Slashdot Mirror
New Study Shows Why Big Pharma Hates Medical Marijuana (washingtonpost.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study shows that painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws and that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. The researchers "found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law... In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year."
[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."
[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."
Yes, their voices need to be heard, but companies ought not to become politically powerful entities. They are there to make money, produce goods, and make our lives better, not to tell us how to live.
Whatever the drug companies think is bad for their business, must be good for the consumers.
-SR
The numbers here are doses, not prescriptions. Keep that in mind, folks. Not nearly as big a reduction as the blurb is trying to make it sound like.
The study says the drop is greatest in states with legal MM, but implies there is a drop in other states as well. That information (the drop in other states) is conspicuously missing. What, then, is the reason overall for that drop? Also, since is a drop in prescriptions, maybe they could ask a few doctors why they are prescribing less. In some states like FL, there has been major crackdowns on excessive pain killer prescription writing.
Regulation is corrupted by lobbying I guess is the general theme, which is quite on-topic.
So because J&J donates to drug prevention efforts for children you logically assume they only do it because they are afraid of lost revenue due to legal marijuana? That's a pretty far stretch. that is like saying Britain donates to food pantries so they can by food from farmers who harm our water supply more......
Big Pharma is only one of five industries spending big money to keep it illegal. The rest are aggravating, too. Private prisons, prison guard unions, and actual law enforcement are also involved. Law enforcement should just enforce the laws, in my opinion. They should not be involved in lobbying for or against them, though.
http://www.republicreport.org/...
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
We are going to need new laws or a constitutional amendment to prevent companies from screwing over citizens to make a profit. These companies, like the Oxycontin maker, know their product is deadly and addictive, and they fight every day to prevent pot from becoming legal. They don't care how many lives are ruined as long as the money keeps flowing.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
One limitation of the study is that it only looks at Medicare Part D spending, which applies only to seniors.
For more on painkiller crackdown;
https://www.google.com/search?...
Laws / legislation is often illogical and not what an engineer / geek type would think would be the best solution for society.
My wife had damaged the occipital nerve on the left side of her head in an accident. She had excruciating pain from this and went repeatedly to various doctors trying to get some help. They handed out hydrocodone and oxycodone like it was candy. After exhausting all options locally she was sent to a pain center. Their answer? More pills. I remember sitting there with a humongous bottle of hydrocodone and told her if you take all this shit it's going to kill you. I got her in to the pain clinic at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the doctor there did a nerve ablation that gave her relief from the pain. It came back and she had to have further treatment but the last 3 years have been pain free. It seems that if doctors can't figure what to do they just throw pills at it.
Linked article is from vice.com. You don't think they have an agenda do you?
What ever happened to my body, my choice? Is it only true when you are killing the unborn?
Maybe we don't need to get rid of the FDA but just change it so it can't prohibit drugs. It can give the FDA "Seal of Approval" for drugs that meet it's standards. You should be allowed to sell any compound. As long as it's labeled properly and accurately the drug maker shouldn't be liable for any side effects. After all Peanuts are a great, cheap source of protein. But they also kill some people. It's should be up to the patient and doctor to figure out what effects particular drugs will have.
Intellectual monopolies need to end. Without the FDA there is no justification for them anyway as you can bring a drug to market quickly and the competition to manufacture them cheaply will drastically lower prices.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Wow, I am appalled that this made it past the editors. What's the news here? Drugs may render other drugs unnecessary? Pharmaceutical companies have money and sometimes spend it? WTF?
Or how about, "Dr's prescribe less after major DEA crackdown".
Learn about the secret all natural plant that might get you off anti-depressants and painkillers that the big pharmas don't want you to know!
Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? The ones they engineer from the ground up to provide a pleasant, short-term euphoria with designed-in features to prevent overdose, mitigate overconsumption and abuse, and cheap enough that they could be priced lower than mass-produced marijuana?
I would kind of expect that somebody, somewhere would figure out that this would not only be big business but good public policy. Punitive measures to inhibit use of the existing classes of recreational drugs hasn't worked, so why not engineer alternatives that mimic those highs but minus as much of the negative side effects as possible?
The current class of recreational drugs have all kinds of nasty side effects, addictions, overdose deaths, corrosive physical effects, hangovers, and all the social problems they produce. Marijuana isn't bad in comparison to most, but even it still has the lingering stupor and the smoking aspect.
You would think that the bright guys in the lab would be able to come up with something new that minimized the negatives while still giving people something that would dissuade most people from bothering with the legacy highs.
Having tried both, I feel that pot is less addictive than Atavian.
