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Mexico Decriminalizes Small-Scale Drug Possession
Professor_Quail notes an AP story that begins, "Mexico enacted a controversial law Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency. The law sets out maximum 'personal use' amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect Friday." An official in the attorney general's office said, "This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty... for a practice that was already in place." In 2006, the US criticized a similar bill that had no provisions for mandatory treatment, and the then-president sent it back to Congress for reconsideration.
Now if only the USA would follow suit and end this madness.
Prohibition II may soon be over.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Ending prohibition of drugs would eliminate the underground market, would stop the funding of terrorist groups, would do MORE for treating drug addicts, and would save the billions currently spent annually on prohibition and incarceration of drug offenders. We need to treat drug use and drug abuse as a health issue, not a criminal issue. We need free choice for consenting adults, not a nanny-state solution imposed by the government.
Unless the drug trade is legalized, the gangs and drug cartels will always hold a monopoly on its sale. Decriminalizing minor possession does nothing but keep users on the street where they can continue to fund the gangs.
Mexico is in the middle of a huge drug war. The fighting is real and assassinations and kidnapping are frequent occurrences. This step seems to be a way of curbing the violence by letting users stay out of the prisons.
You aren't ever going to win the battle against weeds by cutting the leaves off. You need to pull the plant out by the root.
How to build and support a R.A.I.D. (redundant array of independent (drug) dealers).
Now dealers will have backups and if one gets taken down, don't worry! There's another one that can be brought 'online' to do his workload. And it's all legal since they each only deal in small amounts!
Just remember: RAID != BACKUP!!
You still have to deal with disreputable dealers, drugs which are laced with filler or worse, and the dangerous pain in the ass that scoring drugs usually is.
Legalize selling small quantities of these drugs and we will all be alot better off.
Score a bag of pot if you don't believe me.
Small-scale drug possession means realistic-scale drug possession for Barbie and Ken.
Well considering the smallest amount normally sold in North America is on average 100mg, (0.1g), does this mean all meth users are going to be criminals regardless?
With some positive results. Drug dealers still go to jail, but addicts go to treatment centers. Their main goal was to reduce deaths due to overdose which, five years later dropped as well as users infected by dirty needles. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
The problem will likely be that they won't legalize the sale. If they only allow enough for personal use, the traditional dealers are out, and if they don't let people get licenses to sell or let doctors prescribe it (what doctor would prescribe meth? coke maybe.. but meth?) then the point of allowing possesion is sort of like DVDs and DECSS. "Sure, you can make backup copies! But no, sorry, you can't sell the software that can make them."
I take that back about prescribing meth:
http://www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Health_Services/Health_Education/atod/od_meth.html
"Some people are prescribed methamphetamine for the treatment of narcolepsy or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. However, these are limited uses and the doses are much lower than doses that are typically used illegally."
But my original point remains.
Legalization is necessary; our society simply can't keep paying for prosecuting and incarcerating non-violent drug users, or the criminal activity resulting from the drug trade. However, full legalization is going to be tough: both drug dealers and drug enforcement agencies (including the UN) have a strong financial interest in keeping drugs illegal. And the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs makes it hard for any single nation to change the status quo. That's one of the reasons why it's been hard for any nation to legalize drugs.
Like decriminalizing heroin is such a good idea. The decriminalization arguements go for marijuana, not the other drugs.
You aren't ever going to win the battle against weeds by cutting the leaves off. You need to pull the plant out by the root.
I'm no botanist, but I'm pretty sure most plants die if you cut all their leaves off. But yes I agree with your larger point. Unless a legitimate trade can be established, this will do nothing to stop the illegitimate trade.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
I hate it when people complain about the things the government is doing to them. As long as we have a government that is some entity separate from the people, then you can bitch all you want but the government won't listen to you. (Sure you can lobby your representative. Just bring a dozen hookers and a huge briefcase of money and they might listen for a minute.)
The solution is to change the way we interact with government. Are you ready for an open source government? Or do you want to whine some more about how the government should change when you know damn well it wont?
If Mexico is able to show good results with this, maybe it will make sense to look at doing something similar in the US. At least someone in North America is trying it.
Of course, San Francisco is ignoring marijuana for personal use, as is Canada (as mentioned by someone else in an earlier comment), but I do not think marijuana is the "problem drug" from which we need to help people recover. Given a choice between marijuana and alcohol, I think we would do better paying more attention to alcohol. Similarly, given the choice between marijuana and crack/meth/heroin/etc., I think marijuana is not the larger problem.
Todd
Note for employers: I do not use any illicit drugs.
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Posession of less than an ounce of BC bud is essentially legal. If you get caught with some pot the cops will take it and possibly give you a ticket. Everyone knows cops get the best dope, and coffee and doughnuts are great munchies.
I think decriminalization is a good first step, but if selling drugs is still illegal then gangs will still have their main source of income intact. At least police will have more time to focus on crimes that harm others..
The war on drugs is over. Everybody lost.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Small amounts of drugs, small amounts being defined as anything under a 1000 kilos, are now considered legal in Mexico. Mexican drug lords vowed to fight the new laws pushing for more reasonable limits of 10,000 kilos of cocaine and 100,000 kilos of pot.
and america got mad rattled its checkbook and threatened to take away billions in aid money and they backed off.
What are the chances they wont just give in again
That's a nice try, but the drugs are still illegal and non regulated = murder, black market, corrpution.
Barbarous? For an agent of a foreign power (Libya) to kill civilians of a power they dislike? Really? That's just war.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
many plants have enough energy stored in the rest of the plant to bud more leaves. the cherry tree in my front yard is one of them.
Total decriminalization of drugs has been tried in Portugal since 2001, and by all accounts has been a raging success by just about any metric you care to use. I'm happy to see other countries jumping on board the clue train, not that I expect to see something similar in the US for the foreseeable future.
For more on the Portuguese experience, see: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/14/portugal/
Why is this news for nerds? As a nerd I try to remain rational and therefor to absorb the world as clear as possible. Drugs just don't fit in.
