“Where’s” my “beef?” I just wrote two extensive posts which I thought made that plain.

“Of coarse religion is responsible for the hobgoblins. Cuba, China and Russia are the religions.”

Come on. The Marxist-Leninist states were/are explicitly atheistic. If you’re bent on redefining “religion” to include “atheism”, Dialetical Materialism, or Marxist-Leninism, you might as well redefine the word “water” to include “petroleum.”

No, I haven’t “attended one too many DARE seminars.” I have spent 20 years working on “the streets” you refer to. I wasn’t out there all those years attending a Grad Seminar in Middle Class Liberal Fatuity.

And I’ve spent a lot more time researching this issue than simply reading an old copy of The Consumer Report Guide to Licit and Illicit Drugs. (In my observation, that’s the main reference source provided for the pernicious canard that it’s practically impossible to overdose on pure heroin. It’s imperative to realize that an LD50 is an LD50- no more; no less. With the opiates, that’s a dosage range that swings back and forth rather precipitously for people, even in the case of many confirmed addicts. And if you flip that particular coin 2500 times, it’s liable to end up on edge at least once- providing a lethal dose in a range where none was expected. Legal and pure, or not. Consider what’s being risked- your respiratory capability.)

“As for getting heroin in drug stores. I can’t think of a better place outside of a clinic. Consistent dosages, clean dope without adulterants and cuts, Clean paraphernalia. Getting a thorough medical examine and a proper dosage for weight condition tolerance etc.”

In the first place: setting up clinics where heroin users can receive controlled dosages of their chosen substance is not what BruceM was talking about. He was talking about selling “100% pure heroin at Costco for $19/ounce” (direct quote.)

But beyond that- you think the medical services sector of this nation can afford the sort of expense and effort you speak of, so people can do their pleasure drugs? Get real.

Honestly- don’t you ever argue with yourself, in a seriously diligent manner, bringing up as many plausible objections to a course of action as possible, including granting the valid points of adversaries and taking steps to modify your position in response?

How do you presume that this society is going to provide cheap or free heroin on demand, when the pharmaceutical companies charge big money to sell morphine to cancer patients? Legal morphine is more expensive than illegal heroin- even under most insurance plans!

Do you expect the drug law reform movement to change that status quo? You must be missing out on the health care debate in this country. Talk about biting off more than you can chew…

As for the comparisons of heroin addiction to diabetes- I’m not sure what people think they’re gaining with that one. Diabetes is a disastrous chronic disease, and one of the biggest public health problems in the country. It isn’t some simple deficiency to be solved with a snap of the fingers by a few insulin injections every day.

The fact is that neither diabetes or opiate addiction are trivial syndromes whose consequences are to be trivialized or minimized.

I’ve put my own compromise position out there in at least one previous comment: allow the sales of dilute opiate preparations like hydrocodone/oxycodone cough medicines over the counter, with age restrictions, and strict limits on the amount to be purchased. And don’t expect a 4 oz. bottle to be cheaper than 750ml bottle of vodka.

No pure powder opiate drugs, with their lethal overdose/date rape/”Mickey Finn” capability.

Also, I think it’s important to discourage and minimize needle use- not only do needles facilitate overdose consequences, their use calls for a degree of responsibility that’s too much for most heroin addicts to handle. I don’t like beer cans much as litter- but at least they aren’t Hazardous Waste material. I don’t like them showing up in bathroom stalls, sandboxes, public park grounds, or street gutters.

That’s the main purpose of the injection clinics found in Europe, of course- because as a rule, needle users can’t be trusted to even find a place to safely dispose of their sharps.

Considering that something like 2/3 of injection drug users in California are Hep C positive, that is not a schoolmarmish nanny-state concern. The idea that needle exchange offers a foolproof solution to that problem is a fantasy-

“Young injection drug users (IDUs) in San Francisco may
be at high risk for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection despite access to several needle exchange venues…Since tests to detect anti-
body to HCV (anti-HCV) became available in 1990,2 multiple
studies have found that 50% to 95% of IDUs are anti-HCV
seropositive…”

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=CZP&q=author:%22Hahn%22+intitle:%22Hepatitis+C+virus+infection+and+needle+exchange+use+…%22+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholarr

50-90% Hepatitis C positive. That’s a PUBLIC health problem, not a private health problem.

