Alky-fied Drivers
Michael Powe
>>>>> "BKL" == BKL <lang> writes:
BKL> On Sat, 20 Jun 1998 19:48:33 GMT, Michael Powe
BKL> <looie...@teleport.com> wrote:
>> Your Drug and Poison Information Center...
BKL> (Whoever they are. Neo-prohibitionists?)
Must not be a family man if you don't know anything about Poison
Information Centers.
>> ... wants you to know that about fifty percent (50%) of all
>> traffic fatalities are alcohol related and that there is no
>> such thing as a "safe" level of alcohol when it comes to
>> driving.
BKL> This is full of problems, although it is commonly repeated
BKL> propaganda.
BKL> 1. The "alcohol related" figure is more like 41% ("about
BKL> 50%"?!). Your lie meter should be reacting to such imprecise
BKL> usage.
Oh THANK GOD! "Only" 41%. Whew! Now that we know that drunk drivers
aren't really a problem, you can all go out to the park, get sozzled
and drive home. Don't forget to leave your seatbelts unbuckled,
either.
For every person who wants to reduce the carnage on the highway,
there's 10 people like you who act the apologist for the killers.
That's why the innocent continue to die.
I pity people who can't enjoy life without "catching a buzz." But I
pity their victims even more.
mp
--
Michael Powe
lo...@teleport.com
Portland, Oregon USA
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 03:33:47 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>I am familiar with those (Mr. Yuck and all!). It just never occurred to me
>that the folks who tell you what to do when your kid drinks Drano had any
>expertise in the effects of alcohol consumption on motor skills, so I never
>drew the connection. Are you sure?
It would be rather negligent of them to know about what to do when
your kid gets into the Drano or the Nyquil, but to have no clue about
what might happen should your child find Uncle Bob's gin and tonic
sitting around unsupervised.
>You missed the point. I was pointing out a sloppy exaggeration. And the 41%
>number, includes many instances where accidents occurred that would have
>occurred even without alcohol, in fact, the majority of those are not caused
>by the alcohol, and would not have been avoided if no alcohol had been
>consumed, if in fact any was..
I wonder how many accidents that *do* involve alcohol are not
reported. I know of enough teenagers who were driven home from one-car
(theirs) with a warning (no ticket, no arrest) when Daddy was a
prominent local person...say, another cop. I know that when I got
rear-ended by a drunk driver going double the speed limit, and the
cops noted alcohol on his breath, they did not give any tests nor did
they write him a ticket.
>Apologists for killers?! Hey, I want to get the real drunks (0.15+ BAC) off
>the road, since they are the ones causing the accidents at a disproportionate
>rate. Including the moderate drinkers in your net only diverts resources.
The "moderate drinkers" are probably not the ones buzzing around at
10 BAC. Your problem drinkers are the ones dumb enough not to have a
designated driver or to wait until the fuzzy head wears off, and the
ones who may be *continually* driving around at some level of
impairment *regularly*.
Billy Pulpit
Laurel Halbany wrote:
[...]
> I wonder how many accidents that *do* involve alcohol are not
> reported.
If you mean just cars, it's a good question. I can supply anecdotals
too, such as the mother of a two-year-old, who was about six months
pregnant, who was killed by a drunk, who wasn't given a ticket.
But it isn't just cars. All kinds of accidents are caused by booze,
and probably in similar proportion to the number of car wrecks
caused by it. Around half, or more of the prison population were
drunk when they did the crime that got them the time.
> The "moderate drinkers" are probably not the ones buzzing around at
> 10 BAC. Your problem drinkers are the ones dumb enough not to have a
> designated driver or to wait until the fuzzy head wears off, and the
> ones who may be *continually* driving around at some level of
> impairment *regularly*.
We shouldn't use some arbitrary %BAC figure for booze, and some other
figure for another drug, and so on. The crime should be driving while
impaired, and we shouldn't care about what substance got them that
way. We should have a test that measures actual impairment. Flunk it
first time, you get some counseling so you know how to tell when
you're impaired. Second offense, some time in the slam. Third, fourth,
on up to death by drowning a vat of stale lite brew, with cigarette
butts floating therein.
Landon A Dodson
Billy Pulpit wrote in message <3597590F...@ZZ.BAR>...
>We shouldn't use some arbitrary %BAC figure for booze, and some other
>figure for another drug, and so on. The crime should be driving while
>impaired, and we shouldn't care about what substance got them that
>way. We should have a test that measures actual impairment. Flunk it
>first time, you get some counseling so you know how to tell when
>you're impaired. Second offense, some time in the slam. Third, fourth,
>on up to death by drowning a vat of stale lite brew, with cigarette
>butts floating therein.
As long as you include those that use cell phones while they are driving.
If you are going to drive, DRIVE and do nothing else!
Landon
Michael Powe
>>>>> "Billy" == Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> writes:
Billy> We shouldn't use some arbitrary %BAC figure for booze, and
Billy> some other figure for another drug, and so on. The crime
Billy> should be driving while impaired, and we shouldn't care
Billy> about what substance got them that way. We should have a
Billy> test that measures actual impairment. Flunk it first time,
Billy> you get some counseling so you know how to tell when you're
Billy> impaired. Second offense, some time in the slam. Third,
Billy> fourth, on up to death by drowning a vat of stale lite
Billy> brew, with cigarette butts floating therein.
You should go to jail. Countries with low drunk-driving rates are
countries that have serious penalties for the offense. If you blow
.08 while behind the wheel of a car, you should go immediately to
jail. And if you're convicted of the offense in court, a mandatory 30
days leave in the hoosegow. Plus, you should lose your driving
license for a year. <That> will cut the drunk driving rate
immediately.
It'll never happen, though, because we're the "alcoholic republic" and
a nation of apologists for drunkards.
Bob Tiernan
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Michael Powe wrote:
> You should go to jail. Countries with low drunk-driving rates are
> countries that have serious penalties for the offense. If you blow
> .08 while behind the wheel of a car, you should go immediately to
> jail. And if you're convicted of the offense in court, a mandatory
> 30 days leave in the hoosegow. Plus, you should lose your driving
> license for a year. <That> will cut the drunk driving rate
> immediately.
I agree. The way this country handles drunken driving shows how
the notion of personal responsibility is very blurred. The double
standard is also very prominent. An anti-marijuana radio ad I heard
the other day mentioned a train wreck and had a victim's father
saying that if the engineer had not been on pot blah blah, and you
see, it's more dangerous than you thought. But ask him if he'd
favor alcohol prohibition if the engineer had been drunk on gin,
and you'd get nowhere.
> It'll never happen, though, because we're the "alcoholic republic"
> and a nation of apologists for drunkards.
I wouldn't say that this is accurate. Europeans are hardly dry,
but they take the personal responsibility aspect of this very
seriously. So far as I know, their views on acohol use are very
mature, unlike our general views.
Don't know if we're really apologists or not. I think very few
citizens pay any attention to the how the court system is
handling drink driving cases. I seem to recall about ten
years ago that a new defense tectic that was working on many
of these cases was one in which the lawyer claimed that while
his client was drunk, he/she was not himself/herself, and thus
not responsible for whatever occurred - accident, waeving etc.
Sort of an insanity defense. This was working in many cases.
But how many people knew this was going on, and that too many
drunk drivers were back on the road next day? Like with most
things, people aren't paying attention.
Bob T.
In the busy streets, domains of trade,
Man is a surly porter, or a vain and hectoring bully,
Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me
Than brotherhood by law.
- Henry David Thoreau
Brian Varine
Bob Tiernan wrote:
> Don't know if we're really apologists or not. I think very few
> citizens pay any attention to the how the court system is
> handling drink driving cases. I seem to recall about ten
> years ago that a new defense tectic that was working on many
> of these cases was one in which the lawyer claimed that while
> his client was drunk, he/she was not himself/herself, and thus
> not responsible for whatever occurred - accident, waeving etc.
> Sort of an insanity defense. This was working in many cases.
> But how many people knew this was going on, and that too many
> drunk drivers were back on the road next day? Like with most
> things, people aren't paying attention.
