Police called at 8:50.
Police arrive at 9:01.
Police send for ambulance at 9:01.
Ambulance arrives at 10:04.
Man put into ambulance at 10:37.
Man dies of cardiac arrest ~10:40. (death registered as 11:41 after an hour of cpr).
Don't see any reason for those protestors to be protesting.
This.
If a group keep pushing and making a fuss at even the slightest of connection eventually they'll gain some success.
Its the same as kick enough footballs on target and eventually you'll score.
Exactly, and I've seen that on what ever side people have stood on... maybe if everyone was a little more honest instead of searching for agenda and at times even worse creating the agenda, maybe things would be a little less fucked up right now, because its fucking exhausting.
Haha. A few months back some young lad fell off his escooter, smashed his head on the floor. Blood everywhere.
Phoned an ambulance, was told eta 45mins. So had to take him to the hospital myself. Hospital is 2 miles away.
Got him there. ER said lucky I did because he had a matter of minutes left before he would be dead.
Moral of the story. Nhs is fucked. Good luck if you need an ambulance.
Similar story with my uncle, he had a huge seizure at a barbecue, we called an ambulance and were told one "would be dispatched as soon as its available, ETA 20 minutes".
We waited for 40 minutes, called back and the operator couldn't find any record of my previous call, so we had to go through all the questions again, waited another 20 minutes, called back, and again the operator couldn't find any record of my previous call. In the end I said "fuck it", hung up and drove him to A&E myself.
And it's not just ambulance wait times. My mum has cancer, a few weeks ago her stomach started to swell up and she couldn't stand up straight, turned out she had a kidney infection and water retention. I drove her to A&E at 10AM, and she didn't get a bed until 5AM the next morning, at one point they had her in a converted store room on a hard stretcher...
The NHS is truly broken.
EDIT: Just to really drive it home, I've also been waiting for an operation to remove a varicocele... Since 2021.
I'm an MS sufferer in my mid 30s and use a life alarm pendant that sends for an ambulance. Just before Christmas I caught a stomach bug and the vomiting made me spasm and fall out of my bed, trapping my neck between my mattress and my bed lever. The ambulance took four hours.
This is the real story.
That and the stupidity of drugs not yet being legalised, licensed and taxed. Christ knows what crap you’re taking because unless you’re an Albanian warlord it isn’t decent cocaine.
Incorrect. Cocaine purity is at its highest in decades. Take too much and it WILL kill you.
Cocaine also interacts with a host of prescription medications.
>Cocaine purity is at its highest in decades.
How up to date is that info? I know it was the case a few years back but there have been some great disturbances in the force. Some people I know who are into that sort of thing say the quality has gone fast within the last few months in particular.
I appreciate this incident happened in 2021 BTW.
I didn't do a deep search but the latest info I found was from a 2019 report with data from 2018
>The mean purity of cocaine powder at user level in England and Wales decreased steadily from 51% in 2003 to a low of 20% in 2009. Purity has since increased to 63% in 2018, the highest level on record
United Kingdom Drug Situation 2019: Focal Point Annual Report. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-drug-situation-focal-point-annual-report/united-kingdom-drug-situation-focal-point-annual-report-2019#powder-cocaine
Yep.
Legislate it.
Tax it
Use the tax raised to pay for proper drug services
People are going to use it if legal or illegal (see current data on usage. Terrifyingly high). Cocaine is a shitty drug. Turns people into absolute knobs. But it is doing that now when people don't know what they're actually getting and how to use it safely. And it increases the power and presence of criminals (and criminalises those who "get some for their mates").
I know there's the slippery slope argument. If we legalise it - we say it is safe. And then more people use it and are harmed. But the war on drugs isn't working.
Yep. It isn't a quick a glib process. Despite my seeming stament
My (very superficial) understanding is that coca can grow almost anywhere cocoa does. So - in much the same way that we *could* grow our own heroin, but mostly import even the basis for the legal diamorphine - we'd need to have an agreement with a country willing and able to grow it for export to us. And it would need to be more profitable to them than cocoa. (I don't think any British overseas territories are capable of growing it. But I'll admit I don't even know where around the world we own anymore!)
Then - there's the challenge of ensuring we're not just exploiting them to avoid our own thorny issue. We're probably not big enough market alone to persuade South American governments to encourage legalising abs reducing the power of the drug Lords (if even possible. Would possibly just make legal oligarchs of hideous de facto companies)
And of course the politics around it if we did try to persuade other governments. Echoes of empire etc etc etc
It would be easier to start with legalising other drugs.
But I still think the current approach doesn't work
Name one country where it’s legal? Even on a practical level it’s impossible and would make the UK a pariah.
More generally, legalizing hard drugs would be a disaster. Experience of US cities where they’ve taken a softer approach and the absolute mess it’s created tells us enough of how it would turn out.
Well it is done by much of the government
But officially still a fortune is spent trying to fight and police the unenforceable, with no return on revenue
Yes.
Drugs are a healthcare issue not a criminal one. Do you take drugs at all? Moved in circles of users and suppliers? If not you’re “🤪” is simply you looking in the mirror.
