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Senate To Reconsider Wiretap Immunity
bughunter passes on a report from Wired Threat Level about the effort by Democratic lawmakers to roll back some provisions of the Patriot Act. Three of its provisions expire at the end of this year, and the reform attempt is expected to be attached to legislation to renew them. "Lawmakers are considering key changes to the Patriot Act and other spy laws — proposals that could give new life to lawsuits accusing the nation's telecommunications companies of turning over Americans' electronic communications to the government without warrants. On Oct. 1, the Senate Judiciary Committee likely will consider revoking that immunity legislation as it works to revise the Patriot Act and other spy laws with radical changes that provide for more government transparency and more privacy protections." Among the other likely goals of reform efforts, according to Wired, are limiting the government's power to issue National Security Letters, and limiting "black bag" searches to cases of spying or terrorism — 65% of past searches were authorized in drug cases.
I have to wonder if it /will/ happen if the GOP's in charge. Knowing those folks, they'll cut taxes for the rich and subsidize it with borrowing from the Chinese.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
We don't know the real reason and I can't be sure that you know it either as you are too emotionally attached to the situation. It might well be that even your brother didn't know the real reason for why things ended up as they did.
What we know is that your brother took marijuana, then moved to stronger drugs and died of overdose. Very anecdotal in itself and doesn't prove anything but it is very bad example when arguing against gateway effect.
I've seen similar stuff happen too. One of my closest childhood friends first began using marijuana when we were in high-school, then moved to stronger drugs. He was able to get control of his life back again after wasting about two years. He is in pretty shitty situation now but young and can get out of it even he doesn't manage to commit a suicide before that...
Numerous stories like this come up but no matter how many of them there are, pro-marijuana people always say "That's just anecdotal" and ignore it, then go back to saying "Gateway effect doesn't exist because I know many people who smoke marijuana and don't use stronger drugs!"...
I am against legalization of marijuana myself. Not because I didn't know anything about it. I am now a college student and several of my friends use it and yes I have tried it myself (didn't find it that special though). I am still against it.
There is definitely a gateway effect.
It is a drug. Not a strong one but taking two small leaps (the leap from not using anything to weak drugs and another one from weak drugs to strong drugs) is a lot easier than taking one big leap (from using nothing to strong drugs) and can be done over time. It has nothing to do with chemical properties or addictiveness, just with human nature.
Saying "Yeah but they don't take a leap from using nothing... They can well use alcohol for example!" is partially accurate. It is true if you look at chemical and biological aspects only but there are pretty significant sociological differences between alcohol and cannabis.
Cannabis is used in order to get high. To get and stay high is pretty much only thing it is good for. Alcohol is used differently, to kill time. Want to spend 10 hours with friends and have something to fill the silent moments? Buy pints, spend a lot of time with that. Yeah, the chemical effect is intentional and desired side effect but aside from high school kids with their first tries at alcohol and old alcoholics, people don't drink for the reason of being drunk.
On the other hand, cannabis can't be used like that. You can't smoke weed for ten hours straight as the "sideplot". You don't do it to kill time with getting high being a desirable side effect. You smoke pot in order to get and stay high. You might still be (and probably are) with friends and talk stuff but your intention is "I want to be high and talk stuff". In my eyes at least there is a massive difference. I understand that some people might not think like I do.
Even bigger issue to me is that comparisons to alcohol prohibition laws don't work. Massive amounts of people always use the weakest illegal substance. It is part of human nature. People want to bit a bit rebelling and try something that isn't allowed... Weakest available illegal substance is always favored. And then so many people use it that it is socially acceptable.
When I was a schoolkid (as in, 12 or so) we drank alcohol (not much. It was exciting and cool to get wasted with a sixpack every once in a while) but didn't smoke weed. When we got older and acquiring alcohol was no longer a problem, no longer cool or interesting, no longer anything new, people started smoking pot. This can be also seen in larger scale.
When alcohol was prohibited, people used alcohol and there were problems. Now alcohol is legal but people use pot. I personally believe that if pot was legal, over the time a lot of people would begin using the next weakest illegal substance.
I'm just not optimistic enough to think "Okay, if we legalize marijuana people will begin using it, illegal activity around it will end and people won't begin using anything stronger."
Prohibition led to violence because we the people were addicted to alcohol.
It's sorta why people get hurt when the cops don't walk on eggshells while hostages are involved.
Giving government the fight of our lives because they tried to take our booze away doesn't mean alcohol is good, all it means is that we want it.
It's not so much that alcohol is good and the government needs to back the fuck off. Rather, alcohol is a skilled hostage-taker of a drug and we need to use some strategificationizing.