When my mother had cancer, they gave her Benzodiazepines for stress. The withdraw she went thought was like nothing I have ever seen anyone go through from pot.
Perhaps in a perfect world there would be no pot, but there wouldn't big drug and beer companies telling you and your government what to do.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
We are going to need new laws or a constitutional amendment to prevent companies from screwing over citizens to make a profit.
LOL. See also: TPP.
Goes like so:
1. Country legalizes pot.
2. You establish having lost profit because pot.
3. Sue the country under TPP for lost profits.
4. Profit!
Sig ?
The DEA is another problem. Some people actually need pain medication and now whether you get it or not depends on things like how timid your doctor is, how much of an agenda your politically minded law enforcers have this week, and of course what kind of person you appear to be. If you're very young you'll get over the counter crap that doesn't work but if you have a good job, live in a rich part of town, etc it's different. I fall in that latter category. Had minor surgery a couple of years ago. Got strong, almost too strong pain pills temporarily no problem at all. Yet I've seen people younger than me who work service jobs get injured, be in worse pain than I was ever in, and get denied anything but otc garbage. Of course some of that stuff can destroy your liver when you take too much because it doesn't work but the government doesn't care because at least it doesn't make you feel good while you're taking it. That's what this is about. It's puritanism at its finest, and it's absolutely sick and disgusting.
I'm glad for a whole lot of reasons I don't need that stuff for something long term. One of those is the notion of cops or anybody else besides my doctor looking over my medical history makes me sick to my stomach.
The article also mentions reductions in other classes of drugs which are NOT subject to a "DEA crackdown".
Further, this reduction outpaces the reduction in non-MM states. And the average reduction in doses includes physicians who do not generally prescribe such medications. So when they say that the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants, that includes orthopedic surgeons, gastroenterologists, urologists and the many other types of doctors that prescribe medication.
Anything that is causing people to take fewer pharmaceuticals must be of a concern to pharmaceutical companies, wouldn't you say?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Anything that is causing people to take fewer pharmaceuticals must be of a concern to pharmaceutical companies, wouldn't you say?
It may. But that doesn't make a spit of difference in drawing a conclusion about the relationship between the drop in prescribed amounts and medical marijuana usage. There isn't even data on how much individuals that are actually sick are taking, only prescribe amounts. for example, my dad had severe arthritis and used to stock up on pain pills in case they price went up, he couldn't get out to refill, or his coverage changed. He wound up with tons of unused painkillers.
It's probably a good idea for anyone with the responsibility of voting to look beyond the end of their nose once in awhile.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Those people are still on drugs.
Yeah, like I said, we are going to need new laws, not new "free trade" agreements. The criminal corporate overlords need to be taxed into submission, broken up into smaller companies and regulated until they scream Uncle!
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
The state of Maine has legalized medical marijuana. Prescription opiode abuse abuse is ramptant, as is heroin.
Mind you, I would be okay with rifle companies lobbying for gun control and Lockheed Martin funding anti-war protests, while that's still an excessive use of private money power for political power that'd be a change.
It wasn't intended to be deadly and addictive it was intended to treat severe Pain. If you want to blame anybody, blame Doctors who think it's Candy and Users who take it to get High.
Can't wait for the those same drug companies to get their hands on MJ so they can start filling it with additives and making it as addictive/poisonous as cigarettes. By the time they're through with it, it'll be more dangerous than the synthetic stuff they're currently trying to outlaw.
Effects of intentional adulteration will be mitigated because pharmaceutically effective marijuana can be grown by individuals.
blog
Thousands of people die from overdoses every year. Of course it is the doctor's and patients who are ultimately responsible, but congress and the lobbyists have made it much too easy for people to get much more oxycontin than they need. Ask Rush Limbaugh, he knows.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
It's easy to reach that conclusion. However there are some important facts to consider that the conclusion conveniently passes on.
One, opiod prescription rates are down significantly in nearly all states, largely due to new regulations that are meant to discourage their use.
Two, opiods are often amongst the smallest and easiest to synthesize molecules in pharma today. A lot of companies can easily make them, which makes them cheap and low-profit. The big pharma companies don't even want to bother making them.
Three, big pharma could make lots of money selling pot if they wanted to. There are plenty of people who would prefer to be able to buy it in a way that does not require smoking it. Imagine how much money Bayer and others could make selling cannabinoid chewable tablets at the pharmacy; it is not in their own best interest to kill off development of such products. Even if small time shops sell the same, the scale at which the big companies could produce it would be a huge win for them.
