The jokes will be legion, but the policy is sound. And this is a move that Libertarians, Republicans and Democrats can all applaud.

From The AP:The jokes will be legion, but the policy is sound. And this is a move that libertarians, republicans and democrats can all applaud.

From The AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

What does this mean practically?

Well, no more federal raids of medical marijuana shops, fewer non-violent drug offenders in jail and a LOT of very happy stoners. Oh, and we are able to focus a lot of our efforts on important things (terrorism, gangs, etc.), which should save more lives and a lot of money.

Again, this should be applauded from all corners…but I’m waiting to see what the states’ rights crowd has to say about it.

George Will writes today that we should pull out of Afghanistan and instead focus on Pakistan.

Even though I still think we should stay (and I’ll get into why), at this point he has my ear…

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Couple this with the reality that a soldier dies every 14 hours in Afghanistan and dropping public opinion about why we should be there, and you have a recipe for quick withdrawal.

But here’s why I think we still need to keep pushing for at least another year…opium.

I’ve talked about this before, but to sum it up…if we allow Afghans to grow opium legally (as they do in India and Turkey) and sell it to pharmaceutical companies, we can regulate it and they can pull themselves out of the crushing poverty that is the backdrop for sympathetic views of the Taliban.

If not, we should just pack up and go.

Seriously. Because they’re not going to be able to build a stable economy with anything else and without money there is no hope for the country. And I mean NO hope. Virtually nothing can grow there, they have scant natural resources and their infrastructure is literally 200 years behind ours. It’s a crazy place and we can’t simply pour billions after billions to rebuild. Well, we can, but it’s not sustainable.

The choice is ours, but one thing is for sure…more troops won’t make Afghanistan whole again. No way, no how.

I welcome your thoughts…

Most people are familiar with the “placebo effect” – people who believe they are being treated for an ailment can show improvement or be cured, even if the treatment consists of sugar pills. This is the hurdle pharmaceutical companies must clear when testing a new drug. To be proven effective, a drug must be shown to be more effective than a placebo. Apparently the bar is getting higher.

Steve Silberman reports in Wired that placebos are statistically getting stronger and more effective:

“Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn’s disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an “unusually high” response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It’s not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late ’90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.”

This is a problem for Big Pharma, who are spending millions designing drugs that are not as effective as the astonishing curative power of belief in a sugar pill. Silberman described the effect in a CNBC interview on Monday:

With billions at stake, drug companies are apparently tinkering with a pill’s color, shape, name and labeling in the hope of building a better, more effective um… placebo. Again from the article:

“The most important ingredient in any placebo is the doctor’s bedside manner, but according to research, the color of a tablet can boost the effectiveness even of genuine meds—or help convince a patient that a placebo is a potent remedy.”

Hmmmm…

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick

So Canada has basically decriminalized marijuana possession and Mexico has added cocaine, meth, heroin and LSD to the mix.

Wonder what’s going to happen in the US in the next decade…especially given the current reality in California where shops are selling pot out in the open?

The Daily Beast has more…

In an effort to garner control in the battle against drug traffickers, Mexico has passed a new law that decriminalizes small amounts of drugs by setting maximum “personal use” amounts on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. A person will no longer be arrested if found with 5 grams of marijuana (or 4 joints), a half-gram for cocaine (or 4 lines), 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine, or 0.015 milligrams of LSD.

But the Mexican government is quick to point out that the difference between decriminalization and…

“This is not legalization,” assured Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney general’s office. “This is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty.” Under the new law, anyone caught with drug quantities below the limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, until the third time a person is caught when treatment becomes mandatory.

You know, I think that’s actually a pretty good policy, with the exception of marijuana being a drug that needs mandatory treatment. I mean, if somebody is walking around drunk a few times, will cops stop them? Of course not. Marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol, but the stigma exists and so it goes.

Also, how many LSD addicts are out there? 5? I mean…come on. Maybe that provision was made for the rich kids in Mexico City and the Turistas in Cancun. Hrmmm…

In any event, I think this a good, common sense step forward to make sure that non-violent drug offenders aren’t rammed-rodded through the system and have to serve unnecessary jail time.

…and the libertarians and liberals did cheer…

This came as a bit of a shock to me, but Arnold is definitely one of the most moderate Republicans I’ve ever seen and is willing to take chances giving his unique position as a Republican Governor of a solidly blue state. Also, let’s not forget that the state voted to okay medical marijuana back in 1996, so it’s a little easier to do.

