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The people changed. That is the reason racism mostly went away.

In Texas, a group of jurors just let a man off for shooting a woman over $150, claiming he was recovering his "property" since he hired an escort and she told him sex wasn't part of the deal.

East Texas still has sundown towns. Mississippi and Alabama are still worse.

Government attempting to fix racial injustice against the black community has resulted in the destruction of the black family unit.

Good lord, do you listen to yourself? The problems of destruction of the black family unit have been mostly due to the drug war, which uncoincidentally was started by conservative racists.

Remember this famous quote?
"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."

But don't worry. You say it's "social policies" to help poor families stay together tearing them apart, and not the racist republican drug war goal taking of a majority of their population at young age, sticking them in prisons, giving them no access to education, no access to legal counsel, and then shoveling them back out into the population at age 30 with no job prospects, no trained skills and a big red "don't hire me" stamp on their foreheads in the form of a felony conviction record.

I wonder - would you accept 3 months in jail with breath mints being the only evidence? Is that close enough? (link)

They can also force a catheter up your penis without evidence. (Well, they can taser you if you don't let them.) Dontcha think that stings a bit? (link)

Or they could just charge you with conspiracy. You can be jailed for years with no evidence for conspiracy, because the sentence (at least in my state) is exactly the same as if you really possessed the drugs. So even if you've never possessed drugs, merely talking about it on the phone carries the same sentence as possessing the same amount. The added bonus is the prosecution now needs no evidence of actual drugs to convict! Open and shut case if you have a phone recording.

While the original poster was possibly engaging in hyperbole - I don't find it quite so objectionally out of realstic bounds. A case could pop up where that is what happened. It would probably require other factors to aggravate the situation (i.e. somebody schtupping a cop's wife), but it's not unimaginable to me.

More often they silently kill it. In North Carolina the 2006 state legislature passed a bill to form a commission to study the feasibility of industrial hemp production. There were required to report back by the end of the year. http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2006/sep/27/hemp_north_carolina_governor_sig

Various people were appointed to the commission, and various state bulletins noted the fact that it existed, after which it seems to have silently disappeared.

My bad - I mis-related what I read in this article without double-checking it. Number's still pretty high though. 108,000 is more than we've lost in our last few "wars" combined.

More logically the phrase "no evidence" versus the more commonly expected "no knowledge". So perhaps no recovered alien vessels and no captured aliens versus no knowledge of unknown space vessels, presumably not operated by humans.

Of course one need only look at the reply for marijuana versus say this story http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2008/jul/23/significance_us_govt_cannabinoid which leads you to http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6630507.html. So the US Department of Health has a patent on what the US Government in turn denies is of any value.

Then of course who could forget wikileaks and embassy cables, basically the US government lying all over the place, again and again and again.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/169/modesto.shtml

A 7th grader was shot in the back while laying on the ground face-down on police orders. No drugs found (father of the boy charged anyway, probably to hurt his case for a wrongful death that everyone was expecting to follow).

Or is one not enough? Do you need the meta-sites that gather up hundreds (or thousands?) of innocents dead during drug raids? Because they are prominent on Google. That just happened to be the very first result for my particular search, but I saw many many others.

Actually, depending on the metrics used, alcohol may be considered like the most harmful drug on the streets or just below heroin and cocain. Cannabis is lower than tobacco and LSD even lower than that.

http://www.mapinc.org/lib/LancetFigure1.gif

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2010/nov/02/alcohol_more_harmful_heroin_or_c

Because the court says so. Not a good reason, but the real one. I'm sure if you searched way down to the court transcripts you could find the arguments made by the lawyers for the officers. Oh and they can search your house, they just have to have to properly justify it afterward. Perhaps they would argue that weapons or dangerous chemicals could have been present.

Of course some disagree
Not ok
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2007/may/31/search_and_seizure_california_fe
Sure, ok
http://news.cnet.com/Police-blotter-Cops-OK-to-copy-cell-phone-content/2100-1030_3-6177464.html

> t's not (yet...) illegal to possess US currency. Period.

