Home | Community | Message Board

MagicBag Grow Bags
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds   North Spore Cultivation Supplies   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
OfflineDivided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
Last seen: 15 years, 9 months
A conservative on the on the ever growing drug war
    #2659363 - 05/10/04 11:52 AM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Bad Trip
The federal war on drugs expands.

By Deroy Murdock
National Review Online

At a time when federal officials should focus obsessively on crushing terrorists, they are expanding the disastrous war on drugs into an even more pointless war on substances. From old bogeymen like marijuana to new "hazards" like Oxycontin, Washington busybodies are knocking themselves out combating compounds that, by themselves, do not threaten public safety.

The Justice Department has appealed a December 2003 federal court decision that barred Uncle Sam from impeding Californians who use personally grown, locally cultivated, or charitably donated medical marijuana. In Raich v. Ashcroft, the Ninth Circuit correctly disallowed the Constitution's commerce-clause rationale for federal intervention. After all, how can interstate commerce include intrastate, noncommercial activity?

Rather than accept defeat and confront genuine dangers, Attorney General John Ashcroft seeks Supreme Court permission to keep raiding medical-marijuana suppliers and harassing people such as Angel Raich who has used medical marijuana to treat a brain tumor, wasting syndrome, seizures, and more.

Among many others, the feds also are prosecuting Gary and Anna Barrett. This Victorville, California couple had state permission to grow marijuana to address their respective ailments. He suffers Crohn's disease, a potentially lethal digestive disease. She uses marijuana to relieve the pain she has endured since surviving a five-story fall from a London hotel balcony during their 1995 honeymoon.

"We are disappointed, but not surprised, that Attorney General Ashcroft has chosen to ask the Supreme Court for what amounts to a license to attack the sick," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project. "Conservatives should be appalled that the Justice Department is arguing that two patients and their caregivers, growing and using medical marijuana within California ? using California seeds, California soil, California water, and California equipment, and engaging in no commercial activity whatsoever ? are somehow engaged in 'interstate commerce.'"

On April 12, the Bush administration became the first to prohibit a dietary supplement, yet another GOP triumph. Ephedra, an herbal stimulant, helped dieters lose weight ? a healthy objective ? and energized others, much as does currently legal caffeine. Alas, Sidney Wolfe of the liberal Public Citizen estimates that ephedra has contributed to some 155 deaths since January 1993. But as Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum notes, "this number is remarkably low given how many people have used ephedra. Until the recent bad publicity cut into sales, the industry estimated that 12 million to 17 million Americans were taking around 3 billion doses a year."

Sullum compares these 155 possible ephedra deaths spanning 11 years with the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network's survey of coroners' reports. In 1999 alone, DAWN found 811 multiple-drug overdose deaths that included Valium ingestion, 427 fatalities that involved Tylenol, and 104 that entailed aspirin. Why not ban those drugs, too?

The Justice Department led a federal grand jury to issue a 42-count indictment against San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds's personal trainer, Greg Anderson; track coach Remi Korchemny; and Victor Conte Jr. and James J. Valente, executives of the Bay Area Lab Cooperative. They are accused of giving professional athletes anabolic steroids.

"Illegal steroid use calls into question not only the integrity of the athletes who use them, but also the integrity of the sports that those athletes play," Ashcroft told reporters February 11. "Steroids are bad for sports, they're bad for players, they're bad for young people who hold athletes up as role models."

There you have it: Uncle Sam has seized the responsibility for policing America's hallowed sports teams and athletes. Who needs the commissioners of baseball and football? Even if steroids were Washington's business, must the attorney general spend even three seconds on this? Surely Ashcroft has more pressing items in his inbox. So does every other steroid cop. Ashcroft should scrap this project.

Hydrocodone (Vicodin) is America's most widely prescribed drug. Doctors prescribed it 100 million times in 2002, according to Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

"Nowadays a physician can prescribe this drug and give patients multiple refills," Michaels says. "Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration wants you to see your doctor before every refill. Its proposal will require 300 million more doctor's office visits per year, assuming that one visit today covers two refills. That equals 150 million worker days lost."

Michaels badly injured his neck in a softball mishap, leaving him in such agony that he wanted to die.

"Unremitting and severe chronic pain creates a very logical decision on the part of the patient not to want to live," Michaels recalls. "I remember thinking it was stupid to be alive.... Along with 38 million other people, my life was made a heck of a lot more livable with hydrocodone."

The DEA wants to make hydrocodone a Schedule II drug, track how much of it doctors prescribe, and monitor the amount each patient receives.

"I can assure you," Michaels warns, "this is going to make doctors reluctant to prescribe the world's most popular pain reliever."