From Politics Daily:

In February a state lawmaker introduced a measure that would decriminalize marijuana in California. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano suggested regulating and taxing pot could pump $1.3 billion annually into the state’s shaky economy. He got a handful of headlines but the bill didn’t spark much debate and Ammiano was mostly portrayed as a fringe figure from kooky San Francisco.

On CNN a month later Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said the state should launch a pilot program that would explore legalizing marijuana. Sanchez likened the issue to the prohibition of alcohol last century and said most Californians believe pot laws should be relaxed. (A recent Field Poll supports her claim: 56 percent of California voters say cannabis should be legal for recreational use and taxed). The interview made the blog rounds since it appeared to be the first time a national politician addressed the issue seriously on a mainstream media outlet.

Today an even bigger figure has taken up the discussion on whether to decriminalize and tax marijuana. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it’s time to at least debate the issue. The Republican governor made it clear that he’s not for legalizing weed, but he doesn’t want to be afraid to talk about it.

First question…should marijuana be decriminalized?

Second…should Schwarzenegger just become a Libertarian already and shed the Republican label?

The change isn’t huge. The previous age for over-the-counter purchase was 18. But do not doubt that the Obama administration will not have the problems with this rule that the Bush administration had. Many abortion opponents consider the morning-after-pill to be no different than an abortion and Bush was sympathetic to those worries. Obama, on the other hand, is decidedly liberal on the abortion issue.

Of course, much of the debate comes down to when you think life begins. Is it fertilization? Implantation? The moment of “quickening” notoriously laid out in Roe v. Wade? For some people, the matter is clear-cut. After fertilization or even after potential fertilization, any interference is immoral. For others, the woman’s rights supersede the right of the unborn up to and, in some instances, beyond the point of viability outside the womb. But I think, for most people, the issue is not so clear cut.

My views on abortion are complex and too complicated to effectively describe in a blog post. But I will say that I support Plan B contraceptive. Mistakes happen, either out of foolish moments of passion or failure of other contraceptive devices. Plan B allows for otherwise responsible people to remain responsible and not have a child they don’t want or can’t care for. It’s not perfect. But doing nothing and waiting to see if pregnancy results creates even greater problems and deeper moral dilemmas. It’s easy to draw bright lines, but it’s not always what’s best for a responsible society.

Now, if you are adamant that life begins at the moment of fertilization and that doing anything to inhibit implantation is morally reprehensible, then there’s nothing I can say. But if you believe that preventing unwanted pregnancies necessitates certain compromises, then over-the-counter Plan B is a reasonable policy. At least that’s my conclusion.

Are we really ready to do this to kids? And the important part here is that the student in question was on the honor roll and they were searching her for prescription-strength ibuprofen pills.

Yes, ibuprofen.

From Wash Post…

An important case at the Supreme Court sometimes informs as much about the justices as the issue at hand, and yesterday’s animated hearing on whether school officials have the right to strip-search a 13-year-old female student seemed just such a case.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wondered if the incident was much different from the experience of disrobing for gym class. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy affirmed his deep concerns about illicit drugs. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed at times on the edge of exasperation with her all-male colleagues. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. searched for a way to make the issue go away.

But it was Justice David H. Souter who seemed to sum up the dilemma for a majority of the court. He put himself in the place of a school official balancing the need for keeping his young charges safe from drugs while respecting the constitutional protections even middle school students should receive.
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“My thought process is, I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry,” Souter said.

Sure, but how big of a problem is this really? Lots of kids ODing on ibuprofen? I mean, come on…

And how far do we want to go down the “If one child gets hurt…” road? Life is full of danger, and there are laws in place to make sure we have reasonable assumptions of safety. But there’s no such thing as complete safety, and it feels like that’s what we’re aiming at with this.

Color me concerned because this slippery slope seems ripe for abuse.

Goldberg also makes this odd statement:

A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

This is particularly puzzling because Goldberg has argued that anti-statism is at the core of conservatism and is also why libertarians should continue to coalition with conservatives. Obviously, increasing drug prosecutions is not only inconsistent with any conception of limited government, it’s also an expansion of the size of government. And not an insignicant expansion either, given that this can definitionally only be achieved by pursuing people with enough resources to put up a tough fight against drug prosecutions (a fact that at least partly explains the socioeconomic discrepancies in such prosecutions in the first place).

