CLICKHEREx

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/americans-are-leaving-religion-behind-and-it-scares-hell-out-christian-right?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark Conservatives are getting more frantic and repressive by the minute, in response to America's growing secularism. July 16, 2014 There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the increasing political polarization in America, which is at historically high levels. There are a lot of reasons for it, including changing demographics, women’s growing empowerment, the internet, the economy and cable news. But religion and religious belief plays an important role as well. There’s no way around it: America is quickly becoming two nations, one ruled over by fundamentalist Christians and their supporters and one that is becoming all the more secular over time, looking more and more like western Europe in its relative indifference to religion. And caught in between are a group of liberal Christians that are culturally aligned with secularists and are increasingly and dismayingly seeing the concept of “faith” aligned with a narrow and conservative political worldview. That this polarization is happening is hard to deny, even if it’s harder to measure that political polarization. The number of Americans who cite “none” when asked about a religious identity is rising rapidly, up to nearly 20% from 15% in 2007, with a third of people under 30 identifying with no religious faith. Two-thirds of the “nones” say they believe in God, suggesting that this is more of a cultural drift towards secularism than some kind of crisis of faith across the country. But even this may underrepresent how secular our country really is getting, as many people who say they belong to a church don’t really go to church much, if at all. While Americans like to tell pollsters they go to church regularly, in-depth research shows they are lying and many of them blow it off, putting our actual church-going rates at roughly the same level of secular Western Europe. Even when people identify with a label like “Catholic” or “Methodist”, that doesn’t mean they consider it an important part of their identity in the way that people used to. Take, for instance, the way that weddings have quietly changed in this country. It used to be that you had a wedding in a church, and only people who were eloping got married by someone other than a minister. Now, outside of very religious circles, it’s more common to see weddings on beaches or at country clubs, and very often officiated by friends of the couple rather than clergy. Indeed, state laws are slowly beginning to change to reflect this reality, allowing more flexibility for people to have the secular weddings they increasingly desire. But of those who remain religious, being affiliated with a fundamentalist or conservative religion is becoming a little more common. The same Pew research that found while all Christian faiths are slowly receding, mainline Protestant churches are shrinking a little faster and have fewer followers, at 15% of the country, than white evangelicals (19%) or Catholics (22%). This comports with other research that finds evangelicals have a bigger piece of the shrinking pie called “Christianity.” On top of that, there’s reason to believe that conservative Christians might also be getting more conservative. After all, the political polarization that we’re seeing lately is driven solely by the right, with conservatives getting more frantic and repressive by the minute. Much of this is due to dramatic surge in reactionary ideas rooted in religion. While public opinion on reproductive rights has stayed roughly the same, conservative Christians who make up the anti-choice movement have grown more extremist in recent years, not only dramatically surging in the attempts to wipe legal abortion out of red states but also expanding the war on women’s rights to include attacks on contraception access, as recently seen in Burwell v Hobby Lobby. Anti-gay sentiment is quietly becoming more extremist as well. While most of the country is coming around on gay rights, conservative Christians have expanded beyond just opposing same-sex marriage to backing laws that would allow restaurants and hotels to refuse gay people service. That some people are becoming more fundamentalist as others become more secular is hardly a coincidence. In a sense, the trends are feeding into each other. That’s easy enough to see when it comes to the rapid expansion of secularism. As the word “religious” increasingly gets coupled with an image of intolerance and hatred, more and more people, regardless of their belief in God, are downscaling the impact religion has on their lives, or in the case with the “nones,” giving up the idea of religion altogether. But there’s also good reason to believe the increasing conservatism on the right is a reaction to secularism. People who have long believed that Christianity should be the dominant cultural force in the country see all these secular weddings and people grocery shopping on Sunday and they want to crack down and somehow force the rest of us to fall in line. We know this to be so because, to be blunt, that’s exactly what conservatives are telling us. Take Fox News host Gretchen Carlson in an interview with WorldNetDaily, where she explained why she felt the need to participate in a Christian right movie called “Persecuted” that laughably posits that there’s some kind of attack on the right of American Christians to practice their faith. Carlson argued that Christians are being persecuted by not being able to foist their faith on others, complaining about “petitions at state governors’ offices during the Christmas season to put up a ‘Festivus pole’ – from the made-up holiday of ‘Festivus’ from the ‘Seinfeld’ TV show – next to a Christian crèche on public lands.” She also bemoaned the disappearance of crèches around town during Christmas, implying that her neighbors have an obligation to decorate for Christmas so that she and her kids feel satisfied that their beliefs are still dominant. That’s the idea that’s animating the Christian right: They really do believe everyone else owes them, that we are obligated to tithe to their churches and pray to their God and if we don’t want to do that, we should somehow be treated as less than fully American. You may think you’re just exercising personal choice when you get married in a park or choose not to hang Christmas decorations, but as Carlson’s interview demonstrates, conservative Christians see this as an attack on their “right” to live in a society that flatters their beliefs everywhere they go. And since the rest of us heathens aren’t cooperating, they’re going to force it on the rest of us through government means, such Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad throwing the finger to the First Amendment to declare a special Christian repentance day for the whole state or, of course, by trying to make us live by their beliefs by restricting abortion or gay rights. And now, with Hobby Lobby v Burwell, there’s a new means to try to force you to pay fealty to their beliefs, by giving employers the ability to manipulate your workplace conditions or compensation package to punish you for doing things their faith forbids. In her dissent in Hobby Lobby, Justice Ginsburg argued that the decision “invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith,” suggesting there might be a wide expansion in businesses demanding the religious right to control and punish employees for not following their religious dictates. Sure, the government may not be able to make you please Gretchen Carlson by putting a nativity scene in your front yard, but we may be looking at a future where your boss forces you to in order to protect his “religious freedom”. Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

http://www.tripme.co.nz/forums/showthread.php?12166-Getting-Spiced 27-07-2014, 12:03 AM #1 Neo View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message Add as Contact Administrator Join Date Oct 2006 Posts 5,222 Thanks 3,242 Thanked 2,934 Times in 1,071 Posts Getting Spiced Synthetic cannabis is stronger than it used to be. First published 10/07/2013 I wish I could stop writing blog posts about Spice, as the family of synthetic cannabinoids has become known. I wish young people would stop taking these drugs, and stick to genuine marijuana, which is far safer. I wish that politicians and proponents of the Drug War would lean in a bit and help, by knocking off the testing for marijuana in most circumstances, so the difficulty of detecting Spice products isn’t a significant factor in their favor. I wish synthetic cannabinoids weren’t research chemicals, untested for safety in humans, so that I could avoid having to sound like an alarmist geek on the topic. I wish I didn’t have to discuss the clinical toxicity of more powerful synthetic cannabinoids like JWH-122 and JWH-210. I wish talented chemists didn’t have to spend precious time and lab resources laboriously characterizing the various metabolic pathways of these drugs, in an effort to understand their clinical consequences. I wish Spice drugs didn’t make regular cannabis look so good by comparison, and serve as an argument in favor of more widespread legalization of organic marijuana. A German study, published in Addiction, seems to demonstrate that “from 2008 to 2011 a shift to the extremely potent synthetic cannabinoids JWH-122 and JWH-210 occurred…. Symptoms were mostly similar to adverse effects after high-dose cannabis. However, agitation, seizures, hypertension, emesis, and hypokalemia [low blood potassium] also occurred—symptoms which are usually not seen even after high doses of cannabis.” The German patients in the study were located through the Poison Information Center, and toxicological analysis was performed in the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University Medical Center Freiburg. Only two study subjects had appreciable levels of actual THC in their blood. Alcohol and other confounders were factored out. First-time consumers were at elevated risk for unintended overdose consequences, since tolerance to Spice drug side effects does develop, as it does with marijuana. Clinically, the common symptom was tachycardia, with hearts rates as high as 170 beats per minute. Blurred vision, hallucinations and agitation were also reported, but this cluster of symptoms is also seen in high-dose THC cases that turn up in emergency rooms. The same with nausea, the most common gastrointestinal complaint logged by the researchers. But in 29 patients in whom the presence of synthetic cannabinoids was verified, some of the symptoms seem unique to the Spice drugs. The synthetic cannabinoids caused, in at least one case, an epileptic seizure. Hypertension and low potassium were also seen more often with the synthetics. After the introduction of the more potent forms, JWH-122 and JWH-210, the symptom set expanded to include “generalized seizures, myocloni [muscle spasms] and muscle pain, elevation of creatine kinase and hypokalemia.” The researchers note that seizures induced by marijuana are almost unheard of. In fact, studies have shown that marijuana has anticonvulsive properties, one of the reason it is popular with cancer patients being treated with radiation therapy. And there are literally hundreds of other synthetic cannabinoid chemicals waiting in the wings. What is going on? Two things. First, synthetic cannabinoids, unlike THC itself, are full agonists at CB1 receptors. THC is only a partial agonist. What this means is that, because of the greater affinity for cannabinoid receptors, synthetic cannabinoids are, in general, stronger than marijuana—strong enough, in fact, to be toxic, possibly even lethal. Secondly, CB1 receptors are everywhere in the brain and body. The human cannabinoid type-1 receptor is one of the most abundant receptors in the central nervous system and is found in particularly high density in brain areas involving cognition and memory. The Addiction paper by Maren Hermanns-Clausen and colleagues at the Freiburg University Medical Center in Germany is titled “Acute toxicity due to the confirmed consumption of synthetic cannabinoids,” and is worth quoting at some length: The central nervous excitation with the symptoms agitation, panic attack, aggressiveness and seizure in our case series is remarkable, and may be typical for these novel synthetic cannabinoids. It is somewhat unlikely that co-consumption of amphetamine-like drugs was responsible for the excitation, because such co-consumption occurred in only two of our cases. The appearance of myocloni and generalized tonic-clonic seizures is worrying. These effects are also unexpected because phytocannabinoids [marijuana] show anticonvulsive actions in humans and in animal models of epilepsy. The reason for all this may be related to the fact that low potassium was observed “in about one-third of the patients of our case series.” Low potassium levels in the blood can cause muscle spasms, abnormal heart rhythms, and other unpleasant side effects. One happier possibility that arises from the research is that the fierce affinity of synthetic cannabinoids for CB1 receptors could be used against them. “A selective CB1 receptor antagonist,” Hermanns-Clausen and colleagues write, “for example rimonabant, would immediately reverse the acute toxic effects of the synthetic cannabinoids.” The total number of cases in the study was low, and we can’t assume that everyone who smokes a Spice joint will suffer from epileptic seizures. But we can say that synthetic cannabinoids in the recreational drug market are becoming stronger, are appearing in ever more baffling combinations, and have made the matter of not taking too much a central issue, unlike marijuana, where taking too much leads to nausea, overeating, and sleep. (See my post “Spiceophrenia” for a discussion of the less-compelling evidence for synthetic cannabinoids and psychosis). Hermanns-Clausen M., Kneisel S., Hutter M., Szabo B. & Auwärter V. (2013). Acute intoxication by synthetic cannabinoids - Four case reports, Drug Testing and Analysis, n/a-n/a. DOI: 10.1002/dta.1483 Graphics Credit: http://www.aacc.org/ More... Reply Reply With Quote Thanks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remove Your Thanks The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Neo For This Useful Post: CLICKHEREx (Today), Daz69 (28-07-2014) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27-07-2014, 10:21 AM #2 Super View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message Add as Contact Send Email Senior Member Join Date May 2013 Location Golden Bay Posts 152 Thanks 165 Thanked 66 Times in 45 Posts Weed in NZA very well written article. Typically adding a single methyl group to molecules that can pass the blood brain barrier will vastly increase its potency, like that of amphetamine and methamphetamine or JWH-018 and JWH-122(methylated version of -018). Reply Reply With Quote Thanks -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today, 05:26 PM #3 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message Send Email Senior Member Join DateAug 2012 Posts102 Thanks89 Thanked 62 Times in 34 Posts In view of the info in the above about synthetic cannabis use resulting in low potassium levels, it seems sensible for people determined to still use them to boost their potassium levels, both beforehand, and afterwards. One way is to eat a banana (which is an excellent natural source of that element, that is necessary for the "potassium pump" in our nervous system, and brains) both before, and after. Another is to use "diet Rite LITE SALT", (which contains 27.6 gms of potassium / 100 gms of product, and only 18.2 gms of sodium / 100 gms of product) or similar, from supermarket condiments, or health food aisles, to replace table salt in food.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-25/splendour-in-grass-police-target-drugs-at-festival-byron-bay/5625156 By Josh Bavas Updated Sat 26 Jul 2014, 12:33pm AEST Photo: Police man the entrance to Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay. (ABC News: Josh Bavas) Patrons of the popular Byron Bay music festival Splendour in the Grass say a NSW police operation targeting drugs may promote irresponsible behaviour. Police say the operation targeting illicit drugs has been set up to prevent people smuggling contraband into the licensed festival venue. However, some people attending the three-day festival said the police operation would simply prompt people to take their drugs quickly to avoid detection. NSW police drug detection dogs have been screening revellers at the entrance gates since Wednesday. By Friday afternoon, 113 people had been caught with drugs. Police had seized more than one kilogram of cannabis, pills and powder. The festival is expected to attract more than 27,000 people from across the country with headline acts such as Angus and Julia Stone, Outkast, Lily Allen and Hilltop Hoods. Superintendent Stuart Wilkins said while most people partied responsibly, there were always some who thought they could get away with smuggling drugs inside. There’s a lot of talk about [how] people see the dogs and they take four pills at once then freak out. Lewis Tito, Splendour in the Grass patron "It's one of the largest music festivals in Australia ... and we seize more drugs here and detain more people for the possession of drugs than anywhere else in the state," he said. "This is about harm minimisation, and it's about protecting the people who come here to make sure they don't take drugs. "We see the after effects of people who do take drugs. We see the ice-addicts and those who suffer significantly through mental illness." Drug dogs 'freak people out': Splendour patron Festival-goer Lewis Tito said the dogs scared people. "There's a lot of talk about [how] people see the dogs and they take four pills at once and then freak out," he said. Fellow Splendour patron Chris Rainback agreed. "Yeah it's definitely going to cause something like that to happen and that's dangerous you know," he said. "That's going to create issues." Several high-profile bands have spoken out against special drug detection operations like these, for fear people will swallow drugs to avoid being caught. Earlier this week, Dan McNamee from the band Art vs Science spoke to Triple J's Hack program, urging authorities to remove the drug detection dogs from the event. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Those people who take drugs along to festivals, and wearing freshly laundered clothing, donned after showering, washing their hands thoroughly in soapy water, and carrying such drugs well sealed and preferably at a considerably higher level, to minimise the stream of scent molecules that are constantly being emitted from reaching a sniffer dog's nose, which is low to the ground, would theoretically be much less liable to detection. Someone in the pub suggested to me that if they followed in (but not too closely, and not seeming as though they were together) a "decoy", who had no drugs on them, but the scent of cannabis lightly rubbed on their lower legs / footwear, would attract suspicion to them, occupying the police while others passed by unnoticed. Such a person could state that they had been to a party earlier, but couldn't remember where, as it was the first time they had been there, but some of the partygoers may have been using drugs, although they themselves did not. That person would then be searched, but, having no drugs on them, would be released, free to attend that festival.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730653-Feds-test-how-stoned-is-too-stoned-to-drive slimvictor View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Moderator Drugs in the Media -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2008 Location "Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness. More darkness will make darkness thicker. Only light can dissipate darkness. Violence and hatred cannot be removed with violence and hatred." - Thich Nhat Hanh Posts 6,363 Today 08:05 A small group of volunteers spent much of the last year getting drunk and stoned on marijuana furnished by the federal government before getting behind the wheel. The volunteers were part of what federal scientists say was the most comprehensive study ever conducted on how marijuana, and pot combined with alcohol, affect drivers. The data now being analyzed ultimately will help regulators decide how stoned is too stoned to drive. It's similar to the studies conducted to develop levels for drunken driving. Volunteers were recruited from around Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator. "They were happy to participate," says Marilyn Huestis, chief of chemistry and drug metabolism at the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The participants never got on real roads. Instead, they drove for about 40 minutes behind the wheel of NADS, a federally funded simulator that can mimic the look and feel of everything from urban parking lots to darkened gravel roads. Deer jump out unexpectedly. Passing cars swerve. Before getting behind the NADS wheel, each volunteer was required to consume specific combinations of marijuana and alcohol, or a placebo. Because the university has a smoke-free campus, the volunteers had to use a vaporizer to consume their marijuana, which was furnished under strict rules by a federal garden at the University of Mississippi. Each of the 19 drivers who completed the six combinations of pot and alcohol gave blood and saliva tests during their drives to check intoxication levels, Huestis says. She says the entire experiment took three years to design and administer. The testing finished this spring, and now scientists are studying the 250 variables checked by the tests. They hope to have initial data available by October. "In this country, there's a huge controversy over whether there should be zero tolerance or there should be some level that's acceptable. It's a terribly difficult problem," Huestis says. "We will be looking at what are the kinds of functions that are affected, and whether they are significantly different … whether alcohol is on board or not." Colorado State Trooper J.J. Wolff has made a career of tracking down drunken and drugged drivers. As one of the state's leading experts in identifying impaired drivers, Wolff knows many Americans are watching what's happening on Colorado roads. He says he's not yet seen a major increase in stoned drivers, but state troopers are definitely looking. "I have personally not seen more stoned drivers, not arrested more stoned drivers," says Wolff, who also trains new troopers on how to recognize impaired drivers. "From my point of view, that's good." To check whether drivers might be impaired by alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs, Wolff puts them through a series of voluntary roadside tests. The tests, which include standing on one leg while counting silently, and walking in a straight line, check someone's sense of time and motor skills. Marijuana, like alcohol, is a central nervous system depressant. That means it affects how someone perceives time, Wolff says. "My first objective is to make sure you're OK to drive," he says. One of the most useful tools police officers have is the portable breath test, which instantly checks a driver's intoxication level through the amount of alcohol they exhale. In the past few weeks, Wolff has been testing a new kind of rapid screening system for marijuana use. The test takes about 10 minutes, using a drop of saliva from a driver. Most of the commonly used marijuana tests require a blood draw and take days to yield results. Those tests can really tell only whether someone has used marijuana in the past week or so, not whether they are impaired now. cont at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...arch/12496767/