Agreed there. I thought I'd read a lot about DUI and the like but I was
blown away when I went to traffic court. The cases before me were the
DUI's and let me tell you, it was pathetic what went on. WHile there the
people being charged were ALL repeat offenders. The maximum any of them
got was 30 days in jail to be served on weekends. Then the financial
settelment was even more of a joke. Most of these losers complained that
paying $40/month for 20 months was "too much" and the judge lowered
about half the fines to $30/month. The weekend jail was so these people
wouldn't have to lose their jobs. Ask any cop about weekend jail, it's a
joke. ABout 50% don't show. One woman was on her 3rd DUI, had T-boned
another car, left the scene, and when caught she gave the officer a fake
name. She blew a .19! Sentance??? 30 days in the slammer and $30/month
for (I think) 24 months. We all know she won't pay or show up for jail.
In fact the next time the court see's her will probably be after she
gets another DUI.
We don't need to lower the BAC level, what we need to do is actually
back up those supposed tough sentances we have. Oregon brags about it's
"tough" DUI laws but they are a joke. Until we build some more prisons,
DUI drivers will continue to avoid jail.
Of course when you go in for speeding, thats another story. They know
you have money and they know that most of the trivial traffic cases will
pay up. The judge stuck it to those evil speeders.
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 03:06:23 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>We shouldn't use some arbitrary %BAC figure for booze, and some other
>figure for another drug, and so on. The crime should be driving while
>impaired, and we shouldn't care about what substance got them that
>way. We should have a test that measures actual impairment.
I agree. And people driving while on their car phones should lose car
phone privileges for a set period. That's the only thing I can think
of that would scare these people. :*
Anti-Prohibition Lg
*** *** *** The AMERICAN ANTIPROHIBITION
***** ***** *** LEAGUE
*** *** *** *** ***
*** *** *** *** *** Volunteers
*********** *********** *** Working for "Drug Peace!"
************* ************* ************ In Oregon,
*** *** *** *** ************ Just Say NO! to M57
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3125 SE BELMONT STREET PORTLAND OREGON 97214
503-235-4524/fax:503-234-1330/Email:A...@InetArena.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*** For Immediate Release *** Monday, June 29, 1998 ***
League refuses invitation from High Times Magazine 'HEMP FESTIVAL,'
warns parents to keep their kids away from WHEE
Portland, Oregon -- While the Antiprohibition League is a staunch
opponent of adult drugs prohibition, we are also steadfast in our
opposition to underage drug use. The League will pass on an
opportunity to set up a free booth at a 3 day event called The World
Hemp Exposition and Extravaganja (WHEE) put on by New York based
promoters High Times Magazine (aka: Trans High Corp.).
The League went to WHEE last year to register voters and petition,
but we soon found out that was the last thing on the organizer's mind.
It became obvious to us this event was all about money and drugs, not
political progress and certainly not about making "Drug Peace!"
Consider the following excerpt from some advance advertising the League
has recently obtained off the internet:
"... 1997's Whee1 was an exciting three-day bacchanalia of
agricultural exchanges, quality live music from dozens of bands and
dancing Rainbow girls decorated with cannabis leaves. All this on 30
acres of prime party land with absolutely no police, located a few
miles north of Eugene, Oregon. Mountains, rivers, oceans and phat buds
are within easy reach of the private WHEE site..." (www.420Tours.com)
The League promotes setting standards, one of the most basic is a
minimum age. But along come these Pied Pipers of "hemp" creating an
atmosphere of wild abandon designed to lure young people and of course
their money. All this is taking place against a backdrop of hard drugs
prohibition. Of course rebellious kids think it's cool and truth be
told them 'phat buds' (cannabis flowers) are relatively harmless. But
along with the pot comes LSD, heroin, cocaine, speed and every other
un-regulated drug our government refuses to control. Parents should
definitely not allow their kids to attend this event un-supervised,"
The sad truth is kids can get these drugs just about anywhere these
days. In a society saturated with so-called controlled substances WHEE
is not only irresponsible and hypocritical, it also plays right into
the hands of the prohibitionists, creating a huge political and public
relations liability. We want nothing to do with it, and we have
nothing to do with it. For what it's worth we also encourage all other
groups working to end this insane drug war (which is everything from
medical marijuana to heroin maintenance) to also boycott this event.
While it will probably do no good, if you feel as strongly as we do
against this event please email or call High Times' chief organizer,
Mr. Steven Hager at (phoen...@hightimes.com) or 212-387-0500 to
register your displeasure. Meanwhile pray for rain on July 17, 18, and
19.
***
Randal Schwartz
>>>>> "Laurel" == Laurel Halbany <myt...@twisty-little-maze.com> writes:
Laurel> I agree. And people driving while on their car phones should lose car
Laurel> phone privileges for a set period. That's the only thing I can think
Laurel> of that would scare these people. :*
Only if we also rule out drive-through food and babies on board. Stop
being a class chauvinist.
--
Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying
Email: <mer...@stonehenge.com> Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger mer...@teleport.com)
Web: <A HREF="http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/">My Home Page!</A>
Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 16:27:57 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>Perhaps, but that doesn't really involve the effects on an adult's capacity to
>operate a motor vehicle. The poison folks have nothing to do with this.
I doubt they have that information anyway, but I'm sure they have
stuff on the effects of alcohol on motor reflexes.
>You are distinguishing between compensating behaviors to determine whether one
>is a "problem " or not. First, we should ask at what level of impairment the
>government steps in and brands someone a criminal. Certainly, we don't expect
>a pure absence of impairment, as many types of impaired driving are legal
>(being tired, distracted, cell phone use, and being a teenager or elderly.)
Some of those impairments probably *should* be illegal. And remember
that the government does treat teenage drivers differently than other
drivers--it's easier for them to lose their licenses, they are not
permitted to have any level of alcohol impairment (because minors
can't drink), etc. When I was a teenager in Michigan, *one* ticket got
you hauled in for a stern lecture, and two might mean you lost your
license.
Elderly drivers, of course, being part of a voting bloc, are not
similarly regulated.
Kelly E Jones
In article <8cogvcx...@gadget.cscaper.com>,
Randal Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Laurel" == Laurel Halbany <myt...@twisty-little-maze.com> writes:
>
>Laurel> I agree. And people driving while on their car phones should lose car
>Laurel> phone privileges for a set period. That's the only thing I can think
>Laurel> of that would scare these people. :*
>
>Only if we also rule out drive-through food and babies on board. Stop
>being a class chauvinist.
And I've also seen reports that 'tired' drivers are much more
dangerous than low-BAC drivers. Not to mention drivers who,
regrettably, are no longer able to drive safely due to their advanced age, but
haven't realized it yet.
We'd be doing much better to get dangerous drivers off the road, and
give up this neo-prohibitionist nonsense of lowering the legal BAC limit.
Kelly
Hillsboro, OR
Laurel Halbany
>Only if we also rule out drive-through food and babies on board. Stop
>being a class chauvinist.
Tsk, what makes you think *I* don't have a car phone? Do you really
think that having a phone in one's car means that you can't use it
unless the vehicle is moving?
(What do you think is the rationale for "ruling out babies on board,"
btw?)
Mike McDonald
In article <3597c80a...@hermes.rdrop.com>,
myt...@twisty-little-maze.com (Laurel Halbany) writes:
> On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 03:06:23 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>
>>We shouldn't use some arbitrary %BAC figure for booze, and some other
>>figure for another drug, and so on. The crime should be driving while
>>impaired, and we shouldn't care about what substance got them that
>>way. We should have a test that measures actual impairment.
>
I think they should lose their driving priviledges. Then they can yack on
the phone to their hearts content at home.
Mike McDonald
mik...@mikemac.com
Billy Pulpit
Laurel Halbany wrote:
>
> On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 03:06:23 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
> >... We should have a test that measures actual impairment.
>
> I agree. And people driving while on their car phones should lose car
> phone privileges for a set period. That's the only thing I can think
> of that would scare these people. :*
"But it isn't a phone, officer... it just looks like one, and I
hold it to my ear when I drive so that people will think I'm
a bigshot and respect me" (they sell fake "sailor phones"(tm) in
some places).
I like the bumper sticker I saw: "Hang up and drive".
Jeff Holloway
In pdx.general Randal Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Laurel" == Laurel Halbany <myt...@twisty-little-maze.com> writes:
> Laurel> I agree. And people driving while on their car phones should lose car
> Laurel> phone privileges for a set period. That's the only thing I can think
> Laurel> of that would scare these people. :*
> Only if we also rule out drive-through food and babies on board. Stop
> being a class chauvinist.
Agreed. I've seen plenty of people whose ability to drive normally is
impaired by the mere presence of a passenger that they can yak with.