“Most Americans don’t know anything about heroin or junkies outside of what prohibition has shown us. Before prohibition many artists and writers indulged in public places like the Chelsea Hotel and the Hashish Club…”

DdC, putting “Hashish Club” in there is a flat-out non sequitur.

And the fact is that the entire human experience of concentrated, purified opiates is only of about two centuries duration. There was never any halcyon pre-prohibition era where no one ever OD’ed or suffered adverse consequences from addiction. I’ve thought through my position on the matter, not with the idea of imposing a moral prohibition, but in light of the practical consequences for public health. It’s as liberal as I care to get.

I think that it’s absurd to expect that legal drugs would ever even be as inexpensive as a bottle of whiskey, much less “$19 an ounce.”

I don’t need needles on my beaches.

I don’t need my tax dollars supporting someone’s volunteered slavery at a publically funded injection clinic.

And I don’t like the idea of seeing my friends or relatives slipping into drug addiction, through easy access to unlimited quantities of powerful opiates. It isn’t a “deficiency disease”- not in the usual sense. Not for most people. As David Smith MD, founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic- and husband of a recovering drug addict- puts it, “there’s a large number of people out there with a taste for heroin.” It’s a taste. A choice, that turns into a no-choice.

Heroin addiction is no picnic. It induces withdrawal from the world. Even granting that opiate use in and of itself doesn’t lead to organ damage: drug addicts have a way of grossly neglecting their health. Many of them have trouble caring enough about themselves to bathe, take care of their oral hygiene, or to get even minimal exercise or adequate nutrition. That isn’t a stereotype, it’s an epidemiological fact. The exceptions do not abrogate the rule, any more than the fact that some people survive typhus or dengue fever indicates that those are harmless diseases.

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“Where’s” my “beef?” I just wrote two extensive posts which I thought made that plain.

“Of coarse religion is responsible for the hobgoblins. Cuba, China and Russia are the religions.”

Come on. The Marxist-Leninist states were/are explicitly atheistic. If you’re bent on redefining “religion” to include “atheism”, Dialetical Materialism, or Marxist-Leninism, you might as well redefine the word “water” to include “petroleum.”

No, I haven’t “attended one too many DARE seminars.” I have spent 20 years working on “the streets” you refer to. I wasn’t out there all those years attending a Grad Seminar in Middle Class Liberal Fatuity.

And I’ve spent a lot more time researching this issue than simply reading an old copy of The Consumer Report Guide to Licit and Illicit Drugs. (In my observation, that’s the main reference source provided for the pernicious canard that it’s practically impossible to overdose on pure heroin. It’s imperative to realize that an LD50 is an LD50- no more; no less. With the opiates, that’s a dosage range that swings back and forth rather precipitously for people, even in the case of many confirmed addicts. And if you flip that particular coin 2500 times, it’s liable to end up on edge at least once- providing a lethal dose in a range where none was expected. Legal and pure, or not. Consider what’s being risked- your respiratory capability.)

“As for getting heroin in drug stores. I can’t think of a better place outside of a clinic. Consistent dosages, clean dope without adulterants and cuts, Clean paraphernalia. Getting a thorough medical examine and a proper dosage for weight condition tolerance etc.”

In the first place: setting up clinics where heroin users can receive controlled dosages of their chosen substance is not what BruceM was talking about. He was talking about selling “100% pure heroin at Costco for $19/ounce” (direct quote.)

But beyond that- you think the medical services sector of this nation can afford the sort of expense and effort you speak of, so people can do their pleasure drugs? Get real.

Honestly- don’t you ever argue with yourself, in a seriously diligent manner, bringing up as many plausible objections to a course of action as possible, including granting the valid points of adversaries and taking steps to modify your position in response?

How do you presume that this society is going to provide cheap or free heroin on demand, when the pharmaceutical companies charge big money to sell morphine to cancer patients? Legal morphine is more expensive than illegal heroin- even under most insurance plans!

Do you expect the drug law reform movement to change that status quo? You must be missing out on the health care debate in this country. Talk about biting off more than you can chew…

As for the comparisons of heroin addiction to diabetes- I’m not sure what people think they’re gaining with that one. Diabetes is a disastrous chronic disease, and one of the biggest public health problems in the country. It isn’t some simple deficiency to be solved with a snap of the fingers by a few insulin injections every day.

The fact is that neither diabetes or opiate addiction are trivial syndromes whose consequences are to be trivialized or minimized.

