Nice People Take Drugs by Tony Newman in Huffington Post.
We have to learn how to live with drugs, because they aren’t going anywhere. Drugs have been around for thousands of years and will be here for thousands more. We need to educate people about the possible harms of drug use, offer compassion and treatment to people who have problems, and leave in peace the people who are not causing harm. And we need to take action against the incarceration of so many of our brothers and sisters who are suffering behind bars because of the substance that they choose to use.
Nice People Take Drugs. That’s why the war on drugs is a war on us.
Newt Gingrich: Prison reform: A smart way for states to save money and lives
We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons. Several states have recently shown that they can save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison populations.
Legalizing Drugs Would Stop The Bleeding by Tom Condon
The illegal drug trade doesn’t just cripple American cities. It bankrolls international terrorism and has turned parts of Mexico into war zones. The whole thing is crazy. What other crime has an organization of police officers, judges and prosecutors, such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, working for its repeal?
The failed war on drugs has cost Hartford and Connecticut a bloody fortune, and hasn’t worked. Well, the city and the state now have extreme budget difficulties. Now is the time to try something different. In mid-March, Leadership Greater Hartford and others will sponsor a forum on this topic, which I will moderate, with the goal of really making a change in drug policy. I’ll keep you posted on time and place.
Judge, prosecutors: Pot is ‘no big deal’
The response to a recent column about the legalization of pot has me more convinced than ever the time has come to end a costly, dangerous and ineffective prohibition.
But don’t take my word for it.
Maybe you can imagine my surprise when Iowa 7th District Senior Associate Judge Douglas McDonald, of Bettendorf, wrote to say he also hopes to see cases of pot possession “de-emphasized or legalized.â€
McDonald is 75. He served on the bench from 1988 until his retirement in 2007. He continues to serve on a part-time basis. He has never tried marijuana.
Ann Coulter and John Stossel discuss drug prohibition. I could only watch half of the five minute discussion, but go for it, if you can handle it.
This is an open thread.
RE: stossel segment
seriously? when did nicotine become a stimulant? people who are up all night working are probably stressed. I can testify that smoking is useful to help relieve stress (not a healthy way I know but an effective way in the short term).
Again coulter pushes the idea that alcohol and tobacco can be used in moderation but somehow we are incapable of using other drugs in moderation. Also the idea that we don’t drink and smoke to “get high” but for some other reason. Somehow promoting the idea that people don’t drink and smoke for pleasure but for some utilitarian purpose but the only purpose of other drugs is pleasure therefore they’re “bad mmm’kay”
OK i couldn’t watch the whole thing in one sitting and I started it up on this quote from coulter
wtf? I wish that stossel asked here to cite her claim…although kudos to stossel for calling her out on at least the murder part.
more on coulter, Holland isn’t an economic or military power therefore anything that happened there is meaningless (unless it supports her thesis).
more coulter-ridiculousness
evidence? *cricket**cricket* I wish at this point stossel mentioned Portugal.
last piece of coulter-ridiculousness (or at least the last one I feel the need to respond to).
This is actually correct…well half correct. The other half being that you can’t assume that because it is illegal that the law has deterred the rate of occurrence.
wow pete, you weren’t kidding. that was hard to watch.
I watched the whole Coulter segment on Stossel. Her main line of argument is that she’d be fine legalizing all drugs when welfare is eliminated, otherwise the inevitable (in her view) rising tide of social dysfunction would lead to higher taxes. I desperately wanted to teleport myself onto the set to see if I couldn’t say SOMETHING to crack her air of glib assuredness. I wish at least Stossel had brought up the incongruity of her being a Deadhead (true fact!).
Ann is indeed a difficult one to watch and I’ve turned the channel many a time to stope hearing the screech.
Her fame surprises me. What a hoot.
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Ms Coulter sure looks like she could use some pot to put a little meat on her bones. Anne, cannabis is a great relief to those who suffer cachexia and/or anorexia nervosa. You gotta have one or the other or possibly both.
That is one skinny lady.
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I really don’t have a problem with the statement that criminalizing will reduce the total number of users and the amount used by those who do. Now the people who are chased away by the law are the ones you just don’t need to worry about.
I often present the example of my brother in law, who not infrequently opines that he wished cannabis would be re-legalized because he prefers it to drinking alcohol. The man might drink as many as 4 beers in an evening and I doubt he averages even a single drinking alcohol buzz per month. I have no doubt in my mind that were the law different, it would be cannabis instead of drinking alcohol, less that 10 times per year and less than 5 bong hits per sitting. It’s just not that particularly important to him. But exactly what benefit does society see if he’s drinking beer instead of cannabis?
Now he doesn’t tell this to everyone who comes along. He knows that I’m a dedicated cannabinoidian so he’s comfortable sharing that with me. I also think that there’s an unspoken message that he “accepts me for who I am” going on.
Just the expense of hundreds of dollars per ounce is going to cause rationing. One of the reasons that smoking became popular is because it was the least expensive method. Now vaporizers are less expensive though requiring a upfront payment of at least a couple of hundred dollars.
I believe that there is a significant cohort of drunks who are using drinking alcohol or sniffing model airplane glue because of the law. Where the increased use post legalization comes from is much more significant than that the increase incurred. If a guy that’s drunk on liquor tonight decides to get high on cannabis because it’s now legal, that’s at worst a lateral move from the point of view of society. Of course we all know that it would definitely be a net benefit to society, but it’s just not worth arguing with a Know Nothing over the matter. It’s hard enough to get some of them to believe that its a lateral move.
