Just Say No To Reading About Drugs

We keep getting submissions about bills in Congress to ban the distribution of any information on how to manufacture illegal drugs. The story of this is kind of humorous. The bill was having trouble on its own, so it's been grafted onto a bill called the "Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000" -- this bill goes on for 50 pages about modifications to bankruptcy laws (to make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy, naturally), then suddenly has a whole section on illegal drugs, then goes back to bankruptcy. It's the censorship law that won't die. Even more disturbing, a tiny little rider in the bill alters the general requirements for search warrants so that you need never be informed of a search -- notification can be delayed indefinitely, which is a fundamental violation of the Fourth Amendment. In any case, it's in real danger of passing, so it's something you ought to pay attention to. We've done some grafting ourselves of some of the submissions related to this ...

First, as always, you can read the bills yourself by going to Thomas. Key in "methamphetamine" or "bankruptcy." Here's a direct link to the Bankruptcy Reform Act, and there's a link to HR 2987 in a submission below. Places like DRCNet aren't too happy about the bill, but neither are civil liberties groups -- the EFF has a nice overview of the whole situation in their last newsletter as well.

Vince Beiser writes: "New story from MotherJones.com: Speed Limit: A bill banning Internet sites that publish or even link to drug-making information looks set to sail through Congress -- to the dismay of free-speech advocates. Read the story." Mother Jones has also recently published an update to this story. If you only read one link off this story, it should be this one.

wrenling writes: "Right now HR 2987 is before the House Judiciary Committee. The bill is marked as an anti-methamphetamine proliferation bill. Without getting into discussions of whether or not drugs should be legal, attention needs to be drawn to the rider that is attached to the bill which according to the ACLU would allow the following:

Free Speech is at Risk. H.R. 2987 would also allow the government to order Web sites censored and shut down without any due process of law and without any notice given to the website's owner. One provision of the bill would allow agencies like the FBI to make judgment calls on the intent of online statements regarding drug use -- a power usually reserved for the courts. Internet service providers would then be ordered by law enforcement to take down any of these statements within 48 hours -- without notifying the Web site owner -- or be considered in violation of the law.

It's not only things like DMCA we have to watch out for, but for little riders on other legislation that, if enacted, could be used to further grant the United States government censorship powers."

Eric the .5b writes "Do we geeks really care, and do we geeks really matter?

The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, described here and here, is still in committee in the House as we speak. A similar bill sailed through the Senate last year, and if this goes through, the two should be very easy to reconcile into a final version and get made into law.

• This bill,
• HR 2987, would:
• Allow police to search your home or business without so much as notifying you that you are under investigation or that such searches have taken place for as long as six months,
• Allow investigators to make copies of your documents and computer files without ever notifying you,
• And make it illegal to distribute information about how to make any controlled substance, to merely link to Web pages giving information on that or drug paraphenalia, or to even just describe how to find such information.

If we want to do something about this, we have an excellent opportunity. Both the Committee on Commerce and the Committee on the Judiciary (members listed here) are working on this legislative abomination. If you see your House representative (if you don't know your representative, like most of us, use the look-up) on either of these lists, contact him or her. E-mail or snailmail them if you like, but faxes and phonecalls will probably make the best impression. Be polite and very nonthreatening, but make it clear that you vote, and that you don't like this bill. Be sure to mention the title and number (The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act and HR 2987). Even if you don't see your representative on the lists, it couldn't hurt to bug the chairpersons of the committees. Lastly, pass this info around to anyone you know who might care. The more displeasure the representatives hear, the less attractive doing anything but killing this bill will be."

Comments

Link here to protest! (no, not a troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity308.html

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Anonymous Coward]

Marijuana is legal in several countries around the world (Most noteably, the city of Amsterdam)
Technically it's tolerated in Amsterdam, i.e. it's decriminalised but not legalised.
Also, Amsterdam is a city not a country, the country would be The Netherlands.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Anonymous Coward]

So what about anti-depressive drugs then (eg Prozac etc)?? That's a drug that alters your brain's chemical balance and the way you perceive things. Should that be illegal too???

Distribution Unlimited...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess What I just put up on gnutella... :)

Amsterdam, technically...

[Wakko Warner]

Actually, marijuana and prostitution _are_ illegal in Amsterdam, at least according to the laws on the books. Fortunately (or not, depending how brainwashed you've been by the anti-drug movement), the laws are all but overlooked by the police there.

Technically, though, it's incorrect to say marijuana is legal there, because, legally, it isn't.

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re:go, ACLU!

[rodgerd]

Except, of course, you will be regarded with opprobrium by such luminaries as George Bush Sr, who referred to a political opponent as a "card carrying member of the ACLU". Anyone would think ACLU members were terrorist subversives...

Think voting them out is the answer?

[Wansu]

Think again. The Democrats and Republicans are
tripping over their own feet to curb freedom. The
Libertarians and Greens both oppose the drug war
but with the exception of the Reform Party in 92
and George Wallace's American Prty in 68, 3rd
parties haven't been a significant factor. They
are regarded as spoilers and those who vote for
them are said to be "throwing their vote away".
People want to vote for a "winner", even if he's a
jack-booted fascist.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[bluGill]

For starters, his arguments are a flawed. I don't have time to dig up all the facts though, so I'm just going to give you hints so you can.

Statistics are easy to manipulate. Few people kill strangers. Strangers are people you don't know, aquantences are people you do. Few people randomly kill strangers, most who kill, kill people who they know and feel have done harm to them. (drugs often influence ones thoughts of what/how someone has done wrong) In other words those statistcs may be accurate, but his interpitation is not.

There are more flaws. I don't feel like getting all the facts here, and besides the whole thing is off topic. Get them yourself.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[bluGill]

Again, question your statitics statistcs. I personally own 2 guns, and plan on buying 5 more. Most hunters (which is why I own a gun) are the same. a 12 guage is not a 20 guage is not a .30-06 is not a .30-30 is not a 22 is not... And using the wrong gun is cruel and ineffective. I know many hunters with more then 10 guns. It isn't hard to collect that many. (even though many havn't been used in years they get sentimental value)

Guns are cheep and easy to buy now, so those who need/want them get them.

I have no idea how drug dealers and other criminals affect your statistic, but my expirence with hunts suggests that I can come up with a gun per person just from their ranks, and these folks don't kill each other. (accidents happen, but they are rare. And the drug dealer that hunts I factored out)

Re:probably the 'well regulated' part

[bluGill]

Probably. I can shoot my gun with reasonable accuracy, and I can walk (or row my boat, or drive) a couple miles with my gun.

Am I a good solider? No, of course not. But a good sargent in a pinch can gather up me and a few friends and make a reasonable defense. Losses will be higher then normal on our side, but if someone is invading my hometown I'm willing to take that risk. (Note that invading my home town means that the army has pretty well lost.

Also don't overlook gurrella warfare. I can talk the invaders up (anything they do better then the current goverment no matter how small) byn day, and then dig my gun out of hiding and night and kill a few of them. the US army had a hard time in vietnam. I can make sure invaders have just as difficult a time.

Like I said, I'm not as good as a well trained army. As a last ditch effort though, it might be enough.

Re:The 2nd amendment is about overthrowing governm

[jpatters]

Chechnia is part of the Russian Commonwealth. Suppose the governement in DC wanted to deal with a group of rebels in California?

and Vermont; and Montana; and Texas; and Alaska; and New Hampshire; and in and around DC all at the same time?

If it came to the point of there being a group of rebels in California and they were not simply an isolated group of nuts or something, I would imagine that pockets of rebelion would turn up all over the place, and they would be in the home towns and cities of the members of the US military.

cya in ten years, Rob:

[crayz]

How to Make MDMA

I was very interested at reading Uncle Festers reductive alkylation using aluminum amalgam to make meth. This was quite a while back and since I have come across similar methods using sodium cyanoborohydride for the reduction but mainly for synthesizing MDA & MDMA. I am pretty sure I can work out the reaction conditions for myself but would not like to give it a go without someone with experience to advise me first. I'm not quite up to deducing my own procedure. So if anyone can e-mail me or post up some info on using sodium cyanoborohydride for synthesizing methamphetamine I'd be infinitely grateful.

It is interesting that you mention Uncle Fester as a preamble to discussing the use of sodium cyanoborohydride for the reductive amination in the synthesis of MDA & MDMA. Actually sodium cyanoborohydride is most useful for the synthesis of MDMA and methamphetamine, less so for MDA. However, Uncle Fester says that sodium cyanoborohydride gives him poor yields and he dismisses its usefulness. Uncle Fester is wrong on this count and on other points. Sodium cyanoborohydride reductive amination of phenylacetone or 3,4MDP2P can give up to 98% yield in very large batches with no side reactions. Alexander Shulgin in PiHKAL discusses the use of sodium cyanoborohydride reductive amination but only for very small batches. In fairness to both authors it should be said that Fester is a good read but is often wrong, whereas Shulgin is a difficult read but is often deficient. Uncle Fester presents the use of activated aluminium for reductive amination and so does Shulgin. Aluminium may be the best way to go, but since I have not yet had the opportunity to try it, I am not in a position to comment.

Let us start with theory. Why do reductive amination at all? Many poor thinkers advocate the bromination of safrole with hydrobromic acid followed by amination with methylamine. What could be simpler? What could be more stupid? Chemists have been synthesising various amphetamines for nearly one hundred years now using various sophisticated approaches and only now is the simplistic route being promoted. The problems these people fail to address are two fold. 1) Hydrobromination of saffrole is problematic. 2) The nucleophilic potential of an amine goes up with the degree of substitution. That means the reaction will not stop at the secondary amine MDMA but will aminate one or two more bromosafrole molecules to give a tertiary or quaternary amine and not the product you want.

Reductive amination using sodium cyanoborohydride address this issue properly. Sodium borohydride is more accessible than sodium cyanoborohydride, but it will reduce the ketone to the secondary alcohol and so it is not used. Sodium cyanoborohydride used at neutral pH has the property that it will reduce the imine (Schiff base) formed between the ketone and methylamine much much faster that the imine. It is a selective reducing agent of the first rank.

For research purposes the place to start for primary literature is the Merck Index. The entry for will lead you to the original literature which details the synthesis of sodium cyanoborohydride and also the typical procedures used in reductive amination or other selective reductions. Sodium cyanoborohydride can be made by reacting equimolar quantities of sodium borohydride and hydrogen cyanide in THF. One gram of hydrogen cyanide can kill one hundred men so do not attempt this unless you are a first rank chemist like me. The hydrogen cyanide is made following a procedure found in Organic Synthesis, Collective Edition. Work at the 50 -100 gram scale in a distillation apparatus with ground glass joints. Emil Fischer established the practice where you must smoke cigarettes while you do this work. Nicotine accentuates the taste of HCN to give you an early warning of danger. In the absence of a fumehood wear scuba gear when disassembling the glassware. Store the liquid HCN frozen in the freezer. Combine equimolar quantities of NaBH4 and HCN in THF and allow the reaction to go to completion with the evolution of H2. Remove the THF with a rotary evaporator. If you do not own a rotary evaporator go out and buy one right now. The NaCNBH3 you made fresh is better than any you can buy. If you don't mind the heat, go out and buy the NaCNBH3 instead.

More theory: the reductive amination of the ketone can lead to higher amines but this can be overcome with the use a five times molar excess of methylamine. That means that for this reaction you are going to want to make a large quantity of methylamine hydrochloride. 40% aqueous methylamine is easy to get and work with. Take equimolar quantities of 40% MeNH2 and concentrated HCl and make them as cold as you can in a deep freeze. Do the next part outdoors, clandestine and at night to avoid detection. Combine the two cold liquids quickly in a 1000 ml beaker. It will get real hot real quick and a lot of MeNH3CL smoke will be given off but you can put a cover on the beaker and the smoke will dissipate real quick so the neighbours will be unaware of what you did. Take the solution inside cool it and then remove all the water with your rotary evaporator to yield a good crop of white methylamine hydrochloride as a cake in your flask.

So now you are all set to do your reductive amination of your ketone. You start with either phenylacetone or with 3,4MDP2P. Organic Synthesis, Collective Edition describes to methods for making the phenylacetone. One involves the condensation of acetic anhydride with benzylcyanide using sodium ethoxide, the other, the tube furnace method from phenylacetic acid. Or you made the 3,4MDP2P from isosafrole, 30% H2O2 and formic acid following the "Japanese Method" detailed somewhere in Chemical Abstracts. You can also find more details of the methods by using DejaNews to wade through the last several years of this newsgroup.

More theory: sodium cyanoborohydride is a selective reducing agent and it evolves hydrogen at a slow rate in solution. So you do not want to want to react at reflux. Reductive amination with sodium cyanoborohydride is best done in methanol at room temperature. The reaction is mostly over in a day and a half and 98% yield can be achieved in three days of waiting. Starting with a given molar quantity of ketone use a 25-50% molar excess of NaCNBH3 based on moles of hydrogen and a five times molar quantity of MeNH3CL in sufficient methanol to bring everything into solution. The beauty of this reaction is that you do not need expensive glassware of fixed capacity. You can work at humungous scale using even a plastic garbage can.

After three days neutralize any unreacted NaCNBH3 using a calculated quantity of dilute HCl or acetic acid. Remove all of the methanol using your rotary evaporator. Then dissolve all of the cake in H2O. Add sufficient 5 N NaOH to cause the desired amine product to separate as a slightly brown layer floating on top of the aqueous layer. Here is where the work up can be slightly different depending on whether the product is methamphetamine or MDMA. The meth cook will sample the meth and continue his work in an energized manner for many more hours or days. Good meth cooks tend to be fastidious about the quality of the meth he makes and does. It is possible to just separate the top layer using a separatory funnel and to carry on. A better approach is to steam distill the amine out of the pot. The water in the aqueous layer is sufficient. The steam distillate is collected. Separation is enhanced by the addition of just sufficient 5 N NaOH. The floating amine layer is now clear. The top layer is removed with a separatory funnel an the bottom layer is washed a couple of times with a small quantity of ethyl ether which is combined with the top layer. You now have liquid meth with a small quantity of ether, a little dissolved water and perhaps some MeNH2 or unreacted ketone as a water white oily liquid. It is traditional to dry this over anhydrous NaSO4 or equivalent. Now set up your vacuum distillation apparatus with a water aspirator vacuum pump. If you do not own a distillation apparatus with ground glass joints go out and buy one right now. Depending on your vacuum the product will distill at 130 C or so and the liquid MDMA somewhat higher.

With the pure liquid meth it is now time to create the hydrochloride. Many people think it is possible to create crystal meth using gaseous hydrogen chloride. I have never seen this to be true. What is obtained instead is an amorphous product. Why bother. Instead use your HCL gas generator to produce a quantity of anhydrous methanolic HCL in the case of MDMA or you can use aqueous HCL for meth. Combine equimolar quantities of HCl solution and amine product in methanol to neutrality. Use your rotary evaporator to remove solvent to yield a white cake in your flask. This is crude though pure methamphetamine HCl or MDMA HCL.

It is now time to recrystallize your immensely valuable product. Dissolve the cake in the minimum quantity of hot isopropyl alcohol. Cool the IPA solution in the fridge. Crystallization may begin. Layer the solution on top with an equal quantity of anhydrous diethyl ether and put beaker into freezer overnight. I am told it is also possible to use methanol and MEK as solvent pairs. Overnight the ether layer will be seen to diffuse into the IPA and a massive crystallization has occurred. Stir if necessary. Some crystals will be needles upto one mm in length. You are laughing. Separate solvent from filter mass using a buchner filter and vacuum. Air dry for a while and then remove residual using a vacuum desiccator. You have a world class crystalline product. You have money in the bank.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sjames]

Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done.

I sincerely hope thats just flamebait.

If not, consider that if that were done, an entire world of chocolate lovers and the multi-billion dollar a year industry that serves their wants would all compete to think of the most horrendous punishment ever invented, just for those responsible.

Drug education would say "Such and such drugs will do this to you, have these side effects, and will kill you in approximately such a number of years."

GREAT! they can start with the prescription and OTC drugs I see advertised on TV. You know, the ones that whisper at the end ".02 percent of users grew an unperceptable amount of hair like fuzz, the rest died of heart attacks."

Re:OOG OFFER INFO ON CAVE-WEED!!!

[jafac]

Maybe OOG could be a bit more historically accurate:

Turn off your caps-lock key, and take a hammer and chisel to that shiny colorful stone tablet in front of your face.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[jafac]

I'm not saying that there are people who can tolerate moderate heroin use -

But I have seen, first hand, the horrors of alchohol addiction. Worse still, when someone destroys their life on Heroin, they tend to be abandoned, they tend to usually not take a family down with them.

I have seen whole families lives destroyed by this harmful drug. Yet I am not out calling for prohibiton on alchohol. Some people can tolerate it's moderate use, and not be addicted.

What is harmful, with regard to ANY drug, is the prohibition-attitude, thinking that they can clamp down on it and stop the behavior. Are they nuts? We can't even stop everyone from exceeding the speed limit!
As a recovering heroin addict, wouldn't you be in deep do do if the only information on how to break your addiction to heroin, maybe some treatment or program, were considered by the anti-drug folks to be "too informative", and blacked out, by this law? Their solution for you: eventually you will be caught, thrown in jail - that's the cure for you. None of this publically funded methadone clinic crap. Just jail em all.

As a recovering internet porn addict, I can very confidently say that porn online should definately NOT be banned. I must rely on my individual will power to "keep clean". Not fascist government intervention. Otherwise, I'm not really keeping clean, am I? Someone else is doing the dirty work for me. Fuck that.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[jafac]

WHen I was in college, there was a student who died my first week there. He had a shot-glass he had stolen from the bar, in a pocket. Walking home from the bars, he passed out, fell, and the glass severed his femural artery. He bled to death in 60 seconds.

Two years ago, I had moved to a California college town. Some kid, recent college grad, was out celebrating graduation. He went back to his house, although he apparently had forgotten he had already moved out, was staying in a hotel to drive back home the next day, to start a $70k/yr job as a programmer. Since his house had been vacated, the owner was fumagating. The kid went under the tent, into the house, and fell asleep on the living-room floor. The pesticides killed him.

My son's grandfather was an alchoholic for 30 years. Worked a backhoe. Killed a co-worker because he was drunk on the job. Was involved in several minor traffic accidents, but somehow was never caught as DUI. Raped his daughters. Beat his wife. Unemployed for most of the 30 years. Died on the operating table after his 5th heart attack at age 55.

Maybe the first two could have happened from other drugs, maybe the last one could have happened with other drugs. But all of these happened with "harmless" alchohol.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:WATER is bad

[jafac]

stop the lies? You're the one spouting wine-industry propaganda, perverted to anti-american nationalism.

I know this because I live in California, and the wine-industry spews the same bullshit here, only they don't try to shoot down a nationality.

Alchohol is a poison. It is a waste product of fermentation. It kills bacteria, it kills brain cells in humans. (in my opinion tho- it just prunes the weak ones, leaving the strong ones behind to flourish.)

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:WATER is bad

[jafac]

the point here, mon ami, is NOT to demonize alchohol. It is to point out the hypocracy in the prohibition attitude, which DOES have puritan roots.

The hypocracy that alcohol (and caffeine, and cigarettes) is harmless, and other drugs are bad.

The point we're trying to illustrate here is that they're ALL bad - when misused. But the scale that is illustrated by the prohibition propaganda, is hypocritical. We're not saying that alcohol should be banned, we're saying that the other drugs SHOULDN'T be.

I drink a glass of red wine every day.
I torch up a doobie once in a while as well.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:quick FYI

[jafac]

irratability, anxiety attacks, nervousness, sweats, insomnia, cravings, severe constipation, and of course, extreme weight-gain from when you quit drinking diet coke or diet pepsi, you choice for non-caffinated carbonated beverages most places you go to buy beverages, is Sprite or 7-UP, thanks to the cola cartels (who also have an oligopoly). There often is no caffeine-free diet-cola or diet Sprite available, nor is there sparkling water, in America. No choice. No choice. Sounds like a job for David Boise.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:Commiland

[jafac]

um, we already DO have prison labor.

No death penalty for tax evasion, per se,

Forced abortions will NEVER happen in this country. NEVER. No matter how many Clintons (Hillary) are in the whitehouse.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[jafac]

What would really be nice, if we took every politician who was sworn to uphold the constitution, examine their record for passing unconstitutional laws, and the ones that have not upheld the constitution as they have sworn, were fired.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:Has anything eroded the constitution

[jafac]

You would not be the first conspiracy theorist to draw that conclusion. In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence to support such a theory.

if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!

Re:quick FYI

[tzanger]

fun fact: marijuana is a stimulant, and a halucinogen - although most people think it's a "downer" - it increases your blood pressure and heart rate. Many people also hear things and see things on pot. you can read more that the lycaeum.

My first experience with marijuana wasn't very memorable... the most obvious effect it had on me was that it made my beer taste absolutely awful, so I quit drinking for the night and went to bed. It was raining outside and I could hear incredible melodies in the rain.

My third experience with marijuana was the memorable one. I didn't come down from that for a good 6 hours, and I wasn't myself for 24. The guy swears up and down that it was local stuff, nothing added, not high THC, nada. I trust him, but I wonder what the fuck it was that made it last so long.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[florin]

Although possession (up to an amount appropriate for personal use, which is couple of grams) and use are not strictly protected citizen rights by any law here, legal precedents show that you can't be convicted for it.

Selling, importing and cultivating are not legal and the police can choose to interfere with any cannabis related activity. Most of the time, they only bother going after large scale importers (container sized) and people who have multiple greenhouses full of hemp. Their electricity bill tends to give them away.

Most cities in the Netherlands choose to enforce a mild, realistic approach to cannabis and they attempt to control the inevitable sales by allowing a certain number of coffeeshops. How many , in how obscure streets you'll have to find them, and whether or not they're allowed to also sell alcoholic beverages tends to vary from place to place. Here in Amsterdam things are as tolerant as they get.

Unfortunately, the tolerance here leads to continuous stress between the netherlands and its neighbouring countries, with perhaps france in particular. Many citizens of these countries enjoy the herb while they are visiting, and some choose to take some home. To their leaders, I say peace mon.

Re:OOG OFFER INFO ON CAVE-WEED!!!

[florin]

Hey Oog, chill out man here have a drag and then pass the piece cause a circle is round know what I mean mate??

Greetings from Amsterdam

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[osi]

Actually its because caffience dialates the capillaries in the brain, and more blood up there helps soothe the headache

Even more scary...

[Chakotay]

You could tack bullshit riders onto something to prevent it from being passed. For example, if there's a bill you don't like, you could tack a rider onto it that would NEVER pass to pull the entire bill down. Or is that already happening on a wide scale? And is there a way to see the difference? I mean, most riders that are tacked onto bills with the intention to get the riders passed seem so braindead that they could just aswell be meant to pull down the bill...


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Chakotay]

Yes, and a criminal faced with a high probability that victims are armed will probably either (a) find an honest way to make a living, or (b) resort to non-confrontational crimes. This effect is pretty well documented, if you cared to inform yourself.

Ah, I see now... So robbers are afraid of the people they rob because they might have firearms on them? Hmmmm, so that must be why there are so much more robberies, muggings and other such crimes in the US than there are in the Netherlands? Oh wait, by your logic, that should be reverse! Yet it isn't... Since your knowledge of criminology is obviously so much better than mine, would you care to explain, please?


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Chakotay]

Heck, crime rates DROPPED in FL after they started handing out the permits! How can you refute that?

I must say that you do have a point... There are ofcourse two sides to this issue, as always.

There are two opposite sides of the swing: one side where everybody has fire arms, and you get some sort of stand-off. The other side is where nobody has guns. In reality, ofcourse, you'll always be somewhere inbetween, and your choice is where you want to be.

The first fact is that criminals will always be able to get guns. One way to solve the problem is to outlaw guns so you can, on easy grounds, get those criminals behind bars. Another way is to arm the general population to create a stand-off.

The whole drug issue is also tied in here somewhere... Here in the Netherlands there is virtually no organised crime. I mean, what criminal organisation doesn't have anything to do with drugs? Mafia-like organisations, maybe, but those have also never existed here. No large-scale organised crime means a LOT less crime involving fire-arms, and thus no need to arm civilians in defense of such - the police are efficient enough by themselves. Murders - any murders, anywhere in the country - are national news because they're, fortunately, very rare.

To make the system banning fire-arms effective, you need to root out organised crime. To root out organised crime, you need to:
a) legalise soft drugs
b) stop treating junkies criminally - treat them medically
c) keep cracking down on illegal drugs

Actually, b) isn't necessary to root out organised crime, but it's just something intrinsically logical that the US seems to overlook :)


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Chakotay]

Frankly, though I don't consider this a very convincing argument. Lusers misusing things and not following safety precautions are the real problem.

You've got a point there... So what about Lusers who misuse/abuse drugs? Is that a reason to ban all drugs? Hmmm, food for thought :)

Unfortunately, actually reducing that threat would require real work, not just repeating "Guns == BAD!".

Fact remains that crime rates are much lower in countries where firearms are illegal for the general population. Ofcourse that could be due to various other things, but it does raise some thought. I mean, I spent a few weekends in the Bijlmermeer, "the bad part" of Amsterdam, visiting friends of my girlfriend, dropping by black bars and clubs (black as in skin colour) taking black cab rides (black as in illegal) with random black people (black as in skin colour) at the wheel. Could a white young man like me do that in "the bad part" of a random American city?

One thing did make my skin crawl, though... I was in the elevator in Develstijn, the building where those friends live, with a black guy in a really nice suit with lots of gold on his neck and fingers, talking on his cell phone about bringing "the boys" to bury somebody. But relating that with criminal activity could ofcourse been overimagination from watching too many bad American movies *grin*


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:A lil shot of reality

[Chakotay]

I'm sorry to hear that... And at the same time I praise myself lucky that I live in a country where armed robberies are a rarity. So, yes, I am biased towards banning guns, but just the same, you are biased towards keeping them legal...

But still, somebody who can kill somebody in cold blood, like your brother was killed, must have killed before, for as far as I understand criminal psychology. The first time he shot a person was probably in a shoot-or-be-shot situation... Though that's ofcourse unfunded speculation.

My only experience with firearms is being on the good side of them, doing it for sport on paper targets at 10, 12, 25, 50 or 100 meters...


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Chakotay]

If statistics are your game, why don't you come up with how many armed cops are robbed in relation to how many unarmed are robbed??

I'm not talking about if the robbery takes place or not - I'm talking about WHEN it takes place, what the robber will do. If the victim gives him some cash, the robber will go. If the victim grabs a gun, the robber will shoot.

Fact remains that in this country, where "packing" as you so elegantly call it is illegal, the crime rate is much lower than in the US. Whatever you say about wanting a gun, the no-gun system seems to be working quite nicely here...


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Chakotay]

The prohibition of guns would only keep them out of the hands of lawful citizens.

Bingo! And is that a bad thing? Yes, criminals will always get their guns somewhere anyway, but there are a few other things to consider:

1. If guns are illegal, you can arrest people simply for owning a gun. Remember how hard it was to get Al Capone, and how easy it would have been to get him AND all his henchmen if guns were outlawed?

2. A criminal faced with an unarmed civilian will most likely not fire. A criminal faced with an armed civilian most likely will. Count the bodies.

3. As far as I know, though I could be wrong about that, most injuries and deaths by firearms among innocent civilians (i.e. not criminals) are by accidents with legal firearms.

Comparing guns to alcohol and other drugs is the next fallacy. By using alcohol or other drugs as they're intended to be used, you only endanger yourself. By using a gun the way it's intended to be used, you endanger other people's lives, by definition. See the difference? See why alcohol and (certain) drugs can be allowed, while guns (IMHO) can't?

Legalise soft drugs and prostitution - solves a LOT of problems, saves a LOT of money. Ban guns. Also solves quite a few problems, and saves a LOT of money too.

Hmmm, I wonder how we got into guns, drugs and prostitution in a thread about freedom of speech?


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Chakotay]

Though I feel very much sympathy for your position, I'd like to ask you a few questions. If you don't wish to answer, that's cool.

I presume that you started out with drugs on a purely recreational basis, most likely marijuana-based drugs, and later discovered heroin?

Would you have "switched" to heroin if marijuana were safe, cheap, legal and of excellent quality while heroin is unsafe, expensive, illegal and of doubtful quality?

I know for a fact that most people who are or have been addicted to truly dangerous drugs like heroin, cocain or crack will answer "no" to the above question. They would have most probably stuck to purely recreational use of marijuana.

The problem with use of marijuana so easily leading to use of the really bad drugs in the US is that the threshold between them is way too small. It's already illegal and expensive to get a hold of marijuana, so it's an easy step to buying heroin, cocain or crack through very much the same channels for very much the same outrageous prices.

I have been a recreational marijuana-smoker, though I haven't smoked any marijuana since I quit smoking tobacco two years ago. I've never used XTC any other drugs (well, except caffeine and alcohol ofcourse). In the Netherlands there are, percengage-wise, a LOT less heroin or cocain addicts, and crack has never been heard of here. Because of the low number of hard drug addicts, and the free distribution of methadon to registered and "hopeless" addicts, there is also virtually no organised criminal activity.

See the virtues of legalised drugs. I fully understand your aversion to drugs, I know what heroin does to a person, I know how extremely hard it is to get off it, and I cincerely hope you will be able to leave it behind entirely and get on with your life, but that doesn't mean all drugs are equally bad...


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[Chakotay]

You can easily drink 4 glasses of wine a day and are extremely unlikely to become alcoholic.

The official medical definition of "alcoholic" is to, drink 2 or more alcoholic beverages per day on average. My father was such an alcoholic for a long time, drinking 2-4 glasses of beer every night, until he found out that he didn't feel good and couldn't sleep if he didn't. He consulted his physician, and managed to break the habit.

Many people are alcoholics without realising it. Actually, most alcoholics don't realise it...


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Chakotay]

Treat it as a medical problem, not a criminal one. Who knows, it might even just work.

Exactly! That's the approach the Netherlands are taking towards use of drugs other than the legalised marijuana. As for sale and production of those drugs, that ofcourse is dealt with as the criminal problem it is. But addicts are not jailed, they're being helped. Helping an addict off his habit and back into society with a job and a place to live is much cheaper in the long run than locking him up for a few years and then kicking him onto the streets again, to only see him return to prison within a few years on the same charges.


)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,

Re:what's even scarier

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, it's been a _long_ time since I took any politics classes that discussed this but IIRC it works like this:

There are no rules regarding riders per se. In fact, Congress can pass virtually any law they like although they run the risk of it being found unconstitutional and being struck down. However, the riders are amendments to bills that must be passed either on the floor (preferably when there's few enough people around that no one notices) or in a committee. Committees are typically ruled by their chairs, and the chairs are appointed by a combination of the majority party, seniority and favor exchanges.

Riders are actually fairly new (maybe ~50 years old) and before they became common, everything happened in the committees and the various chairs effectively ran the show. But you're right on the money as to why it is that we have riders; to pass an unpopular bill by attaching it in a remora-like fashion, to a bill that is likely to become law. Or to sometimes reverse it and villify whoever won't pass the good part of the bill.

It's unfortunate but the system does actually still tend to work - well, as much as it ever did. No small amount of the genius in our political system was in encouraging a system where it's difficult to ever do anything. Line item vetos were an attempt around riders, but it was both unconstitutional and even more dangerous.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[cpt kangarooski]

Is this a troll? I mean come on. You not only want to invade a soverign country and bomb it, but you have a remarkably one sided approach to the freedom of speech.

For instance, it would be illegal to describe the differences between cocaine and roach poison. While I'd be happiest if no one used cocaine recreationally (it has medicinal uses - they use it for some kinds of surgery) I would prefer that they did not kill themselves by taking something that's outright toxic; better that the person lives and gets straightened out.

Let's NOT ban speech. The farthest that the Supremes have tended to go is to ban speech that directly, immediately incites violence. So it would be illegal for me to go to Washington, find the bonehead that proposed this bill and tell an angry mob "Let's string him up." It would NOT be illegal for me to say "When the revolution comes, we're going to find him and string him up." because there's no immediate threat. Hanging the congressman is still a crime though, and there's a really significant difference between doing it and talking about it.

This is a dumb bill, and yet another example of our nations stupid War on Some Drugs.

Re:So are the legal ones. What's your point?

[cpt kangarooski]

I wholeheartedly agree - both in having no desire to take drugs of any sort (barring serious medical need) and in wanting to live in a free country and not a police state.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[cpt kangarooski]

And this in a state where Curley did so well? I'm shocked and appalled. I always liked Massachusetts (used to live there) but this is pretty sad.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes this is true. I should have made this more clear, although I am aware of it.

I overestimated your abilities

[Loundry]

I notice you failed to answer not one but both of my questions. I take it this means that you are incapable of generating any kind of comment outside of stereotypes and snide comments. I'll be happy to debate you as soon as you are able to muster up some kind of argument.

Re:I overestimated your abilities

[Nicolas MONNET]

Debate what? Debate a worthless statement such as 'stereotypes are bad'?

Stereotypes are fun

[Loundry]

By 'regulated', they probably meant fat, heinous, stupid, racist, irrational like a NRA member.

Likewise, all democrats are communists, all feminists are lesbians, and all gays are child molestors.

Re:Stereotypes are fun

[Loundry]

Do you not realize that stereotypes are bad? Is a sarcastic reply all you can muster in response to the point I was trying to make?

Re:Stereotypes are fun

[Nicolas MONNET]

"Stereotypes are bad"? My, you must have a Ph.D in philosophy or something!

Well I'm a bad boy anyway.

Re:Stereotypes are fun

[Nicolas MONNET]

I'm impressed by your wit. Really, I am.

Re:Then...

[Nicolas MONNET]

Well by my own admission I was not since I have stopped drinking that much without the side effects usually referred to as 'delirium tremens'. QED.

Re:Not a follower of media hysteria ...

[Nicolas MONNET]

C'm'on, you can do better than that. Good flaming require some originality.

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[Nicolas MONNET]

I've been drinking more than that for a period of a few months. Mostly in bars, well actually drinking beer, not wine. Let me tell you what, that was nothing compared to my british or Irigh fellows. But then, *they* probably were alcoholics actually.

Re:Are you a troll or just stupid?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Et après ça, les français se demandent pourquoi ils sont pas bien aimés au monde entier.

I see you guys keep repeating that to feel better ... when there's actually only one nation that's not really liked in most countries ... let me see ... which one is it ...

The cool part about NRA zealots ...

[Nicolas MONNET]

... is that there's always a significant chance that they shoot themselves or their children while playing with their toys. Thanks a lot for keeping the gene pool clean.

Re:The cool part about NRA zealots ...

[Montressor]

Idiot. I don't mean to sound like flamebait, but you are a total moron and spineless follower of media hysteria.
Sure, the NRA has many members close-minded self-righteous bastards like yourself would call 'hicks' or 'rednecks.' But the truth is, guns are used to prevent and stop over a million crimes every year.
Not only that, but accidental shootings are actually quite rare. The anti-gun zealots, as you used the term, are the ones who popularized rare anecdotes of accidental shootings.

Not a follower of media hysteria ...

[Nicolas MONNET]

... just non American. Therefore I'm rather unlikely to have fallen for the NRA bullshit to begin with.

Yack.

[Gray]

I'm going to have to move to Sealand or learn dutch at this rate. It's times like this I understand why gun control nuts get so upset..

Re:Do you realize who you are talking to?

[hobbit]

I read the first two comments you posted to this article and was impressed. This one, however, was doomed from the moment you started: "Everybody knows that..."

Everybody knows that heroin (as it is available on the street) is 1) very addictive and 2) bad for your health to the point where you might die every time you use it.

Your number 2 is a property of street heroin, which is exactly the point that the original poster was making. You think that heroin would be administered in hospitals if it were really a case of Russian Roulette every time?

Do you think that the people who take heroin aren't just the same "too chicken-shit to just jump off a bridge" people who drink everything in sight as soon as they can get their hands on it?

I think that heroin attracts a class of people who are running away from problems; but I don't see why that should be an inherent property. To my mind, one should never take drugs as an answer, only as a question. This applies to heroin and to alcohol.

Yes, heroin might not be the "horrible, horrible thing it is today", but that doesn't mean that the same people wouldn't destroy themselves somehow.

That isn't the case with alcohol.

This is a complete non-sequitur. In the first sentence you are talking about people, but then in the second you are talking about drugs. To separate the two is entirely the point.

When prohibition came, people still didn't know how to party without booze. So a lot of normal, non-self-destructive people were put in the position of needing to buy bathtub gin. It's pretty different.

Define 'need'. Now tell me how that differs from people's choice to abuse other drugs. As long as it doesn't harm anyone else (and pretty much the only problem I have with taking drugs is the funding of terrorism), why take away people's liberties?

Hamish

Re:the point was...

[hobbit]

The point was that heroin today doesn't hurt anyone who's not asking for it.

This reminds me of the argument, "People who want to be able to use encryption must have something to hide".

It's been illegal for a long time, and everybody knows how unhealthy the junk you can buy on the street is.

So if you legalise it, then users can get nice clean heroin, and your point is moot.

People had ways of doing things (like partying) that required alcohol, and when their regulated, healthy supply was cut off, they naturally used the unregulated, dangerous supply (having had access to the good stuff all their lives, they just expected that the most dangerous think in their bathtub gin would be ethanol).

Well, you still haven't explained what you mean by "required" (my question previously stated as "Define 'need'."). But is your argument really based on the assertion that alcohol prohibition was dangerous because people hadn't yet caught on to the dangers? If so, are you saying that if they'd kept it up a bit longer, things would have been okay?

The point was that alcohol prohibition killed healthy, productive members of society, while the heroin prohibition mostly kills suicidal nutcases who will probably find some other way to off themselves a bit at a time if heroin is made relatively safe.

Escapism and self-destruction are not the same thing, although they might share many of the same causes. Besides, my original point still stands: heroin's current and potential situations are different. There is plenty of interesting literature influenced by opium experiences; why should heroin, a close relative, have no beneficial side?

Is the moderator correct? Are you really just trolling me?

Hamish

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[hobbit]

So, it's meaningless to say that 'snowboarding is fun', for instance, because you're likely to be under the influence of adrenaline when you make that decision?

It's a chemical world. Get over it.

Hamish

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[pqbon]

Except really strong gun control laws do work. (Let me say right away that I want to own a gun and I think there is nothing wrong with it). How ever countries with strict laws like Japan or many of the countries in europe have very few cases of gun related violence.

"... That probably would have sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas..."
-Buffy Summers
Goodbye Iowa

Re:go, ACLU!

[bstadil]

Agree. I joined ACLU one year ago and only regret I didn't do it earlier. The information you recieve is very interesting and its only $15 or so per year (you can donate more obviously). Every time you think "Somebody needs to do something about so and so". Rember if it wasn't for ACLU, that Somebody often wouldn't be there.

Re:What you can do about it

[ajf]

Politicians live and die by the vote, they care about nothing else and will respond to nothing else. They know which segments of society vote and which don't. Those who don't are going to get the short end of the stick from those who do.

Call me cynical, but I suspect those who don't vote are getting the short end of the stick fromt hose who contribute to campaign funds, and those who do vote aren't much better off than those who don't.

WFT?

[tilly]

Please read more carefully.

I was not talking pro-life vs pro-choice.

I am talking about explaining to a married couple how to use a condom. Or explaining the relative risks of withdrawal and rhythm. For much of the 1900's in the USA it was against the law for doctors to even discuss the issue. (On the grounds that the information could pass to people who were not married and encourage immoral behaviour.)

I have met and discussed these issues with many people who were pro-life. Even those who do not use birth control themselves due to their religious beliefs (think Catholics) do not believe it to actually be murder to attempt to prevent contraception.

Regards,
Ben

Sorry about the poor terminology

[tilly]

And yeah. Riders are slops for the pigs in government.

However not all riders are pet projects. A lot are (like this one) laws that will remain in effect until someone goes through the expense of trying it in court.

The latter is what I would like to see discouraged. Rather than, "You scratch my back, I will scratch yours" make it, "WTF are you trying to do to my law?"

Cheers,
Ben

PS Incidentally that is how equality for women wound up becoming law. JFK wanted a law banning racial discrimination. Opponents got women included since they thought it would sink the bill. Then JFK died, and the bill was passed in his memory with rider still attached...

Hemp != Marijuana

[Kozz]

These two things are NOT the same. They are from the same family of plants, but they are NOT the same. Marijuana plants are typically very bushy & leafy, whereas hemp plants are primarily a main fibrous stalk, with very little leaves. Hemp is/was grown for the fibers in the stalk and NOT the leaves. If you want, try smoking some leaves from a hemp plant, and all you're likely to get is a headache.

I hate it when people mistakenly equate the two in the effort to justify legalization of marijuana when they're really talking about the many uses of hemp. True hemp advocates know this, but the marijuana advocates rarely know the difference. Don't agree with me? Read this or this or this or do your own search on the phrase "hemp is not marijuana".


Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Re:All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[Orgasmatron]

>Alcohol is a recreational drug with no medical use (well no common medical use anyway).

Alcohol makes an excellent organic solvent and disinfectant and has been used for centuries or millenia as a cauterizing agent. Denatured alcohol (Rubbing alcohol, basically alcohol + bad tasting stuff) is sold in drugstores for these purposes. Not to mention making useful tinctures of various herbs...

My experience with caffeine

[Zen]

I agree. This dolt obviously doesn't have any first hand experience with caffeine. Probably a Mormon - they outlaw it, as they do all mood-altering drugs (at least that's my concept of what they do).

From first hand experience I can tell you that caffeine is addictive. I was addicted for almost one entire school year, back in High School. I started out drinking a two liter of Coke every day in the first couple periods. Then I switched to caffeine pills. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I went through the cheap 100mg tablets (equivalent to one cup of coffee), and started on the 200mg tablets (nodoze I think?) Then I started taking a couple at a time. Pretty soon I was up to around 2000mg a day, which besides the strain on my body, started to put a strain on my no-income budget, too. Amazingly, I still slept fairly decently, because my body had adjusted for the mass influx of caffeine, and required it to function normally, instead of using it to perk me up.

After finals one day I decided to quit cold turkey, and luckily my mental strength was strong enough to take it. I didn't ingest any major form of caffeine for a couple months (pop, coffee, chocolate, etc), and now I'm back with most of the population drinking a can or two a day.

So, yes, I stopped cold turkey, but some people can do that with any form of drug addiction. That doesn't mean that I wasn't addicted, that just means that I am one of the lucky people who was able to control my cravings after I decided that I didn't want to do it anymore.

Re:My experience with caffeine

[TheCarp]

> From first hand experience I can tell you that
> caffeine is addictive. I was addicted for
> almost one entire school year, back in High
> School.

My experience with addiction also came in HS. I was never one to get enough sleep at night so, I knew tea had caffeinew (actually has a few cousin chemicals of caffeine too - its somewhat more active - overall - than coffee). So...I drank nestea every morning before class. (there was a soft drink machine)

Every day I would have one...or two or three. Then of course one or two at lunch....and maybe one after school for good measure.

One day...I forgot to bring money to school. ALL day long I experienced hot flashes, cold sweats. I knew right away that I was an addict.

Ever since I have monitored my caffeine intake. I try to be very careful with it. I usually allow myself some tea in the morning...maybe one or two ....but after noon no more. At night? never. As for soda, I switched to ginger ale.

All in all I have been much happier ever since. I sleep much better at night. I don't get headaches in the morning before my tea (and if I ever do...then I cut all caffeine out for a solid week). And of course...as little caffeine as possible on weekends...to give my body a rest.

Its really not hard to monitor caffeine intake, or ANY drug really. Its just a matter of knowing your body, knowing the drug, and knowing that you don't NEED any drug at all. (on a regular basis... ocasionally one NEEDs a stimulent for a short time like when sleep is not an option because the disk array got itself wedged in the night)

I think the reall problem is that our society doesn't teach this. There is little incentive to learn how to manage ones intake of drugs. Hell the most common drugs like alcohol and caffeine etc aren't even considered to be drugs by many.

Im just glad I learned my lessons early.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Si]

"It's absurd to compare illicit narcotics with caffeine."

Yet you do so in all of your points and your conclusion.

"Caffeine is not outlawed. Can caffeine produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics? No, then, I am not against websites like that."

Guns are not outlawed. Can guns produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics? No, then, I am not against websites like that.

Cars are not outlawed. Can cars produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics? No, then, I am not against websites like that.

My point? That many many things can and do have far worse effects on people than illicit-or-otherwise drugs. Most outlawed substances are that way because of arbitrary decisions by ill-informed doctors made years ago.

"Caffeine does not cause people to go rob stores/banks/innocents so they can get cash for their next fix. Drugs do. When was the last time you saw someone jumped in the street because the mugger needed money for a Coke? "

Perhaps if it were possible to go into a supermarket and buy a pound of 'drugs', no-one would be jumped in the street.

It's not the drugs that create the crime, it's the fact that they can only be obtained illegally and therefore at a much higher price, and less easily, than otherwise. Actually, the need for alcohol ( a legal drug) does cause crimes to be committed. Maybe poverty is the cause of this sort of crime?

And, as others have pointed out, caffeine is addictive.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[DavidTC]

Your right to free speech is not being infringed, you're being prohibited from spreading information about a criminal activity.

Hehehe. First of all, change 'freedom of speech' (and freedom of press) into 'freedom to spread information' (as that's what it's for), then reread that sentence.

-David T. C.

Re:go, ACLU!

[DavidTC]

Yes, heaven forbid that some students, picked by the administrators, can't lead everyone, even people who complain about it, in prayer. I mean, everyone should be forced to pray!

People like this, that just don't get it, piss me off. It's prayer. It's offically supported by the school. It's during an offical school football game. The fact that a student leads it doesn't matter. If a student wants to lead a prayer, unsupported by the school, before a game, go ahead. But if it's in the locker room, at the offical prayer time, and the person is picked by the coach, make it school, and thus, government sponsered. What part of this do you not understand?

Here, in GA, the Baptists do something call 'Fifth Quarter'. It's after the game, nearby. It's just fine. Do you honestly not see how this would be different if the school provided facilties and made it part of the football game?

People who want students praying at school really, really piss me off. No one's stopping them from praying. However, it's 100% not the place of the school to support them, and definately not to encourage them!

-David T. C.

DMCA?

[marius]

This sounds just like title V of the DMCA. You've got Title's I-IV which actually pertain to copyrights, then in comes title V, talking about Vessel Hull Safety in 200 foot vessels. I'm of the opinion that bills that go through the legislature should all pertain to the same topic. none of this mingled stuff.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[toriver]

Now that you've had to recategorize yourself as "someone who is open to experimentation with drugs", you don't have anything to lose by trying another drug...

More likely: Since anti-marijuana arguments are lumped together with the arguments against heavier drugs, and the user finds that the scare propaganda against marijuana is false, they may conclude that the stuff about the harder drugs is also false, though some of it actually may be true.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Omnifarious]

That's not what he's saying. You're using a bunch of charged phrases like 'question the status quo' to try to obscure his point. His point is that some way of altering your perception of the world are more dangerous than other, and that drugs tend to be a more dangerous way than many.

Of course, mountain climbing is also a dangerous way to change your outlook on the world, but we seem to accept that as a society. :-)

Reply from Congressman Steve Largent

[apropos]

I just don't know what to think about this. I actually got an email response from a member of congress. Hmmm... maybe democracy could really work.

Dear Tom:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the so called "sneak
and peak" measures included in the Methamphetamine Anti-
Proliferation Act, H.R. 2987 and as a Senate amendment to H.R.
833.

It is my understanding that this language will be removed
altogether from H.R. 2987. This should alleviate any concerns
regarding privacy in an effort to pass this important piece of
legislation to bolster the DEA's ability to combat
methamphetamine, increase penalties for amphetamine abuse, ban
dissemination of drug recipes, and toughen criminal penalties.

A separate bill, H.R. 833, the Bankruptcy Reform bill,
passed the House and was amended in the Senate to include the
same provision. A conference committee is currently meeting to
iron out the differences between the House passed bill and the
Senate amended version. The so-called 'sneak and peak' language is
one of the differences being worked out currently. I will consider
your comments when the final version of this bill comes to the
House for approval. Thank you again for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Steve Largent

Member of Congress

No mention of the linking issue though.

Re:marijuana is not legal in amsterdam

[Kyobu]

Perhaps you're right, but I've been there, and for all intents and purposes, it's legal. There are plants growing on the sidewalks outside of shops, there are cafes that have huge plants inside, there are menus, et cetera. The same with prostitution (well, they don't have whore plants growing on the street, but you know what I mean). And no, I did not partake. But if you ask me, their system is much more rational and huumane than ours (ours = America's).

Re:go, ACLU!

[Kyobu]

That's all the more reason! Anything that gets him mad is fine by me.

Re:Hold your fire!

[jabber]

So you abdicate your right to think to the majority?

Absolutely not. The right to think (and discuss) and the right to act are very different things - and as far as this issue is concerned, I choose to act in accordance with the law. (Note: Nowhere am I saying that YOU must do the same.) The fact that I am here discussing this issue, and not running around shouting how all drug users are evil and depraved, should make that point clear.

I don't think that drugs should be illegal - personally I don't care. If they were legal, I still would not do them - but things being as they are, using drugs is illegal; and the law is the only tangible metric of right and wrong, isn't it?