Jeff
--
Jeff Holloway | He had that rare weird electricity about him --
System Administrator | that extremely wild and heavy presence that you
Tech 7 Systems, Inc. | only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
je...@tech7.com | of ever behaving "normally" - Hunter S. Thompson
Billy Pulpit
BKL wrote:
> If 0.10 BAC is 2x impairment, cell phone use is 6x, drowsy is 2x, teenage 10x,
> elderly (80+) 10x, what should be illegal? Keep in mind also that 0.15 BAC is
> about 10x, and steeply worse for higher concentrations.
And how many people know their BAC% anyway, especially when they're
impaired in the first place? I figure if you've lost track of how
much you've had to drink, you've had too much to drink, and are way
too drunk to drive. But it amazes me how we can even allow booze on
the market, considering the less impairing drugs that'll land you in
the slammer bigtime. On the one hand, we say "you can't have any of
that stuff, because yadda yadda". But on the other hand, we say you
can have as much of this stuff as you want, if you're over 21, and
you don't drive if your BAC% is yay high, and we rest assured that
you'll be fine below this level, and know offhand what level is in
your blood any time, and if you're really, really blitzed and seeing
pink elephants, you won't be so impaired that you might think you
can drive just fine".
Billy Pulpit
Michael Powe wrote:
>
[penalties for drunk driving]
> You should go to jail. Countries with low drunk-driving rates are
> countries that have serious penalties for the offense. If you blow
> .08 while behind the wheel of a car, you should go immediately to
> jail. And if you're convicted of the offense in court, a mandatory 30
> days leave in the hoosegow. Plus, you should lose your driving
> license for a year. <That> will cut the drunk driving rate
> immediately.
>
You've pretty much described Idaho's DUI law. Mandatory jail for first
offense, although you are usually offered inmate labor detail in lieu
of three hots and a cot. You have to pay to work on the labor detail,
and it's not community service. It's picking up trash and the like, and
they make you work. Funny how jails are "too nice", yet people are on
a waiting list to pay for the chain gang... anyway, the third offense
for DUI is a felony, with mandatory time in the Big House. Oh yeah, in
addition to the "straight to jail", mandatory time, and loss of license,
there's also a mandatory fine -- and then they hand you over to the
beasts of the insurance industry for their pound or two of flesh.
A DUI is a major bummer. Fortunately, I learned my lesson way back when
I was a young buck, too drunk to know I was drunk, and almost nailed
a pedestrian. That was enough to put the fear of God in me.
> It'll never happen, though, because we're the "alcoholic republic" and
> a nation of apologists for drunkards.
And being such, I think it's appropriate that we keep those apologists
working overtime, amusing us with their hilarious skirting the issue
of booze, while at the same time singing sad songs about "drugs". I love
remind them that booze is a drug, and the one that does the most harm,
and hear them go "well, yeah, I guess..." and then watch them try and
explain why they aren't out there trying to get it banned. I mean,
shucks,
we've already got laws against "drugs", so there's nothing to discuss
really. Let law enforcement do its thing. But that one particular drug
which seems to be the worst of all -- shouldn't the crusaders be putting
most of their energy toward making it illegal, too? They seem to think
its appropriate to have those other drugs illegal. Why the
inconsistancy?
Billy Pulpit
Brian Varine wrote:
> We don't need to lower the BAC level, what we need to do is actually
> back up those supposed tough sentances we have. Oregon brags about it's
> "tough" DUI laws but they are a joke. Until we build some more prisons,
> DUI drivers will continue to avoid jail.
>
Not in Idaho, they don't. A fairly large percentage of the prison
population is there for DUI, which is a felony on the third time
around, with mandatory incarceration. Then of course there are the
folks in the joint because they did something stupid while drunk,
and you add the two together, and you've got a lot of people in
there because of that drug which we deny is a drug.
Why don't we issue a license with a little checkbox that says
either "drink" or "drive". You'd need the card to either buy
booze, or drive. Take your pick. (I know, it'd never work...)
Or, we could just outlaw the selling of booze by the drink, IOW
ban "road houses" where Joe Sixpack stops after work to get
drunk. Wonder what percentage of DUI's come from those places.
You pretty much have to drive to one, and drive away.
> Of course when you go in for speeding, thats another story. They know
> you have money and they know that most of the trivial traffic cases will
> pay up. The judge stuck it to those evil speeders.
So do the insurance companies. But my worst offenses have been for
driving without a valid license. In Hawaii, I had to pay the same
insurance rates as a DUI ($1500 a year, up front in cash). In Idaho,
I got one and the insurance company didn't care, but I got socked
with 180 day suspension, two days of chain gang, a $250 fine, and
a year's unsupervised probation. Big threat to life and limb, I was,
not having my papers in order!
Anti-Prohibition Lg
Tom,
What a great post! You hit the nail square on the head, it's sometimes
called the Drug War Prison Industrial Complex (I think Noam Chomsky coined
the phrase).
Back in the mid-80s Pablo Escobar offered to sell all his cocaine to the
US for some very fair price (compared to regular blackmarket rate). Of
course he was laughed at and eventually gunned down in Medillin a couple
years later. We could have stopped the 'crack' cocaine epidemic for a few
million dollars, instead of the $17 billion + the feds now waste every
year...
Thank you for drawing such a complete picture of what it is we are up
against. I do disagree though, we will end this insane war because I
think most people are decent and smart enough to realize it means the
inevitable destruction of a free and open society if we do not.
Peace to you and yours...
Floyd.
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Tom Jones wrote:
> I applaud your actions on this tricky issue - hard drugs are, well, bad
> shit - plain and simple. Why do we have them? Doesn't the Government want
> to erradicate them? No. If they wanted to, they could easily end the
> presence of much of the worst.
>
> The problem is that we have a large segment of the economy supported by
> Drug Prohibition. Sometime, when you have a free half-hour, devote it to
> writing down every job classification that depends on drugs. Be creative.
> Go beyond Cops, Judges, Lawyers, Jailers, Parole Officers, etc. Get to the
> secondary beneficiaries like Private security people, Insurance
> Underwriters, Drug Treatment professionals, Bureaucrats, testing labs,
> alarm installers, and the like. Who has their job because of crime? There
> are literally HUNDREDS of job classifications whose ranks are filled at
> least by half because of drug driven crime. Think not? Start your list.
>
> What would happen if drugs like Coke,Speed and Heroin were available to
> addicts for say, 50¢ a dose at the Pharmacy or Clinic? Whose jobs would be
> in trouble if these crime dropped by, say 60-75%, overnight? What about
> the "trickledown" effect of those paychecks? Who pays the lady that fixes
> the Jail Guard's Wife's hair? The Gas Station that puts gas in the
> Insurance Underwriter's car? What about the Court Stenographers grocer? Not
> just here - but in every State in the Union. If drug driven crime stopped
> tomorrow, we would be in BIG trouble inside of a month. (Lay off over half
> the cops and their unemployment runs out, you'd better hope you took all
> those guns when ya took the badges!) Just kidding, there...aren't I? ;-)
>
> For probably less than half of what they spend on interdiction, the
> Government could probably go into the fields, outbid the traffickers for
> the raw produce, process what they need for legalized maintenence of the
> current crop of addicts and destroy the rest. Furnish seed for a
> legitimate crop, and guarantee price supports for the next years for the
> farmers providing they grow no Opium, Coca or Pot. They could legalize
> personal growing and use of Pot for adults, maintain Addicts of hard drugs,
> and in a VERY short time, the Cartels organization from processing,
> smuggling, distribution and money laundering would fall apart. The
> individuals would drift into 'other things'.
>
> Anyway, think about it. Make that list. Take it to the secondary
> beneficiaries and maybe even another level. Dump some under-estimated, (to
> be fair) figures in a spreadsheet and you'll see why it will NEVER happen.
> The unknows are too dangerous for our go-go economy, and even the 'knowns'
> make it too risky to contemplate seriously on a National level. Wall
> Street won't allow it.
>
> --
> __________________________________________________
> | Remove the last 3 letters of the alphabet from |
> | my email address to de-SPAMproof it. |
> |__________________________________________________|
>
>
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 23:12:28 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>The majority of drivers drink responsibly. The majority of drinkers drive
>responsibly.
Well, I don't know that those are true, but I certainly agree that one
should not have to choose between being a teetotaller and holding a
valid license.