I have tried marijuana a couple of times to fit in with the others and to experiment the sensation. Sure I had a few great laughs but the effects on the awareness are horrible and take long to completely get out of your system. I'd have a similar story for alcohol.
Although I sympathize with less zealous drugs policies because tougher ones do not solve the problem -which possibly isn't truly there- but just create more criminals, I cannot see why this is of relevance in a nerds forum.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Calderon is a conservative politician who hates the drug business. He hates it so much that he actually unleashed the Mexican army against the drug cartel. Unfortunately for him, the cartel has tremendous firepower (smuggled from the United States) and fought the army in the streets. The army hurt the dominant cartels just enought to splinter them. Now, the splinters are fighting each other.
Calderon is probably rethinking whether he can actually win the drug war. This decriminalization may be the first sign that he is accepting the fact that narcotics is an integral part of Mexican culture.
Back in the 70s, Dexedrine was prescribed for weight control. A chubby GF was an asset. Usual dose was 10 mg per day and Valium was the come down drug if you overdid the Dexedrine.
Both were easily obtained, legally.
Ok, all of yours like to legalize drugs. You see this law with the light of US law enforcement, where things are always "perfect". I live in Mexico, and this will be just another excuse for cops avoid to do their work and let people sell drugs on streets, as it happens now. This only will encourage drug groups for sell more and more drugs always under the "dangerous size" and with time to not fear cops or any law enforcement groups . Like happens in Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and the rest of the country.
It's easy for you say "bring me the drugs", you don't fear everyday to end in middle of a gun shooting for drug wars. Or a stoned dude does a silly thing like jump in the subway or harm you for money for get the "personal share" of drugs. You live so far of those troubles and of course is easy to say that, so you need drugs to "spark" your mediocre lifes. Bunch of hypocrites.
I'll surprised if this won't be cut off of the site. :P
Kudos to Mexicans and their government!
The drug war is one of the most inhumane, counterproductive, unethical, and mostly illegal uses of government power in the course of human history. It kills, injures, and incarcerates millions of people worldwide, strips people of their hard-won rights, and provides money to illicit/secret government programs.
May this be the start of the end of this horrible chapter in human history.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
It's time for SANE drug laws. No Jail For Pot
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Mafia - Cartels
Rum Runners - Drug Mules
Same Problem, Same Solution
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law, For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Albert Einstein - 1921
Seriously when was the last time someone got shot in a Beer Sale Gone Wrong?
That was my first thought too. They're going to increase demand and not address supply? Who do they expect to produce the drugs? If anything, they should turn a blind-eye to production. It sounds crazy, but if possession remained a serious crime and demand was met by government protected suppliers, the cartels would have no source of revenue. After all, isn't drug use the argument against legalization?
In reality, that would result in unprecedented corruption and hostility with the US. But decriminalizing possession will probably do the same thing. American tourists are going to provide cartels with a lot more money and power. It's hard enough to control Mexican organized crime, this is going to make it much worse.
News for Geeks? Huh? Why is this here?
For another interesting datapoint, MDMA (aka ecstasy) is FDA approved for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Sure, many may die if you cut all the leaves off, but most? Probably not. And there are many factors to consider too. If you cut all the leaves off a maple or a tamarack in Vermont in November, the effect won't be very significant at all. But even if you cut all the leaves off a tropical plant in a regular tropical environment for example, the plant may very well die, but also may very well just lose a lot of its mass but in turn sprout some new leaves built from the nutrients stored in its stems and roots.
You could cut a gymnosperm tree clean down (let alone cut off all the leaves), but then you may yet see a little sprout come up from the stump -- the same organism.
A mexican one
Well to be honest, I'm not entirely sure it matters what someone did when it comes to humanitarian grounds. I'm also not sure I support humanitarian releases at all, but that's a different issue.
If it mattered what they did, we'd just give them a shorter sentence. Really I think it comes down to what you believe the justice system is for. I believe in its use for prevention, protection, and rehabilitation. When a man is about to die, prevention and protection are achieved naturally and rehabilitation is pointless. Unfortunately, most in my country seem to think vengeance is the most important role it plays. Of course this is all down to opinions, and it's not for anyone to say whose is correct.
When you combine it with the pretty flimsy evidence on this guy, I can't really bring myself to condemn his release.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Hopefully this time they won't give in to pressure from the U.S.
Legalize drugs, give me my freedom back, and watch every drug cartel implode overnight--as well as ending the civil wars in Columbia and Afghanistan.
Just sayin'.
expandfairuse.org
I don't know why I bother replying, but...
First, "Drug cartels" is not a monopoly. There are more than one.
Second, look at the tobacco industry. Tobacco has always been legal, but people who profit from human suffering at that scale have always been, and will always be, scum. Sure, legal drug cartels might finance fewer gangs, but they'd finance more lobbyists instead.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
There would be some text here if I had something else to say, but I don't. I'm really just giving the lazy moderators a chance to see the parent post because I have the karma to burn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
AP piece says 0.015 mg of LSD, or 15 ug, a ineffective dose of LSD. 60-100 ug is common for street doses. Perhaps the AP misread the law and its 150 ug, a more realistic number compared to the other amounts.
There is one tiny way in which this small-scale legalization can help. It could allow small-time users of marijuana to keep a plant around, and not require them to interact with and feed the drug traders. It would probably make the whole process a little safer for them too, since they would know exactly what's in the stuff they are smoking. It might reduce the frequency of said people "upgrading" to stronger drugs, which in my opinion is a pretty big win.
I've taken dexadrine for the last 20 years for ADHD. Couldn't think without it. Legally prescribed by a shrink.
This will increase demand, while not allowing legal supply to increase. It WILL be filled by gangs.
If we really want to stop drug abuse, either crack down (and it WILL require a major cost increase; read lots more taxes) OR legalize it and tax it JUST LIKE WE DID BOOZE. Heck, back in the 1981, I use to buy a gallon of ethanol for under a 1.5. How? For our chem lab. It had ZERO tax against it (and just a tiny amount of methanol to poisin it). OTH, at that time, simple everclear cost 20/gal, the majority being tax. It should be that same way for drugs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Things are bad in Mexico right now because of the warring drug cartels, but it's hard to say how this new law will affect them. I feel it's the a step in the right direction though, because hopefully law enforcement will be able to focus on more important things like busting the dealers and leaving the consumers out of this whole mess.
