Cannabis `no worse than junk food`

B World
THE PRESS, CHRISTCHURCH
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
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UNITED STATES
The man who fell to Earth
Rhys Blakely Roswell, New Mexico
Sixty-five years ago, Charles
‘‘Chuck’’ Yeager became the
first man to break the sound
barrier, in an experimental
rocket plane. Yesterday, on
the anniversary of that supersonic breakthrough, an Austrian stuntman did basically
the same thing – but without
the plane.
As the amber of a desert
sunrise faded to azure blue
over New Mexico, Felix
Baumgartner, a professional
daredevil, strapped himself to
a 50-storey-high balloon that
would take him to the edge of
space.
Hours later, he emerged
from his capsule. He took a
moment to survey the view
the curvature of the earth, the
patterns
of
continental
weather systems. And then,
from 128,097ft, or more than 38
kilometres up, he jumped into
the record books.
Over
the
next
few
moments he demonstrated
that a man in a US$200,000
(NZ$250,580) pressurised suit
can plunge through the stratosphere, accelerate to 1136kmh,
free-fall for more than four
minutes and live to tell the
tale at a press conference.
Preliminary readings also
suggested that he had become
the first skydiver to break the
sound barrier.
As he fell through a nearvacuum, his handlers at
mission control urged him to
talk to them. It seemed,
however, that Baumgartner
was left as speechless as his
Earth-bound spectators. His
silence was frightening: leading up to the attempt, he had
battled panic attacks caused
by bouts of claustrophobia in
his suit. Ultimately, however,
he achieved a set of landmarks unlikely to be outdone
for generations. The previous
free-fall record, of 102,800ft,
had been set by Joe Kittinger,
a US Air Force test pilot, at
the dawn of the space age in
1960.
Baumgartner, 43, accelerated from 0 to more than
1120kmh in less than 40
seconds, but at first he had no
sense of motion. Kittinger, 84,
who acted as his mentor,
described the sensation of
jumping at such monumental,
nearly airless altitudes as
akin to ‘‘a state of suspended
animation’’.
‘‘No [sense of] acceleration,
no movement, no noise,
nothing. It was absolutely
quiet, absolutely still, and
absolutely horrifying’’.
As
the
air
density
increased closer to Earth,
Baumgartner slowed and
stopped spinning, bringing
forth cheers from his back-up
team. He deployed his parachute about 5000ft. Minutes
later, he performed a perfect
landing, triggering yet more
applause. He had broken
three records: the highest
manned balloon flight; the
highest altitude from which a
man had free-fallen; the first
supersonic free-fall.
The feat was truly deathdefying. If his suit had
malfunctioned, his blood
might have boiled while
millions watched on the
internet. In short, for Red
Bull, the drinks company that
funded the venture, it was
going to be one of the best, or
worst, marketing stunts in
history.
The day began with a
series of nervous pre-dawn
conferences between engineers, doctors and pilots
responsible for avoiding disaster. Ultimately, the ascent
included just one heartstopping glitch, when a problem with Baumgartner’s visor
risked aborting the mission.
‘‘This is very serious,’’ he
told his handlers at mission
control as he travelled
upwards at close to 160kmh.
‘‘Sometimes it’s getting foggy
when I exhale.’’
For several agonising
seconds, the technicians at
mission control sat silent. At
the request of Kittinger, an
audio feed from the capsule
was shut off.
Baumgartner’s mother,
who had wept as her son
ascended, was powerless to do
anything but pray.
Then a small army of
technicians scrambled to
trouble-shoot the problem.
When the time came, it was
Kittinger who talked ‘‘Fearless Felix’’ through the jump’s
final stages.
‘‘Stand up on the exterior
step but be sure to duck your
head down as you go out that
door,’’ he said as his protege
prepared to leap. As he
paused on the ledge, Kittinger
added: ‘‘The rest is yours.’’
The
jump
organisers
hoped to test whether parachuting
from
immense
heights could prove a viable
means of escape for the
nascent commercial space
industry. Those parsing the
biometric data gathered during the mission included the
US Air Force and Nasa. It was
clear, however, that the
objectives went beyond scientific discovery. The mission
was filmed by 20 cameras and
generated global excitement,
forcing the organisers to
rebut claims that the primary
objective was publicity.
‘‘This is a flight test
programme, not a stunt,’’ said
Art Thompson, the project’s
technical director.
In Roswell, a flat dusty
town best known as the site of
a rumoured UFO landing in
1947, conditions had to be
perfect. Last Tuesday, a gust
of wind had twisted the giant
balloon; the mission was
abandoned and US$70,000 of
helium was lost. The mission
was left with just one back-up
balloon. The hiatus that
followed helped to highlight
the scale of a stunt that was
first dreamt of seven years
ago. The balloon was the
largest to have carried a man.
The plastic from which it was
made was a tenth of the
thickness of a sandwich bag.
Baumgartner, a former
military parachutist who
lives in Switzerland, was
famous. In 2003, he became
the first person to skydive
across the English Channel.
He also holds the record for
the lowest base jump, 95ft,
from the statue of Christ the
Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.
He plans to settle down to a
quiet life – as a rescue
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helicopter pilot.
‘CAPTAIN
COWARD’
Cruise ship captain
Francesco Schettino
to face ‘black box’.
❯❯ WORLD
MAINLAND
CONNECTION
Ben Sigmund and
Ryan Nelsen to
form NZ defence.
❯❯ SPORT
❯❯ On this day
‘‘I’m coming home’’ Felix Baumgartner jumps from his capsule to fall 38 kilometres back to earth, becoming the first supersonic skydiver.
Record breaker: Felix Baumgartner is ecstatic after landing.
We did it: Felix Baumgartner and technical project director Art
Thompson celebrate on the ground.
Cannabis ‘no worse than junk food’
Smoking cannabis is no worse
than eating junk food or
gambling, according to a
major report to be published
today that calls for drugtaking to be decriminalised.
The report, by experts
including scientists and former senior police officers,
says that illegal drugs are
good for some people and that
taking them is no different to
moderate drinking.
Calling for an overhaul of
drug laws, the experts argue
that the 50-year global ‘‘war
on drugs’’ has failed and that
a new approach is needed.
But their demand that
drugs
laws
should
be
reformed will be strongly
resisted at Westminster,
where
the
Government
remains opposed to decriminalisation.
Police leaders, a former
head of MI5 and the Government’s drugs advisers have
questioned
the
current
approach to tackling drugs.
Kenneth Clarke, the former
Justice Secretary, admitted in
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REGULARS
BRITAIN
Richard Ford London
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July that Britain was ‘‘plainly
losing’’ the war on drugs and
David Cameron said in Opposition that ‘‘drugs policy has
been failing for decades’’.
Today’s report, by the UK
Drug Policy Commission, a
charity, follows six years of
research by a team including
academics and a former chief
constable into the basis of
Britain’s drug policy.
Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience at the
University of Oxford and a
commission member, writes:
‘‘In no area of public policy is
there such a mismatch
between political expectation
and public reality.’’
He adds: ‘‘Despite the belief
of politicians that bans and
harsh sentences send strong
messages, there is little evidence that those messages
influence the decisions to use
drugs.’’
The report says that using
illegal drugs is similar to
other ‘‘moderately selfish or
risky behaviour’’ that society
cannot prevent, such as
gambling or eating too much
The Times
junk food.
Photos: REUTERS
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