Posts tagged drug policy
The Things I Find...
Being awesome only looks like a lot of work.
The Government is Lying to You: Part Two
Study: The ‘gateway drug’; is alcohol, not marijuana
Using a nationally representative sample from the University of Michigan’s annual “Monitoring the Future” survey, the study blasts holes in drug war orthodoxy wide enough to drive a truck through, definitively proving that marijuana use is not the primary indicator of whether a person will move on to more dangerous substances.
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That social misconception, largely driven by the sheer popularity of alcohol and the profits it generates for private industry, is diametrically opposed to the most current science available on drug harms. A study published in 2010 in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug of all, above heroin, crack, meth, cocaine and tobacco. Even more striking: the Lancet study found that harms to others near the user were more than double those of the second most harmful drug, heroin.
And yet marijuana is still illegal is most places (emphasis added). Oh, what’s that? Beer and alcohol companies are spending money to oppose marijuana legalization? Go figure.
The Government is Lying to You: Part One
Government-sponsored study destroys DEA’s classification of marijuana
A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that marijuana provides much-needed relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are desperately needed, utterly destroying the U.S. DEA’s classification of the drug as having no medical uses.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/03/government-sponsored-study-destroys-deas-classification-of-marijuana/
The “War on Drugs” has to be one of the biggest drains on our economy: locking up a large population of non-violent offenders and preventing those no longer incarcerated from being able to obtain decent jobs (if you don’t get caught you can be president, if you do get caught, you’re fucked). The only people the “War on Drugs” works for is those who own or invest in private prisons and those who benefit from the increasing militarization of our nations police forces.
(via lonelyvagabond)
The Netherlands is closing 8 prisons due to a lack of prisoners.
But how are major corporations supposed to make money from private prisons if they aren’t inhumanely crammed with non-violent offenders? Oh wait…I don’t think they have the problem there. Maybe because their drug policy actually makes sense…
Governor, sports betting and weed aren’t as different as you might think. Clearly gaming is your thing. It’s cool. So here’s what I’d like for you to do: why don’t you just think of using marijuana as betting you’re going to have a better day.
Obama Wimped Out On Weed
Bill Maher discusses the recent raid on Oaksterdam University.
“Obama is on pace to conduct more raids against medical marijuana dispensaries than George W. Bush.”
The Night Drug Policy Went Mainstream | The Huffington Post
Did you see the debate? A debate with a host of celebrities: Russell Brand, Sir Richard Branson; world leaders, and eminent opinion formers. Oh, and Peter Hitchens was in attendance. A debate of such magnitude would surely not creep under the radar? Especially given the gravitas of the contested subject?
Under the heading of ‘The War on Drugs Has Failed’ - and hosted by Intelligence Squared, the debate is a must watch for anyone remotely interested in societal issues. Luckily, the full video will be available to view soon. The drugs debate has never been given such a platform, and it just goes to show how ripe the discussion now is.
A poll dovetailed the whole event, and the end results: 95% of the web vote, and 64.5% of the auditorium were in favour of reform. But there was some interesting subtext to the debate.
The panel were divided into for and against reform, and yet there was a large amount of common ground between the two sides. For example, it was almost unilaterally agreed upon that incarceration for drug users was no longer just. This in itself is a heartening step forward. Seemingly, there was also a popular consensus - from both sides - that cannabis really has no place in the ‘war on drugs’. The debate as a whole was centred around hard drugs.