I wrote gymnosperm but I should have wrote angiosperm.
I have to agree with you on this one... except that I've recently discovered that the War on Drugs in Mexico is now being fought by killer Robots, and is indeed news for nerds.
Obviously, you've never had to fight drugs yourself. If you want to win, you need to cut off the flowers.
Summer -> Autumn -> Winter -> Spring ?
They're going to increase demand and not address supply?
There's no proof that legalisation (or decriminalisation) increases demand, especially considering two of the countries with the highest rates of cannabis use are the United States and New Zealand at >20%, and Portugal and the Netherlands have 10% rates, I could come to the conclusion that you have no idea of what you are talking about.
This is news for the USA?
Of course something similar (just for wiet/weed/etc) has been going on in the Netherlands for years.
With generally positive effects to public order and safety.
meth is not schedule I, look it up. its indicated for narcolepsy, rare, but it is a recognised medical use.
The US has the largest number of people incarcerated. Period. Yes, MORE people are in jail in the US then in China or India. Countries with populations over a billion. (4-5 times the population).
Granted, China's figures might not be accurate, but India is a democracy. Not a perfect one and India has many wrongs but still, the figures say a lot about the US of A.
Then again, in far more liberal countries, the crime figures are really not all that different.
Personal use has been legal in holland for some time, and we still got crime and crime-ridden area's.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not your website, ignore the story or fuck off somewhere johnny.
From the looks of it, the drug menace had the side effect of bribing at the petty levels. This should get eliminated. Should also lead to a (likely) greater focus on the real fight that is with the organized gangs rather than action against individual addicts. Additionally the government sponsored deaddiction programs will lead to lesser sales on the streets. Theoretically a good twin move. Practically, the implementation will decide the outcome (if the lower levels of police are still not on the job of fighting the bigger menace, or the deaddiction program has maginal impact).
'Cause programmers love drugs. Or so stereotypes say. Hackers, on the other hand, DEFINITELY love drugs.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
It's okay. We're all giggling like schoolgirls either way.
It does redirect police resources though, as they no longer spend excessive amounts of time dealing with end-users and all the paperwork that goes with such an arrest. At least that was the reason cannabis possession was initially decriminalised in Brixton a few years back, followed by a reclassification nationwide in UK which was unfortunately reversed this year by politicians against the advice of their own advisors and police.
It's not actually 100% certain that he was involved and he's dying of cancer. People that lost someone in the bombing agree with the move so why does it bother you?
A large chunk of people bang on about the US being a Christian nation. Well fucking act like it for once and quit acting like a bunch of extremist terrorist mouth breathers.
When a man is about to die, prevention and protection are achieved naturally and rehabilitation is pointless.
I'll agree with you on protection and rehabilitation. However, on prevention, you can still use the man as an example for prevention. i.e. Prevention of other people from committing the same crime. If you give someone a sentence and actually follow through with the sentence, then it should serve as a deterent to prevent others from committing the same crime.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
...but not there completely.
They still need to legalize production and trade of soft-drugs (marijuana for example), this will cause the price to collapse and will allow the government to check the quality of the products.
Legalizing soft-drugs completely also allows the government to track the production and trade, which could expose the gangs even further.
However, allowing people to posses small amounts of drugs makes it easier for those with a drug issue to look for help.
Both THC and psylocibin are known to NOT cause addiction. Also, users of these drugs do NOT show aggressive behavior (unlike with other drugs, especially alcohol (yep, that's right, that's one of the worst)). In light of this, I think it's high time to completely legalize the production, sale and consumption of these drugs. If that happened, I would expect that the consumption of the "harder" drugs would decrease as well, for two reasons:
1) Some people won't need the harder drugs, if they can access these other two aplenty.
2) By legalizing these drugs, of which marijuana is a very popular one, we reduce the contact between users and illegal dealers, who have a vested interest in encouraging the use of harder drugs such as cocaine, heroine etc.
I was quite depressed a couple of years ago, and the psychiatrist wanted to prescribe me an anti-depressant. Instead of using the prescription, I decided to educate myself on anti-depressants, and what I found was, well, depressing: not a single anti-depressant on sale is safe to use. They all have side effects that are either nasty or very nasty. But psylocibin and THC are both excellent anti-depressants (practically the most effective ones), and have NO side effects. This is when I started to become a supporter of legalization of these drugs.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Do you want proof that your government has sold you out to big business? You need look no further than the drug laws we have to see just exactly how evil our leadership has become. We are nothing to these people, they don't care for freedom or humanity. They are slavers.
I wonder how much of our great music has been written "under the Influence"
Summer -> Autumn -> Winter -> Spring ?
profit!
Legalizing supply is made difficult in Mexico due to international agreements, even in the summary it said previous attempts at this legislation met with US led opposition. unilaterally legalizing production would bring trade embargo's if not actual invasion by the US.
It's kind of inevitable really with a cheap legal supply in Mexico the profits to be made smuggling into the USA would be huge. Although some licensed cultivation might be possible. For example in Lincolnshire in the UK opium poppies were grown in fields near the county show ground for medicinal use. The surprising thing was nobody appeared to have raided the fields which were easily accessible from the roadside.
It's rather obvious that the tatic of prosecuting users is a failure use still occurs and society still gets the consequences of thefts prostitution and ruined lives. The logical solution is to take control of the supply and remove the black market. Unfortunately its highly unlikely that there is the political will for this to occur even though the reduction in crime is an obvious benefit.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I'm not sure I get how this will automatically reduce violent drug crime. Who is going to provide these small amounts of drugs? Take pot, for example. It's still illegal to grow pot. It's still illegal to distribute pot. It's still illegal to possess more than a few joints. You won't be picking up your joints at the pharmacy, so where are you going to get them? The only thing that has changed, is that law enforcement is being told to leave casual end users alone, and to instead focus their attention on the producers and distributors. This isn't really "legalization", this is just a shift in priorities. Violent drug crime in Mexico won't decrease, and we'll subsequently see Mexico bandied about as an example of the fact that drug legalization doesn't work, when in fact no real legalization has actually taken place.
