Yellow Journalism in action. Check out this article in the Daily Mail: Legal but lethal: So-called ‘legal highs’ are every bit as deadly as heroin and cocaine. It’s so quintessentially Daily Mail in tone. Actually, the research done for the article is relatively impressive — assuming any of it is to be believed — and I may have learned something. But the breathless melodramatic automatic condemnation of anything drug-related makes the article almost unreadable.
The General’s Drug Problem in USA Today is an interesting article about the apparent rampant use/addiction to prescription drugs in the military.
Standing before a packed hall of 700 military doctors and medics here, the deputy commander of the nation’s elite special operations forces warned about an epidemic of chronic pain sweeping through the U.S. military after a decade of continuous war. […]
An internal Army investigation report released Tuesday revealed that 25% to 35% of about 10,000 soldiers assigned to special units for the wounded, ill or injured are addicted to or dependent on drugs, according to their nurses and case managers. Doctors in those care units told investigators they need training in other ways to manage pain besides only using narcotics.
I suppose they could try cannabis.
Coca-chewing Bolivians press for end to UN ban
Article about the Bolivian protests against the United States for opposing the amendment that would remove coca chewing from the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The real kicker is in the closing paragraph.
The US embassy, in a statement reaffirming US opposition to the proposed amendment to the UN convention, said it was willing to work with the Bolivian government “out of respect for these millennial practices.”
Translation: We know it’s not enforced and there’s no way to enforce it, but we want to have it on the books so we can use it against you whenever we want to complain that you’re not doing enough in the drug war.
Increased Violence as a Drug War Metric by Steven Taylor at Ouside the Beltway. I can’t even count the number of times we’ve seen someone say that the violence in Mexico is a sign that we’re winning. Here’s another one:
Via the BBC: Hillary Clinton backs Mexico drug war comes the following:
The Mexican authorities argue that the rising violence shows that the gangs are being weakened and turning increasingly on each other, but critics argue the use of troops has only served to provoke increasingly gruesome murders.
Taylor usefully provides a chart to show how well we’re doing.
That’s a whole lotta “success” there.
Scott Morgan reminds us: If You Have Drugs, Don’t Agree to a Police Search. For obvious reasons if you read the article. And actually, the same is true if you don’t have drugs. Never consent to a search. There are tons of good reasons not to consent regardless of whether you have drugs.
Scott says: “It seems like such a simple concept, but for some irrational reason, a lot of people still don’t get it.” Exactly. I still run into people like that all the time. They somehow think that it’s better not to antagonize the officer and let them search. But every defense attorney will tell you two things: Never consent to a search, and shut the f#ck up.
(I think I’d have a harder time with the second one, actually. I’d have a desire to try to “convert” them.)
This is an open thread (as if that made any difference).
Unsurprisingly the Dail Mail article stopped publishing comments after about an hour of the article going up.. mine certainly didn’t get through.
Interestingly though, ‘The Sun’ which is nearly as bad as the DM published this http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/mysun/3334712/SunVoters-split-on-legal-highs.html#mySunComments . So, ~65% of their readers support some form of liberalisation to drug policy even with all their prohibitionist BS. Again, my comment didn’t get through but some pro-reform ones seem to be dominating.
Almost feels like some progress has been made worldwide this week…?
If I read one more police affidavit that includes either a defendant consenting to a search or a defendant telling the police who want to search his vehicle: “you’re gonna have to go get the dog” in reference to a drug sniffing dog, I’m going to flip my shit.
Cops threaten that if you refuse consent, they’ll report you to DCFS and take your children. I called their bluff and ended up with a year-long battle against DCFS, the only legal charge pending was obstruction of justice (hardly deadly to children).
On an appeal, DCFS threw the entire issue out as rediculous, but the stress was unexplainable.
Actually pete I think your translation is a bit off. I see it as “We know that it’s a cultural practice and even though in rhetoric it should be protected…we don’t give a shit. You’ll do it our way because we’re here to help ;-)”.
Lotsa holes in the dike, and they’re running out of fingers.
“An internal Army investigation report released Tuesday revealed that 25% to 35% of about 10,000 soldiers assigned to special units for the wounded, ill or injured are addicted to or dependent on drugs,”
When will the DEA descend upon these military folks, shooting their dogs and unarmed little girls, and confiscating their military assets and bases?
Oh, sorry. I forgot that the DEA doesn’t go after drug users who might shoot back. Just dogs and kids and old sick people in wheelchairs.
re open thread – I see many times where prohibs say “I don’t want to pay for druggies health care”, not realizing that they are paying already with the cost of the WO(s)D. I saw on Scott’s site where the average cost to the taxpayer is roughly $530 each – does anyone know of any study that estimates how much per taxpayer it would cost for a health-based approach?