You clearly don't keep up with current US law. As of Aug 18th the courts have ruled in "USA v. $124,700" that possession of large sums of money is automatically evidence of drug trafficking. Any money found on your person is immediately forfeited to the state and you may be charged with some drug offense.

Even before the judgement people had their money seized. For example, a few years ago there was a notable case of a trucker being stopped at a weigh station near El Paso, where a police officer searched the truck and confiscated $23700. Although carrying the cash was still technically legal, the trucker was taken into custody and spent six hours in jail. ACLU later filed a suit to get the money back, but as far as I know that still hasn't happened.

Also, it has long been illegal to carry more than $10000 across a border. That limit is not a hard one. Last year, TSA detained a man for carrying only $4700. So even if you think you are within the legal limit, you'd be advised to seriously consider carrying your money in some other form, like a traveller's check.

Being stupid, or failing to follow a warning does not excuse the actions of others taking advantage of that, and no amount of wrangling will change that fact. It doesn't matter if the user secured their WiFi or not. They have a reasonable expectation that their data will be private. Google had no right to collect that data unless it received prior release from the user to collect such data.

Reasonable expectation of privacy is extended to a persons home. If said person was strolling about naked in front of their window, in full view of their neighbors, then they have no reasonable expectation of privacy. If they did so in their bathroom with the blinds closed, and someone happened to peek through the blinds and take snapshots, then that would be a violation of privacy. The same rule applies here, which is why Google is facing so many legal challenges from so many states. There is clear precedence here from the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Nixes Warrantless Heat-Sensor Searches, Oregon Grow-Op Case Updates Fourth Amendment to Deal With New Technologies

Police must first obtain a search warrant before using a heat-sensing device to look inside a person's home, a narrowly divided Supreme Court ruled Monday. In an unusual Supreme Court alliance, conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined with liberals David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer to form a 5-4 majority.

"This is an important victory for the Fourth Amendment because it says again the home is a protected area," University of Iowa law professor James Tomkovicz, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Los Angeles Times. "I think [the justices] were worried about what comes next, the technology that would allow the government to stay out but detect what is going on inside the home."

REF: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/190/heatsensors.shtml

More information on Expectation of Privacy

"Privacy and search
The expectation of privacy is crucial to distinguishing a legitimate, reasonable police search and seizure from an unreasonable one.
In Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) Justice Harlan issued a concurring opinion articulating the two-part test later adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court as the test for determining whether a police or government search is subject to the limitations of the Fourth Amendment: (1) governmental action must contravene an individual's actual, subjective expectation of privacy; (2) and that expectation of privacy must be reasonable, in the sense that society in general would recognize it as such.
To meet the first part of the test, the person from whom the information was obtained must demonstrate that they, in fact, had an actual, subjective expectation that the evidence obtained would not be available to the public. In other words, the person asserting that a search was conducted must show that they kept the evidence in a manner designed to ensure its privacy.
The first part of the test is related to the notion "in plain view". If a person did not undertake reasonable efforts to conceal something from a casual observer (as opposed to a snoop), then no subjective expectation of privacy is assumed.

Obviously, in the above example, heat signatures detected in infrared are not "in plain view", just as WiFi signals, encrypted or not, are not "in plain view". If technology happens to make it easier to go to the local store and buy equipement to detect such, it still doesn't change the basic premise of "in plain view".

You assume that the WiFi routers in question did in fact warn the users that the connection was unsecured, while many homes have routers that are years old. It is only recently that they started coming with better configuration software that prompts to setup a secure network, and even then the options can be

As this system leaves in the human factor for actually deciding if an action is necessary (ie: sending cops), and then leaves the cops deciding what actions to take, it doesnt seem any more open for abuse than the current surveillance system in place.