In other words, big pharma doesn't want to kill medical marijuana. They are just waiting for the greenlight to start selling retail products based on it. It is worth more to them to be able to do it in all 50 states than to do it 20 different ways in 20 different states while waiting for the other 30 to decide what they want to do.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And then the local cops and courts don't enforce the pop laws due to there high cost of courts / locking up people.
Companies in the US already have strong restrictions on "political donations".
They may have "restrictions"-- but they find ways to donate anyway. Nice thing about corporations; they have lawyers to find the loopholes.
Here's the top contributors list from OpenSecrets.org: https://www.opensecrets.org/or...
What they can do is communicate on issues.
Yes, that's the biggest loophole: the Political Action Committee ("PAC"). It's "supposed" to be to "communicate issues". Every candidate has one.
"Political contributions, which used to go directly to candidates, now often flow to Super PACs, independent organizations that can raise money to either help or defeat a political candidate. Historically, traditional political action committees have been prohibited from accepting donations from unions and companies. However, following rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, Super PACs are now allowed to accept unlimited donations from unions and companies, provided the money does not go directly to the campaign.
The rise of the Super PAC has opened the door to a new generation of fundraising, changing how money is used to elect candidates and increasing the amount candidates need to raise to be competitive as they seek office.
(source: http://247wallst.com/special-r... )
So, are you going to start massively censoring speech by companies? How exactly is that going to work? Does "company" include the New York Times, or only companies you don't like?
A start would be a law mandating that money donated to political action committees has to be disclosed: if you're funding political campaigns, you have to do it openly, not secretly. This wouldn't even require overturning the Citizen's United decision: the Supreme court already said that this would be legal.
Companies don't have "political power"; they can't vote, they can't serve in Congress.
To the contrary, companies have plenty of political power. What we've discovered in the 20th century is that the money to run political campaigns is power.
Companies simply inherit the right to free speech from their owners;
Yes, that's the basis for the Supreme Court "Citizens United" decision. It is on questionable logical grounds however: corporations are not citizens, and while the people composing a corporation have first-amendment rights, it is not at all clear that the corporations themselves do. The belief that an object inherits the properties of the pieces composing it is one of the logical fallacies: this is the fallacy of composition.
(Or see: Logically Fallacious: Fallacy of composition.)
The alternative would be to say that the people themselves have the right to donate to political campaigns, but if they want to do so, they must do so personally, and not from the corporations. This is also perfectly reasonable: corporations are legal entities, not persons, and can be subject to different laws then people.
The fact that it's a weed that grows nearly anywhere is a barrier to approval. The government likes to tax euphoric agents heavily. They've heavily loaded pot sales with taxes where it's been legalized. The busybodies traditionally use taxes as a throttle to control access.
This goes back to the 19th century when the gin taxes were imposed. When the processes were discovered to make alcohol in the form of gin, it was suddenly so cheap and plentiful that even the poorest could stay drunk all of the time. The goverment elected to artificially raise the price as the "solution."
Note your OpenSecrets list is for 2016 only, and is only what has been reported through Q1 2016. Many organizations hold their spending/influence until after the conventions. Looking at how the spending ends up is much more illustrative of where the money comes from.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? The ones they engineer from the ground up to provide a pleasant, short-term euphoria with designed-in features to prevent overdose, mitigate overconsumption and abuse, and cheap enough that they could be priced lower than mass-produced marijuana?
Drug manufacturers have a poor track record on that.
In the 1800s, they noticed that opium worked as an analgesic, but had people using it simply for pleasure. So they engineered a new drug to just have the analgesic properties, and named it "morphine."
That didn't work. It had a bad side effect: people who took opium or morphine experienced a side effect where they started craving it, called "opium appetite". So, pharmacies thought, well, we need to find a deliver it without the people eating it-- it could be delivered directly to the body, so people wouldn't have the craving (how could you have a craving for something you don't even taste?) So they invented needle injection to solve the opium appetite problem.
That didn't work. Opium and morphine both turned out to be addictive, so they developed a new drug to solve that. This one they name it "heroin".
That turned out to be even worse. So they went completely synthetic to make a new painkiller which didn't trace to the opium flower: Oxycodone.
That turned out to be even more addictive...
Those were not CAUSED by Pot. The accepted theory is that MJ is often used to self-medicate AGAINST those conditions; bug it does NOT CAUSE THEM.
So, your housemate already had those problems, and was simply trying to cope by using MJ. Seriously.