Decriminalisation is no substitute for legalisation. In fact, in my view, it is actually worse than putting resources into enforcing the law, both from the perspective of society and from the perspective of drug law reform.
Instead of creating a legal industry of suppliers, decriminalisation keeps all supply in the black market. For gangsters, decriminalisation is a license to grow money, because users won't be harassed by the police. All of the problems of the black market continue to exist and get worse. This means more crime.
In turn, this means that prohibitionists* can point to "failed decriminalisation experiments" as evidence that drugs should not be legalised. I have heard Alaska, the Netherlands and Portugal used in exactly this way; if the drugs had been fully legalised, the prohibitionists might not be able to point to increases of certain social problems, objections of local people, etc. Far from being a stepping stone towards legalisation, decriminalisation is a step backwards.
* I am not one of these people.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Perl was obviously created while under the influence.
In the early part of the 20th Century, you could not corner the market for pain relief. People had access to opiates and cannabis and coca products, which were cheap, natural, and if you weren't an addict, perfectly effective.
Since the prohibition of these drugs, there has been a network of businesses that have profited immensely. Pharmaceuticals, who effectively eliminated competition, profited early on. They get to sell pain relief with products which are still derived from the same natural source, but have the benefits of being riddled with horrible side effects and hundreds of times more expensive for the consumer.
Then the CIA discovered a fantastic way to fund their unconstitutional undercover operations. They could use the US military to transport the drugs they bought for peanuts in Columbia to fund all kinds of insane bullshit around the world, and they wouldn't have to consult any committee because they didn't need their money.
Now, private prisons are all over the country, and all of the sudden we have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the known world. (We also have the highest per capita health care cost in the world. Get the picture?) Prison guard unions, manufacturers of certain products, and I'll bet even commercial building lobbyists make damn sure the politicians deliver on promises to "clean up the streets," which is code for throw undesirably poor people in jail. Of course, we do need somewhere to throw our mentally ill citizens, why not mix in the schizophrenics with non-violent drug offenders and murderers and rapists and white collar criminals and see what happens?
So, the winners in the drug war are huge corporations that make a profit when someone is punished, when someone needs pain relief, and also the unconstitutional CIA.
As Plato said, "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library%5Ctlcnr.cfm
Switzerland's Heroin Experiment
Nadelmann, Ethan, "Switzerland's Heroin Experiment." National Review. July 10, 1995: pp. 46-47.
The Swiss government is selling heroin to hard-core drug users. But in doing so the government isn't offhandedly facilitating drug abuse: it's conducting a national scientific experiment to determine whether prescribing heroin, morphine, and injectable methadone will save Switzerland both money and misery by reducing crime, disease, and death.
The Swiss deal with drug users much as the U.S. and other countries do--prisons, drug-free residential treatment programs, oral methadone, etc.--but they also know that these approaches are not enough. They first tried establishing a "Needle Park" in Zurich, an open drug scene where people could use drugs without being arrested. Most Zurichers, including the police, initially regarded the congregation of illicit drug injectors in one place as preferable to scattering them throughout the city. But the scene grew unmanageable, and city officials closed it down in February 1992. A second attempt faced similar problems and was shut down in March 1995.
So Needle Park wasn't the solution, but the heroin-prescription program might be. In it, 340 addicts receive a legal supply of heroin each day from one of the nine prescribing programs in eight different cities. In addition, 11 receive morphine, and 33 receive injectable methadone. The programs accept only "hard-core" junkies--people who have been injecting for years and who have attempted and failed to quit. Participants are not allowed to take the drug home with them. They have to inject on site and pay 15 francs at approximately $13 per day for their dose.
The idea of prescribing heroin to junkies in hopes of reducing both their criminal activity and their risk of spreading AIDS and other diseases took off in 1991. Expert scientific and ethical advisory bodies were established to consider the range of issues. The International Narcotics Control Board--a United Nations organization that oversees international antidrug treaties--had to be convinced that the Swiss innovation was an experiment, which is permitted under the treaty, rather than an official shift in policy. In Basel, opponents of the initiative demanded a city-wide referendum--in which 65 per cent of the electorate approved a local heroin-prescription program. The argument that swayed most people was remarkably straightforward: only a controlled scientific experiment could determine whether prescribing heroin to addicts is feasible and beneficial.
The experiment started in January 1994. The various programs differ in some respects, although most provide supplemental doses of oral methadone, psychological counseling, and other assistance. Some are located in cities like Zurich, others in towns like Thun, which sits at the foot of the Bernese Alps. Some provide just one drug, while others offer a choice. Some allow clients to vary their dose each day, while others work with clients to establish a stable dosage level. One of the programs in Zurich is primarily for women. The other Zurich program permits addicts to take home heroin-injected cigarettes known as reefers, or "sugarettes," (since heroin is called "sugar" by Swiss junkies). It also conducted a parallel experiment in which 12 clients were prescribed cocaine reefers for up to 12 weeks. The results were mixed, with many of the participants finding the reefers unsatisfying. However, since more than two-thirds of Swiss junkies use cocaine as well as heroin, the Swiss hope to refine the cocaine experiment in the future.
The national experiment is designed to answer a host of questions that also bubble up in debates over drug policy in the United States, but that our drug-war blinders force us to ignore. Can junkies stabilize their drug use if they are assured of a legal, safe, and stable source of heroin? Can they hold down
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What happens to those who are currently imprisoned on possession charges?
...news for medicine, sociology, political, economy and even military nerds.
You don't have to use drugs to be indirectly or even directly influenced by its use.
Nor is there need for you to use drugs to be interested in the aspects of its influence on the society.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So high that he read "nerds" as "Geeks".
You sir, are a hypocritical, and potentially illiterate, coward.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This brings back memories of 'Requiem for a Dream,' which, I should add, is possibly the saddest movie I've ever seen.
