently bogans are losing their teeth to chemicals manufactured in SE asia rather than taking hugely expensive cocaine imported from south america. it's almost like you don't understand very simple drug trends.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 22:25:14)

Dilbert_X
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Crystal meth is not much of a global health issue? Maybe not in Cheltenham, it is in other places.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTH9dEl2ItptLsAF_NlGxq9DJ5kIPms2m6iekK29L5wGABVP_CI

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSBUVLYVTcB8uPq7pnI6eK5AhAM9UH7XYTu5kcaukB_0OMW_8zU

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSCMYkT31cNaqY9jgIKL9eGVQuj6EF3iQ39uusqBCucrCc9wYGk

We should get people off cider and onto meth.

uziq wrote:

crystal meth is not that much of a global health issue. evidently bogans are losing their teeth to chemicals manufactured in SE asia rather than taking hugely expensive cocaine imported from south america. it's almost like you don't understand very simple drug trends.
Oh well if they're poor they don't matter.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-02 22:37:09)

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uziq
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my point being that its 'harm' in the 'australian harm ranking' is obviously inflated by its high prevalence of use in australia. not that australia is the only place in the world that takes crystal meth. everyone knows about rust-belt states falling to crystal meth. breaking bad was a decade ago, dilbert. if anything, the opiate crisis has superseded it as a public health issue.

Oh well if they're poor they don't matter.
my point was australia's stats are inflated towards crystal meth because of its availability in the region and cost, not that 'poor people don't matter'. it's very expensive to get cocaine to australia. you need coca leaves, which only grow in a specific region. meanwhile you can cook up meth in the back of a VW in the outback. point ... missing it ...

no crystal meth in cheltenham, that's true. barely any in europe, in fact, outside of the czech republic/poland i believe (that's amphetamines and speed generally). hence me saying it's not a 'global health issue' and isn't ranked quite as high as alcohol in the wider studies.

and again, i never said that alcohol was worse than crack, or crystal meth, or heroin. i've never once argued that any of these drugs should be legalised? it's almost like you're not listening. well done at being able to post alarming pictures. link another zombie video! that'll really bury the case for magic mushrooms.

people in cheltenham don't really drink cider, by the way. wrong stereotype. bristol, where i live, would be more like it.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 22:43:39)

Dilbert_X
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So what are you arguing?

The data you presented suggests alcohol is worse than crack, or crystal meth, or heroin, now you're saying its not but it is worse than some other drugs on the same chart, drugs which you do like.

You need to get your information together in some coherent way before you start making arguments.
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uziq
Member
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what i've said is that alcohol is a harmful drug and is far worse than many other banned substances. you said it wasn't. i linked about 4 different studies, toxicological, epidemiological, sociological, which stated exactly what i said.

i said that certain drugs are relatively harmless, certainly not as deleterious to your health as alcohol, not as toxic, and not as bad for their effects on society and relationships. among them MDMA, mushrooms/LSD, drugs with next to no toxicity, in the case of the latter two no neurotoxicity whatsoever (alcohol is directly neurotoxic), drugs which are non-addictive and which are in fact being approved now for medicine. weed is also another obvious example of a drug that, in moderate amounts, is a lot less bad for you than habitual alcohol consumption.

i said that illicit drugs are not illegal because they're more harmful. you said they are. they patently aren't. the laws aren't based on rankings of 'harm' at all. the UN's initial guidelines outlined the logic: that drugs with no medical benefits and only recreational uses should be considered most illegal. this is now being relaxed as the thin edge of the wedge, i.e. medical applications of MDMA/LSD/mushrooms, is getting to work (mushrooms were legal until the 2000s in any case).

reforming the classification system won't result in everyone having a drugs bonanza. it'll just alleviate a senseless load of human suffering, costly incarceration, and criminalisation of people pursuing their own low-risk, low-harm consumption. your statements that all illicit substances should continue to be banned, and banned at the highest classification, is too ridiculous to even bother with in any substantive way.

your endless wrongheaded reply seems to be, 'it's illegal because it's harmful'. which has been shown, by various methodologies and rubrics, absolutely not true. they're illegal because they're illegal, and governments have't been inclined to change it and lose portions of their electoral vote; the US's pre-eminence in leading a conservative 'war on drugs' has seen many, though not all, countries toe the line. alcohol is more harmful than a number of drugs, or, to put it another way, is at least as harmful as certain other drugs, which makes a mockery of your whole 'logic'.

if you want to make some moral argument about 'society going to the dogs' because of what people choose to do in their spare time, in the privacy of their own home, then at least be open about it and admit that you're waging a culture war, not a medical one. drugs are not classified into legal brackets based on their putative harm. the system needs a reshuffle and people should stop duping themselves with this logic that, because alcohol (like tobacco) are legal, they are 'OK', and everything else, because they are illegal, are scary and life-ruining. it is illiterate.