The scale of this effect is, from the way the post is worded, outstandingly underwhelming. It's not 265 fewer new depressed patients, it's not 265 fewer prescriptions... It's "265 fewer doses." If the dose, the pill or what have you, is only once a day (and not more like some) then that's less that one patient's-worth over the course of the stated year. Talk about a study hiding in the error bars! Maybe they pay walled study has been badly reported here, but as written, this is a ridiculous argument for or against anything--and I'm not even arguing against the unstated pro-THC position. I just demand better scientific data--and better science reporting.
Hell, just make it a bot that nukes any headlines matching "Why X hates Y".
Last post!
You can only donate to campaigns you can vote in and you can only advertise your products and services.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The place to get high is the nursing home.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Basically, I think, what the AC you were replying to is calling for is open discussion of the spirit of the law, the letter of the law, and the ways in which the two disagree, coupled with making it illegal to do things that technically follow the letter while violating the spirit. Applied evenly, that's actually a very sound idea; for example, it would mean no more tickets for doing the regular posted speed limit past a school when school is in session and all children are inside the building, because the spirit of the law is to protect children (who aren't in danger when you're going more than 20MPH past a building they happen to be inside of) while the letter allows you to get slammed for it.
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted. For example, in the case of a law you're being prosecuted for violating, if it's a minor crime and/or it wasn't publicized at all, simply dropping the charges and paying 3x lost wages and legal costs should suffice; if it was made public or is a major crime that may affect your ability to find housing or work in the future, ongoing yearly payments of 10x the mean salary might be in order. That would serve as a deterrent against bullshit arrests and prosecution and lead to more common-sense enforcement of the law, which is something that needs to be highlighted in order to get votes, especially when the people doing the voting (e.g. politicians) benefit from at least one class of the loopholes being discussed.
As for crimes you commit, which is what the AC was talking about (clearly you understand this, I'm just clarifying that I do as well) that's a much longer discussion. Perhaps too long for a single Slashdot post, but I think it would be interesting nonetheless, if you wish to pursue it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
With privatized prisons, paid for out of our tax dollars, giving kickbacks to the courts and police departments in their areas, this is no longer a "problem". Why do you these laws get enforced to begin with?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The 50s called, they wanted their knowledge back.
Seriously, are there still people who honestly believe that or are you just trolling?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So divide by what? 20? 50? How many pills can a doc in the US prescribe at once?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
MJ is already addictive(getting high) you moron.
Yup, it's so addictive I use it as treatment for the migraines I've gotten since I was 5 and literally the only time I use it is when I have a migraine coming on. Oh, and my wife, who was the recreational user out of the two of us, just decided one day she was done with it and quit cold-turkey with no adverse physical or psychological effects. Then, there's my friend who went on a massive weed binge for a month or so, then quit cold-turkey, again with no adverse effects. Oh, and my mother, a few neighbors over the years, my ex-fiancee, a few coworkers, the list goes on, and that's just the people I know. People start and stop smoking pot all the time, it's not addictive in the slightest; it is subject to peer pressure but, then, what isn't?
It also is habit forming (getting high regularly)
Anything you do regularly for more than 10 days is habit forming. It's also really easy to stop.
and a gateway drug to harder stuffed (when the high isn't enough)
The only people I know who ever moved on to harder stuff were pressured by their friends or their dealer. Peer pressure was the gateway in the former cases and profit motive (on the part of the dealer) in the latter. Nobody who buys from a licensed dispensary or a dealer who only sells pot is moving on to harder stuff without some external influence (e.g. peer pressure), because marijuana is not a "gateway" drug.
It just doesn't happen that someone tokes up and suddenly decides they need amphetamines or opiates.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Note that the big-sounding numbers are in DOSES.
Divide by 365 for days in a year. Be generous and then divide again only by two (rather than, say, six or eight as is typical for painkillers). You're already talking 730 doses for ONE drug for ONE chronic pain patient.
So numbers like 265, 541, and 562 fewer doses correspond to less than one patient per doctor. Even the 1,826 for painkillers is less than the 2190 annual doses of a 6-per-day prescription for one chronic pain patient.
Yes, with 854,698 active physicians in the U.S., it does add up. But generic painkillers, antidepressants, and the like are cheap. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $400 billion US market for all prescription drugs - or likely even the amount the drug companies spend on Congress to lobby for the drug war.
For me the big take-aways from this article are:
* The impact of Medical Marijuana on overall drug company revenue is miniscule. Unless a fad catches on among doctors and they start switching some classes of patients en masse to M.J., the drug companies are unlikely to see any substantial drop in revenue, and would be ahead to save the lobbying money.