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730554-Studies-Reveal-Health-Risks-Of-E-Cigarettes * poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,387 Yesterday 05:56 Studies Reveal Health Risks Of E-Cigarettes “There’s no such thing as a safe cigarette.” This is a line that has been used to describe menthols, filtered cigarettes, and slims, but it also applies to the latest product for smokers: electronic cigarettes. They have been widely heralded by users and manufacturers as a completely harmless smoking alternative, but there isn’t much research to back up that statement. Recent studies have shown that they still contain tiny particles that can irritate lung tissue and could cause disease. Modern electronic cigarettes have been available for a decade and have been booming in popularity. Unlike traditional cigarettes, e-cigs don’t burn dried tobacco leaves doused in nearly 600 additives; 69 of which are carcinogenic. Instead, a battery-powered device heats a liquid solution (called e-liquid) of nicotine and flavors, creating an aerosol that is inhaled to simulate the physical sensation of smoking in a process known as “vaping”. Higher end models of e-cigs allow the user to adjust the voltage from the battery, which regulates the intensity of the heating element. As the solution gets hotter, it intensifies the effect of the nicotine hit. Unfortunately, these higher temperatures also affect the glycerin and propylene glycol used as solvents within the e-liquid, converting them to carbonyls found in cigarettes such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. Earlier this year, a study found that increasing an e-cig’s voltage from 3.2V to 4.8V while using an e-liquid with both solvents produced almost as much formaldehyde as a traditional cigarette. While the human body produces formaldehyde as a byproduct of normal metabolic activity in the cells, it is suspected of being carcinogenic when inhaled. The same study also found that at lower voltages, e-cigs produced up to 800 times less formaldehyde than a cigarette. While this might sound a lot safer, the size of the vapor particles and the delivery method into the lungs heavily impact the risk of disease. Particles found in inhaled cigarette smoke have a median size of 0.3-0.5 microns. Testing has found that the e-cigarette particles have a median of 0.18-0.27 microns. About 40% of these particles can travel deep into the lungs and become embedded in the alveoli, where gas exchange occurs. Even if the particle itself isn’t toxic, the size alone places a burden on the lungs and can cause disease. As vaping is still fairly new, there just has not been enough time to do the necessary long-term studies regarding health risks. Though these early studies do hint that e-cigs are a better option than traditional smoking, that isn’t really saying a lot, because cigarettes are pretty terrible. Even if vaping is better than smoking, it doesn’t mean it’s safe. As its popularity continues to grow, it is important to understand the full risk associated with vaping for both the user and those exposed to the vapor secondhand. Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/health-and...2PrW2rj0rEL.99 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 Laika View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries Visit Homepage View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Moderator Non-Electronic Music Discussion MDMA & Empathogenic Drugs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2006 Location Schedule I Posts 12,600 Yesterday 06:14 And then of course, alternatively - http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/lung-c...ing-increases/ ∞ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,387 Yesterday 06:50 Yeah, always many sides to every discussion or article. I could imagine that certain tobacco companies would not wont any positive info on e cigs to get around and I would even go as far as to say I wouldnt doubt some of them would pay for articles with a slant like this to be published. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 Laika View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries Visit Homepage View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Moderator Non-Electronic Music Discussion MDMA & Empathogenic Drugs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2006 Location Schedule I Posts 12,600 Yesterday 06:51 I would agree. Definitely a lesser of two evils. I started vaping nicotine a year and a half ago after 13 years of a smoking habit that ended with 2 sometimes 3 packs per day(3 on the weekends, lol).. Since making the switch I have abandoned mostly all of my asthma medications that I used to need on a daily basis. ∞ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2004 Location Um, at the potato range? Serving up my weapon of mash destruction? Posts 2,809 Blog Entries8 Yesterday 23:48 Forget the health risks of tobacco, I wanna know what the risks are of trying to get to know that woman a little better! Alright alright - so nicotine (regardless of how it's taken into the body) is not the safest drug. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 Libertin View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jun 2014 Posts 161 Yesterday 23:59 Another relevant study: Estimating the Harms of Nicotine-Containing Products Using the MCDA Approach * With introduction and commentary here: DrugScience: Nicotine MCDA Briefing *