No I won't advertise it. That's Peter Tosh's job http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhTf2C2N5OU
Look I think its great that Mexico will prioritize sending drug addicts to rehab instead of prison. However I don't think that's the real problem at all. The real problem is that drugs are illegal, and criminals with guns make tons of money. Drug abuse is made unnecessarily more unsafe due to lack of regulation (people often die from bad heroin or heroin that is too pure from what is commonly on the street). But the problem affects EVERYONE not just users.
Take California for instance. I was reading about marijuana grow shacks set up in California off-grid using diesel generators to power the grow-lights. (The marijuana was grown in a shack to conceal it from police-airplanes) and someone was just setting these probably very profitable grow shacks all over the place to run themselves and going back to collect the product. The unscrupulous farmers were sloppy and the diesel fuel ended up contaminating nearby waterways. This kind of thing could simply be avoided. Farmers do grow tobacco and tomatoes under the sun on the farms that they live on, and if it is legalized, taxed and sold in stores, production can be regulated.
Also do we really want a world where the most powerful people are drug-dealing crime lords? Drug *illegalization* encourages corruption. Police in Mexico and the USA are routinely bought by big dealers. Who knows how high up the political chain the drug money goes? They say there is more cocaine on bills in Washington, DC than in any other place in the USA. Perhaps coke-addicted politicians are made to do favors to crime lords to get their fix?
I'm not really in favor of drugs. Do Phillip-Morris and Anheuser-Busch bring a net benefit on society? I am sure there are some unknown things about legalization of drugs that would be downright scary. However the known dangers of illegalization are worse than any possible danger I can imagine. These dangers mostly affect non-drug users (shootings, political corruption, increased crime). Good step Mexico, but it's a baby step. Perhaps we can lead the way for our southern brothers and sisters by ending Prohibition in the USA.
(A conflicting message: Don't do drugs, except of course for the ones we advertise on TV.)
"Hell, everything's legal in Mexico. It's the American way."
- Uncle Jimbo, South Park
http://www.quoteaddict.com/
Here's something that amazes me about the war on drugs. The USA learnt the hard way that prohibition couldn't work. Yet even after learning their lesson they still tried the same fucking thing over again. It's been a continuous failure for decades, but it's still going on. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", but everyone remembers the prohibition. Everyone knows who Al Capone is, and everyone knows who Manuel Noriega or Pablo Escobar are, yet we fail to draw the parallels.
Well the problem is that in order to do the necessary changes you need the public opinion to back you strongly, and an administration with the political capital to make that happen. So it's no wonder it didn't happen before when political campaigns made the war on drug seem like a desirable thing, but for all we know the American public opinion may be soon ready for that to happen.
You just got troll'd!
Mexico will see a spike in tourism very soon.
Read the bible sometime - it's full of god-ordered genocides, god-ordered rapes and pillaging, god-ordered hostility to other beliefs, god-ordered hatred of gays, lesbians, transexuals, transgendered, women who refuse to take their husbands' words as commandments, god-ordered assaults on infants (circumcision), god-ordered killing of your own offspring as a "test of faith", god-ordered stupidity in general. The bible is hate literature.
If you want to be a scientist, you study science.
If you want to be a doctor, you study medicine.
If you want to be a lawyer, you study law.
So what do you expect from people who spend so much time studying hate literature like the bible? They become haters. Xenophobes. Zealots. What bible-thumpers need is a good thumping with their bible.
Most states require that I, as a manager, offer an employee a treatment option if I suspect that a performance issue is due to a problem with alcohol. However, if they have I think it is a problem with 'illegal' drugs I can fire them right away.
Socially we view alcohol addition as a moral weakness, but treat it as a medical problem. How about we join the modern world and do the same with all substance abuse problems?
more cowbell
I don't use drugs because they are illegal. My employer could terminate my employment, I could be jailed, etc. If drugs were legalized, then there would be no barrier (however artificial) for me to start using drugs. Maybe I enjoy it and starts affecting my productivity, my way of life, I become addicted, etc. So while this might be in the minority, there are a number of citizens who are not using drugs for the sole reason that they are NOT legal. Legalizing them would remove this barrier and actually cause more drug use. I am not saying that is horrible, but it is a side-effect that is seldom brought up.
Instead of News: Mexico Decriminalizes Small-Scale Drug Possession on Sunday August 23, @01:12AM. I was about to start browsing Dice for New Mexico jobs.
Look, back in the 70/80, we did the kind of decriminalization on pot. I was part of that. My dorm floor was bringing in a BALE of pot a week at NIU and selling it . Why? Because the price DOUBLED overnight to450 for a lb of maui wowie, when police announced that they would not pursue small amounts. we could easily hide the bail. All that was needed was to test for paraquat. What will happen now, is that Mexican gang will get MORE MONEY, so they will expand efforts in Mexico making things wore. Decriminalization is the WORSE thing that they can do. It should legalized.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Now I know where to go for spring break
From article: "The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for âoepersonal useâ under the new law is 5 grams â" the equivalent of about four marijuana cigarettes."
Jeez, those must be 4 huge joints.
As the states are going bankrupt or nearly bankrupt, the previously flurishing tax-payer's financed private jail business won't be maintainable any more. Without public money to support these private enterprizes the "cost-effective" private enterpreneurs will leave to more profitable businesses and stop supporting your law makers with money to pass bills which will lead to create more and more "jail clients".
Suddenly illuminated law makers will realize that keeping huge criminal population is "no longer the interest of society". Once the private jail system will revert back to "socialist" jail sytem, the most effective cost cutting measures will be to decrease the number of jailed people (who are no longer "business clients").
I predict that the USA will decriminalize drugs very soon, in order to reduce cost in the budgets.
They will also support this to deflect public attention from the continous decay of "Glorious Unites States of America". Most likely bankrupt governments will eventually decide to collect tax from drug consumption, just like from alcohol and tobacco.
I predict decriminalizing drugs in the very near future.
I'm aware of that sort of stuff. But there is also stuff in there about forgiveness, not being a twat about your religion and keeping it to yourself.