Goldberg’s statement does indirectly suggest one point worth exploring, though – that human liberty is increased when laws are enforced more uniformly; unfortunately, he takes this point to be a justification for the expansion of drug prosecutions.

Much has been written of late about the difference between small and limited government – specifically, small government refers only to the fiscal “size” of the government, whereas limited government refers to the government’s actual powers. If you accept that the State must exist, as even most libertarians do, then one must have a desire that the Stated do well that which it is authorized to do. If the State does its job poorly, then it will actually have a more negative impact on individual liberty than if it does its job well, because at that point enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary and based on one’s ability to curry favor with the State in some other non-germane arena.

If, on the other hand, the State does its job well, then people may act in reliance upon the law being enforced equally without regards to other issues. So there may be a marginal decrease in liberty due to the existence of the law in the first place, but this is mitigated by the fact that uniform enforcement ensures that people may act in reliance upon the law and without having to curry favor with the State in some other arena. This means less State corruption, less connection between wealth and power, and less fear of interference from the State more generally.

The trouble is that very often uniform enforcement is simply not possible due to the State’s limited resources. Put another way, in the words of the inestimable Wirkman Virkkala, “regulation is not scalable.”

In the case of the War on Drugs, this problem is particularly apparent. For any given drug, there are going to be potentially millions of users spread out over a vast country. The only way to have uniform enforcement of the drug laws in such a situation is to have an incomprehensibly large budget far bigger than the already-incomprehensibly large Drug War budget we have. Other programs, some of which may or may not be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion will need to be scaled back (and thus enforced more arbitrarily). Short of that, given the nature of prohibitions on the possession of banned personal items, the only way to truly enforce the law uniformly would be to turn our neighbors and friends into de facto secret police.

Still, under some circumstances, I suppose it’s possible to enforce such prohibitions in a more or less uniform fashion without creating a de facto secret police force – whatever Singapore’s flaws (and it has many), drug use is not something that flourishes there. Part of that, though, is that Singapore is a tiny nation geographically, and another part of it is that it spends very little on many other types of restrictions, such as economic regulation.

Which brings me to my final point – even regulations that are not outright prohibitions can be uniformly enforced only if they govern a sufficiently small number of actors or if the enforcing agency has the very substantial amount of resources necessary to enforce the regulations uniformly over a large number of actors. Again, they are not scalable. If the regulations are to apply to more actors than the agency has the resources to oversee, then the only solution an agency may follow will be to make the regulations so restrictive as to ensure the reduction of the number of actors over whom they have jurisdiction. In other words, regulatory capture doesn’t just benefit the capturing business – it also benefits the captured regulator.

There is, I think, a solution to this problem: terminate any set of laws or regulations that cannot be uniformly enforced without an unrealistic budgetary expansion, and fully fund those laws or regulations that can be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion. Unfortunately, this is impossible in a two-party system where the Executive is increasingly viewed by both supporters and detractors as omnipotent and where few are willing to admit the unrealistic nature of their pet programs.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Looks like Obama’s “green initiatives” won’t include legalizing marijuana. Today, he shot down the idea.

In a statement that’s sure to disappoint many of those who submitted questions to President Obama’s virtual town hall meeting, the president made clear Thursday he does not support legalizing marijuana as a means to spur economic growth.

“I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation,” Obama said off-handedly at the town hall. “I don’t know what that says about the online audience.”

“The answer is no, I do not think that is a good strategy to grow our economy,” Obama said to laughter from the town hall participants.

I expect, someday, a major politician in power will support legalizing marijuana, but it’s clearly too soon for such a move by a sitting president. That’s one green lobby which is just going to have to wait.

Guess which one sounds more credible…

I do still love Ron Paul in many ways, and I wish he wouldn’t have been mixed up in that remarkably dumb newsletter operation he was. Because then he’d be a viable third party candidate.

Oh well.

Listen, I can understand bans on harder narcotics, but not marijuana. Everybody knows that marijuana is FAR less dangerous to your health and the public’s safety than alcohol. I could literally go out right now and buy enough alcohol to put myself in a coma. There’s no way that could happen with pot.

So at a certain point in the future I hope we just decriminalize this stuff and regulate its sale.

Your thoughts?