Except that you left something out, the system is partially paid for with forfeitures. The more forfeiture the bigger the system can be made. We've already been having problems with law enforcement forfeitures. "For example, between 1989 and 1992, the Sheriff's Office in Volusia County, Florida, seized $8 million in cash in roadside stops of motorists. Although the office returned about half of the money in settlements, it still retained $4 million over the three-year period." Today Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars. Or Asset Forfeiture: Austin Police Use of Seized Funds Probed. Law enforcement makes a lot of money from forfeitures.

Falcon

You think the drug cartels are just going to lay down and stop operating if marijuana is legalized? Haha, good one.

The simple fact of the matter is the drug war does far more to hurt more people than any amount of drugs themselves. You do know we are the highest incinerator on the planet, and aruund half our prisoners are non-violent drug offenders. Meanwhile, California is out of money, and is letting murderers out of jail instead of pot smokers, and the drug war led the charge at erasing civil rights, setting up the stage for the war on terror to continue. But hey. Blame it all on the substance. When police lie and set people up, something that happens every day, ignore the freedom that is taken away, and whine about the other bees in your hive not producing as much honey as you think they should. Your ignorance on the matter becomes more apparent with each passing comment. I suggest you catch up on the last 15 year's news, and maybe read the DRCNet weekly news letter for a decade.

You do realize over 20,000 people have been killed in the drug war in Mexico since Calderon took office. But hey! It's the drug's fault! Everyone knows drugs make you murder! Gosh!

It's possible they did, and just one more form or signature from the hospital was forgotten by all those parents.

It certainly is possible. Back in 2001 the supreme court ruled that hospitals could not take blood samples from new mothers solely for the purpose of drug testing them without a warrant. So now what do they do? They contrive some plausible medical reason to take a blood or urine sample get a broad-based consent form signed, perform whatever tests are required to legitimize that excuse and then they test the sample for drugs and hand the information over to child protective services who will take the children away.

All this despite the fact that there are no studies that show marijuana use in the 3rd trimester is dangerous to the health of the child, in fact, the only study that investigated it plausibly (versus something crazy like exposing cells in a petri dish to 100x the normal dose) showed that at 1 month the infants born to mothers that did smoke in the last trimester were better developed than those who had no exposure.

It's possible they did, and just one more form or signature from the hospital was forgotten by all those parents.

It certainly is possible. Back in 2001 the supreme court ruled that hospitals could not take blood samples from new mothers solely for the purpose of drug testing them without a warrant. So now what do they do? They contrive some plausible medical reason to take a blood or urine sample get a broad-based consent form signed, perform whatever tests are required to legitimize that excuse and then they test the sample for drugs and hand the information over to child protective services who will take the children away.

All this despite the fact that there are no studies that show marijuana use in the 3rd trimester is dangerous to the health of the child, in fact, the only study that investigated it plausibly (versus something crazy like exposing cells in a petri dish to 100x the normal dose) showed that at 1 month the infants born to mothers that did smoke in the last trimester were better developed than those who had no exposure.

I'm not saying the government is behind the weed found with lead in it, but after reading this I wouldn't be surprised. http://stopthedrugwar.org/reader_blogs/2008/apr/18/marijuana_lead_laced_pot_newest_

Oh, give me a fucking break. Every day, all day long, bullshit organizations like "Above the Influence" show stupid ass commercials on TV telling kids that their brain is going to melt if they were to even take one hit of a joint. In the mean time, yes, there ARE innocent people having their doors kicked in, and people getting killed in the process, because of this idiotic War on (Some) Drugs.

Just like anybody else, I can spend 10 seconds doing a Google search and come up with countless examples of senseless deaths and tragedies, all due to a war on a fucking plant. You think it doesn't happen? Well then you are a fucking TOOL who needs to do some research and wake up.

Check this out for an example:

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/156/policeshootings.shtml

sorry, missed the link. See this.