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730619-The-War-on-Drugs-Is-Lost neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,551 Yesterday 22:55 The War on Drugs Is Lost JULY 28, 2014 By NRO Staff From the February 12, 1996, issue of NR EDITOR’S NOTE: This past Sunday, the editorial board of the New York Times endorsed the federal legalization of marijuana. In the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review, this publication’s editors endorsed the same concept in an introduction to a symposium on the question. The editorial and WFB’s contribution to the symposium follow: National Review has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As recently as on the question of troops to Bosnia, there was dissent within the family from our corporate conclusion that we’d be best off staying home. For many years we have published analyses of the drug problem. An important and frequently cited essay by Professor Michael Gazzaniga (February 5, 1990) brought a scientist’s discipline into the picture, shedding light on matters vital to an understanding of the drug question. He wrote, for instance, about different rates of addiction, and about ambient pressures that bear on addiction. Elsewhere, Professor James Q. Wilson, now of UCLA, has written eloquently in defense of the drug war. Milton Friedman from the beginning said it would not work, and would do damage. We have found Dr. Gazzaniga and others who have written on the subject persuasive in arguing that the weight of the evidence is against the current attempt to prohibit drugs. But National Review has not, until now, opined formally on the subject. We do so at this point. To put off a declarative judgment would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed. Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that “National Review favors drugs.” We don’t; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far. *** WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. In the summer of 1995 WFB was asked by the New York Bar Association to make a statement to the panel of lawyers considering the drug question. He made the following statement: We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen — yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. Perhaps you, ladies and gentlemen of the Bar, will understand it if I chronicle my own itinerary on the subject of drugs and public policy. When I ran for mayor of New York, the political race was jocular, but the thought given to municipal problems was entirely serious, and in my paper on drugs and in my post-election book I advocated their continued embargo, but on unusual grounds. I had read — and I think the evidence continues to affirm it — that drug-taking is a gregarious activity. What this means, I said, is that an addict is in pursuit of company and therefore attempts to entice others to share with him his habit. Under the circumstances, I said, it can reasonably be held that drug-taking is a contagious disease and, accordingly, subject to the conventional restrictions employed to shield the innocent from Typhoid Mary. Some sport was made of my position by libertarians, including Professor Milton Friedman, who asked whether the police might legitimately be summoned if it were established that keeping company with me was a contagious activity. I recall all of this in search of philosophical perspective. Back in 1965 I sought to pay conventional deference to libertarian presumptions against outlawing any activity potentially harmful only to the person who engages in that activity. I cited John Stuart Mill and, while at it, opined that there was no warrant for requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet. I was seeking, and I thought I had found, a reason to override the presumption against intercession by the state. About ten years later, I deferred to a different allegiance, this one not the presumptive opposition to state intervention, but a different order of priorities. A conservative should evaluate the practicality of a legal constriction, as for instance in those states whose statute books continue to outlaw sodomy, which interdiction is unenforceable, making the law nothing more than print-on-paper. I came to the conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable part of our patrimony. And that therefore if that war against drugs is not working, we should look into what effects the war has, a canvass of the casualties consequent on its failure to work. That consideration encouraged me to weigh utilitarian principles: the Benthamite calculus of pain and pleasure introduced by the illegalization of drugs. A year or so ago I thought to calculate a ratio, however roughly arrived at, toward the elaboration of which I would need to place a dollar figure on deprivations that do not lend themselves to quantification. Yet the law, lacking any other recourse, every day countenances such quantifications, as when asking a jury to put a dollar figure on the damage done by the loss of a plaintiff’s right arm, amputated by defective machinery at the factory. My enterprise became allegorical in character — I couldn’t do the arithmetic — but the model, I think, proves useful in sharpening perspectives. Professor Steven Duke of Yale Law School, in his valuable book, America’s Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade against Drugs, and scholarly essay, “Drug Prohibition: An Unnatural Disaster,” reminds us that it isn’t the use of illegal drugs that we have any business complaining about, it is the abuse of such drugs. It is acknowledged that tens of millions of Americans (I have seen the figure 85 million) have at one time or another consumed, or exposed themselves to, an illegal drug. But the estimate authorized by the federal agency charged with such explorations is that there are not more than 1 million regular cocaine users, defined as those who have used the drug at least once in the preceding week. There are (again, an informed estimate) 5 million Americans who regularly use marijuana; and again, an estimated 70 million who once upon a time, or even twice upon a time, inhaled marijuana. From the above we reasonably deduce that Americans who abuse a drug, here defined as Americans who become addicted to it or even habituated to it, are a very small percentage of those who have experimented with a drug, or who continue to use a drug without any observable distraction in their lives or careers. About such users one might say that they are the equivalent of those Americans who drink liquor but do not become alcoholics, or those Americans who smoke cigarettes but do not suffer a shortened lifespan as a result. Curiosity naturally flows to ask, next, How many users of illegal drugs in fact die from the use of them? The answer is complicated in part because marijuana finds itself lumped together with cocaine and heroin, and nobody has ever been found dead from marijuana. The question of deaths from cocaine is complicated by the factor of impurity. It would not be useful to draw any conclusions about alcohol consumption, for instance, by observing that, in 1931, one thousand Americans died from alcohol consumption if it happened that half of those deaths, or more than half, were the result of drinking alcohol with toxic ingredients extrinsic to the drug as conventionally used. When alcohol was illegal, the consumer could never know whether he had been given relatively harmless alcohol to drink — such alcoholic beverages as we find today in the liquor store — or whether the bootlegger had come up with paralyzing rotgut. By the same token, purchasers of illegal cocaine and heroin cannot know whether they are consuming a drug that would qualify for regulated consumption after clinical analysis. But we do know this, and I approach the nexus of my inquiry, which is that more people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted. This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000. My mind turned, then, to auxiliary expenses — auxiliary pains, if you wish. The crime rate, whatever one made of its modest curtsy last year toward diminution, continues its secular rise. Serious crime is 480 per cent higher than in 1965. The correlation is not absolute, but it is suggestive: Crime is reduced by the number of available enforcers of law and order, namely policemen. The heralded new crime legislation, passed last year and acclaimed by President Clinton, provides for 100,000 extra policemen, even if only for a limited amount of time. But 400,000 policemen would be freed to pursue criminals engaged in activity other than the sale and distribution of drugs if such sale and distribution, at a price at which there was no profit, were to be done by, say, a federal drugstore. So then we attempt to put a value on the goods stolen by addicts. The figure arrived at by Professor Duke is $10 billion. But we need to add to this pain of stolen property, surely, the extra-material pain suffered by victims of robbers. If someone breaks into your house at night, perhaps holding you at gunpoint while taking your money and your jewelry and whatever, it is reasonable to assign a higher “cost” to the episode than the commercial value of the stolen money and jewelry. If we were modest, we might reasonably, however arbitrarily, put at $1,000 the “value” of the victim’s pain. But then the hurt, the psychological trauma, might be evaluated by a jury at ten times, or one hundred times, that sum. But we must consider other factors, not readily quantifiable, but no less tangible. Fifty years ago, to walk at night across Central Park was no more adventurous than to walk down Fifth Avenue. But walking across the park is no longer done, save by the kind of people who climb the Matterhorn. Is it fair to put a value on a lost amenity? If the Metropolitan Museum were to close, mightn’t we, without fear of distortion, judge that we had been deprived of something valuable? What value might we assign to confidence that, at night, one can sleep without fear of intrusion by criminals seeking money or goods exchangeable for drugs? Pursuing utilitarian analysis, we ask: What are the relative costs, on the one hand, of medical and psychological treatment for addicts and, on the other, of incarceration for drug offenses? It transpires that treatment is seven times more cost-effective. By this is meant that one dollar spent on the treatment of an addict reduces the probability of continued addiction seven times more than one dollar spent on incarceration. Looked at another way: Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment. I have spared you, even as I spared myself, an arithmetical consummation of my inquiry, but the data here cited instruct us that the cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs. We have seen a substantial reduction in the use of tobacco over the last 30 years, and this is not because tobacco became illegal but because a sentient community began, in substantial numbers, to apprehend the high cost of tobacco to human health, even as, we can assume, a growing number of Americans desist from practicing unsafe sex and using polluted needles in this age of AIDS. If 80 million Americans can experiment with drugs and resist addiction using information publicly available, we can reasonably hope that approximately the same number would resist the temptation to purchase such drugs even if they were available at a federal drugstore at the mere cost of production. And added to the above is the point of civil justice. Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority. I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one’s home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used — I am told by learned counsel — as penalties for the neglect of one’s pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors. — William F. Buckley Jr. was the founder and editor-in-chief of National Review. This is adapted from an article that ran in the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review. http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...staff/page/0/1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was being said by credible, conservative people in the US 18 years ago, yet the failed, prohibitionist, punitory mindset continues to hold sway with politicians, who don't want to risk appearing to be weak about drugs.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730619-The-War-on-Drugs-Is-Lost neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,551 Yesterday 22:55 The War on Drugs Is Lost JULY 28, 2014 By NRO Staff From the February 12, 1996, issue of NR EDITOR’S NOTE: This past Sunday, the editorial board of the New York Times endorsed the federal legalization of marijuana. In the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review, this publication’s editors endorsed the same concept in an introduction to a symposium on the question. The editorial and WFB’s contribution to the symposium follow: National Review has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As recently as on the question of troops to Bosnia, there was dissent within the family from our corporate conclusion that we’d be best off staying home. For many years we have published analyses of the drug problem. An important and frequently cited essay by Professor Michael Gazzaniga (February 5, 1990) brought a scientist’s discipline into the picture, shedding light on matters vital to an understanding of the drug question. He wrote, for instance, about different rates of addiction, and about ambient pressures that bear on addiction. Elsewhere, Professor James Q. Wilson, now of UCLA, has written eloquently in defense of the drug war. Milton Friedman from the beginning said it would not work, and would do damage. We have found Dr. Gazzaniga and others who have written on the subject persuasive in arguing that the weight of the evidence is against the current attempt to prohibit drugs. But National Review has not, until now, opined formally on the subject. We do so at this point. To put off a declarative judgment would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed. Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that “National Review favors drugs.” We don’t; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far. *** WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. In the summer of 1995 WFB was asked by the New York Bar Association to make a statement to the panel of lawyers considering the drug question. He made the following statement: We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen — yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. Perhaps you, ladies and gentlemen of the Bar, will understand it if I chronicle my own itinerary on the subject of drugs and public policy. When I ran for mayor of New York, the political race was jocular, but the thought given to municipal problems was entirely serious, and in my paper on drugs and in my post-election book I advocated their continued embargo, but on unusual grounds. I had read — and I think the evidence continues to affirm it — that drug-taking is a gregarious activity. What this means, I said, is that an addict is in pursuit of company and therefore attempts to entice others to share with him his habit. Under the circumstances, I said, it can reasonably be held that drug-taking is a contagious disease and, accordingly, subject to the conventional restrictions employed to shield the innocent from Typhoid Mary. Some sport was made of my position by libertarians, including Professor Milton Friedman, who asked whether the police might legitimately be summoned if it were established that keeping company with me was a contagious activity. I recall all of this in search of philosophical perspective. Back in 1965 I sought to pay conventional deference to libertarian presumptions against outlawing any activity potentially harmful only to the person who engages in that activity. I cited John Stuart Mill and, while at it, opined that there was no warrant for requiring motorcyclists to wear a helmet. I was seeking, and I thought I had found, a reason to override the presumption against intercession by the state. About ten years later, I deferred to a different allegiance, this one not the presumptive opposition to state intervention, but a different order of priorities. A conservative should evaluate the practicality of a legal constriction, as for instance in those states whose statute books continue to outlaw sodomy, which interdiction is unenforceable, making the law nothing more than print-on-paper. I came to the conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable part of our patrimony. And that therefore if that war against drugs is not working, we should look into what effects the war has, a canvass of the casualties consequent on its failure to work. That consideration encouraged me to weigh utilitarian principles: the Benthamite calculus of pain and pleasure introduced by the illegalization of drugs. A year or so ago I thought to calculate a ratio, however roughly arrived at, toward the elaboration of which I would need to place a dollar figure on deprivations that do not lend themselves to quantification. Yet the law, lacking any other recourse, every day countenances such quantifications, as when asking a jury to put a dollar figure on the damage done by the loss of a plaintiff’s right arm, amputated by defective machinery at the factory. My enterprise became allegorical in character — I couldn’t do the arithmetic — but the model, I think, proves useful in sharpening perspectives. Professor Steven Duke of Yale Law School, in his valuable book, America’s Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade against Drugs, and scholarly essay, “Drug Prohibition: An Unnatural Disaster,” reminds us that it isn’t the use of illegal drugs that we have any business complaining about, it is the abuse of such drugs. It is acknowledged that tens of millions of Americans (I have seen the figure 85 million) have at one time or another consumed, or exposed themselves to, an illegal drug. But the estimate authorized by the federal agency charged with such explorations is that there are not more than 1 million regular cocaine users, defined as those who have used the drug at least once in the preceding week. There are (again, an informed estimate) 5 million Americans who regularly use marijuana; and again, an estimated 70 million who once upon a time, or even twice upon a time, inhaled marijuana. From the above we reasonably deduce that Americans who abuse a drug, here defined as Americans who become addicted to it or even habituated to it, are a very small percentage of those who have experimented with a drug, or who continue to use a drug without any observable distraction in their lives or careers. About such users one might say that they are the equivalent of those Americans who drink liquor but do not become alcoholics, or those Americans who smoke cigarettes but do not suffer a shortened lifespan as a result. Curiosity naturally flows to ask, next, How many users of illegal drugs in fact die from the use of them? The answer is complicated in part because marijuana finds itself lumped together with cocaine and heroin, and nobody has ever been found dead from marijuana. The question of deaths from cocaine is complicated by the factor of impurity. It would not be useful to draw any conclusions about alcohol consumption, for instance, by observing that, in 1931, one thousand Americans died from alcohol consumption if it happened that half of those deaths, or more than half, were the result of drinking alcohol with toxic ingredients extrinsic to the drug as conventionally used. When alcohol was illegal, the consumer could never know whether he had been given relatively harmless alcohol to drink — such alcoholic beverages as we find today in the liquor store — or whether the bootlegger had come up with paralyzing rotgut. By the same token, purchasers of illegal cocaine and heroin cannot know whether they are consuming a drug that would qualify for regulated consumption after clinical analysis. But we do know this, and I approach the nexus of my inquiry, which is that more people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted. This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000. My mind turned, then, to auxiliary expenses — auxiliary pains, if you wish. The crime rate, whatever one made of its modest curtsy last year toward diminution, continues its secular rise. Serious crime is 480 per cent higher than in 1965. The correlation is not absolute, but it is suggestive: Crime is reduced by the number of available enforcers of law and order, namely policemen. The heralded new crime legislation, passed last year and acclaimed by President Clinton, provides for 100,000 extra policemen, even if only for a limited amount of time. But 400,000 policemen would be freed to pursue criminals engaged in activity other than the sale and distribution of drugs if such sale and distribution, at a price at which there was no profit, were to be done by, say, a federal drugstore. So then we attempt to put a value on the goods stolen by addicts. The figure arrived at by Professor Duke is $10 billion. But we need to add to this pain of stolen property, surely, the extra-material pain suffered by victims of robbers. If someone breaks into your house at night, perhaps holding you at gunpoint while taking your money and your jewelry and whatever, it is reasonable to assign a higher “cost” to the episode than the commercial value of the stolen money and jewelry. If we were modest, we might reasonably, however arbitrarily, put at $1,000 the “value” of the victim’s pain. But then the hurt, the psychological trauma, might be evaluated by a jury at ten times, or one hundred times, that sum. But we must consider other factors, not readily quantifiable, but no less tangible. Fifty years ago, to walk at night across Central Park was no more adventurous than to walk down Fifth Avenue. But walking across the park is no longer done, save by the kind of people who climb the Matterhorn. Is it fair to put a value on a lost amenity? If the Metropolitan Museum were to close, mightn’t we, without fear of distortion, judge that we had been deprived of something valuable? What value might we assign to confidence that, at night, one can sleep without fear of intrusion by criminals seeking money or goods exchangeable for drugs? Pursuing utilitarian analysis, we ask: What are the relative costs, on the one hand, of medical and psychological treatment for addicts and, on the other, of incarceration for drug offenses? It transpires that treatment is seven times more cost-effective. By this is meant that one dollar spent on the treatment of an addict reduces the probability of continued addiction seven times more than one dollar spent on incarceration. Looked at another way: Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment. I have spared you, even as I spared myself, an arithmetical consummation of my inquiry, but the data here cited instruct us that the cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs. We have seen a substantial reduction in the use of tobacco over the last 30 years, and this is not because tobacco became illegal but because a sentient community began, in substantial numbers, to apprehend the high cost of tobacco to human health, even as, we can assume, a growing number of Americans desist from practicing unsafe sex and using polluted needles in this age of AIDS. If 80 million Americans can experiment with drugs and resist addiction using information publicly available, we can reasonably hope that approximately the same number would resist the temptation to purchase such drugs even if they were available at a federal drugstore at the mere cost of production. And added to the above is the point of civil justice. Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority. I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one’s home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used — I am told by learned counsel — as penalties for the neglect of one’s pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors. — William F. Buckley Jr. was the founder and editor-in-chief of National Review. This is adapted from an article that ran in the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review. http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...staff/page/0/1

