Open Thread

“bullet” Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project discussed marijuana legalization on Glenn Beck’s show. Crooks and Liars covered it (and has the video):

One person in this conversation was calm, reasonable, had an abundance of facts at hand, and actually made pretty good sense. The other person was incoherent, meandering, silly, made a lot of irrelevant observations from outer space, and relied on dumb stereotypes and non-facts.
And Glenn Beck was not the former. On top of that, his nonstop sneering at Kampia made him look like a real sphincter.
In fact, this entire clip generally makes a convincing argument in favor of the marijuana advocates. If the best the opposition can come up with is this kind of gaping stupidity …

“bullet” Report: Bush’s drug office lacked broader focus

The nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration says the $1.2 million study, which it planned to release Thursday, found that the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush relied on selected data to show progress in combating illegal drug use by youth.
The office did not highlight less positive results among adults or pursue a comprehensive anti-drug strategy across age and demographic groups, the report found.

Well, duh!
“bullet” Just a couple of days ago, Caldron said that he vows to win the drug war. Now it turns how that “Calderon vows to win Mexico’s drug ‘cancer’ fight”

“It’s as though the patient told the doctor ‘my stomach hurts badly’ … And when he is operated on to remove what was thought to be an appendicitis, an already widespread cancer is found instead,” Calderon told Milenio TV.

Hmmm… doesn’t sound like a very good doctor.
“bullet” 10 years ago, the UN was proclaiming “A Drug Free World – We Can Do It.” Their new slogan seems to be “Hey, after 100 years, the drug problem has been contained, so we’re winning.” Apparently “contained” is a flexible term (Yup – we’ve got that problem contained, all right. It’s no bigger than it is.) and the damage caused by these “containment” efforts isn’t something to worry our pretty little heads over.
“bullet” If you haven’t already, please check out our own Allan Erickson’s OpEd “Legalize It,” published in the Eugene Weekly. Very nicely done – even though he did kind of ruin the punch line surprise of my stop sign joke by reversing it. 🙂
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”