I’ve put my own compromise position out there in at least one previous comment: allow the sales of dilute opiate preparations like hydrocodone/oxycodone cough medicines over the counter, with age restrictions, and strict limits on the amount to be purchased. And don’t expect a 4 oz. bottle to be cheaper than 750ml bottle of vodka.

No pure powder opiate drugs, with their lethal overdose/date rape/”Mickey Finn” capability.

Also, I think it’s imperative to discourage and minimize needle use. Not only do needles facilitate overdose consequences, their use calls for a degree of responsibility that’s too much for most opiate addicts to handle.

I don’t like beer cans much as litter- but at least they aren’t Hazardous Waste material. I don’t like hypos showing up in bathroom stalls, sandboxes, public park grounds, or street gutters.

That’s one main purpose of the injection clinics found in Europe, of course- because as a rule, needle users can’t be trusted to even find a place to safely dispose of their sharps.

Considering that something like 2/3 of injection drug users in California are Hep C positive, that is not a schoolmarmish nanny-state concern. The idea that needle exchange offers a foolproof solution to that problem is a fantasy:

“Young injection drug users (IDUs) in San Francisco may
be at high risk for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection despite access to several needle exchange venues…Since tests to detect anti-
body to HCV (anti-HCV) became available in 1990,2 multiple
studies have found that 50% to 95% of IDUs are anti-HCV
seropositive…”

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=CZP&q=author:%22Hahn%22+intitle:%22Hepatitis+C+virus+infection+and+needle+exchange+use+…%22+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholarr

50-90% Hepatitis C positive. That’s a PUBLIC health problem, not a private health problem.

And I’m weary of hearing Needle Exchange proffered as a cure-all solution to it. I know how needle exchange works. I support it, under the guidelines whereby it’s supposed to work- one clean for one dirty. But the fact is, it often amounts to clean needle handouts, the “exchange” part goes by the boards. And it’s a partial stopgap for a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Needle users are reckless people by nature. Most of them are too reckless to care about where they leave their contaminated syringes. And even the “conscientious” ones rarely do it right. To do it right, you need to snap off the needle into its plastic cap, and toss it into a red bag. Hospitals have special containers for disposal of blood/lymph wastes- with good reason. The janitors who deal with wastebaskets in public parks aren’t availed of that option…you ever work as a janitor in a public park? I have.

“Most Americans don’t know anything about heroin or junkies outside of what prohibition has shown us. Before prohibition many artists and writers indulged in public places like the Chelsea Hotel and the Hashish Club…”

DdC, putting “Hashish Club” in there is a flat-out non sequitur.

And the fact is that the entire human experience of concentrated, purified opiates is only of about two centuries duration. There was never any halcyon pre-prohibition era where no one ever OD’ed or suffered adverse consequences from addiction. I’ve thought through my position on the matter, not with the idea of imposing a moral prohibition, but in light of the practical consequences for public health. It’s as liberal as I care to get.

I think that it’s absurd to expect that legal drugs would ever even be as inexpensive as a bottle of whiskey, much less “$19 an ounce.”

I don’t like needles on my beaches.

I don’t want my tax dollars supporting someone’s volunteered slavery at a publically funded injection clinic.

And I don’t like the idea of seeing my friends or relatives slipping into drug addiction, through easy access to unlimited quantities of powerful opiates. It isn’t a “deficiency disease”- not in the usual sense. Not for most people.

As David Smith MD, founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic- and husband of a recovering drug addict- puts it, “there’s a large number of people out there with a taste for heroin.” It’s a taste. A choice, that turns into a no-choice.

Heroin addiction is no picnic. It induces withdrawal from the world. Even granting that opiate use in and of itself doesn’t lead to organ damage: drug addicts have a way of grossly neglecting their health. Many of them have trouble caring enough about themselves to bathe, take care of their oral hygiene, or to get even minimal exercise or adequate nutrition. That isn’t a stereotype, it’s an epidemiological fact. The exceptions do not abrogate the rule, any more than the fact that some people survive typhus or dengue fever indicates that those are harmless diseases.