So, in the legal (not moral) sense, it is wrong to do drugs. For me, this is enough to discourage me from doing them. I don't have time for the consequences. Am I passing judgement on you? I don't mean to, this is about my POV and IMHO as is pertains to MY lifestyle. Sheesh! Why is that so hard for casual drug users to accept? Is it latent guilt? Let it go, I have no beef with your lifestyle.

When someone wrongs you, the only thing you have to depend on for justice (besides your fists) is the law - but if your adherence to the law is spotty at best, then how dependable can the legal system be when you need it to protect you? I don't believe that great ideals can be served by compromising the small ones.

Drugs are pretty much a non-issue in my life, some friends do them, most don't - and at times like this they make for good conversation fodder. There are few arguments I can think of against legalizing drugs - at least the 'lightweight' (un-or simply reined ones) ones like pot. There are plenty of good arguments for legalizing pot.
As long as they are illegal, I will see them as wrong (once they are legal, I will see them as 'not my thing').

But people who try to 'justify' their drug use are being hypocritical. You know it is illegal, you know you are breaking the law by doing it. The number of responses to my original post suggests a lot of guilt, as everyone clammors to make their excuse. Hey! It's your life, do as you wish. Have fun and be safe! I'm not in a position to forgive you or excuse you; but I don't resent or blam you in any way - I just won't join you.

"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[jabber]

Censorship issue aside, you're the one that's delusional. "Caffeine, alcohol and nicottene are drugs too" is the whinny cry of pro-drug-legalization brats who do not have any other arguments. There are some good arguments, but that ain't one of them. You're right, there's much misinformation and propaganda out there about illegal drugs, but poiniting a finger at the law-abiding isn't helping your cause.

Many people do not use illegal drugs for one main reason... They are ILLEGAL. We believe in an orderly society, which has developed for itself a set of rules and guidelines of conduct. These rules are called the Law, and the line between right and wrong is drawn pretty thick across the Drug divide. If you really think you 'know better', run for office.

The Law is a living thing, and it depends on evolving ideas and the variable needs of society; but as it is now, Drugs (not to be confused with medicinal or legal lower-case drugs) are illegal. If enough people in our society agreed to legalize pot, I would still draw the line in the same place, leagal vs. illegal.

I'm willing and interested in discussing the issue, but being called a hypocrite for choosing to play by the rules really irks me. For the record, I've tried pot a few times, years ago. It didn't impress me, and as I "grew up" I decided that I would rather adibe by the Law than look for something which WOULD impress me. Game theory won out over some faux sense of moral absolutism, so sue me.

You (general) can justify your drug use by saying that other, legal substances are ALSO addictive and even more harmful, but what you're doing is still against the law. To some people, THAT makes a difference.

I sincerely hope that this explains the method behind my delusional madness.

Re:"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[jabber]

Read this post, and think for a few minutes about what I'm saying, before you flame me. Then, if you still feel incindiary, fire away!

I'm well aware of the history of pot's legal standing, but thanks for posting the details. As an aside, Jefferson also owned slaves; or is that an inconvenient fact?

One for your side now: Marijuana is four times more effective at filtering greenhouse gasses out of the atmoshpere than the next best alternative, and grows to maturity in a fraction of the time. But it's still illegal. And just how does smoking it in your bedroom contribute to educating the public about the economic and environmental benefits of MJ? Make a web-site and educate, don't just cover yourself up with factoids to justify your lifestyle.

As for selective obedience to the law.. Well, there's some vacant space in Waco that's almost ready for lease. How do you feel about murder? Thought so. How about not providing medical care to a badly ill child for religious reasons? Is it murder if the child dies, because his/her parents are Christian Scientists?

Shoving each other back and forth on the tip of the iceberg isn't going to make much differnece, and the fact that we disagree doesn't make one of us right and the other wrong. I'm no more of a fascist than you are an anarchist.

And for the record, I never said Drugs are necessarily "Evil". If that's the vibe you got, maybe you're the one that's prejudiced against opinions other than your own. I just don't do them - and one of the reasons is that they are illegal. I've gone as far as to say that, even if they were reclassified, I would still not do them, for other reasons - of did you miss that part? I'm not telling you not to do drugs, I'm just giving my opinion. That's what this place is about, isn't it?

Re:"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[jabber]

You're right. What I should have said is:

You (general) can justify your drug use/advocacy by saying that other, legal substances are ALSO addictive and even more harmful, but what you're doing is still against the law.

As I've tried to make clear in other posts on this subject, I am not against drugs, I am against drug use due to personal experience (totally subjective), and in a broader sense due to their legal status.

Advocacy of drug legalization is much more likely to bring that result about than blatant disobedience of the laws. And to avoid any subsequent confusion, I did NOT just say that all laws are to be bindly obeyed...

Re:"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[drteknikal]

Why is it that anyone who questions the basis for our drug laws, who calls marijuana prohibition and the "war on drugs" hypocritical is immediately labeled a "drug user" and a "law breaker"?

At no time have I advocated that anyone do anything illegal. I have, however, questioned the basis for our government's categorization of alcohol and nicotine as legal and accepted while less injurious and addictive substances are categorized as illegal and dangerous. As I said, these actions are not based on scientific fact, but on attempts to curtail liberty and legislate morality. And that the current legislation seeks to further curtail other rights to prop up the "war on drugs", which I consider to be an affront to liberty in America.

I commend you for respecting the law. I condemn you for using it as a crutch to criticize what you perceive to be my own personal behavior. I have said that I believe the law to be wrong, not based on scientific fact, not consistently applied, subject to vast overgeneralization, and worthy of revision. I have said that the government is attempting to take additional legislative action which is contemptable in terms of personal liberty in this country.

I did not advocate illegal drug use or any other illegal act. You simply made that up.

Re:"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

So I take it you would be for unconditional obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law (ordered people to be sent back into bondage even if they escaped to a free state, for those that don't know their history) if you were around when that was. Right? Support any law no matter how immoral it may be? Because the law is always right, eh?

Newsflash: What is legal and what is moral are not always the same. Neither one implies the other.

Re:"Clean" in the eyes of The Law

[bughunter]

Delusions aside, you sound like one of the rabid paternalists that insist upon directing everyone elses behavior. You don't like pot. Fine. That should be end of story.

But no, let's proceed to label them illegal. In all caps, no less. You sound just like the director of the FDA in the early 80's who, when ordered to reclassify pot to lessen federal penalties, adamantly refused. When asked, on camera, why he disobeyed a federal judge, he replied, "Because it's evil."

Do you know how marijuana became illegal? Do you have any idea why?

Hemp was once a major crop in the US, and the flowers were considered a useful herb, similar to Goldenseal Root, Ginko Biloba, or Cod Liver Oil. Hemp was primarily used to make textiles, paper, and vegetable oils. It is hardy, disease resistant, grows fast, and grows anywhere. Washington and Jefferson grew it on their estates, and not because they wanted to smoke it.

Over the course of just one decade, though, nobody farmed hemp anymore. Why? Because in the 1920's timber owners needed to sell their trees to papermills. Hemp was in their way; the timber owners included some of the biggest and most vicious capitalists of the era, while the hemp lobby were just the last in a long line of farmers. Marijuana was subjected to an intensive and pervasive smear campaign in the media and on Capitol Hill. And it worked. by the late '30s, all newspapers were made of dead trees, everyone knew about "the evil weed," and hemp farming was a federal crime.

So, the only thing evil about marijuana is how and why it became illegal. Go chew on that for awhile.

Be still my beating heart

[jabber]

You mean our lawmaker do not have our best interests in mind? For shame...

And here they're trying to muzzle the Internet, the single most reliable source of information for enquiring minds.

Seems like a waste of effort to me though. If they just left the net alone, it would collapse under the weight of spam, first posts and Natalie Portman fan-sites anyway. Isn't entropy a beautiful thing?

Government intervention is self-defeating. If they could just keep their grubby little control-freak hands off of the thing, they would not be drawing attention to the issue. Hell, they could just release some fake drug-coctail info that would kill of a few of the intellectually-challenged amateur chemists; and suddenly the population would be begging them to make some law...

Is that what you meant about the way 'politics really works'?

Re:Hold your fire!

[jabber]

Man, did you even read the rest of this thread?
Everything you've brought up has been discussed.
There's a difference between ignoring the law for personal pleasure and blindly following it into immorality.

Do you think anyone is as stupid as you accuse me of being?? Well, let me qualify that I do not know any Religious Right Extremists or KKK members, but other than those two groups... Damn, quit with the flamebait already.

FWIW, much as you've just done, I tend to offer an extreme interpretation of a point of view, just to test how reasonable it's foundations are; fair enough; but come on! The thread is wearing much too thin, and I think I've made my argument adequately well. Any intelligent person knows that there is no law that is perfect.

Hold your fire!

[jabber]

I cleverly hid the following paragraph in my previous post:

The Law is a living thing, and it depends on evolving ideas and the variable needs of society; but as it is now, Drugs (not to be confused with medicinal or legal lower-case drugs) are illegal. If enough people in our society agreed to legalize pot, I would still draw the line in the same place, legal vs. illegal.

Sorry for the apparent discomfort. The law is changable, and there are proper channels for making this change happen.

In your example, the law was not adaptible quickly, because the bulk of society was either opposed or indifferent to what we now consider a moral obligation to their fellow man. It's really another topic entirely, but I appreciate the hyperbole.

Much as a soldier has the option (arguably an obligation) to not follow immoral orders (Mai Lei?) so does a person have the option (arguably obligation) to not follow an agruably immoral law.

But not following a (bad, arguably) law for the benefit of a person is not the same as ignoring a law for personal enjoyment. (Did I mention I drive too fast? I do it because it's FUN; but I only do it on open and empty roads. :) )

The law is a mutually agreed upon set of rules. All rules should be questioned and considered within the immediate context, certainly, but also in a broader sense. A law may hold perfectly well in 80% of all cases, and fail terribly in the remainder - this is why it gets revised, ammended, whatever. Or the POV of society changes and the law is retracted. Sometimes, civil disobedience is required to bring about awareness of the unfairness of a law, and it's eventual change. But going underground and doing as we please, for no higher purpose other than our own entertainment undermines the basis of society and leads to anarchy and lack of accountability for consequences.

It is just as unreasonable to expect universal adherence as it is to accept excessive non-compliance. I just happen to prefer the current state of affairs as far as Drugs are concerned, that's all.

Hindsight is 20/20, and from our perspective, the Fugitive Slave Law is evil since people are not property. In hindsight, either the lumber industry would not have lobbied so hard against help farming, or the Bill of Rights would not have been written on hemp paper; things being as they are, we have a bit of a paradox - the Law of the Land is written on paper made from an illegally grown economic competitor to wood-paper.

Sudden changes in law are difficult for society to accept. For example, should we be suddenly legally required to become vegetarians, because animals are made to suffer when they are made into food?

Yes, it's another hyperbole, but from the perspective of 150 years ago, so was your argument.

Re:Hold your fire!

[jabber]

The rest of the post set that single statement in an appropriate context. Once you take it out of context though, it still stands up.

Read it again, and this time, notice the word "tangible". The codified laws are a standard to which we can all refer - without that, it all boils down to opinion and personal preference, which is exactly what you've just demonstrated.

I chose that specific phrasing ('tangible') to make exactly that point, but I appreciate your reactionary response without actually thinking. This sort of flamage is exactly what gives "Linux Zealots" an undeservedly extremist reputation.

To reiterate, my posts have all centered around 'right' and 'wrong' is reference to the Law, not in reference to some personal and highly variable moral standard.

My morals most likely do not map well to your morals, and arguments and violence often follow such disagreement; and this is EXACTLY why a codified standard defining 'right' and 'wrong' (again, in case you missed it, that does not mean morally but legally) is required.

I'm glad you used the word "wrong" is quotes, but your examples make the point you are arguing against. When a law against something is passed, that something becomes 'wrong' in the eyes of the law... That's sort of the definition of the concept.

The law is an attempt (ATTEMPT) at reflecting societal morality and ethics for the greatest common good (at least in principle - we've all seen plenty of corruption). The law, in principle, does not seek to dictate morally right and wrong actions; it only seeks to codify in a standard way the views of society.

Separating moral right and moral wrong is a job for the individual. The individual then, if they desire the benefits of living in a civilized society, has the responsibility to make their views known, so that they may be codified and made into Law.

If enough individuals share the same ethical views then the laws of their society reflect the views of the people.

If on the other hand, individuals just want to smoke a blunt in peace, but do not assert their right to do so, then their laws do not guarantee them this right. (If you have not realized it by now, I'll hand it to you: This thread is about the theory of law, not about whats right and wrong in a karmic, universal sense)

Get it now? I'm not saying the laws are just, I'm saying that the laws reflect the views of those individuals who made a point of voicing their opinion on the issue. People, historically, only speak out in opposition to the bad, and rarely in support of the good - and too often people are simply too lazy to take an active interest in the laws being passed, until it suddenly becomes illegal to live their lifestyle of choice. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the *silent* majority gets led around like sheep.

I'm not saying this is how it SHULD be, not by a long shot - but this is the unfortunate state of things. Bitching about it on /. won't accomplish squat, but writing yet another letter to your representative; a well reasoned one; just might make a difference. And if you do not take that step, then you will find yourself increasingly repressed by the laws made for the benefit of those who care enough to speak out.

That's the sort of twisted rationalization that results from blindly following any set of rules.

Yeah, no thought went into it whatsoever.

Re:Hold your fire!

[e13ven]

I have had more taken from me by cops than by common thieves. I've never been convicted of a felony, yet I've been pulled over multiple times and searched & arrested for possesion of marijauna(a few times in really fucked up states like Nevada.) I even had the cops rip the upholstry to my car and not even apologize or pay for the damages. I've never been a fight in my life but if I was face to face in a bar with the cop who charged me with felony possession for a gram of herb I would try and beat the living shit out of him.

Re:Hold your fire!

[WNight]

> and the law is the only tangible metric of right
> and wrong, isn't it?

ROFL! So, if this bill passes, it becomes 'wrong' to tell someone how to make drugs, or where such information might be found.

When the DMCA passed, it became 'wrong' for someone to write a DVD player for Linux.

When Soldier of Fortune was banned in BC, the 'right and proper' actions of children who had played it *all of a sudden* became 'wrong', just because some official said so?

Bullshit. Claiming that the law is linked in any way with right and wrong is the sign of someone too weak willed to think for themselves.

Try this on for size, see if you've ever said it... "The law forbids things that are wrong, so if I don't break the law, I must be in the right!"

That's the sort of twisted rationalization that results from blindly following any set of rules.

Re:Hold your fire!

[WNight]

>My morals most likely do not map well to your
>morals, and arguments and violence often follow
>such disagreement; and this is EXACTLY why
>a codified standard defining 'right' and 'wrong'
>(again, in case you missed it, that does not mean
>morally but legally) is required.

So, because it's too hard to do something that is relevant, we should just follow the law... It may not be right, but hell, at least it's consistent?

Not bloody likely. Where the law conflicts with my morals, I break the law. As does nearly everyone else. A broken set of rules isn't better than nothing, it's worse!

If there was a hope in hell of changing a law without twenty million religious zealots, or a few billion dollars, then people might follow the law and try to mold the law to reflect reality. As is, the system is so broken that by trying to follow it all you do is make things worse.

You may disagree, which is your right. But I don't think you'd take it too far. What about when a law is passed that would put you in jail for performing a humanitarian act, or doing what you feel you need to do to survive?

To illustrate the point, look at the most obvious cases, then realize that the truth is in the middle. The worst abuse of law would be something like Nazi germany, where anyone of Jewish blood was forced to report to the government, sometimes just for labelling, sometimes for shipment to a concentration camp. No, imagine that you're Jewish, would you comply with the law?

So, unless you said yes, there are some circumstances where you agree the law should not be followed. So where does the line get drawn? How is this different than just doing what we feel is right?

Law exists to give society the power to stop antisocial behaviour, I can choose to break the law, that's a granted right and an inate one. *If* I get caught, and *if* it's serious, the government can chose to punish me. Otherwise, the law has no effect on me.

Re:Hold your fire!

[11223]

The Law is a living thing, and it depends on evolving ideas and the variable needs of society; but as it is now, Drugs (not to be confused with medicinal or legal lower-case drugs) are illegal. If enough people in our society agreed to legalize pot, I would still draw the line in the same place, legal vs. illegal.

So you abdicate your right to think to the majority? How does the law get changed? It gets changed when enough people think it's wrong - except if they all acted like you, they wouldn't be thinking it's wrong at all.

Even better

[jabber]

Nevermind Julia Childs... The Stoned Chef Challenge!!

Yep, modelled after the Iron Chef competition:
"Kazon! It looks like the challenger is chopping up the Coca leaves with a chrome mirror, and now he's putting some hash into a blender with some little pink pills!" "Ohh! I've never seen that before.. he's adding a few drops of... What is that? LSD?"

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Jeremi]

Of course not EVERYBODY becomes a crack head if you hit a joint. But I've seen it again again and again, and I'm tired of it.

Here's a theory: marijuana serves as a gateway drug not because of any physical effects, but simply because it's illegal. Before you smoked that joint, you might have thought of yourself as "someone who doesn't do drugs". Now that you've had to recategorize yourself as "someone who is open to experimentation with drugs", you don't have anything to lose by trying another drug...

Re:What about text books? -- Nuclear physics

[oracleofbargth]

So, we should ban all text books on nuclear physics? Making bombs isn't all that studying atoms is useful for.

&ltrant&gt

Ever taken note of the scientists that are trying to figure out how to build a workable fusion reactor? One that works would be a near perfect solution to power generation problems. A clean power generator that wouldn't have the radiation worries of a nuclear fission plant. Are you saying you prefer coal power?

Is that a computer you're using? It wouldn't be as fast as it is today if it weren't for the microprocessor, the design of which is heavily dependent on the properties of individual atoms and their interactions.

&lt/rant&gt

Seriously, some of the areas in science that are used for weapons research actually have peacetime uses. Even research that has gone into biological weapons (one of the worst category of weapons there is) has helped further our understanding of genetics and immunology, both of which have led to advances in medical science.
Censorship of information that could be used to produce something harmful could also prevent the development of something helpful or beneficial.

However, there is another side to this coin. There is a fine line between scientific research and the antics of a mad scientist, ranging anywhere from poor taste to outright atrocity. Leonardo DaVinci was a graverobber, digging up freshly buried corpses for his anatomy research. Scientists in Nazi Germany performed vivisections on un-anestestitized prisoners. (For those of you without dictionaries handy, they cut them open while they were awake to see how the organs worked.) Both of these added great amounts of knowledge to modern medical science, but should they have been done? Should the knowledge gained from such distaseful means be used? Should it be censored?

When it comes to talking about censoring text books, you really should think about what all the implications of doing so might be, and what all the reasons for doing so are. The biggest question is: once you start, where do you stop?

Re:go, ACLU!

[DMDx86]

It's at times like this I'm glad I joined the ACLU. It, and other similar groups, have consistently defended us against encroachments on the First Amendment like the CDA and COPA and others, with varied success

I for one, do not care at all for the ACLU. The ACLU was the one wanting school prayer at that football game in Santa Fe, Texas banned. This shows that the ACLU does not care for the 1st admendment rights for EVERYONE. The ACLU only wants some people to have the rights to free speech.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Griff]

Caffeine does not cause people to go rob stores/banks/innocents so they can get cash for their next fix. Drugs do. When was the last time you saw someone jumped in the street because the mugger needed money for a Coke?

Talk about generalisation!

What are 'Drugs'? Heroin, crack cocaine? Speed? Mushrooms? Alcohol? Cannabis? Caffeine? Penacillin? LSD? Ecstasy?

You simply can't group all drugs (legal, or otherwise) into a single group like that and say "Drugs cause crime". It simply doesn't work like that.

I don't know of, and have never heard of, anyone mugging someone so they could get more cannabis, or LSD, or ecstasy. Alcohol on the other hand...

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Max von H.]

I've seen way too many lives destroyed by the horrors of real drugs

FYI, alcohol and tobacco are classified next to cocain and heroin in toxicology. They're all addictive and eventually lead to death.

The only reason alcohol and tobacco are legal is because governments make billions in taxes over the legal addictive drugs.

Marijuana, OTOH, isn't physically addictive and there is yet to be a death caused by it. But since there's no .gov tax on it, it's banned.

If you don't consider alcohol or tobacco as "real drugs", see how nicely people die of liver cancer/sirrhosis (sp?) or lung cancer.

max

Sounds like a job for... SEALAND!

[jlgolson]

I'm sure everybody knows this, but pick up the July 2000 edition of Wired for a VERY interesting article on the principality of Sealand. Is this against their code of conduct?

~Jose Th' Seal

Re:Its a bad thing, but it needs to be done

[Mike A.]

It's hard to get through amidst all the meth recipes which are popping up on the board, but hopefully we can have a proper discussion on this...

It could be argued that tough drug laws are what's keeping the black man down - that it's not drugs but the illegality of drugs that make the inner cities such a violent place. When was the last time you heard of drugstore owners gunning each other down in the street over cigarette sales? Package store owners doing drive-bys on each other's stores? Now I'm probably going too far with that argument, but surely it merits a moment's thought.

--

Re:Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[Gorgonzola]

Actually, getting addicted to alcohol or nicotine is easier than getting addicted to heroin or cocaine. The problem with heroin is that it only appeals to people who are in trouble already and who are on the lookout for an opportunity to escape for a moment. Heroine gets you way to hammered to become appealing as a recreational drug, like alcohol. With four glasses of wine a day you are actually not that far away from the threshold for becoming an addict. It takes six glasses on a daily base for roughly a week or two to become physically dependent.

probably the 'well regulated' part

[delmoi]

by 'regulated' by they ment well trained, working well, etc. Not a government controlled agency. Even during the War for independance, the militia was not controlled by the central government.

Re:probably the 'well regulated' part

[AndyL]

Yea, and we all know that the majority of gun owners(and NRA members,fans, and zealots) are part of a well trained militia thats working well.

Re:probably the 'well regulated' part

[Scrybe]

In this context regulated only means properly armed. It has nothing to do with organization or legal restrictions.

Re:probably the 'well regulated' part

[enhancedtrance]

I'll take that bet...I think the last thing I would be doing in a war would be soiling my drawers and crying...I would pretty much you know, avoid bullets coming at me..just a thought.
It's not that fall that kills you, its the sudden stop

Re:probably the 'well regulated' part

[Nicolas MONNET]

By 'regulated', they probably meant fat, heinous, stupid, racist, irrational like a NRA member.

I give up.

[PeterMiller]

I've been waiting for some government, somewhere to finally realize the obvious fact that prohibition doesn't work.

The government tried it in the 20's, and created Al Capone and the growth of the mafia. Of course it also helped make people like Seagram very VERY rich. So in order to eliminate the crime that was the result of the black market for alcohol, the government removed prohibition, and made alcohol "legal" substance. Sure there were now laws governing the manufacture and distribution of alcohol, but at least it wasn't banned anymore.

I'm sure we all know the same process can be applied to drugs, so then why the hell hasn't some government ANYWHERE realised this? Canada is the closest in North America to legalising drugs, but it hesitant to do so, fearing the US reaction. Imagine a Canadian embargo??

Point being, I give up. People in power right now are obviously too opinionated or dumb to come to the simple conclusion that banning a substance not only invites crime, but creates it.

Re:I give up.

[mrBoB]

Dude, go figure if these guys (our congress) _wanted_ to pass legalising legislation, they'd never be elected again. Even if pro-legal folks are the majority, we certainly don't have enough money to line their coffers. The rich minority, old-fashioned conservatives are able to do that. And without dough in the coffers, we won't see the wonderful ad-campaigns and noone will know who Dem., Rep, Ind, etc. Joe Blow is at election time. Which means that we (the minority) need to become more educated (perhaps in political or social leadership) and take to the congress ourselves.

Bob

Re:I give up.

[Steve B]

I've been waiting for some government, somewhere to finally realize the obvious fact that prohibition doesn't work.

It doesn't work for its stated purpose (of preventing people from abusing drugs). It works just fine for its actual purposes (justifying government power grabs and bureaucratic accretions).
/.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[Alex Pennace]

Anti-felon. I live in Massachusetts, which is one of only three states that haven't disenfranchised felons (along with Vermont and another New England state, probably Rhode Island)

The list is Massachusetts, Maine (once part of Massachusetts), Vermont (lets everything vote), and New Hampshire (used to not allow felons to vote, however).

Its interesting that all these states happen to be geographically contiguous, especially since they disagree on many other fundamental points.

but the legislature has proposed and passed a constitutional amendment changing that, which now goes to the voters in November where it'll probably get overwhelmingly approved, since no one else seems to mind punishing a person twice and taking away the most fundamental liberty democratic nations can claim, simply out of spite, at a time when voter turnout in the regular population is at an all-time low.

I support the right of felons to vote, in Massachusetts and elsewhere. If society really was right in convicting someone of a felony, then society has nothing to be afraid of by giving them a vote.

These disenfranchisement measures potentially amounts to a tool for one part of society to silence another. Somehow get the heretics branded as felons, and your opposition is silenced.

One word...

[LocalH]

doublethink.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder

I wonder...

[LocalH]

...when they will start installing telescreens in every house (except the proles, we don't care about the proles) and monitoring for Thought Crime (crimethink in Newspeak).
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[dreamking]

AFAIK it's an Ingredient in Excedrin(and several other aspirin/aspirin-related painkillers) because it opens your blood vessels and allows the painkiller to work on you more quickly.

the point was...

[TheDullBlade]

...that heroin today doesn't hurt anyone who's not asking for it. It's been illegal for a long time, and everybody knows how unhealthy the junk you can buy on the street is.

The only people who start doing it are halfway suicidal. People who value their lives don't fill a needle with god-knows-what they got off the street and pump it into their veins.

With prohibition, OTOH, alcohol started out in extremely common use. People had ways of doing things (like partying) that required alcohol, and when their regulated, healthy supply was cut off, they naturally used the unregulated, dangerous supply (having had access to the good stuff all their lives, they just expected that the most dangerous think in their bathtub gin would be ethanol).

The point was that alcohol prohibition killed healthy, productive members of society, while the heroin prohibition mostly kills suicidal nutcases who will probably find some other way to off themselves a bit at a time if heroin is made relatively safe. The main benefit of legalizing heroin (to the junkies) is saving the relatively small number who eventually come to their senses; the majority have serious mental issues, and heroin use is just one more self-destructive behavior symptomatic of these problems.

I'm not arguing that heroin should be illegal, I just don't think it's as important as prohibition was.

you're still misunderstanding me

[TheDullBlade]

Are you really just trolling me?

I seem to have PO'd some jerk with moderator access, he's going around marking all of my posts as trolls (I guess he couldn't find "-1: Moderator Was Offended" or "-1: Moderator On Vendetta"); he'll get his in the MM. I'm trying to explain that this argument is based on a misunderstanding, and my other "trolls" provoked agreeing replies, or no replies, but not arguments. If I'm trolling, I'm doing a piss-poor job of it.

I'm not arguing in any way that heroin doesn't have legitimate uses (if you look in my "user info" and read some of the other stuff I've written in this discussion, you'll see that), or that legalizing it won't reduce harm. I'm only arguing that it's a completely different situation than alcohol prohibition (pot prohibition, OTOH, is a more similar to alcohol prohibition, though still on a lot smaller scale).

If you read my posts more carefully, you'd see that. I might ask if you are trolling me, since you almost seem to be intentionally ignoring my words.

For example...

Me: Everybody knows that heroin (as it is available on the street) is 1) very addictive and 2) bad for your health to the point where you
might die every time you use it.

You: Your number 2 is a property of street heroin [...]

"as it is available on the street": I put those words in for a reason, and you replied as if I had implied the opposite. That whole post was about the kinds of people who take heroin now, and the total disregard they have for their own welfare. It's like people who play Russian roulette: take away the revolvers and they'll find something equally stupid to do (and whether there are legitimate uses for revolvers, or crime could be reduced by legalizing them and building them so they don't blow up in your hand, has no significance to that problem).

There's a tiny minority of people who use heroin, almost all of them abuse it, and they're pretty screwed up to begin with. Practically everybody drank alcohol before and during prohibition, most of them used it fairly responsibly, and most of them had reasonable mental health.

Escapism and self-destruction are not the same thing,

True, but heroin use isn't escapism, it's self-destruction. Everybody knows that (again, as it is available on the street) heroin is terrible for your health and any one high might kill you. Knowing that, what kind of idiot would start taking the stuff? Only the severely self-destructive kind.

If heroin is made relatively safe, the people who are currently drawn to heroin will find something equally or more self-destructive to do.

This is why legalizing heroin will not save many junkies: only a fairly small proportion of them ever regain the mental stability to avoid self-destructive behavior. It would be very good to save them, but it's not nearly as important as making sure a little drink on the sly doesn't blind or kill the majority of your citizens.

So I guess I have 2 arguments: 1) the junkie problem is a problem with the junkies, not the junk, and 2) all the junkies could die tomorrow, and society at large would barely notice (some unreliable workers wouldn't show up for work, some welfare cheques would stop being collected, crime would go down), but if a quarter the people who drink alcohol occasionally went blind or died from it, society would be severely disrupted. 2 isn't a pleasant argument, just a cold, hard fact: prohibition had to be lifted, it would have destroyed the country; while it would be good to lift heroin prohibition, it is not strictly necessary.

removing an addiction

[TheDullBlade]

I became addicted to cigarettes because i was unwise

I smoke, but I am not an addict. I have been smoking a pipe for about 4 years and I keep my pipe, tobacco, and matches in my coat pocket so it is always with me. I enjoy smoking tremendously, but I only do it once every month or two. At times, early on, I tried smoking every day, and tried cigarettes. I knew that I didn't want to continue to do this, but I wanted to see what it was like (my curiosity is one reason I stay away from most drugs; since I've done things like gather a jar of spiders and dump it down my shirt to see what effect it would have on me, at the time a moderately severe arachnophobe, I know it wouldn't take a big step for me to be dissecting my hand to see how all the cords and levers work. I think I need all the inhibitions I've got).

I've felt the cravings. They don't impress me. Despite feeling as if my hand was drawn toward my pipe pocket, constantly imagining how nice it would taste to suck smoke from the pipe, thinking how much I liked to strike matches and enjoyed the scent of a struck match, I didn't light up. Given that I wasn't going to smoke, they were as relevant as imagining how much fun it would be to ride a dragon. That is how I think of them, which is why they don't influence me.

The key factor in removing (or avoiding) an addiction, or correcting any stupid behavior, is a moment of clarity. Practically every cigarette smoker, every drunk, and every junkie who dropped their habit started to get their hit one day and thought "this is stupid, I may feel like want this right now, but I will regret doing it, so I don't really want it".

There is a simple 4-step method to have a moment of clarity whenever you need one:
1)Ask yourself "What is my situation?"
Be totally, brutally honest. If your whole body is metaphorically screaming for your addiction to be satisfied, note that. If you've got the means to satisfy that craving close at hand, note that too. Don't deceive yourself or make claims about what you think you can handle at this stage.

2)Ask yourself "What do I, as a rational person, really want?"
Be complete. Not just "I want to make the craving go away" but "I want to make the craving go away, I'd rather not have it come back, and I want to avoid the dangers of taking this drug".

3)Ask yourself "What should I do to achieve that?"
This will usually be very clear (ex. don't light that cigarette, or any others).

4)Obey your rational choice.
Don't think to yourself "I really shouldn't smoke another cigarette", tell yourself "don't smoke another cigarette." Mean it. Give yourself an order, and obey it. Don't play coy little games and pretend there's some force pressing your hand toward the cigarette case, there isn't and the idea that there is and the idea that your hand is itching to grab for a cigarette is silly. Your hand doesn't want a cigarette, it has no mind of it's own. You crave the cigarette, but that has nothing to do with your hands, which are controlled by your mind, which has decided that it's not going to move the hands to light the cigarette.

It sounds stupid, but talking it out with yourself works. That infuriating part of the mind that makes cravings creates illusions of a more direct link between the craving and the process of consuming what is craved; these illusions are easily dismissed by rational thought. You get satisfaction endorphines that blunt the cravings. Don't bother removing the temptation, that removes the positive reinforcement of frequently resisting that temptation. Carry that pack of cigarettes around with you, and you'll be surprised how good it feels to not smoke them, even when you feel lousy from nicotine withdrawal. Try to waste cigarettes, hide them from yourself, and make them tough to get at and you'll give in to the illusion that you're fighting an enemy, instead of making a decision.

Wake up. Be sane. Don't get bogged down in the metaphors your subconscious provides; your consciousness was built to filter them out when they're not useful. Your subconscious has been tricked into thinking your body needs the drug, your consciousness is both responsible for and capable of recognizing this deception and acting appropriately.

You've taken half the step and realized it's your own fault. Take the other half and realize that it'll be your own fault each time you smoke another cigarette.

Re:removing an addiction

[fluxrad]

you, dear sir, have no idea what addiction really is. if you knew - you'd realize that your post is pretty naieve.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Do you realize who you are talking to?

[TheDullBlade]

By contrast, alcohol today is relatively safe, with only two types of victims being common: guys that drink themselves to death over a period of years because they're too chicken-shit to just jump off a bridge, and people killed when morons drive cars around drunk.

Everybody knows that heroin (as it is available on the street) is 1) very addictive and 2) bad for your health to the point where you might die every time you use it.

Do you think that the people who take heroin aren't just the same "too chicken-shit to just jump off a bridge" people who drink everything in sight as soon as they can get their hands on it?

They know it's bliss in this needle and death in the next! They don't care. To try heroin in its common use (supply: who knows what's in it, dose: as high as you can get, so much that you'll never be able to get that high again), you have to decide that your life isn't worth more than a bit of fun.

Sure, if they survive for some years, they might change their mind about what their life is worth. That's where it really sucks. People would never bother with insanely addictive megadoses of heroin unless, at the moment they take it, they don't value their life.

Yes, heroin might not be the "horrible, horrible thing it is today", but that doesn't mean that the same people wouldn't destroy themselves somehow.

That isn't the case with alcohol.

Alcohol is integrated into society, probably because weak alcoholic drinks (like watered wine, as the Greeks drank at breakfast, lunch, and dinner) were a lot safer to drink than water from ponds and rivers. When prohibition came, people still didn't know how to party without booze. So a lot of normal, non-self-destructive people were put in the position of needing to buy bathtub gin. It's pretty different.

Re:What you can do about it

[leereyno]

The idea that our votes don't count is promoted by those who would benefit from the public believing this. Campaign dollars don't get people elected, people voting for that person does.

Don't be fooled, your vote counts more now than ever before.

Lee

Re:IANAL also, but here is what I would like

[Claudius]

Hi Ben.

I would like an amendment saying that if any part of a bill is ruled unconstitutional, the entire bill is rendered null and void.

This could have interesting consequences in the case of an appropriations bill. What does one do if, three years down the road, the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill is voided by the courts? Require agencies to refund the money?

If one exempts appropriations bills from this amendment, then either every new bill will get a tiny "appropriations" resolution in it to safeguard it, or else the big appropriations bills would be even harder to get passed since they would be littered with riders. (And we think it's hard to get a budget approved now...).

Re:quick FYI

[zmooc]

2 things:

1) If alcohol isn't addictive, are alcoholics psychologically addicted?

2) Marijuana definately isn't a downer, but I and none of my many zmoocing friends have never ever seen or heard things actually. And I can't say that would be because I haven't zmooced enough :)

Re:quick FYI

[zmooc]

Thank you for your explanation. I never have those sympthoms by the way :) Guess I would be a bad alcoholic then.

Re:"Clean" geek's opinion.

[/]

No, it's a pesticide. He's just taking the prudent precaution of killing tapeworms at the source.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[/]

Not only can I agree with everything on your list, I can add another of my own:

Anti-felon. I live in Massachusetts, which is one of only three states that haven't disenfranchised felons (along with Vermont and another New England state, probably Rhode Island), but the legislature has proposed and passed a constitutional amendment changing that, which now goes to the voters in November where it'll probably get overwhelmingly approved, since no one else seems to mind punishing a person twice and taking away the most fundamental liberty democratic nations can claim, simply out of spite, at a time when voter turnout in the regular population is at an all-time low. It's a violation of equal protection (not to mention an implication of principle of taxation without representation), but the federal supreme court has consistently ruled otherwise.

Re:You have no idea how the system works anymore.

[13th seer]

bear in mind the judicial system will only overturn an `illegal' law if that law is challenged.

this is the reason sites like this exist.

Re:What you can do about it

[13th seer]

aren't written letters even more potent? I have heard the power of influence is

1. written letter
2. phone call
3. e-mail

but I may be wrong

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[kamileon]

The article was not drafted for you to be able to defend YOUR home. Or I mine. That is a portion of it, but the original intent was that the freedom of the people to choose their own government not be infringed. In other words, for the combined weaponry of the populace to be such that the military could be defeated in a full on conflict. Note carefully: I am not referring to a small subset of the population, such as a paramilitary group. But if an entire country finds themselves under seige from their own government, as was the case at the time of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers intended that the populace be able to defend themselves from THAT threat. And that means defending, in this day and age, against nuclear weapons, bullet proof vests, fighter planes, and tanks.
I also deplore violence, in all it's forms, and would be very happy indeed if all conflicts could be resolved by a nice rousing debate or a riddling contest. But this is an imperfect world, and rather than wringing my hands about the evil around me, I acknowledge that people (governments included) are weak and selfish, and I make steps to work around that. Accept your world and work to change it, don't tell me how it should be.
Geek-grrl in training

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[kamileon]

How DARE you propose to cut me off from my chocolate fix!? Fascist punk!

(FYI, cocaine comes from the leaves of the COCA plant, spelled like Coca-Cola. Bombing the world's supply of cocoa will do a lot all right, you'll have an army of women over-running the White House with their bare hands. Hope you don't have a girlfriend.)

But all that aside, what on earth would make you think you have the right to bomb another nation when we're not at war with them? And what makes you the arbiter of education? Education is the passage of factual information from one person to another, not whatever you decide it's right for people to know. So you're saying that discussing criminal activities is not free speech? What about treason? That's a criminal activity. That's also what brought about the Revolutionary War. That's the kind of free speech that's protected. If everybody approved of it, it wouldn't need protection from people like you that are willing to say "I don't like it, and therefore it shouldn't be said."
Geek-grrl in training

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[kamileon]

Actually, it's because caffeine dilates blood vessels in the head, which relieves a normal headache.
Geek-grrl in training

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[kamileon]

Not to rain on your (very valid) comment, but marijuana cultivation for intoxicant purposes involves separating the male and female portions of the plant. Oh wait, I guess they'll have to expunge this /. archive, I just gave out drug making info. Bummer.
Geek-grrl in training.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[penguinboy]

Knowing how to make drugs will get you nowhere if it's not possible to get the necessary materials (I'm talking about reasonable regulations).

I don't think drug use is a good thing. I just feel that taking away free speech is not the best way to combat it.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[penguinboy]

Drugs must be stopped at all costs.

At all costs? By no means do I support drug use, but I am very concerned about the government taking away rights guaranteed to the people by the Constitution. I feel that it is imperative that we do not allow our rights to be gradually taken away, one by one. In this case, perhaps more appropriate laws could be created. For example, harsher penalties for actually selling or posessing illegal drugs.

Re:OOG OFFER INFO ON CAVE-WEED!!!

[look]

I love OOG. :)

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Tower]

The problem with ecstacy is that it damages your seratonin and dopamine paths in the brain. As my Psychopharmacology professor mentioned, you get a little fun now for a whole lot of severe depression later in life. Neurotransmitter balances are rather delicate in the brain, and if you happen to destroy a whole bunch of receptors... well, you are going to be a very depressed middle-aged person some day (assuming age < 30)... it only takes one time to blow away parts of your brain. Far more dangerous than cocaine in that respect (cocaine just plays with dopamine, not seratonin levels).

Dehydration or not, I wouldn't mess with that...

Re:Something of odd to note about this.

[Tower]

Sounds good, I'll tell my congressman to get that tacked on as a rider to the next random bill ;-)

Re:What you can do about it

[Tower]

4. Web-forum post
5. Usenet post
6. there is no power number 6
7. MacInsider article
8. Jon Katz article
9. never telling anybody

lower crime from DIY drugs?

[joemaller]

An interesting side note to the proliferation of do it yourself drug content online could be the decline in profit for drug dealers.

If everyone knew how to make their own drugs, that kid on 10th street would have to find something to do besides mumbling the drug-name-of-the week to passerbys all day.

Potentially, the amount of incidental crime associated to the drug trade could go down with demand. A bad side effect would be poor drug dealers who can't keep up their "lifestyle" resorting to muggings and robbery to keep them in chains and clothes.

Joe Maller
[no sig]

Re:lower crime from DIY drugs?

[TheCarp]

Well it really depends on the drug.

Most all drugs really do take a chemist or someone who has some lab skill and has done some real work and study to make.

The notable exceptions are of course methamphetamine and anything that can be grown (marijuana), yet even these require signifigant time and learning investments.

Also most "drug dealers" that I have met are just ordinary users who sell drugs to pay for their drugs. Even studies have shown that the average heroin dealer holds a normal job and sells drugs to pay for their habbit.

Studies done in switzerland showed that when heroin is available legally, safely, and at a reduced price (ie a price comparable to what it would be if it were legal), that users led fairly normal lives, were able to hold down jobs, and that the percentage of their income that came from other illegal activites dropped signifigantly. (due to reduced need).

Revolution

[mystik]

I read about it everywhere (ok, mostly @ /.) but It seems that more and more the government is abusing the power that the people have given it. Why don't more people realize what the US government is doing to them right under their noses? I realize that the /. community is just a small subset of the entire US population. we need to find a way to inform the masses of the follies of the goverment. We'll never do it by posting to our personal 'Rant' pages--We need some real media coverage.

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said "We all need a little revolution now and then" ...

The Fight of Freedom

[Pfhor]

"When they took the 2nd amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
When they took the 5th amendment, I was quiet becuase I wasn't guilty. Now
they've taken the 1st amendment, and I can't say anything about it."

A good signature from someones email, very topical. Would like to find out who's quote it is.

-Pfhor

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Grendel Drago]

Sorry, I can't see the connection between catching cold and shoving white powder up my nose. There seems, to me, to be a real, qualitative difference here -- one involves volition, one does not. No sympathy here.

-grendel drago

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[Steve B]

Free speech is not about writing books on how to do something that is generally agreed to be wrong.

I guess the Mystery Writers of America are in trouble then.
/.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Chandon Seldon]

If weed were legal it could be purchased from reliable sources; it could even be regulated by the FDA. As long as it remains illegal it will be a bigger problem than it ever could be as a legal substance.

This really has little to do with drugs..

[Reziac]

.. but as some pointed out but didn't quite hit the mark, with a fundamental issue of whether the ACT OF USING INFORMATION is illegal (making drugs, distributing computer viruses, etc.) or whether THE INFORMATION ITSELF is illegal (recipes for drugs, source code that could be compiled into viruses, or for that matter into a Napster clone).

This bill would make THE INFORMATION ITSELF illegal. That is the fundamental core of what constitutes censorship.

Speaking therewhich, anyone know why Gnute disappeared off the DNS map this week?

Stop drugs at all costs..

[xtal]

I like taking things to their obvious conclusion. If drugs are the horrible scourge on society you claim (I would argue that since being around before the beginning of time, hell, MONKS invented beer, people like getting loaded. I know I sure as hell do.), then we need much more extreme measures to deal with the drug plague. Current measures aren't working.

So, let's either make drug possession automatic life in prison, or punishible by death, as in some arab countries. Hell, let's do it right on the streetcorner. That's civilized. Throw anyone distributing drug related information in the slammer for 15 years on conviction, manditory. Instant confiscation of any computer equipment used to distribute drug information. We have to pay for the war!

Or, you can decriminalize drug use, get addicts treatment, distribute information about how to use a needle and not die, how to get clean needles, how to position someone who's passed out and tossing their cookies (one of the useful things I learned in university!). Make sure addicts get clean shit. Help them get off it if they need/want help. Deal with the social issues that are making them turn to drugs. Don't bother people who want to smoke weed on the weekends. Punish heavily those who sell to minors (my little sister informs me she can get pot in about 30 minutes in her JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, but alcohol is much, much harder to get, hrmm). Maybe even save some money to get schools new books and give kids hope outside a crack pipe. Have you ever thought of the billions in lost productivity when you lock away what, 2% of your population?

I wish people would see the rational side of the arguements. The answers aren't easy, but at least they're answers and not lies. Maybe I hope for too much.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[forii]

I don't think it is appropriate to pick and choose which entries on the Bill of Rights are "good" and which are "bad".

I would agree with you if the ACLU's resources were infinite. As they aren't, they necessarily have to make decisions between what areas to focus on. I think it is perfectly appropriate to try to avoid wasting limited resources on such a controversial topic that is already well-represented by the NRA.

And BTW, I do support the right to bear arms.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Betcour]

There's not much to understand - it means every able-bodied man has a gun and knows how to use it.

...except that in "well regulated miltia" there're the words "well regulated". So obviously the governement (who else ?) has to regulate the milita, which means controling who can and cannot carry a gun, train the people who can, etc... in fact there's already a "well regulated militia" : it's called the army !

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[Betcour]

Or where does it says it can bans "tactical nukes, bacteriologic and chimical nukes, cruse missiles, cluster bombs, napalm, battleships, mortars, etc..." . Do you think we shall let anybody buy any kind of destruction tool he/she can afford ? Where do you draw the line ? Why ? If you trully believe in the 2nd amendment then you should lobby for letting anyone buy or build his own neutron bomb in his backyard and carry it around in his car.

Where's Canada in all of this?

[ODiV]

Are we just going to say "Yes sir." and follow the US on this one? Anyone have any links/insider knowledge/etc... on this?

Maybe we could just move all the drug related sites to Canada. We could use the business anyway. :)

So are the legal ones. What's your point?

[jcr]

I don't do drugs, and in fact, I'm a teetotaler, and drunks piss me off, big time.

However, I am far more offended by people like you who think it's just dandy to live in a police state, as long as the jackbooted thugs can clamp down on those nasty druggies.

FOAD.

-jcr

Re:what's even scarier

[Zan Thrax]

See, now this is one of the biggest things about the American political system that I don't understand. What are the rules regarding these 'riders'? Why don't they seem to require to bear some relation to main bill? What was the reason for creating such a nasty tool? The only use I can see is to make a bill so unpalatable that it either won't get out of Congress, or that the President won't pass it (and can then be made to look like a bad guy), or to get bad laws through the system by adding them to unrelated, possibly good, laws.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Zan Thrax]

We don't put people in jail for having AIDS, do we?

No, but I'm sure there's lots of people who would seriously consider "quarantine camps" for HIV victims.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[meadowsp]

You picked an especially bad one for your example there though, LSD is non-toxic, therefore not physically harmfull. Of course you shouldn't fly a plane on LSD, but you shouldn't really fly a plane on anti-histemines, but surely you're not condoning criminalizing linking to allergy relief sites,are you?

The real problem

[HardLogic]

The problem isn't the abuse of power, it's the power to abuse -- that whenever you give good politicians the power to do good, you automatically give future politicians the power to do bad. When you give people the power to run other people's lives, you attract the worst elements of society -- who use that power for their own purposes.

Vote to take away that power. Vote Libertarian.

Re:Ha ha

[QuoteMstr]

If I had moderator points, I would give this +1000, insightful.

On the bright side....

[invenustus]

....that guy who trolls every single article with his thing about the manufacture of MDMA (or is it some other drug) can get sent away for life. :)
Now all we need is for hot grits to get classified as a narcotic.

"Un-Clean" geek's opinion.

[The Queen]

Jabber my love, well said.
I would just like to add that besides voter apathy among our contemporaries, our schools aren't teaching kids how politics really works. My 12th grade government class was a joke. Nobody was allowed to talk about abortion or drugs, we rarely strayed from the textbooks and were only shown how things on Capital Hill are 'supposed' to work. It would please me to no end to find a school/teacher that really fostered good intelligent debating and fact-finding among their students. But I guess in a country where we still celebrate Columbus day I shouldn't hold my breath...

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[Milican]

I have to admit.. "coding like the devil himself" does sound quite enticing.. maybe I will work for Microsoft now.. j/j..hehe..

JOhn

What country am I in?

[Milican]

Am I in The United States of America? The same country that passed the Bill of Rights? I forget because the so called "Drug War" mask makes me think that I am living in Communist China sometimes. This whole "Drug War" sure does allow the government to bend the rules alot in their favor, even when drugs aren't the reason people are being arrested. Made up monologue below...

GOVT: "Lets get everybody all pissed off about drugs so we can crap on the Bill of Rights, violate illegal search and seizure laws, restrict freedom of speech, restrict freedom of the press, seize "drug" property without due process (and spend the money like common theives regardless of guilt or innocence), lie under oath (I know officers who routinely do this in College Station, Texas! YES I'm calling you out ya perjurors! Bryan cops are better.), illegally monitor e-mail via carnivore, obtain wiretaps for the hell of it, etc..."

The best part of this whole thing is how the sneaky bastard that authored the bill snuck this in as a rider to the "Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000". If you are my Senator or Representative you can bet your a$$ I'm not voting for you in the next election. I respect no representative that votes away the rights given to us by our forefathers. I would rather vote for Mickey Mouse, Homer Simpson, my dead dog Elmer (God bless that crazy dog), or even... dare I say it? Hillary Clinton.. aghhh!