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 15:57:46 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>And being such, I think it's appropriate that we keep those apologists
>working overtime, amusing us with their hilarious skirting the issue
>of booze, while at the same time singing sad songs about "drugs". I love
>remind them that booze is a drug, and the one that does the most harm,
>and hear them go "well, yeah, I guess..." and then watch them try and
>explain why they aren't out there trying to get it banned.
Well, the real reason is that most of the anti-"drug" people happily
drink. Getting them college kids to give up pot, sure, but ban our
Chardonnay or our six-packs? God forbid!
If alcohol becomes a class marker, the way that cigarettes have,
expect Prohibition II.
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 23:20:11 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>Realistically, most people don't since they don't have the tools to measure.
>It is as if we were driving in cars without speedometers, and only got a
>ticket when pulled over.
I remember a while back that there were a number of bars that offered
breathalyzer tests to patrons (free). Did this ever make it to Oregon,
or did liability issues kill it?
>What most responsible people do is to evaluate their own ability, based on
>experience.
The problem is that it's much harder to objectively evaluate how drunk
you are when you're drunk. And alcohol sometimes has a delayed
effect--not feeling that last drink until you're out the door. There's
also the consideration that you don't always react to alcohol in the
same way; one drink on an empty stomach will hit you a lot harder than
that glass of wine over a full meal.
Laurel Halbany
On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 15:09:24 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>And how many people know their BAC% anyway, especially when they're
>impaired in the first place? I figure if you've lost track of how
>much you've had to drink, you've had too much to drink, and are way
>too drunk to drive.
Back when I was a teenager (lo these many moons ago), I was amazed
when my then-boyfriend and his friends would make comments like "I
couldn't pass a Breathalyzer, but I'm okay to drive." I finally got
fed up enough to point out that if you can't pass a Breathalyzer, you
aren't okay to drive. It had never occurred to them that they might be
impaired without knowing it.
>But it amazes me how we can even allow booze on
>the market, considering the less impairing drugs that'll land you in
>the slammer bigtime.
It amazes me why we don't make more of those drugs legal, and stop
making alcohol a bugaboo for under-21s.
Laurel Halbany
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 03:44:38 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>We agree here. If we were a little more European, and didn't make alcohol
>such a mark of adulthood, there wouldn't be this obsession that leads to
>abuse.
Funnily, when I lived in Ann Arbor, the penalty for pot possession by
a minor was a $5 civil infraction. It was a far more serious offense
to have alcohol. But guess what U of Michigan students' drug of choice
was?
It would also help if we had a better system for dealing with people
who can't get behind the wheel. When I was dancing in Windsor, there
were shuttles run by the big-money bars, so that you could get to your
hotel without having to drive (even if you drove there while sober).
Laurel Halbany
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 03:41:26 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>But it's not very hard to know when you have had just enough, when you have
>had just enough.
Assuming you haven't gone across the line. That's the problem--if
you've had a little too much, you're less likely to be able to judge
that you have. (Most people can tell when they've had *far* too much,
though.)
>And experience and responsibility (something more common among other adults
>than you seem to think) can take this into account nicely.
My experience has been that adults are more likely to claim they can
hold their liquor better than they really can.
>And since learning to drink in college, we have discovered something even
>better: dessert, coffee, and conversation.
No argument here. My problem is not with people who drink and then,
sometime in the next 24 hours, drive. It's with people who drink
without making allowances for the fact that they might get hit harder
than they expected, or feel that they lose face if they say "Y'know,
I'm not really ready to drive."
>And one drink on an empty stomach will nowhere near make a person
>significantly impaired, unless that person is unfamiliar with the effects of
>mild alcohol consumption.
I don't see how familiarity affects whether or not the alcohol gets
into your bloodstream.
Laurel Halbany
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 03:34:58 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>Why would we Chateau-Neuf-de-Pape drinkers ever become a suspect class? Why
>would class enter into it?
Haven't you noticed that drugs tend to become Bad Drugs as soon as
they start being associated with lower socioeconomic classes? (I find
it funny, on pregnancy ngs and mailing lists, to listen to people talk
about the merits of "a glass of wine now and then" and watch them get
antsy if I start talking about hard liquor instead of wine--wine
isn't, like, *alcohol*, or something.)
>How do you prefer your martinis?
I don't. OTOH, it doesn't bother me if others like them.
steve knight
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 07:08:44 GMT, myt...@twisty-little-maze.com
>they start being associated with lower socioeconomic classes? (I find
>it funny, on pregnancy ngs and mailing lists, to listen to people talk
>about the merits of "a glass of wine now and then" and watch them get
>antsy if I start talking about hard liquor instead of wine--wine
>isn't, like, *alcohol*, or something.)
>
Well there is a difference. A glass of wine with a meal has been
proven to be good for you. Been known forever in country's that always
have wine with a meal. Plus far less problems with alcoholism.
"Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
Good summary of the "legitimate" jobs from the illegalization of the drug
economy. But its more than just legitimate jobs at stake - the
police/gov't use the war on drugs to oppress minorities, fund covert
operations (from Vietnam to Guatamalea), and to fill their own pockets thru
bribery and corruption (anyone who thinks drug corruption ends at the
Mexican border is very naive).
I doubt the gov't could eradicate drugs even if they wanted to; the people
will find a way to get what they (obiously) want.
Laurel Halbany
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:41:17 GMT, ste...@ethergate.com (steve knight)
wrote:
>Well there is a difference. A glass of wine with a meal has been
>proven to be good for you. Been known forever in country's that always
>have wine with a meal. Plus far less problems with alcoholism.
There is just as much ALCOHOL in a glass of wine as in a shot of
vodka. The issue for pregnancy is that ALCOHOL consumption is a very,
very bad idea(1), and whether you get that alcohol in a glass of
Sauternes or in a Singapore Sling is irrelevant. So I find it
ridiculous to hear other moms-to-be saying they'll be damned if
they'll give up their nightly glass of wine with dinner, but they get
all quiet if you talk about having a beer or a cocktail.
And your scientific information is a bit out of whack. There are
chemicals from grape skins which are present in RED wine (and in plain
purple grape juice), which have a beneficial effect on health--doesn't
matter whether a meal is involved, and white wine doesn't do the same
thing at all. *Moderate* amounts of alcohol seem to help prevent heart
disease in postmenopausal women. The French, btw, although they seem
to deal with alcohol consumption more maturely than we, also have
higher rates of liver disease.
I drink alcohol (when not pregnant) and eat meat, but I don't pretend
that there are magical health benefits to these things that justify my
preferences, or that I wouldn't get along (in health terms) fine
without them.
(1) Besides the well-known effects on the fetus, alcohol also depletes
your body of B vitamins, which are crucial during pregnancy.
steve knight
On Tue, 30 Jun 98 16:50:35 GMT, je...@ANTISPAM.com (Jeff in Portland,
OR, USA) wrote:
>Good summary of the "legitimate" jobs from the illegalization of the drug
>economy. But its more than just legitimate jobs at stake - the
>police/gov't use the war on drugs to oppress minorities, fund covert
>operations (from Vietnam to Guatamalea), and to fill their own pockets thru
>bribery and corruption (anyone who thinks drug corruption ends at the
>Mexican border is very naive).
>
maybe thinking that all this corruption is really happening on the
scale you think it is.
jjo...@hotmail.com
In article <35a6b985...@nntp.ethergate.com>,
Well, think about it. The government has done such an excellent job in
creating an artificial drug market that the money involved will corrupt
almost anybody. Cocaine is worth more than it's weight in gold, hell
even some marijuana is. What does that tell you? That people know that
with minimal effort they can make thousands of dollars. That money will
rarely see the right side of the law as it will be used to beef up drug
operations, pay off potential threats, etc. So then you can spend just
as much money to fight this artificial market you have created (which will
never go away, because the more you fight it, the higher prices go and up
goes the incentive for dealers) -OR- you can implement some sort of drug
war reform and try to deflate the value / demand of drugs and put the
dealers out of business.
People who choose not to do drugs generally have other motivation than the
criminal penalties involved... If certain drug penalties were reduced or
eliminated, do you really believe that society would suddenly realize that
they had missed out on drug use and start smoking pot or doing acid?!? No,
the fact is the portion of society that want to do drugs do so regardless of
the legal ramifications. Those who do not do drugs, usually chose not to
because they don't want to risk their health, or they are content with their
state of consiousness...