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730414-School-children-as-young-as-eight-to-be-taught-about-the-dangers-of-illegal-drugs poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,371 Today 08:33 School children as young as eight to be taught about the dangers of illegal drugs CHILDREN as young as eight will be taught about the dangers of drugs under the new national school curriculum to be rolled out in classrooms across the country. Students from Year 3 will learn how to respond to unsafe situations involving illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, performance-enhancing drugs, prescription drugs, bush and alternative medicines, energy drinks and caffeine. Drug problems in NSW public schools soared last year with serious incidents increasing from 48 reports during the first two terms to 127 in the second half of the year. The current NSW personal development, health and physical education (PDHPE) syllabus states that by the end of Year 4 students should discuss reasons why people use drugs for medical and non-medical purposes. DO YOU THINK KIDS SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT DRUGS? TELL US BELOW But Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia spokesman Paul Dillon said this does not happen. He said primary schools currently gave lessons about medicines and smoking but did not broach illicit substances and alcohol. “We live in a very different world to the one we lived in 20 years ago. We have young people through social and mass media who are exposed to so much more,” he said. “I suppose the curriculum has to match that so if some thing pops up teachers can respond appropriately and are not overstepping what it says.” The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which drafted the national curriculum earlier this year, has said it was now ready to roll out into schools. It said it would be up to states and schools to “decide the appropriateness and timeliness of what to teach and when”. General Manager Dr Phil Lambert said ACARA had consulted “rigorously” in developing the Australian curriculum including the education program on drugs and alcohol. “ACARA is committed to ensuring students receive a holistic education encompassing a wide variety of subjects that help them develop into healthy, well-adjusted adults able to make informed decisions,” he said. The Board of Studies Teaching and Educational Standards (BOTSES) will implement the curriculum through its own syllabuses which NSW public, independent and catholic schools follow. Child Psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said drug education for primary school children should be age-appropriate. “It is very much dependent on what they teach, it is clearly not appropriate for kids in Grade 3 to know about the harm minimisation techniques to taking ice or heroin safely,” he said. “What is appropriate is they learn the concept of illicit drugs and tobacco and alcohol and they learn the concept of medical drugs.” DO YOU THINK KIDS SHOULD BE TAUGHT ABOUT DRUGS? TELL US BELOW Bourke Street Public School mother Missy Lieser said she would be okay if the school taught her children Olivia, 5, and Joshua, 4, about drugs in Year 3 as long as it was not too intense. “My first instinct is that it’s great, my other instinct is that it’s too young,” she said. “Year 3 is pretty young to get into hardcore issues but to start talking about it is good. “Families should discuss it first but for those families that don’t then it needs to be discussed and they’re the children who probably need it most.” BOTSES spokesman Michael Charlton said the board would meet with experts, teachers and other education stakeholders before deciding when and how the NSW PDHPE would be reviewed for incorporation with the national curriculum. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/new...4467145828dfae -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 Cliffy78 View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jun 2014 Posts 438 Today 08:47 I remember when I was young and they had started D.A.R.E(drug abuse resistance education-I think) here in the states I was in 2nd grade I think, but they showed us coke and weed and asked us if we ever saw our parents use these drugs. They tried to get us to rat our parents out. It's real crazy now that I look back. Reminds me of nazi Germany a little with the rat out your neighbor type theme. If your gonna teach kids to "just say no " that's fine and dandy, but to try to get 7yr olds to unknowingly rat on they're parents is just wrong IMO. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,371 Today 08:52 ^ Yeah that's shit. I can't recall any 'drug education' kind of stuff in my primary school yrs, but it might be that I've just partied too hard in later years and forgot it if we did do any. Last edited by poledriver; Today at 10:02. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,522 Today 09:38 Brain washing them early. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 Frydea View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2011 Location Southern California Posts 123 Today 11:17 What a joke. For some reason I don't remember the DARE program being as big a deal in my elementary school as others (I was that age in the late 90s/early 2000s in Los Angeles). I think a couple cops came in an gave us a lecture or two on how we shouldn't smoke or do drugs, but it was never an actual program like I've heard it described in other schools. What I remember most was that even at that young age a lot of the kids though it was a joke, and we would all say that DARE stood for dumb ass retarded education lolol -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 my3rdeye View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2012 Location Planet Microdot Posts 934 Today 13:21 I remember the drug lecture back in the late 80's we got. A big heavy metal kid asked the cop if he ever drinks a nice cold beer after a long days work. The cop replied in the affirmative. The rocker then pointed out that the teachers all went out after work and were seen at the bar too. He asked how can they all be so hypocritical as they were all drug users as well. Cops and teachers really hate being called drug users. You can't tell kids not to do drugs then go get shit faced yourself. You can't lecture them about using alcohol safely and not give the same lecture about safe drug use. That gives the impression one is okay and the other is not. For years there has been this unspoken alcohol is okay message we give kids. You can't just stand up there saying "bad bad bad" when you do it too. Kids see right thru that. Anyway drugs have nothing to do with children I am sick of the debate always going that way. I am an adult and should be able to do what I want. If you cant keep your kids away from drugs that is not my problem it's yours. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #7 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,180 Blog Entries21 Today 13:30 I'd be more concerned with what kids will be taught and will consequently learn about drugs and any other potentially high risk activity than the fact they are learning about them. If they were presented with, hopefully in appropriate ways given their age regarding explicit or developmentally sensitive material, the reality or "truth" as related to drugs that would be best. Then it's hard for kids to figure this stuff out for themselves at this age, and that's ultimately what's important. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #8 Corazon View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date May 2013 Location usa Posts 788 Today 13:55 Originally Posted by Frydea What a joke. For some reason I don't remember the DARE program being as big a deal in my elementary school as others (I was that age in the late 90s/early 2000s in Los Angeles). I think a couple cops came in an gave us a lecture or two on how we shouldn't smoke or do drugs, but it was never an actual program like I've heard it described in other schools. What I remember most was that even at that young age a lot of the kids though it was a joke, and we would all say that DARE stood for dumb ass retarded education lolol My parents had enough sense to lie about our address, so that I could go to the better public school. My DARE program didn't try to trick us into ratting out our parent's drug use either. Just cops who gave us football cards, and had me convinced until I was older that marijuana would kill you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #9 szuko000 View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2009 Location The lab Posts 830 Blog Entries1 Today 16:25 We had dare when I was in 4th grade. To be honest it's way too bias and starts way to early. Telling kids drugs are bad is great I'm all for telling them to say no when they are 5-8. I think it's important children learn to not take random things, as far as why and the dangers associated no. They should then revisit the topic years later 12-16 and give an In depth harm reduction-esk class (as this is school and they won't teach the best way to inject) fear mongering and creating couriosity through making a forbidden fruit is bad. When I was in HS I was good enough friends with the health teacher to do 3 freshmen "intro to drugs" class and a week long advanced drug course for my senior class. He was only cool with it because of how it was conducted tried to be as non bias and come off as not at all glamorizing. It was great and if I even helped one mind it was worth all the extra work for no reason. That is how it should be tought -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #10 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join DateSep 2012 Posts118Today 18:02 Why aren't they also informing them of the hazards of legal drugs at the same time? And the "just say no" campaign worked really well, didn't it? (sarcasm). Their peer group will have far more influence than any govt. indoctrination / propaganda program.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730542-Harm-Reduction-for-Better-Therapy toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,183 Blog Entries21 Today 01:39 Harm Reduction Made Me a Much Better Family Therapist As an abstinence-based therapist, I assumed that failure and frustration came with the territory. When I adopted the values and strategies of harm reduction, I was finally able to offer my clients real help. Originally Posted by Barry Lessin | 7/28/14 I chose to work in the addiction field because I care about people who struggle with substance use and felt that maybe I could make a difference. I was aware of the difficulty of the work because of the complex nature of problematic drug use and the interaction with mental illness. For decades, I shrugged off the difficulty, assuming that the frustration and pain involved in providing effective treatment came with the territory. About four years ago, though, my career took a dramatic turn after I was profoundly affected by a combination of my personal experience with drug misuse and mental illness in my family and my new awareness of public health policies that criminalize substance use and stigmatize drug users. These experiences shone a glaring light on how the traditional treatment model was failing my clients and their families and led me to incorporate harm reduction approaches into my work. As I learned about harm reduction, it quickly became apparent that the tenets of harm reduction parallel those of effective parenting. Harm reduction and effective parenting The philosophy of harm reduction is based on our knowledge that human beings engage in behaviors that carry risks. Harm reduction values each person’s dignity and respects their right to make choices. This shifts the focus from attempting to restrict or prohibit risky behaviors to reducing the negative consequences associated with them. This premise parallels psychological theories of normal adolescent development, during which taking risks and challenging authority help children establish independence and a unique identity. Harm reduction approaches empower people by collaborating with them in making behavioral changes and by viewing people as much more than their substance use. Empowerment helps counter the shame and stigma of substance use and thereby lowers a common barrier to engaging in treatment. People in emotional pain, when shown compassion and given a stigma-free environment, are more willing to open up and share their worries. Teens, especially, engage in treatment when shown respect by allowing them to collaborate in their own care. Effective parenting involves similar values: compassion, flexibility, mutual trust, creating safety, encouraging children’s individuality and ease of communication. This makes harm reduction therapy a natural fit with for working with parents and teens. Unfortunately, harm reduction remains a “dirty word” in traditional addiction treatment due to the misconception that it condones substance use. In reality, harm reduction embraces the uniqueness of the substance user, thereby avoiding the stigma- and shame-inducing approaches of one-size-fits-all treatment. Initially, I was somewhat apprehensive about whether parents would be willing to have their child see a therapist using a more flexible, non-abstinence-based approach. My concerns quickly evaporated as I began working with families. Virtually all of my teen clients were more willing to work with a therapist who viewed them as a student, a peer, a sibling and a person with unique skills and personality—who also happens to be using drugs. Harm reduction in practice Harm reduction teaches us several important lessons: (1) “Hitting bottom” isn’t required for lasting change; (2) people use drugs for reasons; (3) helping people change is easier when we start “where they’re at”; and (4) change includes taking small positive steps. My work with my client Matt illustrates these lessons. (My client’s name and some details of his story have been changed to protect his privacy.) Matt was a month from his eighteenth birthday, during the summer before his senior year of high school, when his father called me about Matt’s marijuana use. Matt’s father reported that he and Matt’s mother were extremely worried about their son’s seemingly depressed mood, insomnia, underachieving in school and lack of motivation about making a decision about his future. They had lost the ability to trust him since he had been lying about his marijuana use. Three months prior to the initial call they grounded him and limited his cell phone use after they caught him smoking in the house and driving while high, following repeated warnings to him to stop smoking. They feared that his marijuana use was a “gateway” to other drug use. They doubted that they could persuade him to come for help and that if he did, he would participate. Their belief that he would need to “hit bottom” before responding to any offered help contributed to them feeling helpless. They had already called another addiction treatment provider, who refused to see them because Matt was “not ready” for making a change and advised that forcing him to come to treatment would be fruitless. No need to “hit bottom” or use “tough love” Initial calls from parents wanting help for their child’s substance use are naturally filled with much uncertainty. Popular myths about everyone with a severe substance use problem needing to “be ready” for treatment or “hitting bottom” reinforce irrational fears and fail families who could otherwise benefit from help. Psychological research shows that people predictably move through stages of change. Most people enter treatment or make positive changes in their substance use without hitting bottom. Overall, harm reduction approaches conform to research that shows that when parents lead their teens with a light but stable hand, staying engaged but allowing independence, their kids generally do better throughout life. The concept of “tough love,” which embraces the “hitting bottom” myth, can damage or even destroy a child’s life-sustaining connection to the only people who truly care. In the absence of violence or abuse in the home, kicking a child out of a family can be disastrous. In fact, a child’s refusal of treatment is an opportunity for parents to benefit from learning about their role and to be offered a road map of next steps to take. I encouraged Matt’s parents to tell him that they had made a decision to consult a professional for some guidance, that I would like to meet him if I am going to give his parents guidance, but that it was his choice to attend or not. People use drugs for reasons I was pleasantly surprised that Matt attended the session. We discussed my collaborative approach and agreed that he would decide what his goals were in treatment, if he chose to continue working with me. I discussed with them the harm reduction view of substance use: that people use drugs for reasons such as to relax, sleep, have fun, improve creativity and help cope with the pain associated with mental health issues, and that people “form a relationship” with substances. Once these guidelines were established, Matt was motivated to talk about his life. He loved playing basketball, hanging out with friends and earning money from his part-time job. Academics came easy for him, requiring little studying to maintain good grades. He was protective of his younger sister and kind to his grandparents. But he was furious at his parents for grounding him and for demanding abstinence from marijuana use before he would be “trusted” enough to be granted his freedom. He admitted being depressed since middle school; not being able to see his friends now made him feel more depressed. He said that he was extremely overwhelmed about not knowing what he wanted to do after high school. He said his struggle with insomnia began at the start of high school. He felt unable to share any of these worries with his parents because they thought smoking marijuana was the cause of all of his problems. We explored his relationship with marijuana (and his other substances, alcohol and nicotine) in terms of the pros and cons of use. We discussed the continuum of substance use and when safe use, managed use or abstinence might be appropriate to deal with his use. He admitted smoking marijuana almost daily for two years. He denied that it was a problem for him; he actually saw it as a benefit because smoking pot had become the only way he could fall sleep. Matt felt that the only negative consequence of his use was his parents’ disappointment and disapproval. He admitted that his lying to them about his drug use made things worse, and realized that parental trust was an area in which he definitely wanted to improve. Meeting people “where they are at” With the focus on issues that were important to Matt and on change as a process, he expressed some hope and was willing to attend therapy with the goals of sleeping better and improving his relationship with his parents. But he was frightened to reduce his marijuana use because he didn’t think he would be able to fall asleep. He was open to thinking about changing his use when I reassured him that insomnia is a common problem and that we could discuss ways he can improve his sleep. He also agreed to have his parents involved in family sessions as needed. His long-term daily marijuana smoking was a concern to me partly because the developing adolescent brain is vulnerable to potential cognitive problems associated with pot use. Obviously, the child’s safety trumps treatment goals and every teen therapist must incorporate safety as part of any treatment plan. I don’t condone smoking marijuana but try to educate my clients about the research and the risks when they are making informed decisions to reduce any consequences connected with their use. Family involvement When I was an abstinence-based therapist, teens were rarely comfortable with involving their families in treatment. Collaboration, empowerment, respect and avoiding stigma are values of harm reduction therapy that make it more conducive for teens to agree to family therapy. My current work with families is now informed by CRAFT: Community Reinforcement and Family Training, a research-backed approach that relies on non-confrontational methods to encourage loved ones to enter addiction treatment. I encourage the families I work with to use the “The 20 Minute Guide,” a free, user-friendly online guide to CRAFT. Matt agreed to share his treatment goals with his parents and have them join us for sessions. His parents were very relieved that Matt was able to share his feelings of depression and anxiety. His father admitted battling depression and insomnia throughout his life and was able to support Matt mood’s difficulties. His mother admitted smoking marijuana a lot in her youth and said that she eventually stopped smoking as her life responsibilities increased. Parents are often reluctant to share their own substance use history, fearing that their children will use it to justify their own use. I encourage parents to look at their own history; adults often forget that they were teenagers once and struggled with the same developmental challenges. Kids can tell if parents are being transparent with their history, so it’s best to be honest, not only self-reflective. Reflecting on their own teenage experiences can help parents better understand some of the unintended negative consequences of zero-tolerance approaches. If kids want to get high, they will find ways to do so, and the harder we make it for them, the more risky behavior they will tend to engage in. Once Matt’s parents were able to view his use as self-medication for his anxiety, depression and insomnia, they were more willing to look at alternative approaches for intervening with Matt. Unbiased information about substances is essential, so I offered resources including information about marijuana and the myth of gateway drugs. Small positive steps Harm reduction therapy incorporates motivational interviewing techniques that include “meeting the person where they are at” as well as building confidence by taking small positive steps. Starting out of the gate demanding zero tolerance for substance use is misguided because small steps that lead to small improvements in behavior—and the experience of success—can give a teen confidence and hope, driving the process forward. Zero tolerance allows zero flexibility, keeping family anxiety high and often locking everyone into a destructive cycle. The process of change is frightening and often feels overwhelming. Most people tend to resist changing all at once, and family problems that take time to develop need time to resolve. Because the self-esteem of even high-achieving kids is vulnerable, it’s important to allow them to experience success and to voice appreciation and encouragement to them for any positive change. Harm reduction offers hope and healing My treatment with Matt focused on his developing healthy strategies and tools to reduce anxiety and improve his mood. He used our sessions to explore career options; after speaking with a military recruiter, he decided that the military was a realistic option for him to get training in his mechanical interests, develop motivation and independence, and to help his parents pay for college when he was ready to enroll. The requirement of the military for Matt to be drug-free at the time of his enrollment evaluation, together with his excitement about his newfound sense of purpose, motivated him to decide to “end his relationship” with marijuana at that point. He was able to fairly easily stop using; his treatment ended once he was accepted into military. In my previous life as an abstinence-based therapist, Matt and his family probably wouldn’t have gotten past their initial phone call to me. Harm reduction therapy allows me now to offer families like Matt’s some hope and a compassionate partner to walk with them through an often very difficult period. I didn’t have to “reinvent myself” as a psychologist. A recipe of compassion, collaboration, evidence-based treatments and a menu of options offers me the opportunity to be more effective with more people. Parents don’t have to reinvent themselves, either. Harm reduction uses time-tested parenting principles and values, along with common sense, to offer parents some hope and the skills to cope more effectively with the challenge of their children’s risky behaviors. A more hopeful parent means a more effective parent and more opportunities for family healing. http://www.substance.com/harm-reduct...herapist/9712/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 crimsonjunk View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2008 Location Alabamastan Posts 3,752 Blog Entries71 Today 08:40 Good article. It would be nice to see more mental health providers taking a similar stance.

