Ozzy Says He Now Believes Pot Leads To Other Addictions

MTV ^ | 07.08.2003 | Robert Mancini, with reporting by Gideon Yago

[presidio9]

Ozzy Osbourne may have weathered the lowest lows that drug addiction has to offer, but the news that his son Jack was seeking treatment for substance abuse taught him a lesson that his own decades of addiction never did.

"I used to think they should legalize pot, but you know what? They should ban the lot," Osbourne told MTV News, addressing Jack's battle for the first time. "One thing leads to another. Coffee leads to Red Bull, Red Bull leads to crank.

"When I found out the full depth of him getting into OxyContin, which is like hillbilly heroin, I was shocked and stunned," Osbourne continued. "The thing that's amazing was how rapidly he went from smoking pot to doing hillbilly heroin."

Ozzy's son entered a California rehabilitation facility in April to battle what was later revealed to be an addiction to the prescription painkiller OxyContin (see "Jack Osbourne Reveals He Was Addicted To Painkiller OxyContin"). Jack also said that he was drinking and using a variety of substances — including Vicodin, Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid, Lorcet, Lortab, Percocet and marijuana — before his trip to rehab (see "Rehab Helps Jack Osbourne Get To Root Of Addiction Problems").

Jack's laundry list of controlled substances made his father painfully aware of just how readily available drugs are. "When I started doing drugs years ago, they were hard to get, but today it's everywhere," Osbourne said. "It's not just America. It's not just California. It's not just Beverly Hills. It's not just downtown New York. It's not just London. It's all over the world" (see "All About OxyContin, The Pills Known As 'Killers' ").

This relatively easy access to allegedly "controlled" substances is especially hard for Ozzy to swallow given his firsthand experience with the damage that drugs can do.

"I'm 55 years old, and I didn't get off scot-free," Osbourne explained. "I have to take medication for the rest of my life because I've done so much neurological damage to my body," Osbourne said.

We'll have much more from our interviews with Ozzy and Jack in an "MTV News Now" special report, premiering Tuesday at 11 p.m. ET/PT (Jack's complete interview will appear on MTVNews.com when the show premieres). The show will be followed the next day by a repeat of MTV News' "True Life: I'm Hooked on OxyContin" at 6:30 p.m.

[A CA Guy]

If you suggest people should read books day after day advocating constant drinking, that would be evil.

[ActionNewsBill]

If you promote the reading of Marxist Harry Potter literature on a regular basis resulting in creating a Marxist practicing witch out of the reader, you have just participated in evil.

[lugsoul]

Better watch it, Pahuanui. Presidio will jump all over you because you haven't been here since yesterday.

[ActionNewsBill]

Give it up and go to Amsterdam or some other dammed place

Watch your language, Buster....this is a family forum.

Why don't you take your sewer mouth to France or some other country where they allow that kind of language if you can't behave civilly!

[A CA Guy]

We are a Democratic Republic. Since 1776, the citizenry has voted on who represents them in office and laws are made by these people that are either slammed or upheld in courts.
The WOD is one of these and is legal.

Your welcome, glad I could be of help.

[ActionNewsBill]

When you support drug usage, you are supporting evil.

When you support fascist jack-boots killing innocents and stealing property through the War on some Drugs, you are supporting evil.

[RockyMtnMan]

So we needed an ammendment to the constitution to make alcohol illegal but we don't for drugs? Please explain I do not understand.

[A CA Guy]

You linked him from the Drug Reform Coordination Network.

[A CA Guy]

Yes!

[ActionNewsBill]

For society, it mostly means what you want freedom but realize there are limitations because we live with neighbors.

Looks like you have a lot in common with Bill Clinton.

No surprise there.

"And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.

That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to make people safer in their communities."

-Bill Clinton, March, 1994 MTV,s "Enough is Enough"

[A CA Guy]

Most places that have drugs legal internationally are becoming hell holes which could be referred to as a dammed place. That wasn't directed toward your clean and sober family at all.

[Ken H]

See post #1386.

I've asked him to expound on his constitutional philosophy.

[lugsoul]

This is a family thread!

[A CA Guy]

We have limitiations to our freedom based on the fact that we live with others. You have to balance the right of all to be and live free, not just what you want to what-ever excess. That is where a freedom can become anarchy.

You can not have the same freedom in close quarters as we once had when the country was more barren in 1776.