But as usual people pick and choose which bits they want to believe in and unfortunately it's usually the old testament that attracts the mentally handicapped.
I don't dispute that more than 12,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, but I think you have reversed cause and effect.
There is no question that the ultimate cause of the drug wars in Mexico is the so-called "War on Drugs" in the United States (pushing up the price thus making it profitable for organized crime). But the most recent cause of the mess in Mexico was the crackdown on drug smuggling in Florida. This made the gangs in Florida transfer their operations to the east coast of Mexico which then caused a ripple effect when the gangs that were already there got displaced and moved westward, etc.
Calderon was responding to the massive violence that was caused by the Florida gangs moving to Mexico, he was not the direct cause of the violence. But I agree with the general point that wars on drugs almost always make the problem worse, not better.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I am from Brazil and I KNOW, it is the ONLY WAY! We need to dis-criminalize all drugs because it only give EASY MONEY to TRAFFIC DEALERS, CORRUPT POLICE, POLITICIANS, ETC...
The only that suffer with the "war in drugs" are the POOR PEOPLE!!! The rich never get catch! The poor goes to Jail with the expense of the tax payers!!!
LEGALIZE ALL DRUGS!!! US IS REPONSIBLE FOR IT BECAUSE IT SUGGESTED AND ALL COUNTRIES (U.N.)!!!!
I want to GROW MY OWN WEED!!!! Like I do with my Tomatos, Mint, Sage, Mushrooms, etc
There are drugs for which there is no known rehabilitation program which has a statistically significant success rate (success being their graduates remain drug free for two years). Crack cocaine is one such drug and meth is almost that way. There are people who cure themselves and there are people who go into a program and succeed, but the numbers are so small that, for instance, a judge cannot legally order someone into a program for treatment since there is no demonstrable likelyhood of success.
Putting drugs on a prescription basis and saying people should get treatment is not such a morally transparent step forward as seem to think. There is just pure evil in the drug business.
Gangs are not the root. Wiping out gangs will just make smarter gangs to appear. The root cause is demand: if you tackle demand (either by wiping out the population of the US, or by legalizing drugs), you wipe out the gangs. Nothing else will even make a dent.
It would probably be much better to compare the rates in the same country before and after legalisation rather than compare the rates between two countries before legalisation with two the rates in two different countries after legalisation.
Cannabis also is useful for pain control for MS sufferers.
By "MS sufferers", are you talking about people who have problems with Windows operating systems or with Xbox 360 consoles?
In 2005 Heart Disease was responsible for 27.1% of all American deaths.
If we cut heart disease deaths in half, it would just push up the percentages of other leading causes of death: probably cancer and lung disease.
The worst of the stupidity is that some drugs are given out which are worse than what people choose to use but have the one advantage of being legal.
They're legal because they're novel and therefore patentable. Let me explain: A Schedule I controlled substance can be defined as any substance with non-zero potential for addiction or "abuse" that is not an FDA-approved drug. The process to declare a substance "safe and effective" costs tens of millions of dollars. Traditional medications tend to be ineligible for patent, and without the promise of years of exclusive rights, nobody is willing to pay for clinical trials for a drug extracted from a plant only to have to compete with generic drug makers. Case in point: dronabinol, the primary active ingredient in cannabis, was taken out of schedule I only after someone working for Solvay patented a way to synthesize it.
God damnit kdwason, wtf is this doing on Slashdot?
You're a dumbass.
The GP has basically done a cost-benefit analysis of using vs. not using the drugs under the current legal system, and stated that were the legal system to change, a new cost-benefit analysis might yield different results for both himself and a significant portion of the population.
Honestly, you're trying to compare this reasoning to that made by an emotionally-stunted child?
W T F
Take your amateur psychoanalysis somewhere else.
The article says "for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory." If true, that means that the third 'offense' is essentially a crime. Mandatory treatment is a restriction of one's freedom of movement and behaviour imposed by a court in response to an act that one has committed. The fact that is it styled as 'treatment' does not make it objectively distinguishable from a sentence rendered by a criminal court.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
and incidentally, corruption. Why would Mexico legalize drugs (soft or hard)? With how much money is made at the hands of cartels selling ILLEGAL PRODUCTS, which in itself keeps 90% of the population at a minimum from dealing with these products as anything but a user, you know the government has their hands in the cookie pot. If these drugs are made completely legal, cartels wouldn't be able to capitalize because their product would quickly become inferior and too expensive to boot, the government (not so much the government as top individuals) wouldn't be able to profit as heavily from decentralized production and sales. For this very reason, in any country where corruption exists and top level government officials directly profit from networked crimes like drug trafficking, it will never be completely legal. Instead, "small scale drug possession" will become legal almost everywhere so that pretty much the small scale sellers and buyers are protected (ie, end-users), thus making sure .. MAKING SURE.. that their clients can purchase the products, hence assuring sales. It'll never be made completely legal, it would DESTROY the profitability of the business.
On the other hand, somehow I don't think the government realizes the huge profit that could be made on taxing drugs much like they do tobacco... it's an insane figure but nobody seems to care.
My point was that it's not particularly barbarous to let him go. He wasn't a common criminal. He was, essentially, a prisoner of war.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Any references to back this up ?
3.243F6A8885A308D313
...And then I had to start taking public transit. I'm all for legalizing weed and maybe hallucinogens (though users need to be kept in a controlled environment. Maybe tripping camps?), but I am absolutely opposed to people having any amount of meth. Meth users are the fucking scourge of the earth, and I wouldn't mind simply putting them all to death in order to reduce the damage they cause to society.
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/ibogaine/ibogaine_basics.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syztZcpj69U
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.cgi?S1=28&S2=-1&C1=-1&Str=
(These are actual experiences by people who took ibogaine. Some of these people were hardcore drug addicts, others just curious psychonauts.)
You (in the general sense) can't have it both ways.
Either the bombing was an "Act of War" or it was a criminal matter.
Europe choose to treat this matter as a criminal matter. Therefore, they need to be held to the standards of a criminal matter upon his release.
Had this been treated as an Act of War (which I agree would have been the proper response), he wouldn't have received a criminal trial.