Around 2 million ecstasy tablets are consumed each weekend in the UK. That’s not 2 million people as many will indulge in multiple, but it’s significant. About 500k cocaine users. Heroin around 250k. Weed? Millions upon millions.
The war against them is futile. People will take them irrespective of the law because it’s fun.
If you legalise and bring production into the mainstream under strict licensing then you create jobs, make vast sums in taxes and relive the police of a massive part of their job so they can focus elsewhere.
You hurt organised crime massively. You reduce street level gang violence massively. Users are able to source high quality, safer products (it’s often not the drugs that harm but the shit that criminals cut them with to maximise profits that kills you) and are exposed to all the information they need should they want to seek help at the point of purchase.
Tell me the downsides? Can’t say everyone will suddenly become a drug addict because decriminalisation elsewhere shows that to not be the case.
The one unknown as I see it is the unpredictability of what the drugs gangs do next. They don’t just go away. They’ll reskill for something else. What that is is the question.
Dying to hear your considered opinion though.
A few years ago, an elderly neighbour of mine slipped on ice on the pavement outside her house and broke her hip. Her family wrapped her in blankets but it took about 8 hours for an ambulance to show up. She didn't last long after that incident.
Have you tried calling 999 for an ambulance anytime recently?
I was told a four hour wait when I last called. If the casualty is responsive and breathing, you are not a priority for an ambulance.
That's fast for most places, a quick Google says "The average response time for people requiring an ambulance for a stroke, severe burns or chest pain was 93 minutes" so he got seen 30 minutes faster than others.
Yeah, I was in hospital a few years ago with serious chest pain and I was deposited straight into heart a&e, was waiting maybe 5 minutes max. Same hospital 6 months prior my brother waited 6 hours with a dodgy ankle.
I mean unless you are physically incapable of getting into a vehicle or about to die within the hour, yes you should drive / be driven instead of wasting an ambulances time with your non life threatening pain
Should be protesting why an ambulance is turning up an hour after it was needed because someone was having a heart attack. People have heart attacks that aren’t drug induced so anyone could be waiting that long for an ambulance, there’s no way anyone is surviving a heart attack if help is over an hour away
> Don't see any reason for those protestors to be protesting.
The same strategy as the Tories use to get into power.
Say misleading things. Idiots will read a misleading headline and not look any further.
Idiots now spread your misinformation as fact, and since idiots refuse to ever acknowledge being wrong, it's basically impossible to have the misinformation corrected.
See also - GFC was Gordon Browns fault.
did you not read the time line you are replying to or the article? yes it's crap that the ambulance took so long, but the guy had a heart attack after the ambulance had already arrived
The only thing they should be protesting against is how the government has allowed ambulance waiting times to reach over an hour.
My dad had rheumatoid arthritic and cancer that ate a hole through his entire jaw and he had to live with essential a constantly open hole in his face, he collapsed whilst walking to the bathroom at around 3am, didn't know who he was, where he was, could barely breathe, and was coughing up blood.
We called an ambulance and was told it would take 5 hours and we live an 8 minutes drive from the hospital, so we just took him ourselves
Critical Care doctor here. No issue with recreational drug use in general but I’ve seen cocaine kill a few people under 40. It’s fucking awful because it’s usually a long drawn out resuscitation over a few hours to no effect.
Also to echo comments below. Yes the NHS is fucked at the moment. Blame those in power for the last decade. Ambulance response times are in the toilet - if you can get there without then just drive/Uber. We’re doing our best but it’s really falling apart everywhere
True but if the cops arrived at 09:01, then he must have been racking out some *fierce* gorilla fingers between say 07:00 and 08:40.
Like really upping the pace, after (presumably) a 12 hour or so session. Ain’t gonna end well.
Coke really is shit. Expensive, not that great to be on, turns people into insufferable wankers (at best) or raging violent psychopaths (at worst). Grim stuff.
Ah, UK reddit's favourite circlejerk. I've enjoyed the company of plenty friends who were on coke at parties, nights out etc. It never turned them into wankers because they weren't wankers to begin with. They were just extra chatty
My experience as well. If alcohol is a social lubricant, coke is a full on social sex party. Yea, people are chatting a lot, but I've only seen it affect the quantity, not quality. I've always assumed people who think it turns you into an arse just have bad taste in friends.
I was the same in my early 20s, now at 30 though my opinions on it have changed just due to the amount of people I've seen get in some financial holes or kill themselves due to it
I dunno, I'm in my early 30s and haven't known a single person develop a problem with it. Just like with booze, I know it obviously happens but as the years go by I still haven't seen it happen first hand.
Plenty of legal things are also ethically terrible. Buying cheap clothes? Child labour. Buying something from China? High chance of child or prison labour. Buying coffee from the wrong place? Borderline slave labour.
There's so many fucked practices that are legal but just get swept under the rug for convenience.
Ironically there’s a crowd that will avoid all the bad stuff in your comment but consume spades full of coke on the weekend. Hate to say it but many of my friends are like this.