Back to the serious side. I'm not a paranoid psychotic or anything, but it sure is quite clear to me that the "Drug War" is a very convenient tool for getting more illegal power for the government at the expense of what the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was founded on! At least there are checks... I'm rootin' for the Supreme Court! But in the meantime I'm writing my both of my Representatives and my Senator!

JOhn
P.S. Bitch slap big brother and get PGP! -- http://www.pgp.com

someone will pay the price...once

[anonymous loser]

Ok, so suppose under the new law the police do a search (without prior notification) which turns up drugs, and the guy goes to jail for a while. The first thing his lawyer is going to do is appeal on the grounds that the search was illegal, and this law will eventually get shot down as unconstitutional the first time it is actually tested.

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[kbonin]

The phrase "well regulated", at the time the bill of rights was written, meant 'in good working order.' There are advertisments from the period offering "re-regulation" of your rifle, which meant barrel/sight adjustments. Timepieces from the period (and some still today) were also stamped "regulated", in that they were calibrated.

Today "regulated" means tons of paperwork and laws controlling and limiting a privelage. Claiming this applied to firearms in the late 1700's could get you lynched. It would also be innacurate. Lawmakers who apply the modern definition are in criminal violation of their oath of office to uphold the constitution.

As for the types of weapons, the purpose of the second ammendment was to preserve the citizens ability to retain arms, so they could throw off an opressive government if the need arose again. Anyone disputing this needs to read 'the Fedralist Papers'.

By that standard, a correct application of the second ammendment is: I should be able to own Abrams M1 Tank, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, weapons with silencers and night vision, grenade launchers, body armor, and the equipment to service and repair them. Anything less means the citizenry cannot overthrow an oppresive government, and would therefore not be meeting the measure of the ammendment.

To claim otherwise is nieve or ignorant, political correctness aside. If you don't like it, repeal the 2nd ammendment - otherwise you're practicing revisionism.

Re:OOG OFFER INFO ON CAVE-WEED!!!

[radja]

OOG no be hitting cavehos if oog high as a flemish parrot. OOG be happily having the munchies, and OOG roll new joint. OOG act like english hooligan in amsterdam, to stoned to do any real damage. OOG welcome to come and visit. As for Radja.. he'll be stoned again once he gets off work in a few hours.

//rdj

You FAILED

[MrEd]

Well, guess the gun-control people win this thread.

Next time you're too busy/bored to refute statements, look for another comment that supports your point of view, that way the fun can continue!

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[MrEd]

I've been mulling over this pro-gun-control thought for awhile, tell me what you think of it:

In a country where it is easy to own a handgun, more people will buy them. Thus, more handguns will be made, assuming a decent domestic market. Thus, due to economies of scale, the price to buy a gun will drop, making it even easier to buy a handgun...

Now that I write it down, it's a bit less compelling. Still a bit of a vicious circle tho.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Mr_Ceebs]

We don't put people in jail for having AIDS, do we?

Don't go giving these people ideas.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Mr_Ceebs]

but when you've got a family or something, you're treading on unsteady ground. Same goes for alcohol and cigarettes (but to a lesser extent with cigs).

BAN ALL DRUGS (but not mine please)

Soon there'll be a law banning Linux HOWTO's

[rommi]

No text.

regulated =/ managed in this context

[operagost]

Regulated has been defined here as "equipped" or "prepared". This means that anyone who is able to carry a weapon needs to know how to properly use and maintain it, and said weapon must have a military use. This was established some time ago in the federal courts when a man attempted to defend his right to carry a sawed-off shotgun. Since this kind of weapon has little military value, the judgment was made against him. You have to remember that the usage of words can change over time. This doesn't change their meaning.
To everyone else here, my apologies for being redundant. I know this stuff comes up VERY often.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[BrianHV]

Is alcohol use wrong?

No, because it doesn't harm other people.

Is marijuana use wrong?
Is LSD use wrong?

Ditto.

Is LSD use while driving wrong?

Yes, for the same reason that driving under the influence of alcohol is wrong; it's much more likely to cause an accident and hurt other people.

Is LSD use while performing heart surgery wrong?

Ditto. The patient has the right to expect that his/her doctor is operating (no pun intended) at full mental capacity.

Is LSD use while piloting a commercial airliner wrong?

Same. Pilots need to be at full mental capacity, especially when they're directly responsible for hundreds of lives.

Is it wrong to use drugs on someone else for the purpose of rape, kidnapping, or any number of other crimes?

Of course not. No where have I seen anyone argue that x, y, or z should be legal because it's ok to hurt someone else. (Possible exception is the death penalty argument, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.)

At some level in this line of questioning, virtually everyone will answer yes.

I, and I imagine most other libertarian thinkers, will answer yes when the damage that drugs cause is no longer limited to oneself. When you're hurting others, it's wrong. But that's not enough to make the blanket statement, "Drugs are wrong."

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[BrianHV]

You are right there. I was trying to make the unpopular argument that somewhere, however deep and dark you want it to be, free speech should have a limit. I realize my argument won't convince everyone, but I believe it was thoughtfully made.

I'll stipulate that free speech should have a limit. That limit is when that speech directly harms other person(s). (Slander, libel, and disclosure of secrets.) But your argument seemed to be basically that speech about illegal activities should be illegal, and I don't agree with that. Aside form the substantial disagreement as to what, exactly, is wrong and the always changing laws, it simply doesn't cause direct harm.

As for your examples, yes, I believe people have a right to read those books. I don't believe they have the right to act on what those books demonstrate. There's also, of course, a fine line between public, free speech and a conspiricy which may be inferred from sending instructions on poisining water to six specific individuals.

Re:What about text books? -- Nuclear physics

[Voltage_Gate]

Not to drag this out, but I can see things like transmutation coming true as soon as we find an unlimited power source - I dunno, like you zap one metal into another if you had enough energy. Voila, you have uranium! Simply a matter of changing the number of protons (and associated particles), no? OK I'll stick to biology and leave physics to others.

What about text books?

[Voltage_Gate]

My own college chemistry books describe exactly how to make some drugs - will these books be banned? Certain drugs, legal or not, take on different forms as conjugates, esters, prodrugs (drugs that don't become active until some sort of biochemistry kicks in). At this level, they'd be hampering my education to make and research actual therapeutic drugs! Of course there are lists of controlled chemicals and "watched" chemicals that they check and see who's buying them, but to ban KNOWLEDGE of how to make them?? Only the worst secrets that could be used as weapons should be banned (like how to make nuclear bombs).

g'damn US

[nutty]

I've seen it mentioned in other posts here, but I don't think enough attention is being put on the subject.

How does the US government plan to block files hosted in other countries?

Lets follow the process...
First, they go to Altavista, google, metacrawler, et al and demand that they remove those links from theyre search directory. Lets say, for arugements sake, that they succeed. So now no US search engine can return anything about illegal drugs, not even if youre using google from Amsterdamn.

Then, people will start using search engines hosted in other countries, like swedens own http://www.spray.se.(My current place of employment) They will NOT back down.

Does the US government really think that they can control the internet? They are completely forgetting the fact the its not theirs to control. Ack. Im very disturbed right now. Ive had it up to my farhead with the US believing they own the internet.

Those are my proud 2 kronors.
/nutt

Re:What you can do about it

[phutureboy]

Voting for a third party candidate is never a wasted vote, regardless of whether they have a chance this time around.

The more votes a third party candidate gets, the easier it is next time around for that party or candidate to get ballot access (an extremely daunting, expensive proposition in many states), media coverage, matching funds (although Libertarians refuse to accept them), inclusion in polls and debates, and campaign donations.

While voting your conscience may not win a current election, it does more good in the long run than voting for the lesser of two evils.

Re:Maybe it SHOULD pass ...

[phutureboy]

Or Harry Browne :)

Re:corrpution and b.s.

[phutureboy]

I heard a speech the other day where the speaker said we are no longer on a slippery slope to losing all our individual liberties, we're hurtling down a water slide.

Re:We're the problem.

[phutureboy]

Actually, the libertarian.org site is an introduction to libertarianism, sponsored by the Henry Hazlitt Foundation.

The Libertarian Party site is at www.lp.org

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[phutureboy]

Actually the chemistry link on hyperreal now sends you to some site called the Vaults of Erowid.

Haven't any of you people hear of Budda Ti?

[LRJ]

It's just regular old Ti dipped in opium (or sometimes hash oil). It's usually just a couple bucks more than regular pot, but ONE hit and hold on. The drawback is that because the pot is wieghted down you get less smokable material - though you do need less.

Two things...

[LRJ]

First: gold is traded in TROY ounces which are quite a bit smaller than a standard ounce (not sure of the conversion factor though).

Second: You may be paying $75 an ounce for pot in your area but I'm pretty sure it's just general grade stuff. Top grade green bud sells for anywhere between $300 and $350 an ounce in CA (you can sometimes find it for less but it's usually mass produced Mexican that just 'looks' green). We can all thank Anhieser Busch and CAMP for today's prices.

A lil shot of reality

[Golgofrinchian]

"2. A criminal faced with an unarmed civilian will most likely not fire. A criminal faced with an armed civilian most likely will. Count the bodies"

My brother was tied up in a 7-11 and shot in the back of the head... you dont suppose that your theory is a bit to optimistic...

Maybe Im just a bit jaded about my experiences. I own a gun, will always own a gun. Ability to protect myself from these idiots is one right that they should never take from us.

attack problems, not drug users

[agentk]

> So you don't think weed laced with opium can > lead to regular opium use which can lead to > Heroin?

This is why I'd rather grow my own weed.

Prohibition shifts the focus of a society away from the true causes of a drug problem, and intead onto villainizing the symptoms. Instead of trying to educate and improve the lives of its citizens, government throws them in jail. This is a self-destructive act by the society.

Prohibition makes things WORSE.
Prohibition obscures real problems.
The only thing it prohibits is the ability of society, through institutions like government and private organizations, to address the real problems, and address the drug PROBLEMS, rather than the simple existence of drugs.

Some of this opinion is based on Elliot Currie's Reckoning: Drugs, The CiIties, and the American Future. Chapter six is called Reconstructing Communities and explores some of what I said in a bit more depth.

A little thought and it should be obvious: the goal should be to dig deeper beyond just the drugs, to realize that drugs are a significant part of other problems (and they are), and not the only problem themselves.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Cu]

That's because you don't focus on Christian history.

Some of that Old Testament shit (right up to Cain and Able) is downright friendly.

Who wrote this bill?

[MobyDisk]

Don't just stop at speaking out against the bill - speak out against those who wrote it. I plan on looking up the members of the commitee who brought this up and find who tacked the rider on. Doesn't anyone publish this stuff? I'd love to see the Washington Post list each congress member, their voting record, and how many riders they attached to bills. THAT would affect my vote.

Springfield/Perverted Arts

[Spankophile]

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Democracy doesn't work." - Kent Brockman

FAX your representative

[Keepiru]

Yeah, I'm replying to be near the top, but I think this is important.

The ACLU has a website where you can FAX your representative a prewritten letter to speak out against HR 2987.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[jlb]

While I am against draconian drug legislation you're making a horrible mistake.

Addiction is a disease. It is an largely undetectable until it rears it's ugly head.

Any, I repeate any drug can set it off. Saying that marijuana is 100% harmless is not only wrong but irresponsible.

There's a reason why there's Marijuana Anonymous, just like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, etc.

It's not a matter of if a particular drug will set it off but how soon.

I agree that banning substances is not the solution, and I oppose the War On (some) Drugs that our government is waging. And I agree that banning substances is not the answer.

The answer is education.

Eventually I hope we are able to detect diseases like addiction early and save people a lot of pain.

An example of someone doing it right is dancesafe who preach harm reduction. But even they would be censored by this bill.

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[Zach]

You start to take away one of our rights and the others will all start to slip away too. Taking away our rights to own fully automatic weapons is WORSE than taking away your "rights" to post drug tutorials.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Zach]

this isn't about whether or not you think that drugs are bad...mmmmmmmmkay........This isn't about "education." This is about freedom of speech. People have a *right* to know about this stuff. The ONLY reason the question of freedom of speech about narcotics is controversial is because narcotics themselves are controversial.

Of course they have a right to know -about- it. Everyone should know -about- it, not -how- to do it. Perhaps about wasn't the word you should've used.

1)It's absurd to compare illicit narcotics with caffeine. Honestly, though, I haven't had caffeine for more than a year now - orange juice, water, and milk suffice just great - and I've never felt better. Guzzling a 'Dew no longer holds its appeal.

2)Caffeine is not outlawed. Can caffeine produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics? No, then, I am not against websites like that.

3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs.

Caffeine does not cause people to go rob stores/banks/innocents so they can get cash for their next fix. Drugs do. When was the last time you saw someone jumped in the street because the mugger needed money for a Coke?

And if you *get* my point... good for you! :)

Re:Why?!?!

[jonnythan]

It may surprise you how few Congressmen actually know/have read the Constitution, my friend.

DOH

[Gaccm]

duh, i really should have catched that, well the at least everything else is right.

Re:Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[Gaccm]

On the subject of drugs, I should start by mentioning that I spent a great deal of my life Straight Edge. Meaning, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no meat, no cheese etc. In later years I have loosened up on alcohol, but drugs is something I still will not touch.

OT- Wow, that's same with me, except i eat cheese

But what I need to know, what is the arbitrary decider that makes marijuana more dangerous (Reefer Madness!) than alcohol? I've never seen a stoned individual beat his wife, or drive his car into a group of people. On the other hand, we've heard of alcohol-influenced wife-abuse and drunk drivers.

2 reasons
Money Money Money. Alcohol (and tabacoo) comps are huge and super powerful, but no other drugs have become as popular, leading to big corps. So, big corps can pay to make sure no laws hurt them. 2nd. There were very few native drugs in U.S. Most drugs they got had to be imported, and U.S. gov't did not want it's subjects paying money to some other country (this is why cocaine is illegal (its from China)).

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[discore]

*blinks*
i coulda sworn i was on slashdot, not hyperreal.org
why did this post get moderated up?

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Logos]

First off, this isn't a flame--I don't agree with your arguments, but I don't intend to attack *you* You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

I have seen similiar arguments to this before, and many good responses have been already given that point out some of the fallacies in your argument. I want to add one more.

I have known, and been friends with, a lot of people used a lot of drugs in my day. People from all income levels, backgrounds, careers, education levels, and demographics. One thing they all had in common--they did drugs because they chose to. Some (like me) quit, and others didn't. Some died, and some really screwed up their lives. And some to my knowledge, are still partying away, and having a grand ol' time. Ending up in a bad way was by no means was a forgone conclusion--If it were, then at least 85% of the people I've known would be dead, or street junkies by now--if we follow your logic to its conclusion.

But that is just background, what I want to point out is this: That all of those people, me, you, your friend, and everyone else in the good ol' US of A who have done drugs Have done so illegally!!!

So what makes you think that a few more laws are going to make that go away? If these people are willing to break the law to consume plants and extracts that make them feel differently (my cat can do it legally, but I can't BTW) when they have dozens of really severe laws and guys with guns that say they will rot in jail for it, if caught, why would any more stringent laws help?

Unless of course Congress goes for immediate execution, first offense. I suppose that will clear up the drug war eventually...

Bottom line legalization != endorsement, any more than criminalization == forbidding. Laws don't dictate morality, or even right and wrong, they deal strictly in limitations to your natural rights. This is one of those things that may be wrong to do, but shouldn't be illegal.

I should (and do regardless of morality laws) get to decide what is good for me, the additional burden of law is extraneous. Unfortunately, censorship in one area is a precedent for censorship in other areas. As too are laws that reduce liberty in the name of morality. Talk about gateways...

Best,
Logos

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[MattXVI]

The line item veto would only have applied to spending bills.

"When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."

Re:Unconstitutional Laws Must Cost Lawmakers

[ckaminski]

Actually, I'm more for the favor of this. If you vote to pass an unconstitutional law, you get a strike. 3 strikes, and you do jail time. Nothing too heavy, just enough to make you reread the constitution a few times before signing your next bill.

Or maybe mandatory constitutional law courses?

I wonder what kind of nastiness congress will cook up to work around such a scheme?

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[Schmecky]

Anyone who comes into my house and takes my things without telling me, is a thief.
That is unreasonable, and it violates my rights.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Schmecky]

IMO either everyone has guns, or no one has guns. Since the later is impossible, the solution is obvious.

Problems with laws and bills

[FattMattP]

I think that bills should be about one subject and one subject only. If a bill cannot pass on its own and needs to be attached to something more popular to get railroaded through congress, then that should tell you something about that bill.

Evaluate one law at a time, please.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[ironheart]

...that the second amendment gives states the right to retain their own military forces.

Unfortunately for this interpretation, Article I, section 10, clause 3 says, nope, they can't. Although one could counter that the 2nd Amendment was the states' way of repealing that clause. Alternatively, one could point to the differences between "Troops" in that clause and "militia" in the 2nd -- except you'll start sounding like a militia is, um, regular citizens again.

In either case, watch what you wish for -- it could be argued that this sort of interpretation leads to all sorts of other problems.

...to "bear arms" was a phrase of the day that meant military service.

Cite, maybe? I find it hard to believe that the 2nd amendment means "Because it's important to have a strong defense, everyone shall be allowed to serve in the military." Especially since the full phrase is "Keep and bear arms."

...the second amendment is a historical curiousity from an age that vanished a long time ago.

Then feel free to take care of this in the constitutionally mandated way: Have your congressman or senators propose an amendment to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Plenty of people probably agree with you, and you only have to convince most of the state legislatures. It could happen...and while I wouldn't support the substance, I would accept that you're trying to improve the country in a way that supports the basic precepts upon which it was founded....instead of requesting that it be ignored because it doesn't matter anymore.

TSG

News Flash

[Artie FM]

Moderator admits to smoking crack!
--
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[iso]

i relate to your heroine concerns, and i don't mean to downplay what you've experienced.

however i don't think you know what it's like to watch a friend never wake up because he drank too much too quickly. i understand it's easier to die of a heroine overdose than an alcohol overdose, but the results are just as damaging.

alcohol is a deadly drug. don't forget it

also, "Weed Shrooms and E are all gateways to a much much worse area of society" for you. please keep this in mind. not for everybody, but it was for you. probably many of your friends as well, as they were probably doing heroine with you for the same reason, but don't then assume that this is the case for everyone

in fact, in all rational studies, there has not been shown a strong correllation to prove the "gateway drug" theory for most of the population. it does occur, but again, not with most people. it is unfortunate that it happened to you, but please don't assume everyone in the world is you.

but regardless, this is off-topic completely. i will never suggest that these drugs be legalized, as i've probably been in similar circumstaces to you. however, it is absolutely rediculous to conclude that drug information should be made illegal. no information should be illegal, ever. withheld maybe, but never outlawed.

- j

Re:Um...

[Alpha State]

And another thing... I'm Canadian, but I use a U.S. ISP (@Home). If I link to, say, a site in the Netherlands about this stuff on my webspace (residing on their servers), am I going to get my account terminated? :^P

Almost definately. Try linking to a search engine page which gives the site as the first response. That should confuse 'em.

The other question is: what about Americans who put up web pages in other countries? The might not be able to get a page hosted in Kazakhstan taken down, but is it still illegal?

For reference, a porn sites in Australia have done this - even keeping their .au domain. People have complained, but the ABA has said that they are complying with the law and there's nothing they can do about it.

What about legal use?

[MrTwisted]

As a Canadian, I have read and heard about how many states now have legalized Marijuana Use for the treatment of illnesses. Also, there are about 50 Canadians who have received special permission from the Health Department to consume it for the treatment diseases ranging from Multiple Sclerosis to Aids.

One of the most commonly cited problems for these people who have marijuana prescribed for them, at least here in Canada, is that it is hard to get a good supply of it. Sure they could get it from their local dealer, however that would be illegal and these are presumably law abiding citizens, since they have gone to the trouble to get legal prescriptions for marijuana.

Some may buy it from Medical Marijuana Clubs, however their packages are frequently intercepted by the RCMP, the Post Office, or other members of the Police. Also, quality control is important, because these people aren't looking for the best buzz, or the most trippy side of the drug, they are looking for it's pain-killing, or hunger inducing qualities (the munchies).

This bill is going to make it harder for the legal use of Marijuana to be done in a legal way. It will make it harder to spread information about how to grow the best kind for medical consumption, it will also make it harder for people to learn how to grow their own. People growing their own marijuana for their legal consumption will help remove the undesirable element (the dealers and the rest of the underworld) from the treatment of their medical condition.

The information that this law will also make it illegal for cannabis clubs to share information with each other in the perfection of the treatments. It also will hurt the scientific study that is currently being done both in Canada and in the USA into the medical qualities of marijuana, and possibly also into the growing industry of making things like clothes and paper out of hemp.

What this bill does appear to be is a way for the US federal government to fight back against states that have legalized medical use.

Of course, what will most likely happen is that most of the information about making drugs will simply move offshore.

In fact it is simply going to hurt the USA's interests, as it will be even further behind countries like Canada which are said to grow the best marijuana in the world. (BC!) I expect it is only a matter of time before the growing of marijuana for medical use becomes big business controlled by foreign multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

By distributing this knowledge to people and farmers, it will perhaps lead to more competition, and perhaps, God willing, the removal of the illegal underworld side of the distribution of a simple plant.

Police state

[magi]

This may be a bit off-topic, but...

I had a discussion with an American recently, and he told me that it was mandatory, in USA, to carry an identification card at all times, or otherwise the police could arrest you. I was shocked. Is this really possible in the "Land of the Free"? In the same country where they stubbornly refuse to allow identification numbers, and other things that could make reliable identification possible.

Well, the situation seems to be about the same elsewhere in the world (although I've succesfully lived in Finland for 30 years without being aware about this kind of law). I guess there are good reasons for enforcing this kind of laws in countries where there are lots of foreigners and illegal immigrants.

- The admistrator of Finnish section of Lycaeum drugs archive

Re:Police state

[e13ven]

I have been arrested in SF for not having and ID in golden gate park. I guess I wasn't officialy arrested but I was put in handcuffs and taken to jail where they "officialy" identified me. The whole thing took nearly twenty hours. Police are the most fucked individuals I have ever had the displeasure of knowing. When I was mugged in Pan Handle Park a very nervous scared desparate poor young man was taking something from me. He at least was honest about his behavior. The DEA, FBI and police steal at will with impunity come into your home early in the morning and when they don't find what they were looking for they take your pot and bong and shit. Fuck the thieving pig police!!

Censorship in universities

[magi]

I am a CS student at the University of Turku, Finland. A few years ago, I had myself written a substantial amount of drugs information on my web pages at our university server (later relocated because of technical reasons). At one point, they removed them, and I received a strict order not to publish them in our university network.

This means that I can't even publish them in my home computer, because it is connected to the Internet through our university. (I'm actually not even allowed to give user accounts to non-university people - which would clearly mean also family members...on a Windows machine there obviously wouldn't be such restrictions...)

Since I had no other server in Finland where I could relocate the drugs information pages, they now reside at Lycaeum.

The university apparently is allowed to censor the publications of its students and researchers, and of persons who pay money for their Internet connection.

I have met similar problems as an administrator of ftp.funet.fi, one of the historically most significant FTP servers. It is maintained by FUNet (Finnish University Network). They also banned keeping drugs information there. ftp.funet.fi is funded by the Ministry of Education, and the administrators feared of cuts in funding, if it were to become public knowledge that the MoE is funding drugs information.

Disclaimer: I am personally not a user of any illicit drugs, nor do I recommend their use to anyone. I might personally have some interest in medical use of marihuana, and perhaps also in recreational use of marihuana and some other drugs. I definitely think that the current prohibition laws of many drugs are bad, because they themselves make drugs much worse thing than they would otherwise be.

Censorship is baad, o'kay?

Great retaliation opportunities

[Wolfier]

The first thing we'll be seeing is a big paragraph on www.fbi.gov telling you how to make drugs. Made by - who else - those 31337 k1dd13s.

Now does it outlaw the fbi?

How about I crack some of my enemy sites and report them...

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

Right because noone ever dies in drinking and driving accidents, noone ever drinks themselves to death, and noone smokes till they get lung cancer.

Right?

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

feel that it is imperative that we do not allow our rights to be gradually taken away, one by one

However I would argue that my rights are taken away by drug users who drive, drug users who assault me on the street, crack users who have children, destroying lives before they are born...

I see this as a much greater problem.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

So you don't think weed laced with opium can lead to regular opium use which can lead to Heroin?

You don't think that E laced with coke leads to regular usage of coke? Don't tell me that it doesn't and don't point to studies. I've lived it and the story is the same everytime. Of course not EVERYBODY becomes a crack head if you hit a joint. But I've seen it again again and again, and I'm tired of it.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

1. Yes they do.

2. Are fetal-acohol syndrome babies a myth also? How about children of Thalydomide?

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[arcum]

Well, that info is in George Washingtons diary, too, IIRC, so they'd have to expunge that as well...

Role of government

[bug1]

I have a saying

Government should empower people, not impair them.

So many cases where governments try and take away power from citicens thinking they are doing the right thing.
The problem is governments try and judge how a citicens power would be used, politicens(i just cant spell) do a grave injustice with this, surely judging people is a job for a recognised judge.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[TheCarp]

> 1) No Medicinal Value - Gee, I guess that's why
> it's one of the primary ingredients of Excedrin.

Heh its like giving heroin to a junkie....
most headaches are caused by mild caffeine withdrawl....so of course the most effective medicine for any withdrawl is the drug itself...

well that or ibogaine....but 24 hours of strong hallucination is a bit heavy of a remedy for a headache.

> Please explain the withdrawl symptoms (not
> usually, if ever life threatening though)

It is...but not for coffee drinkers. I know of people who pop nodoz. They work themselevs up to several pills a day (equivalent of 2 cups of coffee per pill just about - and its all at once).

It is quite possible for a person to develop a life threatening dependance with caffeine pills.

Re:Yeah, what about them?

[TheCarp]

> I have no problem with marijuana and cocaine
> being reclassified. They are only about as
> dangerous for most people as liquor or tobacco
> are. But don't confuse them with opiates. That
> as a very different sort of game.

Oh I agree they are a differnt game. However... that is hardly the point. Prohibition doesn't work no matter what the game is. Limiting what a doctor can do legally, doesn't work either.

The Abortion pro-choice groups have a slogan, its one I like alot. "Keep your laws off my body" has a nice ring to it, if you ask me.

Re:e-commerce

[TheCarp]

> HP - More "e" than letters in the Chinese
> alphabet. It's difficult to read half a sentence
> from HP these days without puking from overuse
> of "e-this" and "e-that". HP is addicted to E.
> And boy, does it show.

Well AFAIK E isn't addictive (habbit forming probably but not addictive - no withdrawl syndrome) However the irony is rich....

One of the Side effects of MDMA (especially if you take a high dose) - nausea :)

-Steve

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

As for moonshine....

I know the US went through this in the 20s but I was speaking with an Iranian friend....when the Shah took over the government (mid 70s?) all the liquer stores were burned to the ground.

What happend? People started making their own liquer from grapes. However, being inexperienced, they forgot to remove the stems.

The stems of course fermented creating methyl Alcohol or methanol. Good for getting water out of your gas tank...not good for drinking. Alot of people went blind.

Alcohol is in fact one of the worst drugs...

[athmanb]

Not because it addicts after a few glasses or because it kills a lot of people, but because of the social damages it causes.
Especially alcohol-addicted parents are cause irreparable damage to their children, resulting in whole futures being lost and possible cost (if it's measurable at all) of trillions of $.

Re:Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[cybercuzco]

(this is why cocaine is illegal (its from China)).

Ummmm NO, most cocaine comes from Columbia and other central american nations, not China, maybe you were thinking of Opium.

Ever hear of the "Bill of Rights"???

[HobophobE]

Yeah, see, the way the government works is, we have a thing called a constitution. This is the RFC document on the syntax that the government must follow. None of the constitution can be altered by simple law, there must be an amendment (upgrade if you will) to the constitution. Therefore, any law which violates the constitution can be ruled unconstitutional through the judicial system. Okay, so for the slow ones, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THEY PASS THE LAW BECAUSE IT WILL VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION AND DIE.

-HobophobE

Re:Without..

[monstermagnet]

Except .. that it's perfectly legal and proteced byt the first amendment to publish books on how to make compounds that are presently illegal in the US.

I refer you, for starters, to "Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture" by "Uncle Fester". Published by Loompanics.

I encourage one and all to thumb through http://www.erowid.org for accurate and non-hysterical information on drugs of all types - licit and illicit.

Re:I've always wondered

[monstermagnet]

It doesn't, plain and simple.

There's pretty much no question that Uncle Fester's "Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture" (Loompanics) is published in the US.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Mike Micelli]

The world needs to return to the basic principles of love and respect for your neighbor and fellow man and guns do absolutely nothing to promote this.

How can we return to a basic principle that never existed? Are you from some parallel universe where everyone got along?

Was it during the time of Jesus? I seem to remember the Romans nailing him to a cross.

Was it during the 1700's? I heard about something called a revolutionary war, so it must not have been then.

Maybe your talking about the 1940's. Nope, I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of war in Europe and Japan.

Perhaps you're talking about the fundie x-tians famous mystical and perfect 1950's. They didn't exist except on television shows like "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best". The rest of REAL society during the 50's had to put up with things like spousal abuse, incest, murder, arson, rape, etc.

I'm always so confused when you fundies refer to this time of peace and brotherly love, beacause quite frankly, I can't pinpoint that time in human history.

Re:Commiland

[Conspire]

Thanks for the note. I was not aware of who was responsible for the bill.

In all fairness, both reps and dems are really all about the same thing, money and power for themselves. I only slammed Clinton because he is there to slam. I would not expect anything different from any other politico in the US at the momment. Things really look grave for freedom in the US for the next generation, and there is not much we can do about it.

Re:Commiland

[Conspire]

well, it does not surprise me about prison labor. thanks for the correction.

death penalty and taxes are sure to come around one of these days.

forced abortions, well before you say NEVER, consider the world population, overpollution, lack of water and resources sometime in the year 2020~2050 and get back to me.

Re:Commiland

[Conspire]

Thanks for the correction. That is what i get for living abroad and ust plain ignoring the political status of the US of A because I am so damn sick of caring for something I cannot change.

Re:Shit for Brains

[Conspire]

Although the post was just a flat out shit for brains quikkie shot, it is altogether scary how the US is becoming so anti-everything to do with anything "immoral". I am sickened by the lack of freedom slowly churning in my motherland, the USA.

Re:quick FYI

[Poingggg]

In fact, alcoholism is a physical disease. Alcohol influences the way your nervous system works. When you are drunk, certain neuro-transmitter-levels go down (or up, don't ask the details, it's been some time since I read an article about it), causing the numbness when you are drunk. When sobering up, the nerve-cells initially overcompensate the effect by producing a peak (or just the other way round, see last remark)production, causing for example the over-sensitivity for sound when you have a hangover.
If you stay drunk for a longer period, or give the nervous system not enough time to re-stabilize, the system keeps trying to compensate. In the end, the nervous cells are 'programmed' to overproduce the substance, and they keep doing so, even when you are sober. The only way to compensate for this is drinking alcohol! So, alcoholism is a life-long illness (once you've 'got' it). You can stay sober, but the craving stays and once you start drinking it's very hard to stop again.

Ahem.

[kreyg]

There is no such thing as dangerous information!

Thank you.

You did say one VERY insightful thing

[yuriwho]

MAYBE OOG GO ON TO DOMESTICATE OTHER PLANTS LATER, INVENT CONCEPT OF AGRICULTURE AND BUILD BASIS OF CIVILIZATION BY ALLOWING CAVEMEN TO LIVE IN ONE STABLE PLACE WITHOUT HAVING TO MOVE!!!

It is widely believed among anthropologists that civizilation arose in societies with agriculture...which arose from people growing food to ferment into alcohol! They didn't invent large scale agriculture to grow food for themselves or for the benefit of others in their community! No they did it for selfish reasons....to get drunk and obtain favours from others by trading the first comodity, alcohol (well mabey second, after sex).

Re: Hypocrisy in government

[taiwanjohn]

> All of those people, me, you, your friend, and everyone else in the good ol' US of A who have done drugs Have done so illegally!!!

Damn right!

The two front-runners for US President (Gore and Bush) are BOTH former drug users, by their own admission. Despite the fact that they both seem to have done just fine without the "benefit" of correctional incarceration, they both still insist that more laws a stiffer penalties are the only way to address the problems associated with drug abuse.

The simple fact is that use != abuse. Abuse certainly happens, but it should be addressed through education (both preventive and theraputic) and treatment -- NOT incarceration.

-- TaiwanJohn

PS: I listed some worthy links on the subject in another post on this topic.

Re: We're the problem (...mostly)

[taiwanjohn]

The problem is that we mistakenly view government as a "parent" of sorts, when we ought to think of it more as a "child" -- of which we, the people are the parents.

Obviously, our "child" is getting out of hand, and it's time to take him out behind the woodshed for a good thrashing. ;-)

Really, in a democracy, the government is neither parent nor child... it is a tool. Like most tools, it can be damn useful if used properly -- and damn dangerous if used poorly...

When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!

How true. And we've been using government for all sorts of goofy applications that the Founding Fathers never intended, like sending people to jail for activities that harm no one (except maybe the "user"). We see something we don't like, and we say, "There oughta be a law!" ...and all too often, we get what we ask for.

I won't belabor the anti-DrugWar message... it's covered too well in other posts/sites/etc.. (Links below) But, it's time we woke up and took control of our lives and livelihoods back from this errant, power-addicted, Frankenstein-monster we call a "government".

-- TaiwanJohn

Links:
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do is the comprehensive guide to crappy, moralistic laws that crush freedom.
Here is a tarballed/zipped version of the same book (for convenient downloading)
The author of said bookrecently died awaiting sentencing for "medical marijuana" -- which is supposed to be LEGAL in California, after Prop-215
Finally, Common Sense Drug Policy has lots of great info... I'd suggest starting with the Ads section.

Re:Um...

[Karellen]

What if you link to an off-shore site that doesn't contain info about drugs, but contains an immediate re-direct to one that does?

They can't manage to outlaw linking to sites that link to sites with information, can they? That would just make the whole web illegal.

(Which isn't to say that making you responsible for what on the other end of _any_ link isn't dumb)

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[mashx]

I do believe that you have become caught up in the propaganda of the drug 'war'. Grouping narcotics/drugs/chemicals into legal and non-legal (and thus safe and harmful) is foolhardy. Alcohol is legal, but more dangerous than heroin in the same quantities. Caffeine *is* more addictive than MDMA/ecstasy.

In response to some of your points:

1)It's absurd to compare illicit narcotics with caffeine.

Why? Because it is not illegal? Because it is in coffee? Caffeine is a very dangerous drugs in some cases, and the fact that you haven't had caffeine for more than a year now says that you realise that perhaps even though it is legal, it isn't necessarily good for you: doesn't the opposite premise come into play here as well: if it is illegal, then is it necessarily bad for you?

2)Can caffeine produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics?

Without a doubt. Why is it that a lot of 'fake' Ecstasy pills in Europe have a good dose of Caffeine in them only?

3)No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs.

There is two main definitions of addictive: physically and mentally. Heroin/Cocaine are physically addictive as well as mentally. Marijuana is mildly mentally addictive, and not physically addictive at all: in fact it is less addictive than chocolate, which acts on the same part of the brain. Caffeine is addictive, which is why so many people need their dose in the morning, me included.

Drugs do...[cause people to go rob stores/etc]

No, I don't disagree, but not *all* drugs, and certainly not *only* drugs. There has to be distinction made: a toker will not hold up a gas station in order to get his next ounce, whereas a crackhead won't think twice about it to get his next rock (or mod points). The ones that do manufacture won't need some website, there is plenty of people who know how to do it and will gladly do so.

Now about the Freedom of Speech thing: During Prohibition, were all books detailing how to make wine/beer/vodka destroyed? Should they have been? Because this is what you seem to be advocating. Or is it just particular non-scientific sites that should be taken down? In which case, if a paper from some University goes into detail of how to make a 'drug' should it be banned because of the content, and the fact that it is available to kids? Or is this legitimate research? It is still the information available.

Just because the law is there, does not make it right, and this is not about protecting the children, this is about government propaganda: you know no other side to a story, you have no choice but to listen to that side over and over again, and to paraphrase that German Propaganda minister, Goebels(sp?), Tell the people a lie enough times they believe it.

I didn't intend to flame, but I don't like people repeating a lot of government crap about WHICHEVER subject. I think that everyone should get informed and not rely on biased FUD.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

Re:Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[neric]

Alcohol is a drug. Budwiser doesn't want it to be associated with the "hard drugs", and peopling dealing with "hard drugs" think it weakness the term drug. If you look at the numbers it is the biggest and most dangerous drug in America. Straight Edge my ass. You've picked an awful drug and think some how you are better than those who eat meat, smoke pot, or do whatever!

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[dopeghost]

::Your right to free speech is not being
::infringed, you're being prohibited from
::spreading information about a criminal
::activity. Do you honestly condone teaching our
::nation's youth the quickest way to kill
::themselves? Quit hiding behind the free speech
::claim.

half of whats on TV involves a criminal element that may possibly inspire those watching; used as a basis on which to base their plan.

If you want to know how to break into a bank watch ironside!

I think

[webrunner]

I think someone should put a rider on some bill about making it impossible to pass illegal LAWS.
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?

Re:Actually...

[Vanders]

Sadly, the Ruling Monarch has a lot of very severe powers which she can inact against Parliment. You give one example above. This even happened in the 70's when Parliment was hung.

The Queen also has the power to disolve Parliment, almost at any time as they see fit. The Queen also has the last say on all new laws, and can in theory reject a law for an reason (Perhaps she's had a bad day at the races, for example.)

You thought you lived in a Democracy? Nah mate, we're all Royal subjects!

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Rand Race]

What's beside the point? The fact is there is no amendment that reads "A well-educated populace being necessary to the security of a democracy, the right to keep and read books shall not be infringed,". That is beside the point because there is an amendment that reads "A well regulated militia...". The one that deals with books reads "Congress shall make no law prohibiting...freedom of speech or the press;...". You see, one says "no law" while the other says "well regulated" and "no law" does not mean the same thing as "well regulated".

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Rand Race]

"Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done."

It's been done, and it didn't work.... of course. Only an complete and total idiot would think it would.

"Your right to free speech is not being infringed, you're being prohibited from spreading information about a criminal activity."

Information is speech. Prohibition of distribution is infringing free speech. What part of 'Congress Shall Make No Law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;...' is so damned hard to understand? Which word in there is giving you trouble? One of the points of the amendment is to allow discussion of things that are against the law so that we can make informed decisions when we elect new lawmakers.

"Do you honestly condone teaching our nation's youth the quickest way to kill themselves?"

No I don't, but the second amendment protects guns... just like the 1st and 4th protect this.

"Quit hiding behind the free speech claim."

Pesky damned constitution.

Anyone else think that an elected representative that votes for a law later found to be unconstitutional (as this one will be, even with this right leaning court) should be subject to impeachment or recall action?

I also want to know how one would prohibit information on marijuana cultivation. Can we really controll speech as simple as "Put it in the ground; wait a few weeks; smoke". Note also that prohibition on marijuana cultivation related speech would invalidate parts of George Washington's diary... he was a hemp farmer you know.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Rand Race]

I agree completely cap'n K except for one little niggling point. Speech that incites violence or causes danger is not 'banned'. Like yelling 'fire' in a theatre, it is not the speech that gets you in trouble but the effects of said speech. Banning the words themselves is called 'prior restraint' and has been found, over and over again, to be unconstitutional (and dangerous in the 'fire in a theatre' case because what would you do if there was a fire?). One is, however, responsible for the actions your speech causes. Ergo the statute you would be prosecuted under for your 'String 'em up..' speech would be inciting a riot or some such.

Actually...

[skrew]

Actually, England does have a bill of rights, all the way back from 1688...the US and Australia (and Canada) legal systems are based on this and english common law. It doesnt guarentee as many freedoms as the US bill of rights, but it was certainly the legal influence for the founders.

Re:Actually...

[andyt]

Well, I guess the opposition has a role in this but, in all honesty, it ain't that effective. (Mainly coz the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition, Mr William Hague, is about a charismatic as a slug).

The only real opposition we have left are the newspapers, most of which are owned by one man.

So as long as the PM a) keeps his party in line and b) keeps Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Sun, Times, Mirror(?), most of our TV channels and some other stuff that I've forgotten) happy, he can do whatever he wants.

Hell - the Government has already decided that the European Declaration of Human Rights won't apply to the victims of the RIP bill...

Re:Actually...

[Detritus]

In the English system, what stops the Prime Minister from doing whatever he wants? From what I've read, Labour is eager to gut the House of Lords. The Monarch doesn't have any real power, and short of triggering a no-confidence vote from the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has unlimited power if he can keep his party in line.

Re:Actually...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The only real opposition we have left are the newspapers, most of which are owned by one man.

Unfortunately, the British newspapers aren't free, either. Without a constitution to trump the laws, the government can (and does) suppress news items it doesn't like.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Hellvis]

The thing is...you never see on the newspaper or on TV "Guy smokes pot, eats pizza" or "man drops acid, finds god...joins the church to help others" (not that I condone joining churches, I am an atheist, but a friend of mine dropped some acid once, and ended up deciding he disliked his life and joining a church because of it and finding "god"...much longer story than that but thats the "executive summary")

...thus proving, once again, that religion is mostly the product of hallucination. :)

Peter McWilliams is dead

[Hellvis]

This may be of interest to some... Peter McWilliams, who is mentioned in the MotherJones article, was found dead on June 14. Peter used marijuana to suppress the nausea that was a side-effect of his medications for AIDS and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After being wrongfully denied access to medical marijuana by the Federal Government, he choked to death on his own vomit. Read all about it on the Libertarian Party website.

Re:Slow loading time

[n3rd]

guess what fuck stick, I'm going to sign up for that DSL, and I'm not going to use you as a referrer since you're such a moron. Thanks for the info, I hope you lose time and money.

Re:The 2nd amendment is about overthrowing governm

[bripeace]

Ask the venture capitalist? ohh so thats where all the Internet startup money is going... military coups!! hmm i need to get more info on this... Are there any military coups going public soon? -Brian Peace mmmm sarcasim

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Fesh]

From what I understand, it's an ingredient in Excedrin because a lot of North American headaches are caused by caffeine withdrawl...
--Fesh

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[andy@petdance.com]

Drugs must be stopped at all costs.

"All costs"? Literally? At the expense of the Bill of Rights? How about if we just execute drug dealers? How about users?

Where do we stop? Heroin is bad, sure, but what about pot? We gonna shoot the potheads? How about booze? Caffeine? Sugar buzzes?

"At all costs" means a hell of a lot, and don't think that your local congressperson doesn't get a big ol' stiffy when you say things like that.

We really need complete legalization

[vorpal22]

Let me begin by saying that I love drugs. I have been using drugs moderately for the last five years. I have used alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, marijuana, nitrous oxide, dextromethorphan, GHB, diphenhydramine, salvia divinorum, codeine, oxycodone, ephedrine, kava kava, mushrooms (psilocybin containing ones), alprazolam (Xanax), and diazepam (Valium). I only use marijuana and nitrous oxide, usually in combination, on a regular basis (i.e. once or twice a weekend). I am a pagan and the combination of these two produces intensely incredible reality defying and religious experiences for me.

I loathe people who sit there chugging coffee or alcohol getting all self-righteous indulging in a similar conversation as below:
Self righteous bastard: "Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs."
Me: "Why are they bad?"
SRB: "Drugs kill people."
Me: "No they don't. I've used drugs and I'm still alive."
SRB: "Well, drugs kill some people."
Me: "Actually, I don't think, throughout history, that there has ever been a recorded case of death directly and solely due to marijuana."
SRB: "Well, some drugs kill some people."
Me: "Yeah, well some Americans killed some people during the second world war. Some cars kill some people every day. So what, you want to abolish Americans and cars as well?"

I'll conclude by saying that illegal drugs, or drugs of questionable legality (e.g. nitrous oxide) have in no way affected me in a negative manner, even after five years of use. My IQ has been measured consistently between 155 and 165, and I have a perfect grade point average in school. I have an excellent relationship - I will be celebrating my 1 year anniversary in two weeks. My family loves me, and they are accepting of my drug use because hell, my parents smoked pot in the 60s.

In fact, the ONLY drug I ever had a problem with is alcohol. I could not control my alcohol intake and at my worst I was drinking 50-80 drinks a week (getting drunk 3-5 nights a week). I got kicked out of the first university I attended because I was frequently too hung over to go to class. My friends were turning their backs on me. I couldn't maintain a relationship. My liver enzyme count was on the rise. Alcohol, no matter how you look at it, is physically addictive. Marijuana, LSD, mushrooms, nitrous oxide, etc... are not. You can overdose and die (fairly easily) on alcohol. It is nearly impossible to overdose and die from marijuana use (you'd have to smoke a bale, and you'd probably die from respiratory failure long before you'd die from an overdose), or LSD use for that matter (If you're interested - there's a report floating around the net that I think is linked to from either Hyperreal or the Lycaeum that states that a couple people at a party snorted pure LSD thinking it was cocaine... they ingested approximately 1250 hits each and although they remained unconcious for a few days, they suffered no long term cognitive impairment or mental trauma). In fact, alcohol is directly poisonous to the human body. Its primary metabolite is three times more poisonous than alcohol itself (this probably explains the hangover).

People state that drugs are bad. That is because that's what the government teaches, and because the media glorifies damage caused by illegal drugs (and yes - drugs, like cars, can be used irresponsibly and cause damage). Information is the key to accident prevention. Retain the information, and you'll get teens dying from trying drugs incorrectly. Dextromethorphan is an example (and a good one at that, because it is becoming quite popular) - if you do it incorrectly, you can easily die from acetaminophen overdose. If done correctly, it is fairly safe and extraordinarily mind expanding. Thanks to William White's most excellent Dextromethorphan FAQ, people can learn to use this drug responsibly instead of saying, "Hey, I heard you can get high on cough syrup." and running out and drinking a bottle of Nyquil, which will kill you.

Most of us don't want our teenagers having sex. Sex can be dangerous. You can contract numerous STDs, get pregnant, etc... Do just tell our children that "Sex is bad?". No, we realize that many of them will PROBABLY still go out and have sex despite our warnings, so we provide them with the proper information. We tell them to use birth control and how to use it properly. We know that teens and young adults will use drugs. We cannot hide the information about drug use; it must be made available for their safety.

Personally, it digusts me to no end that the government feels they can dictate what I can and what I cannot put in my body. Next will they be telling me what I can eat? Watching me to make sure that my sex life is in compliance with what they deem as socially acceptable?

I say MORE drugs :-). Legalize the drugs. Tax the drugs. Pay off debts with the drug tax. Use the remaining money and the money saved on the police force, government anti-drug institutions, etc... to fund hospitals and addiction recovery.

v

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Von Rex]

That must be why you couldn't actually refute his argument, eh?

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Von Rex]

It seems clear to most reasonable people that the second amendment gives states the right to retain their own military forces. It has nothing to do with individual gun ownership. For one, you're talking about a bunch of entities that just fought a war to be free of a central government. They weren't about to disarm themselves entirely for the newly created American federal government, just in case the federal goverment became a new tyrant. Also, to "bear arms" was a phrase of the day that meant military service. You don't "bear arms" against deer and woodchucks; you "bear arms" when you go to war. The fact that it's almost unthinkable today for individual states to maintain a seperate military is just more proof that the second amendment is a historical curiousity from an age that vanished a long time ago. If you're still not convinced, consider this: even the NRA does't base their court challenges on the second amendment. Sure, they make a lot of noise about it among the rank and file, but when it becomes time to step into the courtroom, they generally use the fourth amendment (illegal search and seizure). I'm not saying that individual gun ownership is necessarily a bad thing. I don't have any problem with responsible gun owners. But it's not what the second amendment is about.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Von Rex]

Then feel free to take care of this in the constitutionally mandated way: Have your congressman or senators propose an amendment to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Plenty of people probably agree with you, and you only have to convince most of the state legislatures. It could happen...and while I wouldn't support the substance, I would accept that you're trying to improve the country in a way that supports the basic precepts upon which it was founded....instead of requesting that it be ignored because it doesn't matter anymore.

I agree with you entirely on this point. I think both sides on this issue should have the balls to propose a rewrite of this amendment. If gun ownership should be a universal individual right, let it be written as such. If guns are to banned, or severely curtailed, let the gun grabbers do it with a constitutional amendment.

Or I guess we could all argue about the meaning of that one horribly written sentence for another 200 years.

DOH!

[Galvatron]

*sigh* You're right, I misread your post, sorry. It was early in the morning, and I was tired. Please ignore my initial post. We ought to be able to put updates on out posts like the Slashdot authors can.

Prevented from doing their job?

[Galvatron]

(This is not so far-fetched. For much of the 1900's it was against the law for physicians to explain anything about birth control to their patients. Reflect on that for a bit...)