Drug war reform will only take money out of the drug dealers pockets and save
the tax payers, in addition to creating a much more productive society by not
imprisoning drug users.
Sorry, I didn't realize how long that had grown...
Just my 2c
-----------=================-----------
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Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
Steve - Can you read my mind? What scale do I think the corruption is
occuring? What scale of corruption is acceptable? Of course the cops etc.
have to be able to afford to send their kids to college...
>In article ste...@ethergate.com (steve knight) wrote:
>maybe thinking that all this corruption is really happening on the
>scale you think it is.
Laurel Halbany
On Wed, 01 Jul 1998 15:38:31 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>That doesn't matter. We shouldn't try to condemn wine simply because it
>contains the same chemical as "demon rum".
If you were paying attention, you would note that I do not consider
alcohol to be "demon rum." I just don't like the mentality that wine
is "nice" alcohol and other kinds are not.
>Not really. Excessive alcohol consumption (at levels associated with a skid
>row drunk) can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. Moderate consumption has not
>been shown to have significant harmful effects. A glass a day actually has
>been shown to have benefits to pregnant moms. Don't believe everything the
>politicians bureaucrats, and social engineers say about medicine.
Sorry, I believe what the medical researchers say about medicine.
There is no known safe dose of alcohol for a pregnant woman--a binge
can cause various levels of FAS, and alcohol passes quite easily
through the placental barrier. Alcohol consumption can also lead to
intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). Of course, this doesn't mean
that a drop of alcohol passing your lips will kill your baby; it does
mean that the ACOG cannot safely say that a glass a day is neutral or
good. I'd really love to know where you heard that a glass of
alcoholic beverage is GOOD for pregnant moms, especially since alcohol
depletes B vitamins from the body. Even the most liberal authorities
on pregnancy and alcohol don't *recommend* it.
>So do I. The neo-prohibitionists should stop scaring these women out of
>enjoying the pleasure and relaxation of their favorite beer or cocktail (in
>moderation)
You seem to be conflating the medical consensus with the
neo-prohibitionist view. The fact that anti-drinkers distort the
medical findings and blare them as scare tactics doesn't mean that the
way to respond is by wrongly tweaking information in the other
direction.
Billy Pulpit
BKL wrote:
> In a free society, we don't need to justify every act of the individual. We
> DO, however, need to justify the acts of our government, such as criminalizing
> certain behaviors. How do you justify that cell phone use is legal, and
> driving at 0.08 is illegal, when medical science says that phone use is 3
> times as risky?
Hmm... This cell phone business is starting to get a little incredible.
I'm
seeing all kinds of different figures on how risky it is, and have a
hunch
that part of the risk might be associated with the nature of the
conversation.
For that matter, when I first learned to drive, I couldn't converse with
my passengers. It took a while for driving to become an instinct, and
I'm
sure other people are more or less the same way. More, to the extent
that
I've seen people "coordinate" their gas-pedal foot with the
conversation,
lifting off the gas to listen, pressing down to talk, or vice-versa.
Yup,
I reall seen it for real. And of course, there are the people who can't
talk to another without making eye contact. And the folks who are
reaching
over the seat to whack the brats in the back. Or people just plain
pissed
off about something. I've seen people reading while driving, too. And I
saw a guy driving with a rag stuffed in his mouth once, probably
"huffing"
something perfectly legal.
Do we have to get down to the minutae of each and every situation or act
which could hinder our driving safety? The danger in each of these
situations is that the driver isn't, or can't -pay attention- to the
act of driving. Maybe we need a law that simply requires a driver
-pay attention- to driving, which itself means that the driver -be able
to pay attention- to driving.
Then again, maybe we do have such a law, in which case it's yet another
"legislation vs. enforcement" issue.
BTW, does "medical science" involve itself with keeping stats on the
use of cell phones while driving? Wouldn't the police and/or insurance
companies have better information? And how many accident reports even
bother to take the cell phone into account?
Brian Varine
Billy Pulpit wrote:
> I've seen people reading while driving, too. And I
> saw a guy driving with a rag stuffed in his mouth once, probably
> "huffing" something perfectly legal.
The most incredible was yesterday AM, some idiot was talking on her cell
phone trying to write on something in the passengers seat, while
driving. I was so tempted to cut in front of her and slam on the brakes
or swerve towards her.... But I remained calm and laughed as she skated
over the center lane half way into the right lane and back again.
> Do we have to get down to the minutae of each and every situation or act
> which could hinder our driving safety? The danger in each of these
> situations is that the driver isn't, or can't -pay attention- to the
> act of driving. Maybe we need a law that simply requires a driver
> -pay attention- to driving, which itself means that the driver -be able
> to pay attention- to driving.
We need to develop something that makes it easy for the police to pull
over and cite someone. Why do you think radar and now laser is so
popular? A cop can sit at the side of the road doing whatever and point
his money gun down the freeway. When they come up with a turn signal
gun or a cell phone gun, we'll see those infractions being enforced
because they'll finally bring in the amount of revenue speed
"enforcement" does.
You people are thinking down the wrong path, it has little to do with
safety and a lot to do with the amount of $$$ it brings in.
Billy Pulpit
It's hard to say if the majority of drivers drink responsibly, but
the majority of drivers probably do drink. Having a choice between
driving and drinking would still be more than what the pot users
get, which is don't use at all, or go to jail. But like BKL pointed
out, the majority of drivers drink. If they smoked pot instead, and
many would, the roads would be safer.
Billy Pulpit
steve knight wrote:
>
> On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 07:08:44 GMT, myt...@twisty-little-maze.com
> >Haven't you noticed that drugs tend to become Bad Drugs as soon as
> >they start being associated with lower socioeconomic classes? (I find
> >it funny, on pregnancy ngs and mailing lists, to listen to people talk
> >about the merits of "a glass of wine now and then" and watch them get
> >antsy if I start talking about hard liquor instead of wine--wine
> >isn't, like, *alcohol*, or something.)
> >
> Well there is a difference. A glass of wine with a meal has been
> proven to be good for you. Been known forever in country's that always
> have wine with a meal. Plus far less problems with alcoholism.
That's RED wine, only. And whether it's been known, or just an excuse
to drink, is debateable. What we know now is how it works. What they
knew for centuries is that it's good to mellow out, and any kind of
booze, or pot, or opiate will do that for you, with pot being the
least likely to kill you.
But you're wrong when you say they have less problems with alcoholism.
France has a huge set of alcohol-caused problems, and so does every
country that consumes it. They might not have the college-kegger-chug-
and-puke phenomenon there, but they have problems, and it kills more
people in many ways, more than that glass or red wine saves for
cardiovascular reasons.
> "Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
Never heard that one before :^)
Billy Pulpit
Laurel Halbany wrote:
> Even the most liberal authorities
> on pregnancy and alcohol don't *recommend* it.
Unless, of course, they've alienated all their friends and need a
new drinking buddy.
>
> >So do I. The neo-prohibitionists should stop scaring these women out of
> >enjoying the pleasure and relaxation of their favorite beer or cocktail (in
> >moderation)
>
> You seem to be conflating the medical consensus with the
> neo-prohibitionist view. The fact that anti-drinkers distort the
> medical findings and blare them as scare tactics doesn't mean that the
> way to respond is by wrongly tweaking information in the other
> direction.
No, but it's fun, and there's a whole big bag of tricks we can use, too.
Since when did truth matter when it comes to justifying drinking? Since
when did it matter when attacking it? Some people are in denial, others
are in accusal. Oh, what fun!
Billy Pulpit
BKL wrote:
> > The issue for pregnancy is that ALCOHOL consumption is a very,
> >very bad idea(1)
>
> Not really. Excessive alcohol consumption (at levels associated with a skid
> row drunk) can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. Moderate consumption has not
> been shown to have significant harmful effects. A glass a day actually has
> been shown to have benefits to pregnant moms. Don't believe everything the
> politicians bureaucrats, and social engineers say about medicine.
And don't believe that drunk when he tells you he needs a dollar for a
cup of coffee, either.
It's good for you, my ass. Just look at the Mormons. None of that shit's
good for you.
Billy Pulpit
BKL wrote:
>
> On Tue, 30 Jun 1998 00:13:14 GMT, myt...@twisty-little-maze.com (Laurel
> Halbany) wrote:
>
> >The problem is that it's much harder to objectively evaluate how drunk
> >you are when you're drunk.
>
> had just enough.
>
often means "chips ahoy".