It’s a sting operation carried out against police for the all-too-common problem of questionable-at-best probable cause in drug raids.

The setup:

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

The police took the attorney into custody.

In 60 days, the police have to release the affidavit saying how they gained probable cause to raid the house, which only KopBusters knew about, and in which nothing illegal was going on whatsoever. It seems pretty reasonable to assume that the police used thermal cameras (which the Supreme Court has ruled are unconstitutional, Kyllo v United States (2001)), and then just flat-out lied to gain entry (vice squads routinely use the tried-and-true and usually non-falsifiable “an informant tipped me off” or “I passed by and smelled marijuana”). Of course, given the conditions of the house and the setup, that will be on-the-face-of-it laughable. And suddenly the police have to account for why they entered an empty residence with two Christmas trees and a glow lamp, and how they knew about it in the first place.

It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. With any justice (and some media rabble-rousing), the DA by all rights ought to be turning his focus on the vice squad. Probably just as likely he’ll try to have KopBusters arrested. Either way, should make for some illustrative copy. And regardless, this is a problem endemic in the drug war, and in law enforcement generally. Probable cause is meant to be a protection for the citizenry against unwarranted searches and seizures. In most police departments, it’s just viewed as a bureaucratic nuisance, a mere lawyer’s formality, and with no inherent value (so what’s the harm in skirting it?). That tension will always exist, and for good reason. But for the system to work, there has to be consequences, lest the law-enforcers get too complacent, too lax, and too outright hostile to their constitutional checks.

For more, check out Barry Cooper’s site. Mr. Cooper is a fairly strident anti-drug bust crusader, and a bit of a personality in his own right. I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Cooper at last year’s Liberty Forum (libertarian convention), where we were both speaking. I gave a dry hour-long seminar on constitutionalism and activism—Cooper, by contrast, had a motivational-speakeresque presentation and was received like a rock star. But there’s no doubting that this guy has brass balls, and it’s a systemic problem that not many are willing to take on.

Maybe with another dozen or so like him around the country, police will actually start having reason to be afraid of not following procedure?

Cross-posted at The CrossedPond

This doesn’t surprise me about Giuliani, but Huckabee?

First Giuliani…

Then here’s a link to Huck.

Ugh.

He suggests that Obama hasn’t been honest about it…

Speaking to Dennis Miller, a comedian and conservative radio talk show host, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said Obama should be more forthright about his background and what he called his “very extreme” record.

“He ought to admit, ‘You know, I’ve got to be honest with you. I was a guy of the street. I was way to the left. I used cocaine. I voted liberally, but I’m back at the center,’” Keating, a co-chair of McCain’s campaign, said Obama should tell voters. “I mean, I understand the big picture of America. But he hasn’t done that.”

An aide to John McCain said Keating was not directed by the campaign to make the comments.

“We didn’t ask him to do it,” the aide said. “He didn’t clear it with us, but obviously he’s read Senator Obama’s books.”

And do know…it’ll only get uglier.

However, I have never heard about anybody growing it…in a mall?

MIAMI — The Drug Enforcement Administration discovered something unexpected in the Mall of the Americas.

DEA agents found a hydroponics lab with more than 200 marijuana plants, standing 3 to 6 feet tall in the air and worth millions of dollars, in a storage area on the second floor of the mall.

Authorities said the electricity that powered the lab was diverted from the mall’s main power supply.

By the way…200 plants? How do you not think somebody’s going to find that? Maybe a plant or two tucked in a closet could look like a fake plastic tree, but 200?!?

Still, on the “gutsy” scale, this one goes to 11.

(Note: the “Mall of the Americas” shouldn’t be confused with the “Mall of America” in Minnesota.)

He admits he was wrong and that it’s now time to call this “war” off because it’s doing far more harm than good.

From Huff Post:

For years, I served as a federal prosecutor and member of the House of Representatives defending the federal pursuit of the drug prohibition.

Today, I can reflect on my efforts and see no progress in stopping the widespread use of drugs. I’ll even argue that America’s drug problem is larger today than it was when Richard Nixon first coined the phrase, “War on Drugs,” in 1972.

America’s drug problem is only compounded by the vast amounts of money directed at this ongoing battle. In 2005, more than $12 billion dollars was spent on federal drug enforcement efforts while another $30 billion was spent to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.