the discussion we've got onto about taking acknowledged risks, and admitting that things which give us pleasure often come at some cost (pace the cambridge prof you quoted), seems to me to be getting at some sense, finally. that's essentially been my approach to drug-taking, period, people convincing themselves that getting drunk and going to the pub twice a week is 'OK' because it's legal and the social norm would do better to be more aware of this thinking. you're harming yourself, as the understanding used to go with anything more than 4.5 pints a week (now it's less, but scales with intake in any case), in the short term as well as the long, harming yourself more in fact than with the use of a host of other drugs, and you should stop deluding yourself about this fact. if that's a risk that you weigh up and consider worth the pleasure, then go for it. but drop the pious anti-drugs bullshit.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-02 23:14:55)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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Thats great and all, but you've contradicted the studies you've cited which suggest alcohol is most harmful of all, more so than crystal meth, heroin, opioids etc. You can't cite a study then say its wrong because it doesn't fit with your view, but try to use the bits which do fit with your view.

Please cite a study which puts alcohol at exactly the level of harm which fits with your thinking.
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uziq
Member
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i didn't contradict the studies at all. one is based and weighted on australia, hence a different result. stop being so fucking obtuse.

all of the studies fit my assertion that alcohol is more harmful than most illegal drugs, invalidating your claims that all is right in the world, alcohol is legal because it's mostly harmless, other drugs are illegal because they're 'excessively harmful', too bad, etc.  every single one of them has alcohol in the top categories of risk. you being pedantic over whether it's more or less harmful than crack or crystal meth is not a rebuttal. i've never argued that crack, heroin or crystal meth should be legalised.

no surprises that every study with a different method and a different sample will produce slightly different results. wowzers! but how funny that all the results broadly agree and establish a pattern: a pattern with alcohol consistently in the top-rank of the most harmful drugs. my point being that many recreational drugs are banned for reasons that have nothing to do with their harm. you have said, time and again, that 'they're illegal because they're excessively harmful'. this is wrong. my own personal preferences, or the fact that some drugs out of the dozen or so most common are excessively harmful, and should remain banned, is not a rebuttal

the basis of your counter-argument against these studies, which all point in one direction, seems to be that you link videos of afghans taking heroin in the street, or zombie homeless, or crystal meth addicts with pustulating faces and 'brain effects', as if there isn't a shadow population across every suburb and city of alcoholics and people utterly wracked by alcohol. you show brain scans - wow! science! - of the effects of MDMA and crystal meth on the brain, when you know damn well that a google images search will return the same alarming images for alcohol. it's just dishonest in the extreme.

https://thelastchardonnay.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/image-33.jpg?w=1125&h=963
https://faarall.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/brain.png
https://images.agoramedia.com/everydayhealth/gcms/Cirrhosis-of-the-Liver-722x406.jpg
https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/app/uploads/2019/05/Homeless-Alcoholism-425x283.jpeg

omFG!!!!!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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All the studies cited put alcohol as being worst, you're saying its not, you can't say the studies are wrong but they're also right.

And they're all basically the one study, produced by someone with a vested interest who grossly manipulates data to suit his argument.

"Black is white, except it isn't, its a shade of grey, and its exactly the shade I decide it is - based on the study which says black is white - there I proved it"

Sorry, not convinced.
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uziq
Member
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it's worst when combining individual & societal harms, yes, with various methods to account for weighting of drug prevalence/availability. obviously the methods are going to be probabilistic and so making absolute statements is pointless. i'm not interested in saying 'alcohol is the worst drug ever' because it's hard enough to get it into your thick skull that alcohol is even properly harmful, even though it's legal, as compared to many other drugs which are outlawed.

2 of the studies had nothing to do with david nutt. completely different methodologies and studies. that they cite him, among any number of other studies in the field,  is evidence only of completely routine academic good practice. sorry, try again.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-03 00:08:34)

Dilbert_X
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Which two studies?

I'm still really doubtful that alcohol is worse, on an average person by person basis than, say heroin.
When you know that the 75% of alcohol users who were predicted to suffer and cause no to negligible harm were excluded from the figures it does support my point that your argument is based on rubbish.

Divide the figures for alcohol by four and suddenly all your arguments are turned on their head.
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uziq
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but people aren't saying that alcohol is worse, on an average person by person basis, than heroin. literally no one has ever said that. not even the studies i have linked which give alcohol a high harm/risk evaluation. the meaning of their results isn't a recommendation to take up heroin. drinking a beer every day with a meal is undoubtedly better for you than shooting up heroin every single day. who is claiming otherwise? the whole idea of 'risk' and 'harm' is abstract, and not just about the direct toxicology of a substance, but also its environment of consumption, etc etc, which need to be taken into account. obviously.

for the umpteenth time, i've never pointed out alcohol's flaws so that i can make a claim that heroin is an amazing drug. it is a terrible drug. just alcohol is also officially Very Bad. there are lots of drugs which are not as bad as heroin or alcohol. is this really so fucking complicated?