> Interestingly, one's BAC level may continue to rise for about an hour after
> the last drink. Plan to rest more than that to have the BAC level decrease.
Yeah, in fact, I used to chug a half-pint and then race up a nearby hill
on my motorcycle, about two miles of steep climb, straight up thru the
cane field. Get to the top, the spins would just be hitting me. Sleep it
off, head back down. No problem.
> And one drink on an empty stomach will nowhere near make a person
> significantly impaired, unless that person is unfamiliar with the effects of
> mild alcohol consumption.
Which is me today. I rarely drink these days, and one beer is more than
I want
to drive under. Was a time when two sixpacks gave less impairment. At
least I
thought so. It's not only experience, but tolerance. That's why a
chronic
drinker can be a better driver at a higher BAC than a seldom drinker can
at a lower one.
Just come up with some Nintendo thingie that's at the driver's testing
center,
and you have to pass it before you can get your license. You can
practice all
you want, you can buy one for ten dollars, all the booze houses have
them, and
the cops carry them. You pass the test, you're considered not impaired
and you're
good to go. Fail the test, and it's game over.
Billy Pulpit
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA wrote:
(no, it wasn't Jeff...)
> I applaud your actions on this tricky issue - hard drugs are, well, bad
> shit - plain and simple. Why do we have them? Doesn't the Government want
> to erradicate them? No. If they wanted to, they could easily end the
> presence of much of the worst.
About ten years ago, the Puna district on the Big Island of Hawaii was
the marijuana growing capital of America. More than twice as much pot
was confiscated from that district than all the state of Missouri, which
was the #2 growing area. A concerted effort was made to eradicate the
industry, using highly questionable end-runs around due process, with
lots of homes and cars and everything else being siezed.
The result is that now Hawaii has a huge hard drug problem that it
didn't
have before, and a ruined economy.
Robb Topolski
Laurel Halbany wrote in message <3597dc6...@hermes.rdrop.com>...
>(What do you think is the rationale for "ruling out babies on board,"
>btw?)
Ever since the air bag warnings that you have to keep children buckled in
the back seats, drivers everywhere are swerving wildly as they reach over to
smack the little brats.
Kids in cars should be outlawed!
Robb
Robb Topolski
Mike McDonald wrote in message ...
> I think [people who drive while talking on the car phone]
> should lose their driving priviledges. Then they can yack on
> the phone to their hearts content at home.
It's not the car phone that makes them a poor driver, it's driving while
distracted. It doesn't matter that the distraction is a passenger, a baby,
makeup, coffee, car phone, Big Mac, or a map.
Robb
Dick Winningstad
Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote in article <359AF6BF...@ZZ.BAR>...
If you are right, then France should be full of retards. Hey wait a
minute........
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Learn from Clio
Dick Winningstad lem...@teleport.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Robb Topolski
Tom Jones wrote in message ...
>Driving while impaired by anysubstance or condition is no different than
>pointing a small caliber revolver at a large apartment building a half-mile
>away, closing your eyes and squeezing off a round. You probably won't kill
>anyone. You probably won't hit anyone. You might not even hit the
>building. You might miss that building night after night for a year But -
>you wantonly took the chance that you could, from the very first shot.
>Drinking and driving is a close cousin to attempted murder in my opinion,
>and I have NO sympathy for anyone caught and punished for it, no patience
>for anyone defending the act.
This was nice and emotional, but the facts are that most drunk drivers are
careless and reckless, but not malicious.
Attempted murder is malicious, so is playing your odd game of Russian
Roulette with a building.
Robb
Robb Topolski
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA wrote in message
<6ndv41$j0k$1...@spitting-spider.aracnet.com>...
>Steve - Can you read my mind? What scale do I think the corruption is
>occuring? What scale of corruption is acceptable? Of course the cops etc.
>have to be able to afford to send their kids to college...
Wow, the last several messages have been total horseshit. I here Bob T.
saying, "No, Don't!" but I just have to hit reply.
There is probably no desire by, and certainly no coordinated action by,
those mentioned by Tom Jones to sustain illegal drug use. All (okay, it's a
large group, so I'll say almost all if you promise to understand that I mean
statistically all) these guys are actually working to stop drugs, enforce
existing laws, create (their version of) better laws, etc.. There is no
underground message to avoid killing the supply so that the cops and judges
can keep their jobs. By and large, cops aren't on the take. In as much as
cops are a cross section of society -- a well screened cross section but
still a cross section -- there are exceptions. They are rare enough to make
big news when they are discovered.
As for the quoted paragraph above, fuck you.
Robb Topolski
steve knight
On Wed, 01 Jul 98 14:22:26 GMT, je...@ANTISPAM.com (Jeff in Portland,
OR, USA) wrote:
>Steve - Can you read my mind? What scale do I think the corruption is
>occuring? What scale of corruption is acceptable? Of course the cops etc.
>have to be able to afford to send their kids to college...
>
your scale is everyone is corrupted. alteast that is they way it
sounds. Now you are accusing all the police of corruption. sounds like
alot of hot air to me.
Bob Tiernan
Well, well, well.
Ever since the Reagan Administration came up
with "Ketchup is a vegetable", the liberals
have had a good time quoting that to show
Reagan's insensitivit, cruelty, and stupidity.
(It actually demonstrated why the government
should have no say in menus).
Clinton's Dept of Ag people (i.e. - his
administration) came out last year with
"yogurt is a meat" when they were designing
the skool lunch menus.
Now, it seems, they've decided that salsa
is a vegetable. One ounce is a serving of
vegetables, they say. This means a 32-ounce
jar of salsa is a month's worth or vegetables
for one person.
Bob T.
c...@teleport.com
In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.98070...@user2.teleport.com>, Bob
Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
>
> Now, it seems, they've decided that salsa
> is a vegetable. One ounce is a serving of
> vegetables, they say. This means a 32-ounce
> jar of salsa is a month's worth or vegetables
> for one person.
Whoa Bob. One is supposed (advised) to eat about 8 helpings of vegies
daily. Your jar of salsa would be about 3 days supply. And, salsa is made
out of vegies so it is not a long leap (not like yogurt). But it is
gauche.
Actually, I do remember in college (when money was low) we used to have our
girl friends get an order of fries and pick up a bottle of ketchup and a
lot of crackers at the same time. We would take that back to our abodes
and mix the ketchup with hot water and make "tomato" soup.
--------------------------
Fas est et ab hoste docerii.
--------------------------
C. L. Waltemath
Bob Beauchaine
Billy Pulpit wrote:
>
> Was a time when two sixpacks gave less impairment. At
> least I
> thought so. It's not only experience, but tolerance. That's why a
> chronic
> drinker can be a better driver at a higher BAC than a seldom drinker can
> at a lower one.
>
Is this accurate? I remember, back in the dark recesses of my high
school education about alcohol use and abuse, that people do not in fact
develop a tolerance for the physical effects of alcohol. They only
think they do. The actual level of impairment is more-or-less
predetermined for a given individual, and only depends on factors like
quantity consumed, body weight, stomach contents, and such.
Do I remember wrong? Was I fed useless propaganda?
------------------------------
Bob Beauchaine
"A little harassment and persecution is a small price to pay to live in
the land of the free"
-Montgomery Burns
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
Steve - please don't put words in my mouth. I have not accused all the
police of corruption. But I am suspicious - of the gov't in general and
the police in particuar. I grew up near New York City when Serpico was
exposing LARGE SCALE (like 90%!) corruption in the NYC police force. The
theory being then that as long as the NYC police only protected pushers who
sold to blacks and Puerto Ricans, it was OK. I've also travelled overseas
(in places like India, Kenya) where police corruption is the status quo.
There's a tremedous amount of money in the drug biz, even if only 0.01%
goes to corruption it could be a lot.
>On Wed, 01 Jul 98 14:22:26 GMT, je...@ANTISPAM.com (Jeff in Portland,
>OR, USA) wrote:
>
>>Steve - Can you read my mind? What scale do I think the corruption is
occuring? What scale of corruption is acceptable? Of course the cops etc.
have to be able to afford to send their kids to college...
>
>In article ste...@ethergate.com (steve knight) wrote:
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
Robb - I'll agree with your statement below. What I resent is the that
almost all those mentioned work VERY hard to keep certain drugs illegal.
Having drugs be illegal drugs drive up the cost of those drugs. I'm sick
of having my car and house broken into and of being afriad to walk certain
streets at night because someone needs to buy overpriced drugs.