“As if that made any difference”. There’s a lot of comments I don’t even read anymore.
Have been waiting for an open thread.
“I’m confident our bill will break the back of cannabis crime-syndicate profits and make it possible to preserve vital health services across Washington in these very difficult budget times,” stated the bill’s lead sponsor, Democrat Mary Lou Dickerson.
House Bill 1550 would allow for the state-authorized cultivation and distribution of marijuana and marijuana-related products. “[T]he legislature intends to promote commerce and competition within Washington by eliminating penalties for the possession and consumption of cannabis, regulating and taxing the sale of cannabis by state government, and licensing cannabis growers,” it states.
I think in Israel they let there soldiers are allowed to use Cannabis.
Hard hats on ladies and gents! All these are on LEAP and the YouTube question, from Jack Cole and Tom Angell:
Zeitgeistyreports
Ron Paul’s website
Healthland, Time.com
Wall St Journal blog
Wash Times blog
Thanks Allan…
“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. ….the 63% of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, HOWEVER TEMPORARY, to stamp it out.”
-William L. Shirer, author;
“The rise and fall of the Third Reich” **p.259**
THE POLICE STATE COMETH by Rep.Ron Paul 03/15/00
Congressman Ron Paul: Archives
Past articles by Congressman Ron Paul on LewRockwell.com
Never give consent. Never say Never. If the cops do something vastly stupid like planting drugs, they risk their entire careers and in the end still have only a simple possession bust. Most really aren’t corrupt, we’re just sometimes pretty stupid though. If you give a cop a chance to bust you by being stupid, they will bust you. 40 years and a clean record says it can be done. Consenting to a search is apt to get you more busted, than not. If they are crooked and you do consent do you really think they won’t bust you anyway? Play by the rules even if you have to make em up. I’ve held off a herd of cops for 45 minutes. Getting threats of what they will do if they find something by wasting their precious time harassing me. Pat downs, making sure to note it wasn’t a “search”, just a precaution checking for weapons. Mostly the ones that look like doobies I guess. Threats to get nose dogs, shaking my backpack upside down, checking visible areas like the ash tray. Still no consent or especially admittance. Threats that they smell it. Well I’d like to see that evidence show up in court. That was the 90’s central Cali and not backwoods Talabama.
The bottom line is you are completely in the right. Morally and ethically. Just not completely in the legal because of the CSA lies. Making the legal lies immoral, unethical and very political. Some might say if you piss the cop off by denying a search then they will tack on charges. They are law enforcement and that’s it. They are not even supposed to take sides, yet their political lobby hits every initiative and politician favoring common sense ending prohibition. After all is said and done its a judgment call. But legally you as an American citizen don’t have to prove your innocence. The courts have to prove your guilt. It must feel pretty dumb sitting in jail on mandatory sentencing guidelines because you aided and abetted a nark simply filling quotas.
I wonder if we raised more hell and less cooperation, if it would deter busting stoners more. Cops are probably the first to admit we’re usually very easy marks. Business slow, find a stoner. Black and Unemployed stoners are best. Women coming up pretty quick. Especially if they can forfeiture your kids and rent them to Foster homes. Confiscations and house foreclosures and auctions, cash incentives are the bennies of the Ganjawar.
Prison Inc. cage rentals like it and rehabs get big dividends perpetuating this scam. Plus their paraphernalia pisstasters and probies. Keeping competition off the free trade market should piss off the right wingnuts jerking off their plastic flags in-between sips of old milwaukee. Should get the bible belt anti-choice thumpers praying for organic Hemp they could grow without the poisons aborting babies, cotton uses. The brokedown farmers could grow Hemp and distill their own tractor fuel but instead rally for the Big Dick Armey of wallmart street lobbyists. The Pharms growing pills with binders and fillers and side effects to sell more pills, don’t need the stress of a free cheap homegrown stress reducer. Nor do the cows on welfare with better scenic views than most of the middle class, Got beef or Got Omega 3, 6 and 9 in perfect human balance. Starving Babies and Illegal Food
The AMA Insurance racket went to all the trouble of censoring doctors and the education secretary/drug czar/slot machine junkie Bennett censored school books because it might confuse the tikes. So it really ain’t about toking, its about numbers. Computers have no conscious and humans have no sense. Whatchagoindo? If you know you’re going to get busted because you have too much evidence laying around to miss. Might as well just kick back and fardup till they cuff ya.
