>> ^volumptuous:
Actually, Senator Jim Webb is currently trying to do something about it, and he's linking US drug policy in his push for reform.
http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FS_CrimJust_3-26-09.pdf
Private prisons (which should be the free-market favorite of blanky's) have shown they are more costly to run than government prisons, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. They are also more dangerous, and provide far less for the inmates.


The link doesn't work for me...gets a 404 page-not-found error.

I do wonder where this religious belief in the universal-superiority-of-private-enterprise comes from... There's really not much support for the idea that private enterprise can always do it cheaper. There is little to nothing that a private agency can do that a government agency cannot, and those profits have to come from somewhere (i.e. must get added to the base costs of operations).

And if there are any moral issues involved, private enterprise is probably not an appropriate choice, especially when their profits conflict with the morality. Healthcare vs profit, healthcare loses. Safety of anyone vs profits, safety loses.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that anything involving the safety of humans is a poor choice to leave to the profiteers.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
no politician will touch it for fear of being labeled 'soft on crime'. It's infuriating.


Actually, Senator Jim Webb is currently trying to do something about it, and he's linking US drug policy in his push for reform.

http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FS_CrimJust_3-26-09.pdf

Private prisons (which should be the free-market favorite of blanky's) have shown they are more costly to run than government prisons, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. They are also more dangerous, and provide far less for the inmates.

^ Just so you know, in Israel, we have several "private" healthcare companies, and they're by no means considered insurance. There is no such thing as a pre-existing condition and there is no such thing as being denied treatment for irrelevant technicalities like I've been hearing happens in the US too often.

I'm not entirely sure how exactly our model works, since I've never had any problems with it or attempted to find out. There is no assigned doctor = I can go to whichever doctor I want, but I prefer the ones who work with my healthcare provider, since those will cost me almost nothing.

The only problems I can think of right now are the doctor shortages, hospital bed shortages and controversy on the approved-drug policy (they're thinking of adding Viagra to the list of government subsidized drugs...).

So, in conclusion, my point is that you guys are getting screwed by your insurance industry at the moment. There is no other way to say this.

leaving aside the retarded "war on drugs",which we know to be an utter failure.
let me just comment on the two tools for big pharma.
these two fuckwits dont care one fucking IOTA about your freedoms,nor your health.
they do,however,care VERY much to promote big pharma's cannabinoid pills.
i shall paraphrase:
"listen,you should not be smoking something in the privacy of your home,harming noone.something that you can grow in your back yard.that just wont do.you need to be buying the pill that big pharma has created for you."
chris rock puts it best:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Chris-Rock-on-the-American-Drug-Policy

>> ^sometimes:
Does anyone seriously believe that legalizing pot would help the economy? prices would drop substantially, and I really doubt there would be a significant increase in demand to make up for the price cut.



Yes, many many people believe it will help the economy.

• At one medical marijuana facility in Oakland, Ca, they fork over more than $100k per month in taxes into the state coffers. That's one facility, in one month.

• We have over 1,500 facilities like this just in SoCal alone. The expected revenue the state would see would be an immediate injection of $14bn, and at the very least an added $1bn per year.

• You then factor all of the administrative, policing, courts, etc issues, and the revenues you keep expand to a LOT OF MONEY.



There is no reason to believe prices would drop. In fact, as CA state legislator Tom Ammiano wants to tax sales at $50 per oz. That's a LOT! But us potheads would gladly pay it.

As far as the argument "oh, but then everyone would grow it, so there'd be less sales" is ridiculous. I drink beer, but I don't brew it. Why? Because it's really difficult, time consuming, and costly for me to home brew, and the end result would pale in comparison. I also don't want to invest so much time and energy in growing weed in my house, plus where would I do it? How much would my energy bills be?




Still, the title of this video is crap and should be changed.

And Obama would be an idiot to have answered this really any differently. Sure, he could've said something like "our drug policy is flawed, and there are cancer patients who need help, but legalization isn't going to cure an economy that is trillions in the hole."