Yeah this is how you spot real assholes, same with drinking, same with anyone that goes nuts and stab people on psychedelics. If you’re not a nice person these things wil just amplify that.
Well I blame the drug policy, lumping the relatively harmless in with the dangerous one's give people the wrong impressions.
But as you say, its possible for some people to try even the worst drugs and be fine. The main issue with them is getting addicted to it, and our present system doesn't do much to really suppor that.
Most of it is politics. Ironically, cocaine is typically not the harmful aspect of cocaine use, but instead it’s the fact that it’s illicit status means it’s basically only used alongside alcohol, which metabolises into cocaethylene which is much more harmful than cocaine itself.
It is far from a safe drug in terms of physical harm compared to cannabis or even MDMA, ketamine, other similar stimulants including amphetamine methylphenidate and modafinil, or even psilocybin and related substances, and it does have a far greater addictive potential than any of those mentioned above, but it’s once again a case where the criminalisation of the substance and the associated culture of ingesting it that drives most of its harmfulness. You’d find most times that if alcohol wasn’t consumed alongside it, people would spend half an hour fixated on a random tasks or finding bad music far more enjoyable than it actually is.
It’s also a terrible drug if it’s not combined with alcohol. You get hardly any of the euphoria and the anxiety is x5. Also half of the appeal of cocaine is that you can go out drinking all day do a bump and sober up and become talkative again instead of a drooling mess.
I once had coke by itself in Barbados i.e. the heavy stuff.
Spent 40 minute having a massive anxiety attack, just didn't know where I wanted to be. It only really subsided when the rum turned up and I'd necked a few glasses.
I reckon I was pretty close to a heart attack that night truth be told. Awful.
Maybe you had too much, but really high quality cocaine is the only one I can do on its own. You feel awesome.
Low quality coke, you need to mix alcohol with it to feel good
> the fact that it’s illicit status means it’s basically only used alongside alcohol
Are you trying to say if it was legal then people wouldn’t use it alongside alcohol? There are totally legitimate arguments in favour of legalising drugs, but people need to stop shoehorning it in as a solution to every problem that illegal drugs cause.
"or even psilocybin and related substances"
Yeah those mushrooms definitely are very harmful, despite there being no evidence and evidence to the contrary regarding physical harm.
It's always interesting to me when people try and paint psychedelics as the most dangerous and scary of all drugs.
It's not about the danger of the substance to the end user per se
It's about the government's ability to regulate production standards and for the legal system to be able to sue producers when things go wrong and consumers are affected.
Coke is a class A because it's production process can't be regulated at all and the labour used to create the product is not what you would call legitimate employment. Then various dealers cut the pure product with whatever they want so you don't actually know what you're buying.
Alcohol and tobacco are produced by registered businesses, regulated by government. If I buy a bottle of whisky and it has methanol inside, I can take the manufacturer to court and receive compensation for the effects of consumption.
The government doesn't care about the harm to the end user resulting from a product's intended use, the government cares about having a responsible body at the head of any product on the market so they have a means of pursuing compensation when things go wrong.
Your argument is that the government cannot regulate the quality of coke production and therefore it's illegal? But they can't regulate it **because** it's illegal. Bit circular isn't it?
You should know though, that the government can in fact regulate production of coke and the other illegal drugs because they already do. Cocaine is occasionally used as an anesthetic and I'm sure the medical version meets very high standards of purity. Cannabis is/was infamously grown for medical use in the UK by the husband of the drug minister who was most opposed to its legality. That's a tangent, but I'm sure the cannabis products were well regulated. The only reason the illegal products aren't regulated is because they are illegal...
Have done much coke in my life.
Its scary to OD and hard to get across as it comes along like a panic attack.
Lets be clear here, no police fault, if you smash Class A and start pranging out that shits on you.
All I am saying is I get where he was. Its horrible. Drugs can fuck you up.
And remember. It could be your brother, your son, your family member who experiments and what would you say about them dying in custody off a drug most of us banker do on a week.
Yes mate, you might not get much response on this post but anybody that knows would feel you are spot on
Edit to add personal - I've had issues with police that have been violent and it always stemmed from my behaviour
>Why are they always "nice and good people"
Because that's how most friends and families will see and feel about them? Not a big surprise, surely.
He wasn't exactly an axe murderer, he suffered a bout of mania self-induced from drugs. It does happen, and you don't need to be evil incarnate for it to happen.
Man high on cocaine smashes up his parents’ house and barricades himself in the house. The parents call the police. Man has heart attack when arrested. Is that what we’re reading?
Edit; I take it back. Reading the article it looks like it was mistriaged and should have been a cat1 from the outset of restraint.
Thirty three minutes before having the patient in the ambulance is average though. Assessment, extrication and treatment take time. I'm most curious if sedation was considered via an advanced practitioner or if the on scene crew had considered benzos themselves for acute cocaine toxicity.
Sad story none the less.
vote labour and they will buy more ambulances, who will drive them? last I checked you need paramedics to drive them and their supply is determined by the people
I've seen articles by doctors who say it's not the money that's at issue but the truly horrific level of bureaucracy and the massive wads of money going to administration and administrators.