I hate it when people refuse to understand the pro-life movement. From the perspective of many people, abortion is murder. A doctor is not going to provide you with information on how to most effectively kill your next door neighbor, is he? It doesn't matter that, in not telling you how to commit murder, you might end up hurting yourself. The same argument is appropriate for abortion, if one is a pro-lifer. Now then, I personally do not believe that abortion is murder, but don't act like those who do are trying to restrict what you do with your body, they're simply trying to prevent what to them seems like murder.

Re:IANAL also, but here is what I would like

[11oh8]

AFAIK, Bills aren't "ruled" unconstitutional, Laws are... so once the bill becomes a law, it can be revoked by the courts.. by then, it has nothing to do with any unrelated riders in it's bill.... riders are a good way for politicians to include their pet projects (building roads in their home town, etc) into an important bill that will surely pass... $.02.

Re:quick FYI

[Andrew Cady]

The source was the New York Times, which I know isn't infallible, but it's not a "pro-drug propaganda" newspaper. Oh, do you mean you don't trust WEB SITE THAT REPORTED THE INFORMATION because THE WEB SITE is pro-drug propaganda? Gimme a break. The web site is not the source, the NYT is the source.

`` Source: Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D. for NIDA. Reported by: Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use." ''

Re:quick FYI

[Andrew Cady]

alcohol isn't addictive, although there is a gene that can facilitate addiction to alcohol (read: alcoholism) - technically speaking, alcohol isn't an addictive substance

Uhh, YES, alcohol is addictive, far more than caffeine in every category. See this chart of addictive properties of drugs. It compares Nicotine, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol, Caffeine, and Marijuana.

Also, regarding that comment about a "gene that can facilitate addiction to alcohol", I'd love to hear exactly what this gene is, and the name of the protein to which it maps.

knowledge == power

[klyX]

The anti-anti-drug movement has come so far, why stop fighting? Anyone who agrees with me needs to show their true colors and say something about it!!

Amen my brother !

I had a bad experience with LSD when I was younger, before I really knew much about drugs (besides marijuana). I ended up taking too much, not understanding what the drug would do to me in the first place, not knowing the drug could be laced with something really harmful (like PCP, which the doses I bought turned out to be combined with). Plain and simple I should have looked into the facts about the drug (hyperreal) before I ate too much and ended up in the hospital! And with kids today trying more substances earlier in thier lives, we need open information on drugs readily available.



---
How long have you been listening to the world's famous?
'Bout six weeks.
Six weeks!

Re:knowledge == power

[mdwebster]

That's interesting.

Was the medium of ingestion something other than blotter paper? I believe that the dosage level for PCP required for oral activation is higher than the combined weight of 10-15 standard "hits" of acid on blotter paper. In other words, if the blotter paper were entirely composed of PCP and you ingested it orally, it should not have produced a noticeable effect.

But I could be wrong, it's happened once or twice before ... :)

Then...

[Ozzy]

By your own admission, you are clinically an alcoholic.

I like wine, I like beer, but I admit that it is toxic. I have been drunk enough to scare myself, and I have moved to a more moderate schedule of drinking and illicit substance consumption (which is much healthier IMHO).

This does concern me.

[Ozzy]

"Don't think nothing bad will ever happen to me."

Damn, what does that mean?
I take it as being you feel relatively safe not doing drugs (BTW: Opposite of meaning, watch double negatives.)
And while this is a fairly simple (Gump) view of things, it is wrong. Bad things happen to good people all the time. But let's lobby to try and prevent such violent crimes instead of preventing people from harming themselves. If you choose to shoot up a lethal dose of heroin or drive off a cliff, who am I to stop you, it's a choice.

All drugs are not way bad, some drugs are, some are not. Fenflouramine(sp?) is a diet pill that was passed by the FDA last year, it is legal. That chemical is 4 times as neurotoxic and had more contraindications than MDMA, which is illegal. Drug information can only help, it is a very Quaker view that information can harm, and it is wrong... When have you ever thought it would be better to know less? If you do, do not ever reproduce, we don't need that mentality.

And as far as being a wasto loser, I do drugs, moderately and when I choose, and I am not a wasto loser. I hate these generalizations that lump everyone from mild pot users to heroin and speed addicts as being losers and useless burdens. Most people at your work perhaps have dabbled in pot, and maybe more, you don't know because they are normal people leading normal lives.

It is my firm belief that in order to be a well-balanced individual, you have to look outside yourself and really be critical of your life, not just bitch about others. People who do this are bitter and self-indulgent, they are the people who tell you you have to cut down your backyard tree because it overhangs their property by an inch, and then spread rumors about your alcoholism to all the other chatty neighbors who have no self-worth. If you have to use drugs to understand yourself, or a better sense of self-worth, then by all means, do so responsibly.

If you don't choose to do drugs, fine, that is a choice, but don't evangelize to me.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Ozzy]

I listened to the realaudio too, it has lectures from two other doctors along the same lines... great stuff.

People need to make educated decisions based on fact, not propaganda.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Ozzy]

For example, don't use extacy, but if you end up in a situation where you've used it, remember that it drains your electrolytes, so don't forget to drink lots of liquids.

You might want to look up some Ecstasy information on dancesafe or maps.org or any other site you can find that is not government funded, it's not nearly as dangerous as many people would have you believe. It does not drain electrolytes at all, and when taken at home, or at a theraputic session, it does not dehydrate you either. The hot club environment and frenetic dancing cause you to sweat, and that is why you have to drink water. Also, a few unlucky souls have drank themselves to death hoping that water is the "cure" for MDMA, it is not, only drink enough water to replace the lost sweat.

Everything in moderation.

i'm not American, but if you're willing.....

[CanadaMan]

to listen, considering the collaborative nature of Open Source software, I suggest an Open Source revolution.

That is to say that we should work together in an open and freely accessible way to get not only the Internet community but also the general population at large to really, and I mean really, make Politicians realise that we aren't going to take their bullshit anymore.

It is not only the loss of supposedly inalienable human rights that angers me, it is the illogicality of supporting ideas which are truly detrimental to society in general which make me feel as though each and everyone of us does not have the ability to truly be free under the current regime.

So perhaps this is better suited to its own Ask Slashdot question, but what can we do NOW that will have a real impact on getting true change to take place in our society? Do we really believe that sending some e-mails to Congress will change anything? Even if this bill doesn't go through or if it does but gets 'whacked' by the Supreme Court, how will that prevent other such bills from continually being presented to Congress? How do we EDUCATE the PEOPLE?

I am 20 years old. I am a Philosophy major and a geek in the extreme. I am also a drug user: I smoke my fair share of Cannabis. I would like to be alive during the next revolution. I would like to live to see Humanity use the greatest tool ever invented (the computer and subsequently the concept of the decentralised network) to bring Humanity together in a way that lets our own intelligence and potential reach the level that I know we can all achieve if we work together. I would like to see this done with as little bloodshed as possible-- for one should never do harm, even to one's enemies. I ask the Slashdot community:

How can we effect true, tangible change NOW? What must we do to achieve this?

We need to work together. We need to organise. Perhaps we should start at least a PGP-required mailing list to discuss some options. I implore you, at least, VOTE! .

In the upcoming election, VOTE!. Even if you don't agree with either of the two main parties, VOTE nonetheless. There is no such thing as a throw-away vote. That is a concept created to prevent people from voting for a small party that may have the potential to make a noticeable dent in the results, at least enough for the media and other politicians to take notice.

I and my inbox am waiting for ideas. I don't have all of the answers, but together perhaps we can figure out a way to improve not only our own lives, but also everyone's.

Confession of a Drug Synthesis Info Proliferator

[lamontg]

[ Okay, not exactly a confession, but it was the snappiest title I could think of ]

Back around 1991 or 1992 I setup what I believe is was the first drug information site on the internet using the University of Washington's publically accessable FTP server. The information in that site was incorporated into hyperreal and from there into lycaeum and erowid. I've authored texts on how to Synthesize MDMA and Synthesize LSD.

I would just like to know how we're supposed to have discussions about heavy metal contaminants in methamphetamine synthesis or chromates in methcathinone if we can't discuss how those drugs are actually manufactured? What is different about me reading about how to synthesize drugs on the net and going down to the medical and chemistry libraries at my local university and reading about them there? The latter information is necessary for professionals and scholars to be able to intelligently discuss issues surrounding the synthesis of illegal drugs. Why are people on the net being singled out for exclusion and not being allowed to access this information?

If this law passes I plan on putting up a site which contains exactly the same kinds of information that you can get from the journal of forensic science or journal of medicinal chemsitry but violates the law by including information on the synthesis of illegal drugs (just like those journals do).

This proposed law is blatantly unconstitutional and Diane Feinstein can kiss my ass.

Re:WATER is bad

[RFC959]

Quit twisting around, Monnet - every time somebody catches you saying something ridiculous, you try and claim that it's not what you said, or you misquote them...

Most people who drink alcohol are not addicted. *Nobody* who uses heroin isn't.

Wow, all people who use heroin are addicted? Care to cite any evidence for that?

And alcohol is NOT a poison. That's utter bullshit.

It's not? You might want to go notify all the doctors, biologists, and pharmacologists of the world that you know more than they do. I don't suppose you'd like to explain how it's not a poison and yet only 0.4 BAC can cause coma and death. (http://www.brad21.org/effects_at_specific_bac.htm l)

...you're probably American, land of puritans.

I'm proudly American. Both sides of my family made alcohol illegally during Prohibition. I brew my own beer. Puritan? Not really.

Stop the lies.

Well, we're all waiting on you, Mr. Monnet.

Re:Unconstitutional Laws Must Cost Lawmakers

[theripper]

Sounds like a good idea to me.

OT M*A*S*H

[KahunaBurger]

I drink a beer with a friend because its fun...its part of the recreational activity for the evening...not because I need beer to feel good.

You ever see that episode of MASH where Hawkeye decides to stop drinking and drives everyone crazy for a while, and then at the end they've just gone through a crazy mess of surgery and he orders a drink with the rest of them. When some people say he shouldn't stop his attempt, he says "guys, I need this drink." Then he stops and puts it down and says "I'l come back when I want it, not when I need it."

Totally off topic, but had to comment.

-Kahuna Burger

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[medicthree]

As a bumper sticker once said, "What part of 'Shall Not Infringe' don't you understand?"

What part of "well regulated militia" don't you understand?

Re:quick FYI

[fluxrad]

as i used to smoke weed daily (about a quarter oz.) and still do wherever i feel comfortable, i can tell you that you were getting, what most pot smokers refer to as "fuzzed"

This also has strong ties to amotivational syndrome, you feel tired, your brain feels like it has cobwebs in it and you don't want to do shit for the whole day.

As far as your six hour high. suffice it to say that most people have some of the best highs of their lives on their second or third sessions. In fact, quite a few people don't "get high" their first time because they don't know what to look for in a marijuana high. (I myself got pretty fucking danked). - It probably was local weed. I've had weed from Knob Noster Missouri that would knock your socks off. It's not really "where" you get weed from, but how it's grown. It could be ditch weed from Humboldt county and it would suck....then again, it could be Hydroponic Skunk #1 from rural-ville wyoming and you'd get so high you trip (i've seen it happen).

You're cool - just remember to stay away from the weed with the powdery white stuff on the top of the bowl (hint: that ain't weed you're smokin ;-)


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

two replies

[fluxrad]

A) Most hospitals aren't supported by government (tax) dollars. I'm sure this is gonna piss you off, but when someone crashes into a tree after driving drunk and goes to the hospital, you don't pay one red cent. You seem to me to be the type of kid who did what he wanted in school because "my tax dollars helped build this school". Additionally, saving lives isn't about how someone got fucked up. Doctors entered the profession to save lives, regardless of the circumstances. Personally i think it's bogus of an individual in the medical profession to turn someone away because of "how" they broke their arm....get the fuck out of the industry!

B)Make alcohol illegal??? are you fucking daft??? i assume that you *ARE* aware that the U.S. tried to outlaw alcohol before. What i'm not so sure of is whether or not you're aware of the outcome of that prohibition. - Let me put it this way. No prohibition would have meant signifigantly less crime. Without prohibition, we wouldn't have had one of the biggest crime bosses the U.S. has ever seen (read: Al Copone). I sort of agree with you on the all or nothing policy....but i think it's obvious what happens when the gov't tries to make us go with "nothing."


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:quick FYI

[fluxrad]

oh, you've probably heard things and just not realized it. Ever heard one of your friends say your name - but they actually didn't?? (That's a big one). Mostly it's audio halucinations, in addition to a hightened audio sensitivity. I've been known to turn the TV down to where i almost can't hear it because i thought it was too loud. Stuff like that.

It's not as strong as say, mushrooms or LSD. But marijuana is DEFINITELY a halucinogen. Check it out at your favorite drug related web site.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:quick FYI

[fluxrad]

i think you read my post wrong. i was saying that the sites that usually *aren't* biased are the ones that are labeled pro-drug propaganda. - could you please enlighten me as to the meaning of NIDA?? Do you know if it's a government funded institution??

btw - let's try to keep this respectful man, i wasn't trying to flame you.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[fluxrad]

lol - that's why i said the city of Amsterdam ;-)

To my knowledge, cultivation and posession are illegal, but the use of marijuana is legal


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[fluxrad]

Your right to free speech is not being infringed, you're being prohibited from spreading information about a criminal activity.

this isn't about whether or not you think that drugs are bad...mmmmmmmmkay........This isn't about "education." This is about freedom of speech. People have a *right* to know about this stuff. The ONLY reason the question of freedom of speech about narcotics is controversial is because narcotics themselves are controversial.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

1) Do you condone the use of caffeine?

2) Are you against website that discuss the uses of caffeine or how to "manufacture" products with caffeine in them?

3) If so why? If not - what if 40 years from now our benevolent government decided that caffeine, much like marijuana, has no medicinal value, and because it is an addictive substance (which it is) decided to outlaw it's use? Would you oppose sites related to the above topics then?

Please do respond to these questions as i'm eager to hear your rationale on why, simple because some drugs are less-legal than others, they are either worse, or attrocious?

BTW - if you decide not to respond to my post because you *get* my point - good for you!


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[fluxrad]

"the price of freedom is eternal vigilance"

we fight to "stay" free...not to get free ;-)


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[fluxrad]

This comment seems to me to exemplify EXACTLY what is wrong with america

guess who posted it? I suppose freedom of speech is cool, so long as you agree with what's being said.

oh - btw Zach, quick question. Are you a republican by any chance??? LMFAO.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

quick FYI

[fluxrad]

alcohol isn't addictive, although there is a gene that can facilitate addiction to alcohol (read: alcoholism) - technically speaking, alcohol isn't an addictive substance

Nicotine is obviously addictive

Caffeine (yes - the one found in coffee) *is* psychologically addictive. Unlike heroin, you won't die from withdrawl, but you do become addicted. If you want proof, ask one of your friends who's really into Mountain Dew (or some such) to quit drinking any caffinated beverages for a few weeks - then make sure to note how beligerent and jittery they get, possibly even ill if they have that much of a dependancy on it.

fun fact: marijuana is a stimulant, and a halucinogen - although most people think it's a "downer" - it increases your blood pressure and heart rate. Many people also hear things and see things on pot. you can read more that the lycaeum.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:quick FYI

[sjames]

you can read more that the lycaeum.

Unless the bill becomes law.

Re:quick FYI

[Ed Avis]

I've read that the only withdrawal symptom you get from giving up caffeine is a headache. This has certainly been my own experience. But then I'm not a proper caffeine junkie.

Re:quick FYI

[TheMeld]

I suspect that the reason that alcohol is given such a high severity for withdrawal is that it is VERY possible to drop dead if you try to cold turkey an alcohol addiction. Many drugs have severe and ugly side-effects from withdrawal, but most of them also have a fairly high survival rate. Alcohol is one of the few drugs that ca kill you if you try to cold turkey it.
-Matt

Re:quick FYI

[MindStalker]

I did not know that! +1 informative :)

Re:quick FYI

[MindStalker]

Interesting, but I'd say the part in the chart that indicated the withdrawal from alcohol is worse than the withdrawn from heroin, was obviously smoking some crack itself. But I guess that depends upon how they computed the number. As the withdrawal from heroin is only a few days as opposed to a much longer but less noticable withdrawal from alcohol.

Re:quick FYI

[Hard_Code]

The only withdrawal symptoms I've had are reverting back to a state of irritability and lack of concentration. 8|

Re:quick FYI

[fluxrad]

ummm....check your sources. That site seems to me to be relatively slanted. The only ones i've seen that aren't are usually labeled pro-drug propagana sites by the 700 club and such.

For example, the intoxication effects of a gram of THC are MUCH greater than those of a gram of Alcohol (No, i'm not talking about a bottle of beer vs. a joint).

I'm inclined to take your source with a grain of salt as it appears to be a little skewed.


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[fluxrad]

Does it do brain damage? Depends who you ask

there have actually been numerous studies on the lasting effects of marijuana. While i don't have a link to the specific study i'm about to discuss, it is true nevertheless.

A study was done with a number of individuals spanning all age groups. And what was found was that marijuana has no lasting effects. Marijuana does have a signifigant side effect, known as amotivational syndrome, which usually continues for as long as one habitually use the substance. However, within one month of abstinance (usually sooner) - the research showed that subjects returned to their "normal" selves.

Additionally, short term memory is affected while under the effect of delta-9 tetrahydracanabinol (THC ;-) However, once the subjects were "sober" so to speak, they exhibited no memory problems whatsoever.

Basically the study showed this: when you get fucked up...you're fucked up. Afterwords, you may have a little problem getting your ass in gear, but within one month you have no problems - you're (get this) normal!

As far as the carcinogens found in marijuana smoke. There are indeed quite a number of them. In fact, if people smoked as much marijuana as they do cigarettes, you'd probably see marijuana fatalities all over the place (just like alcohol). However, marijuana is a recreational drug, to be used as such. - if you foget that, then it's your own damned fault :-)

I suppose the reason for this post was to explain that, while i use quite a number of main-stream and not-so-main-stream drugs, i am informed about the consequences and side effects of these drugs. I advise that more people try to follow suit. Find out what you're getting yourself into. Be prepared - follow the advice of friends who have used the substance. Be safe! - And happy trippin'


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[hiryuu]

Someone please explain why our legistlative bodies haven't put a stop to this kind of thing?

They haven't put a stop to it because it's an effective way to kill legislation from "the opposition" that you don't like. Example: conservative democrat thinks that a welfare reform bill goes too far, but has enough support to likely pass. Through the rider mechanisms, he attaches, say, sizeable grants for the study of Mapplethorpe's influence on modern art. Every homophobe, puppet-of-the-religious-right, and general prude takes one look at that and nixes the whole thing. Poof! Unliked legislation gets off the floor and, if it's lucky, back to committee.

If you're a politician, an excellent stalling or killing technique, but if you're an average joe who's wondering why many necessary bills die (and how shite like this nearly comes to pass or does pass), then it just seems awful.

Analogy... do you get it?

[jjsaul]

Here's a simple(minded) analogy for ya:

Cars must be stopped at all cost! As a recovering driver, I must take issue with the idea of driving safely. I was in an accident, and though it was clearly my fault, it has convinced me that no one should be allowed to drive. I have seen far too many friends get behind the wheel and never get back out (except with the jaws of life). Bikes, skateboards, scooters and inline skates are "gateway vehicles" which will only lead to faster transportation. Because I chose to use a known unsafe car, with big jet packs on the back and a nitro-injector which I got from an unscrupulous dealer with a reputation for cutting the brakelines on his cars, I am certain that cars in perfect working order, used once in a while for recreation, are the work of the devil.

Remember, the road to hell is paved with... ummm.... pavement?

In all seriousness, I am sorry your life has been so messed up by your bad choices. However, you are projecting your problem with heroin onto everyone else's recreation with far less addicting substances. That's just absurd.

Re:Unconstitutional Laws Must Cost Lawmakers

[jjsaul]

The other funny side of this phenomenon is that when the S.Ct. overturns unconstitutional laws, they are decried as overreaching and "activist."

Here is my letter to my Representative Steny Hoyer

[Dr. Bombay]

It has recently come to my attention that two bills are currently being considered by the Committees on Commerce and the Judiciary that would become a serious impediment to free speech if they are passed. These bills are The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act and HR 2987. It is my understanding that this bill, HR 2987, would:
Allow police to search your home or business without so much as notifying you that you are under investigation or that such searches have taken place for as long as six months,
Allow investigators to make copies of your documents and computer files without ever notifying you,
And make it illegal to distribute information about how to make any controlled substance, to merely link to web pages giving information on that or drug paraphernalia, or to even just describe how to find such information.

While I certainly do not condone the manufacture and use of illegal drugs, this bill will do little in reducing the use of methamphetamines and have a large impact on freedom of speech. My greatest concern is where this slippery slope may lead us. Would the next target be the removal of this information from books and journal articles in the library? Will organizations which catalog and index literature such as the Chemical Abstracts by the American Chemical Society and the Web of Science by the Institute for Scientific Information by told to take any information pertaining to amphetamines off of their databases?

I hope that no one in Congress would even think about regulating the type of information in the libraries. Factually correct information cannot be "bad," since that is a subject evaluation and information must be evaluated objectively. Of course, the use of data can be "bad" and that is where legal regulations can be put in place and to a large extent already are. Enforcement of current laws related to the manufacture and use of amphetamines should be emphasized, not creating new broad sweeping regulations which will have little effect upon the problem and open the door for abuse on our rights. While regulating information may be easier and cheaper, simple cost effectiveness and expediency is not what our great country has been built upon. We have often made the hard decisions and have taken the costly high moral road. With access to information becoming ever more abundant and accessible, regulation of the content and access will become increasingly difficult. However, we should not consider that course, since information and they knowledge of said information is not "bad" only the use of the information can deleterious to people and society. Knowledge is never a bad thing, although too little knowledge can be harmful.

I am a proud resident and registered voter in Maryland and I hope that the Free State representatives would not support legislation which will have such a negative impact on our freedoms. I realize that you are not on the committees currently considering these bills, but I hope that you have discussed these issues with your colleague the Honorable Robert Ehrlich, Jr. who is on the commerce committee.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Jeffrey G. Forbes, Ph.D.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[MstrFool]

And how meny times would this happen if you /didn't/ have to get it off the 'black market'? regulate them like other well known leagal drugs {any one out there haveing a nic fit or feel like a drink?} and not only do you solve that problem but you start bringing in money rather then throwing it away. Make it against the law to give info about drugs and how meny more places will blow up and people poisoned becouse some one was trying to work it out on thier own? Folks have already proven that this is what will happen, lead poisoning in mooshine and other wonderfull things. What it comes down to is you can't stop it and you can't even force it to slow down. The best you can do is help people to learn about it so that they don't feel a need to 'find out on thier own'.

{Doing my part to promote creative spelling for over 30 years}

One Word

[xee]

HavenCo


-------

Um... 4th, 1st and any others I forgot

[KiboMaster]

OK... let me see if I understand the logic here.

• Government doesn't want drugs in hands of citizens
• Government outlaws drugs
• Government tries to pass laws restricting speech/knowledge on drugs
• Government can't get laws passed on their own
• Government attaches drug restrictions on new bills
• Government repeals 4th amendment (WTF?)

So what the government is saying is that they have the right to say what is right for me? Well, when it's put that way it doesn't sound as noble as I'm sure the government thinks it is. I think our country has been S.E.'d into thinking that the individual's rights mean nothing if you're protecting the greater good of society. What's so wrong with pot anyway? It's no better than alcohol.

And to kick us while we're down they repeal the 4th embedment? What is that all about? I'm not sure how they can make a jump like this:

Ok... we want to get rid of drugs, lets keep them from talking about drugs... and what the hell lets get rid of the 4th amendment as well, it has just been getting in the way. Rights??? What rights??... we tell them what their rights are... its written right here:

"We the people...."

No wait that's not it...

Anyway... what ever happened to We the People of the United States of America give the government these explicit rights? I thought it was the government existed at the will of the people, not the other way around. I distinctly remember reading the following somewhere:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

</bitch>

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[KiboMaster]

I applaud your taking a stand here and bringing your opinions to a public forum. I can see where you are coming from here and I agree with most of what you said.

However, I think your attempt to justify the government cracking down on free speech is wrong. I think this bill is the government telling me what's right for me. That's wrong. I don't use drugs of any kind and can't imagine why anyone would, but I still think people should have the right to do what is best for them. If someone wants to spend their Fri night with his or her head in a toilet, than who am I to judge?

I'm curious why you singled out LSD in your small list. I believe that it is "wrong" to do any of the activities you listed while using any drug. I think more people have died of alcohol & car related accidents than LSD & car related accidents.

Just because the majority of a population think something is wrong does not mean someone is wrong in doing it. I think people should have the right to do something, but have the responsibility and maturity not to.

VOTE IN COMMITTEE Wed 7/19

[bmasel]

House Judiciary will have Markp on this in the morning. Get live audio here. http://www.house.gov/judiciary/mem106.htm
Contact you reps now!

Addiction is the problem, not the drugs...

[Cygnus Rosebud]

People are either addicts or they're not. Anyone who has been through any (blank)Anonymous program can attest to this. It's genetic. How that addiction manifests itself is another story. The goverment banning everything is not going stop people from being addicts. What will is kinda a big subject and it could be argued that nothing will. But the point is :the government has no business messing with people's lives like this. Yes, one should NOT be allowed to sell drugs to minors. And by no means should we support drug dealers or traficers. But not supporting dealers and repressing information is another thing altogether.

Re:Does this make sense to anyone?

[kill -9 $$]

I don't think you can just arbitrarily vote for the other guy/gal just because the current representitive votes against your stance on a bill. You may not agree with some decisions but you might agree more often than you would with the other candidate(s).

Hell, I ended up voting for Clinton last time around, not because I like him, but because I didn't dislike him as much as I disliked Dole.... Looks like I'm going to doing something similar again this year....

I think you missed something

[ArchieBunker]

Its funny how your left out the seperating comma. Heres the real line:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed

Don't bring up the drivers license argument either, driving is a privilege NOT a right.

hey man

[ArchieBunker]

I heard if you smoke a banana peel it gives you an awesome buzz! Also some kid told me to dip a cigarette in some White-out and then light up.

Don't Worry - Be Happy

[Avynn]

Our government is obsolete. If this bill passes, it will simply hasten the adoption of Freenet and similar freedom-inducing architecture. Let those hate filled, loud-mouthed, immoral idiots blather all they want about morals - they can do nothing. Their only real choice to stifle information is a total lockdown on all freedoms. I don't think the military would stand for that since our military likes pretty, shiny new technology toys. Without freedom there is little creativity. Without creativity there is no technology. No technology = unhappy military.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[bitchazz]

oh god. what is that old statement about "remember the past or we are doomed to repeat it"?

We cannot control nuclear power. We _thought_ we might be able to, and that's why Three Mile Island and Chernobyl happened. Do we REALLY need more millenially contaminated areas on this already crowded planet?

The sad thing is; every nuclear submarine, aircraft carrier, and power plant is a horrible accident just waiting to happen. All I can do is hope the next one doesn't happen near me and that its fallout dissipates before it blows over me. It would suck to have hair falling out in patches, bleeding soft tissues, and teeth falling out.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bitchazz]

"America will cheer in glee at another battle won in the war on drugs"

I agree with most of your comment but there have been no battles won in the war against drugs, only casualties.

If you are interested, take a look here:Salon.com article on one of these casualties

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bitchazz]

No you are wrong. There is a difference between users and _abusers_. I use drugs because they are interesting in their effects and the way I think and percieve the world around me while under their influence. Many abusers try to numb themselves from feeling and that is not a_drug_ problem really. It is a emotional problem.

You too can use drugs with MODERATION(no not crack). I take drugs once a week at most. I am not a violent person. I do not steal. But apparently I am still a criminal. Anything wrong with this picture?

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bitchazz]

I do agree with this statement. I know several old-school punks who just went out of control when they were 14 and 15 with drugs (inc. alcohol) and seem to have stunted somewhat their emotional growth. I believe that children, still in their formative years should NEVER be excessive in any chemical daliances. BTW parents this means ritalin and prozac and all that shit too.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[bitchazz]

*gasp*

"Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done"
--Zach'

We have been doing this for many years Zach. And did you know we are providing the better part of $1.5 BILLION over the next three years for more of that>

I wonder if anyone around here thinks we could be using that money to treat drug addicts here in America. Or treat people who cannot afford medical insurance. Or fucking PAVE ROADS or whatever!!

This "Drug War" must STOP!!

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[bitchazz]

thank you for posting this. It is good to know that there ARE people who have educated themselves on this subject.

This Zach guy is completely clueless on this, hopefully he will learn from this flaming and go learn a few things before yapping.

you did read Dr. Holland's speech on the maps site didn't you? Excellent stuff.
the MAPS speech

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bitchazz]

penguinboy, just an FYI....

Politicians making the penalties harsher has merely made greater injustice. The "just say no" eighties saw the advent of just what you advocate. There are men and women rotting for LIFE in Federal prison for selling marijuana and other drugs. Many judges abhor these federal guidelines because it takes away the whole point of 'judgement.'

Your perspective leads me to doubt extremely

[bitchazz]

...that you were ever a heroin addict as you claimed in an earlier post. You make astounding generalizations, but does this mean that you were assaulting people on the street back when you were supposedly an addict?

Addiction is not a good thing. It is not what will be the natural consequence to decriminalization/legalization. Addiction is a health problem. Crime is a result of the control of the drug business by real violent criminals who SHOULD be locked up. This is not the case now. Those who overwhelmingly are jailed are those who possess drugs.

Re:U should not talk about what you don't know

[bitchazz]

the above AC is, like many ACs, is spouting bullshit. I live in southern California, have had many tokes off of many strangers weed, and I have never (to my knowledge) encountered adulterated weed.

Marijuana in NOT more expensive to produce than heroin or opium. Meth I am not sure of. Keep in mind, opiates are almost universally imported while weed and meth do not need to be.

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[bitchazz]

"The world needs less violence and more love and I don't see how guns do anything to accomplish that."

I am not religious, but I must heartily agree with that statement.

Think people! If everybody had guns, what would stop one guy from coming up behind you, shooting you through the back of the head, and taking your money? Do you really want to have to be on guard, with your finger on the trigger 24 hours a day? Do the police NEED to all be issued high speed automatic weapons to stay abreast of what the criminals have? Think about the consequences of the world you propose! The old west, many people had gus...and many people were SHOT!! Stop frothing at the mouth, and think about it!

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[NEW22]

"Sounds like you are also against logic. How can you be against censorship and also against a web site, regardless of what it promotes."

There is nothing illogical about being against censorship and also being against a web site. There is nothing wrong with trying to change society for the better, it is a noble thing to do. For example, I wish there weren't hundreds of white-power sites on the internet, is that wrong of me? Come on! When someone says they are against censorship and against a web page, that means they wish to fight against an idea with words and logic and reason, not laws, cops, and prisons. You seem to advocate living a life where we don't try to make things better in any way, and just sit around as isolated individuals, enjoying shallow pleasures. You also seem to ignore the public effects of what you may think is private behavior. I agree that as a consunsual act, drugs should be legalised. I oppose the governments thuggish and brutal way of dealing with drugs. This does not stop me from believing drug use (from nicotine and alcohol to heroin and cocaine) is a silly, dangerous (depending on drug partly) shallow pleasure that I have no respect for, and oppose. I think it makes the world a worse place, and causes misery for people, and it would make me happy to see people live fulfilling happy lives without a chemical crutch. See, it is possible to be against something whole-heartedly without resorting to censorship and locking up the population, because those things are greater evils than what you wish was fixed. Sure, we shouldn't be poking around in other people's private lives and legislating the sort of behaviors you refer to, but there is also nothing wrong with advocating for or against these private behaviors either.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Stefan MacGeek]

Do you really think, everbody should have access to tanks, fighter aircraft, nuclear weapons, ...? This would very probably sooner or later result in a military dictatorship of those with the most money, who could build the biggest army. You are the one who failed to think this through.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bellings]

But the same thing is true if you read a lot of "real" books, or join the marines, or climb mt. Everest, or were lucky enough to go to the moon on Apollo. Everything you do is going to change the way you look at the world. Admitedly, some drugs (esp. LSD) are going to change the way you look at the more than other experiences, but the effect is more a matter of degree than anything else.

What you seem to be advocating is the idea that is somehow "good" to not ever change your perceptions of the world -- never question the status quo, never question your place in the world, and never question your basic beliefs. I guess if you want to live that way, there's little I can do to help you. But I'm begging you not to try to make the rest of the world like you. It's not going to be a pretty country if you guys continue getting your way...

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bellings]

As a recovering heroin addict, I watched many a friend pass out and never awaken based on having a little too much, air in the needle, etc..

Heroin is a fucking evil thing -- no-one is going to argue with that. But heroin is much, much, much worse because it is illegal. When alcohol was illegal in the States, a hell of a lot of poor fuckers went blind or died from cheap-shit bathtub hooch, made with no quality control measure at all. Many lives were ruined because low-potency alcohol (like beer) was expensive, and only the much easier to smuggle and distribute distilled spirits were affordable.

By contrast, alcohol today is relatively safe, with only two types of victims being common: guys that drink themselves to death over a period of years because they're too chicken-shit to just jump off a bridge, and people killed when morons drive cars around drunk.

If heroin were legal, it would be as bad as a combination of alcohol and cigarrettes -- a horribly addictive drug with strong mind-altering powers. And, like cigarrettes and alcohol, a lot of people would choose to die from it. But it wouldn't be anything at like the horrible, horrible thing it is today....

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[bellings]

That's true, I was using charged phrases, and I apologize. But read his post again -- he really does have a very rigid view of the "right" way to view the world, and the "wrong" way to view the world. And he isn't claiming that drugs are a physically dangerous way to alter perception -- he's saying that drugs alter your perception in a way thats dangerous mentally, and ultimately dangerous to society.

That is my real difficult with the post I responded to -- I am genuinely scared of people who want to supress ideas that are dangerous to society, and I really did read his post to mean exactly that. He essentially says that drug use may be ok for a hermit out in the woods, but no-one else. Why? Because the hermit wouldn't be able to infect anyone with his crazy drug ideas.

But perhaps I am reading it wrong -- it is possible that matman really does believe that drugs give one an "incorrect" view of reality, and that view is dangerous because the drug view is invariably "wrong". If that's all he's argueing, then I have no arguement -- its not really a view that I've ever seen or considered before. My gut instinct is to flat out reject it, but it's so late at night that I'm going to try hard not to do that...

When have we been invaded?

[The-Bus]

The idea of the founders was that there would not be a standing army of significant size, but that ordinary citizens would be sufficiently armed and competent ("well-regulated") to repel an invading army.

My question is: when was the last time the United States actually got invaded by anyone? I see this only applying to American territories that may be bordering unfriendly nations. But last I heard, we were not in danger from being attacked by Mexico, Canada, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic.

And if we were to be attacked, what could a bunch of (mostly) untrained citizens with handguns do?

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[TomV]

Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done.

Well, unfortunatley you're out of luck. The DEA's current plans don't use bombs. They intend to spray most of Colombia with a clostridium fungus which (a) contravenes all the treaties on Biological Warfare, (b) is known to be highly lethal to people with asthma or otherwise compromised immune systems, and (c) also causes 'collateral damage' such as wiping out crops including potatoes.

Drug education is NOT "this is how you make such and such... make sure you include this, and stir the proper amount."

No, it isn't. But it DOES include things like 'and if you are enough of a blithering idiot to use XXXX, you should be aware that you must drink a lot of water or risk serious damage by dehydration'. It's a harm reduction thing, basically.

Do you honestly condone teaching our nation's youth the quickest way to kill themselves

Now that's just s4!t and you know it. It took my dad less than a second to kill himself by jumping off a building. It takes very little time to jump in front of a car, to drink rat poison, to slit your wrists. It takes 4 minutes to asphyxiate. The liver damage from a paracetamol overdose will kill in under a week. A shotgun in the mouth is pretty quick too. Along with the use of alcohol and tobacco, you are looking at one of the slower means of self-termination here.

TomV

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[HenrysCat]

"no law," not "any law that is restricted to drugs, child pornography, infant baptism, etc." No Animal shall sleep in a bed ... with sheets.

The Whitebread Speech

[duketor]

Do you know how marijuana became illegal?

I encounter a lot of people on a daily basis who are either grossly misinformed or genuinely ignornant of how cannabis became illegal in the US.

What's my canned response? "Go read the Whitebread Speech." It's opened a lot of eyes.

Congressional responses

[Pihkal]

One thing that I saw that I'm not sure if anyone else has noted... One of the authors suggests that:

E-mail or snail mail them if you like, but faxes and phone calls will probably make the best impression.

This is NOT true. The amount of weight a congressperson will attach to your opinion is inversely proportional to how easy it was to send it. Faxes and phone calls don't carry much weight, and emails have even less. However, a real meatspace letter, stamp and everything, carries far more importance. The more effort is required, they figure, the more likely you are to vote, influence others, etc. I heard from one congressional staffer that they estimate that a single letter represents the sentiments of about 10,000 constituents. So please, if you're worked up enough to consider emailing your congressperson, make your voice louder and send them a real letter.

Re:METHAMPHETAMINE MANUFACTURE (IV)

[0x0000]

First of all, why didn't you post this all as one post, so it could all be moderated up at once!?

And secondly, could you get something on LSD, I never cared for meth?

Thanks,

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Prof_Dagoski]

Well, I guess its a kinder, gentler drug trade where you are. Seriously tho, from what I do know about drug culture the prevalence of spiking and mixing drugs varies quite a bit. Place where I grew up it was quite common for dealers to spike weed with angel dust and who knows what else. I dunno if they were trying to hook people or were just saying "what the hell?". From living in college towns for several years and brushing up against the drug trade in those places, I'd doubt there was much lacing of drugs going on. Kids there basically like their weed and hallucinogens. If you have a real strong class split with entrenched poverty at the bottom end, you get a whole other kind of drug trade thats ruthless and vicious. Those dealers are going to do just about anything to make a buck. As far as coke not being physically addictive, if I remember the neurochemistry behind coke, doesn't it bing with the chemical receptors responsible for pleasure? Given that that releases a lot of dopameine--if I'm wrong, someone correct me--I'd be very surprised if coke was not physically addictive. As for my experience, I not a drug user, never have been. I just grew up in a rough working to lower class neighborhood of LA in the eighties and I saw hard drug use destroy a lot of people. Even so, I'm not naive enough to say that drugs were the cause, only the pathology of much more serious problem.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[flying_phoenix]

Somehow it's always thos "Free" americans that have to keep fighting for moething so basic as freedom of speech or press....

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[homer_ca]

Funny that you should mention Darwinism and the Anarchist's Cookbook together. Many of the explosives recipes in that book were inaccurate and would likely get you blown up if you tried it. See the rec.pyrotechnics FAQ.

Thank God for the Press

[khog]

Well, with this story being posted on the internet in all sorts of places, including mainstream news sites, this can't go unnoticed. I would be utterly shocked if this bill made it to signature; it'd be a huge target for challenging before the Supreme Court, too. The ACLU'll be all over this.

Mike "Thanks for the (Meaningless) Input" Greenberg

Re:Napster users are peddling stolen goods

[digitalmind]

As seen on some random posters sig:

"Piracy is about murder, rape, and burglary. Not about free music."

Just thought you should think a little more.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[digitalmind]

As a law abiding citizen, I'll take you on.

What bad things can come of this? Well, say you (john doe) abides the law. Even if you are a good, law-abiding, tax-paying, authoritah-respecting individual, would you still want a bunch of cops coming to your house, knocking down the door and holding you and your children at gunpoint? To find nothing at all?

I would also like to present something my friend bryan has on his website at softail.visi.com.

Some words to ponder. They may have been written years ago about the actions of a government long sence deposed. However they are something to seriously think about even today.

By Reinhold Niemoller

When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned.
Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church
-- and there was nobody left to be concerned.

In a different varsion:
"First They Came for the Jews"
By Pastor Niemoller

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Or a modernized version:
When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it.

If you so much as think today, I hope you think about your rights. And how much you'll miss them.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Re:WWW.TEXTFILES.COM is threatened, again.

[digitalmind]

Yet another example of goverment intervention by uneducated lawmakers at its finest.

Coppa and copa have so far managed to kill off the thomas the train mailing list, a bunch of icq users, and have any children been saved? Better question yet, how many child molesters get their info on who to stalk from a database? Sure, stupid kids get picked up by 30something perverts in chatrooms pretending to be 13 year olds who are obsessed with pop icons. But do the majority of kids get picked up by perverts?
No.

Stupid individuals making stupid laws are a product of special intrest groups. If you don't defend your position and your opposition does, your opposition will usually win.

What seems like common sense to you is probably the smartest thing to do. But if you read slashdot, you are probably educated about technology. So you can think for yourself on issues about technology. Senators and congressmen will be convinced one way or the other by someone who tries to educate them their way. There are 78 million people under 21 in this country. Very few are reported missing each year. Due to special intrest groups, the few bad apples have spoiled the bunch. Don't get me wrong, I think that perverts who abduct and molest kids should be killed very painfully. But laws attempting to stop people from abducting kids are misdirected and futal. They are because of the offensiveness of the crime. Therefore, any proposed solution is sold as the end all solution. Get your senators email. Volunteer to talk against bills opposing technology.

But don't bitch and then do nothing when given the opportunity.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Re:"Clean" geek's opinion.

[digitalmind]

Problem #1: all illegal drugs are lumped together, as if their effects, risks, and potential harm were all equal. Legal drugs don't enter into the discussion. There are quite a number of illegal drugs that are less injurious than many legal drugs - the legislated morality is the only difference. In this case, while methamphetamines appear to have been singled out, the specific provisions that are at issue here are not restrained to a specific drug.

Ridalin, the cure all for the yuppie flu of the americas, causes liver cancer. It's also in the same family of speed. Go figure. I'd say it would cure a lot of americas problems if it wasn't prescribed by doctors with no brains. FYI, it is completely possible to OD on ridalin and die from speed-OD like symptoms.

Problem #2: The Internet as made real information available to millions, and allowed many to make intelligent, personal decisions based on fact, not propaganda. As with anything else that fights hypocrisy with facts, when the facts are against them, the media will be perceived as a threat.

Media propoganda is a threat. Religous propoganda is a threat.
Stupid religous sheep in ireland are (and have been for a long time) killing each other because their preachers told them to. Bring what is perceived "bad" into the media and religous gets into it. Then everything following is fucked up. Look at birth control.

Problem #3: As long as substances are prohibited on moral or political grounds, rather than on scientific or public health grounds, hypocrisy is going to be the worst enemy of the "war on drugs". And all the erosion of privacy and other rights and freedoms will remain even when they eventually admit that the war has been lost.

From mad magazine, in a got coke? ad for george w bush for president:

Yes, I did coke. But I didn't inhale. But if you do, I'll put your stoned ass in jail and rehab for the rest of your life. And that's not hypocrisy, that's politics.

I've read stories of the parents of cancer patients growing or buying weed because it helps them to not feel so sick and nautious. So if it helps, and is strictly regulated, why is it "bad"? because people have preconceived notions. Fighting them, even if it is right, rarely works because parents forced into their heads that drugs and druggies are bad.

The saying "free thinkers are dangerous" is especially true. Think for yourself for christ sake.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[digitalmind]

Okay, scenario here:

You are sitting at home on your computer browsing slashdot. Your wife is watching the TV, and your kids are asleep. Suddenly an unmarked car pulls up, men dressed as police walk up, break down your door, hold you and your wife and children at gunpoint and take your computer, file cabinet and any other things they deem to be "evidence", without having to show you a warrant. Later you find out that you didn't do anything and that the men who busted down your door and stole your stuff weren't actually cops, but men dressed as cops because even if they were real cops they wouldn't have had to show you a warrant.

So you're out X dollars for a computer, X dollars for a new filing cabinet, X dollars for whatever else "evidence" they stole and X dollars for the credit fraud they did because you had your credit card bills in the filing cabinet.

And there isn't jack shit you can do about it. And I suppose that that isn't unconstitutional or wrong.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Just when you thought it was safe to think...

[DigitalEntropy]

At what point in time shall we, as an American people, say, "I've had it with this bullshit!"? I believe that many follow my lead on this one. Hell, I'm gonna go out and register to vote just so I can smack this proposition down and stick my foot up it's ass. Why. Why do lawmakers feel persistent on invading the simple privacy granted to us through the constitution? What exactly are they afraid of?
Did their suppliers unexpectedly cut them off one day, and this, this monstrousity, their way of striking back?
Damn, I'm screwed. I've got a 1996 copy of the Anarchist's Cook Book on my system. And I don't even look at it! Does this mean I'm going to jail? Shit, and you thought the book 1984 was so far off.
Police my thoughts. I dare you! Strip every piece of evidence that I exist as an individual human-being!
How truly untrusting.

"To this world I'm unimportant just
because I have nothing to give
So you call this your free country
tell me why it cost so much to live
Tell me why

"This world can turn me down
But I won't turn away, oh no
I won't turn around"
-3 Doors Down

I'll be damned if they're gonna screw me--out of me.


-={(.Y.)}=-

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[main()]

How come the guy with the pro-gun stance is moderated above the dude with all the answers and a solid anti-gun law argument.

Is this an American thing?

Brown's House

ps. For the record and since we're talking narcotics, I'm a fuck-head geek... and proud of it.

Re: careful of the absolutes.....

[deglr6328]

you say that: "Point being, drugs may be bad for your brain. I don't think many people will disagree." i do disagree. though, you seem smart enough to know that almost nothing is either totally 'bad' or totally 'good'(in other words, not everything is as black and white as people would like to believe[even sXe-er's]). keep in mind that drugs are simply chemical compunds. for example take a person who suffers from schitzophrenia, to them, the DRUG clozapine may be nessiscary for normal everyday functioning. so i wouldnt say that just because a chemical compund has an effect on the human nervous system, it is automatically "bad for your brain". also you say that you use alcohol and that: "I don't like either drug users, or alcohol abusers, particularly, but freedom is not about liking people" is all illegal drug use automatically "abuse"? but wait....isn't ethanol a drug...? why the double standard?

My letter to Rep. Jerry Nadler (NY)

[autarkeia]

Please note that I stole some other people's comments from this post because the were so succinct. Sorry if that offends you.

Rep. Nadler-

I am deeply troubled by two bills going through Congress right now- HR 2987, the so-called "Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act," as well as HR 833, the "Bankruptcy Reform Act." Both of these bills ostensibly serve the common good by limiting access to information that could be considered dangerous to society, but instead radically limit Free Speech and are obvious violations of Americans' Constitutional rights. It troubles me first and foremost that such a bill would even be considered by the very individuals who are supposed to be protecting those freedoms, but I am troubled by other facets of the scenario, as well.

In the case of the Bankruptcy Reform Act, it troubles me that the whole rider-system, while technically allowed by law, is once again being used to put into effect laws that have nothing to do with the intended purpose of the bill (bankruptcy reform). I've noted that a tiny little rider in the bill alters the general requirements for search warrants so that you need never be informed of a search -- notification can be delayed indefinitely, which is a fundamental violation of the Fourth Amendment. How Congress can even consider violating rights which are so dear even to them is a mystery to me.

In the case of the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, the violations of our rights are even more perverse. H.R. 2987 would allow the government to order Web sites censored and shut down without any due process of law and without any notice given to the website's owner. One provision of the bill would allow agencies like the FBI to make judgment calls on the intent of online statements regarding drug use -- a power usually reserved for the courts. Internet service providers would then be ordered by law enforcement to take down any of these statements within 48 hours -- without notifying the Web site owner. As someone who works in New York's New Media industry, I find these sorts of things upsetting and confusing. Why would Congress want to do such a thing to American people-- to deeply hurt them and to take away the very rights that founded this country?

Both laws are in such clear violation of our rights that I do not doubt that, like each of the right-breaking laws that have come before them, the Supreme Court will shut them down. That Congress apparently does not see these as grave actions and is willing to cost the public the money it will take to fight such folly is wildly upsetting and shows a great deal of disrespect for the American people.

I urge you to vote this bill down and to encourage your peers in Congress to do the same. I have written to you before about issues like this and you have always been responsive in kind, and I very much appreciate that. I feel this issue is of greater importance than many we're facing today, and I hope that you feel the same way.

Thank you for your time.

Re:What part of "right of people" don't u understa

[kableh]

This isn't about my "'rights' to post drug tutorials," it's about FREE SPEECH.

Frankly, I dont think any sane person would argue your "rights" to own automatic weapons are more important than the amendment that was the driving force behind our revolution against the British.

Don't get me wrong, I am a strong supporter of the 2nd amendment, for various reasons. Just keep in mind what the real threat is here. Once our rights to free speech are taken away, do you think anyone will care about our rights to bear arms???

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[kableh]

>Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done.

Well rest assured your dream will come true. Congress just approved a huge appropriation of funds to buy the Columbian army a bunch of helicopters, which will be used to butcher anyone and everyone associated with cocaine production. And lets make sure to bomb all those cocoa fields, wouldnt want anyone to have any chocolate! (It's coca, not cocoa).

>As for people saying that this bill would infringe on people's rights to "educate" - that's ridiculous.

Bullshit. The wording of the bill is so vague as to deem just about anything drug-related as illegal. Thus, government and law enforcement will be able to pick and choose which websites will be allowed to distribute such information.

>Drug education would say "Such and such drugs will do this to you...