Here are a few:

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may062009/mj_zogby_5-6-09.php

And here's an older poll showing the support for medical marijuana:
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/410/gallup.shtml

Interestingly, support seems to be trending up for legalization in general.

Your statement is senseless for the following reasons:

1. Your assertion that legalizing Meth is "not an option" is based on the assumption that legalisation and taxation of a drug will result in an increase of consumption of that drug. In fact, the experiences of countries which have decriminalized drug consumption, and replaced "drug war" methods with harm-reduction methods (i.e. legalization, treatment, and counceling), have experienced reductions in drug consumption, and most importantly in drug addiction. These countries include Switzerland, Holland, and Portugal. The data overwhelmingly indicates that a policy of regulation, taxation, education and treatment is far more effective at reducing drug abuse and addiction than prohibtion. See leap or stopthedrugwar.org for more information.
2. Most estimates show that the drug cartels biggest source of revenue is marijuanna (the estimate http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/04/drugs/> here is 62% ). This is understandable, as Marijuana is a popular drug, and relatively harmless (certainly less harmful than other legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol). There is no reason to believe consumption of other drugs will increase when marijuana is legalized. This implies that simply legalizing marijuana will cut the drug cartels revenue by 62%. Only a fool would believe this would have no effect on their influence

Any rigorous, honest evaluation of this issue indicates that the solution is extraordinarily simple. Just as ending prohibition was the solution to the mob violence of Al Capone's era, ending drug prohibition is the solution to ending the Drug Cartels.

In some states, an adult is legally required to provide ID to any cop who asks - it's actually illegal to walk down the street without a driver's license (or non-driver's ID).

Uhhm, no. It is only required that you identify yourself when asked by a police officer who has grounds to suspect you of a crime. Of course "grounds" is whatever the hell the cop wants it to be. But there is no obligation to provide id, only your name.

What is interesting to me, that I have not seen addressed, is if you are required to provide your legal name or just a name that you may occasionally use. Seems to me that if the cop doesn't explicitly ask for your legal name, then you would be perfectly fine giving an alias that you have used at least once before. Or, if you are one of those people with two middle names, give those out and if the cop assumes they are your first and last name, without explicitly asking for them, well that's on him.

As long as the police arrest more people for having Cannabis than they do all violent crimes combined, they ARE the criminals. The police victimize more people than they protect. It's that simple.

if something is illegal, less people can get it

Warning: Retard-like typing detected.

FYI, high school kids these days find it easier to buy marijuana than beer. Good luck getting rid of all those guns.

What a fucking idiot, Quantos. This has been going on for DECADES, so stop spewing your bullshit propaganda. That's how civil asset forfeiture works. Read this and learn something, dumbshit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#Asset_forfeiture_in_the_United_States. And I quote: "In civil forfeiture cases, the US Government sues the item of property, not the person". You want some other examples? HERE. Or maybe you could google it yourself instead of spewing mis-informative bullshit propaganda? Take your head out of the fucking sand!

At least you know we're the top incinerator. I give you props for that much, at least.

Example

Bonus second example

Real answer: ask a lawyer how relevant the legality of a search is.

It keeps an awful lot of cops in business.

It also keeps prices high for traffickers and sellers.

Neither of those parties want to see it legalized. Only the users with no sales interests do.

While the part about organized crime is true there are law enforcement officers who want to legalize marijuana:

• Arizona's Attorney General Talks Marijuana Legalization"
• "Marijuana Legalization: Retired Seattle Police Chief Says Obama Should Listen to Voters"
• Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Falcon

Here's one: law enforcement officers want as many things as possible to be illegal, to protect their job security, so they lobby hard.

Actually that's not a rational reason, there are many law enforcement officers who want to legalize marijuana, such as:

• Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
• "Arizona's Attorney General Talks Marijuana Legalization".
• "Marijuana Legalization: Retired Seattle Police Chief Says Obama Should Listen to Voters"
• "Law enforcement group urges legalized drugs to aid economy"

And that's only a few exmples.