"The sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship is being destroyed by federal bureaucrats, who have turned the drug war into a war on pain relief," Rep. Ron Paul, M.D. (R., Tex.) lamented in an April 19 commentary. The feds have threatened prosecution and loss of medical licenses for physicians who prescribe strong painkillers such as Oxycontin. While some abuse these pharmaceuticals, many more rely on them to ease pain. Nonetheless, Rep. Paul wrote, some doctors no longer prescribe these pharmaceuticals while others "have even posted signs in their waiting rooms advising patients not to ask for Oxycontin and similar drugs."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gene Rossi encapsulated Justice's profound disdain for pain specialists when he declared: "Our office will try our best to root out certain doctors like the Taliban."

Adults should be free to stimulate, fortify, or medicate themselves however they wish, so long as they simultaneously respect the rights and safety of others. As al Qaeda prepares bloody surprises, it is simply surreal for federal officials to exert even one calorie of collective energy to battle American citizens who trim their waistlines, boost their batting averages, or soothe their pounding nerve endings.


--------------------
1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..."
2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..."
3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibleafoaf
CEO DBK?
 User Gallery

Registered: 11/08/02
Posts: 32,665
Loc: Ripple's Heart
Re: A conservative on the on the ever growing drug war [Re: Divided_Sky]
    #2659379 - 05/10/04 12:01 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

nice article...

Alas, Sidney Wolfe of the liberal Public Citizen estimates that ephedra has contributed to some 155 deaths since January 1993. But as Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum notes, "this number is remarkably low given how many people have used ephedra. Until the recent bad publicity cut into sales, the industry estimated that 12 million to 17 million Americans were taking around 3 billion doses a year."

Sullum compares these 155 possible ephedra deaths spanning 11 years with the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network's survey of coroners' reports. In 1999 alone, DAWN found 811 multiple-drug overdose deaths that included Valium ingestion, 427 fatalities that involved Tylenol, and 104 that entailed aspirin. Why not ban those drugs, too?


good facts...

yet another victory for the fear factory, along the lines of the
assault weapons ban, drum up enough frenzy over a non-issue
and you too can get legislation passed.

totally fucking bogus, what a waste.


--------------------
All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisiblez@z.com
Libertarian
Registered: 10/13/02
Posts: 2,876
Loc: ATL
Re: A conservative on the on the ever growing drug war [Re: Divided_Sky]
    #2659734 - 05/10/04 01:47 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

The National Review is a great publication. It even has my parents questioning the drug war. Every couple of years they put out a special issue on the war on drugs.


--------------------
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineDivided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
Last seen: 15 years, 9 months
Re: A conservative on the on the ever growing drug war [Re: z@z.com]
    #2659895 - 05/10/04 03:02 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Yeah, I think they best represent conservative thought. Most of their articles (the print ones more so than the online ones) are pretty top notch. I wish people would stop listening to Mike Savage and Anne Coulter and read National Review.


--------------------
1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..."
2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..."
3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinephi1618
old hand

Registered: 02/14/04
Posts: 4,102
Last seen: 13 years, 10 months
Re: A conservative on the on the ever growing drug war [Re: Divided_Sky]
    #2659982 - 05/10/04 03:24 PM (19 years, 10 months ago)

Yup.

The Economist also opposes the Drug War.

I think there are moderate economic conservatives that have realistic and practical solutions to the problems we face. Unfortunately, the Republican party is increasingly deserting this wing of the party, and taking its lead more from the radical religious elements and business interests, such as energy companies.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds   North Spore Cultivation Supplies   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Asa "globalization of drug war" Hutchinson MOoKie 2,771 6 05/13/01 04:18 AM
by MokshaMan
* Conservatives Against a War with Iraq Evolving 812 3 03/12/03 12:27 AM
by luvdemshrooms
* anyone here support the drug war?
( 1 2 3 all )
Anonymous 4,778 52 03/20/03 03:21 PM
by Anonymous
* the drug war thealkaloid 1,612 8 03/17/15 08:29 PM
by acidfeak1469
* Latest Drug War Propaganda!
( 1 2 all )
Viveka 4,705 30 10/28/02 12:50 AM
by carbonhoots
* Noam Chomsky on the Drug War
( 1 2 all )
xnevermore 4,994 32 10/09/02 02:01 PM
by EchoVortex
* The War on Drugs is Lost wingnutx 2,492 19 08/25/02 06:51 PM
by Murex
* Why It Is Time To Decriminalize Drug Use RonoS 2,058 19 10/02/02 04:12 PM
by LSAuser

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Enlil, ballsalsa
747 topic views. 1 members, 9 guests and 4 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.025 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.