Agreed, sort of... As far as the government is concerned, drug education = "drugs are bad, mmkay?" Frankly, if someone is going to do drugs, which is THEIR business, I would rather they have available to them any and all information, especially information from objective viewpoints, something the government cannot provide.

As an occasional drug user (I know, being a drug user I must be an addict, so my opinions and views will be dismissed by you) I have seen many people do many STUPID things on drugs that could have been easily avoided had they educated themselves properly. This bill we do nothing to help educate people, if anything, it will cause MORE casualties. If the war on drugs has shown us anything, it is that the government does NOT have our best interests in mind here, and that is NOT the reason that there is a War on drugs.

>Your right to free speech is not being infringed...

Once again, BULLSHIT. This is about losing our right to free speech in the name of the War on Drugs. Our CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED RIGHT to FREE speech is why we fought a war to gain our independence. And you want to forsake that in the name of the WOD?? If this isn't a troll, I pity you...

Re:Maybe it SHOULD pass ...

[kableh]

For the record, it seems most (intelligent) people I run into agree with me that the war on drugs isn't working, and that prohibition causes more problems than it solves.

I read an article the other day, talking about third parties, and it seems more and more politicians are seeing just how futile the WOD is as well. Some even think that anti-prohibition is a good position to take politically.

All the more reason to vote for Ralph Nader... =)

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[aardvarkjoe]

A bit ... although that only works if the limiting factor on gun ownership is the price of the gun. However, in general, it isn't -- whoever wants a gun pretty much gets one, the limit is simply how many people want to own firearms. So I doubt we're going to see gun prices plummeting anytime soon ...

What if this isn't about censorship?

[subreality]

What if this bit of legal cruft isn't really about censorship?

Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps the people who put this into the bill did it not to fight against drugs, but rather, they didn't like the Bankruptcy Reform Act? In an attempt to get the entire thing thrown out, they included this totally unrelated bit of 1st and 4th amendment violating trash in, so that either a) the freedom of speech groups will do their dirty work for them, and get the bill thrown out, or b) the court will throw the thing out as unconstitutional.

Why would they do this instead of just not creating the bill in the first place? When Congress drafts a bill, they agree that they want it, and a subcommittee goes and actually writes out the text. If the subcommittee objects to the bill, they could throw in this little bomb, so that even if the bill passes, they know it'll be taken out later.

And as an added bonus, they're heros! They're helping to fight the war on drugs! Hooray for censorship!

IANAL, but it's food for thought.

--Kai
( slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom )

Re:What you can do about it

[JCMay]

A while back I wrote my US Representative, Dave Weldon, and my two Senators, Connie Mack and Bob Graham. I actually sent an Email to them through Grassroots.com.

Although I never heard back from either of the Senators, I did get a reply from Mr. Weldon's office. At least some congressmen ('s staff) read email. The reply was even in the form of a printed, mailed letter.

Jeff

they dont defend the 10th either

[craig33]

The federal goverment is given the power to defend our country, negotiate treaties with other nations, and regulate trade between the states. All other power is reserved to the states by the 10th amendment. The feds havent followed this since before the civil war. But no one cares, we just give more and more of our freedom and responsibility to the government so they can take care of us from cradle to grave.

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[mdwebster]

Actually, the studies I have read on heroin addiction indicate that the average person would have to shoot up twice a day for about two weeks before starting to undergo physical withdrawal symptoms upon quitting cold turkey. So it takes at least that much to begin a physical addiction. And I'd personally consider someone who has more than 3 drinks a day (over a significant period of time) to be somewhat addicted to alcohol.

All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[Matt Ownby]

I believe that these so-called recreational drugs you mention are a scourge to all society and I am not interested at all in fighting for your "right" to engage in this kind of drug use.

And I am not convinced that censorship in any and every form is Bad. I can't see any legitimate reason why tutorials on how to make illegal drugs should be propogated on the internet. I am not going to make any move to stop its propogation (after all, information will find a way, you can't stop it) but I certainly am not going to shed any tears if prominent drug sites are shut down. In fact, I might crack a grin... the same kind of grin I would crack if Microsoft is split.

Re:All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[drbuttslam]

Holy shit! Imbeciles like this guy are why the world sucks. All censorship is bad. I, just like anyone else, would prefer not to have offensive (to me) sites, or publications, or whatever not to be around. But I'll support anybody and everybody's right to free speech, no matter how shitty what they have to say happens to be. The government is slowly but surely trying to pull our rights out from under us and we need to give our lawmakers a good spanking before it's too late. The implications of limited censorship are mindnumbingly BAD. Think about fucking Matt Ownby.

Re:All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[e13ven]

Why are legal drugs so much better than illegal drugs. Let me guess your a white male.

Re:All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[TheCarp]

> I believe that these so-called recreational
> drugs you mention are a scourge to all society
> and I am not interested at all in fighting for
> your "right" to engage in this kind of drug use.

"this kind". SO should we bann alcohol again?

Alcohol is a recreational drug with no medical use (well no common medical use anyway). Prohibition of drugs does NOTHING to stop actual drug use...in fact, if anything, all it does is stop legitimate use and research on drugs. (LSD, MDMA, and Heroin were all being researched for medical reasons and some even had acceptable medical uses right up till the day they were outlawed)

This law will merely stop aboveground discussion of drugs. It wont stop production. It wont stop use.

Re:All illegal drugs are a thorn in society's side

[TheCarp]

Sure...hell LSD was used for therapy too.

In fact....Cary Grant claimed to have taken LSD more than 100 times and said that no other therapy that he tried worked as well. (this is of course in a controlled setting)

I HIGHLY recomend "Getting High: A History of LSD" for a REALLY GOOD treatment of the subject of LSD and other drugs in general.

The point is made well...the ONLY thing that was ever stopped was legitimate use. Researchers can't even obtain samples of drugs to use in studies, unless their studies are specifically designed to show harm.

And even then the studies are usually done by people who can be "trusted" to skew the results.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[Scr3wt4p3]

Six steps to drugging and raping your next date. How to poison a city water supply. How to assasinate (I've heard of such a book being published, but I don't know about the others). How to lure children in your neighborhood into your house so you can fulfill all your sexual fantasies.

Have you watched televised news or read a newspaper ever in your life? Crimes are reported in detail. Should we ban all news of criminal activity?

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[AndyChrist]

>The Founding Fathers did not know about things >like bullets that can pierce armor and kill >policeman. Considering the founding fathers didn't know about armor that could stop bullets, I'm sure they considered the possibility of killing policemen. (More and more of whom seem to be deserving it lately) Anyhow, I think I see your point (It's just unfortunate that it has to be obscured by bad examples). If they'd considered how weaponry might advance (they didn't even have breach-loading firearms then, did they?), they might have been a little less ambiguous with the 2nd amendment.

Maybe Jafac could be a bit more humorless:

[monkeyfamily]

c'mon, motherfucker, yank that stick outyer ass!

Re:Commiland

[piku]

I agree about the moderator part.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[IronChef]

>1. If guns are illegal, you can arrest people simply for owning a gun. Remember how hard it was to get Al Capone, and how easy it would have been to get him AND all his henchmen if guns were outlawed?

It's already illegal to own a gun if you are a felon. They could scoop up a LOT of criminals based on that alone. They CHOOSE not to. We have a TON of laws that area aimed at "gun criminals," but we just don't use them effectively.

> 2. A criminal faced with an unarmed civilian will most likely not fire. A criminal faced with an armed civilian most likely will. Count the bodies.

I think you are nuts. You can choose to be defenseless, if you like, but you don't have the right to force others to. And while I don't have a link, I have read reports that indicate people who resist crime, with force, are more likely to come out alive than people who don't resist at all.

I have some personal experience with this. Some friends of our family, long ago, ran a Qwick-E-Mart of some kind. They were robbed. Though they were unarmed, the robbers shot them both anyway, and one of them died. If they had a weapon, they might have come out ahead.

So, if someone breaks into my house I am going to give them a terminal case of kinetic energy poisoning, no matter what the statistics say.

The drug stuff I might be able to agree on. But I should have the right to defend myself with lethal force. And if you check the stats for places like Florida, where concealed weapons are common, you will see that your fears of a blood bath Old West style scene are unfounded. Heck, crime rates DROPPED in FL after they started handing out the permits! How can you refute that?

Self-defense is a very primal right of all living things. You try to hurt me, I try to stop you -- what's so hard to understand about that?

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[merchant_x]

I think the key here is that both drugs are addictive. Yet alcohol is legal. Marijuana is not addictive and it is illegal where's the sense in that. This arbritrary picking and choosing of what drugs are legal and what drugs are not makes no sense to me. I beleive that if a black market currently exists for recreational drug it would make more sense that we legalize it and regulate it. Direct the funds from such sales back into rehabilitaion and education programs and that way we could reduce crime and drug related deaths at the same time.

Drugs and misinformation!

[logicnazi]

So I think the interesting question here is would this bill pass if congress didn't know the supreme court would strike it down? I mean congressmen probably get votes from the anti-drug lobby from passing the bill and the backlash which would occur once people actually started being censored never materializes because the ACLU sues and has the bill declared unconstitutional.

A second point I wish to bring up is the ridiculous propaganda being put out by the government. Here in california radio commercials have started airing explaining the "hazards" of even occasional marijuana use. Aren't there any kind of laws which govern what propaganda purposes the government may spend its money on? For instance if the democrats controlled the house senate and presidency could use federal monies specifically to advocate their own reelection?

Much noise and smoke, nothing substancial

[surfcow]

The supreme court is certain to throw this out, even on a bad day. And I suspect all the law makers know it. That's why it will pass overwhelmingly. This _is_ an election year. Our leaders will vote for silly but high-profile items. Look at the electronic decency act. I think this is a non-issue. Freedoms are being infringed in many other ways every day and in plain sight.

~surfcow

Just a question

[streetlawyer]

Sure, alcohol and tobacco kill people, but generally that's just Darwinism

If I were to come round to your house and cave your stupid pointy little fucken geek head in for being a callous, social-Darwinist prick, would that be "just Darwinism"? Or would that be the actual death of an actual human fucken being, which is not, in my neck of the woods, a matter for supercilious smart-alec remarks.

Fuckhead.

"Illegal drugs" vs "legal drugs"

[AllieA]

Our government talks big when talking about "illegal drugs", while pushing the most deadly drugs (tobacco and alcohol) to an addicted country and the rest of the world. Of course they want to cut out information about "illegal drugs". These people are trying to cut in on their action!

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[neema]

First off, let me make it clear that while I dispise drugs myself, I think they should make it legal as a part of the survival of the fittest act of 2000.
Second off, hes right though. Same thing happened with stuff like the "anarchist cookbook" and while I'm no potential terrorist (despite the persian ethnicity) I would still like to have the option to be able to find such information. After all, we're not babies. We should have access to any information of our choice. Perhaps next there will be laws passed about restrictions on programming programs that can be (not necessarily) used for harm, such as Back Orfice, Netbus or whatnot. Lets keep the government involved, but at arms length, cause once they get too involved, its hard to get them out.
Perhaps a more logical thing to do is instead of passing laws to make sure people don't know about cultivation (even though about 75% or all marijuana and other natrual drugs are brought in from other countries, rather then grown here), maybe the government should deploy more people to crack down on dealers. Lets make sure kids dont get sold to, rather then make sure they dont grow up being able to grow it.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[neema]

Funny you should mention something that is absoutely irrelvant to what I said. I never condoned making the explosives mentioned in the anarchist cookbook, I simply said it should be avalible, even for those that just want to print it out and read it in the bathroom for entertainment. I personally think doing anything someone anonymously wrote that deals with explosives is pure stupidity.

Re:60% of marijuana sold is

[neema]

Try going to http://www.yahooka.com (yes its a hilariously clever name) and obtaining information from there. If you do find it, read on how its says that 75% percent of marijuana sold in the United States is imported.

OpenGrow linking/mirroring....

[smack_attack]

Just like DeCSS :)

Here's my link: http://www.growmedicine.com/.

BTW, it's a grow it guide and biography from the same guy in California who was caught growing 4000 Marijuana plants (yes, he has a very impressive grow room).

Re:The 2nd amendment is about overthrowing governm

[deewite]

If the military were to conduct a coup in our government, we would be absolutely unable to resist.

you must be joking...

1)a military coup would have to go house to house to round up resistance.

2)a military coup would have split the military ... i.e. not everyone in the military would favor the coup

3)a strong military does not guarantee victory ... if you don't believe me ask the VC.

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[kadath23]

ooh, a drug post. I feel naughty. Dontcha just cook the stuff with vinegar to get heroin? I'd love to see a drug "cooking" show-- something like a Julia Childs evil twin in an inner city apt doing all the amateur stuff? btw I did write my representative and I hope most of us do too. There oughta be a court potential laws have to pass before they can be enforced. There's so much dumb, malicious and oppressive garbage coming out of the legislative branches.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sqlrob]

Caffeine can be life threatening (hell, it's purpose is a poison for the plant), but I don't know if suddenly withdrawing will cause death. The only way I can think off (IANAD) is originally having very low blood pressure, you have normal to high under the caffeine and stopping it drops it dangerously.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sqlrob]

Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done.

Check the news. They are.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sqlrob]

Nope. Caffeine dilates the blood vessels. That alone can help with a headache (a similar trick is to soak your hands in very warm water), as well as help in the absorption of the pain killer.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sqlrob]

3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs

BZZT. Thank you for playing.

1) No Medicinal Value - Gee, I guess that's why it's one of the primary ingredients of Excedrin.

2) No Addictive Properties - Please explain the withdrawl symptoms (not usually, if ever life threatening though) for heavy coffee drinkers that go cold turkey

Re:Congressional Chicken

[lpontiac]

Court Martial that sentenced Pvt. Slovak to death for dissertion during WW-II. All of those officers believed that a higher court would commute the sentence, and meanwhile they could avoid appearing "weak."

I'm interested. Got a link?

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[j-pimp]

If you are really against drugs and censorship, as I would a ssume a recovering herion addict to be, you would realize that this law will have zero impact on reducing drug use. Especially among children and groups that lack the life experience to realize that if they are going to use drugs they better be very careful.
I'm sorry, but I'd rather risk being killed by a drunk driver in a free country then being killed by a drunk driver in an oppressed country.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[prolixity]

Ha Ha Ha, you're a misinformed idiot (like the guys on capitol hill) How active is cocaine when taken orally? How much would be needed to excite the dopamine transmitters and whatnot? I'm sure it would be much more than the 200mg a pill of MDMA is. Oh yeah, Cocaine lasts about twenty minutes, one exposure when masked by the stimulant properties of MDMA cannot lead to addiction. Hmm, let me think..this sounds like those stories of E laced with heroin..something that is virtually inactive at the doses required to fit in a pill when taken orally. Are you pulling these facts out of your ass..are you getting this information from drugfreeamerica.org-clearly a non-biased website. Try actually learning about drugs (it doesn't have to be first hand) through books (oh wait, congress is going to take away those rights..I can't wait to see kids at parties drinking too much water or mixing MDMA with alcohol because they cannot get any information.) Why shouldn't we regulate the recreational drug phenomonon--because the Goverment is run by a bunch of Puritanical Christians and Idealistic Liberals? God, this makes me sick.. Oh yeah, if it weren't for websites such as erowid and lycaeum two of my friends would have been seriously hurt when they drank a vile of acid...wanna know why? Because I learned that Chlorpromazine Maleate is an anti-psychotic and that thorazine (which I had supplies of) would also help to bring them back to ground zero. Would this law also ban sites whose intent is to help others (i.e. needle exchange sites with tips on how to safely inject)? Instead of sweeping the drug "problem" under the tables and ignoring the fact that they exist, I would propose that we the american people legalize our rights to property and capitalize on our ability to treat our bodies as our own temples..to injest whatever we like, no matter how harmful the government says..god..I'm sure whoppers and big macs contribute to more deaths than all illegal drugs combined. What were there? like 5 deaths in the US last year in which *only* MDMA was involved.. what 100 in which the stupid (I say stupid because they are uninformed..cause they didn't read up) and mixed alcohol or other drugs with their e.. Oh and lets see..how many deaths occur each year to alcohol poisoning, driving under the influence of alcohol? Who are we going to believe? An oppressive government and its propaganda spreading "education campaigns? (DARE,DRUGFREEAMERICA, NIDA,DEA) or those researchers who present only the facts? (the late Dr. Saunders, the folks at MAPS.org) The choice isn't hard.. I personally would like to choose facts over fiction. Sincerely everyones with peace love unity and respect, Josh

Re:U should not talk about what you don't know

[prolixity]

Hah. The only time I've encountered adulterated weed in CA is when my friend put mixed some shrooms in with our shiatt. And don't tell me psylocibin isn't active when smoked..I got the whole deal...infinate deja vu, visual distortions..not like a full blown trip, but more like coming up to another psychedelic state.. Oh yeah, it might've been enhanced by the dexies and all. Peace

Re:Are you a troll or just stupid?

[Grim Metamoderator]

What makes you think Estanislao Martinez is an American? Your own stupidity?

--

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[Kefabi]

It's fairly common practice to attach things like this to a bill. Example. There was a canyon near where I live. Some garbage company wanted to use it as a place to dump all the trash. A bunch of locals raised hell over it, and some of the senator's staff got a little amendment added to a bill somewhere in congress about "Elmore Canyon may not be used as a place to dump garbage" and that bill got passed.

Of course, the canyon has nothing to do wtih the bill, nothing to do with national affairs, but representatives and senators use stuff like this to get what their voters want. If it wasn't for that, the canyon would be a junkyard right now.

So not all is bad, but it does leave a lot of room for abuse.

Never over 50%

[DreIsGay]

you said typically more than 50% vote?!? The voting attendance for even Presidential campaigns is around 48% on a good year. And thats just of registered voters. Then there are all the people who are eligible but dont even register. Since anyone reading this is way above the average intelligence level of America, this may seem far fetched to you, but half of america doesn't know who are vice president is.

Re:marijuana is not legal in amsterdam

[drbuttslam]

It IS legal jackass. People can possess "small" quantities (i don't remember the exact threshold amount, but it's a hell of a lot) and certain shops can sell. But the shops that sell must still buy their marijuana off of the black market, so in that sense it is illegal.

Re:Its a bad thing, but it needs to be done

[drbuttslam]

Its not soft drug laws that are keeping the black man down, its inordinately harsh drug laws and unfair implementation of these laws. Penalties for possession of crack (basically the black man's cocaine) are much harsher than those for the possession of cocaine (rich white man's drug). Furthermore, despite the fact that 75% of drug users are white, in many states most drug offenders are black. In Illinois, a black man is something like 57 times more likely to be arrested than a white man for drug offenses. Legalized drugs means no more traffickers, which means a drastic reduction in drug-related killings (people won't be fighting over turf anymore because drugs aren't profitable anymore). It also means a reduction in drug-related deaths since people will be getting the pure product from a licensed supplier. It's not drugs that are killing our inner cities, it's drug laws. And these same drug laws are also threatening our freedom.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[JCCyC]

Drugs must be stopped at all costs.

All costs? You mean, REALLY all, as in by whatever means necessary? Are you willing to have your country (I'm assuming you're from the US) turned into a Christian equivalent of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan? Coz that's what you'll eventually get, Mr. At All Costs.


"Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman

Re:Without..

[Antipop]

ONe major problem with the war on drugs is that, although the war on drugs gives kids sociological facts, it does give them little scientific facts.

This is the reason why programs like DARE just don't work. "See Jane smoke pot. See Jane have massive allergic reaction (just like you will). See Jane go to hospital. See Jane die. See what happens to you when you use drugs!" is not an effective way to get teens to stay of drugs. One of the things I remember hearing in school was that all drugs are addictive, which is just not true. If they have to lie about basics facts to scare kids off, how are teens supposed to trust the rest of what they said?

I can see this law be taken advantage of, not just to censor sites about making drugs but sites containing real scientific information, which leaves us with the "drugs are bad" propaganda. Blatantly disregarding the 1st Admendment to "stop" drug use is morally and ethically wrong. Besides, someone will just put it up in a country with no such laws, totally defeating the purpose of the bill. When will politicians learn that they can't regulate the internet?

-Antipop

Will they shut down the Foresight Institute?

[Hominy Chef]

Nanotechnology may allow any substance to be produced easily, and the Foresight Institute is collecting information on how to do this. Obviously, they are in blatant violation of this proposed law. Will they also try to shut down sites that teach basic organic chemistry?

Somebody needs to combat legislators who disregard the Constitution. Remember that the oath of office that Congresspeople and Senators swear is to uphold the Constitution, so any legislator trying to cut into our Constitutional rights can be accused of hypocrisy by their opponents.

correct

[feck]

from 1st hand, that sounds about right.

everybody knows

[feck]

the fewkin' CIA owns the drug trade, especially the addictive ones. DUH!!!

YEP!

[feck]

i dont care what you use- mescalne, yoga, TV, poring over core-dumps...everyone alters their conciousness. anyone who thinks they dont is seriously deluded..

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[hailbob]

heheheheh...

"They do NOT need to create more demand...they get PLENTY of buisness as it is..."

I'm reminded of Chris Rock when he was talking about the EXACT same topic. He said he's never met a crack dealer walking around his apartment saying, "Now HOW am I gonna get rid of all this crack!?!?"

create more demand...heheh...

Re:Less obvious arguments against this.

[bgalehouse]

You can't *truly* translate law into common language for the same reason that the only true description of a program is the program itself: namely, any layman's description is likely to gloss over precisely the elements of phraseology or punctuation that will turn out to be most ambiguous (and hence critical) later. Most laymen could do as little with such a lay explanation as they could with an explanation of Perl or APL code. Debugging is a skilled art in law or software.

It might be that the essense of code (especially good code) is the code itself. I can debate that some though. I've certainly occasionaly made code harder to read in the name of efficiency.

Irregardless, you are thinking in terms of the techie. Consider it in terms of the consumer. Even if you don't start with a spec for your program, you'll metaphorically have one at the end. This is the nature of software engineering.

In code, the end user need not be involved in low level debugging. But the end user can and should be able to discuss the spec, and be able to discuss whether the spec meets their needs. If this can't be done, the spec isn't up to spec :-)

Similary, there are plenty of websites listing and sorting bugs in various systems and how to work around them. They aren't just of interest to programmers, many are quite consumer oriented.

What is equivalent for legal code? Political activists sites sort of list what they call bugs, but I've yet to see a proper database per say.

moron

[Froggo2525]

did you read any of the post other than the subject line? Or are you just kidding? Tell me you're just kidding.

Real Gateway Drugs...

[Froggo2525]

My first buzz was when I spun around on a swing at the playground as a toddler. It was fun to be dizzy! And it helped me to "fit in" with the "hep" crowd. Then I moved on to hyperventilation when some older "cool" kids showed me how. Then it was roofies, heroin, cigarettes, shrooms, acid, X, crack, ice, beer, ice beer, ginseng, percodan, vodka, ghb, crystal meth, cafe latte, sinutab, dexatrim, passionflower, toad licking, chocolate, prozac, vicodin, dmt, and ketamine . But never pot. That sh!t is for losers.

"Drugs Unpopular " - Untrue

[SubtleNuance]

No - Drugs (alcohol, Marijuana) are _EXTREMELY_ popular in Canada and the US. Popular support for the legalization for marijuana has held a majority for many years. Its right-wing & religious zealots who spend a great deal of time lobbying who have held back reasonable reform to criminal drug law.

Its the 'middle' group (you, me, my neighbour) who are 'normal' (read not a memeber of any Church, Gun Rights Group etc) who are being ignored. Law should reflect the moral and social opinions of the general population, not a small but vocal minority.

And in the land of the free...

[Mashiki]

HA! My a$$, once again the goverment tries to has decided to screw around with everyone's rights.

Being a student of history...guess what I see...I see a goverment begging to be over thrown. I see people useing their rights...in the US that is to bare arms against the goverment. It has become a bloated political body which does nothing but service itself.

In canada, it's none the better...every day they attempt to pass something like this. Ever hear of CESUS? It's like the secret goverment police...but they don't need a warrent to do anything here. Wanna wire tap something? They do it...want to log someone's computer? They just do it. So much for a free country.

Besides, if it's a free country...why do they pirate US TV stations and slap in canadian commericals? Preserving the culture of canada they say. Bah, makes me ill. Spineless cowards up here, simply said simply put.

And if you americans don't bloody well wake up, you'll end up like us too. Paying 58% in income tax, then paying another 7-19% in combined federal and income tax, then paying for all the hidden taxes on top. As well as looseing your right to own a gun and other things.

Bloody well wake up, and don't turn from the greatest free country, to the greatest police state in the world.

Re:Line Item Veto! ---- NOT!

[codefool]

Yeah, I recall that now. Thanks for the update.

Strange that the Constitution makes all kinds of provisions on how bills become law, but there are practically no guidelines for how bills are made. Wouldn't it be grand if the forefathers required bills to have perfect coherence?

Line Item Veto!

[codefool]

This kind of pork is exactly why the line item veto was fought for so long and so strong by many by all parties. The strategy went something like this: Take something like the Clean Air Bill and attach to it a provision that required the US to purchase oil from a Mass. oil company for the next 50 years. Since the President must either sign or veto the bill in its entirety, it was usually vetoed because of the pork (provisions in a bill that have litte or nothing to do with the main body of the bill.) This would give the opposing party a fitting "Hey, look, the President vetoed the Clearn Air Bill, I guess he doesn't want you to have clean air!" and other bullying tactics to that effect. The permutations are obvious.

Now we have a line item veto, which allows the President to veto some portions of a bill while passing others into law. Those vetoed portions are still allowed to be re-debated by the Hill and passed without the Presidents consent etc (see The Constitution of the United States of America , John Adams et al.)

Now, given that the President has the power to veto something like this while keeping the outer bill intact, does he have the courage to act? In the Clinton era, I think not.

Re:Congressional Chicken

[ThroughYourEyes]

As am I. I checked a few search engines but came up empty. Any info would be appreciated.

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[iamplasma]

I doubt anyone will ever read this, but I'll respond anyway.

Okay, I'm not a complete expert on these laws, but as far as I understand, the police must, as always, show their just cause to a judge, so they may then get a warrant and do the search. Otherwise it is simply break&enter.

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[iamplasma]

I doubt anyone will ever read this, but I'll answer anyway.

Your main criticism seems to suggest you are opposed to search warrants in general, and you are kidding if you seriously believe the police shouldn't be able to search a building with just cause.

Also, I only just showed it wasn't unconstitutional anyway, so your songs are irrelevant.

Besides, we live in well-founded democracies. So all decisions must face public scrutiny. The government can never take over and remove this democracy, if they did, the military would instantly mutiny, and topple that government.

Even government employees are members of society.

It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[iamplasma]

Firstly, I would like to point out for the 9E+999 time to Americans that the Constitution is not the absolute gospel about what is right and wrong.

Secondly, the search law is in no way unconstitutional. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . .."

In no way does this state that you must be informed of a search, all it really requires is that there be just cause.

Besides, what real detriment could this have to a law-abiding citizen (I can only think of benefits!)? And it certainly has benefits in crime prevention (eg you can search or even mark stolen property in a warehouse, then wait for the buyer and arrest them).

I know most people here are pro-rights, and I'll get flamed to hell for this, but it's my opinion, and I feel I have justified it.

Re:It isn't unconstitutional or wrong

[Steve B]

Secondly, the search law is in no way unconstitutional. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . .."

In no way does this state that you must be informed of a search, all it really requires is that there be just cause.

That is, a search warrant supported by just cause is still required, but that the police never have to actually show it.

Perhaps we can extend this concept to education (the academic standards will remain the same, but the students won't be required to take any tests), finance (banking still have to manage your money properly, but we won't let the depositors pester them with disclosure requirements), and taxes (you still have to pay, but we won't do audits any more).

Besides, what real detriment could this have to a law-abiding citizen (I can only think of benefits!)?

You haven't thought it through then. Obviously, removing the requirement that the police prove that they got a warrant is an open-ended invitation to abuse.
/.

Re:Napster users are peddling stolen goods

[iamplasma]

I know you are probably either being a troll or sarcastic, and the incredible space at the end of your message is as annoying as heck, but still I agree with you. Congratulations on being one of the few with the courage to express an unpopular opinion (even if you did do it as an AC).

Ideas for laws

[Ender7A]

This is an idea that has been bouncing around my head for a while and I thought I would share it with the rest of slashdot(I am sure this is not a new idea but I don't think I have seen anyone mention it before so here it is). Laws are suppossed to be the oppinions of the people right? Well, Why dont they have a "vote a law" where the people CAN VOTE FOR THEIR OWN LAWS! What I mean is, Instead of having congress men decide are fate why don't we? We have the technology (had it since t.v. actully) It could be a simple as having a television channel or web site or both dedicated to what laws are being presented and people could call in/email and place their votes. This is a LOT more accurate on what the people want. Give the law a trial period of two years to see if it needs amending. Have a SUGGESTION BOX where people can post their own suggestions for the law and people can vote on that.:) I know their are a MILLION problems with this but I like this a lot better than ONE person deciding what I can and can not do based on THEIR OWN PERSONAL BELIEF AND FEELINGS.

I gotta Say this

[Kirch]

Ahem.. The Internet has NO BORDERS! Just had to get that off my chest :D Especially after reading all of this thread. Kirch

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Luminous]

I support the right to own weapons but I do not support the right of people who do not know how to use the weapon to own it. The 'well-regulated' provision implies 'skilled in the use of' which means to me trained. A simple fact that those individuals who go through Hunter Safety classes or train at Shooting Clubs have a much lower rate of accidents with guns than those individuals who do not clearly demonstrates that since this is a country that has the right to bear arms directly in the Constitution, then any individual wanting to own and use a gun needs to trained in the use and handling of the gun. And to keep the 'militia' 'well-regulated' periodic re-training would need to be done. Essentially, to legally use the weapon, your firearm registration card needs to signify that you've been to Firearm Training within the past five years. Will this stop gun violence? No. Laws don't stop actions, laws make actions crimes. To stop gun violence (or any similar act) a society needs to address the reasons 'why' the action is occurring.

This does not surprise me at all

[wiZd0m]

The only country where the percentage of new drugs addicts in the teenage population over time as significantly decreased is the Netherlands with their PRO-Information and PRO-Education programs. Every where else in the world, like in the USA, where the strategy as been prohibition, criminaliasation and exclusion from society it's been a loosing battle, with that critical group use skyrocketing.

For those of you who think you can use drugs anywhere in the Netherlands you are mistaken. You cannot do it outside on the street. But you surely can on a Cafe or at home. If you get cought on the street, you get a fine! ;-) and they confiscate it.

Everything they have tried so far as failed, now they think censorship is the cure. It's a doomed strategy fail from stupid people not understanding the problem. It's like telling people "If we stop talking about it, the problem will go away"

The WoD is a Failure

[Ghrul'hal]

There is really no denying this fact. Given that its aim has been complete prohibition, is it any wonder? We tried this sort of thing once before in this country, only then people still had the balls to eventually bite the bullet and just chalk it up as a loss.

People will make, distribute, and consume all manner and sorts of drugs. The WoD has only served to make this fact more obvious. The problems any person or society experience because of drugs is not simply the result of use, but that of abuse. Crossing the line that divides these two states is completely up to the individual user. An abundance of available, reliable, and truthful information is the only way to make sure that people understand the implications of whatever it is they choose to do.

We're bombarded by public service propaganda encouraging us to talk to our children about drugs. Seeing as how I'm no chemist and there are more drugs out there that I haven't done than those that I have, what am I suppose to tell them, "Just say No"? I hate to tell you this, but that just doesn't cut. If we are unable to learn for ourselves about drugs, and child's only option is experimentation ... guess what.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[e13ven]

LSD is one of my personal favorites. Mushrooms. many species of grass native to north america comtain DMT. There are so many drug containing plants that when you start to compile a list you realize that the government efforts to control human enebriation are futile. At the farmers market here people sell San Pedro(trichocereus pachanoi) (trichocereus peruvians) (salvia divinorum) (papaver somniferum) (rivea corymbosa)(ipoemia violacea)(phallaris illinoises) to name only a few. I notice nearly everywhere I walk plants that contain organic chemical compounds that are schedule one. I can't think of any city in america that doesn't have native plants that contain schedule one chemicals. Psilocybin containing mushrooms originally specific to a few small geographic locations only a couple of hundred years ago now proliferate in nearly all parts of the globe. Personally I think this means we should all eat mushrooms at least once a year.

Re:Its a bad thing, but it needs to be done

[e13ven]

And if you choose ecstacy instead of alcohol as your party drug you will be less likely to... get in a fight, fuck someone without a condom, fuck someone who doesn't want to get fucked, get fucked by someone you don't want to fuck, get in a auto accident, forget what happened last night. On ecstacy I'd mainly worry that you might share something you wish you had kept to yourself(if I worried). As with any drug always drink lots of water.

Re:Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[e13ven]

The truth is alcohol is much more harmful to society than heroine is. If heroine were legal most of the harm asociated with it now would disappear. A chronic alcoholic will die in no longer than ten years (from liver failure.) If heroine were pure and unadulturated it could be used quite safely. Yes you can overdose on alcohol. In fact it happens far more than heroine overdoses. The citys with the most tolerant stances on heroine use have the lowest per capita addiction rates and the lowest rates of underage users while the cities with the "toughest" policies (intolerance) have the highest rates of abuse and the highest rates of youth using.
Western european ethnocentrism has reached its peek in you. The harmful drug that my culture has choosen for enebriation is O.K. while the drugs other cultures have adopted for a head change are wrong. You are just as bad a the racist fucks who passed the "yellow man tax act" of 189?. Which was an Opium tax.
Ever wonder why it took an amendment to the constitution to make white mans drug of choice illegal, but any other substance known to man can be arbitrarily declared a felony by an unelected zealot?
-Most likely because of ethnocentric ignorant stupid racist fucks like yourself.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[e13ven]

Stupidity. Honestly, let's just come right out and say it: alcohol abuse kills. More people die every year as a result of drunk driving than all of the heroin overdoses combined.

ten to twenty times more

FUCK YOU

[e13ven]

You should be killed. I have been on my own sinse I was sixteen. I have never recieved public money. I haven't ever recieved, been notified of, or been offered free medical services because I am poor. I have worked full time and paid taxes like everyone. Why should I listen to a classist ass complain about helping a poor people "like your beneficent" when you don't. Your example stinks. I don't hear you complaining about thirty grand a year(of our tax money)per person spent on incarcerating drug addicts. Rich classist fucks think all tax money is theirs. I pay taxes but get the way short end of the stick. Then I read some stupid fuck complain about me taking all the help he never offered. FUCK YOU!!!!!

I mean c'mon

[j0s)(]

This is one of the reasons I feel America needs to chill out a bit and why we need to pass some laws against these types of riders. I personally plan on doing something to try and get the word out about this bill. After I post this little post im heading over to some LA news station websites to find the info to let them in on this article and see if maybe I can get this article out in the open. I kno i prolly cant do much but I think this is rather lame... a clause on illegal information on websites? I mean c'mon. This type of censorship is blatantly against our Bill of Rights and the simple thought of this clause being inserted into the "Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000" is just annoying me to no end.

~j0sh

Im off to fight the windmills...

Re:Does this make sense to anyone?

[Sodium Attack]

Also don't forget that for most Representative races, there are more than two options. If your representative votes for HR 2987, don't simply vote for his/her major-party opponent without investigating the opponent's views as well. If you're not satisfied by that, choose one of the "minor-party" candidates.

Some people argue that voting for a minor-party or independent candidate is a "wasted vote". This is true only if you cannot see any further ahead than the next term of office. If you plan on dying in the next two years and don't care what happens to the country after you die, then--and only then--would a vote for a third-party candidate be a wasted vote.

A vote for a third-party candidate sends the message that the usual Democrat-Republican oligarchy is unacceptable. It may encourage one of the major parties to move in the direction of the voted-for party in order to regain the lost voters. It is also an encouragement to those who are working against both Republicans and Democrats to keep up the fight, letting them know that their words are not falling on deaf ears.

Refuse to accept the lesser of two evils, when there are three or more choices.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[ichimunki]

So basically it would "sooner or later result" in exactly the status quo. Neat!

Prior Restraint; but this still pisses me off!

[sulli]

This will almost assuredly be ruled unconstitutional, as were CDA, COPA, and other related crapola. Prior restraint is per se unconstitutional.

But what REALLY pisses me off is the brazen attitude of Feinstein and Hatch that those who link to bad, bad, bad content are somehow complicit in a crime. What fucking planet are they from? How do they know that the linkers or publishers have such evil intent? And why does this matter anyway, if it's constitutionally protected speech?

Sorry, had to rant for a moment.

What is really the most disappointing about this whole episode is that the so-called liberals (e.g. Feinstein) are the ones most willing to trample on and destroy the Constitution for shallow political ends. It's very, very depressing.

(And so much for Orrin Hatch being a good guy... time to cancel that CD order.)

sulli

Government is based on threat

[Mtgman]

"If you[a government] can't convince the people that they need you to protect them from malicous 'other' powers, then they'll quickly decide that they no longer want your hand picking their pockets and telling them how to live their lives."
-Mavis, or was it Stella Maris?(Miss Mao?)

Steven

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[quintessent]

Have you watched televised news or read a newspaper ever in your life? Crimes are reported in detail. Should we ban all news of criminal activity?

It's funny how they do that, isn't it? "next up we have more news on the Oklahoma bombing. The gabby gourmet is going to be our special guest to show you how to make fertilizer bombs. Parents, you might want to supervise your kids, since there are hazards..."

Ok, so that's a little exaggerated, but it's true that they really seem to want to go through every salacious detail. It's like modern journalism is doing everything it can to imitate the yellow journalism of the past, without being labeled as such. As to your question about banning, I'd say no, their purpose is to inform, even though they often do it very badly.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[quintessent]

I'm curious why you singled out LSD

No specific reason. The list was only meant to show a spectrum of activities.
#define LSD [drug-of-your-choice]

Also, thank you for your thoughts.

Please listen to a differing opinion

[quintessent]

Please don't mod me down for saying this. In fact, this whole article is about censorship. In light of that, I ask you to allow my ideas to stand even though I may not be among those with the majority opinion.

I believe drugs are wrong. I could explain why, but I don't have the time and don't want to take the space to do so. I'll just say I believe it is wrong to use drugs, except for positive medical reasons (no, I'm not going to take space to define this).

I respect the opinions of others. In the United States, we have enough of a concencus that drug use is wrong that we as a representational democracy have created laws banning the use, sale, and production of drugs (obviously many drug users and others disagree). I believe in these laws.

The issue is about balancing two different values.

First, any sane person will at some level agree that drug use is wrong. Ask yourself these questions:
Is alcohol use wrong?
Is marijuana use wrong?
Is LSD use wrong?
Is LSD use while driving wrong?
Is LSD use while performing heart surgery wrong?
Is LSD use while piloting a commercial airliner wrong?
Is it wrong to use drugs on someone else for the purpose of rape, kidnapping, or any number of other crimes? At some level in this line of questioning, virtually everyone will answer yes.

Second, we value free speech very highly. The constitution protects free speech, and yet the Supreme Court has ruled that free speech is not supreme. Remember the classic court example of screaming "fire" in a crowded movie theater. This is one example of the many times when speech can harm others.

So far, these two values don't seem to contradict. Yet somewhere along the line, the two values meet each other and require compromise. Do you really think we should be publishing books about anything a person might want to do? Think about these titles: How to build your own nuclear weapons. Six steps to drugging and raping your next date. How to poison a city water supply. How to assasinate (I've heard of such a book being published, but I don't know about the others). How to lure children in your neighborhood into your house so you can fulfill all your sexual fantasies.

Do you really think people have a "right" to read these books? I don't. I suspect most people will agree that there is some limit to free speech. In other words, there is a place where free speech begins to tread on other critical values and the two must compromise.

Free speech is not about writing books on how to do something that is generally agreed to be wrong. Free speech is about our right to share ideas and beliefs. If you believe it is ok to poison a city's water supply, please find a good public forum and share your ideas. But writing a how-to book and sending it to the 6 people in the U.S. who might be crazy enough to do it is not necessarily protected speech.

If you believe drugs should be legalized, please make your arguments, lobby your congresspeople, and donate to your favorite activist group. This is healthy free speech. This is how laws are made. But at the moment, there is enough evidence that drug use is wrong, that we as a nation have made laws against it. Until the arguments in the other direction gather enough strength to have them modified, I'm not convinced there is a constitutional right to distribute drug-making manuals.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[quintessent]

But that's not enough to make the blanket statement, "Drugs are wrong."

You are right there. I was trying to make the unpopular argument that somewhere, however deep and dark you want it to be, free speech should have a limit. I realize my argument won't convince everyone, but I believe it was thoughtfully made.

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[isotope23]

I respect your opinion but cannot agree with it.
Taking a substance is NOT in and of ITSELF wrong.....

It may be unhealthy for you, but not wrong.
What is WRONG is directly endangering others while
ON those substances

I.E. dont drink and drive, fly a plane, operate
power tools etc while under the influence

We are FREE beings and INHERENTLY have the RIGHT
to do whatever we wish to with oursleves!
Where that right stops however is you!!!
I have the right to hurt me, but NOT you...

I think many people who have a problem with the drug war would not have a problem with things like DUI drug laws as long as home use was legal.

Very simple and straightforward

Re:Please listen to a differing opinion

[unreal1]

ok, all that you said is fine and dandy, but the free speech that they are trying to censor here WILL harm people if it is censored, not the other way around. This law will not just ban sites that talk about the manufacturing of illegal substances. It will ban any site DISCUSSING the use of drugs. You still may think this is fine to do, but i'll give you a reason why this will harm people. I attend many events that, sadly to say, have alot of drug use; mainly ecstacy. While it is illegal, it is being used, and there is no getting around that. And being that its illegal, its never 100% safe to use, because you can never tell what is in it, where it has been, if its been tampered with, etc. This is where the internet comes in and actually SAVES LIVES. There are many sites that have open forums on the discussion of various pills that are floating around, and some of these forums are split up into specific cities or regions throughout the country. These sites are essential to the 'safe' use of ecstacy (which by the way is most likely the main drug this act has been introduced). These websites give information on what batches of pills contain potentially lethal chemicals, and also give information on harm reduction while under the influence. While the people that use these sites are drug users, they are still active members of society. There is no logical reason why we as a country should totally turn our backs on them. The people that will be affected by this are not the street dealers or organized crime groups, but the average user who does these things in the privacy of their own home or while with friends. Doing nothing to help drug users has been proven to do absolutely nothing to better the situation. While you may not agree with the use of drugs, you cannot argue the fact that they have always been used and most likely always will. The government will be alienating hundreds of thousands of users throughout the country and opening them up to even more dangers if this act is passed. The government should fight the war on drugs as much as they can, but not to the point where it is guarunteed to harm their own citizens. The government has to learn that taking away information will do nothing to curb the use of drugs, it will only make it less safe for those that choose to put it in their OWN body. Harm reduction and PROPER information, both good and bad, is the only way to end drug use in the US or any other country around the world.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Torak-]

At least look something up about what you're saying before you comment, you stupid illiterate. Caffeine is physically addictive.

What about none FDA approved drugs?

[dropdead]

Would none FDA approved drugs be considered illegal? Information on a new cancer treatment drug that is being tested in else where in the world by a none US mfg could be censored. Could this happen, would someone try.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[wierdo]

crack users who have children, destroying lives before they are born...

The whole idea of the crack baby has been proven to be a myth. In summary, the reason that "crack babies" are so bad off is that they live in a shithole with drug addict parents. Think about it for a second. Very few children in such a situation are going to come out well. I've seen plenty of ADD kids, and their parents weren't crackheads.

For more information, you can search on google for "crack baby myth." Here's a couple of links to get you started:

FamilyWatch

The American Psychological Association

-Nathan

Note: I'm not saying that doing drugs or alcohol while pregnant is a good thing, only that the specific myth of the crack baby is just that, a myth.

Re:Something of odd to note about this.

[wierdo]

Additionally, this type of bill may strongly reform the concent of riders; two completely different concepts should not be allowed on the same bill.

We should have a constitutional convention and amend the U.S. Constitution with an amendment such as:

Being necessary to promote an informed citizenry, and to protect the rights of the Citizens by causing Laws to be more readily understandable by all it is declared to be an infringement of the rights of the people for laws to be written that include multiple concepts which are linked together in such a form that voting to pass one is a vote to pass the other. In the case of the Congress, any representative attempting to do so, shall on the first offense be suspended from his or her duties for a period of ninety days, with a temporary replacement being elected from the home district of the Representative. Upon the second offense, the Representative will then be barred from further participation or employment by any branch of the U.S. Government.

I think something like that would go a long way to keeping our rights from being infringed by the idiots in Congress.

-Nathan

U should follow your own advice

[La0tsu]

As of yesterday, gold was trading for $280.00/oz. I can get the same amount of weed for $75.00 any day of the week. In addition, while Opium and Heroin might be cheap to produce in Afghanistan, Thailand, and Pakistan, it costs to ship, and smuggling is not cheap. Not with the risks involved. I am not from california, but I am from a state that has relatively sane drug laws (MN). I have spent time in California. I have never, ever heard of laced weed. IMHO, You are a twit-troll.

Re:Are you a troll or just stupid?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I see you guys keep repeating that to feel better ... when there's actually only one nation that's not really liked in most countries ... let me see ... which one is it ...

Mais tu penses-tu que j'suis aux States? C'est pas possible que t'aies pas vu mon nom, ou mon adresse éléctronique. Mais la prémière chose que t'as fait c'est de m'insulter, en me traiter d'étasunidien. Ouais, t'es certainment un troll.

Vas t'câlisser dans ton esti d'camp, crisse de troll.

Are you a troll or just stupid?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Dude, you managed both to evade his point (0.4% blood alcohol is deadly), insult him by calling him a puritan, and insult the rest of the people of the continent of America by calling an USian "american". Jeez.

Et après ça, les français se demandent pourquoi ils sont pas bien aimés au monde entier.

BTW your people have lost it. Chilean wines are just better (and cheaper too) nowadays than the stuff your wineries are putting out.

Re:Are you a troll or just stupid?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Well actually I was'nt referring to you specifically, since you were just repeating one common meme often seen here.

Actual situation in The Netherlands

[broadya]

Replying to the post suggesting that Marijuana is legal in Amsterdam and just to state the actual situation in The Netherlands - Marijuana is not actually legal, it is "decriminalised". It may in practice be sold and used in certain "Coffee shops". In theory, the police could shut any of these shops at a moment's notice and arrest the proprietors. There are also so called "Smart Shops" which sell mushrooms and other "natural" psychoactive substances. There is talk at the moment about legalizing the cultivation of Marijuana in The Netherlands, simply as a practical point to reduce imports and organized crime, but this bill stands very little chance of becoming law because it offends The Netherlands' neighboring countries so badly. They are already not too pleased about the current situation (there are only minimal border controls between The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium).

The 2nd amendment is about overthrowing government

[Phredrick Dobbs]

Another person covered this pretty well here.

Basically, though, the 2nd amendment exists so that if the government were to become oppressive, we could overthrow it. The idea is that if the populace were armed, and the government were also armed, the populace should be able to defeat the government's military force. Technology and our general socialist trend have changed this. Now, we spend hundreds billions of dollars a year on military, which is a far greater percentage of the Gross National Product than the government in the 1700's had. On top of that, many weapons that the military owns are far more expensive than anyone could ever afford.

The 2nd amendment died a long long time ago. At this point, there is no backup plan. If the military were to conduct a coup in our government, we would be absolutely unable to resist.

I don't consider this a real possibility now, or in the near future, but remember, we have a frickin' huge military. I'm not a zealot, I don't own a gun, but I do understand what those old guys writing the constitution were talking about. Back then, monarchies and similar autocratic governments were the norm. We were a new thing, a very optimistic and ruled-by-the-people-nation. Our giddy feeling of finally rising above feudal and monarchic lords after centuries and centuries made us worry that one day our government would stop being of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Defending your home is one issue, but fundamentally, the 2nd amendment exists so that we have the right to overthrow our government if necessary.

This is purely the idealistic view of the whole issue. I realize there are many pragmatic hooks that we need to worry about, and there is no right answer. If in the long term, we do have a military government, then maybe it would have been better for us to have sacrificed these lives to gun violence so we'd have had the ability to resist this government. More likely, I don't see that happening, but that's just my optimistic self talking.

-Phredrick Dobbs
Emperor of the Universe
Grand and High Protector of Everything

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[tsmith213]

Couldn't? I didn't think I had to.

From www.dictionary.com:
militia
n. Abbr. mil.

1. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
2. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
3. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.

Emphasis is my own.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[tsmith213]

in fact there's already a "well regulated militia" : it's called the army !

The weakness of your argument and the weight of its prepostory cause it to fall over upon itself.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[tsmith213]

Do you think that you should be able to own a nuclear bomb if you want to.

Indeed I should, and why not?

What is the difference between my possessing a nuclear bomb and our government possessing a nuclear bomb, except that what I do with mine may be easily seen by my neighbors, and what the government does with theirs may be smokescreened by taxpayer-funded propaganda?

Re:Commiland

[VoodooPIg]

please be so kind as to check the party affiliations of this bills sponsors before you lay it on the doorstep of the clinton administration.

Re:Commiland

[VoodooPIg]

that would be a republican bill sponsor from the great state of utah hardly the"clinton admin"

Hey who wants to play!!!