The result of spending all of those taxpayer’s dollars? We now have a huge incarceration tab for non-violent drug offenders and, at most, a 30% interception rate of hard drugs. We are also now plagued with the meth labs that are popping up like poisonous mushrooms across the country.

While it is clear the War on Drugs has been a failure, it is not enough to simply acknowledge that reality. We need to look for solutions that deal with the drug problem without costly and intrusive government agencies, and instead allow for private industry and organizations to put forward solutions that address the real problems.

Still, is this too little too late? Because what can he really do now? What’s more, Barr’s Libertarian run for President isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. And sure, it’s early, but how is he going to get this message out?

Here’s my opinion…if Barr made this THE central issue of his campaign he may be able to have a larger voice…but 3rd party candidates who are starting out late need ONE big issue. Perot had the deficit, and as a former federal prosecutor, Barr can make a very Libertarian case to end this “war”, but he needs to be absolutely dogged about it.

Will he do it? I have my doubts.

From Times Online:

The warning was issued by the charity Fair Trials International, which assists people facing trials abroad, following a spate of arrests of visitors to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The charity’s chief executive Catherine Wolthuizen said: “We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for ‘possession’ of three poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow.”

Among the Britons arrested recently in Dubai for carrying banned substances is Grooverider, a Radio 1 DJ, who is facing up to four years in prison after Dubai customs officials reportedly found a small amount of cannabis in his record collection. His case has been adjourned until later this month.

In another case, a 43-year-old man from Middlesex was imprisoned earlier this week for four years after Dubai customs officials used highly sensitive screening equipment to detect 0.003g cannabis in the tread of his shoe. Keith Andrew Brown was stopped in transit from Ethiopia to London last September. The amount of the drug found on his shoe would not be visible to the naked eye and weighs less than a single grain of sugar.

Unlike many countries, the UAE will also arrest travellers found with traces of banned substances in their bodily fluids. Ms Wolthuizen said: “What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person.”

I actually thought Dubai might be kind of a cool place to visit, given all the recent construction and interesting architecture. Now, not so much. Sounds like a George Orwell nightmare.

It wouldn’t surprise me, and if it’s the case, something needs to be done.

From Science Daily:

A new study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry’s claim.

The researchers’ estimate is based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry and doctors during 2004, which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion. [...]

As well, note the authors, the number of meetings for promotional purposes has dramatically increased in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, jumping from 120,000 in 1998 to 371,000 in 2004, further supporting their findings that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is marketing-driven.

Listen, I believe in free markets, capitalism, etc, but if these companies are really spending more to market their products than developing them, then consumers simply aren’t paying fair prices for needed medication. And the free market is supposed to bring the most competitive prices, not the most expensive marketing campaigns.

And do know that all this advertising does is create demand for products that people don’t even need. Talk to any doctor and you’ll hear the same story. People come in asking for “The Purple Pill” when a different medication (or none) would be better. But because people have been seduced, they insist on it. What’s a doctor to do?

Also, I haven’t even touched on all the free stuff doctors get from these companies to pimp the branded product over the generic.

Time to start rethinking how we allow companies to market this stuff in our already overmedicated society.

“I think the government’s role should not be involved in personal habits. When you defend freedom, you defend freedom of choice, and you can’t be picking and choosing how people use those freedoms… whether it’s personal behavior or economic behavior, I want people to have freedom of choice,” Paul asserted. [...]

Paul said we shouldn’t treat addicts as criminals.

“We treat ‘em as criminals rather than sick people, we have pushed a lot of people into prostitution. So prostitution is related to the mistakes we’ve made in the drug war.”

Agreed all around. We’re wasting our time, money and jail space on an impossible goal.

Remember, we tried to fight alcohol once and we all know how that turned out. More crime and more alcohol consumption. Why should we think other narcotics are any different?

Watch the interview here.

Just. Plain. Stupid.

New mint packets being sold by The Hershey Co. look nearly identical to the tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell illegal powdered drugs like crack, heroin and cocaine and glorify the drug trade, a Philadelphia police official said.

Ice Breakers Pacs, nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside, hit store shelves in November. The packets, which come in blue and orange plastic slide-up cases, are similar enough to drug packets that a child familiar with the candy could mistakenly swallow a heat-sealed bag of drugs, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector William Blackburn told the Philadelphia Daily News for an article published Friday.

Heads. Will. Roll.