Falcon

Home Basic - OxyContin - You still aren't going to make a commitment to the drug culture, but you need a stronger fix. Because it comes as a part of package, you don't need to find a dealer. If you are arrested, you can always claim it was prescibed or that the arrest is politically motivated.

Home Premium - Meth - You are know a dedicated member of the drug culture, maybe supporting pro drug use sites. Maybe you manufacture a few extra copies in your barn and deal them up on ebay, hoping the copyright police don't catch you.

Business - Cocaine - You are moving up in the big league. Money is not a problem, uoi just need the fix. You have dealer contacts, and long term contracts. Life is good.

Ultimate - Trip to Amsterdam - You have an office to make the plans, an expense account to pay for the trip, all you have to do is fly high.

But seriously, I know I am going to have to move from XP at some point, just like I had to move from NT and before that 95. It just does not give me a lot of confidence when more work may have been done creating various and arbitrary builds to meet certain price points than creating a stable OS. I mean, creating a single stable OS is hard enough. In Windows 7, MS has to build, debug, and correct dependencies of 5 different OS.

1. Your claim completely ignores the existence of countries like Switzerland, which has very high rates of gun ownership and is LOWER than you on the list you just posted. Your comparison across cultures is essentailly meaningless, and I that bet deep down you knew that to begin with. America has a lot of poverty and crime issues that are simply ignored because the people in power do not consider those segments of the population to be worthwhile. More Black Men in Prison Than College, Study Finds
2. You seem to have this flawed assumption that prohibition makes something go away. The idea that there would be no more guns after 5 years is absurd. Gun prohibition is doomed to be just as effective as America's war on drugs. Making the assuption that by passing a law, you're going to keep 100 year old technology out of the hands of criminals is living in a fantasy word.
   
   
   You seem to assume you're safer because you don't have any guns, but I repeat my challenge to back it up. I can show you data where gun ownership was legal, then it was not. Same city, same people. Crime went up.

He would have gotten a base sentence of three years and similar fines in, say, India. (S. 379 of IPC)

It also appears that country keeps trying to completely prohibit booze..

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/435/indiacourt.shtml

Perhaps you should experience freedom and move to the country in your name, thus escaping the cruel, upside down nature of US law. ;)

It's not really. I suppose to some extent whether treating black people or homosexuals as human beings is subjective too. I mean you can find anyone who can justify anything through some logic or another. Just look at George Bush, he really thinks he's doing what's best for the country.

Philosophy aside, any well informed rational analysis will show that marijuana prohibition does more harm than good. The public has simply been scared into this disasterous policy. It's really a triumph of the American propaganda system.

The idea that something less addictive and less toxic than caffeine is more illegal than cocaine or morphine is absurd, and that's supportable by facts. The fact that marijuana arrests now outnumber violent crime arrests is further proof of this injustice. The police are perpetrating more violent crimes than they're punishing!

I grew up in Mendocino County.

Measure G passed in 2000. This is a county ordinance that allows for people to grow up to 25 female marijuana plants for personal use (i.e. not for sale) legally.

http://www.canorml.org/news/mendorelse.html

http://stopthedrugwar.org/in_the_trenches/2007/apr/25/amma_press_release_victory_mendo

I'm not sure, but this ordinance seems compatible with the statewide Proposition 215. It is still illegal under federal law, of course.

"State law takes precedence, according to our Constitution."

This sounds incorrect from what I've been tracking in the news in recent months; Federal prosecutors are actively pursuing California pot growers who believe they are protected by paperwork that declares it for "medicinal purposes" under the assertion that state laws cannot countermand federal laws. You cannot have a federally controlled substance given the all clear on a state level.

There are some interesting things in the news from recent years:

This one supports your claim from 2006
This one however discusses federal charges against a guy who, according to the article, in federal court has no medicinal defense - the state laws don't protect him one bit (2007).