Be happy he at least took the question. Obama doesn't work the way that Rougy would like him to work. Obama is a master behind the scenes, and I believe he's more likely to secretly open doors to decriminalization, than to risk his entire agenda by being center stage for the pot fight.

Agreed, I would have much rather watched Rushdie and Hitchens debate drug policy. How did nukes get on the table again? I'd have to re-watch the video to see how Mos Def segway'ed onto that tangent.

Rosie O'Donnell is such a munch she did not have the intellect to actually understand what Tom Selleck was saying and then convey what she was saying in a reasonable non hyped fashion.

I think people should be free to do as thay want so long as there is minimal risk to others, I don't see why anyone would need to own an active hand gun ,automatic rifal , if you want to shoot then you could go to a government gun club where thay would store and keep varouse hand guns and rifals that you could rent and use within the premisice on a target ranges and what have you.

it should be legal to have replica , deactivated and model guns but illegal to brandish them at people,

i think specific hunting rifles with slow reload rate , air soft and air guns should all be legal for home use, due to the minimal risk to others.

and the vast majority of money derived from the gun clubs and gun licensing should go directly into education and schemes designed to reduce gun crime.

its like drug policies a drugs danger level should be rated and made very clear the more dangerouse a drug the more lopp whoels sumone would have to go through to aquire the drug and the grater the tax on the drug to recoperate medical chosts of the persons using the drug.

the only drugs that should be illegal are ones that have a really negative affect on others and afectvly kill sum one regardless of quantity/are highly chemicaly adictive.

Hey guys, first off thanks for the quick response. I wasn't suggesting throwing people in jail for their drug habits, if that was working the war on drugs would've been a cakewalk. Speaking of cake, ya i can see where your coming from Karl. However, I'm skeptical as to whether or not every single drug should be made legal, maybe a more lenient anti-drug policy would do the trick? I believe some laws and repercussions can have a positive impact on human behavior.

I'm not saying sick people should be denied health care, even if its self-inflicted everyone should have the right to receive medical help. But at the same time, is it really fair for the majority of the population to take care of people with dangerous habits? I guess I'm just conflicted. As you were saying about weed, ya its impossible to OD and theres some serious doubt on whether or not it causes cancer, but it can still cause some respiratory problems later in life.

I'd like to point out that what Costa says about Dutch drug policy is wrong. It's true that A FEW coffeeshops have been moved to the borders of our country but that's only because drug tourists were causing problems and crowding in the city centers close to the borders.

Anyone that is interested in this should check out the site:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

Their mission statement:

Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of law enforcement who believe the existing drug policies have failed in their intended goals of addressing the problems of crime, drug abuse, addiction, juvenile drug use, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country and the internal sale and use of illegal drugs. By fighting a war on drugs the government has increased the problems of society and made them far worse. A system of regulation rather than prohibition is a less harmful, more ethical and a more effective public policy.


ALSO, here is a sift by drattus about LEAP:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Cops-say-legalize-drugs-ask-them-why

There are actually real problems and crimes to solve out there. The drug war is only cultivating an underground business that is never going to go away, and will only perpetuate the allure of gangs and organized crime (Prohibition...history repeating itself...). There are proposed solutions, and there are arguments against those, but I think the U.S. is grown up enough as a nation to stop beating a dead horse and develop a true drug policy that reflects realistic goals and specific outcomes. I have relatives who are addicted to meth, and seeing the police waste their time on something that is inconsequential, when compared to the real gateway drug (alcohol), makes me sick. I know that keeping cannabis illegal is far too profitable for law enforcement, and in a way it may help to fund other genuinely beneficial endeavors, but there's another side to that coin. Excise taxes are proven to be a good way to raise funds for education or whatever a state government needs, and cannabis is a gold mine that is waiting to be exploited. Good old capitalism is at work in the black market, and opening the blinds to lighten that dirty place up a bit will certainly be a step toward solving problems, rather than creating new ones like what's happened to the people in this video. I do have to agree that they shouldn't have broken the law that they are so lucky to have in the first place, but a little civil disobedience can go a long way.