Also, having drugs illegal drives up my taxes to pay for police, courts,
jails, etc. Making drugs illegal does NO good for me that I can see. (I
won't mention corruption because that seems to be a touchy subject).
Barry D. Chalcroft
Robb Topolski wrote:
> Ever since the air bag warnings that you have to keep children buckled in
> the back seats, drivers everywhere are swerving wildly as they reach over to
> smack the little brats.
>
> Kids in cars should be outlawed!
>
> Robb
Yeah Robb,
Lets let them walk so the idiot drivers can run them down when they try to
cross a street on a green light and someone *HAS* to make the yellow 'cause
they are in a hurry. Wouldn't want to give them a safe bike lane either. Might
infringe on the "Drivers Rights". Now Mass transit, that's socialism.
-barryc
Proud father of 5 beautiful brats. And a Minivan. LOOK OUT!!!
--
Barry D. Chalcroft / N5NWI GST Telecom
Lead Network Specialist 4317 NE Thurston Way
bar...@gstworld.net Vancouver, WA
Alt: bar...@gstis.net 98662
John Flanery
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> legal job? do you really think that will happen?
Yes. What else would they do?
> What about all the
> real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
> that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop.
How do you figure?
Robb Topolski
Bob Beauchaine wrote in message <359BA9A2...@feico.com>...
>I remember, back in the dark recesses of my high
>school education about alcohol use and abuse, that people do not in fact
>develop a tolerance for the physical effects of alcohol. They only
>think they do. The actual level of impairment is more-or-less
>predetermined for a given individual, and only depends on factors like
>quantity consumed, body weight, stomach contents, and such.
>
>Do I remember wrong? Was I fed useless propaganda?
Don't know which, but it certainly is true that light drinkers usually drive
terribly after just one beer while regular drinkers drive just fine after
their nightly six-pack. All of the factors about level of impairment you
mention also affect time, level, and duration of impairment.
I've had new drinkers hit trees and cars and have less than 0.10 BAC while
hard drinkers with a burnt-out headlight and bad breath drives fine but
blows a 0.25.
Robb
Robb Topolski
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA wrote in message
<6ngl2g$n5t$2...@spitting-spider.aracnet.com>...
>[...] What I resent is the that
>almost all those mentioned work VERY hard to keep certain drugs illegal.
>Having drugs be illegal drugs drive up the cost of those drugs. I'm sick
>of having my car and house broken into and of being afriad to walk certain
>streets at night because someone needs to buy overpriced drugs.
>
>Also, having drugs illegal drives up my taxes to pay for police, courts,
>jails, etc. Making drugs illegal does NO good for me that I can see. (I
>won't mention corruption because that seems to be a touchy subject).
Thanks. It's the difference between effect and cause. But clearly things
aren't the way they are because cops need to put their kids through college.
Robb
Laurel Halbany
On Wed, 01 Jul 1998 22:29:02 GMT, lang*lo...@teleport.com (BKL) wrote:
>...of anything, since this is an essentially unprovable thing. The idea that
>things should or can be *proven* safe is popular, but medically irresponsible.
Are you missing the point deliberately, or unintentionally?
The idea of a safe dose is not a medical mystery. Pregnant women can
have <300 mg. of caffeine a day; this has been shown not to be
correlated with any increased risk of miscarriage, though there is a
suggestion that higher doses are. (This is about 2 cups of coffee a
day, btw.) An infant can have .8 mg of acetaminophen safely, but 3 mg
can be dangerous. These things have known safe doses.
Alcohol, however, does not have a known 'safe dose' in pregnant women.
Any alcohol consumption increases the risks of growth retardation,
FAS, slowed brain development, and miscarriage. There is no way to
know whether one drink a week is OK, or three drinks a week leads to a
significantly larger likelihood of damage.
>Pregnant women have been drinking for millennia, and moderate consumption
>remains with essentially no proven medical effects greater than the
>demonstrated benefits.
*What* demonstrated benefits? You cite *one* study (cited, itself, in
another article) that claimed alcohol prevents stillbirths--a bit of a
stretch just from the description of the study, and not a result I
have ever heard corroborated elsewhere. Alcohol crosses the placental
barrier. The more alcohol is consumed, the greater the risks--and
there are plenty of variables, like genetic susceptibility and the
stage of pregnancy--that make blanket statements about "this much is
safe" a very dicey thing.
And really--the "pregnant women have been doing X forever" is a very
bad argument. Pregnant women have done all kinds of things for
millenia that we would consider *really not a good idea* today
(drinking water out of lead-glazed cups, anyone?). The fact that the
species didn't die out is no recommendation.
>Perhaps (although most or nearly all FAS is probably in chronic drunks, not
>gals who tied one on one time.)
Probably because most of those are women who tied one on *very* early
in pregnancy, then stopped drinking when they found out they were
pregnant. But even one binge, at the wrong time, can do damage. Not to
mention that problem drinkers are unlikely to sip moderately or binge
very rarely.
>Anyway, we're talking about moderate
>consumption. No need to alarm the moderate folks by pretending that they are
>as at risk as the drunks. That kind of deception is dangerous, as the drunks
>see others moderately breaking the "rule" and assume that it must be OK for
>then to subject their fetus to more than 6 drinks per day.
Well, that's an interesting theory. I would expect rather that the
drunks would look at a recommendation like "One drink a day is safe"
and figure hey, two drinks a day can't be *that* much worse, or maybe
you could save up all week and have six or seven...
You keep talking about "alarm" and "scare tactics." I don't see that
letting people know about genuine risks is, by itself, a "scare
tactic." Telling women that alcohol will poison their babies, or that
*any* drinking causes FAS, is overblown. Telling them that we don't
know what level of drinking is safe, so it would be most prudent to
avoid alcohol, is not.
>PS, as to the lack of proper citations, I suggest anyone looking further
>subscribe to Medline, which should easily call up these references.
Hey, you cited 'em.
Laurel Halbany
>Ever since the air bag warnings that you have to keep children buckled in
>the back seats, drivers everywhere are swerving wildly as they reach over to
>smack the little brats.
>
>Kids in cars should be outlawed!
And cars should be reserved only for perfectly competent drivers such
as yourself, I assume...
Laurel Halbany
>This was nice and emotional, but the facts are that most drunk drivers are
>careless and reckless, but not malicious.
Recklesness = intent for purposes of homicide. If I fire a gun into a
crowd of people, even if I don't actually *mean* to kill anybody, that
so recklessly indifferent to the likelihood of killing somebody that,
under the law, it is intent.
steve knight
On Thu, 02 Jul 98 14:49:20 GMT, je...@ANTISPAM.com (Jeff in Portland,
OR, USA) wrote:
>Robb - I'll agree with your statement below. What I resent is the that
>almost all those mentioned work VERY hard to keep certain drugs illegal.
>Having drugs be illegal drugs drive up the cost of those drugs. I'm sick
>of having my car and house broken into and of being afriad to walk certain
>streets at night because someone needs to buy overpriced drugs.
>
>Also, having drugs illegal drives up my taxes to pay for police, courts,
>jails, etc. Making drugs illegal does NO good for me that I can see. (I
>won't mention corruption because that seems to be a touchy subject).
so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
legal job? do you really think that will happen? What about all the
real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop. Making drugs
legal will not solve anything. because it is not solving the problem.
the only way to deal with it is to deal with the reasons people use
drugs in the first place. Making drugs legal will just move the
problem somewhere else. and it could be far worse then it is now.
Bob Tiernan
On Thu, 2 Jul 1998 c...@teleport.com wrote:
> Whoa Bob. One is supposed (advised) to eat about 8 helpings of vegies
> daily. Your jar of salsa would be about 3 days supply.
What is advised is not practised. A one ounce serving is
what will count as a serving of veggies, so a 32 ounce
jar will keep one kid in veggies for a month.
Bob T.
Tim Teitenberg
In or.politics Robb Topolski <rmt...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Thanks. It's the difference between effect and cause. But clearly things
> aren't the way they are because cops need to put their kids through college.
On the contrary, the financial gain by those persecuting the
War on Drugs is a primary motivation for their continued advocacy
of such programs, despite the lack of any discernible positive
results.
The following discusses the DARE program, but the point made about it
being a billion dollar industry applies more so to the War on Drugs as
a whole. It has become a huge industry, and there exists a symbiotic
relationship between those trying to enforce the prohibition, and
those in the very lucrative black market which exists due to the
continuance of the prohibition.