[zoyd]

If you suggest people should read books day after day advocating constant drinking, that would be evil.

Please don't hem and haw. Are the advertising companies that produce beer advertising for television and print advertising for magazines evil?

Their raison d'etre is to promote alcoholic beverages. Are they evil?

For that matter, is Coors an evil company? Jack Daniels? If simply advocating drugs is evil, aren't the makers themselves more culpable?

Anheuser-Busch. Evil? How about tobacco companies? Evil?

[lugsoul]

"You can not have the same freedom in close quarters as we once had when the country was more barren in 1776."

So much for original intent.

[mvpel]

When you support drug usage, you are supporting evil.

When you support the intrustion of government into every aspect of its citizens' lives, right down to what they decide to put in their own bodies, then you are saying that individuals have no ownership of themselves, but rather are chattel of "society," and you are thus supporting evil.

[RockyMtnMan]

You mean like Amsterdam? I know the numbers are a little old but the WOD was going full steam:


Last month use of cannabis (marijuana) by high school seniors:
18.1% in the Netherlands (1996);
23.7% in the U.S. (1997).
(Sources: The Trimbos Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Monitoring the Future Survey, University of Michigan and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy)

Any lifetime use (prevalence) of cannabis by older teens (1994):
30% in the Netherlands;
38% in the U.S.
(Sources: Center for Drug Research, University of Amsterdam; Monitoring the Future Survey, University of Michigan and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy)

Recent (last month) use of cannabis by 15 year olds (in 1995):
15% in the Netherlands;
16% in the U.S.;
24% in the U.K.
(Sources: Trimbos Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Monitoring the Future Survey, University of Michigan and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; Council of Europe, ESPAD Report)

Any lifetime use of cannabis by 15 year olds (in 1995):
29% in the Netherlands;
34% in the U.S.;
41% in the U.K.
(Sources: Netherlands Institute of Health and Addiction, U.S. National Institute for Drug Abuse; Council of Europe, ESPAD Report)

Heroine addicts as a percentage of population (in 1995):
160 per 100,000 in the Netherlands;
430 per 100,000 in the U.S.
(Sources: Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport;
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy)

Murder rate as a percentage of population (in 1996):
1.8 per 100,000 in the Netherlands;
8.22 in the U.S.
(Sources: Netherlands Bureau of Statistics; White House Office of National Drug Control Policy)

Incarceration rate as a percentage of population (1997):
73 per 100,000 in the Netherlands;
645 per 100,000 in the U.S.
(Sources: Netherlands Ministry of Justice; White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy)

Crime-related deaths as a percentage of population:
1.2 per 100,000 in the Netherlands (1994);
8.2 per 100,000 in the U.S. (1995).
(Sources: World Health Organization; Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation)

Per capita spending on drug-related law enforcement:
$27 per capita in the Netherlands;
$81 per capita in the U.S.
(Sources: Netherlands Ministry of Justice; White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy)

[ActionNewsBill]

How so, by sourcing a drug activist?

The journal SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

The JOURNAL OF GENERAL INTERNAL MEDICINE

Drug activist sources? When did that happen?

Face the facts....you and your co-horts Axel and presidio have contributed nothing to the debate, other than your own feeble posts that are short on facts on long on rhetoric and emotional rantings.

None of you have posted so much as a shred of evidence to support any of your claims.

If I were a lurker hoping to find facts on the drug war, I certainly wouldn't use any of your posts for my education.

You and your crew have made up your minds "Pot is EVIL, and no matter what facts you provide that prove otherwise, I don't care, because marijuana and all the other drugs (but not alcohol or tobacco) are EVIL too."

That pretty much sums up your stance.

[A CA Guy]

That was in short what Congress has down on their website as to the reason we go about laws the way we do now instead of thousands of constitutional amendments.

If you AMEND everything, then as society changes, you get more and more amendments to the point where the Constitution was just some old meaningless document.

Rather than have it made meaningless, they write current laws which come and go as needed and the courts either approve of them or deny them.

If you want 30,000 amendments as the way to go, fine with me, but the point that could dilute the original document seemed to be a possibility if we did that.

There would be the same outcomes by just different methods.
There would just be 30,000 amendments by now. Is that what you would prefer Ken?

That is OK too, just seems a messier way to go.

I'm going to go eat, have a nice debate.