* They might be much FARTHER ahead to start selling, reasonably cheaply, purified, standard-dose, convenient oral tablets of the several active compounds. Especially if they can get the government to declare them "orphan drugs" or some new category, so they don't have to spend a bunch on research or accept large-scale liability for possible side-effects, and can let the non-drug-company-funded researchers in the medical community continue to identify the conditions (such as intractable seizures) that these compounds improve.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Your problem with people getting high is what exactly? One less idiot to compete for a job with me, why should I be against it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is the internet, you should be able to find a copy online if you really want it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The Federal Drug Administration have classified this plant as a "Schedule 1" drug, the same as PCP, Cocaine, Heroin and other famous substances. While it is classified as such, research opportunities are extremely limited, and not applicable to Federal guidelines.
States with an MMJ program can and do perform studies, but they are at odds with the Federal regulations.
Until this changes (rumored to happen on August 1), cannabis derivatives, whether organic whole plant preparations or synthetics are still subject to Federal jurisdiction; minimum sentencing, etc.
"Our hands are tied" remains a valid argument, and they're still able to capitalize on the addictive nature of their existing 'therapies'.
For more: http://www.newsweek.com/big-ph...
I'd agree except Congress forced DC to do the opposite; when they legalized weed they were effectively forbidden to come up with a way to regulate sale. So it's a strange world where you can grow your own weed, possess weed, buy weed, and give weed away, but you cannot sell recreational weed (thereby completely cutting the government taxation out of the loop). It's like if prohibition were repealed but only homebrew was allowed...
The table you point to lists primarily contributions from employees, and they go primarily to causes and issues. The association with corporations is indirect, as is the association with parties. You're being dishonest by misrepresenting this table as "political donations by corporations".
I don't see what "loophole" you see there. Are you saying that millions of people who want abortion rights, or gay rights, or marriage equality, or fight climate change should not be able to pool their money to buy airtime to make their views known?
And that is effectively the law already; that's why we have OpenSecrets.org.
And what are such laws supposed to accomplish anyway? Have a look at the 2016 candidate Super PACs: http://tinyurl.com/j4kvjd9 The ten biggest spenders are Bush, Rubio, Clinton, Christie, anti-Trump, Cruz, Carson, Kasich, and Fiorina. The only one of those who even made it past the primary was Clinton, and her showing was piss-poor compared to what people expected. The idea that Super PAC money can buy elections is laughable in light of simple obvious facts (and political scientists have also found little evidence for this).
Furthermore, what do you expect to happen without PACs / Super PACs? Do you thing George Soros or Bill Gates are going to STFU? Of course not: they are going to buy airtime privately to peddle their (usually self-serving) political ideologies. Or they do what Bezos did and simply buy a newspaper. If you take away the ability of people to share resources in PACs and Super PACs, all you accomplish is that you increase the barrier to entry for public political statements and really limit it to a few plutocrats. Of course, that is why the Democrats are advocating this in the first place: to increase the state's control over political speech.
That theory is not, in fact, 'accepted' in any sense
It was certainly "accepted" and adopted by The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, who found that MJ did not CAUSE psychosis, but could "uncover" it in certain ALREADY-PREDISPOSED individuals.
Which, according to your own comments, is EXACTLY what happened to your former housemate.
Yes, there are several books you can purchase, both in dead-tree (which I prefer) and electronic format, from his website. Or, you can just read the how-to for free.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Actually, I am.
It doesn't need the vast very profitable infrastructure other drugs need for processing and distribution. You can just throw the seeds on the ground and wait three months, and it will be "good enough" for most people outside the connoisseurs. And, as Colorado is finding out, this is driving down prices, and the tax revenues that were promised by legalization. The gold rush will be brief and will hit a brick wall when it is legal everywhere. Prices and profits will plummet. And that is what the game is about. The "morality" issue is a distraction played by the prohibitionists to sell their trade
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The AC is ignorant and you may be too. First, regardless of any definition of treason anywhere, in the USA it can only be levying war against the United States , or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort and you can only convict someone for treason if you have two witnesses to the act or a confession in open court. Even if you have bank records and possession indicating guilt, without any of that you cannot constitutionally convict someone for treason.
But it gets worse. If the law doesn't specifically make it illegal, regardless of any intent, it must therefore be legal. We are a free society who's freedom are limited only by laws already in place restricting that freedom. The constitution prohibits making things illegal after the fact which is what enforcement of the spirit of a law when it doesn't specifically outlaw an act would be.
In short, you could not make a law like that unless you made constitutional amendments first.
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted.