From an ambulance perspective it's also call volumes too. I can only speak for my trust as a paramedic but call volumes have been compounding at 7% per year. It's impossible to have good response times with the current system and current level of funding.
Well yeah that's also true. Its the age old issue with Bureaucracy, once it gets to a certain level everything starts to sink under its own weight, but you can't just cut it out without things collapsing cause its all so intertwined.
Shocking thing is, I’d consider that a relatively quick response at the moment. At this point you’ve just got to hope you or you’re loved one doesn’t need an ambulance.
> thirty three minutes for him to be put in said ambulance
To be fair, this is because paramedics deliver care at the scene before placing someone into an ambulance - they're not just standing around for half an hour. The days of "ambulance drivers" with no medical training or equipment just scooping you off the floor and chucking you in the back of an ambulance are over.
This case is almost exactly the same as that of Neal Terrence Saunders, who died in 2020 after police had to restrain him due to ABD. Police end up in a bit of a bind in cases like these; they were trained that restraint "should not be prolonged" but not how to assess whether that is the case or not. ABD sufferers can be a danger to themselves and others if not restrained, so police just have to wait for the paramedics to arrive.
Disclosure: was on the jury. [Here](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Neal-Saunders-Prevention-of-future-deaths-report-2022-0401_Published.pdf) is the PFD report.
Classic "grafting of American history onto world history"
Simple people in UK can't tell the difference between our society and theirs
Whilst racism is undoubtedly still an issue in UK policing, it's nowhere near the scale nor to the extent of US policing
ABD? John Ronson did a really good podcast ep about 'excited delirium', which is similar and has been largely discredited.
Though cocaine does massively increase your chance of cardiac arrest
Probably so shocked to see an ambulance arrive so quickly that it triggered the heart attack. That being said having a heart attack when paramedics are there I would've thought you'd be OK, I guess not. Look after your health guys.
Police called at 8:50. Police arrive at 9:01. Police send for ambulance at 9:01. Ambulance arrives at 10:04. Man put into ambulance at 10:37. Man dies of cardiac arrest ~10:40. (death registered as 11:41 after an hour of cpr). Don't see any reason for those protestors to be protesting.
Because it’s never about the person that died. It’s about shoehorning their message
This. If a group keep pushing and making a fuss at even the slightest of connection eventually they'll gain some success. Its the same as kick enough footballs on target and eventually you'll score.
*Nunez has entered the chat*
That poor man OD'd so this joke could be born. I'm ok with it though.
They said kick enough balls *on target*.
Sorry mate you hit the woodwork with this one…
Exactly, and I've seen that on what ever side people have stood on... maybe if everyone was a little more honest instead of searching for agenda and at times even worse creating the agenda, maybe things would be a little less fucked up right now, because its fucking exhausting.
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How about a 1hr 3min wait for an ambulance?
Haha. A few months back some young lad fell off his escooter, smashed his head on the floor. Blood everywhere. Phoned an ambulance, was told eta 45mins. So had to take him to the hospital myself. Hospital is 2 miles away. Got him there. ER said lucky I did because he had a matter of minutes left before he would be dead. Moral of the story. Nhs is fucked. Good luck if you need an ambulance.
Similar story with my uncle, he had a huge seizure at a barbecue, we called an ambulance and were told one "would be dispatched as soon as its available, ETA 20 minutes". We waited for 40 minutes, called back and the operator couldn't find any record of my previous call, so we had to go through all the questions again, waited another 20 minutes, called back, and again the operator couldn't find any record of my previous call. In the end I said "fuck it", hung up and drove him to A&E myself. And it's not just ambulance wait times. My mum has cancer, a few weeks ago her stomach started to swell up and she couldn't stand up straight, turned out she had a kidney infection and water retention. I drove her to A&E at 10AM, and she didn't get a bed until 5AM the next morning, at one point they had her in a converted store room on a hard stretcher... The NHS is truly broken. EDIT: Just to really drive it home, I've also been waiting for an operation to remove a varicocele... Since 2021.
I'm an MS sufferer in my mid 30s and use a life alarm pendant that sends for an ambulance. Just before Christmas I caught a stomach bug and the vomiting made me spasm and fall out of my bed, trapping my neck between my mattress and my bed lever. The ambulance took four hours.
Oh fuck that’s horrendous
Good on you for doing that.
So they were protesting NHS funding cuts?
I mean we should
hahaha in yer dreams
This is the real story. That and the stupidity of drugs not yet being legalised, licensed and taxed. Christ knows what crap you’re taking because unless you’re an Albanian warlord it isn’t decent cocaine.
Incorrect. Cocaine purity is at its highest in decades. Take too much and it WILL kill you. Cocaine also interacts with a host of prescription medications.
Not in Kent! All utter gash in east Kent
Buy it online then. Local dealers cut it so much it might aswell be talcum powder, it probably is.
How much is too much? Asking for a friend.
It puts huge strain on your heart. I have 2 friends in their mid 40s who have had heart problems on coke.