Thanks for this one, Auxin; my specialist just told me a couple of days ago that there was no blood test for cancer, so next time I see him, I'll ensure he gets the info that there now is one.

http://perry.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-perry-introduces-bipartisan-legislation-to-help-children Jul 28, 2014 Press Release Washington, D.C. – Currently, more than 300,000 children in American suffer from some form of epilepsy. Many of these children experience more than 100 violent seizures a day— any one of which could be fatal without proper care. U.S. Representative Scott Perry introduces legislation today, the “Charlotte’s Web Medical Hemp Act of 2014”, to ensure that children and individuals with epilepsy and other debilitating seizure disorders have access to life-changing Cannabidiol (CBD) Oil and therapeutic hemp. There is anecdotal evidence that CBD oil has been shown to reduce the amount and duration of seizures in children suffering from epilepsy and other seizure disorders. This legislation would enable individuals access to this potentially life-saving supplement without having to split up families geographically in order to receive treatment. “Earlier this year I was approached by three local families whose children suffer from severe epilepsy”, said Rep. Perry. “As a father, I can’t imagine how helpless and crestfallen I’d feel to be essentially out of options, without any significant way to help my child; and these families live with this circumstance every single day. Their heartbreaking situations compelled me to act at the federal level to enable their access to a supplement that literally has changed lives – not only in the form of relief for the individual who suffers from this condition, but subsequently for their families and loved ones as well. Unfortunately, this plant and its derivatives and extracts are currently banned for medical use at the federal level and are unavailable to the citizens of Pennsylvania; this legislation would remedy that. This bill in no way changes my stance on marijuana—I still disagree with the recreational use of marijuana; however, these children and individuals like them deserve a chance to lead a healthy and productive life and our government shouldn’t stand in the way.” “We applaud Congressman Perry and his leadership in creating access to this treatment for Americans with epilepsy who have run out of options,” said Philip M. Gattone, M.Ed., President & CEO of the Epilepsy Foundation. “As a parent of a child with epilepsy, I know how difficult it can be to stand by as your child has a seizure that you are helpless to stop. The Epilepsy Foundation has supported access to CBD oil – which is showing dramatic results for some patients. Access to a lifesaving treatment should not be determined or limited by zip code. It is time for Congress to enact this sensible bill that could help save lives." This legislation in no way federally legalizes the recreational use of marijuana, nor is CBD marijuana; rather, the bill is an incremental approach to providing relief to those suffering from ailments that could benefit from CBD oil and therapeutic hemp. It also doesn’t legalize all forms of marijuana for medical use. It removes CBD oil and therapeutic hemp from the federal definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act. Therapeutic hemp is defined as having no more than .3% THC, which means it has no hallucinogenic effects of traditional marijuana. The legislation now moves to the House Energy and Commerce and Judiciary Committees. If it is voted out of committee, it then moves to the full House for consideration.

http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2014/07/poll-reveals-workers-drugs# July 28, 2014 One in 10 Victorian employees have either taken a day off or gone to work feeling the effects of their drug use, according to a poll by the Australian Drug Foundation. The poll was based on a sample of 1000 Victorian workers, and the drugs were identified as illegal drugs, synthetic drugs and un-prescribed pharmaceutical medications. The Australian Drug Foundation said cannabis was the most commonly used illicit drug in Australia, with the most recent National Drug Strategy Household Survey finding that more than 20 per cent of 18-29-year-olds had used cannabis in the last 12 months. The Australian Drug Foundation’s Head of Workplace Services, Phillip Collins, said weekend drug use could have a major impact on workplace productivity, performance, absenteeism and office health and safety. Collins said that many workplaces were now looking to drug testing as a solution to ensure workers weren’t under the influence of drugs while at work - but he warns that employers should be wary. “Drug testing isn’t the only solution, and simply will not work when delivered in isolation. All businesses need a formal workplace policy in conjunction with education, training and support programs,” he said. “Feeling the after effects of weekend drug use can be just as problematic as being intoxicated on the job. Headaches, blurred vision, irritability, difficulty concentrating and extreme tiredness can all create organisational problems. “Drugs and alcohol cost Australian businesses $6 billion a year in lost productivity and absenteeism alone. Then there’s the serious health and safety risks in the workplace, particularly where employees operate machinery or drive vehicles.” The poll was funded by the Myra Stoicesco Charitable Fund. The Australian Drug Foundation is one of Australia’s leading bodies committed to preventing alcohol and other drug problems in communities around the nation. Like this story? Want more? Subscribe to our Online News Service - it's FREE! - See more at: http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2014/07/poll-reveals-workers-drugs#sthash.UTfNLVLj.dpuf