Oh that’s funny and scary has shit Dante, quote (WHEN WILL THE DEA DECEND UPON THESE MILITARY FOLKS,SHOOTING THHEIR DOGS AND UNARMED LITTLE GIRLS,AND CONFISCATING TEHIR MILITARY ASSETS AND BASES ) just love what you said.
Yeah WTF so what if a few of our good soldiers,are addicted,or dependent on pain meds.
The Fraking world will not fall apart hell these folks are in chronic pain sometime intractable for life.
I admire our men in uniform hell I would not make it through boot camp even for an hour.
I think this nation would be shocked if they truly knew
how many highly functioning addicted and dependent folks there are on drugs out there, what am I taking about I think they they the prohibs do know and it just pisses them off beyond belief.
ran out of time on my edit…
WSJ blog
Seattle Weekly blog (MacKenzie Allen is from WA)
Great links Allan420 as ususal cool.
My gay son supports Ron Paul. He likes that Ron Paul has always been common sense about Cannabis.
My son is twenty he does like Cannabis on occasion rather than alcohol.
By the the way straight A in college and works. so much for lazy pot head.
Hey, it’s all relative, you’re son would probably have a successful career in popular music, raise millions of dollars for the poor, be working on a cure for the common cold, and helping little old ladies negotiate busy traffic intersections if he weren’t a lazy pothead. Tim Lincecum would have been the winning pitcher in all 4 games of the World Series instead of only 2 as well as winning a 4th straight Cy Young award this year. Yeah, I know he only won two straight but he would have won one in 2008 too, if he weren’t a pothead.
It took Michael Phelps 2 Olympics to win 14 gold medals when he could have won 20 or more in a single Olympics if he weren’t a pothead.
Everybody talks about that dogsled guy that won 4 consecutive Iditarods and 4 consecutive Yukon Classics in the same 4 consecutive years when he was high on the muggles, but do you really think his dogs were high too?
(that’s a joke, of course he got his dogs high, that’s his secret. Christ you and your dogs would have to be stoned silly to dogsled 1100 miles through Alaska twice a year for 4 consecutive years. It’s the only way I could see to keep the dogs from joining a union and going on strike)
Lauren Kelly has an excellent piece at Alternet called 75-Year Prison Sentence for Taping the Police? The Absurd Laws That Criminalize Audio and Video Recording in America. Seems some police officers prefer being the secret police.
“As if that made any difference.” You ever feel like you’re herding cats? 😉
The ‘more violence’ = ‘success’ logic reveals exactly what this all is. It is definitely not about saving people from vices but about control. It’s about those in control retaining it. It’s a really good point to pull out in intelligent discussions since the logic is so absurd. But when facing someone who thinks “hang ’em all” there’s not much intelligent discussion to be had with them.
In my experience with police searches, which is vast since I followed The dead for 10 years, if you refuse the search they will plant drugs on you or beat the snot out of you and find something else to charge you with. It dosen’t matter what is said because police lie all the time and if they want to, they can easily ruin your day.
“Kratom, a so-called herbal speedball which was only being ‘trialled’ as little as two years ago, is now openly on sale.
Again, this drug works by attaching itself to the same opiate receptor as heroin and crack cocaine.”
Same opioid receptor as heroin and crack? Can’t believe scientifically inaccurate writing like this passes for news.
.
.
Both go for the dopamine receptors. Guess which other drugs do? Drnking alcohol and meth.
The hallucinogens hit the serotonin receptors.
It’s my understanding that a receptor is like a lock, and the drugs above open the locks. A lock and power drill combo.
Guess which one doesn’t particularly eff with either, but has it’s very own specialized receptors? It starts with an m ends with an s and has 7 letters. It’s nothing new, Louis Armstrong had this one deconstructed in 1928:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY6Yo6lE-Jg
Don’t ask me why they call it muggles. But I have heard that it opens the endocannabinoid brain locks locks. Very much like a high security lock and a specifically matching key combo. Maybe even one of those keys with an encrypted computer chip or something.
I’m just a Know Nothing when it comes to the neurosciences though I do have considerable experience with brain lock. So don’t adopt my understanding as true without consulting your local professor of neurology. Do make sure he’s not a Know Nothing prohibitionist before you do.
Next they’ll be telling me that putting more people in jail is a sign of success too.
Yup, and spending more money is winning the war against our national debt.
Next they’ll be telling me that putting more people in jail is a sign of success too. strayan
It is a very successful enterprise for the Prison Industrial Complex. It’s soooo crazy. Politicians get more taxes if you’re in jail at $35k/y than if you worked for minimum wage. Only thing they need is a law that lets them jail people for possession of a controlled substance. Inhaling or not.