Further, we are a nation governed by the spirit of law. The Constitution gains its power primarily from the spirit with which it was written, and secondarily from its letter; that's the only reason it still holds any power today.
The constitution prohibits making things illegal after the fact which is what enforcement of the spirit of a law when it doesn't specifically outlaw an act would be.
You're not arguing against me, here. I never claimed things should be made illegal under the spirit of law but, rather, that they should not be made illegal under the letter of the law when the spirit does not also apply. That is, a law written to protect children from speeding motorists should not be applied to a motorist who speeds past a school while no children are present outside. The letter of the law says it is illegal for the motorist to do so, but the spirit of the law indicates that the letter should only apply when children are actually in danger.
Follow?
Probably not, so let me recap. Neither spirit nor letter alone should be sufficient to render anything illegal; only when both are in agreement should the law be applied.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
We now have 25 states and DC that have made marijuana available for medical use. A handful of states, in spite of federal prohibitions, that have legalized it for recreational purposes. Half of the US states, districts, and territories are now violating federal law. What happened to the supremacy of federal law? Makes me wonder how else the states can tell the federal government to fuck off.
The DEA has now drawn up a set of "policies", which also violate federal law, where they do not enforce federal law on the possession of marijuana in jurisdictions where it is "legal". IMHO, this is an admission by the federal government that they cannot enforce federal laws without the cooperation of local law enforcement. This was always true but now they must admit it outright. Things were different when the federal government was unopposed.
The event that set a countdown timer in my mind for the end of federal prohibitions on marijuana possession was a news article about a Girl Scout selling cookies outside a medical marijuana dispensary in California. That must have been two years ago now and she was about 12 years old as I recall. This tells me that we have four years until this young lady is old enough to vote. When that happens then expect the federal government to fold on marijuana.
I expect to see in 2020, if not sooner, people running for public office talking about how they believe marijuana to be as safe as alcohol and tobacco. What this means in more specific policy terms would be interesting. Would this mean that marijuana regulation moves from the DEA to the BATFE? What would this mean for the future of the DEA? Would they be tasked with keeping marijuana from being smuggled *from* the USA *into* Mexico?
I don't expect the legalization of marijuana to have further effects on other drugs but I do see it as setting into motion other aspects of states rights. If states can legalize marijuana without federal opposition then what about gun laws? Energy is a big concern, what keeps a state from licensing nuclear power reactors on their own? We're already seeing states push back on the DHS running security at airports, what purpose does the DHS serve if all the states kick them out of all their airports?
It's also possible that the federal government learns from this to pick the fights they can win in order to keep federal supremacy from being questioned again. Legalizing marijuana might just do that. If the federal government backs off on this now then the smaller things like gun control might not come up. This assumes the federal government, made up of thousands of alpha personality types and each having their own idea on what roles the federal government should fulfill, can come to any singular conclusion on policy.
I think we are seeing a new revolution on rights, or merely a government sized train wreck, happen in slow motion.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I read what you said, how does that reconcile with the constitutional requirements for treason in the context of the person you were replying to?
The constitution is different from laws. It sets the power the government has and expressly is prohibited from. The spirit applies only to which the names and conventions may be different. For instance a laptop or phone call is papers and effects for the purposes of searching.
As for your speeding example, i don't disagree. The op however was talking about loopholes which is somewhat opposite of your direction which is why I included it. Of course remaining free when the letter of law conflicts with the spirit would pass constitutional muster. But the other way wouldn't.
" how does that reconcile with the constitutional requirements for treason"
If you would break the law and hurt the nation's citizenry, you are deliberately hurting the nation and providing aid to its enemies simultaneously.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It doesn't work that way. The enemy has to be defined already and the act has to be directly connected. Otherwise you would see treason convictions instead of murder or fraud or whatever. We have had very few treason convictions and very few legal accusations of it in our history.
Corporations in the US cannot "run political campaigns"; they can't even contribute to political campaigns.
They can and they do.
That's what the Citizen's United decision was all about: the right of corporations to contribute to political campaigns.
By the way, your post simultaneously says "corporations cannot contribute to political campaigns" and "corporations can contribute to political campaigns because of the first amendment rights of the owners." Which? Can they, or can't they?
The article data says 1,826 fewer painkiller DOSES per year per doctor prescribed, then calls that a 'sharp decline'. Well without knowing how many total doses per year a doctor prescribes, that number is MEANINGLESS. Is that 1,826 fewer doses out of 5,000 doses? 25,000 doses? 100,000 doses? The fact that this all-important context providing number is left out suggests to me that someone is trying to lie to me with statistics.