There's plenty more material on the subject out there, but here's an interesting home base for the folks seeking to reform federal law with numerous links to relevant news.

Of course the federales can do a bust, but prosecuting people for trivial offenses which don't cross state lines is normally done on the State's dime; and I doubt the people of Wyoming want their taxes raised to keep all those California pot-heads in federal prisons if they manage to get a conviction.

People in Wyoming mostly have common sense. People in Washington do not.

The rate at which female inmates are raped is even higher than among males.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/382/tellthestories.shtml

I couldn't find the article, but I read one on CNN which stated that sex is treated as a currency in womens prison where often times male guards are working even thought that is not supposed to be the case. AFAIR it was talking about cases where female prisoners were routinely "rented" out to male prisoners by the guards.

The male population in prison is much higher, which makes for a higher number of rape cases, but relatively speaking the problem is even worse among the female prison population.

While it is very, very unlikely that the FISA court would leak a request for a wiretap, if the request were groundless/abusive enough, I suppose it is a possibility.

They shouldn't have to "leak" anything. There is no reason for warrants not to be public knowledge after they have been carried out or rejected. It should be a necessary monitor both of police/DHS actions and judicial competency.

He's correct.

After all there are corrupt cops almost everywhere you turn around.

If your defensive plan doesn't include any offensive measures, you're doing it wrong.

Let's put that idea into a different context. As the state and local police forces around our country take continue to take a more offensive stance do you feel safer? How about the way music labels protect their interests, is that better when it is offensive? I don't think so. I think that the only time an offensive posture look like a good defense is when you are on the side being more aggressive. To everyone not being directly served by the increased aggressiveness it just looks like abuse of power.

Gearing up for offensive strikes breeds the "need" for offensive strikes. It's human nature, people go with what they know and train for as the answer. A surgeon will try to fix things with surgery first while a pharmacist will try to fix the same problem with medications. Or in a more slashdot-esque analogy: a programmer will see the solution to a task through the filter of the programming languages they know the best, and have focused on most recently. When you have big organizations spending a lot of time and money training to attack, they will find reasons and targets to use that training on.

This sounds all too familiar, mostly because I grew up in Mendocino county (To give you an idea of how hippie friendly Mendo is, take this fact: "the marijuana industry is responsible for roughly 40% of all Mendocino County economic activity" -http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/413/mendocino.shtml ) . It wasn't all to long ago when my mom and one of her close friends spearheaded a movement against the installation of a cell tower. Funnily enough, they both owned cell phones. It wasn't long until she moved on to blaming my computer for all of my problems, under the basis of EMFs (ElectroMagnetic Fields http://www.mercola.com/article/emf/emf_dangers.htm . These people in Sebastopol (Oh god, I only live a few miles away from this town at the moment: I live in Santa Rosa)are more than likely caught up in the EMF craze. ( To see how EMFs are being applied to wifi , just check out this http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/wifi.htm ) Personally, I think people like this should adopt a more well balanced perspective, instead of just feeding into modern societies fear tactics.

What private ventures are these that are putting sciecne satellites in orbit and sending probes to other planets?

And what are these enterprises supposed to do, compeat with the government when the government makes all the rules?

And his racism

Yea, like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders, most of whom are not "white", is racist. "Ron Paul associates the Drug War with racism, and wants to put an end to both."

Five years is not too much? I say it's not enough.

Damn, I shoulda checked the link. Here's the newsbrief, "New Hampshire Supreme Court Says Garbage is Protected Property":
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/305/garbag e1.shtml

"A school safety drill that included police officers in riot gear with weapons has caused concern among some parents who say it was too realistic and frightened some students."

"Students, who were unaware police were conducting a drill, were taken from the classroom into the halls, patted down by officers and asked what they had in their pockets, the newspaper said."