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Junkies last time I heard were people, American citizens with the same rights as any war drug worrier cop shooting people for choosing an alternative to legal slobbering booze. I think you may have attended one too many DARE seminars or whatever they are, I’ve had the pleasure of being old enough to have avoided such nazism. I would only suggest it being sold the same as other Pharmaceuticals, not Costco do to shoplifting kids. I admit when I first thought about Libertarian views I assumed they just wanted to screw things up so bad no one would ever suggest legalizing again. Kids ripping off Woolsworth for smack, deaths etc and a big old See I told ya!

Now after years of reading their lies and flim flams and burying evidence and outlawing discussion, censoring school books and the media happy to be lapdogs to the same corporate war brokers year after year. Now I say legalize it and stop persecuting people for their choices in the name of saveding kids they don’t give two shits about. I still have a problem with Libertarians siding with factories rights or that Liberty doesn’t include clean air and water. Appeasing these drug thug scumbuckets, ConPromising their lies still leaves scumbucket liars. Most Americans don’t know anything about heroin or junkies outside of what prohibition has shown us. Before prohibition many artists and writers indulged in public places like the Chelsea Hotel and the Hashish Club. Not my cup of tea but I can clearly see where the danger is, it is with the established status weird world trade orchestration of banksters, war mongers, chicken hawks and chicken littles in the church perpetuating for profit dysfunctions.

The Ganjawar has no morals…

It Is Time for Medical Marijuana
According to this week’s Wall Street Journal, Somerset County Judge Robert Reed has prohibited MS patient Wilson from explaining to a jury why he used marijuana. The jury will be left to infer he merely wanted to party or to sell it for profit. Motive is not relevant in Reed’s court.

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Cabdriver is right and has given you some very good advice. You would be smart to listen to him a bit. Both for your sake and for the sake of the freedom from unjust, cruel, wrong laws and government.

Your attitude is fire and arrogance. That’s not always a good idea. You have a lot of fire and I wish that you would use it wisely.

It’s not about legalizing pot so I can smoke it legally, Bruce. For me, and many, many others, it’s about stopping the indecency of it all. The killing, the injustice, the cruelty, the insane fear mongering, the persecution and destruction, the seizures and confiscations, the spying and meddling, and the loss of precious rights, freedom, and liberty.

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Ever heard of a microdot? =D

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I think personal possession of all drugs should be decriminalized, with confiscation the only penalty.

But beyond that, your assumption is correct- I don’t want to see heroin sold in drug stores any more than I want polychlorinated biphenyls to be sold as ingredients in the capacitors of my electronics gear.

If the public policy disaster of drug prohibition is “directly caused by religion”, perhaps you’d like to explain the historical Zero Tolerance Drug War stance of officially non-religious nations such as Cuba, China (particularly during Mao’s time), and the Soviet Union- and the recent decisive steps forward toward drug legalization by several European and Latin American nations that are predominantly- or even officially- Roman Catholic.

Your tin ear for political sensitivities is in abundant evidence on this forum.

Actually, it’s worse than a tin ear, it’s outright deafness. You’re plainly much more interested in demonstrating your superior personal insights on matters of philosophy than you are in working toward actual results.

You have no reticence at all as far as tossing off propositions like this piece of medical malpractice, beginning with “Sharon Smith’s daughter would still be alive today if heroin had been legal…” and ending with this surefire room-clearer: “…If Smith’s daughter had learned about heroin since first grade, practiced using needles on bananas, learned how to use drugs safely and what not to mix, she could have purchased 100% pure heroin at Costco for $19/ounce and she’d be alive, healthy, and happy today.”

Like a satire from The Onion…the only problem is that you’re presumably absolutely serious, earnest, and sincere.

And of course I’m advocating to readers by posting on this website- just like you are. Among other things, I’m advocating that readers give your sort of heedless, reckless, callous pronouncements a wide berth- and that they treat your facile sophistries with the potent dose of skepticism that they deserve.

People like you are capable of killing or crippling movements for social justice from sheer narcissism and insufferability- along with your eager willingness to play fast and loose with facts.

That’s a combination that couldn’t be more effective it it were a provocateur tactic- although in the usual case, it’s simply someone’s idiotic elephantine ego, barging through a china shop. How to destroy a political movement, in one easy lesson.

I’ve encountered the type before (and most assuredly, it is a “type.”) Inevitably, it’s all about YOU.

At least some of us- it isn’t easy to tell how many, I hope it’s most of us- are playing the game for higher stakes than that.