Slavery: Another Fine Product Still Made in the USA! 12/17/01
Contrary to what we may learn in school, the American Civil War did not see the complete abolition of slavery in 1865. The 13th Amendment to their constitution reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime…”
The US Gulag Prison System… 30 Mar, 2006
A Global Research Feature Article
‘Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible’
Angela Davis on the Prison Abolishment Movement
Yup, and spending more money is winning the war against our national debt… Sick……..!
One trillion spent on the Ganjawar is only a waste to tax payers,
Not those with no bid contracts receiving the one trillion.
Yup, the prohibs are digging in since potus made his statement. ‘..a public health issue’
Hello US government, dont you think its time to do as the people will you to do? Or do you think you are immuned to our anger. Have a look around the world, your not. The debt ceiling is coming fast.
umm, the Great Recession is over. Time to retire that rhetoric.
Pete, just to make you completely crazy, I’m going to stay on topic today.
Gonzalez is right. The drug-war violence in Mexico — and, for that matter, here in the United States — is owing to the drug war. Legalize drugs and the violence comes to an end. So what if those drug-war-enforcement agents are put out to pasture. Taxpayers would be relieved of having to pay their salaries. And the agents losing their jobs would benefit in the long run because they then would get to spend their lives with peaceful, productive jobs rather than the violent, corrupt, dead-end jobs they currently have.
http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/8291-drug-war-border-patrol.html#josc2749
The violence, overdoses and other degenerating practices are only good for one thing, promotion of the drug war. Can’t get statistics on Ganja overdoses. Violence is minimal and the only degenerating practices are prison gang bangs. Mostly seen as deterrents by the cops and drug worriers. They need stats to push for bloated budgets and DAWN is clearly un-science. Rehabs would go broke on Ganja users without court ordered please bargains. Used by the majority of those busted because of the built in fascists mandatory minimum sentencing if a jury finds you guilty. A high probability without jury nullification since the jury is not permitted to hear the words “medicinal” because of the 404 gag rule. Its a system of catch 22’s demanding science based research before it can be re-scheduled, then stall and thwart any attempt to test it, when it is tested, more stalling. Or statue of limitations and start over, do not stop at GO or collect $200. Its a rigged dirty filthy system where my Hemp blue jeans are considered a schedule#1 narcotic, making up 98% of the Feds “marihuana” eradications. Only using government schwag if permission is granted by drug cops. Drug cops telling doctors what they can prescribe and how much. Drug cops paid by taxes campaigning against citizens initiatives. So it all boils down to what looks good on paper. Same in Health care. “treatment” pays, cures and prevention don’t. Legalizing would be best for the citizens, not the international corporatists in competition. Gawd find America, land that I loved…
Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage
CONgress’ CONvenient Commerce Santa Clause
a Pub LTE trifecta in today’s Columbia Daily Tribune (MO). Muse, Wooldridge and Erickson:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n058/a08.html? (Muse)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n058/a07.html? (Wooldridge)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n058/a09.html? (Erickson)
Legal but lethal: So-called ‘legal highs’ are every bit as deadly as heroin and cocaine.
Ya wanna know what wrong with these legal highs? The same thing thats wrong with all street drugs, no dosage, no purity, no education.
These kids got out and roll “blunts” thinking they gotta be cool and smkoe the whole damned thing . There no moderation.
Anything can be deadly if enough is taken into the body.
Responsiblity and moderation.
More suckcess… Damn do I feel safe now…
Webster Alexander Facing 41 Years
by Loretta Nall – Monday, January 24 2011
It was eight years ago this month when my friend Marc Emery first alerted me to the plight of then Alabama teenager Webster Alexander, whose high school principal Ricky Nichols set him up by placing an undercover cop in the small town Lawrence County high school to pressure the kids into selling him weed for his FAKE cancer stricken grandmother.
That’s like the sickest shit ever when you think about it.
(Oh do do do read this link to Principal Ricky Nichols. Talk about sweet fucking irony and poetic justice! God it doesn’t get any better than that 🙂
Webster was the unlucky kid to get caught in the snare. He was a first-time offender. And they were saying he was going to get 26 years in prison for a few ounces of pot. 26 years for a high school kid. For weed! continued with links
Editorial: Scott’s prison break
Indiana’s system is much smaller than Florida’s, but Buss radically cut costs there. In large part he did it by getting legislators to focus on something that might go against the “lock ’em up” theory that has pushed Florida’s prison population past 100,000 inmates, and cost Florida taxpayers billions. That is, using prison for criminals who need to be there, and finding other — less costly, and less socially damaging — remedies for those who shouldn’t be there.