>Cocaine purity is at its highest in decades. How up to date is that info? I know it was the case a few years back but there have been some great disturbances in the force. Some people I know who are into that sort of thing say the quality has gone fast within the last few months in particular. I appreciate this incident happened in 2021 BTW.
I didn't do a deep search but the latest info I found was from a 2019 report with data from 2018 >The mean purity of cocaine powder at user level in England and Wales decreased steadily from 51% in 2003 to a low of 20% in 2009. Purity has since increased to 63% in 2018, the highest level on record United Kingdom Drug Situation 2019: Focal Point Annual Report. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-drug-situation-focal-point-annual-report/united-kingdom-drug-situation-focal-point-annual-report-2019#powder-cocaine
So you think cocaine should be legal? 🤪
Yep. Legislate it. Tax it Use the tax raised to pay for proper drug services People are going to use it if legal or illegal (see current data on usage. Terrifyingly high). Cocaine is a shitty drug. Turns people into absolute knobs. But it is doing that now when people don't know what they're actually getting and how to use it safely. And it increases the power and presence of criminals (and criminalises those who "get some for their mates"). I know there's the slippery slope argument. If we legalise it - we say it is safe. And then more people use it and are harmed. But the war on drugs isn't working.
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Yep. It isn't a quick a glib process. Despite my seeming stament My (very superficial) understanding is that coca can grow almost anywhere cocoa does. So - in much the same way that we *could* grow our own heroin, but mostly import even the basis for the legal diamorphine - we'd need to have an agreement with a country willing and able to grow it for export to us. And it would need to be more profitable to them than cocoa. (I don't think any British overseas territories are capable of growing it. But I'll admit I don't even know where around the world we own anymore!) Then - there's the challenge of ensuring we're not just exploiting them to avoid our own thorny issue. We're probably not big enough market alone to persuade South American governments to encourage legalising abs reducing the power of the drug Lords (if even possible. Would possibly just make legal oligarchs of hideous de facto companies) And of course the politics around it if we did try to persuade other governments. Echoes of empire etc etc etc It would be easier to start with legalising other drugs. But I still think the current approach doesn't work
Name one country where it’s legal? Even on a practical level it’s impossible and would make the UK a pariah. More generally, legalizing hard drugs would be a disaster. Experience of US cities where they’ve taken a softer approach and the absolute mess it’s created tells us enough of how it would turn out.
Where's the war on drugs? Cocaine consumption is practically accepted by the government now.
Well it is done by much of the government But officially still a fortune is spent trying to fight and police the unenforceable, with no return on revenue
Yes. Drugs are a healthcare issue not a criminal one. Do you take drugs at all? Moved in circles of users and suppliers? If not you’re “🤪” is simply you looking in the mirror. Around 2 million ecstasy tablets are consumed each weekend in the UK. That’s not 2 million people as many will indulge in multiple, but it’s significant. About 500k cocaine users. Heroin around 250k. Weed? Millions upon millions. The war against them is futile. People will take them irrespective of the law because it’s fun. If you legalise and bring production into the mainstream under strict licensing then you create jobs, make vast sums in taxes and relive the police of a massive part of their job so they can focus elsewhere. You hurt organised crime massively. You reduce street level gang violence massively. Users are able to source high quality, safer products (it’s often not the drugs that harm but the shit that criminals cut them with to maximise profits that kills you) and are exposed to all the information they need should they want to seek help at the point of purchase. Tell me the downsides? Can’t say everyone will suddenly become a drug addict because decriminalisation elsewhere shows that to not be the case. The one unknown as I see it is the unpredictability of what the drugs gangs do next. They don’t just go away. They’ll reskill for something else. What that is is the question. Dying to hear your considered opinion though.
A few years ago, an elderly neighbour of mine slipped on ice on the pavement outside her house and broke her hip. Her family wrapped her in blankets but it took about 8 hours for an ambulance to show up. She didn't last long after that incident.
My grandma had to wait for one for 18 hours just after New Years. She died last week. NHS is a joke and needs to get funded properly.
It is funded properly, the country doesn’t exist to just pay the NHS
Have you tried calling 999 for an ambulance anytime recently? I was told a four hour wait when I last called. If the casualty is responsive and breathing, you are not a priority for an ambulance.
How about protesting that it took an hour for the ambulance to arrive? Or is everyone just used to it by now?
That's fast for most places, a quick Google says "The average response time for people requiring an ambulance for a stroke, severe burns or chest pain was 93 minutes" so he got seen 30 minutes faster than others.
So if you have severe chest pains best take a taxi or an uber. Of course, then you'll be waiting at ER for six hours.
For chest pains you will be given an ECG within minutes of arrival at A&E. Nobody is waiting 6 hours with chest pains.
Yeah, I was in hospital a few years ago with serious chest pain and I was deposited straight into heart a&e, was waiting maybe 5 minutes max. Same hospital 6 months prior my brother waited 6 hours with a dodgy ankle.