You’d be better off with a different hobbyhorse, Bruce M. Judging from your comment above, you might consider starting a movement to revoke the voting franchise from women. As far as I can tell, that’s unbroken ground- you could assume the leadership role in that one. Ann Coulter did get there ahead of you, but I don’t think she wants it all that much…

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1) as I’ve noted here many times before, drug prohibition is all or nothing, and drugs are either illegal or they’re not. It seems the vast majority of people here equate “ending prohibition” with “legalizing pot” and nothing more. I’m one of the few who wants to legalize ALL drugs. That means OTC heroin. OTC status for all drugs. “Controlled substance” should be nothing more than a relic of a failed system.

2) neither this website nor any other is going to convince any drug warriors of the error of their ways. You’re not advocating to anyone by posting on this website. So I see no reason to moderate my opinions on the subject. I disagree with the entire concept of drug prohibition, not just denying people marijuana. I think it’s sad that so many people here only post here because they want like pot and want to smoke it legally, yet they agree that every other drug is properly controlled, properly criminalized, and people who use them are properly arrested and denied their rights. People like that are just as bad as the drug warriors who suck down vodka martinis as they waste taxpayer dollars on the latest anti-drug propaganda. And finally, since this public policy disaster is directly caused by religion, I see no reason why I should placate religious people and try not to offend them.

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As I’ve noted before in these pages: that’s tantamount to making the drug law reform movement about abolishing all forms of prescription medication- because there are few if any pharmaceutical compounds that combine high consumer appeal with lethality more effectively than the natural and synthetic opiates.

Start advocating for that, and what you’re doing is providing valid relevance for the testimony of Steve Steiner and the parents of Sharon Smith, where previously there was none.

And politically, you’ll lose. You’ll get steamrollered.

Speaking from personal experience: all of the “stand-on-principle” arch-libertarians that I’ve met who advocate for “legal everything” are young single males with no children of their own.

(Admittedly, I’ve also read of a few parents who have held such laissez-faire views- most usually, in the course of reading memoirs written by, or about, their addicted children. I realize that may be perceived by some people as a terribly moralistic note to strike. But I didn’t write those books…)

You have the right to your opinions. You also have the responsibility to check yourselves if your advocacy works to doom any hope of obtaining wider support for getting the drug law reform movement off the dime.

If you’d rather be self-righteously convinced than effective- I forecast a long slog, and almost certainly a futile one. Turn a movement favoring legalized possession and cultivation of marijuana into a movement favoring legal sales of every psychoactive drug under the sun, and you’ll face much strong logical objections and much more forceful opposition.

It would be the nadir of self-indulgence to do so.

I’m hold no special position in the Drug Law Reform movement, mind you. I’m merely giving some advice here.

And in my opinion, the practical consequences of splitting the movement within, between the incremental reformers who seek maximal harm reduction vs. the “legalize everything” position are bound to be a lot less devastating than the consequences of a unified “legalize everything” movement vs. the Zero Tolerance Prohibitionists.

As it stands now, the opponents of Medical Marijuana- and legal marijuana- are looking like Buffoons. Finally. They have no arguments left, except hysteria.

But if you want to learn what Buffoon status looks like from the inside, just make the drug reform movement about demanding legal OTC heroin. The shoe will be on the other foot, and you will have sealed the doom of the movement just as it was poised for major victories.

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And you’d be hard-pressed to find a more politically tone-deaf agenda than “anti-religionism”.

I could go off into a rant depicting your position as prima facie evidence of Asperger’s Syndrome, or some other sort of gross impairment of social intelligence.

But to do so would merely be indulging in the same sort of quack coffee-table psychotherapeutic explanations that you’ve put forth.

The fact is, there’s no way I could honestly say for sure what might be motivating you.

But people in political movements need to learn how to keep their eye on the goal, and not drag in extraneous agendas.

If the cause of anti-religion is dearer to you than drug law reform, then join or initiate that movement. Don’t mix that in to the anti-prohibitionist movement, just at the time when it’s gaining increased sympathy and success.

For all practical purposes, making anti-religion part of a drug law reform program would please no one more than the Prohibitionists. It would move the field of contest from the arena of medicine, public safety, and health, where their arguments are weakest, and transform it into a philosophical realm where they could continue to happily deadlock all drug reform measures to their heart’s content.

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You seem to equate religion with spiritually, and your hypothesis is just as odd. But as far as any kind of magic pill or antidote, I’m with Jesse.

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