[VoodooPIg]

Lets see if we can draft a bill violating every ammendament!!

passafism @ its finest

[the_reverend_d]

good ol U S of A strikes another blow twords our freedoms, in a non-direct approach as usual. If they want to take away our freedoms, they should atleast have the testicular fortitued to do it to our faces. Peace...

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[FatOldGoth]

> Can caffeine produce the same kind of effects as illicit narcotics?

There are a few times I've decided to really, really abuse caffeine (like taking 24 Pro Plus tablets in one go) and I've found the effect to be quite like speed, right down to negating the effects of other drugs.

The comedown is pretty rough, too, but still better than speed.

We dont need

[Sarkdas]

We dont need no voice control....

Heh we don't need this bill...we don't need to have our rights taken away and most of all we wouldn't be even discussing this if it weren't for the simple fact that people thnk everything that might make someone think a different way or feel a different way is bad.

Odd how cigarettes are still being sold huh..nicotine makes people feel different..nicotine is a drug....why isnt in completely banned?....THat would hurt the politician popularity...so instead they sit down and think "Hmm now which things do very fewpeople use that we could put a spin on and make it horrible.....hmmm DRUGS thats it!"....Politician number 2 walks in...."Hey wait we use some drugs for medicene....QUICK ban those too and say they are bad also!".....gotta love how the mainstream popularity of something like tobacco has kept the industry alive for so long DESPITE the obvious problems.

Heres to you Congress.....*puts a curse on them all*

-Sarkdas (you know....theres a point in there some place)

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[(deleted - SCI)]

Scroll quickly through this discussion, hovering over the links, and tell me that the archive of this very discussion will be legal or visible to future generations, if this law passes,

Re:Less obvious arguments against this.

[(deleted - SCI)]

Anybody want to set up a website along the lines of Mr. Cranky , but rating politicians instead? Or a place to read legislation converted into 'everyday language' - can't be harder than explaining computer code in everyday language. Politics is o so very dry. Somebody should do something about that.

I love code. I love the law. I love them both for the same reason: logic and intricacy. What the law lacks in consistency, it makes up in rock-hard 'sneak up behind you with a 2x4' relevance. Both are dry, but if anything code is drier, in the sense of being 'impersonal'

You can't *truly* translate law into common language for the same reason that the only true description of a program is the program itself: namely, any layman's description is likely to gloss over precisely the elements of phraseology or punctuation that will turn out to be most ambiguous (and hence critical) later. Most laymen could do as little with such a lay explanation as they could with an explanation of Perl or APL code. Debugging is a skilled art in law or software.

That doesn't mean that I don't advocate study. i most certainly do. I wish more people were taught a bit more about the law in their (roughly) 12 years of state-mandated education. If ignorance of the law is no excuse [unless you're a NZ judge] [R.S., c.C-34, s.19 in Canadian law] [Code of Hammurabi ;->) [random cool article on the general subject] [Google search] then shouldn't the state take a bit better care to assure we aren't ignorant?

Nah, we can't even teach spelling, grammar, math, science, history, geography or sex.

Re:Words to Live By

[hacker wannabe]

By legalizing drugs or publications about them, you coercively make a choice for all citizens about what is "right" for them.

More like: By legalizing drugs or publications about them, you LEAVE IT TO THE INDIVIDUAL to make a choice about what is "right" for them.

Re:Who is/are th[e/i]s(e) guys?!

[shmoopy]

Can someone tell me what small group (i hope) of people it is that is so insane?!

Republicrats.

If it's the majority of people in congress that are making obscene laws like this, and trying to get them passed underhandedly, then the US and the world have a major problem, and someone needs to hire some nutty mercenaries to go in there with some bombs. geeeze.

Get 'em, Che. You sound like the kinda fire-breathing sumbitch we need.

If Adolf Hitler blew in today/They'd send a limosine anway -- The Clash

Re:What you can do about it

[anarkhos]

Vote? Republicans and Democrats are pro-drug war. Not because it's popular, but because it gives them power and money. Historically few people have voted, yet today typically more than 50% votes and yet our freedoms are in far greater danger than ever before. The 'voting' ideology is a farce
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent

Re:Why?!?!

[anarkhos]

Or US Supreme Court Judges for that matter
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent

What about drug doer Health!!!

[BobTheWonderchicken]

This may sound dumb, but if those instructions aren't out their kids will probably try all sorts of things that they shouldn't. All I know is before wide-spread internet usage my friends and I had to make up ways to get high. I'm sure they hurt our braincells at lost worse then if we followed instructions.
Kate

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[subversive]

in fact there's already a "well regulated militia" : it's called the army ! >Absolutely incorrect. A militia is almost the >polar opposite of a standing army. That's right, and I personally have a picture of the Oregon Militia, standing on the beach preped for invaders, in 1942. No uniforms, badges, nothing but citizens protecting their country. >The idea of the founders was that there would >not be a standing army of significant size, but >that ordinary citizens would be sufficiently >armed and competent ("well-regulated") to repel >an invading army. Further, the fact that people on this board wouldn't KNOW how far the idea of the army being the militia is only amounts to proof of how accurate the book 1984 is. They've changed the meaning of the words so most people now can't comprehend a real militia, or regulated. This has been analized by linguists in the past, and the finall result showed the above definition of regulated to be the one intended by the founders.(And no I don't remember where I saw it)

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[subversive]

Ah, I see now... So robbers are afraid of the people they rob because they might have firearms on them? Hmmmm Actually, one of the problems with many states is that the people that DO carry firearms are REQUIRED to keep them concealed. Having been in states that people carry openly and conceal, I'll guarantee you, nobody ever tried to rob me when I was packing, and they knew it.(Fact that's why I started packing, the garbage stopped) If statistics are your game, why don't you come up with how many armed cops are robbed in relation to how many unarmed are robbed?? That would certainly support your point, if you had one...:)

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

['jeffers']

The Senate is an "ol' boys club" it's in their best intrest to tack these extranious law onto bills...

My uncle was a senator for one term, he got elected thinking he could fix this and that. He didn't even bother to run for another term because nobody in there wqanted to fix anything, they simply passed the bill with the best paying lobbiers. There is a lot of "i'll vote for your bill if you vote for mine" that goes on.

thats what it's about. cash. it's sickening. :(

Re:We're the problem.

[isotope23]

You want to make a difference?

Become a frickin LIBERTARIAN!!!!!!!!

The ONLY damn party out there who believes
in freedom anymore!

http://www.libertarian.org/

Make a fricking difference!

[isotope23]

After emailing and calling "your" representatives
go to
http://www.libertarian.org/

then after READING it,

SEND A COPY of the url to every damn
person you know........

You may not agree with all their positions,
but IMO it is better to have too much freedom
than too little!

Either that, or get ready to be imprisoned for
"thought crimes"

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[JTrooper]

A militia is an armed citizenry. The militia predates our government. The militia created our form of government which is unique in human history. The civil power must always be superior to the military power. I am a gun owner and I will regulate myself. Other gun owners should do the same. And if we band together in defense of our property and our families no state can stop us but over our dead bodies. Want more? http://www.geocities.com/jtrooper_2000/thespike.ht ml

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[JTrooper]

People should be able to own any weaponry that the bankrupt-socialist-police-state-nazi-jack-booted-t hug government does. Otherwise the 2nd amendment is useless. I don't know where you think you're going with this argument. If the jews, gypsies, christians and others in Nazi germany had machine guns and had formed militias they would not have huddled together in their homes, scared and cowardly, waiting for the government goon squad to come and take them away. YOU HAVE FAILED TO THINK THIS THROUGH.

heroin

[haslacher]

as we all know, heroin was invented and marketed by bayer, the same company that did aspirin. so there should be an old patent hanging around somewhere that describes how to make heroin. will the patent offices be punished for that (or bayer)?

Knowledge is power.. and then....

[AcidTil]

Know your enemy! Come on! Yes I know my enemies They're the teachers who taught me to fight me Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite All of which are American dream From Rage Against The Machine... Well this just made my day... I can't believe that the gov wants to put out such useless and disturbing law. Come on the reality is that a lot of people takes drugs... When you know what you take and what are the side effects you might not take a second dose... There are countless web site offering very good information about drugs... If those sites are shut down... Nobody will know about such and such side effect. Knowledge is power, don't let the *&%&% American gov. take it away. You got to take the power back !

Re:Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[AcidTil]

-----------
I have no interest in partaking in legal or illegal marijuana, but I don't support states throwing people with personal use marijuana in prison for 20 years, while Budweiser's customers are applauded as "Real Americans/Canadians etc."
----------

Applause... That's the whole point... It's like cigarette... Everyones knows, and the gov too, that it's dangerous, cost millions of dollars each year in medical care... yet it's legal !?!?!?!

Go figure !!!

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[robspychala]

Look, the reason people go to the extremes to get their hard drugs is because they are ILLEGAL! If you could get crack or heroin from a doctor through a prescription - which I think you should, then all the drug related crime would stop. Simple.

Making something illegal doesn't stop it, it just pushes it more underground and makes it more dangerous. If there is a demand (and there is with addictive substances) there wil ALWAYS will be a supply.

And if some government decided to ban caffeine or make it really hard to obtain (like coffee in Eastern Europe during the cold war) then there will be way to smuggle it in ILLEGALY... and by making it ILLEGAL you give rise to all sorts of oranized crime rings,m channels and networks that give a bad name to drugs.

Same things appilies to prohibition in the 1920's. Look it up...

r.S.

Who Decides Drug Schedules Anyway?

[redundancy]

I know I am gonna stir up some controversy over this one, but here goes... Who decides (or rather decided) the Schedules placement for drugs? They are obviously out of date. I think they were made before the invention of the automobile, for they hardly placed alcohol in a suitable Schedule for all of the damage it has done, and to so many innocent people. No other drug kills as many people, yet what people really don't see is the fact that it kills about nine times more innocent people than it does actual users. Other drugs, such as amphetamines, opiates, cannabis, etc cannot even compete with this on such a horrible ground. Tobacco, also a very harsh drug for those who never intended to use it, is also sitting very close to nowhere on this preverbal list that makes many of the decisions about the drugs we discuss today. I think in this age of cars, people-filled restaurants, and so-on, the Scheduling system should be set up on basis of harmfulness to not only the user, but the friend or loved one of the user who so often has to live with the users mistakes, along with other factors such as predictability and usage. This, I think we will all agree, will make it harder for alcohol and tobacco companies to get into the mainstream of not only adults, but kids, too. I, myself, live in a county with the highest underage drinking rate of the south in Mississippi. Not something to be proud of. But the thing the most interests me about the law-makers of this state, is the fact they only care about things that society as a whole frowns upon and not the real issues for the district or county seat for which they were appointed. I will agree that all other drugs are morally and physically wrong, but at least they kill mainly the people that use them and not the innocent child you knew down the street or your loved ones you never saw again after they went to get some milk and ended up going to a trauma center. We need to work on the issues that make sense in that order before we tackle harder things. A wise man once said, "we must crawl before we can walk." And on a geek note, the only reason I am using a SCSI hard drive right now is because of the sheer fact that they process commands in the order that (generally) makes most sense. Maybe we could take this knowledge to the court room.

my letter and response

[jaiden0]

My letter to my congressman that I've attached below was responded to in just a few hours. I was pretty impressed.
---
I'm writing to comment on "The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act" and HR 2987. I'm very concerned that this bill directly violates the first and fourth amendments. It's very important to me that neither the proliferation of new technologies nor the politicized objections to the voluntary use of any substance take precedence over the freedoms that make this country great. Please don't let anti-drug zealots trample the rights our forefathers held so dearly.

Thank you for your time.
, Voter
----
Dear :

Thank you for contacting my office to express your views about H.R. 2987,
"the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999." The debate and the
concern over this bill is quite timely as drug use in the United States is
at epidemic levels with narcotics permeating all levels of our society and
new addictive substances being introduced at a rapid rate. One of the more
recent additions to the nation's drug problem, responsible for claiming the
lives of hundreds of Americans a year, is amphetamines.

Proven to be rapidly addictive, the demand for amphetamines has risen
dramatically over the past few years--fueling a violent and dangerous drug
trade, which threatens our national security. In addition, shocking new
statistics have been released indicating that many young children have been
found at the sites of methamphetamine labs across the country. These drugs
are causing a terrible blight on our nation and placing innocent citizens
at risk. This practicemust be curbed.

To combat this dilemma, several of my colleagues have introduced and
supported legislation to actively pursue and stop methamphetamine dealers
and creators throughout the country. The general purpose of
This legislation is to create stronger penalties for those convicted of
methamphetamine-related activities by requiring longer prison sentences and
by mandating that the convicted reimburse the government for the expense of
demolishing methamphetamine labs-a practice at which the United States
incurs a tremendous debt each year. The bill also offers money for the
continued research of drug addiction, abuse, and recovery.

While I agree with the goals of these recent legislative efforts, I share
your concern that a small subsection in the "Methamphetamine
Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999" may restrict Americans' personal liberties
guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Similar to my
conviction to halting the drug trade, I am likewise committed to upholding
the founding principles of our nation, which grant safeguards and
protection against unlawful search and seizures by the government and its
agents. Currently, this bill has been referred to the House Judiciary
Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and the House Commerce Committee's
Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. At this time, no congressional
action has taken place on this legislation and I assure you that I will
carefully consider your concerns about the bill when the legislation
appears for a vote.

I appreciate your letter addressing this important topic and hope that you
will contact me again if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

JOE MOAKLEY
Member of Congress

JJM:sl

Re:Line Item Veto! ---- NOT!

[jaiden0]

Actually the line item veto bill was thrown out by the supreme court.. so though it DID pass, when clinton tried to use it, it was ruled invalid and cannot be used again. it would take a constitutional amendment to change it

Re:Repeal the 1st Ammendment!!!

[Bluedemon1975]

Does the government want a communist people? Im waiting any day now for someone to come around collecting all the books and commense the bonfire.

Thanks, slashdot folks!

[Richard_Lake]

Thanks for the coverage on the new drug info censorship bills in congress. Drug-info censorship bills are proliferating. One good place to read about them is http://cannabisculture.com/ which is even giving out prizes for those who get Letters to the Editor published on the issue.

Hope everyone is contacting their congresscritters about this. While we will win against whatever may become law in the courts, underfunded groups like mapinc.org will suffer before we can win in the courts.

Richard Lake
Sr. Editor; DrugNews
More than 40,304 Drug-Related News Clippings
in a powerful searchable database!
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/

We Get Published
More than 3,985 published letters supporting drug policy reform:
http://www.mapinc.org/lte/

Get Involved - Learn about the Issues
http://www.drugsense.org

Find Information - Learn how to Make a Difference
http://www.mapinc.org

If you've been there

[mosch]

Then surely you agree that it could save lives to have information on what to do to take care of a heroin user. Surely you agree it's better to teach the horrors of drugs, than to pretend they don't exist.

If nobody knows what happens, and we're told that marajuana and heroin are the same by the partnership for a drug-free america, how can we keep our youth from discovering the danger of heroin the way you did, or the way i did (high school sweetheart overdosed on it... died)
----------------------------

Weed laced with opium?

[mosch]

Nope never had that... but I have been sold weed laced with dust. As for the other lacings, I've seen dealers who would do lots of things that don't make sense because they were too messed up.

Hell, a good friend of mine used to be a drug dealer... she lost money while doing it. She kept on telling people 'you're not high enough' and just giving them drugs.

Though you're right, it's exceedingly rare to find such things. And the E laced with coke thing doesn't make much sense to me. E that's laced with speed, hell yeah, but coke? doesn't make sense.
----------------------------

Re:Weed laced with opium?

[toriver]

Nope never had that... but I have been sold weed laced with dust. As for the other lacings, I've seen dealers who would do lots of things that don't make sense because they were too messed up.

But that is a consequence of an unregulated market, and the problem will only increase if access to information is further restricted. Are you likely to buy liquor from a proper liquor store, or buy some unspecified moonshine from a dirty redneck pig farmer? The former, because you can. As long as drugs other than those used by the establishment (nicotine, alcohol, caffeine et al) are prohibited, you will have problems with "unclean" product.

I can't believe I'm responding to this

[mosch]

No, if drug education didn't consist of 'all drugs will destroy you' I don't think it would've happened. We all realized 'wait a minute, weed isn't bad' and it just sort of went from there.

You see, when you're told that they're ALL evil and you discover that one of them isn't really evil at all, you underestimate the dangers of the others as the entire education method has now been discredited.
----------------------------

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[adamsc]

You've got a point there... So what about Lusers who misuse/abuse drugs? Is that a reason to ban all drugs? Hmmm, food for thought :)

Not really. You've just invented something to argue about. Personally, I'm a big fan of letting people live their own lives. If someone wants to do drugs and this does not adversely affect others, they're welcome to since they'll be receiving the bad effects.

Fact remains that crime rates are much lower in countries where firearms are illegal for the general population.

I'll tell that to the next Mexican I meet (it's almost as if the Mexican gun control laws are being ignored by criminals. go figure.). Of course, this doesn't account for the rising crime rates in most European countries, countries like Israel or Switzerland or the way crime rates *plummet* in any US state which legalizes concealed-carry.

More to the point, it's still a meaningless comparison if everything else isn't equal. As a simple example: I don't think it's coincidental that the areas with the worst crime rates are also the ones with the weakest law enforcement.

Ofcourse that could be due to various other things, but it does raise some thought. I mean, I spent a few weekends in the Bijlmermeer, "the bad part" of Amsterdam, visiting friends of my girlfriend, dropping by black bars and clubs (black as in skin colour) taking black cab rides (black as in illegal) with random black people (black as in skin colour) at the wheel. Could a white young man like me do that in "the bad part" of a random American city?

Depends on the city - my (very white) father lived in Harlem for awhile and had no problems.

Also, are high racial tensions present & abused by racists on both sides for political gain to the same degree they are in the US? Probably also no. I consider this behaviour one of the most disgusting activities in the American political arena.
__

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[adamsc]

3. As far as I know, though I could be wrong about that, most injuries and deaths by firearms among innocent civilians (i.e. not criminals) are by accidents with legal firearms.

The legitimate accident rates are rather low (one figure I've seen placed the average child more at risk from drowning by getting stuck in a bucket of water than an accident involving firearms). One of the practices that turned me against the gun control movement was the very common practice of including of under-20 gang members and suicides in the "accident" rate numbers.

Frankly, though I don't consider this a very convincing argument. Lusers misusing things and not following safety precautions are the real problem. If you really wanted to save lives, getting these people off the road would save several orders of magnitude more.

Comparing guns to alcohol and other drugs is the next fallacy. By using alcohol or other drugs as they're intended to be used, you only endanger yourself. By using a gun the way it's intended to be used, you endanger other people's lives, by definition.

This is either very shortsighted or intentionally deceptive. Is a police officer using a gun to stop a crime not using a gun as it's intended to be used? This is because guns are neutral; the real concerns are the intentions of the owner. Unfortunately, actually reducing that threat would require real work, not just repeating "Guns == BAD!".
__

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[V.]

>How is it that it is okay to inject totally >non-related riders into bills in this fashion? >Shouldn't
> this kind of behavior be disallowed?
>
>Go ahead and try to draft a definition of >"substantionally related" that you can use to >restrict
> which riders can be attached to which >bills. I dare you. And oh yeah, try to find a >constitutional
> basis for striking down such riders by >the Supreme Court, which after all can only exert
> judicial review over matters >concerning the constitution.

I agree that judging them by topic probably
wouldn't work. But here is an easy solution:
only the original authors of the bill can append
additional riders. That would allow the original
authors to make changes in order to get the
bill passed without letting some jackass insert
unrelated riders.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[sjames]

3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs

Many OTC headache remedies have caffeine in them. It is a mild vasoconstrictor that DOES relieve some types of headache.

Regular users of caffiene will suffer from headaches, fatigue, and daytime sleepiness if suddenly withdrawn.

Caffeine does not cause people to go rob stores/banks/innocents so they can get cash for their next fix.

If a single cup of coffee went for $10-$20 on the black market, it probably would. By the same token, if 20 joints (or a one week supply of Cocain) sold for $2-$5 at the corner store, it probably wouldn't.

When was the last time you saw someone jumped in the street because the mugger needed money for a Coke?

I never saw such a thing. I did see that a man claimed that his addiction to candy was an extenuating circumstance in his armed robbery trial.

It's really very simple, ANYTHING can be a problem for some small segment of the population. Gambling, jogging, smoking, sex, water (yes, people HAVE actually consumed so much water that they had medical problems as a result!). If the thing has a social of legal stigma attached to it, you will only know about the very few who have a real problem with it. The rest will do their vice quietly, and show up for work in the morning just like the rest of us.

Thousands of people a year enter treatment programs to save them from the raveges of Coke (the soft drink). Two such treatment programs are Jenny Craig and the family dentist.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[sjames]

I have to take issue with this. As a recovering heroin addict, I watched many a friend pass out and never awaken based on having a little too much, air in the needle, etc..

Recreational heroin use isn't a very good idea. If your friend could have gotten nice clean needles, and a frank education on how to tap the bubbles out of a syringe, or perhaps even walked into a clinic and proclaimed "I'm a heroine addict and I want to quit" without fear of legal reprisal, perhaps he might have lived.

The anti-anti-drug movement does not advocate the use of drugs so much as suggest that the effects of the war on drugs do more damage to individuals and society than the drugs themselves.

These people need help.

Agreed 100%. Some people (such as me) believe that treatment and counciling will do a lot more for the addicts future than a few years in jail with the associated loss of the right to participate in democracy or get a decent job.

I don't know you or your circumstances, but would jail time and having to check yes to felony conviction on your job application help you in your recovery? If so, I suggest that you go get arrested right now to ensure your successful recovery.

Either way, I wish you a successful recovery.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[sjames]

So you don't think weed laced with opium can lead to regular opium use which can lead to Heroin?

As others have said, if it were legal, that would never happen. Have you ever heard of alcohol laced with nicotine?

Constitution

[nstrug]

It sometimes seems to me that you Americans would ban everything and turn into a fascist police state within a year if you didn't have a constitution writ in stone as it were...

Nick

Re:Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[Outlyer]

I didn't say I like alcohol, I said I've loosened up on PEOPLE who use things. If you've ever met a 16 year old straight edge kid, they're militant, and judgemental. I'm not. My friends drink, do drugs etc, but I don't pester them.

Re: careful of the absolutes.....

[Outlyer]

I agree with you, but like any drug, taking them improperly is bad for you. As for ethanol, my exact words were drug users and alcohol abusers. I was being specific.

Illinois doesn't allow this

[diaphanous]

As part of its state constitution Illinois has a provision restricting a bill to a single subject. In the last year one fairly popular law (I can't remember which off the top off my head) was struck down by the Illinois State Supreme Court because it violated this provision.

Another tactic

[Squid]

Protest the bankruptcy bill itself. If you succeed, the bill stops, no one thinks you're a stoner, and better yet, if you ever have to declare bankruptcy yourself, your rights are protected there too. :-)

Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[Nicolas MONNET]

Alcohol is JUST as bad as ANY drug that is currently illegal. JUST like ANY other drug, there are people who use it, and people who abuse it.

The difference? Getting really addicted to alcohol takes quite a lot. You can easily drink 4 glasses of wine a day and are extremely unlikely to become alcoholic. Now take heroin twice and you're a junkie. Smoke a few cigarettes a day, you'll smoke a whole pack a day in a year or two.

*On top of that* drinking that much alcohol has NO bad long term effect. On the contrary, studies tend to prove that it has some positive ones! I'm not aware of any positive effects of heroin or crack.

That "alcohol is just as bad" meme is really really really wrong, and is getting really really old now.

Re:Alcohol is NOT that bad.

[KahunaBurger]

*On top of that* drinking that much alcohol has NO bad long term effect. On the contrary, studies tend to prove that it has some positive ones! I'm not aware of any positive effects of heroin or crack.

Yeah, liver failure and fetal alcohol syndrome are good for you!

Sorry, but you may want to restate that. It all depends on the amounts. Alcohol can have highly destructive long term effects if overused, or if used in conjunction with other drugs. (have you seen the new warnings on tylenol etc? Even in the "good for your heart" zone of alcohol consumption, you are risking serious liver damage if you take it with some pain killers.) Drinking any amount at any point durring pregnancy can lower your baby's birthweight and thus increase the danger of complications. Drinking regularly can screw you child for life.

Drinking too much at once can also kill you. At my college, we had alcohol poisonings go to the hospital regularly. At MIT they had one die. Not from choking on the vomit, though thats a risk too. Just from consuming too much of a poison.

Oh, and I suspect that some diets may increase the damage too. One of my housemates is going on a modified Atkin's - no carbs, high protien, high fat. Its working to lose weight, but only because its sending his liver into overdrive to metabolize all the fat reserves. If he were to go on even a light drinking binge when his liver is that overtaxed already? Luckily he's aware of the biology behind his diet and is teetotalling while on it.

Make comparisons, but make no mistake - alcohol is a poison. Some people find it fun to take low doses of all kinds of poisons and sometimes your body will even crave them when they're gone. But don't fool yourself into ignoring the risks.

-Kahuna Burger

WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[Nicolas MONNET]

You're talking out of your ass. Getting addicted to alcohol, easier than getting addicted to heroin? ROFL. You don't know shit. It takes a few shot of heroin to get addicted. I've talked with heroin addicts. I've read about the psychological issues of drugs. No way!

Nicotin, OTOH, is a very very strong addiction, and is said (by former addicts of both) to be harder to quit. But my point is, it takes more time to become addicted.

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[Nicolas MONNET]

The thing about "a couple of shots to become addicted" is a little bit of bull. It depends alot on Dose, TIme period, and the persons own body chemistry.

Oh save me the "it depends on ..." non-argument. EVERYTHING "depends on" something. OF COURSE, some people get addicted faster and some slower. OF COURSE. Who do you think would not realize that? Duh.

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[TheCarp]

The thing about "a couple of shots to become addicted" is a little bit of bull. It depends alot on Dose, TIme period, and the persons own body chemistry.

Addiction is a combonation of physical and mental process. Physical dependance isn't enough, neither is mental dependance. BOTH are required for addiction (which is why pot is considered non-addictive by many...no physical withdrawl for most people).

As drugs go...heroin is actually less damaging to the body than Alcohol (though the lifestyle total junkies lead is even more harmful - but heroin is at least not hepatoxic).

As for nicotine addiction.....yea...ive seen more heroin success stories than nicotine.

Re:WArning: parent post is complete bollock

[TheCarp]

Actually getting addicted to anything is EASY. You just do it alot. Its really that simple. Its JUST as easy to get addicted to alcohol as ANY other drug.

The difference is addiction potential. Alcohol is right up there with many other drugs. Its withdrawl is just as bad as most anything too.

Many drugs (LSD, Cocaine (yes cocaine - no physical withdrawl syndrome and that includes crack) etc) are LESS addictive than alchol because they have no withdrawl syndromes and/or do not reinforce the action (I dunno about you...but after a 12 hour LSD trip I have NO desire to do it again right away...takes at least a week before I am even willing)

Bottom line: Alcohol is a drug, just like any other. Whether it is worst or better is a matter of personal opinion and values.

Personally I can't hardly drink the stuff due to a medical condition (can have a little now and again). So for me, marijuana is much safer (less likely to aggravate a stomac condition that could lead to eventual cancer) - its all drugs, and its all a matter of personal values.

-Steve

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Nicolas MONNET]

The NRA *really* needs help ... DUH

1st amendment -- freedom of speech
2nd amendment -- freedom of threat

Re:WATER is bad

[Nicolas MONNET]

And alcohol is NOT a poison. That's utter bullshit.

It's not? You might want to go notify all the doctors, biologists, and pharmacologists of the world that you know more than they do. I don't suppose you'd like to explain how it's not a poison and yet only 0.4 BAC can cause coma and death. (http://www.brad21.org/effects_at_specific_bac.htm l)

Shortly, and simply: what's the western region with the lowest occurance of heart disease and one of the highest life expectancy? Answer: south west of France.

They also happen to eat REALLY fat stuff (foie gras ... 70% fat) and drink LOTS of red wine.

Now, if that's a poison, I'm glad I'm poisoning myself! MORT DE RIRE

This has been studied and written about at length.

The fact is and remain, you're a puritan, who has to see evil in everything that feels good. It's nothing to do with nationalism: it's just yet another example on how you should look at things on a higher level.

For instance, there is some media coverage of alcoholism here, but it's a really minor issue. I believe it's seen in the same way in other European country. Now, I was in NYC a few weeks ago. Alcohol is bad alcohol is bad alcohol is bad ... Everywhere. There was even an article in the New York Times blaming the Central Park Rape thing on Alcohol. Duh!

WATER is bad

[Nicolas MONNET]

Water is bad. Try drinking 30 liters at once and you'll probably die.

Why don't you drink that much water anyway? Because it's not addictive enough. Alcohol is a drug in a way, because it can be addictive. HOWEVER, this is my point, getting addicted to it is far far far harder and unlikely than getting addicted to heroin.

Most people who drink alcohol are not addicted. *Nobody* who uses heroin isn't.

And alcohol is NOT a poison. That's utter bullshit. Alcohol at low enough doses has no significant long term effect, except maybe good ones (lower cholesterol!). I'm not talking about getting drunk here -- of course, that itself causes short term problems.

Saying that alcohol is a poison is ridiculous. Oh but wait, I'm from France, the wine country, you're probably American, land of puritans.

Stop the lies.

Re:WATER is bad

[TheCarp]

> Alcohol is a drug in a way, because it can be
> addictive. HOWEVER, this is my point, getting
> addicted to it is far far far harder and
> unlikely than getting addicted to heroin.

If addiction potential is the ONLY concern then yes, alcohol is less bad than heroin. However, its also more toxic to the body and does more damage to the body over time than heroin. (heroin withdrawl can't kill you. heroin will also not destroy your liver or any other organ of the body)

However heroin is one of the most addictive drugs there is. Cocain isn't addictive at all. I still wouldn't use it (well id do it once...kind of curious as to what it feels like. am told that to do it right you have to do lines off the body of a naked chick...never done it myself tho)

LSD isn't addictive at all...Ive done it. Will do it again. However...I wouldn't recomend it for most people. Its something you really have to be sure you want to do cuz...it does present certain dangers much worst than any addiction. As Grace Slick said "On one hand you hear me talk about it as this exsquisite revelation and on the other hand its 'watch out cuz you might jump out a window'"

> Saying that alcohol is a poison is ridiculous

Alcohol, even in recreational doses (ie the amount the average person drinks when they go to the local pub) is hepatoxic. This means it does real damage to the liver.

However the liver is capable of repairing itself. Alcohol can be toxic on short order if enough is imbibed. Though this is no different than rat poison...in the right quantity it will cause you to hemmorage internally and die....yet its commonly given to people with heart problems as a medication.

Its all a matter of quantity really. Of course you do realize that 90% of the entire population of france are clinical alcoholics? (which goes to show that just being addicted to a drug doesn't mean that it controls your life or you can't lead a normal life - most don't even know their addicted)

You are not a recovering addict

[tilly]

You do not recover from a heroin addict. If you think you can, that is a short trip back into the trap. You can become clean, but for the rest of your life you exist in a minefield. Anything that can remind you of some association with heroin will bring the craving back.

For the rest of your life you are a heroin addict. Remember that and you might have a chance. Kid yourself about it and it is only a question of time until you are using it again.

I am serious.

Regards,
Ben

IANAL also, but here is what I would like

[tilly]

I would like an amendment saying that if any part of a bill is ruled unconstitutional, the entire bill is rendered null and void. No ands, ifs, or buts. Don't play games with the Constitution.

Just something to discourage politions from tossing unconstitutional riders onto big bills...

Cheers,
Ben

ah, good

[True Dork]

Since the meatspace war on drugs went so well, I bet the online one will be a snap! Maybe they out to check in on the RIAA and MPAA and see how well they are doing in their little wars.

Re:Has anything eroded the constitution

[revnight]

Actually, the U.S. wasn't founded by puritans. Hell, it wasn't even founded as a christian country. No more proof of this is needed than the Treaty with Tripoli of 1792, where it states (paraphrased, don't have the text close at hand) 'in as much as the United States of America is in no way a christian country.'

I don't bring this up to argue with you, rather to illustrate that this country is rife with rewritten history, psychobullshit, and general all around lies...generally to support a 'good' cause (for the children, you know.) I suppose it always has, like most other 'civilized societies.' We do seem to be approaching 'Landslide Stage,' however...now if I could only figure out whether we should try and divert the avalanche, or smooth the way for it in hopes that a few thousand people get mad enough to do something about it, perhaps I could sleep well at night.

and even scarier

[ToastyKen]

When those big floods happened in the Midwest a while back, a bunch of riders were tacked on to the flood relief bill, delaying relief for quite some time (I think eventually the people who wrote the riders gave in).

That's a situation where these riders probably cost lives.

Re:What you can do about it

[jms]

The only wasted vote is for a candidate that you do not believe in.

go, ACLU!

[Kyobu]

It's at times like this I'm glad I joined the ACLU. It, and other similar groups, have consistently defended us against encroachments on the First Amendment like the CDA and COPA and others, with varied success. Somebody's got to fight the bad guys, eh? Other countries without any Bill of Rights, like Australia and England, have had even more serious problems with idiot lawmakers. Those of you who read NTK now will remember news about the law in Britain which required people to prove that they did not possess a cryptographic key, and the many prudish laws passed by the Australian government are famous. Us 'Murricans still have to be on our guard, however. We, too, have moron lawmakers, and we can't always count on the conservative Supreme Court to protect us. Also, if Dubya gets elected, the precarious political balance on the Court will slip even farther to the right, and we can expect more unfavorable rulings.

Why?!?!

[BrianH]

Are our elected representatives really that stupid, or do they just work on this type of stuff to pass the time? I mean, think about it...if passed this would blatantly censor the free flow of public domain information. It would also directly violate constitutionally guranteed due process laws. Now, my fourth grade niece could tell you what's going to happen if this gets passed: the first time someone gets a website shut down, or someone gets charged with distributing "illegal information" (I don't even like the sound of the term), this will end up in the Supreme Court which will declare this thing unconstitutional in a few microseconds. So what are they thinking? That maybe if they try enough times the Supreme Court will accidentally let one slip by? There is NO WAY that any American with an IQ over 80 could seriously entertain the belief that this thing has any chance of becoming (and staying) law.

Vote getting PR bulls***, that's all this is. And the truly sad thing about the whole situation is that the average American probably wouldn't even give a damn. "What? It's going to help end the drug problem? Great! What are the fourth and fifth amendments anyway?" It's unfortunate that there isn't anywhere else much better.

Re:Why?!?!

[Steve B]

So what are they thinking? That maybe if they try enough times the Supreme Court will accidentally let one slip by?

What they are thinking is that they can make themselves look Tough On Drugs[tm] twice -- once when they pass the bill, and once it is struck down -- without really doing anything (even the average Congresscritter knows that a law like this is un-Constitutional on its face and will be routinely laughed out of court).

If you or I decided to routinely crank out crap at work on the theory that somebody down the line would catch and correct it, so no harm is done, we'd be fired. The rules are different for Congress.
/.

This should concern EVERYONE

[pheonix]

I no longer do drugs. I just don't enjoy them anymore (assuming you don't count cigarettes or alcohol); and it doesn't matter.

Even if you think that drugs are completely evil, you still need to stand up against governmental censorship. One of the responsibilites of HAVING freedom of speech is the need to defend even the things we disagree with, on principal.

Today, they'll censor drug-related sites "for the children". Tomorrow, cracking-related sites? Maybe sites that include obscenity? Maybe sites that include bestiality? Maybe sites that include depictions of sex? Maybe sites that include nudity? If we allow this to happen, the net could be a very different place. For a picture of what it might look like, try surfing for 2 weeks using Cybersitter or another content filtering software set to maximum. Don't turn it off for two weeks. See how you like the "net of the future". After the two weeks are up, fire a letter and an email to your representatives.

-Jer

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Sloppy]

But to be a part of an "anti-anti-drug movement" is just too much. I've seen way too many lives destroyed by the horrors of real drugs

...and if only those people had been punished (i.e. imprisoned, fined, or whatever) by the government, they would have been better off?

Drugs must be stopped at all costs.

I guess that's where a lot of people disagree with you. Just because something is destructive and causes misery, that doesn't mean it should be opposed by force. When you get down to it, I believe that people have the right to put guns to their own heads, both literally and figuratively.

Yes, they will die and the people who loved them will suffer, but it's their life to lose. I'm all in favor of anyone (or everyone) trying to influence them into reversing that decision. But when we use Law to use force instead of mere influence, we all become slaves. It presumes that we are all indebted to society, that society (or family or other loved ones) has a claim on us.

I don't live for anyone's sake but my own, and I am insulted and betrayed by any lawmaker who presumes otherwise.

---

Thorn in society's side? So what?

[Sloppy]

I believe that these so-called recreational drugs you mention are a scourge to all society

I agree with you on that point.

Now perhaps you can explain what gives society the "right" to use force against individuals for the purpose of removing that thorn?

Do you consider society's "needs" to be more important than your ownership of your own body?

---

Re:Maybe it SHOULD pass ...

[The Cunctator]

Another way of looking at it is not that the lawmakers are trying to pass unconstitutional laws, but that the majority of the American public wants unconstitutional laws to be passed. The average American citizen probably couldn't see why search warrants are so important (after all, we shouldn't coddle drug dealers!) or why anyone should be allowed to link to drug-making information (my kids are in danger!), etc., etc.

If we don't want our federal legislators to engage in horse shit, the American public needs to be educated.

Also, contacting your representatives does make a big difference. I interned for a senator once; all messages are read, and interesting and insightful ones are read by the senior advisors. In other words, they have their own moderation systems. The +3,+4's are read and make a difference.

Who knows; your arguments might be used on the House or Senate floor.

The system has serious flaws, but it is a reflection of the warring desires and needs of the American populace. For example, most people these days trust big business to make the right decisions; so why shouldn't the government?

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[Shoeboy]

There are many other flavors of poppies you can obtain that do not produce opium.
Yes yes, but decorative flowergarden type poppies are Papaver Giganteum - which is simply a large sized strain of Papaver Somniforum. It's rumored to contain reduced quantites of morphine, but I've found it to be adequate.
California poppies really look nothing at all like a poppy. It's an extremely small plant with a rather different looking bulb and flower.
--Shoeboy

I can see the TV propaganda for it now...

[Black Parrot]

Cool looking teenagers playing basketball in a middleschool gym. The ball rolls over toward the camera and a young stud trots over to pick it up.

Young Stud: Hi, I'm Joey. I don't read about drugs, because reading about drugs isn't cool.

A hot babe steps into the scene and puts her arm around the young stud.

Hot Babe: Just because all your friends read about drugs, don't feel like you have to read about drugs too. When Joey and I go to the library on Friday night, we always check out a book on pure spring water. Be true to yourself - don't let that pusherman give you a book about drugs. The first one might be free, but look what it leads to.

Camera pans over to Herbie, the pre-pharmacy student with thick glasses, sloped shoulders, sunken chest, pocket protector, and a copy of The Physicians Desk Guide under his arm. The ball bounces past Herbie and several guys run over chasing it. Rap music starts playing as they beat Herbie's scrawny ass:

You know I don't read drugs
I got to keep my mind clean
...

--

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[ordu]

This bothers me.

It has been shown over and over than marijuana is not a gateway drug. See Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence ISBN: 0964156849

While 3 in 5 high school students have smoked marijuana a lot less(exact figures are available on drcnet or the dea's page) have tried heroin. Even fewer of those have become addicts.
http://www.drcnet.org
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/
Banning substances is not the solution. We've been living under the WoD for decades now, we will spend 37.9 billion dollars just this year. The prison system is(or was a few years ago) the sixth largest growth industry in the United States. We are continuing to spend and spend and where are the results? We are sending planes full of money to foreign countries full of cash.. is the cocaine problem going away? It is cheaper and more available now than it has ever been before. Where are the results?

http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
other facts:
Approximately 45454 people are expected to be incarcerated for drug law violations in 2000. Arrests for drug law violations in 2000 are expected to exceed the 1.55 million arrests of 1998. Someone is arrested every 20 seconds.

For some interesting reading check out:

http://www.lycaeum.org
http://www.erowid.org

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[WNight]

I've never heard of anyone stealing specifically to buy a coke, or a beer. Both *are* addictive, seriously, it's true. But both are legal, and thus fairly cheap. You can buy a beer or a coke for about the same price.

If a beer was $20 (and hard alcohol similarly expensive), I know some people addicted enough that they probably would turn to theft.

If hard drugs were cheaper, likely less people would turn to crime to purchase them. I used to live next door to a heroin addict and she was fairly nice, between the highs and lows. She would have much rather gone to the corner store, got some clean drugs, and gotten high safely in her apartment. The illegality and high price had her working the streets, shooting up in alleys, and buying untested drugs.

Sure, she'd have been better off had she kicked the habit, but I know a lot of people for whom alcohol has had different but equally serious life-destroying effects. If that okay just because alcohol is legal?

Two things

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

1) Attaching riders to bills is pretty annoying and sneaky. What they do is stick an odious piece of crap onto a must-have bill. Then they can blackmail the congress-critters into taking the crap by saying "what will your constituents if you vote against the must-have?" How's this for a solution: If any law gets struck down (for whatever reason) the entire bill it was attached to when it was passed goes with it.

2) Speaking of censorship: I was browsing at -1 yesterday and happened to see a cut-n-paste from what looked like an MSDN article. An hour or so later I again browsed that story at -1 and noticed that the MSDN thing was gone. Was it deleted? If so, does that mean Slashdot caved to Microsoft on the Kerberos thing (without telling us) and is now removing posts left and right?
--

correlation is not causation

[TheDullBlade]

I've seen way too many lives destroyed by the horrors of real drugs.

Were they indeed real drugs? Or were they the adulterated garbage that is most commonly sold on the street?

Most drugs are cut, and drug dealers aren't too picky about what they cut it with: if it matches colour, it'll do.

Heroin certainly isn't good for you, but stuff like baking soda, baby powder, and laxative powder does not belong in your veins! Pure heroin's effects are almost purely psychological, it's physical side effects are relatively minor (unlike, say, alcohol). Never mind the difficulty of determining an appropriate dosage from an unreliable source!

Consider a moonshiner who makes rotgut with nearly as much methanol as ethanol and you'll have some idea of the kind of suppliers you're dealing with.

The biggest problems of drugs are caused by them being illegal: impure supply, high cost, inability to openly discuss your habit (both for moderating use and technical skills like learning how not to blow bubbles in your veins), and the feeling "I'm a criminal, what's one more crime?". Not only that, but they have some valid uses:

Heroin is a pain killer 4 times as effective as morphine.

Coca leaf tea is a little pick-me-up like coffee, and is good for the digestion.

Pot makes you relaxed, friendly, and hungry (and stupid). It's a social lubricant like alcohol, minus the puking and bar fights (plus pigging out and laughing at really bad jokes; pretty good trade-off, no?). They should be encouraging people to use it instead of alcohol, it would cut way down on crime.

If weed, shrooms, and E are gateway drugs, it is only because they are illegal. If you could get them at the corner drug store, you wouldn't be rubbing elbows with the heroin pushers.

IMHO, uppers, downers, intoxicants, and happy pills all have their place, when used in moderation (hint 1: uppers' & downers' place is not entertainment, hint 2: intoxicants are not for solitary use, hint 3: unlike intoxicants, it is not appropriate to encourage your friends to take happy pills with you). I personally think messing with hallucinogens is wrong, people have little enough grasp on reality as it is.

The war on drug users must be stopped at all cost. They are the victims, as well as the perpetrators, and punishing them does no one any good.

You can call me weak or say I have no will power, but I am not the only one out there who has been addicted to something.

A lot of ex-addicts have that "I'm a victim, I must be protected from that evil stuff" mentality. Well, guess what? You did it to yourself.

Everyone told you "the more you take it, the more you'll want to take it", but did you carefully watch how much you were taking and nip it in the bud while you still could?

It has nothing to do with will power and everything to do with laziness and self-destructiveness. Between all the drug war propaganda, and the current quality of drugs available, both irrational and rational people know doing "hard" drugs is a bad idea. Despite the way you people describe it it's not "that sounds like fun, I think I'll try it!" it's "my life sucks, but I'm too much of a pussy to kill myself all at once." To Hell with you! Clean yourself up and learn that real happiness comes in small bites or get some quicker-acting poison and do it right, but don't whine to me about how you got lured into it, I know that's bullshit and I really don't care anyway.

A lot of fat people claim to be addicted to overeating; that's not sufficient reason to put everyone on a strict diet and break into candy factories with guns blazing.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[joshamania]

It's nice to see some real living, breathing communists left amongst us. We should continue this thought and make all kinds of information illegal to disseminate. I think that if we make it illegal to disseminate information about how to make race cars we might save several lives per year because people cannot race unless they already know how to build a race car. We could even do the same to the auto industry. We could put cars off the road and save 50,000 (I think that's the current stat on motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. per year).

You know what...we could even make brewing of one's own beer difficult to do by making all of Micheal Jackson's beer books illegal.

You know what...let's burn all the copies of the Anarchists Cookbook to cut down on all the insurgency we experience here in the U.S.

I'm sure that there are several educational institutions around the country that are teaching subversive and dangerous information to their students, we should shut them down too.

Oh, and I do *get* your point you boorish fuck. Your argument in the above post is poor...you used the caffine comparison three separate times. And I don't think you get *it*. The author of the quote you used is not comparing caffine to methamphetamine, he is comparing ideas...abstract ideas. If you cannot think in abstraction, you will NEVER get *it*.

This world is never going to be a safe place to live, and you are not going to get your safe little boring utopia by outlawing what others have to say...what you will get is a revolution...and I'm not talking about the kind of governmental overthrow of a revolution, I'm talking about the kind of revolution that happened in the United States after Prohibition was passed. The mindset of the nation changed...and I think we are a long way from changing to what you think is right. Telling others what they can and cannot say is not what this county is about. If you think it is, go somewhere else...move to Cuba. I'm sure Castro will agree with you that providing instructions on the manufacture of methamphetamine should be banned. By the way, I hope your loins are as infertile as your imagination.

Election year politics 101.

[Claudius]

drug information, no make that all information must be free, so that people can make informed, rational decisions.

I think their inclusion of such a resolution is inspired more by pragmatism and election year politics, with restricting the information a convenient, if secondary, motive. The political incentive for the resolution is obvious; this is an election year, and many politicians want to be in the Congressional Record as having recently supported anti-drug legislation. As for pragmatism, most of this information is already published onto wood pulp (many libraries contain this material, and a quick search on Amazon.com reveals a number of titles) and then distributed through book vendors, libraries, etc. It is much easier for the DEA and FBI to track who is getting the drug information, however, when they can subpoena Amazon.com's records instead of trying to attach packets to people (always a dicey game at best) in a way that will satisfy the courts.

The failure of the Communications Decency Act should demonstrate the impracticality and questionable legality of trying to restrict this kind of information on the Internet. The political capital to be gained from supporting such a bill, however, outweighs that of opposing it, so it is doubtful that we can do much to affect its eventual passage even though it appears to revoke civil liberties that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

The law is not intended to hold up in courts. It is not intended to be good public policy. It is (probably) not even intended to be enforced. It is nothing but election year politics--if it helps its supporters get reelected, then it has done its job. Look for it to be overturned the first time it is challenged in the courts.

Re:"Clean" geek's opinion.

[zmooc]

And since when is beer not a drug? Alcohol is considered a hard-drug; it's more addictive than soft-drugs like marihuana and also has a worse effect on your behavior than marihuana. The fact that US-law threats it different, doesn't make the effect any different. So it's rather hypocritical of you to say you're clean when you like to use some kind of hard-drug every now and then...

By the way #1: The same for coffee (although coffee isn't addictive I believe)...

By the way #2: apart from this itsy pitsy little thing: good post!

By the way #3: I'm an absolutely-not-clean-geek. I use alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and mariuhana on a rather regular base.

Re:What you can do about it

[schussat]

That link has some good info. I just want to reinforce one of the items it suggests people do: Call, rather than email congressional or senate representatives. I worked for a while for a nonprofit that does a lot of lobby activity, and can't stress enough how much more important phone calls to a congressional office are than email. Piles of email are often sorted into "pro" and "con" and treated as a single comment, whereas phone calls are, to the extent that anything gets individual treatment, actually counted.

It's also really critical to be informative if the staffer isn't familiar with the issue. And be polite! It hurts our cause when people are belligerent on the phone to the staff who report these things to the representative.

-schussat

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[/]

Ah yes, the old "we only accept friendly amendments" approach. The problem with that has always been that it doesn't prevent other legislators from introducing their own identical-but-for-the-additional-rider version of the bill, and it unduly constrains the legislative process of reaching an informed consensus.

BTW, please fix your formatting; there's no need to use carriage returns at the end of each "line" when submitting a comment. Your id# is sufficiently low that I suppose I'm wasting my time in telling you this, as you're choosing to use an obnoxious but well established convention of making your post stand out from others'.

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[/]

"Line-item vetoes", in the traditional meaning of the term, are restricted to appropriations bills, and are inapplicable to general legislation. Thus, the president could veto the FBI's funding separately from vetoing other appropriations, but he couldn't veto an individual law assigning new powers to the FBI. A line-item veto of the sort you're imagining that reaches to all legislation would do a lot to undermine current checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches and otherwise be rather unwise.