"Some of these kids were so scared, they just about wet their pants," said Marge Bradshaw, a parent with four children in Godfrey-Lee Schools. "I think it's pure wrong that the students and parents were not informed of this."

} Even All Headline News hosted a report of the same contemptuous assault and battery of children, and now even their Article is gone.

Sure, they could be helping to *stimulate* those young minds into submittance, but they are also corrupting the public record of these events; the assault of the presumed-Actors moving to the commercial Scribes and non-commercial editors and their Book-keepers to CORRUPT the complete accounts and Rolls of those events. I find it stimulating that the only branches of society that could store, recollect, and preserve such evidence of terrorism are the same that are accused to be "schizzophrenic", "crazies", and "conspiracy theorists" yet they are not causing any tort or tresspass by their conservatorship over said records; StopTheDrugWar is one such persevered embalmer of these record of non-pretend raids on schools, having no difference between that of Actors and the 'tended drug raids. Even as far back as 2003 there was a video that gets posted with an article of same subjective pretended Raids and non-pretended Actors, but eventually is deleted. It makes its way around, here it is again of Stratford High School at Goose Creek. I have a couple more to reference of the same feet of non-pretend Actors, like this horrible creature, and yet another

Rinse and repeat with methadone.

...and now with buphrenorphine. (See, for example this article).

The cycle seems to run like this: Drug A has been found to be "addicting" (for practical purposes, let's define this as "makes you feel really shitty if you stop taking it"), and it has been noticed that people enjoy themselves after taking it. Drug A is therefore declared by the media and government agencies as "evil". (Note that both conditions are necessary and sufficient for evilness: prescription medications that make you feel really shitty if you stop taking them (like certain anti-depressants) aren't evil--presumably because people suffer instead of feeling pleasure. Coffe and likker are OK even though they make some people feel good because they're not addicting (or so they say).

Ok, now we all know that a substance that makes people feel good and that makes them want to keep taking it is a social disaster that puts terrorism, plagues, famine and and the imminent fall of Western culture in the shade, so what do we do? There are, of course, many alternative approaches to this problem but one that has gained some favor is to adopt a new drug, "B" as the "cure" for problem A. This looks good because drug B isn't evil--it hasn't yet experienced the media frenzy that unshakeably convinces the populace that a drug is evil. So drug B is now prescribed for heroin addicts to "cure" them. In the case of Methadone, this was obviously silly because Methadone is just as addicting as heroin, and can make you feel quite nice. In other words, some Methadone patients may be -gasp- enjoying themselves! Methadone does have the advantage of lasting longer than heroin, so it can be handed out to heroin addicts on a once-daily basis, thereby controlling their dosage. But really, this is no different in principle from handing out a day's ration of, say, Dilaudid to the addict. It just looks better, and we all know that looks are all-important.

Of course, Methadone has acquired a definite tinge of evilness, and it's hard to establish a methadone program, and difficult to get into one because the possibility that some individuals may possibly be enjoying themselves troubles the conscience of the media and the politicians.

Now we have Buphrenorphine that is being embraced as the new "cure". Well guess what, addicts aren't going to stop being addicts because they need their daily fix of bupe, and --curses!-- some of them are smiling.

Personally, I think the whole business is silly. I do think there are some people who have a big problem with addiction, but I think the best way to help them is to do what the British have been doing for years, and just prescribe reasonable amounts of the stuff they crave. Maybe bupe will be a better drug, in that accidental or deliberate overdose may be less likely with this drug (it's partly self-limiting because beyond a certain dosage it stops working). But folks, none of these programs is going to work if we Americans don't get over the notion that feeling good by taking certain pharmaceuticals is ipso facto an evil thing.

