The recommendation for criminal charges is particularly applicable to Mr Anoj Singh and Mr Koko, who by false pretences led Eskom, through the officials who processed the R659 million payment, to believe that the R659 million payment was in the nature of pre-payment for coal, as was the R1.68 billion pre-payment, later converted into a guarantee, when in truth and fact they knew that the prepayment and the guarantee were needed to enable the Guptas to complete and save the sale of share transaction.
Money quote:
The most toxic recreational drugs, such as GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and heroin, have a lethal dose less than 10 times their typical effective dose. The largest cluster of substances has a lethal dose that is 10 to 20 times the effective dose: These include cocaine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often called “ecstasy”) and alcohol. A less toxic group of substances, requiring 20 to 80 times the effective dose to cause death, include Rohypnol (flunitrazepam or “roofies”) and mescaline (peyote cactus). The least physiologically toxic substances, those requiring 100 to 1,000 times the effective dose to cause death, include psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, when ingested.
I’ve found no published cases in the English language that document deaths from smoked marijuana, so the actual lethal dose is a mystery. My surmise is that smoking marijuana is more risky than eating it but still safer than getting drunk.
Alcohol thus ranks at the dangerous end of the toxicity spectrum. So despite the fact that about 75 percent of all adults in the United States enjoy an occasional drink, it must be remembered that alcohol is quite toxic. Indeed, if alcohol were a newly formulated beverage, its high toxicity and addiction potential would surely prevent it from being marketed as a food or drug. This conclusion runs counter to the common view that one’s own use of alcohol is harmless.
The other statistic that caught my eye in this extract is that 75% of adult Americans “occassionally” enjoy a drink. Only 75%? In South Africa, where drinking alcohol is a national sport, I would imagine its closer to 90%.