Sorry, try again!

[ShawnP]

Surprise surprise the republicans now got to be on the receiving end of the shaft (so be careful what you ask for boys). So they challenged the law and the supreme court bailed them out by declaring the thing unconstitutional (not surprising how many republicans on the court).

Try this one on for size. The Line Item Veto was sponsored by two Republicans: Dan Coats of Indiana, and John McCain of Arizona (Yes, that John McCain!).

Guess who cheered, whooped, and hollered when it was struck down? Robert "I have ever single thing I brought to W. Virgina named after me" Byrd and Carl Levin. Both Democrats.

(Backing up my statement...)

They were the ones who first challenged the law soon after it was enacted but the Supreme Court said come back later when it is actually used.

They, along with NYC and another group did come back and successfully killed it.

SP

One step closer everyday

[shinji]

"Shays' Rebellion--- a sometimes-violent uprising of farmers angry over conditions in Massachusetts in 1786--- prompted Thomas Jefferson to express the view that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" for America. Unlike other leaders of The Republic, Jefferson felt that the people had a right to express their grievances against the government, even if those grievances might take the form of violent action."

Everyday I'm convinced more and more of the need for a new revolution. Free speech is becoming a joke, privacy is a joke, the innocent until proven guilty is backwards (guilty until proven innocent (duh)). The basic rights are tread on so much these days its getting hard to stomach.

I once was in the US military and love this country, however I love the ideals of this country much more!

Words to Live By

[Silas]

"There is no one right way to live." -Ishmael

By banning drugs or publications about them, you coercively make a choice for all citizens about what is "right" for them.

By legalizing drugs or publications about them, you coercively make a choice for all citizens about what is "right" for them.

Politicians have no place making these decisions. Human beings are not all the same. We don't all live in the same house, community, or world. I assure you that 90% of the world's problems exist because we have decision makers who are empowered to make decisions for EVERYONE about how to live.

More on my thoughts about drugs and alcohol.

Re:Words to Live By

[Silas]

My point was that if we recognize the government as having the ability and power to decide whether or not drugs should be legal, we are effectively giving up our freedom to decide for ourselves. Even if they happen to decide in our "favor" in one particular case or another, we still only gain a sort of pseudo-freedom that is still at the mercy of the decision makers whom we have empowered to take it away.

Re:Words to Live By

[TheCarp]

I agree with you...but you are wrong.

I agree that politicans have NO right to make any sort of decision about whether drug us is "OK". It is my solem belief that my body and my mind are just that...mine. Mine to use, mine to own, mine to rent out (thats what work is isn't it?), mine to alter (with drugs, meditation or what not), and mine to destroy (suicide).

However legalizing drugs is NOT the politicans making a decision about drugs. It is removing a legal restriction. It would mean them stepping back and saying "NO, we were wrong to do that".

Legalization doesn't mean asking them to say "Its ok to do drugs". Legalization is asking them to say "We wont hunt you down and throw you in a cell like some animal if you use drugs"

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[ajs]

Interestingly forward comments. I have to agree that legality or not, discussion of matters that do not directly impact national security and do not directly harm others should be protected by the first ammendment. I think, in the long run, this is a hollow bill. I really don't think that it would pass the first constitutional challenge, and the ACLU would be all over it like blue on a cop.

I do want to say something about the anti-drug fervor in this country, though. I agree strongly with the current practice of removing smoking from public places. I agree strongly with drunk-driving laws. I feel that people should have to go through competency testing if their job has a chance of taking my life in their hands.

However, the horrors of controled substances mostly come from three sources:

1. Economic disputes among distributors are not resolvable in the courts. Thus, the drive-by-shooting. You saw it during prohabition, and now you're seeing it in the drug war. No suprise.

2. Lack of education or addiction treatment and fear of persecution lead to a lot of unnecessary harm and even death. Every time someone dies of an overdose I blame the War On Drug(user)s. This is not wholy true; some of these people would have died anyway, but it's true far too often. If you want to see how bad drug education in this country is, go around asking people if LSD is addictive. I bet over half say yes....

3. Stupidity. Honestly, let's just come right out and say it: alcohol abuse kills. More people die every year as a result of drunk driving than all of the heroin overdoses combined. Why? Because there are people out there who don't value life, and alcohol makes them even less likely to think about consequences. This is a reason to censure, restrict and in some cases lock these people up, but not to bring back prohabition. I want my Tequila, dammit, because it's one of the coolest tasting things ever. If you take it away, I will find a Mexican source and smuggle it in.

The moral of the story is that making a substance illegal does one and only one thing: it creates an illegal industry out of the manufacture and distribution of that substance. That industry will have all of the problems associated with it that every illegal industry has since societies were first formed.

In order to avoid this, you put tight controls on the use of the substance (e.g. what Holland has done with hemp and several other substances). You control how, when and where the substance is used, but you ALLOW IT TO BE USED LEGALLY. If you do this, you suddenly take CONTROL over the substance. You can regulate and tax the industry. You can require that it not be used in certain places and industries. You can even let doctors perscribe it when they feel it's neccesary (60 minutes had a great feature once about a doctor that lost his license for perscribing large doses of opiates and other narcottics. When the revoked his license, his patients, who were not addicted to the drugs, but needed them in order to avoid chronic pain were now unable to get the medication that they needed, and one even commited suicide rather than deal with the pain again).

Re:Congressional Chicken - Slovik

[coyote-san]

It helps when I spell his name correctly. :-)

www.azstartnet.com/~rovedo/mph2c.html - military police history - has this entry:

January 31, 1945 - Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik is executed by a firing squad of military police, after his conviction by a court martial of desertion in December 1944. He is the first soldier executed since the Civil War, for desertion. Slovik was only one of approximately 21,000 soldiers who deserted up until this time. Of those convicted of desertion, 49 were sentenced to death, six were considered for the death penalty, but Slovik is the only one in which the sentence is actually carried out. He is buried in France with 94 other soldiers hanged for murder and rape. His body is returned to the United States in 1987.

There is also a movie about the case starting Martin Sheen. It shows that *everyone* in the firing squad missed his heart in the first round of shots, which left Slovik alive (briefly) and in incredible pain. The men were chewed out, issued another round, but IIRC Slovik was declared dead before another volley was fired.

(Sorry about the hyperlink - Slashcode decided to nuke the closing tag for reasons known only to itself).

Congressional Chicken

[coyote-san]

This bill/amendment sounds like it is another case of Congressional Chicken. Remember to bake lots of chicken pot pies in November!

Congressional Chicken, if you haven't heard of it before, goes like this:

Each Congressman: This bill is flat-out unconstitutional. (It clearly violates *at least* the First and Fourth Amendments, with prior restraint of speech, restraint of peaceful assembly, seizure without court authority and searches without timely notification.) But the voters in my district are SO DUMB (how dumb are they?!) that they'll applaud me taking a Tough Stand Against Drugs, Rapists and Godless Communists. Besides, the Senate would never allow this piece of crap to pass!

Now you jump to the Senate. Historically, they've had enough respect for "the system" that they would not play along. But Senators aren't cut from the same cloth any more, so they're also letting obviously unconstitutional stuff get through. After all, the President will surely veto this piece of crap!

Now you jump to the President. Sometimes he'll veto the bills, but it often seems to be a function of party politics. If the president can veto the opposing party's puff piece and come across like a "Statesman," it's history. If it's Dubya and a Republican controlled Congress dropping trousers and pulling out micrometers expect to see legislation that allows school crossing guards to summarily execute jaywalkers.

Ultimately it comes down to everyone's favorite bogeyman, the Supreme Court. They are the ones who throw water on the bonfires by saying that "speech" doesn't require words (e.g., daring to breast-feed an infant on a city bus to protest the laws that declare *all* naked breasts in public obscene), that we are *not* a Christian nation which can force people to swear oaths to Jesus before you can drive/vote/take office, etc. For the most part, they do a pretty good job. But nominees must be ratified by an increasingly politicized President and Senate that seem far too focused on litmus tests. (Disregard their protests of innocence.)

The bottom line in this game of chicken is contempt for the voter. They believe - and act on that belief - that the voters are too dumb to recognize clearly unconstitutional bills, and too apathetic to do anything about it anyway.

Unfortunately, history suggests that things will get worse before they get better. E.g., there are a lot of similarities between Congressional Chicken and the chicken-shit Court Martial that sentenced Pvt. Slovak to death for dissertion during WW-II. All of those officers believed that a higher court would commute the sentence, and meanwhile they could avoid appearing "weak." It took his death (his particularly gruesome death) for everyone to accept that they had to take responsibility for their own actions.

Re:what's even scarier

[Malcontent]

"Sorry, Malcontent, but riders have been around for a very, very long time."

Yea did I state anything contradicting this? I never talked about the origin of the riders only the demise of of the line item veto. Please reread my post.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[Malcontent]

"The drug war is not the only war against individual responsibility that is happening in this country"

The war against individual responsibility was lost when the corporation was invented. Simply by incorporating a human being can shirk all responsibility for his or her actions. If you want to fight the war on individual responsibility pierce the corporate shield and hols CEOs responsible for the actions of their corporations.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[Malcontent]

Introduce a bill that says felons should be flogged and get their genitals cut off and I bet it will pass with flying colors anywhere in the United States. Americans are a hateful bunch.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Mr. Slippery]

the US has the weakest gun control laws in the civilized world, and the highest gun death rates in the civilized world.

Depends on which state you live in. Maryland has some of the strongest gun control laws in the nation, and Baltimore has had over 300 murders per year for about a decade; meanwhile, states which have liberal concealed-carry laws tend to have much lower crime.

Yes, the US does have a higher muder rate than other Western nations. (We do, however, tend to have lower crime rate in other categories.) We also have more economic and social disparity, more draconian drug laws, more racial disparity (blacks are six times more likely to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide, according to the DOJ), and more people in jail.

That applies only to the highly organized criminals who can get guns smuggled in from out of the country.

One hardly needs to smuggle guns. A skilled machininst with the right equipment can turn them out quickly - IIRC, the French underground in WWII produced their own submachine guns (the "grease gun"). Heck, high school metal shop students can make "zip guns". Ammo's no problem either - thousands of people handload now, and gunpowder is easier to make than crystal meth.

But even if smuggling were necessary, it's not much harder to smuggle a handgun with a box of cartridges than a kilo of cocaine.

Most of the people killed with guns are not killed by criminals, but by perfectly honest, upstanding citizens. They are killed by their families, because someone gets drunk and angry, and grabs the gun out of the gun closet.

False. Most murderers have a prior criminal record - as do most murder victims.

It is true that most murder victims are killed by someone they know. But that's much more likely to be one crack dealer shooting another over a deal gone bad, than a perfectly sane man suddenly snapping, grabbing his gun and killing his wife.

Also, suicides are sometimes counted as part of the "killed by an acquaintance" figure, which is a gross distortion.

Or because they go downstairs for a glass of water in the night, and someone mistakes them for a burglar

This is very, very rare - accidental firearms deaths rank well behind drownings, fires, even poisoning, as a cause of death.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Mr. Slippery]

In the War of 1812, their contributions were insignificant.

The local militia was important in the defence of Baltimore (yes, there was a land battle in addition to the famous naval engagement at Ft. McHenry) during the War of 1812.

In the Spanish-American War we were extremely lucky that Teddy Roosevelt and all the other volunteers weren't killed en masse. And all the poor saps who had to fight in the Phillipines for that matter.

Part of the idea of relying primarily on the militia was that it would prevent us from getting into foreign wars - the militia was to be there "to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions", not to go fight on foreign soil.

Now if your position for the right to arms is about self-defense, that's a whole nother issue and shouldn't be cloaked in a debate about militias and curtailing abusive governmental power and whatnot. That's the difference between people owning handguns and people with semi-automatic rifles, anti-personnel explosives, and anti-tank weapons. Two entirely different issues.

Not at all! They shade into one another; I might be defending myself and/or my neighbors from a single criminal, a gang of bandits, an oppressive govenment, or an invading army. Self-defense is a group as well as an individual right.

my drug information pages

[Mr. Slippery]

I have some stuff up at my unreasonable.org site; feel free to copy or link if you'd like to join the ranks of thought criminals.

Here's the disclaimer I put on the "how-to" stuff:

The following files contain information about the extraction, preparation and consumption of certain drugs. This information is for educational purposes ONLY!

Some of the activities described may be illegal, dangerous, or both.

I'm going to repeat that, because it's important:

Some of the activities described may be illegal, dangerous, or both.

I disclaim any liability for any use of the information found here.

However, we cannot have a meaningful discussion of drug policy if we do not have basic information such as how easy it is to grow cannabis; or the relationship between cocaine, freebase cocaine, and "crack"; or how psychedelic drugs can be obtained from common ornamental flowers. It is also my hope that the information on growing and consuming cannabis may be of use to those using it out of medical necessity.

I'm sending the ACLU some money, and writing my Congresscritter, tomorrow.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Mr. Slippery]

Well regulated does not mean what you think it means. It means trained and effective in military skills.

But it doesn't matter what "well regulated" means; the form is "Because X, the law is Y", not "If X, the law shall be Y" - X is a comment, not a condition. It's like the Preamble to the Constitution, or the comment that the power to grant copyright is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Don't focus on the comment (a well-armed and drilled militia is important for freedom), interesting and insightful though it is, focus on the code (the government shall not mess with the right to keep and bear arms). If there'd been a C programmer among the architects, we might have:

/* A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state - set the permissions accordingly. */

chmod("/people/rights/keep_and_bear_arms",0x544);

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[Hard_Code]

Nobody is "punishing" AIDs victims by throwing them in jail are they? It was their fault they had unprotected sex, right? So they should be put in jail, right?

Obviously wrong. This is why the war against drugs is failing. Drug addiction is a SYMPTOM of a larger problem. We keep treating the symptom with bad medicine but never attack the root. People are POOR. People are UNCARED FOR. People have PROBLEMS. This is why they turn to drugs (and yes, if you are doing drugs because they are "cool", you too have a problem). We need to solve this problem. Not just punish people.

Re:Question about the bill number

[Spyky]

By the way, I just thought I'd mention that "grafting" means a politician (or other powerful figure) using their office and position to recieve money, property and such from people or corporations. Modern laws have stopped most of the more blatant grafting, but there are always loopholes. The term that really should be used is in this case (fault to the original poster) is "piggybacking". This generally means throwing some lesser item that is unlikely to stand on its own into a bill about a bigger issue and hope it slips by relatively unnoticed. Common practice, and this is also why the having the the President's former power of line-item veto was so powerful. He could scratch out particular sections (like piggybacking items) from a bill. Unfortunately (since I think piggybacking is generally undesireable) line-item veto was declared unconstitutional not long ago, forcing the President to consider the entire bill only for veto.

As far as the numbers go, I really haven't a clue ;-) sorry

Spyky

ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[kbonin]

I greatly admire the work of the ACLU in all but one area - they refuse to take any action to defend the second ammendment, and have on occasion supported unconstitutional positions in relation to it.

I don't think it is appropriate to pick and choose which entries on the Bill of Rights are "good" and which are "bad". Reasonable exceptions have been made when necessary by the courts, but the ACLU's "unofficial" position that the 2nd ammendment does not exist or apply is unnaceptable. This is hypocracy, despite whatever other good they have done.

As a bumper sticker once said, "What part of 'Shall Not Infringe' don't you understand?"

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[scruffyMark]

it doesn't matter because constitutional or not, strong gun control laws fail

I shouldn't even bother answering, but I can't help it. That is some of is the purest, most unadulterated BS I have heard. Let's think about this - the US has the weakest gun control laws in the civilized world, and the highest gun death rates in the civilized world. Anyone see a connection here?

They do not keep guns away from criminals any more than drug laws keep heroin away from junkies

• That applies only to the highly organized criminals who can get guns smuggled in from out of the country. It's with the common hoods that this makes a difference - they're not going to be connected to international gun cartels, but they sure can find the one gun shop in (twenty? thirty? I dunno) that looks perfectly honest on paper, but is willing to sell guns without criminal record checks. Get rid of gun shops, and only a tiny minority of criminals will be well-enough connected to find guns.
• Most of the people killed with guns are not killed by criminals, but by perfectly honest, upstanding citizens. They are killed by their families, because someone gets drunk and angry, and grabs the gun out of the gun closet. Or because they go downstairs for a glass of water in the night, and someone mistakes them for a burglar

All the gun nuts I hear call up Switzerland as an example of a country with lots of guns and no gun violence. But Switzerland has some of the most draconian gun laws in the world. You basically can't own a gun. That's not your gun in your house, it's the government's gun, and you don't take it out without filling out a week's worth of paperwork. The gun is kept locked up, unloaded, and there are inspections regularly (That's right, government agents come into your house to inspect their guns, and you have no right to tell them to go away) and if they find that you have been using the guns without due process, you lose the guns. Furthermore, nobody gets a gun in their house without going through lengthy training, and passing it, and going back regularly for refresher courses.

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Mr. Slippery]

...except that in "well regulated miltia" there're the words "well regulated".

...except

1. well-regulated does not mean what you think it means - in the military parlance of the time, it meant effectively equipped and trained;
2. it doesn't matter - you're paying more attention to the comment than the code. The form is not "If X, then the law is Y", it's "Because X, the law is Y"; it doesn't matter whether X holds or not, the law is Y and X is just a comment, and
3. it doesn't matter because constitutional or not, strong gun control laws fail. Always. Repeatedly. They do not keep guns away from criminals any more than drug laws keep heroin away from junkies or porn laws keep Penthouse away from kids; and they prevent law-abiding citizens from defending themselves, leaving them reliant on the police. You know, like the New York City police who stood idlely by and allowed over 50 women to be sexually assulted in Central Park a few weeks ago. Do you think something like that could have happened in a state with concealed carry legislation? One bystander with a handgun could have stopped that whole thing very quickly, probably without firing a shot.

in fact there's already a "well regulated militia" : it's called the army !

Absolutely incorrect. A militia is almost the polar opposite of a standing army.

The idea of the founders was that there would not be a standing army of significant size, but that ordinary citizens would be sufficiently armed and competent ("well-regulated") to repel an invading army. That's why military appropriations are more limited than others ("To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years").

Re:ACLU: Defender of all but the 2nd ammendment.

[Mr. Slippery]

What part of "well regulated militia" don't you understand?

There's not much to understand - it means every able-bodied man has a gun and knows how to use it. Both federal and state (Maryland, don't know about the rest of you) clearly state that I am in the militia.

But that's beside the point. If a law read "A well-educated populace being necessary to the security of a democracy, the right to keep and read books shall not be infringed," this would in no way allow the government to define a well-educated group of people and restrict possession of books to them.

Could this be used against Napster?

[radja]

What if instructions for growing hemp for pot, instructions to turn it into pot, and getting the best crop are in MP3 format? Could it be used against Napster and the likes? I know there is at least one such song, although it's in dutch (surprise.. ;). search for "Nederwiet" by "Doe Maar".

//rdj

Re:what's even scarier

[theonetruekeebler]

Actually, you dated yourself when you said

Here is what heppened.

For a long time Democrats ruled the congress. They kept putting their pet projects as riders and the republican presidents pretty much had to either sign or scrap the whole bill. Usually of course you attached your pet project to cancer research bill or something and when the president vetoed it or you opponents objected you got to yell Mr. So or so is against cancer research!."

I asserted that the addition of unrelated amendments has a much longer history and gave an example from 1905 of how state legislators in an almost exclusively Democratically controlled state attempted to use riders to pass questionable legislations. You suggested that adding porkbarrel projects on to critical bills was a Democratic invention used to extort passage from the President.

That's not the only fact you got wrong. Presidents have been lobbying for line-item veto power since Jefferson. The first line-item veto legislation was proposed in congress in 1876, 121 years before one ever went into effect.

The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 was became Public Law 104-130, going in to effect 1/1/1997. To quote the LOC abstract:

Whenever the President signed a bill or joint resolution, the President could cancel in whole (1) any dollar amount of discretionary budget authority, (2) any item of new direct spending, and (3) certain limited tax benefits. In exercising this authority, the President had to determine that such cancellation would (1) reduce the federal budget deficit, (2) not impair any essential government functions, and (3) not harm the national interest.

Any allocation disapproved by the line item veto had to go to deficit reduction. This is a far cry from being able to remove the CDA from the Telecommunications Act.

Then you said:

Then in a brilliant move at the end of the Bush presidency the democrats smelled a winner in Clinton and they passed the line item bill even though for years they were against it.

Surprise surprise the republicans now got to be on the receiving end of the shaft (so be careful what you ask for boys). So they challenged the law and the supreme court bailed them out by declaring the thing unconstitutional (not surprising how many republicans on the court).

As the title of the Act suggests, it was enacted in 1996, towards the end of Clintons first term. Both the House and the Senate were, at the time, Republican controlled, majority having been secured in the 1994 elections. It was a plank on the GOP's so-called "Contract with America", the only one Clinton supported. It went into effect 1/1/1997. Clinton applied it to an appropriations bill later that month. On 2/27/1997 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Clinton v. City of New York, which was brought by NYC and a group of Idaho Potato growers:

New York City sued to restore a provision that would have let the city and New York state raise taxes on hospitals and use the money to attract federal Medicaid payments.

The Snake River Potato Growers sued over Clinton's veto of a tax measure that would have allowed agricultural processors to defer capital gains taxes when they sell such facilities to farmers' cooperatives (source)

On 6/26 of that year the Court overturned P.L. 104-140 by a 6-3 margin. Breyer and Ginsburg, both Clinton appointees, were on the majority. Scalia and O'Connor, Republican appointees, dissented.

When the court's decision was announced, Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) called it "a great day for the U.S. Constitution."

--

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[romco]

"But something has to be done. I do all I can to educate, but as long as criminals are coddled in the courts, and people aren't educated as to the REAL effects of drugs are, I take any solutions I can get."

"criminals"
Some criminals might be getting coddled but drug offenders are not. I believe the US has more drug offenders in jail than the europe has people in jail for everything.

"and people aren't educated as to the REAL effects of drugs are"

If this law is passed it will be even harder to educate people. One of the reasons I never tried PCP is because I know it contains fermaldhide and arsonic. The more you know about drugs the LESS likely you are to use them.

"I take any solutions I can get"
umm you mean "the end justifies the means"? The war on drugs has already done a lot of damage to the 4th amendment and now this will do a lot of damage to the 1st amendment.

It will still be legal for people to tell you they want medical marijuana legalized but won't be legal for them to tell you WHY they want it legalized. Very convenent for our goverment.

Be very carefull what you wish for...

Finite resources

[Ungrounded Lightning]

As [their resources] aren't [infinite], they necessarily have to make decisions between what areas to focus on.

I'd be inclined to agree with you if all they did was blandly ignore the amendments they didn't defend. (I'd even overlook things like their poster on the bill of rights, which conspicuously omits the 2nd.)

Unfortunately, they sometimes spend their "limited resources" working actively against it.

(Though they once worked for it, when it got tied to one of their big hot-buttons - the fourth. It was nice to see the ACLU and the NRA working together to defend the law-abiding residents of the Chicago public housing projects against warrantless searches allegedly looking for guns. B-) )

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If they'd considered how weaponry might advance (they didn't even have breach-loading firearms then, did they?), they might have been a little less ambiguous with the 2nd amendment.

They DID consider how weaponry would advance. (Prototype repeating weapons were already well known. Breach-loaders did exist, though they weren't common.)

The founders PERSONALLY owned top-of-the-line armament, from rifles to field cannon to warships. They had just used them to OVERTHROW the "legitimate government", partly using tactics that depended on their weaponry's advantages over that of their opposition.

And it's clear from their writings that the general population's military superiority over the central government's forces is EXACTLY what they meant to protect with the second amendment.

As for "state militias", those are examples of "select militias". "Well regulated militia" was a term of political debate, and referred to EXACTLY that part of an armed population that WASN'T enrolled in either the "standing army" or a "select militia".

(Even when called up by the central government to defend against foreign threats, the well regulated militia was commanded by officers that were not chosen by the Fed. Usually the officers were chosen by the members. According to the Founders' writings the selection of militia officers, and its method, was to be explicitly reserved to the state level.)

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[barleyguy]

One of the main reasons is because we go around the world pushing our ideas on everyone. We have actually gone to other countries and burned down hemp fields. The other reason may be that the countries where technology is developed are petroleum based. It may also be that the perception of financial gain is greater for petroleum.

That's a hard question, because I'm not sure there's a good answer. It's most likely something that stems from either ignorance or greed.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[barleyguy]

My point? That many many things can and do have far worse effects on people than illicit-or-otherwise drugs. Most outlawed substances are that way because of arbitrary decisions by ill-informed doctors made years ago.

This is a good point, however by making it you imply that drugs were made illegal for health reasons - i.e. to "protect" people. The truth of the matter is that most drugs, especially marijuana/cannabis/hemp (and to a lesser extent coca/cocaine), were made illegal for almost purely financial reasons.

The proponents of hemp and cannabis legislation were mostly from industries that would be harmed financially by hemp industry, namely the petroleum industry (mainly dupont), the over the counter drug industry (johnson and johnson), and several other industries. They lobbied to start the drug war to shut down financial competition.

If hemp was legal, it could replace almost all of our needs for petroleum, as well as becoming a material replacement for many other materials, such as fiberglass. In the early 1940's, Henry Ford make a car from purely organic materials, mainly hemp, flax and ramie. It was so strong you could beat it with a sledge hammer and it wouldn't dent. The sails we used to get to this country (the U.S.) were made out of hemp. George Washington had a hemp plantation, as well as being in favor of indian hemp (marajuana).

Do you honestly think, that when Thomas Jefferson helped draft the bill of rights, he wanted to exclude talking about one of his favorite plants just because some clueless government decided to make it illegal. You are allowed to talk about laws you disagree with, as well as encourage others to fight them. There is nothing in the first amendment that says you have to be on the government's side, either.

------------

On the note of drugs in general, I believe in teaching responsible drug use, or street smarts... For example, don't use extacy, but if you end up in a situation where you've used it, remember that it drains your electrolytes, so don't forget to drink lots of liquids. Or if you are going to use speed, remember to sleep every night so you don't start dreaming out loud. And if you are going to drive high, don't forget to concentrate on the road so you don't wreck your car.

If our free speech is restrained on the internet, are we forced to echo the dronings of the government on things we don't agree on? Or are we just forced to keep our mouths shut? I believe that making intelligent, responsible decisions about a substance is much easier if you know exactly what it does and exactly what's in it. If free speech goes away on the internet, the only place to learn street smarts will be on the street. There will always be free speech there.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[barleyguy]

Your right to free speech is not being infringed, you're being prohibited from spreading information about a criminal activity.

Two points on this - first, this IS an infringement on free speech. You are allowed to speak out against any law you disagree with, in any way you choose. Otherwise, bad laws would never get repealed.

The other point is - does something being illegal make it wrong, and being legal make it right? You do know that working in a coca (yes coca - not cocoa) field in Columbia is completely legal - many of the cartels are government subsidized. In some cases, they are even government assisted job placement, like something you'd get at job service in the U.S... Should we kill these people for going to work that day? And does the fact that it's legal make it right? By whos government's standards? Is the U.S. government inherently responsible for what happens in other countries? Are we inherently more knowledgable or ethical than the people of columbia, or any other country? And if we disagree with our government, or any other, shouldn't we be allowed to talk about it?

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Kintanon]

3)Caffeine doesn't hold any current medicinal value. No, caffeine is not addictive. Strongly appealing, perhaps, but not addictive. Caffeine does not have the addictive properties of drugs

Ok, whatever you are smoking you need to cut back. (Yes, that is supposed to be funny)
Caffeine IS very much an addictive substance. It causes withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it, and alters your mental state. It is by every definition of the word a Drug.
The reason you don't see anyone rob a store to buy Caffeine is because Caffeine is legal and reasonably price. It only costs me 50 cents to buy a mountain dew. If drugs were legalized, taxed and regulated you wouldn't have the kind of massive criminal activity centered around them that you do now.
When Caffeine is outlawed just see what those 2 pot a day coffee drinkers do, I garauntee they'll be growing beans in their basement and mugging passerby for a fix.

Kintanon

What you can do about it

[phutureboy]

Here's a link that tells how to contact the appropriate lawmakers to urge them not to pass the bill:

http://www.lp.org/action/sneakpeek/

Re:What you can do about it

[La0tsu]

Those are not your only choices. The libertarian party is about as pro-freedom as you can get. They certainly are in favor of drug reform. Or there's the Green Party, who are more leftist. If Jesse Ventura's Independence party is available where you are, they support more fiscal responsibility as well as social tolerance (ie letting up on the drug war, gay rights, etc). There are many parties like these, and you should be able to find one that fits your thought if you do some research. It is true that they are all pretty much unlikely to win office, but it does happen. Even if they don't win, they do at least have a chance of changing the debate. If they get 5% of the vote, they qualify for Federal money next time around. And then there are options within the parties. Here in Saint Paul, we have a pro-legalization (marijuana, at least) state representative in Andy Dawkins. He's a Democrat. The governor of New Mexico is quite vocally pro-legaliztaion, and he's a republican. And if you live in a caucus state, you can go to the caucuses and (given the low turnout that is commonplace) have a pretty fair chance of changing party policy. Something most people don't want to deal with is the incremental nature of American Democracy. However, the greatest journey begins with but a single step. But to say that the democrats and republicans are pro-drug war, therefore there's no point in voting, is a lame excuse for laziness and apathy. If every single stoner in this country voted, and voted based on legalization, I guarantee you the drug war would end in less than five years.

Re:What you can do about it

[leereyno]

The best way to contact the appropriate lawmakers is to show up on election day.

The reason why bullshit like this even makes it to the floor, let alone passed into law, is because people don't take responsibility for their government. Politicians live and die by the vote, they care about nothing else and will respond to nothing else. They know which segments of society vote and which don't. Those who don't are going to get the short end of the stick from those who do. Representational democracies only work if those being represented hold the people representing them accountable for their actions. Not voting does nothing but give more power to special interest groups and left/right wing zealots, because those guys ALWAYS vote.

Lee

Ha ha

[phutureboy]

Yeah, the meatspace war on drugs is going really well! I am so happy that we have over a million people in prison on nonviolent drug charges! In fact, there are so many drug prisoners that they don't have room for the nice rapists and murderers!

I think it's great that children are encouraged to report their parents to the police, so the parents can be sent to jail for a mandatory 20-year sentence, and the kids can grow up as orphans.

I think it's awesome that our cities are a war zone because of the inflated prices drugs command on the black market!! It makes me smile when innocent people get caught in the crossfire :)

It makes me sleep easy at night knowing that police can confiscate my car without due process, or comb through my banking records without my knowledge.

I am glad that drug addicts are afraid to seek out help because they're afraid of being imprisoned!

We are doing so well in the War on Some Drugs!! It makes me happy!!

Who is/are th[e/i]s(e) guys?!

[matman]

Can someone tell me what small group (i hope) of people it is that is so insane?! I mean, who makes these laws? Who is it that drafts these things? Are there not laws against conspiracy to violate the rights of others? I mean, geeeeze, someone find out who these people are and vote them out! If it's the majority of people in congress that are making obscene laws like this, and trying to get them passed underhandedly, then the US and the world have a major problem, and someone needs to hire some nutty mercenaries to go in there with some bombs. geeeze.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[matman]

I must disagree. I feel that a large proportion of problems related to drugs are personal, and directly related to drug use. Drugs change the way that you view life - ie mind altering drugs (if that doesnt mean changing views, i dont know what does). A neural network is built as relationships between experiences. If you take a chemical to change the way that you percieve things, then new experiences are going to be mapped differently. The more drugs and the more experience, the more that you're going to have two sets of relation processes going on, and you're guna start getting fried. Now, the impacts are going to be on your family, the ways which you interact with others - your wife, parents, children, friends... even if you dont feel that its hurting you, it could be hurting others. I dont have so much of a problem if you're smoking some weed when you're alone, single and dont really care about anyone, but when you've got a family or something, you're treading on unsteady ground. Same goes for alcohol and cigarettes (but to a lesser extent with cigs). Besides, if you want to change the way that you look at things, change it yourself, dont let drugs do it for ya.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[matman]

also, if you're experimenting with drugs when you're young, and still learning a lot, you're asking for trouble. What an unsteady base to build upon is one built with drug tainted experience.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[matman]

I am not in any way suggesting that one's views should remain static. A drug, when taken, makes you experience things differently. It tints your experience with the effect of the drug - that tint is why you take the drug. Since your experience is changed, it wont get mapped and related to other experiences the same way in which it would have 'clean'. Thus, you get a warped view of reality - the more drugs that you take, the more warped your view gets. Thats all. I fully advocate experiencing new things - but i dont advocate getting a warped view of reality.

Torvalds: great OS but why won't he mow my lawn?

[anonymous cowerd]

I greatly admire the work of Linus Torvalds and the rest of the Linux kernel hackers in all but one area - they refuse to come over to my house and mow my lawn and wash my car. I mean, a free, high-quality OS isn't enough; they should also come here and do everything else on this mile-long shopping list of things I'd like someone else to do for free. Since they don't, I guess they suck.

If you want someone to fight for your so-called "right" to wave guns around like the heroic lead characters in some moronic TV detective show, isn't that what the NRA and that complete jackass Charlton Heston are collecting all those membership dues for? Why in God's name should the ACLU be obliged to get involved in all that gun rubbish? The ACLU does the first amendment, and that's plenty.

Isn't it enough that the ACLU has stood almost perfectly alone for nearly a century in defending your first amendment rights against fierce, unremitting opposition - those constitutional free-speech rights without which you gun nuts wouldn't even have the opportunity to openly complain about government restrictions to your gun usage? Evidently not. No, every time I turn around I've got to read some damned gun nut whining about how, in addition to their enormous, primary task of preserving free speech which they achieve almost single-handedly, the ACLU fails to also support their pathological and revolting gun hobby.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Here's some help

[bdavenport]

here's the letter i wrote to my rep. feel free to use it as a form and fill in the info for your rep. be sure to fax this - it will get read more readily. i hope this helps! i already sent this to my personal listserve. let's /. our reps with a little geek love!
---------------------- letter below ----------------------
1111 My Street
Houston, TX 77777-6113

Sheila Jackson Lee
410 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-3816
Fax: (202) 225-3317


July 13, 2000

Dear Sheila Jackson Lee,

I would like to thank you for being my representative in our House of Representatives and for working towards our interests not only as Houstonians and Texans, but also as Americans. Having voted for you in all three of your elections to the House of Representatives I can say that I have been pleased with your continued work and commitment to us, your constituents.

I am writing you today in regards to H.R. 2987 The Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act which has been tacked on as a rider to H.R. 833 (short titled) Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000. As one of Houston's technology workers, I have had the wherewithal and time to read in its entirety H.R. 2987. I am appalled and dismayed by the blatant disregard for personal privacy rights contained within this H.R. 2987. This bill has been targeted by the ACLU as a severe revision of our rights as American citizens on the internet.

Currently this Act is before the House Judiciary Committee. Please accept this written notice as my public plea for you to act on my behalf to work to stop H.R.2987. Again, I am a three time voter for you and would like your continued support in Washington representing Houstonians needs and desires.

Thank you for your time and effort. Please keep fighting the good fight!

me
Software Engineer
some company

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Zach]

Going down to Colombia and BOMBING all of the cocoa fields there would accomplish more than anything else we've tried in the past 20 years. I'd love to see that done.

As for people saying that this bill would infringe on people's rights to "educate" - that's ridiculous. Drug education would say "Such and such drugs will do this to you, have these side effects, and will kill you in approximately such a number of years." Drug education is NOT "this is how you make such and such... make sure you include this, and stir the proper amount."

Your right to free speech is not being infringed, you're being prohibited from spreading information about a criminal activity. Do you honestly condone teaching our nation's youth the quickest way to kill themselves? Quit hiding behind the free speech claim.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[mjjareo]

Sounds like you are also against logic. How can you be against censorship and also against a web site, regardless of what it promotes.

The use of drugs is a consensual act (as in consensual sex or consensual suicide) and therefore, none of your clueless business. If more people would concentrate on there own lives and leave others alone, this country would be so much more bearable.

Stay out of other people's private lives and you will find yourself alot happier.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

Ok, on the free speech issue I agree with you.

I am a drug using geek. I think it's pretty hypocritical for people to be "anti-drug" and then go out and get hammered on a saturday night

. I have to take issue with this. As a recovering heroin addict, I watched many a friend pass out and never awaken based on having a little too much, air in the needle, etc.. Yes I know there is a difference between weed and heroin. Yes I know that alcohol is addictive and damaging. But to be a part of an "anti-anti-drug movement" is just too much. I've seen way too many lives destroyed by the horrors of real drugs. You can call me weak or say I have no will power, but I am not the only one out there who has been addicted to something. These people need help. Drugs must be stopped at all costs. Weed Shrooms and E are all gateways to a much much worse area of society.

Rev.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheReverand]

Well that's kind of my point, sorry if it was unclear.

I am against censorship.

I am against drugs.

I am against web sites that promote DIY drugs.

I am against big government.

But something has to be done. I do all I can to educate, but as long as criminals are coddled in the courts, and people aren't educated as to the REAL effects of drugs are, I take any solutions I can get.

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[TheCarp]

You obviously have very little knowledge in the area of drugs. Caffeine is most certainly addictive. In fact...it is addictive in the true MEDICAL sense of the word (not the watered down definition used by the WoD)

Addiction, true medical addiction has 3 components:

1) Tolerance.
Caffeine exhibits this. The more caffeine you ingest on a regular basis, the less effect it has. If you don't believe me...pop 2 nodoz (400 mg caffeine) today....see how it feels. Now pop 1 per day for 2 weeks...then do it again at 400 mg.

2) Positive Feedback. You take it, it feels good. There is action (take it), effect (stimulation).

3) Withdrawl syndrome. Caffeine *IS* physically addicting. The vast majority of headaches experienced by humans are due to mild caffeine withdrawl. Severe cases can cause hot flashes, cold sweats and death. (yes, I know of people who were told flat out by doctors that if they stopped caffeine cold turkey, it would KILL them)

I have experienced caffeine withdrawl (hot flashes, cold sweats) first hand. It sucks. In fact...it is the reaosn that I list caffeine right along with marijuana....in fact caffeine is MORE addictive than marijuana (which is only very mildly addictive for most people) and cocaine which, believe it or not, is NOT medically addictive. (no physical withdrawl syndrome)

> Caffeine does not cause people to go rob
> stores/banks/innocents so they can get cash for
> their next fix.

Right because its legal. Heroin on the other hand is much more addictive and high priced. If it were legal, there is *NO* reason heroin should cost any more than what tylanol currently costs.

Studies have shown that addicts who have a reasonably priced and safe access to their drugs do NOT go out commiting crimes and are quite capable of holding down jobs.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

Certainly laced pot exists. However it is extremely rare, in my experience, for a person to recieve laced pot without knowing it. There are people who LIKE pot laced with PCP and will pay extra for it.

However...alot of the "laced pot" stuff is myth. Face it...really high quality pot has a very differnt feel to it from cheap shwag. Pot *IS* a psychedelic in the proper quantity and in that quantity the high can be VERY uncomnfortable. That leads to alot of "Oh that shit had to have been laced" stories.

Thats not to say that no dealer has ever laced shitty pot and tried to pass it off as normal. Surely it has happend. Its just alot more rare than most people claim it to be.

Its not uncommon really. Any drug is effected as much by what you think about it as itself. Dance Safe has been asking people o send in "Ecstacy" pills. Of course people only tend to send in pills that they THINK are laced or somehoe wrong. Still only a small percentage contained any drug but MDMA (well larger than some would like to see but still smaller than one would expect to see).

Find someone who says they have had mescaline. They will say it was in a microdot. Then tell them it was LSD (because it was...you can't fit enough mescaline in a microdot that you would even feel it if it was real. 400 mg just wont fit in that small of a space). They will swear up and down "No way was that acid" and "Ive had acid before, this was WAY different" - its true...I am speaking not only from real conversations I have had with people I know - but also from talking with others who have had the same conversation....with completely differnt people.

food for thought.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

> I'm very upset you used your +1 bonus on this
> pseudo-medical babble.

Well thats your right. However it is my bonus to use as I see fit. I saw fit. My opinion on this subject differs from yours, obviously.

> Now professionals that deal with addiction on
> a daily basis use a slightly different
> functional definition which is more like
> "a continuance of a behavior despite worsening
> consequences" usually with a few caveats.

This is much to broad of a definition for me. It sounds like an essentially worthless definition. What are "consequences" what is "Worstening"? This sounds like a value judgement to me. Someone who sees no value in the effect of a drug is likely then to make a determination completely differnt from one who does see a value in it.

by your definition, if I continue to masturbate even after my dick is sore from the friction, then I am addicted.

> There are very few drugs you can take that don't
> have some sort of withdrawl symtoms.

I supose this brings you right down into what is withdrawl? There is a definite value judhgement going on here, but this one can't be avoided.

Caffeine and Heroin both have very specific and often rather acute forms of withdrawl. It is physical and easy to diagnose. Marijuana on the other hand, is much harder to see.

With something like marijuana, withdrawl is less evident. With most people its harder to finger and many who have used it heavily then suddenly stopped report no withdrawl.

Cocaine on the other hand has NO known withdrawl. There is a definite tendancy towards psycological dependance, which can itself make stopping quite hellish, but after the "crash" there is no further physical syndrome. (and, unlike marijauan, I am not speaking from personal experience here, my source is "Ending the Drug War a Solution for America" by Dirk Chase Eldrich - having lost my copy of the physical book...I can't say who he cites on this topic)

> Depression, real, actual, life-wrecking
> depression is simply a specific CHEMICAL
> IMBALANCE IN THE BRAIN. It's not a bad mood.

Im sorry....this I have to take issue with. it is simply NOT that simple. Yes depression is marked by a chemical imbalance, and that CAN be the cause. However I have found that it is seldom the sole cause (even though it is often treated as if it is).

Psycopharmacology is a fascinating feild. It is amazing and very useful. However it is very far from a total exlanation of how the mind works and how to solve its problems. Depression has every bit as much to do with how an individual aproaches and deals with problems in their life, and what their problems are, as it does chemical levels in the brain.

I know this first hand. I found myself extremely depressed the one year I was in colledge. It was the main reason I left at the end of the year and failed nearly all my classes. I got out of it on my own. I did it the old fashioned way. I suffered, and I suffered...then, when the time was right, I realized that the problem was me and I needed to change how I was doing things.

Sure not everyone can just do that... some need help with the chemical imbalance part. Definitly. However to say that depression IS a chemical imbalance is to trivialize the nature of the beast. (the tendancy to treat depression like some ailment that can just be blindly medicated away with drugs is a pet peeve of mine. ive seen it tried too many times)

Now off my soapbox...

My original point was simply this. Addiction specifically requires PHYSICAL withdrawl. Anything else (while possibly just as hard and agonizing to quit...if not more so) is psycological dependance.

Its alot like how police call every illegal drug a narcotic. Its simply incorrect terminology. Heroin is the ONLY common illicit drug that is also a narcotic.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

> First off, let me make it clear that while I
> dispise drugs myself, I think they should make
> it legal as a part of the survival of the
> fittest act of 2000.

I thought that too, until I did some more research on the subject. I found out fairly quickly that it *IS* prohibition that makes drugs so dangerous. 85% of drug-related violent crimes are a direct result of prohibition and the black market it creates (turf wars, disputes with dealers - whens the last time someone shot the liquer store owner cuz he thought the soco was priced too high?)

Furthermore most drugs are extremely safe if used in moderation and correctly. ZStudies have shown that even heroin addicts who have access to reasonable priced and safe supplies of heroin are able to hold down jobs and lead otherwise normal lives. (currently prices are so high that resorting to selling or other illegal activites like stealing is almost a requirement to maintain a habbit - if legal it should cost little more than tylanol - right now it costs a little more than gold)

> while I'm no potential terrorist (despite the
> persian ethnicity)

mmm I have a sudden urge for some kabob kubideh and some steamed basmatti rice. :) mmmm

> Lets make sure kids dont get sold to,

I started smoking weed when I was 17. Until the day I turned 21, it was MUCh easier to get weed than alcohol.

When alcohol was illegal, surprize surprize, one of the big issues was the fact that kids were drinking. In fact, there were cases of schools being closed down due to mass student drunkeness.

Legalization and regulation actually PREVENT kids from getting drugs. I mean...I only once saw a dealer refuse to sell to a kid cuz they were too young. However...it happens in convienece stores every day.

Seriously though. Alcohol is JUST as bad as ANY drug that is currently illegal. JUST like ANY other drug, there are people who use it, and people who abuse it. Marijuana is, if anything, less harmfull...hell my own medical doctor agrees with me on that one (so did my pediatrician when I told him back when I was 17)

In fact, my own mother worked at a hospital for 25 years. She asked around one day and was UNABLE to find a SINGLE medical doctor who thought marijuana was a terribly harmful drug...she even heard a doctor say "Hell i would rather my kid be smoking pot than drinking alcohol".

food for thought.

Re:What about medical practitioners?

[TheCarp]

> Are doctors to be banned from learning how to do
> their jobs?
> (This is not so far-fetched. For much of the
> 1900's it was against the law for physicians
> to explain anything about birth control to their
> patients. Reflect on that for a bit...)

Doctors are prohibitied by law from doing their jobs actually. Ever since the early 1900s that is.

Today people are sitting in nursing homes in chronic, daily pain for 1 reason and 1 reason only. Their doctors are prohibited, by law, from prescribing them the amount of pain killers that they actually need.

In fact, doctors routinely undermedicate pain, because prescribing too many pain killers can lead to them losing their licence.

Even heroin (di-acytlmorphine) is verboten for them. Its a great (heroic) pain killer. One of the best anagesics known to man. However doctors arn't allowed to give it, even to their worst cases of chronic pain.

Other drugs? Ask a psychotherapist about MDMA (ecstacy) and it suse in treating patients. The psycotherapy community was elated with the stuff...there wer eall sorts of studies on it and showing promising results....until it was made illegal, even for them to study.

Marijuana? A doctor from the AMA was in congress and testified that making cannabis illegal was a bad idea. He was told by one of the congressmen "Doctor, if you don't have anything good to say about what we are doing here, then why don't you just go home".

Later on, when the bill went to the other house...debate can be litterally quoted in 4 lines.

A congressman asked "Mr Speaker, what is marijuana"
Speaker: "I don't know. Some kind of Narcotic I think"
"Well does the AMA support making it illegal?"
"Yes their doctor was here the other day, they support it 100%"

That is the ENTIRETY of the debate on the subject.
(in fact when a researcher went to look that up in the library of congress it took months for them to find the transcript...it was so small it had fallen behind other volumes in the library)

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

In my experience I have to say that addiction has much more to do with the person than the drug. Dependance doesn't even need a drug to form (dependance is what you really mean, addiction is a very specific medical term and is used incorrectly about 90% of the time - no PHYSICAL WITHDRAWL - no ADDICTION)

I have seen a friend be totally dependant on drugs...not just marijuana but LSD, alcohol...anything he could get his hands on...then one day he stopped.

He started going to church. He became dependant on it. He exhibited the SAME behaviors towards church as he did towards drugs. He felt a NEED for it. He was dependant.

Real dependants tend to have deeper problems. Addiction and chemical dependance tend to be symptomes of underlying problems. (most of the time...caffeine addiction tends to be the exception...but only because it is so ubiquitous it is hard to NOT become addicted to it - and unlike most drugs caffeine is VERY addicting... withdrawls suck - been there, done that)

Now is marijuana 100% harmless? Nope. Nothing is. Not a single thing that you do in life will ever be 100% impossible to do harm to you. Even the water that you drink can contain bacteria that can put you in the hospital or kill you.

However harm is relative. Does it do brain damage? Depends who you ask...the jury is definitly still out (at least among the actual medical community). Does it cause lung cancer? It probably can. Of course...lung cancer is the product not of smoking but of chronic smoking for many years...most post smokers don't smoke anywhere NEAR the amount cig smokers do, for the ssame length fo time. So...there is very little real data

As for dancesafe....yes they are really good. Glad they are out there.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

Yet my own sister smokes daily....and alot. has for years. What did she do while smoking that much?

She dropped out of High School as a sophmore, got a GED, entered Colledge a year before her old HS classmates...then maintained a 3.5 GPA.

Not bad for a total pothead.

I have said it before, I say it again..."amotivation" "dependance" etc all have alot more to do with the user than the drug.

HEY! WAIT!

[DaveWood]

Somebody come to their senses and post some phone numbers to call! I would spend all day on the phone if only someone would actually tell me who to call and how!

Please, in the future, don't leave out or gloss details like this!

Commiland

[Conspire]

Well, I have been running around China for some time, and it is good to see that the US is finally passing bills that make it more like China.

I hope that we can have all the other great things in China in the US soon as well, such as prison labor, death penalty for tax evasion, forced abortions, and a whole lot more!

Cheers to the Clinton administration for bedding with the commies!!!

Re:Bad laws for individuals, but society won't car

[Master Bait]

The quickest way of killing oneself might be to happen to live in Columbia when the Yankees go bombing!

That said, I heartily endorse the PF method. Check out Rhodium's website. Nice formulas and experiences. Or The Hive for fun info about MDMA, AKA ecstacy, AKA Adam.