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730027-Bottoms-up-the-non-crisis-of-Australia’s-alcohol-consumption bit_pattern 23-07-2014 Bottoms up: the non-crisis of Australia’s alcohol consumption Bernard Keane | Feb 08, 2013 12:19PM | EMAIL | PRINT The constant claims about the dangers of rising alcohol use in Australia don’t match reality. Crikey fact checks some of the statements made by the wowser lobby. Another day, another report on the evils of alcohol. In a Fairfax article, the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre yesterday declared ”young women are now abusing alcohol at levels similar to men”. Michael Thorn of FARE  — an organisation about which Crikey will have more to say in coming weeks — was asked to weigh in, and condemned the “increase in drinking levels among women”. He then, at least in his quoted remarks, complained about “the way alcohol is promoted as a social norm” (not that it is a social norm, and has been so for millennia, but is promoted as such), which sent a bad message to young people — “parents drinking, the actions of their peers and the messages they’re getting about alcohol through advertising”. The preventive health agenda for alcohol has been clear for some time: it’s the remorseless demonisation of the product, with the intent of doing to alcohol what was so successfully done to tobacco — to so discredit it that the community eventually supports draconian regulation to limit its use. The signal difference — that the mere use of tobacco is harmful whereas the vast majority of alcohol consumers consume it safely and, indeed, obtain health benefits from it — is deliberately overlooked. Part of the demonisation is to persistently claim that alcohol consumption is increasing (indeed, is “out of control” or an “epidemic”), that new threats are constantly being discovered, that there is “an urgent need for action to challenge Australia’s harmful drinking” as the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol puts it. So, let’s check some of the “facts” about alcohol in Australia … Statement: drinking more than two standard drinks a day is “risky drinking” and you should avoid alcohol altogether Herein lies a tale. Most people will recall the National Health and Medical Research Council 2009 revision of its alcohol guidelines, when it rather spectacularly jumped the shark by deciding to amend its recommendation of four standard drinks a day for men and two for women to two a day for everyone. What’s less understood is exactly what the basis for the NHMRC’s recommendation is. It’s based on lifetime risk assessment: how likely are you to die from anything alcohol-related at a certain level of consumption. Anything  — dying while driving drunk, getting into a drunken fight, or eventually dying from an alcohol-related disease. And the basis for the two drink a day recommendation is 0.9% for men — as in, less than 1% of people consuming two drinks a day will die from an alcohol-related cause at some point. And if you don’t drink-drive, and you don’t get into fights when you drink, then the risk is halved. The risk is 0.4% for alcohol-related diseases for men and women at two standard drinks a day. The risk increases the more you drink, obviously — thus the phrase “risky drinking”. But how “risky”? You have to drink eight drinks a day in order to get over 5% risk of alcohol-related disease if you’re a male, and over five drinks a day if you’re a woman. To put that into context, as the NHMRC itself notes, “the lifetime risk of dying in a traffic accident associated with driving 10,000 miles a year in the US has been calculated to be about one in 60,” or about 1.7%. But, say you wanted to live a risk-free life. Say four people in 1000 wasn’t good enough odds for you. Why not just not drink? That’s what bodies like the Cancer Council recommend. Well, if you don’t drink, you miss out on the health benefits of alcohol, particularly if you’re older: as the NHMRC explains in its guidelines, light to moderate drinking (up to two standard drinks) has been shown to reduce cardiovascular risk, improve bone density and, perhaps, protect against dementia. Some preventive health industry figures claim these benefits are “contested” but currently there are no substantiated, up-to-date studies that have disputed the long history of studies demonstrating health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption. Statement: alcohol consumption is growing Look closely and you’ll always see some careful phrasing around the issue of how much we’re drinking: the preventive health industry won’t come out and say that alcohol consumption is growing, but they’ll claim alcohol consumption among young people is on the rise, or binge drinking is on the rise, or that Australia has a high rate of consumption compared to other countries, or as we saw above, alcohol consumption by women is rising. But the general tenor is that the alcohol problem is getting worse. Wrong. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in fact shows daily drinking fell from 2004 to 2007 and fell again from 2007 to 2010. Indeed, the government’s own Preventative Health Taskforce published the following table, which shows daily alcohol consumers falling and non-drinkers rising: But, curiously, the accompanying text in the report makes no mention at all of that. ABS data similarly shows per capita consumption of alcohol in Australia falling significantly — by nearly a quarter — since the 1970s. Nor is drinking by young people on the rise. Remember the moral panic Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon tried to whip up early in Labor’s first term about what they claimed was an “epidemic” of binge drinking? It was rubbish. The same Preventative Health Taskforce report showed short-term risky drinking by 14-19 year olds, both male and female, falling significantly between 2001 and 2007. And what about young women? Well, they were binge drinking less too, according to the taskforce report. And the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found female drinking down for daily, weekly and less than weekly, and found a rise in ex-drinkers and non-drinkers. Statement: the damage from alcohol consumption is growing All of which means the most recent tack tried by the preventive health industry, to claim that alcohol is causing massive economic damage (as part of its campaign to lift alcohol taxation), comes heavily caveated. Even accepting the industry’s assumption-laden calculations about the damage caused by alcohol (putting it at $36 billion a year) and “harm to others” at $15 billion, the claim that “alcohol-related harms in Australia are increasing“ made by FARE plainly doesn’t stand up: alcohol consumption is falling; the only way for the preventive health industry to somehow claim that harms are increasing is to again alter their assumptions to produce still-higher outcomes from their commissioned modelling. Bear all this in mind next time you see yet another media report about the alcohol crisis apparently besetting Australia. http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/02/08/...witcher=mobile

24 Jul 2014 Source: Mercury, The (Australia) Website: http://www.themercury.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/193 Author: David Beniuk HEMP TRIAL ON RADAR Libs Soften Stance on Medicinal Cannabis THE State Government has signalled it could step back from its ban on a medicinal cannabis trial under pressure to grow the hemp industry in Tasmania. Treasurer and Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein has told councils pushing for the trial that the Government will seriously consider the recommendations of an Upper House committee. "We're supporting that process and obviously we'll be guided by the response that comes out of that process," Mr Gutwein told the Local Government Association state conference in Hobart. "Are we prepared to look at and support the committee process and then look at the outcome? Absolutely, yes." Mr Gutwein's comments were in response to a question from Legislative Councillor and Latrobe Mayor Mike Gaffney. Several councils were disappointed by Health Minister Michael Ferguson's decision earlier this month to disallow a trial proposed by Tasman Health Cannabinoids. Huon Valley council says a trial could create 40 jobs in the region. The 13-strong Regional Councils Group has thrown its support behind the industry as a possible antidote to the downturn in forestry. "We shouldn't shut the door to anything," spokesman Barry Jarvis said. "Too much in the past we've had groups that say no to things. "Let's investigate it and get the data, and have a logical conversation." Mr Jarvis said his group would be watching the recommendation of the Legislative Council committee. "If there's value for our communities in it, we will lobby hard for the State Government to implement those changes," he said. The debate was reignited as NSW's Liberal Premier, Mike Baird, reportedly backed a trial of medicinal cannabis in his state. "The intransigence of Will Hodgman and his minister in blocking the proposed Tasmanian medical cannabis trial is holding Tasmania back when we could, and should, be leading the nation," Greens MP Cassy O'Connor said. Councillors also expressed concerns about red tape constraining the growth of the industrial hemp industry. However, Mr Gutwein said the Government fully supported the production of industrial hemp. "We're looking at the red tape and regulation that surrounds that to ensure that an appropriate level of necessary regulation exists, not an unnecessary one," Mr Gutwein said. The state conference continues until tomorrow. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n606/a06.html?1080

http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/quick-statistics#NPS [Get the facts via the weblink] 23/7/14 Betel nut Around 10–20% of the world's population chews betel nut in some form. This makes it the 4th most widely-used psychoactive substance, after nicotine, alcohol and caffeine12,13. Get the facts on betel nut. Cannabis National 34.8% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used cannabis one or more times in their life23. 10.2% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used cannabis in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try cannabis at 16.7 years on average23. 14.8% of 12–17 year olds have tried cannabis – it is the most commonly used illicit drug among this age group9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Victoria There were 3.88 cannabis-related ambulance attendances in metropolitan Melbourne per day and 1.52 in regional Victoria in 2012/13. The average age of the patients involved in these attendances was 30 years10. Between 2011/12 and 2012/13, there was a 10% increase in the number of attendances for cannabis in metropolitan and regional Victoria that resulted in hospital transportation10. Ambulance attendances for cannabis continue to rise, with more than double in 2012/13 than in 2003/04 in metropolitan Melbourne10. Get the facts on cannabis. Take part in the National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre's Cannabis Diversion Survey. Cocaine National 8.1% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used cocaine one or more times in their life23. 2.1% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used cocaine in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try cocaine at 19.2 years on average23. The 1.7% of 12-17 year olds who take cocaine have only used it once or twice9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Get the facts on cocaine. Ecstasy National 10.9% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used ecstasy one or more times in their life23. 2.5% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used ecstasy in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try ecstasy at 18.2 years on average23. 2.7% of 12-17 year olds have tried ecstasy9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Victoria In both metropolitan and regional Victoria, there was an over 60% increase in the number of ambulance attendances where the patient believed they had taken ecstasy between 2011/12 and 2012/1310. The proportion of attendances where the patient reported having ecstasy and alcohol decreased by 10% in metropolitan Melbourne10. The number of attendances resulting in hospital transportation increased in 2012/13, which could indicate an increase in harmful substances being included in ecstasy pills10. Get the facts on ecstasy. GHB National 0.9% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used GHB one or more times in their life23. Victoria The number of GHB ambulance attendances in 2012/13 increased by 42% (up to 578 attendances) in metropolitan Melbourne and 3% (42) in regional Victoria from the previous year10. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try GHB at 20.1 years on average23. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Get the facts on GHB. Hallucinogens National 9.4% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used hallucinogens one or more times in their life23. 1.3% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used hallucinogens in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try hallucinogens at 18.5 years on average23. 3% of 12-17 year olds have tried hallucinogens such as LSD9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Get the facts on hallucinogens. Heroin National 1.2% of Australians aged 14 years and older have used heroin one or more times in their life23. 0.1% of Australians aged 14 years and older have used heroin in the previous 12 months23. Victoria There were 5.21 ambulance attendances related to heroin in metropolitan Melbourne and 0.28 in regional Victoria per day in 2012/13 (these numbers include non-fatal overdose)10. There was a 13% decrease in the number of ambulance attendances for heroin overdose in metropolitan Melbourne and 15% decrease in regional Victoria in 2012/13 compared to the previous year10. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try heroin at 16.9 years on average23. 1.6% of 12-17 year olds have tried heroin9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Get the facts on heroin. Inhalants National 3.8% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used inhalants one or more times in their life23. 0.8% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used inhalants in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try inhalants at 16.9 years on average23. Around 1 in 5 12-17 year olds have deliberately sniffed inhalants at least once9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Victoria In 2012/13 the number of ambulance attendances related to inhalant use in metropolitan Melbourne dropped by 10% - from 135 in 2011/12 to 122 in 2012/13. Attendances in regional Victoria increased by 121% - from 14 to 3510. Get the facts on inhalants. Ketamine 1.7% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used ketamine one or more times in their life23. 0.3% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used ketamine in the previous 12 months23. Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try ketamine at 19.4 years on average23. Get the facts on ketamine. Meth/amphetamines (including ice) National 7.0% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used meth/amphetamines one or more times in their life23. 2.1% of Australians aged 14 years and over have used meth/amphetamines in the previous 12 months. Of these people, 50.4% report crystal or ice as main form of the drug used.23 Young people Young Australians (aged 14–24) first try meth/amphetamines at 18.6 years on average23. 2.9% of 12-17 year olds have tried amphetamines9. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Victoria The daily number of all amphetamine-related ambulance attendances in 2012/13 increased significantly compared with the previous year – 88% increase in metropolitan Melbourne and a 198% in regional Victoria. This is attributed to an increase in the number of attendances relating to crystal methamphetamine (ice) 10. In metropolitan Melbourne there was an 88% increase in the number of attendances for ice (crystal methamphetamine) between 2011/12 and 2012/13, up to an average of 3 per day. In regional Victoria, the increase was 198%, up to 0.63 per day10. Ice (crystal methamphetamine) is the 4th most common drug involved in ambulance attendances, following alcohol, benziodiazapines and non-opioid analgesics (such as paracetamol)10. Get the facts on amphetamines. Get the facts on ice. View 'What 12–17 year olds are really using', an infographic about alcohol and drug use by young people in Australia. Naloxone Naloxone successfully reversed 23 opioid overdoses between 2011 and 2013, during a peer administration trial in Canberra14. In Australia in 2009, there were 563 accidental deaths attributed to opioids among people aged 15-54 years. In the over 55 age group, there were 70 deaths. Many of these deaths were due to multiple drugs being taken including prescription opioids15. Get the facts on naloxone. New psychoactive substances New psychoactive substances (NPS) are being developed at an unprecedented rate. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and Europol currently monitors more than 280 NPS. In 2012, 73 new NPS were added to the list16. While there is still little Australian data, UK statistics demonstrate these drugs are increasingly causing harm, with 52 deaths being directly attributed to NPS in 2012, a jump from 25 in 2008 and 6 in 200311. Get the facts on new psychoactive substances. Oxycodone National The amount of oxycodone being prescribed by doctors increased from 95.1 kg in 1999 to 1270.7 kg in 2008 – a 13-fold increase18. Victoria The amount of oxycodone being prescribed by doctors increased nine-fold from 7.5 mg per capita in 2000 to 67.5 mg per capita in 200918. Get the facts on oxycodone. Synthetic cannabis 1.2% of Australians aged 14 years or older (about 230,000 people) had used synthetic cannabis in 201323. An online study recently conducted in 2012 found that of the people who use the drug: The median age is 27 years 70% are male 78% are employed 7% use daily19 According to Australian data from the Global Drug Survey, synthetic cannabis was the 20th most commonly used drug – 4.1% of respondents had used this type of drug in the last 12 months20. Get the facts on synthetics cannabis. Overdose In Australia in 2009, there were 563 accidental deaths attributed to opioids among people aged 15–54 years. In the over 55 age group, there were 70 deaths. Many of these deaths were due to multiple drugs being taken including prescription opioids. Alcohol and other drug experts suggest that opioid-related deaths in Australia are increasing.21 Of all illegal substances, heroin and other opioids were involved with the largest number of drug-related deaths, despite the number of people using them being low compared to other substances. Amphetamines including 'ice' have the second highest death rate of illegal drugs.22 Further information Statistics Statistical trends Statistical reports Resources Alcohol and drugs affect everyone What 12–17 year olds are really using Men and substance use: the facts Facts about drinking References Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2011). 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey report. Canberra: AIHW. Callinan, S., & Room, R. (2012). Alcohol consumption during pregnancy: results from the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey. Canberra: Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education. Manning, M., Smith, C., & Mazerolle, P. (2013). The societal costs of alcohol misuse in Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Collins, D., & Lapsley, H. (2008). The costs of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug abuse to Australian society in 2004/05. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Laslett, A.M., Catalano, P., Chikritzhs, T., et al. (2010). The range and magnitude of alcohol’s harm to others. Fitzroy: AER Centre for Alcohol Policy Research. Dale, C.E., & Livingston, M. (2010). The burden of alcohol drinking on co-workers in the Australian workplace. Medical Journal of Australia, 193(3), 138-140. Smith, A., Agius, P., Mitchell, A., Barrett, C., & Pitts, M. (2009). Secondary students and sexual health 2008: Results of the 4th National Survey of Australian Secondary Students, HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health. Melbourne: Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society. National Health and Medical Research Council. (2009). Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol, Canberra: NHMRC. White, V., & Bariola, E. (2012). Australian secondary school students’ use of tobacco, alcohol, and over-the-counter and illicit substances in 2011. Melbourne: The Cancer Council, Victoria. Lloyd, B., Matthews, S., & Gao, C.X. (2014). Ambo Project – Alcohol and drug related ambulance attendances: Trends in alcohol and drug related ambulance attendances in Victoria 2012/13. Fitzroy: Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre. Coroners Court of Victoria. (2012). Finding into death with inquest, Inquest in the Death of David Andrew Trengrove, Delivered on 18 May 2012. World Health Organization. (2012). Review of Areca (betel) nut and tobacco use in the Pacific - A technical report. Geneva: World Health Organization. Ashock, L., Deepika, N., Sujatha, G.P., & Shiva P.S. (2011). ‘Areca nut: To chew or not to chew?’. e-Journal of Dentistry, 1(3), 46–50. Olsen, A., McDonald, D., Lenton, S., & Dietze P. (2014). Key interim findings : Independent evaluation of the ‘Implementing Expanding Naloxone Availability in the ACT (I-ENAACT)’ program, 2011-2013, Canberra: ACT Health. Roxburgh, A., & Burns, L. (2013). Accidental opioid-induced deaths in Australia 2009, Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC). European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). (2013). New drugs in Europe, 2012, Lisbon: EMCDDA. Office for National Statistics. (2013). Deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales, 2012. [PDF:250KB] Newport: Office for National Statistics. Rintoul, A.C., Dobbin, M., Drummer, O.H., & Ozanne-Smith, J. (2011). Increasing deaths involving oxycodone, Victoria, Australia, 2000-09. Injury Prevention, 17(4), 254–259. Barratt, M.J. (2012). Kronic appeal: Patterns of synthetic cannabinoid use in Australia [PDF:460KB], Melbourne: Yarra Drug and Health Forum. Global Drug Survey. (2014). Last 12 month prevalence of top 20 drugs. [PDF:249KB] London: Global Drug Survey. Roxburgh, A., & Burns, L. (2013). Accidental opioid-induced deaths in Australia 2009, Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC). Wenlong, L., & Naren, G. (2013). Illicit drug overdose – prevalence and acute management. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2014). 2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey: key findings. Canberra: AIHW. Last updated: 23 July 2014 - See more at: http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/quick-statistics#NPS