Anyway, the major point is that there aren’t going to be very many people who are sober as the proverbial judge who are going to take up the habit just because it’s re-legalized. What the heck does a Know Nothing care if tomorrow’s pothead is today’s meth addict? Same thing with the hysterical rhetoric about driving while impaired on cannabis increasing. Doesn’t it make any difference that the impaired driver who chooses cannabis and goes out driving today was driving while drunk on drinking alcohol today? It’s the total incidence of impaired drivers that we need to compare.
Here’s a direct link to Legalizing Drugs Would Stop The Bleeding
Ann Coulter… 30 seconds in and my brain is screaming at me
I watched the coulter interview. I think you guys should take it a little easy when you watch an opponent on T.V. and watch them closely. Sure, they are wrong in a hundred different ways, but you are not who they are trying to communicate with.
I saw a Coulter who seemed to have trouble believing in her own arguments. She was on the defensive, evading direct questions or simply denying points of fact. She was aiming for Stossel’s audience, libertarians, and trying to appear at least somewhat reasonable without wandering off the reservation. She was uncomfortable doing it, and in my opinion probably didn’t convince many libertarians to sign up on the social conservative ticket.
I thought she looked completely brain dead. It seemed to be very oobvious that not only is she not knowledgeable about this subject, but that she is the typical “I represent a conservative faction, so I have to respond in this way (regardless of how ignorant I look.)” You can tell its not an issue that she has spent any quality time researching…
see… there are blessings to having a dial-up modem, I won’t even try and watch Ms Coulter.
Seattle Seahawks and N’Orlean Saints game, last quarter… Saints have the ball and are behind, but pushing down the field and the Seahawks are… well… less than reliable in protecting a lead. But they stop the Saints’ drive and I look up and the game clock is at 4:20. I said (to myself) they’ll win it now. They did. My 17 year old saw and thought the same thing watching the game in his room.
Just one of those moments I had to share. I doubt any NFL commentators will point that one out.
I thought the most ridiculous part of that interview is when Coulter just flat out tell’s Stossel that the graph he has about the murder rate before and after prohibition is just plain wrong..I mean, how does she manage to keep her head from exploding just from saying something like that.
She’s flat out wrong, and crazy. But the people she reaches aren’t interested in the truth, they’re interested in having their prejudices and preconceptions justified. She’s a piece of work that one (and if she knew what I accomplished stoned to the gills, including my Master’s thesis and my dissertation, she’d sing another tune).
Ann Coulter can be funny,sarcastic,acerbic and cute and me being bi yes an has hot legs but for gods sakes you sound so vacous and insincere MS Ann whenever you talk about Drug War and down right elitist one time, she talked about how very few can handle hard drugs and that possibly Edger Allen Poe was the only highy functioning druggie who produced great works so I quess according to Ann unless I quess you own A fortune 500 company or are some great artist that she likes forget using drugs sorry but these conservatives hypocrites, tired of it. oh and Rushand Michael Savage are talking about
Congresswoman shot said J Loughner that He was Occultist devil worshiper ,heavy Metal listener and pothead and that media not cover it. oh he read Mein kemph. Yeah my son had asked me if I had ever read that book of course I had out of curiosity and I also read Catcher in the rye,the Joy of Sex,and The Happy Hooker was out in late seventies around time I was in High school. my god I quess and I like pot and heavy metal music cheez I MUST BE VERY DANGEROUS HA HA. Yeah despite all this crap Ido still on occasion like Rush but he was also spouting today that liberals had interfered with freedoms concerning smoking, Oh my how the right yes Ann AND RUSH AND Rusty Humphries and many conservative republican enjoy smoking cigs,cigars and pipes which we can argue till the cows come home is not that healthly at all pot way better but they continue to deride and make fun of POT HEADS HEY WAKEUP GUYS THOUSANDS OF pEOPLE OF ALL Political stripes light up hello and smoke regulary and are not out shooting up congress PEOPLEor kids and Rush did you not have a narcotic problem not to long ago. Christ. That’s all What else is new Peter and everyone else here its always SAME SHIT DIIFERENT DAY.
The drug war is like an addiction to city state and countrys. Things will not change until they hit bottom. Flat broke. Zero money. GOOD. Tough way to learn but it happens to people every day. What a corrupt bunch of ……
Raskin’s Medical Marijuana Battle Gets Personal
In the weeks after a bill to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland failed last spring, the state senator who championed the legislation, Jamie B. Raskin of Montgomery County, found himself in a doctor’s office with a new perspective on the issue.
Physician Promotes Pros of Pot
Local physician and former UCSB Psychology professor Dr. David Bearman is calling on the federal government to fund research of cannabis-based medicines.
Ingredients in hallucinogenic bath salts will be banned, Gov. Bobby Jindal declares
Published: Thursday, January 06, 2011, 11:39 AM Updated: Thursday, January 06, 2011
“This is an epidemic,” Jindal said.
A pack of the product costs no more than $20, and some people inject or snort it to experience a euphoria similar to the one associated with the amphetamine known on the streets as “speed.”
The emergency rule adds six chemicals found in the illicit bath salts to the Controlled Dangerous Substance Act. The six, according to a Governor’s Office news release, are: 3,4-Methylenedioxymethcathinone, 3,4-Methyenedioxypyrovalerone, 4-Methylmethcathinone, 4-methoxymethcathinone, 4-Fluoromethcathinone, and 3-Fluoromethcathinone.
Thanks Ddc for posting link to Raskin’s story enjoyed it much.
Roger Federer has yet made another impressive gameplay during the Indian Wells. WIth his serve and volley, forehand and backhand perfectly strike. Nothing is stopping him with his healthy shape.