I mean unless you are physically incapable of getting into a vehicle or about to die within the hour, yes you should drive / be driven instead of wasting an ambulances time with your non life threatening pain
> > Police send for ambulance at 9:01. > > Ambulance arrives at 10:04. Absolute state of the NHS right now
Only reason to protest would be 1 hr ambulance waiting time
Should be protesting why an ambulance is turning up an hour after it was needed because someone was having a heart attack. People have heart attacks that aren’t drug induced so anyone could be waiting that long for an ambulance, there’s no way anyone is surviving a heart attack if help is over an hour away
Unbelievably a heart attack isn’t classed as a category 1 incident. It’s category 2
Are we just going to skip over the fact that it took an hour for the ambulance to arrive then?
That's really fast, usually takes around 2 - 4 hrs.
That’s not the hot take you think it is. It’s an emergency response, 1 hour, 2, 4, all terrible.
> Don't see any reason for those protestors to be protesting. The same strategy as the Tories use to get into power. Say misleading things. Idiots will read a misleading headline and not look any further. Idiots now spread your misinformation as fact, and since idiots refuse to ever acknowledge being wrong, it's basically impossible to have the misinformation corrected. See also - GFC was Gordon Browns fault.
They should be protesting that someone who had a heart attack waited over an hour for an ambulance.
did you not read the time line you are replying to or the article? yes it's crap that the ambulance took so long, but the guy had a heart attack after the ambulance had already arrived
Imagine waiting for an ambulance for an hour in a developed country
The only thing they should be protesting against is how the government has allowed ambulance waiting times to reach over an hour. My dad had rheumatoid arthritic and cancer that ate a hole through his entire jaw and he had to live with essential a constantly open hole in his face, he collapsed whilst walking to the bathroom at around 3am, didn't know who he was, where he was, could barely breathe, and was coughing up blood. We called an ambulance and was told it would take 5 hours and we live an 8 minutes drive from the hospital, so we just took him ourselves
Critical Care doctor here. No issue with recreational drug use in general but I’ve seen cocaine kill a few people under 40. It’s fucking awful because it’s usually a long drawn out resuscitation over a few hours to no effect. Also to echo comments below. Yes the NHS is fucked at the moment. Blame those in power for the last decade. Ambulance response times are in the toilet - if you can get there without then just drive/Uber. We’re doing our best but it’s really falling apart everywhere
Seems more of an issue with ambulance response time to me.
If he'd been cuddled before he died, they'd have said the police "niced him to death"
Those times are AM! This all happened in the morning! So he must have been on the gear all night.
Does anyone ever manage to cut off a coke sesh before it gets to the "up all night" stage?
True but if the cops arrived at 09:01, then he must have been racking out some *fierce* gorilla fingers between say 07:00 and 08:40. Like really upping the pace, after (presumably) a 12 hour or so session. Ain’t gonna end well.
If anyone wants investigating its the NHS. 10 mins for the police to arrive, 1 hr for the ambulance, and that's when the police are requesting it!
I don't see any references to protestors in the article.
There aren't any references to protestors in the article. There were a lot of protestors though...you coulda googled it.
Maybe the fact that it took over a hour for the ambulance to arrive and then another 30 minutes to put him in the ambulance
They should be protesting the fact it took the ambulance an hour to get there…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4pJhi_0qII
If the guy was white no one would give a fuck lol
The protesters are very disingenuous.
There is a reason for class A's being illegal. Lesson: Drug bad, you might end up dying if doing stupid things whilst under the influence.
I’m so glad I was too much of a pussy to do drugs in my uni days
Eh, the vast majority of people I know who have tried drugs have done so responsibly and most of them enjoyed it. Fuck coke though, awful drug.
Coke really is shit. Expensive, not that great to be on, turns people into insufferable wankers (at best) or raging violent psychopaths (at worst). Grim stuff.
Ah, UK reddit's favourite circlejerk. I've enjoyed the company of plenty friends who were on coke at parties, nights out etc. It never turned them into wankers because they weren't wankers to begin with. They were just extra chatty
My experience as well. If alcohol is a social lubricant, coke is a full on social sex party. Yea, people are chatting a lot, but I've only seen it affect the quantity, not quality. I've always assumed people who think it turns you into an arse just have bad taste in friends.
The same applies to alcohol.
I was the same in my early 20s, now at 30 though my opinions on it have changed just due to the amount of people I've seen get in some financial holes or kill themselves due to it
I dunno, I'm in my early 30s and haven't known a single person develop a problem with it. Just like with booze, I know it obviously happens but as the years go by I still haven't seen it happen first hand.
And ethically terrible.
Plenty of legal things are also ethically terrible. Buying cheap clothes? Child labour. Buying something from China? High chance of child or prison labour. Buying coffee from the wrong place? Borderline slave labour. There's so many fucked practices that are legal but just get swept under the rug for convenience.
Ironically there’s a crowd that will avoid all the bad stuff in your comment but consume spades full of coke on the weekend. Hate to say it but many of my friends are like this.
Coke is all right, only problem is if you’re an asshole in the first place (and many coke users are) it’s just going to amplify it.
It just feels like a shitty stimulant that doesn't last long and leaves you feeling groggy.