That's a long way of saying "this is junk science". :-)
-SR
Ha, or in this case, 'junkie science'
A loophole in the law is, quite literally, a disagreement between the letter and the spirit of the law. Remaiming free is what The Constitution is all about, I suggest you attend law school before speaking on these matters. Or, at least, obtain a 3rd grade understanding of the topic.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
While commercially available cannabis compounds are FDA-approved to reduce cancer treatmentâ"related side effects such as nausea and vomiting and to improve appetite, no clinical trials have shown that cannabis products can treat cancer.
Claims that cannabis oil cures cancer are anecdotal and largely unsupportable, based on scant research done in mice and in labs. Side effects can include memory and attention loss. Perhaps most important, there is evidence that cannabis compounds may inhibit enzymes that patients need to metabolize other anticancer drugs, thereby increasing their toxicity or reducing their effectiveness.
The Truth behind Three Natural Cancer ''Cures''
Companies should have political power if you're going to tax them. No taxation without representation, right?
Yeah their employees have representation. Their employees also pay the same taxes as non-employees. Since the taxes their company pays are in addition to taxes the employees already pay as individuals, it needs to be counterbalanced by additional representation.
The whole tax charade is pointless anyway. It doesn't matter whether you tax personal income or corporate profits. If you accomplished the Bernie supporters' dream and eliminated all income taxes and converted them to corporate taxes, people would not suddenly become wealthier. Companies would just be forced to decrease wages and increase prices to pay for the taxes, meaning the average individual's purchasing power would be the same before and after the tax change. Wealth is proportional to productivity, not income. So unless your change increases productivity, it cannot increase average wealth. Artificially increasing income without increasing productivity just causes your currency to become worth less (prices will rise to compensate) so that there's no net change in real wealth (purchasing power).
So just pick whichever tax is easiest to collect and use that as your sole source of government revenue. Taxing a gazillion different things is just wasteful inefficiency - like using a thousand teaspoons to remove a percentage of a bathtub's water, instead of a single bucket. Also note that if you don't want to violate the "no taxation without representation" principle, and you want a progressive tax structure, the tax has to be on personal income. If you shifted all taxes to corporations, their price increases would be equivalent to a flat tax. And higher-income management controls wages and will be most reluctant to cut their own salaries. So the net result of shifting all taxes to corporations would be regressive compared to the current taxation system of income + corporate taxes. The only way to control a progressive tax system is zero corporate taxes, with all taxes being on income, and ratchet up the income tax rate on the higher income brackets.
It's amazing how people who reject the concept of corporate personhood hypocritically insist on treating a corporation as a person. They're not people. They're just a group of people who've decided to work and act together. If you have a beef with how a corporation is behaving, aim your ire at the people controlling that behavior. If you don't like how much profit a company is making, focus your remedy on the people who are receiving that profit from the corporation as distributions or dividends. Thinking of a corporation as a person just reinforces the notion that corporate personhood carries with it rights (e.g. free speech) and duties (e.g. paying taxes).
Everyone's too busy playing Pokemon to care what makes sense in the real world.
The criminal corporate overlords need to be taxed into submission, broken up into smaller companies and regulated until they scream Uncle!
The taxes corporations pay are collected from their customers.
Perhaps you are a moron and didn't understand what was said. Perhaps you do and want to ignore it to fan flames that shouldn't be.
Anyways, a loophole means specifically that something is not illegal. It doesn't matter what the spirit of the law is (unless congress expressly writes it into the law in which case the leeway is less), if it isn't illegal via a loophole then it is unconstitutional to pretend it is.
Now specifically show me where I am wrong. You cannot which is why your post is vague. But in case you did not understand my comment on the loophole being ok in one instance and unconstitutional in another, I will explain it a bit. The constitution prohibits the government from prosecution of a crime that isn't a crime. You have a right of habeas corpus, due process, to face your accusers, and a right to be free of post fact laws. If the legislature made it illegal to spit on the walkway on Sunday but spelled out a sidewalk, then you being prosecuted for spitting on a dirt path in the middle of the woods would violate your constitutional rights. But if they intended to stop spitting on finished walkways otherwise known as sidewalks but used the term walkway instead, you not being prosecuted is not a violation of your constitutional rights because you face no accusations or due process or penalties.
So one is enforcing a law that isn't actually a law which is unconstitutional and the other is failing to enforce a law that actually is a law which is constitutional (outside the duty for the executive to aee that all laws are faithfully executed).
Did you read the whole of that article and conclude it completely supports your argument, or did you just read the bits that did?
This article supports the idea that at the very least there is no 'accepted' theory.
