fafalone

"Police harassment like prosecuting people for possessing illegal drugs? You mean the police arrest people who do things that are illegal? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?" Way to completely ignore the fact that people who need help are not getting it because of fear. Fear, through all of history, has never been an effective long-term strategy.

"I don't care how much it costs, I'm not in favour of legalising a dangerous drug." This is exactly what is wrong with drug policy. You simply don't see that education, harm reducation, and legalization is the best way we know of to REDUCE DRUG ABUSE. Legalization -Reduces deaths from overdose -Eliminates the illicit market run by violent criminals -Enables more people to seek help for addiction Basically you're saying you don't care if it costs more, creates more addicts, raises the misuse levels, leads to more violence, and causes more death, so long as we continue to hopelessly arrest everyone involved with drugs in the world.

Comparing a drug like tobacco with extremely little psychoactive effect that has been traditionally used by a large number of people since the begginning of the country is not a valid point in arguing against prohibition of drugs that are associated with psychoactive effects, starting with alcohol.

FACT: Needle exchange programs reduce the spread of HIV in a measurable way. FACT: Alcohol related deaths and violence rose during the alcohol prohibition of the 20s FACT: Methadone clinics are highly successfull in reducing the number of heroin addicts, however they are severely restricted and underfunded. FACT: Humans have used drugs since the beginning of our species. FACT: Lying to children about the dangers of drugs results in a decrease in trust of the message. FACT: D.A.R.E has been unsuccessfull in lowering the drug abuse rate. FACT: Fear of police harassment is a leading cause of keeping people out of treatment programs. FACT: The marijuana use rate among teenagers in the US is higher than the use rate in Europe, where the laws are more relaxed. FACT: In Amsterdam, 0.1% of the population 12 and over used heroin in the last 30 days. In the US, 0.1% of the population 12 and over used heroin in the past 30 days. However in Amsterdam, use is decriminalised. FACT: 31.1% of the population in Amsterdam used cannabis once in their lifetimes, and 40.4% of the US population has used it once. Source: Abraham, Manja D., Hendrien L. Kaal, Peter D.A. Cohen (2003), Licit and illicit drug use in Amsterdam, 1987 to 2001. Amsterdam: CEDRO/Mets & Schilt and the US NHSDA, 2002 FACT: 10% in Amsterdam used cocaine once in their lives, while 14.4% in the US have. FACT: "Domestic enforcement costs 4 times as much as treatment for a given amount of user reduction, 7 times as much for consumption reduction, and 15 times as much for societal cost reduction." Source: Rydell, C.P. & Everingham, S.S., Controlling Cocaine, Prepared for the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the United States Army (Santa Monica, CA: Drug Policy Research Center, RAND Corporation, 1994), p. xvi. FACT: To reduce cocaine use by 1%, it would take 4.3 times as much money by enforcement of drug laws over money spent for treatment programs. Source: Rydell, C.P. & Everingham, S.S., Controlling Cocaine, Prepared for the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the United States Army (Santa Monica, CA: Drug Policy Research Center, RAND Corporation, 1994), p. 36. FACT: The National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES) found that with treatment: drug selling decreased by 78%, shoplifting declined by almost 82%, and assaults (defined as 'beating someone up') declined by 78%. Furthermore, there was a 64% decrease in arrests for any crime, and the percentage of people who largely supported themselves through illegal activity dropped by nearly half - decreasing more than 48 percent. Source: Center for Substance Abuse and Treatment, National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study 1997 Highlights, from the web at http://www.health.org/nties97/crime.htm. I could go on and on and on.

Theres also the example of Amsterdam and Liverpool. You have absolutely no evidence to back up your claim.

Yes. And if you call the paramedics, the police come too.

That's where harm reduction and unbiased education come in to play. And also the differentiation between use and abuse. Take the heroin user who's afraid of going to the hospital for an overdose because of fear of being arrested. Say he had a standardized dosage unit. Say Naloxone wasn't also a restricted drug. Now say with me, that overdose victim would still be alive.

The most effective way of reducing overall drug misuse, abuse, and addiction is legalization, harm reduction, and unbiased education.

Prohibition is not the most effective way of reducing drug use...

Wait so if I'm with someone that I have no idea has drugs, I should be arrested as if they were mine???? no no no

That may be so, but the case should have been thrown out of court because of the illegal search. And the point is that 4 people shouldn't be convicted because one of them had drugs. If you're at a party, and the cops come in and find drugs hidden somewhere in the house, this precedent says they can go ahead and arrest everyone at the party.