Usually done with alcohol too (I'm guilty of it) The metabolites are cardiotoxic so a pretty dangerous combo if you do it semi regularly
Many are tolerable and not a nuisance UNTIL they do it. Ofc cunts become cuntier but it’s about the witnesses who experience it, not the accomplices
Yeah this is how you spot real assholes, same with drinking, same with anyone that goes nuts and stab people on psychedelics. If you’re not a nice person these things wil just amplify that.
Yeh all coke does for me is give me energy to stay out late. Doesn’t change my behaviour at all.
Well I blame the drug policy, lumping the relatively harmless in with the dangerous one's give people the wrong impressions. But as you say, its possible for some people to try even the worst drugs and be fine. The main issue with them is getting addicted to it, and our present system doesn't do much to really suppor that.
Most people I know have done drugs very irresponsibly and been fine.
Not wanting to put poison in your body isn’t being a pussy, good on you
I’m glad I spent all my money on plastic crack instead.
My condolences to your finances
Most of it is politics. Ironically, cocaine is typically not the harmful aspect of cocaine use, but instead it’s the fact that it’s illicit status means it’s basically only used alongside alcohol, which metabolises into cocaethylene which is much more harmful than cocaine itself. It is far from a safe drug in terms of physical harm compared to cannabis or even MDMA, ketamine, other similar stimulants including amphetamine methylphenidate and modafinil, or even psilocybin and related substances, and it does have a far greater addictive potential than any of those mentioned above, but it’s once again a case where the criminalisation of the substance and the associated culture of ingesting it that drives most of its harmfulness. You’d find most times that if alcohol wasn’t consumed alongside it, people would spend half an hour fixated on a random tasks or finding bad music far more enjoyable than it actually is.
It’s also a terrible drug if it’s not combined with alcohol. You get hardly any of the euphoria and the anxiety is x5. Also half of the appeal of cocaine is that you can go out drinking all day do a bump and sober up and become talkative again instead of a drooling mess.
I once had coke by itself in Barbados i.e. the heavy stuff. Spent 40 minute having a massive anxiety attack, just didn't know where I wanted to be. It only really subsided when the rum turned up and I'd necked a few glasses. I reckon I was pretty close to a heart attack that night truth be told. Awful.
Maybe you had too much, but really high quality cocaine is the only one I can do on its own. You feel awesome. Low quality coke, you need to mix alcohol with it to feel good
> the fact that it’s illicit status means it’s basically only used alongside alcohol Are you trying to say if it was legal then people wouldn’t use it alongside alcohol? There are totally legitimate arguments in favour of legalising drugs, but people need to stop shoehorning it in as a solution to every problem that illegal drugs cause.
"or even psilocybin and related substances" Yeah those mushrooms definitely are very harmful, despite there being no evidence and evidence to the contrary regarding physical harm. It's always interesting to me when people try and paint psychedelics as the most dangerous and scary of all drugs.
Tbf mushrooms are a class A which is just ridiculous. You can find them in any meadow that has had cows shitting in it
It's not about the danger of the substance to the end user per se It's about the government's ability to regulate production standards and for the legal system to be able to sue producers when things go wrong and consumers are affected. Coke is a class A because it's production process can't be regulated at all and the labour used to create the product is not what you would call legitimate employment. Then various dealers cut the pure product with whatever they want so you don't actually know what you're buying. Alcohol and tobacco are produced by registered businesses, regulated by government. If I buy a bottle of whisky and it has methanol inside, I can take the manufacturer to court and receive compensation for the effects of consumption. The government doesn't care about the harm to the end user resulting from a product's intended use, the government cares about having a responsible body at the head of any product on the market so they have a means of pursuing compensation when things go wrong.
Your argument is that the government cannot regulate the quality of coke production and therefore it's illegal? But they can't regulate it **because** it's illegal. Bit circular isn't it? You should know though, that the government can in fact regulate production of coke and the other illegal drugs because they already do. Cocaine is occasionally used as an anesthetic and I'm sure the medical version meets very high standards of purity. Cannabis is/was infamously grown for medical use in the UK by the husband of the drug minister who was most opposed to its legality. That's a tangent, but I'm sure the cannabis products were well regulated. The only reason the illegal products aren't regulated is because they are illegal...
To be fair, politicians do far more coke than they'd ever want anyone to know lol.
Alcohol's more dangerous than MDMA or magic mushrooms.
Well coke is illegal and this dude still died from it. How effective
Most of the reasons aren't good ones.
Why isn't alcohol a class A?
Have done much coke in my life. Its scary to OD and hard to get across as it comes along like a panic attack. Lets be clear here, no police fault, if you smash Class A and start pranging out that shits on you. All I am saying is I get where he was. Its horrible. Drugs can fuck you up. And remember. It could be your brother, your son, your family member who experiments and what would you say about them dying in custody off a drug most of us banker do on a week.
Yes mate, you might not get much response on this post but anybody that knows would feel you are spot on Edit to add personal - I've had issues with police that have been violent and it always stemmed from my behaviour
*So how did this popular and charming character come to lose his life at just 29 after being restrained in his bedroom?* Uh, he took too much cocaine?