Re: Local solutions.
Local solutions ARE BETTER, many states are ahead of federal regulations when it comes to education, environment, drug policy, minimum wage, etc. Once a few states have a better solution to any given problem then other people in other states will want better solutions for their states. Centralized power in such a big country is far too slow to respond and when it does the policies are watered down and corrupted. The more I think about it the harder it is to imagine a huge central government doing anything without being slow and wasteful.

-Karl

I'll offer you two bits of info here to consider before we go any farther, yaroslavvb. Please take the time to read, they'll help.

First an excerpt from the Lancet medical journal report I'd mentioned above. As I'd said above and as repeated in their findings, unattractive for young people now. It isn't market theory that drives this. The climb in use is in the years before the program started and why they started it, they had one of the worst abuse rates in the area. The fall started shortly after the program did.

Summary

Background Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy, which could attract new users and lengthen periods of heroin addiction. We sought to estimate incidence trends and prevalence of problem heroin use in Switzerland.

Methods We obtained information about first year of regular heroin use from the case register of substitution treatments in the canton of Zurich for 7256 patients (76% of those treated between 1991 and March, 2005). We estimated the proportion of heroin users not yet in substitution treatment programmes using the conditional lag-time distribution. Cessation rate was the proportion of individuals leaving substitution treatment programmes and not re-entering within the subsequent 10 years. Overall prevalence of problematic heroin use was modelled as a function of incidence and cessation rate.

Findings Every second person began their first substitution treatment within 2 years of starting to use heroin regularly. Incidence of heroin use rose steeply, starting with about 80 people in 1975, culminating in 1990 with 850 new users, and declining substantially to about 150 users in 2002. Two-thirds of those who had left substitution treatment programmes re-entered within the next 10 years. The population of problematic heroin users declined by 4% a year. The cessation rate in Switzerland was low, and therefore, the prevalence rate declined slowly. Our prevalence model accords with data generated by different approaches.

Interpretation The harm reduction policy of Switzerland and its emphasis on the medicalisation of the heroin problem seems to have contributed to the image of heroin as unattractive for young people. Our model could enable the study of incidence trends across different countries and thus urgently needed assessments of the effect of different drug policies.

Introduction

Switzerland has been criticised for its liberal drug policy. Specifically, the implementation of harm reduction measures, such as drug consumption rooms, needle-exchange services, low-threshold methadone programmes, and heroin-assisted treatments, have been thought to make potential users think that harm will not arise from use of illicit drugs. According to this critique, such a policy would lead to a growing number of new users of street drugs and lengthen the period of heroin addiction. Contrary to this belief, stable prevalence of heroin use since 1994 has been reported in Switzerland.

http://www.sharemation.com/Rubin/H/swiss.heroin.summary_lancet.367.1830-4_2006.html

Second we'll deal with the idea that any of this had to do with health or safety to start with. It was more control, politics. The following link is to a speech derived from The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition by Professor Richard J. Bonnie & Professor Charles H. Whitebread, II, and given by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School.

It is the history of non-medical use of drugs in this nation, how and why the laws developed and when. No, he's not just some activist. He had done some research on his own that impressed the Government enough that he was a part of a team given access to government archives to research the issue. That's what he was there for. It's a bit long and reads odd at times since it was meant to be spoken instead of read, but it's a good bit of history we won't see much elsewhere. It wasn't to keep the kids safe. It was politics.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

Is any of what we've got so far perfect? Probably not. What we do should be decided by research and trial studies, even when we are doing better than we're doing now we shouldn't stop looking. It should always be pursuit of a better method. Much of what we're considering today seems better than what we've done so far, and where they've been tried the fears of what could happen often turn out to be misplaced. If in some case they aren't we trash that method and try again, that's why we start in trial study instead of widespread use. That's how the Swiss went from needle park, a failure, to the maintenance program, a success. It's a process, not a simple "we do it this way" answer. We do what works, and if we're lucky we do it without politics or special interests getting in the way.

I'm glad someone asked that question, entr0py. In the end I think trial studies should decide what we do, if it doesn't work we don't use it no matter how good it sounds. If it works we use it no matter how odd it sounds. To me, prescription drugs wouldn't change, at least not the principle of there being prescription drugs.