See this thread for information about the most accurate measure of the Hubble constant (the rate at which the universe is expanding).

That was the whole point of the case. They DID NOT have reasonable suspicion, but rather coerced the people in the car into letting conduct an illegal search.

Achieve the DESIRED effect. i.e. 5-10mg It will have a significant effect, but if its taken once in a social situation by a person not trying to escape from their problems, the risk of addiction is nominal.

We have a little thing called the 4th amendment here that states police cannot conduct a search without reasonable suspicion they will find something illegal.

I call lack of scientific knowledge of the subject. The reasoning is that addiction will not occur after one use that is socially motivated. Addiction will occur with misuse and abuse, i.e. using it by yourself and not for social reasons, but to escape problems and negative feelings.

Yes because addiction rarely occurs, even with heroin, at the use level. Important to distinguish between use and misuse/abuse here.

Police do NOT have the right to search you without reasonable suspicion. Seeing a corpse is reasonable suspicion to search the premises.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe has produced strong evidence of frozen water and frozen carbon dioxide at Mars' southern polar cap. This evidence was confirmed by the new PFS spectrometer, which has significantly better accuracy than any to come before it. The find was made with Mars Express' OMEGA camera, which contains a traditional camera and an infrared spectrometer. The probe will not reach its final orbit for a few more weeks, but has already produced this amazing discovery. The probe also contained an instrument called SPICAM, which is an ultraviolet and infrared spectrometer, that confirmed the presence of water vapor and that there is more of it where there is less ozone. This is perhaps the most significant find on Mars ever. Full story at http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEM8ZB474OD_index_0.html

Here's the latest abhorrent drug policy: It's OK for police to arrest everyone in a car that unclaimed drugs are found in when an unreasonable search is conducted. Unreasonable search in the sense that it was a routine traffic stop and there was no reasonable suspicion to suspect there to be drugs.

well at least our probe MADE IT to mars, which is more than the europeans can claim

The higher income brackets are still taxed a MUCH higher percentage than middle and lower income brackets. Say you have $10, and your tax rate is 10% and you pay $1 in taxes. Now say you have $100.. your tax rate is now 50% and the government is taking HALF your money instead of 1/10th. If you're going to critisize trickle-down economics, at least understand what the tax policy is like before complaining about it. One of the unfailing principles of economics is that the higher the productivity of large corporations, the better the economy is for EVERYONE. The simplest example is the ability of war to pull the country out of depression. WW1 and the depression of the early 1910s, WW2 and the Great Depression, and now the post-9/11 depression and Iraq. When large companies have more money to spend on producing products, it's good for the economy.

And as far as side effects from heroin use... Using dirty needles is MISUSE, using lethal doses is ABUSE, and using it outside of the occaisional social setting is MISUSE and eventually becomes abuse and addiction.

No, it says use of them is safe in the right dose and setting.

Here's some ideas we talked about today in my PSY305 - Drugs and Behavior class... Drug USE is safe regardless of the substance, legal or illegal, and defined as using an amount of the drug to achieve the desired effect with low hazard and in the right setting. Drug MISUSE is slightly increased risk, using any drug in a dosage or set/setting that increases risk over the extent of use. Drug ABUSE is repeated misuse or dosages and set/settings that great increase the risk of harm, and is almost exclusively associated in non-social use of drugs (drinking alone, drinking right before a class,...) and of course drug addiction is a psychological or physical dependency on a substance. Our professor also talked about how the people who only use drugs in certain settings such as parties have a very low risk of moving up to abuse and addiction, REGARDLESS of the substance. We also talked about how the drug laws were based on emotional reactions of congress rather than scientific facts about drug, in fact my earlier discussion of nicotine was essentially repeated verbatim in class, and that people are going to use drugs no matter what laws we make, and that HARM REDUCTION, not prohibition and tougher sentencing, is the first step on the road towards prevention of misuse and abuse. Harm reduction consists of things like needle exchange programs, methadone clinics, teaching SAFE USE, and services like DanceSafe (dancesafe.org, supplies lab results and testing kits for determining ecstasy purity found on the streets). I'll be posting this kind of stuff every tuesday and thursday, because me and the professor of the class seem to be on the exact same page.