Oops, replied to the wrong post.
From http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html:
Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.
So according to the article it's 62%, not 75%. Of course, 47.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I highly doubt anyone besides the drug pushers themselves knows exactly what the real percentage of profits from cannabis is, but there's no doubt it's significant, being the most popular illegal drug in the United States by far.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for them to have treated it like a criminal trial but then to realize that most of the sentencing elements don't come into play. There's no value in sentencing guidelines like deterrence or rehabilitation because he's not a criminal, he's a military agent. He hasn't done anything 'wrong'.
The result is that if, in fact, for whatever reason you do let him go there's no ideological problem with that.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Blame the US based Pharmaceutical company's for one, for they wanted this "drug war" in the very early 1900's because people were taking cheap, tried and tested remedies such as opiate based cough mixtures and marijuana based poultices for antibiotic and pain use.
Actually we can basically hold the USA responsible for the world wide drug war movement beginning in the first place.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
When Marijuana Tax was first passed through your Sennett, some of the industry's said they could not survive without Hemp. It was used in oil based paints that were superior to today's petrolatum based oil paints and also as bird and stock feed (seeds).
Today most people could not even tell you why most drugs were made illegal initially and will refer to some sort of vague drug/crime link. Unfortunately this is a product of having had these useful and enjoyable substances illegal (and thus associated with crime) for so long that the majority feel no compunction to question the motive's and reasoning.
Hi, you fail hard. I had a prescription for dextromethamphetamine. It didn't really have the desired effect and it was the first medication that made me feel "high", but its use was indicated in my situation.
AFAIK, many counties already to that:
Italy, Spain, Netherlands, UK (?), Portugal, Brazil and possibly others
Drug addicts don't steal because they're drug users, they steal because they can't get enough money to feed their habits.
You don't see that happening with cheap drugs - tobacco addicts don't go out robbing people to get more cigarettes,
and drunks don't go commit burglary so they can afford a $10 liter bottle of cheap gin, even though tobacco's more addictive than heroin and booze is more destructive.
Heroin and meth addicts steal because of the artificially high costs of black-market drugs, but the drugs themselves don't cost much to produce if you don't have to avoid the law. Medical opiates are cheap - a $5 over-the-counter bottle of codeine would be enough to keep Rush Limbaugh happy for the day, except that it's mixed with acetaminophen (and in Canada, caffeine) to keep you from overdosing; it'd be just as cheap to make without the additives. And making meth in a pharmaceutical factory doesn't cost significantly more than making Sudafed.
All this crime and violence is because the government has convinced us there's some difference between a junkie and a drunk. What a waste.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
By the way, does anybody know if the LSD limit that the story reported is correct? It's way too low - 0.015mg is 15 micrograms; a typical street dose in Timothy Leary days was 250mcg and today is more like 100mcg, and the threshold for having any effects at all is around 25mcg for most people.
If they were actually talking 15 milligrams (0.015 grams), that'd be 150 doses, so a small-time dealer, or if they meant 0.150mg, that'd be a medium-sized single dose, which is somewhat believable for a policing limit.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Practically all the illegal drugs used to be legal; the exceptions are new drugs developed by the pharmaceutical industry that would need FDA approval before selling them, and new drugs that fail the "similar to anything already illegal" test that the US Feds put out a few years ago to deal with designer drugs (which weren't illegal when developed, and the bureaucrats got tired of having to make new rules or get new laws passed to ban them.) Other than that, alcohol's the only major exception, since it used to be legal, got banned in the US, and then got re-legalized. But nobody's been willing to mess with the big killer drug, tobacco, or my favorite dangerous addictive drug, caffeine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No it wouldn't be "reasonable" to mix and match between two fundamentally different systems (war & crime). Especially when you're doing it to justify an pre-conceived conclusion.
Although we do have a term for that, "intellectually dishonest".
You can board one of the two trains, but you can't hop on and off them as you wish.
It may be bunk, but I dont think obama said it in an anti-gun way. I think he (actually Hillary) said it to intentionally kick up debate here in the US about our insane drug laws. Proof of my theory is in that none of the media spun his (and her) statements as "anti-gun" but as "it is time to revisit the war on drugs".
that noone have mentioned the US prohibition era yet...
hell, i am surprised that the nation that showed by attempt the costs of outlawing a popular narcotic substance would do so again to a host of them some 50 years later...
as they say, those that do not learn from history is doomed to repeat it...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
You can if they're going in the same direction.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
actually, cutting off the leaves will help produce a better flower on the marijuana plant. The argument I'm making here is slightly technical... on the plants you have the leafs and the flowers (the flowers are the ones you smoke, the leaves can be smoked with some effect but not much.) Cut off the leaves during the right time of the year and you'll end up with a very rich flower (bud.) It's not much different from pruning tomato plants... the end-game is a beautiful flower or fruit.
"Isn't that the point ? if less activities are criminal , you should end up with less criminals"
Cause and Effect, because a law exists or doesn't exist doesn't change the outcome of the effect. People will still steal, rob and murder for drugs no matter if it's legal or not until the cause is cheaper legally then illegally. 90% of people who are caught with possession came about the items thru an illegal activity, it's the chain of events that drugs has on peoples lives, not the drug itself. Think of the bigger picture before saying "legalize it, crime will go away" mentality.
I wish we ran the world from here! If the consensus of /. was how it was run we would so be better off.
Bottom line is we pay for all this BS. The biggest issue for people with drug habits is lack of drugs. It's a medical issue.
Can someone please throw me a joint! Else I'll never finish this programming project that the my racist, hegemonic, Christian, fatarsed, abusive, prick of a client is demanding... without going nuts.
Mexican youngsters didn't have a drug problem, it was an unknown issue until very recently (last 15 to 20 years).
Until very recently we did not have drug cartels, executions of policemen, innocent people and rival gang members, until very recently we didn't have decapitations and drug dealers trying to sell pot to kids of secondary school.
Until very recently only 1 in 100 people at most in Mexico had touched any drugs except alcohol or tobacco.