Legal doesn't mean party in the streets or free use, it just means arrest isn't automatic for use. What I imagine is softer drugs such as pot sold in liquor stores and such while others depending on risk get less and less available until we finally get to heroin. Believe it or not we've got proof, it can be regulated with good effect. The Swiss are doing it now, in a limited way. That should help guide them toward less risky ones by level of availability, reinforce that with real education and no scare tactics.

The following page is from the Drug Policy Forum of Texas, it shows some of the results the Swiss had in the early years of their program plus some examples of the program right here in the US in the early 1900's. We don't tend to remember, but it did work here too. This part just covers the heroin maintenance program, from my understanding that's the last step after treatment and efforts to get them off the drug have failed. Just for real addicts, you can't get it just for asking and it isn't the whole program.

http://www.dpft.org/heroin.htm

It's a few years out of date by now, the Lancet medical journal did a more current one last year that concentrated on the treatment rather than the maintenance aspects. Full article unfortunately is pay for access only but it was referred to in a number of scientific and medical publications, drug war facts has a number of quotes collected at the following link with sources listed for those who wish to look for themselves.

http://www.drugwarfacts.org/hatreatm.htm

Legal just means get rid of schedule 1, schedule one restricts all use including medical and allows few options but prison. Get rid of schedule 1 and try regulating the stuff in a way guided by science and results, that doesn't add up to uncontrolled use or party in the streets. It would I think add up to more sound health policy and the ability to adjust and actually control the problem rather than just make gestures toward it. We know we can deal with pot, it seems we can heroin as well. The ones between should find their spots too, if we're allowed the trial studies to find how to deal with them best.

>>> I dislike Olbermann, an insincere, smarmy prick if ever there ever was one on the air. I can't believe even the leftists who like his op-eds can stand him. Keep an eye on him here:

http://www.olbermannwatch.com/

>>> I hate to begin with Slick Willie, but all this concern over the Libby non-issue weighs less than a feather when compared to the last-day-in-office pardons of Bubba.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardons_controversy

>>> Reviews of recent history demonstrate to me that Democrats, the silly cult of personalities they are, don't give a rat's patoot about the rule of law. There's also the fiasco with Gonzalez over the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys in 2006, which was perfectly legal. Why Gonzalez, who did nothing wrong, didn't tell critics to politely f-off is beyond me. But he didn't, and now he too is stuck in a pointless Democrat snare wasting time, money and energy over a non-issue.

I voted for bush, I'll admit it. I've even defended several of his questionable decisions, even though I was over in the Gulf myself at the time. To my knowledge, Mr. Libby's supposed "crime" about revealing in identity of a CIA member wasn't necessarily a crime at all, because the CIA member wasn't even an agent. They were not someone who was in deep cover, if anyone wanted to find out who they were, it would be a simple matter of looking them up.

>>> I believe you are correct in your assessment of the Libby fiasco. To me it was nothing more than a political witch hunt.

Perhaps I'm wrong about what happened with the CIA member and Mr. Libby, but the very fact that Bush would release that man from jail before the appeals process had even started is against everything this justice system was created for. It is in a word : wrong. To the very core of the word.

>>> Libbygate means little or nothing to me; whether the man goes free or rots in prison has no bearing on the fate of the country. Keeping the scum in Gitmo locked up is more important.

>>> I voted for Bush, or rather, against these socialist tools the Victicrats keep offering up. Yeah, Bush has let all of us down one way or another, it's true. He's really a liberal with a few conservative tendencies. He's failed to secure the border, failed to vaporize what needs vaporizing in the Middle East and though he wouldn't have much pull even if he was for ending Drug Prohibition, his past abuses of alk and coke have left no mark of compassion on failed drug policy for those still being locked up for life over a joint.
For all his faults, Bush is nowhere close to being the chimera the moonbat left has tried to create of him. Why should I take anything the left has to say seriously? They remain in complete denial over the war on islamofascism and how tax cuts create wealth.

>>> Hamilton said corruption was the grease of democracy. Focus on what matters to you.