I agree that it is somewhat equivocal; but the preponderance of the evidence supports my assertions.
Our school zones are 8am-5pm. Fucking obey it and don't be a weasley cunt.
What makes you think I don't? I do. But if there are no children outside (and I have eyes, I can see them if they're there), there are no children in danger if I don't.
Now, if I had actually said I don't obey the law despite disagreeing with it, I wouldn't think you're an asshole.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's not the fault of MJ, that's the fault of the lies told about MJ. Stop lying about MJ and the problem goes away.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That has fuck all to do with whether or not MJ is addictive or a gateway drug, which is what was being discussed.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What was the problem with just smoking a joint, eating a couple of Twinkies, and going to sleep? Was that a problem? They say marijuana leads to other drugs. No it doesn't, it leads to fucking carpentry. That's the problem, folks. People getting high going, "Wow man, this box would make an excellent bong! *snort* This guy's head would make an excellent bong! *snort*" Relax! That's why I stopped doing drugs in the first place. Not because I didn't like 'em, but because I didn't want to build anything, ok?
Time to offend someone
A couple of years ago a Police Chief in Canada notably argued the number one reason to legalize it was that it was a huge waste of time for police officers to enforce. If I remember it was weirdly from out in Alberta (which is usually staunchly Conservative if you're not from Canada). It isn't like the police have a lack of things to do. The time could be spent doing real police work. They don't get to choose what laws to enforce however.
Personally I think it would also wipe out a ton of low level crime as a result almost instantly, and they would be basically out of business.
God I love that man...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
To put this differently, the fact that our politicians are corrupted by money is something we should address by punishing the politicians
You can't punish the politicians, because contributions to PACS are legal.
Yes, you are repeating yourself, and your statement is as wrong as it was at the beginning: PACs aren't a "loophole"; what they can and cannot do is part of campaign finance law.
Correct. They are the loophole in campaign finance law.
You seen to think "Campaign finance has never been shown to corrupt the political process in the US.". I think you're an idiot, but you're allowed your opinion.
That's actually not what addiction is... that's certainly irresponsibility, but it's not addiction. They think they're okay to drive stoned, so they do it, much like someone who might get a bit too drunk on a Friday night and drive home when they shouldn't isn't necessarily an alcoholic. Or much like a Millennial might still try to walk across a busy street with their phone glued to their face isn't addicted, just stupid.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, I forgot to mention...
You'd prefer my driving high to me driving with a migraine. Trust me. But, then, I researched and found a strain that gets rid of my migraines without actually getting me high. I'm sure if I overdid it, it eventually would, but it certainly doesn't in the doses I use for medicinal purposes. I need to keep a clear head for my work and this lets me do that.
And yes, I've been high before, I know what it's like. I've also been stoned and I know what that's like. You want to see me stoned? Give me any of the FDA approved migraine drugs. They're all powerful hallucinogens...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Maybe it's just me, but the biggest point of interest here isn't the weed. It's that the average doctor is apparently prescribing 2000 people pain killers every year.
Holy crap.
That's 5 people a day, every day, 365 days per year. Nearly 7 a day if you account for weekends and holidays. How are there so many people on prescription pain meds?
When you add up all the prescriptions listed in TFS, you get up to 15 per working day. And that's just the delta from pot. Assuming medical marijuana didn't completely supplant the entire drug industry, how many drugs is the average doctor issuing?
This signature is false.
You're welcome to present data to the contrary. Until then, you are the idiot who presents his misinformed opinions as fact.
You and others are proposing to make PACs illegal and restrict corporate speech; that is, you are proposing to "punish" a large number of people by taking away their free speech rights, even though most corporations behave responsibly, and even though it is politicians that let themselves be corrupted.
I'm saying that is the wrong approach. What we should do is change the laws so that politicians are restricted in what they can do: politicians shouldn't be allowed to earn millions of dollars on the side, or get cushy jobs in private industry, or sit on boards, or create billion dollar foundations. There is no need to restrict the free speech rights of others, when it is politicians that are at fault.
And likewise.
Doing both sounds like a good plan to me.
Are you incapable of using Google?
http://freakonomics.com/2012/0...
http://journals.cambridge.org/...
http://www.jstor.org/stable/21...
That is kind of implied by calling corporate donations to campaigns a "loophole".
Well, what can I say, you're a fool, and one that gives corrupt politicians a pass.
Are you incapable of using Google?
So, out of 19,700,000 search hits on Campaign spending effectiveness, you selected... three.
Great. You have 19,699,997 left to read. When you've read those, get back to me.