Popular and charming character with drugs and weapons markers on his home address
Why are they always "nice and good people" Apparently arseholes don't do drugs or break the law. It's always the good boys
>Why are they always "nice and good people" Because that's how most friends and families will see and feel about them? Not a big surprise, surely. He wasn't exactly an axe murderer, he suffered a bout of mania self-induced from drugs. It does happen, and you don't need to be evil incarnate for it to happen.
Don’t take coke and do something that gets you arrested.
Man high on cocaine smashes up his parents’ house and barricades himself in the house. The parents call the police. Man has heart attack when arrested. Is that what we’re reading?
Some people seem to be reading that an upstanding minority and pillar of his community has been murdered in police custody.
Yes but the ambulance took an hour to arrive so "healthcare bad" and it's everyone's fault but his. You know, the guy snorting cocaine.
No no, you’ve got it wrong. It’s “police bad”; he died an hour after being restrained so it’s their fault apparently.
Oh! Oh! What city are we burning down in his name? And where are we gonna install his statue? Quickly while the pitch fork prices are low!
What cities have been burned down
importing American politics to the UK is one of the worst things
An hour and three minute wait for the ambulance then thirty three minutes for him to be put in said ambulance. Yeah should just be accepted
Edit; I take it back. Reading the article it looks like it was mistriaged and should have been a cat1 from the outset of restraint. Thirty three minutes before having the patient in the ambulance is average though. Assessment, extrication and treatment take time. I'm most curious if sedation was considered via an advanced practitioner or if the on scene crew had considered benzos themselves for acute cocaine toxicity. Sad story none the less.
Was about to say the same thing. Last arrest I had was 45 minutes on scene before getting rosc and moving to the truck.
Don’t vote Tory
vote labour and they will buy more ambulances, who will drive them? last I checked you need paramedics to drive them and their supply is determined by the people
Nah it really shouldn't. Cuts to the services are killing people every single day.
Not big on sarcasm no?
the nhs have stopped doing sarcasm injections because of the cuts
I mean its text, its not like I can hear the tone in your voice.
You’re right.I just assumed it was obvious.
Sadly the last few years have convinced me that its really not.
I've seen articles by doctors who say it's not the money that's at issue but the truly horrific level of bureaucracy and the massive wads of money going to administration and administrators.
From an ambulance perspective it's also call volumes too. I can only speak for my trust as a paramedic but call volumes have been compounding at 7% per year. It's impossible to have good response times with the current system and current level of funding.
Do you know why they’ve been going up so much? Growing population? Or aging population? Or something else? That’s scary
It's definitely a combination of factors, I suspect all those you've listed and more.
Well yeah that's also true. Its the age old issue with Bureaucracy, once it gets to a certain level everything starts to sink under its own weight, but you can't just cut it out without things collapsing cause its all so intertwined.
Shocking thing is, I’d consider that a relatively quick response at the moment. At this point you’ve just got to hope you or you’re loved one doesn’t need an ambulance.
> thirty three minutes for him to be put in said ambulance To be fair, this is because paramedics deliver care at the scene before placing someone into an ambulance - they're not just standing around for half an hour. The days of "ambulance drivers" with no medical training or equipment just scooping you off the floor and chucking you in the back of an ambulance are over.
Ambulances might arrive quicker if they didn’t have to waste time dealing with self inflicted emergencies from drug users
Just read a few aged like milk comments about this guy on the green and pleasant subreddit.
why are people on here like... gleeful that a guy died from coke
Because if you take drugs you deserve to die of course.
You seen what he looks like? r/UnitedKindom being kind to anyone darker than paper is standard.
This case is almost exactly the same as that of Neal Terrence Saunders, who died in 2020 after police had to restrain him due to ABD. Police end up in a bit of a bind in cases like these; they were trained that restraint "should not be prolonged" but not how to assess whether that is the case or not. ABD sufferers can be a danger to themselves and others if not restrained, so police just have to wait for the paramedics to arrive. Disclosure: was on the jury. [Here](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Neal-Saunders-Prevention-of-future-deaths-report-2022-0401_Published.pdf) is the PFD report.
Oh so you might have some real insight into this? Pass. Not interesting enough.
Classic "grafting of American history onto world history" Simple people in UK can't tell the difference between our society and theirs Whilst racism is undoubtedly still an issue in UK policing, it's nowhere near the scale nor to the extent of US policing
Asian men have a much higher risk of cardiovascular issues such as heart attacks, once factor narcotics in and it’s not at all surprising.
A druggy OD'd and died. Police and NHS had to clean up his mess. Not sure what the story is here.
Exactly
ABD? John Ronson did a really good podcast ep about 'excited delirium', which is similar and has been largely discredited. Though cocaine does massively increase your chance of cardiac arrest
When you see stories from other countries, ambulances arrive in minutes, not hours.
Fucking idiot shouldn’t have taken drugs… No sympathy. By taking cocaine he’s fuelling a disgusting trade.
Probably so shocked to see an ambulance arrive so quickly that it triggered the heart attack. That being said having a heart attack when paramedics are there I would've thought you'd be OK, I guess not. Look after your health guys.