'75% of people' weren't excluded in that study at all, you just pulled that figure out of your arse, and besides it was an australia-specific study that took some (arguably outdated) australian government guidelines on 'low-risk' consumption as a noise filter. where are you getting it from that 75% of people's alcohol consumption is under 4.5 pints a week? and besides, plenty of governments and health ministers now advise that any amount is harmful, so even that 'low-risk' claim is spurious and up for debate.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-03 03:56:00)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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'75% of people' weren't excluded in that study at all, you just pulled that figure out of your arse, and besides it was an australia-specific study that took some (arguably outdated) australian government guidelines on 'low-risk' consumption as a noise filter. where are you getting it from that 75% of people's alcohol consumption is under 4.5 pints a week? and besides, plenty of governments and health ministers now advise that any amount is harmful, so even that 'low-risk' claim is spurious and up for debate.

Dilbert_X wrote:

https://i.imgur.com/Lix2iTV.png

So they factored out all the harmless alcohol consumption and only included the harmful alcohol consumption

Dilbert_X wrote:

A major study by the Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), which surveyed 1820 Australians, found that most of us are “moderate drinkers” — that is, we have nine or fewer standard drinks per week.

While the percentage of drinkers has increased from 77 to 82 per cent since last year, more than three-quarters do so no more than two days a week."
The study factored out people who drink below the supposed harmful level.

Half of people drink 9 units per week, well below the safe level of 14

Three quarters of people "do so no more than two days a week" ie likely drink below the harmful level of 14.

Do try to keep up.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-03 04:52:41)

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Dilbert_X
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Oh hey, 87% of Australians consume 14 drinks or fewer in an average week, not 75%. Page 18.
http://fare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/F … -FINAL.pdf

If you deliberately exclude 87% of your data points (the awkward ones which don't support your argument) then your whole report is rendered rubbish.

Seems like the whole report was pulled out of someone's arse.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-03 04:53:09)

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uziq
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how is it rendered rubbish when there is no equivalent for the other illicit drugs? you could just as easily say, 'well, someone who takes cocaine once a month, they're fine, they're below the [x] government's own arbitrarily imposed low-risk' ...
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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Thats the point dur, the 87% of 'safe' drinkers have been factored out, the 'safe' cocaine users haven't.

To compare like with like we need to divide the alcohol figures by 7.69.
Individual Harm - 36/7.69 -> 4.7
Social Harm - 41/7.69 -> 5.3
Total - 77/7.69 -> 10.0

Using the chart you keep pulling out of your arse that puts alcohol between Ketamine and PIEDs.

uziq wrote:

https://journals.sagepub.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/sage/journals/content/jopa/2019/jopa_33_7/0269881119841569/20190621/images/large/10.1177_0269881119841569-fig2.jpeg
Since alcohol use is apparently so terrible thats really not an argument for legalising drugs with comparable levels of harm now is it?
Cocaine is now 2.5 times more harmful than alcohol, lets keep that in Class A eh?

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-03 05:03:29)

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uziq
Member
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i've never actually argued that cocaine should be reclassified. like alcohol, when i do take it, i take it knowing it's bad for me and comes with risk.

we're a very long way away from you saying 'alcohol is fine and all drugs which are illegal are so because they excessively harmful', no? it's fug hilarious that now you're contorting your argument to say, 'well if alcohol is so bad, we shouldn't put anything else in its class!' a page ago you were insisting they were all 'excessively harmful' and any claims about legal drugs like alcohol were hysterical.

15-25% of people consuming a drug taking it to a 'harmful' level, even going on australia's stats and recommendations alone and relying on your reasoning, is still a massive public health issue. and if you take another nation's recommendation, which even so much as lowers the recommended intake by 2-3 units, that statistic inflates very rapidly. i'm sure you've never consumed more than 4 pints in any given week and thus done harm to yourself, dilbert. remember all those scary scan pictures of 'your brain on drugs'! i'm sure your brain has never been adversely affected by quantities of neurotoxic alcohol ... bla bla bla

to whit, the drugs i have very specifically and insistently mentioned, page after page, like MDMA, LSD and mushrooms, are still 'safer' than alcohol even by your own entirely spurious methodology and reasoning, which seems to contradict every other researcher and professional in the field. even given your slapdash approach to the modelling, they're STILL safer. how are you going to sit there and say that every illegal drug belongs in the 'highest possible' classification because they are so inherently bad? christ sake. stubborn as a mule.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-03 11:20:16)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
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SuperJail Warden wrote:

Interesting that you guys are arguing about drugs. My New Year's resolution is to stop smoking marijuana so I can become a police officer this year.
So that was a fucking lie. The first part at least.

I don't get my civil service results until March so I guess I can finish off the marijuana I have.

It really is a struggle to not smoke marijuana on my down time. Marijuana doesn't give you a hangover like alcohol or a crash/catatonia like harder drugs. You can also generally manage to do normal people stuff while high. And there isn't any normal people stuff that can't be improved with a little marijuana.

I have a nice full day at work and then sit down on my couch at home with my buzz-cut, shaved face, belt, and no pajama pants and think "what now?"
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unnamednewbie13
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I'd say it would be a dark day for the force if you managed to wriggle your way in, but there are so many on it who are just like you. Getting their rocks off on exerting unnecessary power and occasionally killing dogs.

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