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/suspected-mexican-drug-dealers-arrested-at-gunpoint-on-neutral-bay-sydney-street/story-fni0cx12-1227002577368?nk=a34b153369178058739b223b29ead61d LIA HARRIS The Sunday Telegraph July 26, 2014 7:21PM Channel Seven news captured these dramatic images of the arrest in Neutral Bay. Picture: Courtesy Channel Seven TWO suspected Mexican drug dealers have been charged after being dramatically arrested at gunpoint in front of stunned onlookers in Neutral Bay. Police believe Federico Gonzalez Magana, 32, and Juan Vergara Rodriguez, 49, are part of a drug cartel targeting Australia. The pair were pulled from a car in traffic by gun-wielding officers on Friday afternoon before being handcuffed in front of a nearby shop. The incident was filmed by a passer-by on their mobile phone. Police later revealed they had allegedly found $30 million worth of drugs during raids across Sydney — the equivalent of 300,000 street deals. Police draw their weapons on two suspected drug dealers. Picture: Channel Seven Police pull over the suspected drug dealers in Neutral Bay. Picture: Channel Seven Following a tip-off, officers searched properties in Manly, Pennant Hills and Moore Park on Friday, seizing about 30kgs of a substance believed to be crystal meth. Officers also seized two guns and about $2 million, suspected to be proceeds of crime. AFP Serious and Organised Crime Commander Scott Lee said the arrests were the result of a joint operation with the Australian Crime Commission. “This joint-agency operation is testament to our combined determination to stopping criminals from profiting from the importation of drugs into Australia”, Commander Lee said. Both men were charged with possessing a commercial quantity of border-controlled drugs suspected of having been imported and dealing in money suspected to be proceeds of crime. They were refused bail after appearing in court via video link and will face Central Local Court on Wednesday. If convicted, they could face life in prison. Tests are still being carried out to determine the purity of the drugs seized.

21 Jul 2014 Source: Dayton Daily News (OH) Website: http://www.daytondailynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/120 MARIJUANA EDIBLES GROW Cottage Industry Rises for Medical, Recreational Uses. ( AP ) - Move over, pot brownies. The proliferation of marijuana edibles for both medical and recreational purposes is giving rise to a cottage industry of baked goods, candies, infused oils, cookbooks and classes that promises a slow burn as more states legalize the practice and awareness spreads about the best ways to deliver the drug. Edibles and infused products such as snack bars, olive oils and tinctures popular with medical marijuana users have flourished into a gourmet market of chocolate truffles, whoopie pies and hard candies as Colorado and Washington legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the past year. "You're seeing a lot of these types of products like cannabis cookbooks," said Erik Altieri, spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "They've always been popular among a subset of marijuana, but with the fact that more and more people from the mainstream are able to consume, there's a lot more interest." Many pot users turn to edibles because they don't like to inhale or smell the smoke or just want variety. For many people who are sick or in pain, controlled doses of edibles or tinctures can deliver a longer-lasting therapeutic dose that doesn't give them the high. And there's money to be made. BlueKudu, in Denver, started producing marijuana chocolate bars for medicinal purposes three years ago. Since recreational use became legal this year in Colorado, owner Andrew Schrot said, the wholesale business has more than doubled its sales from several hundred chocolate bars sold a day through dispensaries to more than 1,000, at $9 to $17 a piece. "There seems to be quite a bit of intrigue about the infused products from the general public and consumer, especially tourists," Schrot said. Cooking classes have sprung up. One in Denver - led by a chef who has turned out chocolate-covered bacon and Swedish meatballs with a marijuana-infused glaze - has grown so popular that it will be offered every week in August. It's also part of a vacation package that provides pot tourists with a stay at a cannabis-friendly hotel ( vaporizer and private smoke deck included ), a visit to dispensaries and growing operations, and the cooking class. Students are advised not to smoke before they come to class because there's a lot to learn about the dosing and they will be sampling foods along the way. "By the end of the class, everybody's pretty stoned," said founder J.J. Walker. Mountain High Suckers in Denver sells lollipops and lozenges for medical marijuana users and plans to release treats for recreational users at the end of August. The company hopes they will take off. "People are turning the corner and making lots of money in the rec department, and we expect to almost double the business in a year," said Chad Tribble, co-owner of Mountain High Suckers in Denver. High Times, a 40-year old monthly magazine based in New York, has always featured a cooking column with a recipe. At least 40,000 people attended its Cannabis Cup in Denver in April, a sort of trade show that includes judging of marijuana edibles, said editor-inchief Chris Simunek. "Like everything else in marijuana at the moment, it's sort of experiencing a renaissance where the more people get interested, the more experiments they do with it," Simunek said. The magazine said its "Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook" is the top-selling title of the five it offers. It's not just a hobby or business; there's a science involved. THC, marijuana's psychoactive chemical, must be smoked or heated - as in cooked - to be activated. When ingested rather than inhaled, it provides a longer-lasting and often more intense feeling. Users of pot edibles, such as cookies, are often advised to eat only a portion so they don't get too high. Education about proper dosing has become a priority after at least one death and a handful of hospital visits were linked to consuming too much of an edible. http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n608/a04.html?397

24 Jul 2014 Source: Cairns Post (Australia) Website: http://www.cairns.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/617 PREMIER OPEN TO POT PLAN THE Queensland Premier says he has an open mind about legalising marijuana for medical purposes but will rely on the advice of national health experts. Medical cannabis could soon be legalised in NSW with senior politicians indicating support, as long as concerns about how it would be regulated are dealt with. Campbell Newman says any change in Queensland should be made on the basis of advice from the National Health and Medical Research Council ( NHMRC ), not NSW. "I have an open mind on these things," he told reporters yesterday. "There are so many of our life-saving and pain-alleviating drugs that come from nature, and I see it in that context. "But I'd be interested in what the NHMRC are saying." http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n606/a09.html?397

