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Just Say No To Reading About Drugs
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."
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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
__
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.
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!".__
>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.
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.
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.
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?
you can read more that the lycaeum.
Unless the bill becomes law.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
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.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
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.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
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.
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. :-)
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Well actually I was'nt referring to you specifically, since you were just repeating one common meme often seen here.
By 'regulated', they probably meant fat, heinous, stupid, racist, irrational like a NRA member.
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.
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.
The NRA *really* needs help ... DUH
1st amendment -- freedom of speech
2nd amendment -- freedom of threat
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.
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
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
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
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.
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.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
That's a situation where these riders probably cost lives.
The only wasted vote is for a candidate that you do not believe in.
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
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.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
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
-Cheetah
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
...and if only those people had been punished (i.e. imprisoned, fined, or whatever) by the government, they would have been better off?
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.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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?
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
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
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:
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
-- "Religion is for those who fear hell, spirituality is for those who have been there."
I did not know that! +1 informative :)
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.
> 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.
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?
>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.
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?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
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.
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.
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.
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.
0x or or snor perron?!
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
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
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'.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
"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.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
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
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
"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!
Remove the spam reference to email
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.
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.
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).
www.azstartnet.com/~rovedo/mph2c.html - military police history - has this entry:
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).
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
"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.
War is necrophilia.
"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.
War is necrophilia.
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.
War is necrophilia.
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.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
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.
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.
This is very, very rare - accidental firearms deaths rank well behind drownings, fires, even poisoning, as a cause of death.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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:
I'm sending the ACLU some money, and writing my Congresscritter, tomorrow.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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:
chmod("/people/rights/keep_and_bear_arms",0x544);
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The only withdrawal symptoms I've had are reverting back to a state of irritability and lack of concentration. 8|
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
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.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
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.
;-) sorry
As far as the numbers go, I really haven't a clue
Spyky
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?"
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
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
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:
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:
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:
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."
--
This is not my sandwich.
"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...
AdFuel
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
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.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
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?
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
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
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
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/
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> From first hand experience I can tell you that
....but after noon no more. At night? never. As for soda, I switched to ginger ale.
> 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
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> 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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> 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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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).
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> First off, let me make it clear that while I
:) mmmm
> 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.
> 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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> 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)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Please, in the future, don't leave out or gloss details like this!
We're on the road to Tycho.
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!!!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
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,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
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.
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.
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
...will work for Chick tracts...
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
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Look ma, I just shut down Slashdot.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
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.
How does this work, since in principle it seems to be in violation of the first amendment?
What about sites that link to sites that link to information about the manufacture of drugs?
:^P
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?
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.
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 to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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)
-----------------------------
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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?
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.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
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.
I can see the fnords!
That's not entirely factual.
h tml
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.s
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.
-- "Religion is for those who fear hell, spirituality is for those who have been there."
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.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
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.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
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.
... 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.
...
My understanding is that scoring and scraping poppy pods is rather labor intensive
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
- bridgette
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".
War is necrophilia.
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.
--
This is not my sandwich.
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
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?
Free Hans!
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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
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?
Fight Spammers!
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 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!!!
OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!!
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.
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
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.
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.
"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
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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 )
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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
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.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
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
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
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!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
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!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
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!
:-) 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.
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
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
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> 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
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> 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.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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.
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.