No government can own your mind. See that it is kept free.

blessings,

We're the problem.

[onyxruby]

This bill is terrible, this bill is unconstitional, America is turning into a Police state. I imagine that these will be often stated responses to this story. On the whole I am quite inclined to agree. The problem here is not FBI, or other groups, it is us. We decry the unfairness of it all, yet few of us will actually do anything about it. Senators do not read Slashdot, geeks do.

Until we are willing to get politically involved, they won't even know we exist. If people don't tell them this is a problem, they won't know. Our input is just as important as anyone elses. On capital hill the prevelant attitude is, "If it's important enough, someone will tell me". There are some organizations that do excellent work (EFF comes to mind), but they need our help. I realize this is anti-thesical to our culture. Technical people have amazing ability to organize and work togethor on very complex issues, and do so all the time. It would be nice to see some of those same skills used to fight legislation like this.

Re:Question about the bill number

[Animats]

The drug-info criminalization section is currently section 421, "Distribution of information relating to manufacture of controlled substances" of H.R.833 / S.625, which has been in House/Senate conference committee since February 2. There's an "intent" requirement, as a bow to the First Amendment, but I'm not sure how effective that is. I don't see any prior-restraint language in there, but I may have missed something.

No URL, other than Thomas, the Library of Congress web site. Because it's a web front-end to a live non-web database, URLs you get from the Thomas search engine aren't useful for more than a few minutes.

Silly comparisons are bad.

[KahunaBurger]

Saying that alcohol is a poison is ridiculous. Oh but wait, I'm from France, the wine country, you're probably American, land of puritans.

I'm from a chemistry classrrom, on this subject. All alcohols are poisons. ethel just takes a lot more to be leathal. Lots of medicines are low dose poisons too, look at chemotherapy. Don't take it so personal.

And you ignored most of my post disn't you? Even non-adicted people can do serious damage to themselves or their children by drinking. And don't hang on to that heart data so tight you lose the big picture. The last comprehensive look at the issue I saw made it clear that other long term effects are ambigous enough that the heart data should not encourage non drinkers to take it up "for their health".

There's also some fun info to be had in the psychology classroom on "alcohol myopia", the tendency even at low doses to lose track of the long term consequences of your actions. Has some fun repercussions not just on drunk driving, but drunk sex or socializing.

Oh and the fact that you are from France makes your alcohol boosting more suspect, not less. Would you believe a midwesterner to be objective on the benifits of beef consumption or Jesse Helms to talk fairly about tobbacco? think about it.

Stop the lies.

Oh the poor plight of the maligned fermented sugar! *snort* its facts, not lies, deal with them maturely.

-Kahuna Burger

I am not just posting on my own experiences

[fluxrad]

I've seen the dark side of addiction. One of my best friends wound up homeless - and then got kicked out of a homeless shelter or two - all because he absolutely LOVED to smoke weed. No...that's too much of a euphamism. He was addicted to marijuana. But he was also dumb about it.

As easy as it is in this day and age to blame anything but the individual for people's problems...DON'T. I've seen all of it first hand. And what i'm saying is that most people's positions in life are of their own choosing. - I became addicted to cigarettes because i was unwise. Do you think i'm going to blame phillip morris or joe camel 40 years from now when i die of lung cancer? no! And personally, i don't want to see the government take away anyone elses right to smoke because of my mistakes. And while i think heroin is an abominable narcotic, probably one of the worst known to man, i don't want to see the government punish anyone else for your friend's mistakes. You will blame addiction....as harsh as it sounds...i will blame your friend.

But this fight isn't about heroin, or any drug in particular. This fight is about censorship. If you censor information and "drugs" simply because they're unpopular - then you've already lost the battle.

Yes, let's ban all addictive drugs. Then you can't have your morning coffee, or your mountain dew at work, or your Marlboro Reds, or your chocolate. Then let's start banning other stuff. Where do *YOU* draw the line???

(BTW - delta-9 tetrahydracanabinol and alcohol are *not* addictive substances...genetics makes them such).


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

Linux is a drug

[small_dick]

Sometimes when I use use for extended periods of time, especially after downloaded a phat tarball and compiling that byatch, I start shaking and writhing in ecstasy.

I have also been late to work several times due to my Linux use.

On occasions when I can't use Linux at least 2-3 times a day, I become angry and distant; often lashing out in anger at those around me.

All those "formulas" downloadable from the web -- the population must be protected! It is the duty of a caring government!

Amerika Uber Alles!

Smoke Pot!!!

[istartedi]

Look ma, I just shut down Slashdot.

Re:prior restraint is unconstitutional

[bellings]

I doubt there's much to stop the police from searching through a bookstore's sales reciepts -- heck, Judge Starr apparently got the records for Monica Lewinsky's purchase of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (or some book -- I can't actually remember which one), as evidence that she was giving gifts to the President. Heck -- that entire boondogle made a mockery of the constitution's protection against self incrimination and the protection from random "fishing" expeditions by prosecutors.

The drug war is not the only war against individual responsibility that is happening in this country, and its not the only means by which our rights are being eroded. I have moral reservations about doing it, but I'm afraid we have to put anti-gun, anti-prostitution, anti-sex, anti-porn, anti-drug, anti-gay, and all other anti-personal-responsibility laws into the the same category, and fight them away together. I realize that there may be only a few people on earth that can swallow every thing I listed there... well, tough. I can't either. But as soon as you, or I, or anyone starts to think we can pick and choose which responsibilities we can take away from other people, then we've made it too easy for the people who really don't want us to have any responsibilities at all.

Hallucinogens are not all bad

[mdwebster]

I personally think messing with hallucinogens is wrong, people have little enough grasp on reality as it is.

I'm with you on everything except this. My opinion (and everyone's got one, right?) is that hallucinogens are most definitely NOT for everyone. But I also believe that they can be very useful for self-discovery.

Some very interesting work has been done with LSD during the early 60's that show the potential for long-term positive psychological effects when used in a well-controlled therapuetic environment. One that sticks in my mind was group therapy sessions with prison inmates on LSD headed by a psychotherapist. The long-term prison recidivism rate for the LSD group vs. a control group was something like 25%. A number of psychologists at the time likened it to 2 years of therapy in a day.

That having been said, I would also like to state that hallucinogens are the most powerful group of drugs known to man. Not many are physically harmful in any way (especially LSD), but they do have the potential to create great psychological schisms, especially in those with predispositions and especially when taken in an uncontrolled environment (raves, parties, basement of your parent's house). The outcome of a hallucinogen "trip" is all about your mental set and your physical locale. It is most certainly not a set of drugs to be taken lightly, at all.

I've always wondered

[lpontiac]

From a purely legal perspective; if it is illegal to publish and sell a book about manufacturing illegal drugs, perhaps it should also be illegal to publish it anywhere.

How does this work, since in principle it seems to be in violation of the first amendment?

Um...

[vavenger]

What about sites that link to sites that link to information about the manufacture of drugs?

And another thing... I'm Canadian, but I use a U.S. ISP (@Home). If I link to, say, a site in the Netherlands about this stuff on my webspace (residing on their servers), am I going to get my account terminated? :^P

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[ShaunC]

I'm certainly with you in principle. I don't use drugs, but I agree, this isn't a drug issue - it's about censorship, it's about unlawful search and seizure.

This time it's drugs, and America will cheer in glee at another battle won in the war on drugs. But next time it'll be porn, or liberalism, or whatever the current White House administration thinks is the enemy. And then we'll be in trouble.

The mere fact that our lawmakers have to bury such legislation within the text of unrelated bills is evidence enough that something's wrong. The bill didn't pass the first (or second, or third...) time around, for a reason - the people don't WANT laws like this. And apparently, a majority of the politicians don't either, because the bill keeps trying to die.

We have to speak out and keep fighting.

Shaun

Thanks!

[GigsVT]

I would like to thank the editors at Slashdot for finally posting this story. I have submitted it a few times, basically every time there was a new development in this censorship nightmare. It isn't even about drugs anymore. It is about the government using drugs as an excuse to take more of our rights away.

The biggest abuser of drugs is the Government. They are consistantly using drugs for their own ends, which seem to be the progressive leeching of our rights away.

If you havn't already, visit the DRCnet site and send your senators and represenatives email. The site makes it very easy, you just enter your address and it will find the right people to send it to. Do it today before it is too late. I have followed similar bills, and these things can pass faster than you think. It will also help if you call your Senators and Congressmen. Don't worry, you won't actually have to talk to them, you just leave a message for them on their answering service. Make sure you tell them the bill number, and that you are AGAINST it. They basically put down a tick mark in the against column. It is kind of like voting. It only takes 5 minutes, and it will give you the right to say "At least I fought it, I did something about it!" after all our rights are gone. (lets hope it doesn't get that far)
-----------------------------

IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[V.]

How is it that it is okay to inject totally
non-related riders into bills in this fashion?
Shouldn't this kind of behavior be disallowed?
What about cross-referencing these riders?
It must be a nightmare keeping track of
what rider was in what totally unrelated bill.
It's the governmental equivalent of spaghetti
code. Someone please explain why our legistlative
bodies haven't put a stop to this kind of thing?

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[/]

How is it that it is okay to inject totally non-related riders into bills in this fashion? Shouldn't this kind of behavior be disallowed?

Go ahead and try to draft a definition of "substantionally related" that you can use to restrict which riders can be attached to which bills. I dare you. And oh yeah, try to find a constitutional basis for striking down such riders by the Supreme Court, which after all can only exert judicial review over matters concerning the constitution.

Someone please explain why our legistlative bodies haven't put a stop to this kind of thing?

Why? Because they're precisely the ones who are committing this fraud, and it's in their every incentive to do so, since it helps them get laws passed that couldn't get passed if standing on their own (or would get vetoed, for that matter). You don't expect one branch of government to police itself effectively, out of the goodness of its collective figurative heart, do you?

Re:IANAL....so please inform me if you are.

[bridgette]

The non-related rider thing really bothers me as well. Given our fickle political landscape, it really puts legislators between a rock and a hard place. i.e. HR #FFFF Harsh penalties for clubbing baby seals w/ a rider for encoraging taking candy from babies.

Perhaps it is still around because:

1) legislators don't vote based on their convictions but rather on what a) looks good b) the soft money wielding lobbist wants them to do or c) what they promised some other legislator they would vote in exchange for some favor (like a vote for something else)

2) the legislators can't be trusted to honor this (imho dishonerable) dealmaking so they have to put all the conditions of "i'll vote for this if you vote for that" in one big confied mess.

Something of odd to note about this.

[Masem]

IIRC the text of the original bill correctly, sites that *specifically* include drug info or links to drug info sites are suspectable. However sites like Yahoo or other search engines, or Amazon or other retailers (basically, where said site is acting as some index proficience) are immune to the aim of this bill. And of course this is only in the states. Which makes the point of the bill (the drug part, at least) null and void.

In any case, I'm expecting the ACLU to pounce on a challenge to the bill as soon as the ink dries from Clinton's signature. Additionally, this type of bill may strongly reform the concent of riders; two completely different concepts should not be allowed on the same bill.

Re:We don't need

[alumshubby]

Not to mention, alcohol is arguably one of the more destructive drugs out there: Consider drunken driving, alcohol-related domestic violence, chronic illnesses related to long-term alcohol consumption, and the stress put on social-welfare institutions and family structures due to the effects of alcohol addiction. Yet when we tried prohibiting it in the US, we created a huge wave of underground crime and fomented disrespect for the law, so we had to prohibit prohibition.

Are we learning yet?

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[ordu]

That's not entirely factual.

Only Papaver Somniforum poppies produce opium. There are many other flavors of poppies you can obtain that do not produce opium.

Eschscholzia californica (california poppy)
Romneya coulteri
Calochortus

All of these do not produce opium.
A quick search turns up a few interesting links on opium extraction:

http://www.lycaeum.org/drugs/Opiates/
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/opiates/opiates.sh tml
Opium producing poppies are not technically illegal. You can grow them in your garden without problems. Flower shops often sell them in gift baskets. Harvesting them for ingestion, however, is quite illegal. Opium is a schedule 1 substance.

Tattered Cover

[/]

According to the American Booksellers Association, the case is heading to trial on July 26. Tattered Cover has their own website, of course, but I can't find any reference to the pending legal action.

This is not, of course, the first time Tattered Cover has been involved in a constitutional battle. Back in 1985, in Tattered Cover, Inc. v. Tooley, 696 P.2d 780, they got part of Colorado's criminal code that criminalizes the display of sexually explicit materials struck down as violating the state's constitutional guarantee of free speech.

Let's assume this bill passes.

[cje]

You guys (and I mean "guys" in a purely unisexual sense) remember the Communications Decency Act, don't you? Let's assume this bill passes, and let's further assume that the President signs it. Where do we go from here? I'll tell you, in three simple words: the Supreme Court. Obviously, there are many things about the American legislative process that are completely and totally fucked up. The ability for lawmakers to attach totally unrelated riders and to insert completely irrelevant legislation in the middle of other laws is something that has been abused for decades.

Still, the founding fathers were wise enough to envision something like this happening. That's why they established the system of checks and balances that every high school government student is obligated to learn about. If this law passes, and if it is used to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens, there can be no doubt that it will be in front of a judge faster than you can blink your eye. This is what happened with the CDA. When was the last time you heard anything about the CDA?

Anybody who observes politics these days has to have a certain amount of cynicism. Still, I have faith that the system will work as it was intended to. There are elements in both the left and right wings of American politics that would like to conveniently ignore certain parts of the Constitution, but they cannot make the Constitution go away. The First Amendment should prohibit schools from actively organizing prayers and it should protect my right to speak my mind and voice unpopular opinions about the government. The Second Amendment should guarantee my right to own reasonable firearm if I so desire. The Fourth Amendment should protect me from unreasonable search and seizure by agents of the government. And so forth.

If the legislative and executive branches of government try to pass laws that ignore any of this, the judicial branch will jump all over that shit as is their duty. Call me a hopeless idealist, but even if this bill does pass, I don't see any reason for us (Americans) to worry.

More on Poppies ...

[bridgette]

Papaver Somniferum - opium poppies, are also used to produce the poppy seeds used in bakeing (poppy seed cake, poppyseed rolls etc.). While the grocery store poppy seeds are generally rendered infertile (dried w/ heat or roasted), you can find viable papaver somniferum seeds for sale in some specialty seed catalogs.

My understanding is that scoring and scraping poppy pods is rather labor intensive ... even if there were no drug laws opium would still only be farmed in the 3rd world. Note that boiling the pods for a medicinal opium tea is both a historical remedy and much, much easier.

I have heard that the dried poppy pods used in flower arrangements are also papaver somniferum, and that grinding those pods in a coffee mill will also make a decent tea, but 'decorative' plants, not intended for human consumption can have all sorts of wierd stuff. But I guess if you're desperate enough to ingest stuff from a crafts store ...

Re:what's even scarier

[Malcontent]

Here is what heppened.
For a long time Democrats ruled the congress. They kept putting their pet projects as riders and the republican presidents pretty much had to either sign or scrap the whole bill. Usually of course you attached your pet project to cancer research bill or something and when the president vetoed it or you opponents objected you got to yell Mr. So or so is against cancer research! (exactly what George W. Bush did to McCain).

All this time the republicans yelled and screamed that they wanted a line item veto so that the president could veto just the riders and still let the rest of the bill pass. Then in a brilliant move at the end of the Bush presidency the democrats smelled a winner in Clinton and they passed the line item bill even though for years they were against it.

Surprise surprise the republicans now got to be on the receiving end of the shaft (so be careful what you ask for boys). So they challenged the law and the supreme court bailed them out by declaring the thing unconstitutional (not surprising how many republicans on the court).

OK the long and short of the story is that riders exist, the pres can do nothing about them, the American people are stupid and don't give a damn. Worse yet Americans are so stupid and gullable that when George W. Bush tell them that John McCain is FOR breast cancer and actually wants their mothers and sisters to get cancer they all nod their heads in agreement and say "it must be true cos I saw it on the tee-vee".

Re:what's even scarier

[theonetruekeebler]

Sorry, Malcontent, but riders have been around for a very, very long time. They have been used to pass unpassable legislation since at least the 1900s, and probably even longer than that. Example: In the state of Georgia the House has a rule that all debate and amendments to a bill can be stopped by a two-thirds majority of the present senators. This rule was enacted around 1905 because prohibitionists kept trying to tack alcohol bans on to the state budget, and the state very nearly did not have a budget for the 1906 fiscal year because a simple majority refused to let the then-minority prohibitionists extort their cooperation.

Riders are often slipped in as political compromises, with assorted legislators saying things like "My constituents couldn't care less if the US government stops supporting cheese prices, but they are really concerned that women in the armed forces are allowed to have abortions, so while I would hesitate to vote to eliminate cheese price supports, I would gladly vote 'yes' on a bill which prevented women in the armed forces from having abortions." So you end up with the 1998 Dairy Farmers Deregulation Act, which makes dairy farmers happy at the expense of taxpayers and the cheese-buying public, but oh-by-the-way makes having an abortion grounds for a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force.

It's like Ben Franklin said---people who respect the law and love sausage should never see either one being made.

--

Looks like YOU don't understand "well regulated".

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What part of "well regulated militia" don't you understand?

It looks like you don't understand it.

When reading historical documents you have to keep in mind that the language drifts with time. Different meanings of the same word become predominant, phrases fall into disuse, and so on. There's an entire specialization of history (called "historiography") dedicated to understanding documents in the version of the language in which they were written.

"Well regulated" is a textbook example of the effect. While "regulated", standing alone, occasionally meant "controlled by law or authority", it more commonly meant "adjusted/tuned". The phrase "well regulated" always meant the latter.

A "well regulated clock" kept good time. It didn't have a special section of the legal code dedicated to it. A person with a "well regulated mind" thought clearly. He wasn't a graduate of a mind-control program. A "well regulated shotgun" had two barrels that shot in the same direction, rather than diverging. It wasn't subject to 30,000 laws on everything from barrel length to whether it could be possessed within a mile of an elementary school.

And a "well regulated militia" was one that fought well, not one that was under the control of the government.

But that's just the start. The phrase "well regulated militia" was a special term of political debate. It referred to that portion of "the militia" (i.e. every adult male who owned or could borrow a gun and was in a condition to fight) that wasn't in a special relation to the government.

The armed land forces of the country were divided into three parts: The "standing army" (full-time employees who did nothing but soldier), the "select militia" (part-time employees who soldiered in times of need, under command and control of the government), and the "well regulated militia" (everybody else who could fight).

And according to the writings of the Founders, the well regulated militia was explicitly supposed to be not under the control of the government. And it was explicitly supposed to be large and talented enough to easily defeat all the other branches of the military combined if it ever came to a conflict.

Because the primary purpose of the well regulated militia was as the last ditch insurance that the government remained the servant of the people, rather than usurping the people's authority and becoming their master.

Re:What part of "well-regulated" don't you underst

[MostlyHarmless]

Well-regulated, back in those days, meant the same as "well-oiled" (figuratively, of course! :p). It had nothing to do with laws.

Funny how this comment is in an article about drug prohibition. It didn't work with alcohol, it isn't working with drugs -- Why do you think guns would be any different?. It's not like criminals won't be able to get guns any more. The prohibition of guns would only keep them out of the hands of lawful citizens.

Question about the bill number

[Apotsy]

Okay, everyone can probably agree that this is complete and utter bullshit and must be stopped immediately.

But which bill number do we reference when writing to our representative? I know the bill is labelled HR 2987 but as the story mentions, it's now been grafted on to the "Bankrupcy Reform Act", which is known as HR 833. So, if it's been "grafted", does that mean that the original bill number has gone away, and the bill has become a part of the one on to which it was grafted? If so, shouldn't we be using the bill number of the one which it was grafted on to?

Which is the proper bill number? H.R. 2987 or H.R. 833? Can anyone help?

Has anything eroded the constitution

[Greyfox]

Has anything eroded the constitution more than the war on drugs? If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect that the whole thing was staged for just that purpose, to move the United States into a police state mode. That's what you get when your country was founded by puritans (You aussies have no excuse.)

Sure no one's going to complain about information about drugs -- that's shouting fire in a theater, right? So next it'll be... say... offensive or "adult" topics and you won't be able to find information on birth control or abortion. Then it'll be sites critical of the government, and we'll be abut where China is today. By that time the people will be begging for it, too.

Your best bet is to mail your congressman and tell him that if he votes for this you will not only not vote for him in the next election, you'll make a sizeable donation to his opposition. Even if "Sizeable" for you is only a few bucks, that'll get his attention. Especially if you can get a few thousand of your friends to write similar letters to him.

what's even scarier

[SEAL]

... is that this sort of legislation tacked onto unrelated bills happens all the time.

For instance, it is fairly well known that the U.S. was not paying it's U.N. fees for quite some time. However, if you dig a little deeper, you'll find out why we weren't paying. Apparently the Republican dominated Congress was insisting on an additional "provision" in the legislation that would've payed that bill.

This provision, in a nutshell, stated that the U.S. would not provide economic aid to nations or foreign agencies which provided abortion as part of women's health care.

As far as I know, Clinton refused to sign this bill as long as that provision was attached. Thus, leaving our U.N. bill unpaid. Now, whether you agree with abortion or not is not the issue. The fact is that this had NOTHING to do with the U.N. fees, and had no business being part of that bill.

Politics is downright nasty. But a great deal of this is possible because of voter apathy and ignorance. If the public would get more informed and more active, then maybe politicians would start representing us, instead of pulling b.s. like this.

So in addition to calling your Congressman, pass the info to a friend or two when you see stuff like this. And ask them to spread the word. Every little bit helps.

Best regards,

SEAL

Repeal the 1st Ammendment!!!

[www.sorehands.com]

It just gets in the way. Lets not have talk about drugs. While we are at it, lets outlaw talk about hacking, crime, gambling.

Lets rule out saying anything negative about the governments and large corporations. It only leads to anarchy.

Once you start on a slippery slope, how do you stop?

ACLU's take and faxing

[gunner800]

The ACLU has it's take on this issue, along with an easy way to fax your representative with a customizeable form letter.


My mom is not a Karma whore!

OOG OFFER INFO ON CAVE-WEED!!!

[OOG_THE_CAVEMAN]

OOG NOT FEEL GOOD.. OOG REALLY FUCKED UP RIGHT NOW BUT HAVE SENSE HE IS NEEDED ON SLASHDOT!!! OOG CHECK NEW STORIES!!! OOG STONED AS SHIT BUT WILL TRY TO HELP A BIT ANYWAY!!! OOG KNOW LOTS ABOUT CAVE-DRUGS!!! OOG FIND FUNNY POINTED PLANT WHEN LOOKING FOR MAMMOTH TO EAT, AND LEARN HOW TO CULTIVATE IT SOLELY USING INTERNET SOURCES!!!

OOG SUGGEST YAHOOKA.COM!!! YAHOOKA.COM VERY GOOD RESOURCE, LINK TO MUCH INFORMATION ON CAVE WEED!!! OOG GROW ALL HIS CAVE-WEED HIMSELF NOW!!! OOG LINK TO GUIDES OOG USE TO LEARN HOW TO GROW CAVE WEED!!! MAYBE OOG GO ON TO DOMESTICATE OTHER PLANTS LATER, INVENT CONCEPT OF AGRICULTURE AND BUILD BASIS OF CIVILIZATION BY ALLOWING CAVEMEN TO LIVE IN ONE STABLE PLACE WITHOUT HAVING TO MOVE!!! BUT OOG TOO BUSY WITH CAVE-DRUGS AND CLUBBING CAVE-HO'S!!! OOG JUST GOING TO GET REALLY FUCKING HIGH!!!

SINCE OOG HIGH, OOG WANT TO APOLOGIZE IF INFORMATION NOT HELPFUL!!! OOG NOT READ STORY AND COMMENTS!!! OOG TRY NOT BE LIKE MOST SLASHDOT POSTER, WHO READ HEADLINE AND THEN POST!!! OOG MAY BE STONED OFF ASS, BUT OOG NOT WANT END UP LIKE SIGNAL 11!!!

OH NO, OOG'S SUNDIAL SAY IT ONLY FEW MORE HOURS TIL 4:20!!! OOG MUST GET NEXT BATCH OF CAVE-WEED READY TO SMOKE OUT!!! ARRGHHH OOG NEED CAVE MAMMOTH AND FRITOS TOO... OOG GOT CAVE-MUNCHIES BAD!!!

Less obvious arguments against this.

[bgalehouse]

So, do they expect altavista to figure out all the sites which cover this sort of thing, and not link to them. How? Trust the sites to identify themselves? Keyword recognition?

If somebody in Amsterdam decided to put up an informational website using, how would the us search engines keep such links out? Hard to filter on words like 'speed' and 'crack'. What about netnews posts? Text files in gnutella? Freenet? Sealand? Enforceablilty sounds like something that politicos in question haven't considered. It is bad karma to pass laws you can't enforce consistantly. Politicos should be reminded of this.

Another argument against censorship is that even if you disagree with the material being censored, censorship is like painting over the termite-holes. No matter how bad you think drugs are, the problem is that people look for them, not that they exist. Convincing people that they need to be responsible is the right solution. Give them enough rope to hang themselves, and one way or the other, they'll learn to respect rope.

Course, that last statement applies to many fields. Anybody want to set up a website along the lines of Mr. Cranky , but rating politicians instead? Or a place to read legislation converted into 'everyday language' - can't be harder than explaining computer code in everyday language. Politics is o so very dry. Somebody should do something about that.

Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[Shoeboy]

But opium can be distilled from the garden variety poppies found in flowerbeds accross the country. Breeds of poppy differ in strength, but all contain morphine. To harvest, take a pin or a razor blade and make thin cuts around the bulb of the poppy. Do not cut all the way through, just scratch the surface so that sap begins to ooze out. The sap will be milky white. Now wait for 12-24 hours. The sap will have become thick and gooey and black. Scrape the sap off with a spoon or razor blade. This is raw opium. You can extract the morphine out of this, and refine it into heroin if you have the know how, but I just do the raw opium. The safest way to do this is by smoking it. Another good method is to drop the opium into strong lemonade, stir and gulp. Warning, opium is very bitter tasting. Don't do this with a large quantity however, since you may OD. The opium high can best be described as a general sense of well being. Pain, fatigue, appetite and sexual desire are suppressed. Concentration is much easier. You can code like the devil himself.
Some people combine the opium with hash when smoking it. I think this is a mistake as the opium high is far superior to being stoned and should be enjoyed as much as possible.
Have fun and try not to get caught.
--Shoeboy

Re:Sorry to do this you CmdrTaco,

[iso]

may i just point out that this response is the very reason that this drug literature MUST exist on the Internet.

Person A claims to have the recipe to make opium. it all sounds very legitimate.

Person B points out that it is only one type of rare poppy that works. where is he finding this information? why lycaeum.org, one of the very sites that the government is attempting to make illegal.

you have to understand that "drug manufacture" rumours are spread all the time. most of them are completely wrong, and unfortunately, many are extremely dangerous if one were to actually try them. though you may argue that the original mis-information could have come from another Internet site, i have found that it is more likely to hear incorrect information through word-of-mouth.

drug information, no make that all information must be free, so that people can make informed, rational decisions.

i know this from real experience. i can't tell you the number of times i've heard people passing dangerous, no, deadly information of how to manufacture MDMA (ecstasy). in fact, a friend of mine was going to attempt to manufacture MDMA based on the directions that he had heard word-of-mouth. he later consulted the Internet, and learned that the method he had learned was in fact a hoax, and ran a very high chance of causing an explosion.

in the end, he found a correct method, and in fact manufactured MDMA sucessfully. that is why he is currently serving jail time, but that's another matter all togther. the fact remains that he would probably be dead right now if it weren't for free drug information on the Internet.

but even if you don't agree with me, and you are so much against drug use that you refuse to even consider the alternatives, consider this:

thistime the government's destruction of free speech does not affect you. however if you let the trend continue, someday it will, and you will be powerless to stop it.

- j

WWW.TEXTFILES.COM is threatened, again.

[Jason Scott]

I have been following Senator Dianne Feinstein's efforts to control unpopular information on the internet for a number of years now, because her activities specifically and directly affect the viability of sites like textfiles.com which chronicles over 20,000 textfiles from the 1980's era of the BBS. The fact is, during this part of America's history, BBSes contained (besides information on UFOs, modifying computers, transcriptions of news articles, and vicious fan fiction) many files on making bombs or causing general trouble, and some files were created about the process of using or making drugs. I'm not for or against this informaion: I'm just trying to rescue it from being lost because it missed the boat of being uploaded to the Internet.

I believe in what I'm doing. Very much.

For what I believe in, Sen. Feinstein would have me imprisioned for up to 10 years.

Before her dreams can become reality, I will be making all of textfiles.com downloadable in one huge file, for everyone who wants to save the site to have. Maybe the big smackdown won't come this time, maybe not the next time, but I am sadly coming to the conclusion that one day it will. Thanks for your help.

Without..

[mindstrm]

From a purely legal perspective; if it is illegal to publish and sell a book about manufacturing illegal drugs, perhaps it should also be illegal to publish it anywhere.

Personally, from an ethics point of view, I think I see no problem with publishing such information.
If the government (the people) want this information to be taken correctly, they must use their own counter-information. THe best way to do this is with *real* information.
Not 'Weed makes you go nuts and kill people a-la reefer madness', but real scientific information.

ONe major problem with the war on drugs is that, although the war on drugs gives kids sociological facts, it does give them little scientific facts.
Illicit drug papers give them many true scientific facts, but without the appropriate details.

Educate the kids. Educate the public. Don't just tell them 'this is bad for you'. Tell them why. After all.. the internet is here.. fuckin use it.

Does this make sense to anyone?

[leereyno]

"if you don't know your Representative, like most of us, use the look-up... Be polite and very nonthreatening, but make it clear that you vote, and that you don't like this bill."

If you voted you'd know who your representative was. Not that contacting them and lying about it wouldn't be a good idea. But be sure to follow up on it by showing up at the ballot box next election day and voting based on how they vote on this bill.

If more people did this and took responsibility for our government, then bills like this would never see the light of day and everyone who cherishes the freedom this country was founded on would sleep a little easier at night.

Lee

Re:"Clean" geek's opinion.

[drteknikal]

MASSIVELY IMPORTANT CENSORSHIP ISSUES ASIDE, you're delusional.

You say you're "clean" - not a drug user. You then admit to using alcohol and being addicted to caffiene. You also admit your parents are nicotine addicts. That makes you at least a second-generation part of the problem.

Problem #1: all illegal drugs are lumped together, as if their effects, risks, and potential harm were all equal. Legal drugs don't enter into the discussion. There are quite a number of illegal drugs that are less injurious than many legal drugs - the legislated morality is the only difference. In this case, while methamphetamines appear to have been singled out, the specific provisions that are at issue here are not restrained to a specific drug.

Problem #2: The Internet as made real information available to millions, and allowed many to make intelligent, personal decisions based on fact, not propaganda. As with anything else that fights hypocrisy with facts, when the facts are against them, the media will be perceived as a threat.

Problem #3: As long as substances are prohibited on moral or political grounds, rather than on scientific or public health grounds, hypocrisy is going to be the worst enemy of the "war on drugs". And all the erosion of privacy and other rights and freedoms will remain even when they eventually admit that the war has been lost.

"Are you gentlemen aware that shirts are being made from hemp, which are then being boiled down for the resin by teenagers who then mix the
residue with alcohol to create marijuana?" -- Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, proving once again that he's either the stupidest or most dishonest man in America today (quoted in last week's Wunderland Weekly News )

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

Well I certainly see your point. Yes, alot of drug problems ARE personal. I have seen people go down that path. However...throwing a person in jail doesn't exactly solve their problems...it just garauntees that they lose any job they had and makes it hard to get another one later. It garauntees to make their life worst.

As for personal drug use. I kno wplenty of people who use drugs socially. Alcohol, pot etc. I can personally attest to having some of my fammily relationships strengthened by drug use...the bond that comes from smoking a joint with someone. Time spent together.

How about Ken Keasy? The man apears to be about in his 90s last I saw him interviewed. He says he still uses LSD today. He said "I never would have been able to write that well (one flew over the cucues(sp?) nest) without it"

The thing is...you never see on the newspaper or on TV "Guy smokes pot, eats pizza" or "man drops acid, finds god...joins the church to help others"
(not that I condone joining churches, I am an atheist, but a friend of mine dropped some acid once, and ended up deciding he disliked his life and joining a church because of it and finding "god"...much longer story than that but thats the "executive summary")

All in all...I have come to realise that its not about "drugs", its about relationships with drugs. ANY drug can be used safely, and without problem, by a person with a good relationship with drugs.

There is a HUGE difference between a person who NEEDs to start the day with a drink (or a toke, or any drug) and a person who sometimes has a drink...or a toke...or a line.

Its not about willpower. Its not about addiction. Its about outlook. Its about the relationship. It is about recognizing and accepting why one is using a drug. I drink coffee to be more alert at work. I can make it through a day of work without it.

I drink a beer with a friend because its fun...its part of the recreational activity for the evening...not because I need beer to feel good.

Unconstitutional Laws Must Cost Lawmakers

[Nightspore]

Every day we see more of these blatantly unconstitutional laws churning their way through the guts of congress. Nearly all will later be overturned when they finally reach the supreme court, but not until after huge amounts of time, money and energy have been wasted on them and people's lives or businesses have been wrecked.

All elected U.S. legislative, executive and deliberative officials are sworn into office with a vow to uphold and defend the constitution. Voting for laws that are later determined to be unconstituational is a clear breach of office and public trust and must be made punishable by impeachment.

Night

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

[Outlyer]

On the subject of drugs, I should start by mentioning that I spent a great deal of my life Straight Edge. Meaning, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no meat, no cheese etc. In later years I have loosened up on alcohol, but drugs is something I still will not touch.

So perhaps I can take a somewhat outsider perspective on the drug war. First of all, anyone who claims marijuana has no ill effects has never walked into a university dorm. I know it does have effects. But, so does alcohol. So does red meat.

The governments of Canada and the US both feel, for some ridiculous reason that they have a duty to protect us from ourselves. We may have liberty, but we're not given the credit to make decisions for ourselves. Is that freedom?

Point being, drugs may be bad for your brain. I don't think many people will disagree. But what I need to know, what is the arbitrary decider that makes marijuana more dangerous (Reefer Madness!) than alcohol? I've never seen a stoned individual beat his wife, or drive his car into a group of people. On the other hand, we've heard of alcohol-influenced wife-abuse and drunk drivers.

I have no interest in partaking in legal or illegal marijuana, but I don't support states throwing people with personal use marijuana in prison for 20 years, while Budweiser's customers are applauded as "Real Americans/Canadians etc."

I don't like either drug users, or alcohol abusers, particularly, but freedom is not about liking people, it's about allowing everyone the freedom to do as they will, as long as they don't infringe on others rights.

On a side note, Straight Edge kids in Syracuse NY are branded are terrorists. Many are investigated. Somehow, NOT drinking is a crime in the United States. Not eating meat is a crime, but alcohol abuse is as American as Apple Pie.

What about medical practitioners?

[tilly]

If you are a medical practitioner dealing with drug treatment, it is important for you have information about illegal drugs. Including how people prepare them. Otherwise you won't be able to talk to your patients, and people in treatment centers won't know what they need to look for and take away from their patients.

Are doctors to be banned from learning how to do their jobs?

(This is not so far-fetched. For much of the 1900's it was against the law for physicians to explain anything about birth control to their patients. Reflect on that for a bit...)

Cheers,
Ben

"Clean" geek's opinion.

[jabber]

I consider myself a 'clean' geek. I used to be 'clean and sober' until the age of 25, then I discovered that Sam Adams and Guinness were not like the other beers, but that's another story.

Anyway, as a 'clean' geek, I do not use any type of drug, and tend to not be around in person when they are being used. However, this Bill scares the crap out of me for the following reasons:

1. It's embedded, like a virus, on a completely unrelated piece of legislation. I see this as perversely unethical, and think that the sponsors of this Bill should be tarred and feathered in the Grand Old tradition reserved for anti-social hoodlums. The idea that some members of Congress expect to slide this regulation right under the noses of their peers, assuming that the latter are either asleep or too stupid to notice, is systemically offensive. The audacity of this should result in the Bill's sponsors excommunication from the political arena.

2. The speed with which society turned on smokers (I don't, both my parents puff 2 packs/day - it's an addiction, not a habit) means that no single substance is safe. All it takes is a few well placed comments by the right people, and your food coloring of choice, additive, flavor enhancer or whatever is likely to single you out as some depraved addict.

3. I NEED my morning coffee. I WANT my afternoon JOLT. I CRAVE my evening tea. (See #2)

4. I feel that (even though I do not partake of the bounty of Mother Nature to the same extent as others) no person really has the right to impose their standards and morality on what weeds a person adds to their diet in the privacy of their own home. Certainly, there are complications with operating heavy machinery and the reliable functioning safety critical professionals, but we've addressed these problems vis a vis alcohol already. Make being 'clean' a condition of employment where it's required, and let people make up their own minds.

5. To paraphrase Voltaire: 'I do not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' This is a FREE COUNTRY in name, and if this sort of Bill (see #1-#4) passes, it will be the height of hypocracy, and an embarassment before the rest of the world - like we really need to be laughed at again...

I'd keep going, but it would be redundant. This is a very huge issue, not just due to drugs but due to the doors it opens to the 'holier than thou' and the means by which it is being delivered into the Law of the Land. Disgusting!

the relevant Simpsons quote is:

[Pope]

Kent Brockman: With our utter annihilation imminent, our federal government has snapped into action. We go live now via satellite to the floor of the United States congress.

Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of --

Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.

Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill?
[everyone boos]

Speaker: Bill defeated. [bangs gavel]

Kent Brockman: I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

Hooray for enumerated powers

[/]

As you all recall because you all follow these events as closely as I do, the Supreme Court just handed down US v. Morrison, which reaffirms the proposition recently stated in US v Lopez that Congress has no business regulating anything that does not stem from an enumerated power in Article I or any of the amendments. Specifically, Congress isn't allowed to claim that anything that substantially implicates interstate commerce is regulatable as such; it actually has to be a form of commerce to qualify.

As if there weren't enough 1st amendment grounds for striking down the censorship provisions of this act, I suspect Congress would be hard pressed to demonstrate that nonprofit speech as such is a form of commerce, and this bill doesn't specify that the speech must be conducted through interstate channels to qualify.

This isn't an either-or question

[coyote-san]

This is *not* an either-or question. Many of the critics (including myself) agree that drug abuse is a major problem that needs to be fought with the full strength of our society -- but we feel that the current approach is the most fucked-up way to do it and that the person who thought it up must be... stoned!

Some quick examples:

1) Why on earth are we willing to spend *billions* of dollars incarcerating something like half of our prison population on minor drug charges - to say nothing of the immense social disruption in "supplier" countries - while treatment centers are so cash starved that an addict who really wants to stop must be put on a months-long waiting list?

2) Speaking of prison populations, why do we have an inverted policy that guarantees users and low-level dealers will serve 20-years-without-parole (to the point of giving violent criminals early paroles in order to free space for the smuck caught with an ounce of pot at the airport), while mid-level dealers with information to trade can negotiate lighter sentences?

3) Why do we have an official policy of convincing our children that they can never, ever trust someone in authority to tell them the truth? As one local critic (and county commissioner) observes, kids are *not* going to believe the horror stories about how bad horse is if they were told that one toke on a joint will make them insane, yet they took a toke and the hit was lighter than their first cigarette. That's why E is a problem today - many researchers thought it might have a valid medical use but the Feds knee-jerked yet again and declared it without any legitimate use. (The same thing can be said about LSD, btw). There's now some evidence that E *might* cause long-term problems, and definite evidence that street users need to be careful about heat exhaustion, but the authorities have lost all credibility so the message isn't getting out. Not only that, they are actively hostile to DanceSafe telling ravers what's really in their pills and what the consequences of them taking it will be.

There is no cold calculus that tells us you should see three friends die of overdoses to equate two units of civil authority, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a very real tradeoff here. I don't know where the line is, but I get *very* worried when the government tells me that I can't get the information necessary to make an informed decision in the voting booth.

But then again, I am a hard-ass on this. Were I President, I would have immediately called a press conference to announce that I had relunctantly accepted Barry McCaffrey's(sp?) resignation after he made some comment about the stupid, ignorant voters in California and Arizona passing state referendums contrary to the national drug policy. (The fact that he offered no resignation wouldn't stop me from accepting it :-) I often think election results are crazy, but I would rather have a hundred stupid referendums than a government that considers itself above the voters who elected it.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[reptilian]

> For example, harsher penalties for actually selling or posessing illegal drugs.

They couldn't get much harsher. That's part of the problem. There are some obvious things like prison overcrowding, but also more subtle things you wouldn't notice, such as 20% of African Americans being ineligible to vote due primarily to felony drug laws. Being convicted of a felony now also carries the penalty of being ineligible for foodstamps for the rest of your life (except in some states who have opted out of that, such as New York). Poor people are targeted much more, due most probably to ineffective legal defense, and denying them foodstamps, while they're poor, seems awfully strange to me, felon or not.

Stiffer penalties you say? At least consider the consequences before you add yet another racist, class-biased penalty to drug laws, besides the possibly naive notion that these things will help prevent drug use.

For the record, my personal opinion is that jailing people for drug use is a blatant human rights violation. Addiction is considered by almost everyone in medical professions to be a medical problem. We don't put people in jail for having AIDS, do we? Treat it as a medical problem, not a criminal one. Who knows, it might even just work.

I think most drugs are disgusting and I truly wish they didn't exist. I've had my own experiences with them, and many people close to me. My girlfriend is a cocaine addict, though she's been clean for about a year now (notice I used the present tense; you're never, ever a "former addict," it's for the rest of your life). However, despite my general disgust, I don't forsee any good coming out of this war on drugs no matter how stiff you make the penalties, and no matter how much of a police state you make it. Users will use. Help them stop, don't punish them when they learn from their mistakes.

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

> But to be a part of an "anti-anti-drug movement"
> is just too much. I've seen way too many lives
> destroyed by the horrors of real drugs.

However the anti-war on drugs movement isn't necissarily about just legalizing drugs so everyone can get smashed.

The idea is to change the focus from "prohibition" ie just saying "drugs are bad and you goto jail for having them" (which is, many times, a fate MORE harmful than the drugs alone ever were) over to educating people.

Many of the problems associated with drug use are a direct result of prohibition and black market economics. I am talking about adulturated drugs. I am talking about "turf wars" between rival drug sellers. I am talking about misinformation that is being given out by users and dealers alike. Even the fact that people are injecting heroine is a product of prohibition. Prohibition has driven the price up so high that IV injection is the only cost-effective way to use it.

Only through legalization and regulation can we reduce the harm associated with drugs. Prohibition has been PROVEN time and again to only drive problems underground and make problems worst.

It happend with Alcohol in the 1920s. It is happening today. There will ALWAYS be drug users. Its been part of human culture since the begining of time. You can't change human nature and society by handing down laws from "on high".

That is exactly what prohibition tries to do. That is exactly why it fails.

-Steve

Re:this REALLY concerns me....

[TheCarp]

> So you don't think weed laced with opium can
> lead to regular opium use which can lead to
> Heroin?

I get the feeling your are either mis-informed or a provocateur. NOONE is going around selling "weed laced with opium" to anyone without telling them.

Why? Simple its just NOT economical. Weed is an incredibly cheap drug (as far as street drugs go). Lacing it with opium would raise the cost to the seller...which means he would have to somehow justify his price increase.

While theoretically your scenario is POSSIBLE. It is highly IMPROBABLE and in my experience (I am a drug user and know alot of drug users) it simple does NOT happen outside of the most isolated of incidents.

Also...were it legal...this wouldn't happen. See those who believe in legalization also believe in some form of regulation...much like medicine is now. Force them to put quantities and ingredients on everything.

> You don't think that E laced with coke leads
> to regular usage of coke? Don't tell me
> that it doesn't and don't point to studies.
> I've lived it and the story is the same
> everytime.

hmmm the more I read from you, the less I believe that you have "lived it". Dealers don't just go around randomly lacing things...and they don't go doing it for the purpose of "hooking" people.

They do NOT need to create more demand...they get PLENTY of buisness as it is. Secondly, coke is not physically addictive (only mentally) so "laced E" would not produce a real cocaine addiction.

Again, lacing would be illegal if drugs were legal and regulated. Just like it would be illegal for bayer to put acetominiphen (paracetamol for the brits) without adding it to the ingredients label.

this REALLY concerns me....

[fluxrad]

for two reasons.

1) I am a drug using geek. I think it's pretty hypocritical for people to be "anti-drug" and then go out and get hammered on a saturday night. Yes, we geeks really care! Why? Because there is a substantial cross section of geek culture that also participates in recreational drug use. Be that Alcohol, Marijuana, Mushrooms, or whatever. The anti-anti-drug movement has come so far, why stop fighting? Anyone who agrees with me needs to show their true colors and say something about it!!

2) Most importantly, this is a freedom of speech issue. It's illegal to own fireworks where i live, yet you can find all sorts of information about making them and using them on the internet. Why aren't sites like these being banned? Marijuana is legal in several countries around the world (Most noteably, the city of Amsterdam). There is even a bill to allow cultivation there. So - what's the difference between fireworks and drugs? Simple - drugs are unpopular so the politicians think they can get a bill passed to censor sites like the Lycaeum. IT'S STILL CENSORSHIP!!!

I don't care if you're a geek, a hippy, or a fundamentalist christian....this isn't just a drug issue. If you don't fight censorship wherever it rears its ugly head - you'll find that, when it comes time for you to be censored yourself, there's no one left to fight!


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

prior restraint is unconstitutional

[EricEldred]

Last I looked at the Constitution of the U.S., prior restraint on publication was not allowed. I seem to remember the First Amendment referring to "no law," not "any law that is restricted to drugs, child pornography, infant baptism, etc."

What this means is the government is not supposed to prohibit anyone from publishing information, only that if the publication is not protected by the First Amendment (Holmes's "crying fire in the theatre") then the police can arrest you. A few of us oldtimers can remember the Pentagon Papers case, where The New York Times and The Washington Post had to go to the Supreme Court to establish their right to publish those papers, which the federal government claimed would violate our national security.

I would like to learn from anybody in the Denver area who could tell me what happened in the Tattered Cover Bookstore case. A few months ago a squad of police arrived there with a search warrant to go through their credit card records. They said they had found a receipt concerning a book on how to produce illegal drugs, at an empty methamphetamine lab.

The owner refused the police demands and got a writ from a court to stop the search. But I never heard what happened afterward. Her argument was that such a search would invade not only her rights as a bookseller to preserve privacy of clients, but also the right of the public to buy and read books no matter what. Perhaps if the issue pertained to web pages and ISPs then some computer geeks would make more noise.

It appears that this new attempt to amend the law is an effort to strengthen the hands of the police in such a case. I hope it is rejected by Congress. But I don't have any faith in their ability to read and understand the Constitution. If it passes, then I hope it is challenged by brave people like the owner of the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver.

Have you read the "Bill of Rights Lite"?

[w00ly_mammoth]

written by john Perry Barlow, co-founder of the EFF. Probably more relevant than ever. The original NY times article is here

Amendment 1

Congress shall encourage the practice of Judeo-Christian religion by its own public exercise thereof and shall make no laws abridging the freedom of responsible speech, unless such speech is in a digitized form or contains material which is copyrighted, classified, proprietary, or deeply offensive to non-Europeans, non-males, differently-abled or alternatively preferenced persons; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, unless such assembly is taking place on corporate or military property or within an electronic environment, or to make petitions to the Government for a redress of grievances, unless those grievances relate to national security.

Amendment 2

A well-regulated Militia having become irrelevant to the security of the State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms against one another shall nevertheless remain uninfringed, excepting such arms as may be afforded by the poor or those preferred by drug pushers, terrorists, and organized criminals, which shall be banned.

No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, unless that house is thought to have been used for the distribution of illegal substances.

Amendment 4

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers. and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, may be suspended to protect public welfare, and upon the unsupported suspicion of law enforcement officials, any place or conveyance shall be subject to immediate search, and any such places or conveyances or property within them may be permanently confiscated without further judicial proceeding.

Amendment 5

Any person may be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime involving illicit substances, terrorism, or child pornography, or upon any suspicion whatever; and may be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, once by the State courts and again by the Federal Judiciary; and may be compelled by various means, including the forced submission of breath samples, bodily fluids, or encryption keys, to be a witness against himself, refusal to do so constituting an admission of guilt; and may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without further legal delay; and any property thereby forfeited shall be dedicated to the discretionary use of law enforcement agents.

Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and private plea bargaining session before pleading guilty. He is entitled to the Assistance of underpaid and indifferent Counsel to negotiate his sentence, except where such sentence falls under federal mandatory sentencing requirements.

Amendment 7

In Suits at common law, where the contesting parties have nearly unlimited resources to spend on legal fees, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.

Amendment 8

Sufficient bail may be required to ensure that dangerous criminals will remain in custody, where cruel punishments are usually inflicted.

Amendment 9

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others which may be asserted by the Government as required to preserve public order, family values, or national security.

Amendment 10

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, shall be reserved to the United States Departments of Justice and Treasury, except when the States are willing to forsake federal funding.