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730415-Repeal-Prohibition-Again-(NY-Times) poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,369 Today 08:38 By THE EDITORIAL BOARD It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana. We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws. There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level. We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these. But that would leave their citizens vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law. The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals. There is honest debate among scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide. There are legitimate concerns about marijuana on the development of adolescent brains. For that reason, we advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21. Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime. In coming days, we will publish articles by members of the Editorial Board and supplementary material that will examine these questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and we will report back on their responses, pro and con. We recognize that this Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...tion.html?_r=1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,520 Today 14:32 The New York Times Editorial Board Thank you for making this stand.. now please consider pushing further. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 poledriver View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jul 2005 Posts 8,369 Today 15:28 New York Times writes editorial saying cost of Marijuana prohibition ‘vast’ compared to alcohol, tobacco impacts ONE of the United States’ most prestigious newspapers has called for the legalisation of marijuana, comparing the federal ban on cannabis to Prohibition. In an editorial on Saturday, the New York Times said marijuana laws disproportionately impacting young black men and that addiction and dependence are “relatively minor problems’’ especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. “It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished,’’ the newspaper said. “It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.’’ Noting that the editorial board reached its conclusion after much discussion, the New York Times described the social costs of marijuana laws as “vast.’’ Cont http://www.news.com.au/world/new-yor...-1227003108628 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Sep 2012 Posts 117 Today 15:32 When an influential newspaper like the New York Times publishes such editorial material, it's time that even conservative politicians realised that American public opinion has changed, so that the majority of the people support the decriminalisation of marijuana. More people should be contacting their political representatives, and telling them that they will vote for candidates in favour of drug reform. Realistic threats concerning their potential loss of power through the ballot box are one of the few things that will influence politicians to change their position.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-26/synthetic-drugs-continue-to-evolve-amid-bans-regulation/5625890 * By Elise Worthington Sat 26 Jul 2014 Photo: Packets of synthetic drugs seized by police during raids in Canberra in May 2014. (ABC News)* Map: Canberra 2600 An emergency room doctor and researcher says prohibition is driving the rate that new synthetic drugs are evolving in Australia. Synthetic drugs or "legal highs" can be packaged as party pills, herbal highs, bath salts or even plant food, but often contain new and untested chemicals designed to mimic the effects of drugs like cannabis, LSD and amphetamines. To help stop people using synthetic drugs, the Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australian governments have put a blanket ban on possessing or selling substances other than alcohol, tobacco and food that have a psychoactive effect. In other states and territories, only specific substances have been banned and new ones were regularly added to the list. A lot of the time we are ad-libbing our medical therapy just trying to get people over an acute medical intoxication and keep them alive. Emergency doctor David Caldicott Dr David Caldicott, a researcher and emergency physician at Canberra's Calvary Hospital, knows how deadly synthetic drugs can be. He said he saw the impact of these new and increasingly unpredictable drugs on a regular basis. "Young Australians who consume drugs don't seem to have any sort of conception of moderation so we see a wide variety of novel products used in bizarre ways," he said. "A lot of the time we are ad-libbing our medical therapy - just trying to get people over an acute medical intoxication and keep them alive." Dr Caldicott said prohibition was driving the rate at which these substances were evolving. "When one substance in Australia is banned, the legal process means that there's plenty of time for another one to take its place," he said. Banning synthetic drugs won't help, user says The unknown substances are essentially a guinea pig market [but] people are inherently attracted to risk. Nick Wallis Nick Wallis, a candidate for the Australian Sex Party, said he had tried a variety of traditional and new psychoactive drugs. "I've noticed a lot of them don't have as nice a high, so it's not always very pleasant - not the kind of thing that you are always looking for," he said. "That said though, there are some that were kind of mildly pleasant." Despite that mixed review, Mr Wallis argued banning synthetic drugs would not help. "We have extensive research on things like MDMA, on a lot of the traditional amphetamines," he said. "The unknown substances are essentially a guinea pig market [but] people are inherently attracted to risk." Attempt made at regulating growing market Dr Chris Wilkins, from Massey University in New Zealand, said politicians there had taken a different approach by attempting to regulate the growing synthetic drug market. "The ambition was to make the industry itself more responsible so if you gave the industry the opportunity to get products approved ... they would become a more mature and responsible sector," he said. But that approach had not worked out exactly as planned. Last July, some substances were given interim approval to be sold while testing procedures were being finalised. However, 10 months later the interim laws were scrapped after a growing backlash from the public and local mayors who argued the drugs were damaging communities. Dr Wilkins said politicians soon discovered the newly legalised synthetic drugs were much more popular than had been anticipated. "The Ministry of Health have estimated the market was $140 million over just 10 months," he said. "Of course that industry is going to be interested in pursuing their perspective on how the market should be regulated, much like the alcohol and tobacco industry." Dr Wilkins said it was a high stakes game and other countries were watching closely. "If they can get a similar regime rolled out in some bigger markets like Australia or Europe and the UK, then there's going to be a lot of money to be made," he said. _________________________________________________________________ "To help stop people using synthetic drugs, the Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australian governments have put a blanket ban on possessing or selling substances other than alcohol, tobacco and food that have a psychoactive effect" - This is demonstrably untrue; natural herbal products are still available, and have psychoactive effects, even if generally milder than the synthetics, (with the possible exception of some of the plant & fungi based psychedelics) and there are others, such as nutmeg, and poppyseed which are also available.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/730165-Your-Money-Is-Covered-in-Drugs!-Feds-Can-Declare-a-Load-of-Cash-Forfeit-Without-Ever neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Senior Moderator Recovery Support Science & Technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Jan 2013 Location babysitting the argument in my head Posts 10,492 Yesterday 01:51 Your Money Is Covered in Drugs!: Feds Can Declare a Load of Cash Forfeit Without Ever Proving a Link to Drugs By Chris Roberts Wednesday, Jul 9 2014 The cross-country flight from Newark had just touched down at San Francisco International Airport, and Brice Barton was already in trouble. It was late January, and the Seattle-area man was making his sixth coast-to-coast trip since September. SFO was his layover before a one-way flight to Arcata in Humboldt County. He never made it north. Within minutes after stepping off the plane, Barton encountered his welcome crew: DEA agents. They'd been tipped off by the TSA back east — the diligent luggage-scanners — that they might find something interesting in Barton's luggage. Adopting a friendly tone, the drug cops asked if they could search his backpack. He agreed. Nothing. Escorting him to baggage claim, they asked him if he had any drugs in his checked suitcase. He said no, and he was telling the truth. A search, though, turned up $100,000 in cash. That meant trouble. Barton knew it. "One way it's with Vaseline, and the other without," he told the agents after they fished out the cash, according to their sworn testimony, "either way I'm fucked." He may be, and so are other people with money in their pockets, technically. Big or small, legitimate or not, any cache of money can be seized and forfeited by the federal government at any time, attorneys and experts say, and for a simple reason. It's covered in drugs. Check your pockets. Do you have any bills on you? If so, congratulations: You're carrying drugs. As much as 80 percent of U.S. currency in circulation has traces of drugs on it, mostly cocaine and methamphetamine. This is not disputed: Even the U.S. Supreme Court takes this as gospel. After identifying an amount of money they want to take, drug cops have a simple procedure. They get a drug-sniffing dog to tell them if there are drugs on the money, then seize it. "If they want your money, they get Fido to alert to it," says a defense attorney who works on these cases. "And Fido alerts to everything." Barton's case is not unique. "This happens everywhere — everywhere there's a major airport," said Rory Little, a law professor at UC Hastings who spent much of the coke-crazed 1980s as a United States Attorney in San Francisco. In those days, the forfeiture unit in the office was a quiet bunch, doing its work in an unglamorous corner of the office. But members were always a hit at the annual Christmas party: They raked in millions, essentially providing the cash to keep the office going. Forfeitures also work in another unique way that's stacked against the cash-carrier. In all other areas of law, the burden of proof is on the accuser: The prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt someone is guilty of wrongdoing. With seized cash or property, it's the other way around. The government doesn't need to prove you're a drug-dealer to take your money. You just need to prove that you aren't, and provide an honest accounting for every cent. "The burden of proof is on the contestant to prove an innocent source," says Little. "That's crazy, in my opinion." He has his own shaggy drug-dog story: He and a judge friend were returning from a conference when they encountered a dog in the terminal. The dog alerted police to the judge's briefcase. Sheepishly, the cop asked to check the case. There was nothing in the briefcase — except for probable cause for the cops to seize it, should the urge have struck them. Most honest people would say that a person carrying a huge amount of money while headed to the capital of California pot country was up to no good. They might be right. But there are innocent people carrying cash — and it's not a crime to carry money, until the feds decide otherwise. Exactly how much money the feds are seizing in this way is hard to pin down. This is because public records tell only a small part of the story. Courts handle "judicial seizures," currency forfeitures that are contested. Of late, these are increasing. In the Northern District, which comprises most of the Bay Area and coastal California up to the Oregon border, the feds moved to take about $1 million in currency last year. That's up from under $500,000 the year before, and $778,000 in 2011 — but only six months into 2014 and the feds have seized $797,880, according to records. But these are a small fraction of the overall seizures, most of which are "administrative seizures." These never see the inside of a courtroom. A DEA spokeswoman declined to say how much the local drug cops are seizing via this route and directed SF Weekly to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to take a peek at the ledger. By the time the FOIA process takes its course, it will likely be 2015. By then, hundreds more people and millions more dollars will likely land in the feds' hands. Barton wasn't so special: His was the fifth case that day, agents told him. And his flight landed before noon. http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco...nt?oid=2988711 .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. Once again we see that the very people creating the violent causing, life ruining, greed filled black market.. are also the ones reaping significant financial and professional rewards from there creation. Legalize it and tax it so the public can benefit from it instead of a bunch of thieving law enforcement, useless attorneys, slave profiting prison owners and workers. All of which have done nothing positive to curtail it. Why would they, they are on easy street.. billions from the taxpayers and millions from the black market. Last edited by neversickanymore; Yesterday at 03:45. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #2 iamthesuck View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Sep 2013 Posts 247 Yesterday 02:32 This kind of shit is expanding as cops abuse their authority more and more. Someone needs to write a petition -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #3 MyDoorsAreOpen View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelight Crew -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2003 Posts 8,510 Yesterday 03:37 Why is no one doing anything about this? I keep a close eye on major media sources, and it seems to me the asset forfeiture racket is getting a lot of press and entering the public consciousness in the US. Seems to me we ought to be at a tipping point where there's widespread public outrage and a passing of new legislation. This shit is Supreme Court material, for chrissakes: there's an interpretation of a constitutional right at stake here: the right to property! Instead, it seems the problem is only getting worse the more press it gets! This issue gets under my skin because I deeply respect, and plan to someday join, the ranks of people who use only cash, for reasons I've elaborated on elsewhere. I'm thinking about opening a solo physician practice, and offer some non-insurance-covered services for which I'll take only cash as payment. Believe you me, a chunk of that cash is getting hidden in a location only I know about and that no one would ever stumble upon. That fund will be for the day I get stopped on my bike by a law enforcement officer and have a chunk of cash in my pocket seized, to hire a good lawyer who'll be willing to help me take my case to the highest court in the land. If this ever happens to me -- which it sounds like if I go cash-only is a very real possibility -- I won't be satisfied to account for every penny on paper and get it reimbursed (never mind the large amount of time and additional money that takes!). No, I won't declare victory until an unjust law is struck down. Be interesting to see whose wrath I incur if I end up being that guy. Betcha the DEA and IRS would be paying my doctor's office very frequent visits looking for dirt, and I wouldn't be surprised if the medical licensing board took the first opportunity to pull my license and wash their hands of me, even if no one found any dirt on me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #4 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Nov 2004 Location Aiding my comrades in mythbusting prohibitionist propaganda - one cliche at a time. Posts 2,797 Blog Entries8 Yesterday 03:49 I find this article to be rather disturbing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #5 rickolasnice View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Apr 2007 Posts 6,160 Yesterday 03:50 Should ask the cops to politely present the dogs with their own money.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #6 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Dec 2010 Location Fascist Valley, USA Posts 2,174 Blog Entries21 Yesterday 07:42 wow, a new pathetic disgusting low... warriors my ass -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #7 TheLostBoys View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Date Aug 2010 Location East Coast Posts 3,632 Today 16:22 What's the difference between the dea extorting money from.these people & the mob doing it? There is none except for the corrupt dea has the backing of the corrupt federal govt...... Its a complete joke of a system & its like the wild west where they make rules up as they go. These people that are being extorted/robbed by these agencies don't all have money for good lawyers but any good lawyer can get this case won if there are no drugs involved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #8 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Bluelighter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join DateSep 2012 Posts116Today 18:46 And not before time, too, view: "Rand Paul Files Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill", at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/...set_forfeiture

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2014/jul/25/rand_paul_files_asset_forfeiture by Phillip Smith, July 25, 2014, 02:56pm, (Issue #845) Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has filed a bill to reform federal asset forfeiture laws. Yesterday, he introduced the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) ACT, Senate Bill 2644, which would require the government to prove with clear and convincing evidence that the property it wishes to forfeit is connected with a crime. A modern form of highway robbery?It also takes aim at state and local law enforcement agencies who evade state laws requiring that seized assets go into state general funds or other specified destinations by instead turning their seizures over to a federal agency, which delivers back 80% of the value of the seized goods to the local or state law enforcement agency involved. The FAIR Act would require that state law enforcement agencies abide by state law when seizing property. It would also remove the profit incentive for forfeiture by redirecting forfeitures' assets from the Attorney General's Asset Forfeiture Fund to the Treasury's General Fund. "The federal government has made it far too easy for government agencies to take and profit from the property of those who have not been convicted of a crime. The FAIR Act will ensure that government agencies no longer profit from taking the property of U.S. citizens without due process, while maintaining the ability of courts to order the surrender of proceeds of crime," Sen. Paul said. The bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As of today, it has no cosponsors.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/24/placebo-rivals-paracetamol-study AAP 24 Jul 2014 Paracetamol, the first-choice lower-back pain killer, worked no better than dummy drugs administered in a trial of more than 1600 people suffering from the condition, researchers say. In fact, the median recovery time for those on placebo was a day shorter than that for trial subjects given real medicine, they wrote in The Lancet medical journal. "Our findings suggest that ... paracetamol does not affect recovery time compared with placebo in low-back pain, and question the universal endorsement of paracetamol in this patient group," the Australian team concluded. "Paracetamol also had no effect on pain, disability, function, global symptom change, sleep or quality of life." Lower-back pain is the leading cause of disability in the world, and paracetamol is "universally" recommended as the treatment of first choice, said a statement carried by The Lancet on Wednesday. The Paracetamol for Low-Back Pain Study (PACE) divided 1652 individuals with acute pain from 235 clinics in Sydney into three trial groups. One received regular paracetamol doses, the other used the drug as needed, and the third was given placebo pills. Recovery was defined as seven consecutive days of 0 or 1 pain intensity on a 0-10 scale. "Median time to recovery was 17 days in the regular paracetamol group, 17 days in the as-needed paracetamol group, and 16 days in the placebo group," said the statement. All patients were given high-quality advice and reassurance, and the findings suggest these may be more important in lower-back pain management than drug therapy, said the authors. "Our results convey the need to reconsider the universal endorsement of paracetamol in clinical practice guidelines as first-line care for low-back pain." A potential limitation of the study was that some participants used other treatments. In a comment also carried by The Lancet, Bart Koes and Wendy Enthoven from the Universal Medical Center in Rotterdam applauded the team "for tackling this research question on a topic that has been without debate and evidence for such a long time". But they cautioned that guidelines should not be changed on the basis of a single trial. __________________________________________________________________________ Called acetaminophen in the US, it's overuse / abuse is thought to be the main cause of people needing liver transplants. Interestingly, antidepressants also only perform slightly better than placebos in double blind studies, yet Big Pharma can use that fact to justify a $ multibillion industry, despite their high incidence of side effects such as sexual dysfunction, which can sometimes (admittedly rarely) be permanent. http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110921032742AAZn9qX https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140615011107AAPCuGt & https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140514083426AARwQqC refer.

This used to happen to me, until I changed web browsers. If using Internet Explorer, try Chrome, Firefox, or Opera http://www.download.cnet.com

What if the extraterrestrials have the one true religion, and those of Earth are all shown to be false?