That whole thing about power corrupting isn't just a saying, folks, but it's nice that people are starting to notice. The Drug War Chronicles have been doing a "corrupt cop of the week" series for years now. Drug enforcement is particularly succeptable to corruption because there's very little moral difference between breaking drug laws and enforcing them. As our privacy laws are eroded and the enforcement of laws becomes less and less differentiated from invasion of privacy, you can expect to see that kind of corruption creeping into normal law enforcement, too.

federal laws have always overridden state laws.. for the same reason state laws override local laws. This isn't something that's being applied to just marijuana.. it has happened again and again in history.. so not only should those trying to pass marijuana initiatives be unsurprised when the federal (or state, in Denver's case) law is enforced, they should also expect it to happen.

Enforcement of federal law does not seem to be a discouraging factor.. after all, people are willing to come out and vote for marijuana initiatives.

If you really think people support legalizing the harder drugs.. I want you to go out and ask a few people.. "If the federal government ended the War on Drugs tomorrow, would you support legalizing Crack, Meth, and Heroin?".. I will guarantee you that virtually everyone will say no.

Marijuana only enjoys support because it is seen as a non-addictive drug that is no more harmful than alcohol or cigarettes. Cocaine, meth, heroin enjoy no support from people other than drug addicts.

People don't care about how much money the Feds can same by ending the war on drugs, when one of their friends, family, or children get addicted to cocaine after (in some cases) trying it only once... They don't want to hear that there will be more Meth labs in the neighborhoods.. or more identify-theft because of the increase in Meth addicts...

For drugs like that, people do not want to hear about initiatives that result in more access. (and if you don't believe me.. try asking a few people.. watch as they look at you like a weirdo.. then ask them why when they tell you 'absolutely no'.)

Read this article (on a pro-marijuana site.. it was the first result on google.. but there are other polls that show the same): http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/410/gallup.sht ml Notice that no where do they claim that a majority of people support marijuana legalization... No imagine how many people would support Meth....

Mr Wolf, Republican chairman of the committee that oversees the department's funds, told reporters that China's spying efforts were "frightening".

It was "no secret that the US is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services", he said, adding: "No American government agency should want to purchase from them".

Actually they said that scenes of torture and the blood and gore content where also higher than the submitter claimed.
I don't understand the flack over this. The game isn't banned it's rating was just changed. Those ratings are voluntary and are not enforced by law.
It isn't even like alcohol and cigarettes. A store can choose to sell pretty much any game to anyone. No will get fined or go to jail for it.
It's not like they are banning it.
Unlike here http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/347/eu.shtml or here http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1596751 it isn't government enforced like here http://www.caslon.com.au/censorshipguide17.htm
or like this move to censor internet video http://www.indexonline.org/en/indexindex/articles/ 2005/3/european-union-official-papers-offer-plans- t.shtml
Over all I don't see any reason to get all worked up over this.

In case you didn't know, marijuana smokers are the most commonly targeted drug demographic these days, and the majority of our tax dollars, go towards fighting marijuana, while proven "bad drugs", such as meth, ruin lives, and run rampant throughout the country

Are you suggesting we arrest our men and women in uniform? Terrorist! ... BTW, many states now require an ID to buy over-the-counter cold medicine like Alka-Seltzer.

Note, I'm talking real crimes, such as identity theft, phishing, and so on. Not downloading music and videos, which IMHO should be near the bottom of our list of priorities

Which raises and interesting point. How much of this so called 'cybercrime' money is derived from the RIAA's over-inflated numbers? I think the Columbians are still raking in a lot more than the Nigerians.

But 1 person in 30 in the USA are in jail are because of drug crimes

According to the DOJ, 1 in 31 people in the US are on probation, parole, or in jail or prison. That would certainly contradict your statistic. Although, if you meant 1 in 30 people in the prison population is in on drug crimes, that would be much too low. From stopthedrugwar.org:

"the Justice Department number-crunchers found that people sentenced for drug crimes accounted for 21% of state prisoners and 55% of all federal prisoners."

"an earlier BJS report put the percentage of jail inmates doing time for drug crime at 24.7% in 2002"

"the total number of people doing time for drugs in the United States last year exceeded 530,000."