You will not believe this, but what caused the current state of war in many Mexican cities was the overwhelming demand in the biggest market of drugs in the world combined with the puritanical drug enforcement efforts which have been extended beyond the borders of such market.
People in Mexico is hostage to the pigheadedness of US politicians that in order to keep their Talibanic constituencies happy, are more than willing to imprison people that have harmed no one and declare war on an industry that serves mostly recreational purposes, in countries with the poor kill the poor and the criminal becomes ever more vicious because the prohibition rewards the more crocked criminals.
Decriminalize most drug use and trading and all of the sudden there is no space for organized crime, treat drug users as patients instead of criminals, and all of the sudden you have better chances to rescues a life for the betterment of society.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MDMA is Schedule I in the US, indicating that the government claims that it has no significant medical uses. They're wrong, but nevertheless there's no legal way to use MDMA for medical treatment in the US.
.... because the concept has no meaning for the case of Homo Sapiens.
From a biological point of view we are all the same type of animal, people with an agenda pander to compltely arbitrary ways to divide people, like levels of melanine in the skin (there are peoples in Africa that differ genetically more between them than one of them may differ in respect to Europeans or Asians).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They detonated bombs last year: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841623,00.html
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841623,00.html
Now tell me again those bastards, financed by the pot US people smoke, are not terrorists.
Tell that to the humble families of the people that were killed on the day.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841623,00.html
These criminals have killed innocent people just to ensure a state of terror remains in areas they are interested to control.
Random killings are becoming more common, and according to Mexican experts, the reasons for this are so feeble that can actually be considered to be totally random, which is one of the main traits of indiscriminated terrorism.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is no way to deal with one while ignoring the other.
This should be an stern warning for other countries , in Mexico corruption always existed, but drugs were never part of the deal until very recently.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
what doctor would prescribe meth? coke maybe.. but meth?
Methamphetamine is schedule II for a reason.
Most drugs are funneled to the US, not within Mexico. Something has to be done IN the US. Either legalize marijuana and use the saved resources to fight cocaine and heroin trafficking.
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You should have rather written, the dominant cartels hurt the military just enough to splinter them, not the other way around.
Really, one of the most feared groups are called the Zetas, and they are basically (or rather, they originated as) a group of SWAT members who deflected the forced armies, as the cartels pay immensely better. They have mostly (AFAIK) joined the Gulf cartels â" But I might be mistaken on this last point.
Our (de-facto, remember he took power fraudulently) president insists we are winning the war, and the spots quote the names of many captured drug dealers. They don't mention the governnment seems to be aiding some cartels and being selective in their targets against their competitors. The number of casualties has escalated tremendously in the last three years... and it does not seem to be getting any better.
I really hope that decriminalizing being an addict helps show the way. Of course, what follows (and is even harder) is to decriminalize providing such small doses, regulating the market. Addicts are sick, they are not criminal.
So many people are drug users, and are just careful to do it right. And if you have to bribe, it is always a small bribe to pay.
I am a Mexican, yes. And I am a Mexican who has chosen (and adhered to, for a decade already!) never to bribe. So yes, it would work for me â" I would much rather be arrested for 36 hours (or whatever small) than paying a 5 dollar bribe (after all, the policeman is doing his job on catching me were he to get me!).
I am not a drug user, though, although I have ocassionally (two, three times over the last five years) smoked with friends who have some. This will not make me rush out to buy. But I have some friends who are frequent users, and have some who are sadly real addicts to other drugs (which I expect never to get familiar with). A small bribe or a small hassle with the police for small-scale posession has never been likely to deter them from buying.
Less likely to be legal residents of the US, and even when they are, they come from a hiding culture, from a social background where they cannot trust the country they live in (even if they were born US citizens), so they don't trust the health institutions to go search help there. Latinos are much less likely to go to the public hospitals in case of any kind of illness, so they go only when the illness is advanced or critical, or with major fractures etc.
This also comes because in our countries (I live in Mexico) the healthcare systems have been pauperized. I know I have to sit for a couple of hours before getting urgency attention (of course, not if I am on critical situation, but for most cases I have been to the public system). I know I must go through several appointments probably months apart to get to see a specialist if I have a non-urgent condition. So, I seldom go to any doctor. It is a cultural, not racial, issue. (FWIW, I am culturally Mexican, racially Jewish/Slavic; my family migrated in the 1920s)
!suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
Pharmaceuticals, who effectively eliminated competition, profited early on. They get to sell pain relief with products which are still derived from the same natural source, but have the benefits of being riddled with horrible side effects and hundreds of times more expensive for the consumer.
This, by the way, is exactly the same thing with tobacco, except with mood-adjusters rather than pain relief.
The feds pay something like 50 grand a year per prisoner in a regular security prison. Would you spend that 50 grand on more guards for violent prisoners, or keep more of the money as profits from non-violent prisoners like drug addicts and prostitutes?
Learn something new.
Tom,
An important part of authorship is being aware of your audience. You haven't written anything that's untrue - but if you want to be a force of change you have to moderate your writing to move the audience gradually. Rome was not built in a day, and people's opinions won't sweep from one pole to the other in a single post.
So it is that in the article we move from making every pothead a felon to not being interested in small amounts. It's a gradual thing. Let's not make every post on the subject an indictment of human history, or a comparison to Hitler. Let your opponents go there, and win by the humorous absurdness of their replies.
Reason will win not by ridiclule, but by merit. As I often tell the Microsoft Blogbots: don't paste in all of your talking points all at once. Save some of them for the inevitable replies.
Best to you,
Symbolset.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'd mod you up, but that doesn't quite say it!
more cowbell
Mod parent up.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
It's about time we got our freedom back! How long has marijuana been illegal? Almost a full century. How long have humans been enjoying marijuana? Several thousand years! Why, in ONLY our last century was it made illegal? Why, after thousands of years, all of a sudden, the government is so afraid of it? They don't give reasons as to why it's illegal and treat peaceful potsmokers like dirt!
It's time for the government to grow up and stop being such a baby! Just because you don't want to enjoy marijuana, doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to. Stop being greedy you damn cry babies!