----
Excerpt from
DON'T YOU D.A.R.E.
by Stephen Glass, The New Republic, March 3, 1997
Reason, Kansas City Magazine and USA Today have published
substantial stories criticizing the program's effectiveness. But
these stories have done nothing to impede DARE's progress, and most
parents and educators still believe it works. Why isn't the case
against DARE better known? Why, at a time when federal funds are
scarce, is it not a public issue that a program which costs the
government more than half a billion dollars a year may be a waste of
the taxpayers' money? What happened to James Bovard and to The
Washington Post is an illustration of the answer.
For the past five years, DARE has used tactics ranging from bullying
journalists to manipulating the facts to mounting campaigns in order
to intimidate government officials and stop news organizations,
researchers and parents from criticizing the program. DARE
supporters have been accused of slashing tires, jamming television
transmissions and spray-painting reporters' homes to quiet critics.
"What you have to understand is that DARE is almost a billion-dollar
industry. If you found out that a food company's foods were rotten,
they'd be out of business," says Mount Holyoke sociology and
criminology professor Richard Moran. "What's now been found out is
that DARE is running the biggest fraud in America. That's why
they've gone nuts."
DARE has become so well-known for the hardball tactics it employs to
shut down its critics that drug researchers and journalists have a
word for those hushed-- they say they've been "Dared." Glenn
Levant, the executive director of DARE, did not respond to repeated
requests for an interview about DARE's effectiveness and its tactics
in squelching bad publicity. Provided, at his request, with written
questions, Levant did not reply.
----
- Tim
> Robb
Tim Teitenberg
In or.politics Robb Topolski <rmt...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Wow, the last several messages have been total horseshit. I here Bob T.
> saying, "No, Don't!" but I just have to hit reply.
> There is probably no desire by, and certainly no coordinated action by,
> those mentioned by Tom Jones to sustain illegal drug use. All (okay, it's a
> large group, so I'll say almost all if you promise to understand that I mean
> statistically all) these guys are actually working to stop drugs, enforce
> existing laws, create (their version of) better laws, etc.. There is no
> underground message to avoid killing the supply so that the cops and judges
> can keep their jobs. By and large, cops aren't on the take. In as much as
> cops are a cross section of society -- a well screened cross section but
> still a cross section -- there are exceptions. They are rare enough to make
> big news when they are discovered.
> As for the quoted paragraph above, fuck you.
If the above is the best you can come up with, you should have
listened to Bob T. and aborted the reply. Most of what you've written
are straw-men which provide you with nothing other than facile,
specious shots.
For one, there is absolutely no need for the War on Drugs
establishment to hold back on killing the supply. They can be quite
diligent and genuine in the act of persecuting the war without killing
the supply. You should also make a distinction between the cop on the
street and those up the chain conducting the lobbying efforts and
intimidating critics to silence them. There's a substantial
difference in knowledge and decision making, and thus culpability.
----
Excerpt from
DON'T YOU D.A.R.E.
by Stephen Glass, The New Republic, March 3, 1997
While it's not possible to say exactly how many researchers
have been Dared, it is clear from talking to academics in the
relevant fields that there are a number of them. It's common
knowledge among researchers that doing DARE studies can ruin a
promising career. Wysong and David W. Wright, a Wichita
State University professor, wrote in Sociological Focus that
the DARE researchers they had interviewed "asked to remain
anonymous out of fear of political reprisals and to protect
their careers." Interviews with drug researchers support this
statement. An author of one prominent paper says he no longer
studies DARE. "I needed my life back. I'm in research. My wife
and I couldn't take endless personal attacks," he told me.
"You want to know why I stopped researching DARE? Write your
article and you'll see."
Another researcher who was critical of DARE says he became so
unpopular among fellow professors he went into the private
sector. "If you fight DARE, they make you out to look like
you want kids to smoke pot. I thought it was my duty to say
the emperor is not wearing any clothes," he says. "It was
stupid of me to think I could fight them. Everyone told me I
couldn't, but I tried. Here [in the private sector] I can
start over." The researcher says after he published his
study, someone etched the words "kid killer" and "drug pusher"
into the paint of his car.
----
- Tim
> Robb Topolski
Tim Teitenberg
In or.politics Robb Topolski <rmt...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> Wow, the last several messages have been total horseshit. I here Bob T.
> saying, "No, Don't!" but I just have to hit reply.
Excerpt from
DON'T YOU D.A.R.E.
by Stephen Glass, The New Republic, March 3, 1997
[ Notes to text :
Glenn Levant - the executive director of DARE
NIJ - the National Institute of Justice (NIJ)--the research wing
of the Justice Department
RTI - "the prestigious Research Triangle Institute (RTI) hired by
the NIJ to analyze the studies on DARE and determine the
bottom line." ]
In September 1994, RTI finished the lengthy report. It concluded
that, while DARE was loved by teachers and participants, it had no
effect on drug use. It also went one step further, a step that DARE
feared most of all. "What got [RTI] in the most hot water is that
they said other programs work better," says Moran, the Mount Holyoke
sociologist. In other words, RTI found that DARE is not merely a
failure in itself, but crowds out money for programs that actually
keep kids off drugs. RTI published a lengthy bibliography of some of
the other programs.
One note from Laurie Bright, NIJ's program manager, said the
"methodology appears to be sound and DARE representatives did not
offer any specific flaws ... [it] presented findings in a very fair
and impartial light." Eventually, Jeremy Travis, who heads the NIJ,
stepped in. He publicly reiterated that Justice had not caved under
DARE's pressure, explaining that NIJ's independent reviewers
unanimously recommended against publishing the report.
Not so, according to one reviewer. William DeJong, a Harvard
lecturer, told USA Today: "They must be misremembering what I said."
Two of the independent reviewers who examined the report in March
1994 recommended that more analysis be done. But both urged the
publication and wide dissemination of the executive summary of the
report, and one praised the crucial section that analyzed DARE's
efficacy as "well done." NIJ still has not approved the study, but
will sell it upon request.
The same day Justice refused the study, The American Journal of
Public Health--a highly respected academic journal--accepted it. It
had conducted its own peer review and found the paper to be worthy.
The Justice Department official says this infuriated Levant and that
DARE tried to prevent the journal from publishing the study. While
no one at Public Health would comment on Levant and DARE, two
editors at the journal said that it stands by editor Sabine
Beisler's comment of October 1994: "DARE has tried to interfere with
the publication of this. They tried to intimidate us."
Today, the researchers who worked on parts of the RTI study remain
thoroughly spooked by their experience. Two researchers at RTI, four
at universities and two now in the private sector refused to talk
more than briefly about the study. All but one said they were
scared of losing their jobs. Three told me that their superiors had
been contacted by politicians. "A state representative called my
boss and asked if my research was really in the best interest of the
community," said one state university professor. "Thank God my boss
said `yes.' I don't know if even tenure would stand up to that."
DARE's hardball approach is as well-known among journalists who have
attempted stories on the organization as it is among academic
researchers.
-----
- Tim
> As for the quoted paragraph above, fuck you.
> Robb Topolski
Billy Pulpit
BKL wrote:
>
> On Wed, 01 Jul 1998 14:54:01 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>
> >Hmm... This cell phone business is starting to get a little incredible.
>
I shouldn't have said 'business'. I was refering to the wide range of
statistical impairment levels cited.
> Perhaps you should take a look at the New England Journal report, to find the
> fatal analytic flaw that their review panel missed.
>
Library's closed for the weekend. Whadit say?
[...]
> The NEJM study was fascinating. They looked at official accident records, and
> cross checked with cell phone records to see who was on the phone at the time,
... and the conclusions were...?
> etc. The level of thoroughness was startlingly refreshing, compared to much
> of the "safety" "research" (prepared by insurance lobbying groups).
Folks who are mainly interested in finding an excuse to raise rates.
BTW, red cars aren't involved in more accidents. They just get more
tickets. Reason enough to raise rates. That's what an insurance guy
told me.
Don't get me started on the insurance industry...
Billy Pulpit
steve knight wrote:
>
> so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> legal job? do you really think that will happen? What about all the
> real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
> that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop. Making drugs
> legal will not solve anything. because it is not solving the problem.
> the only way to deal with it is to deal with the reasons people use
> drugs in the first place. Making drugs legal will just move the
> problem somewhere else. and it could be far worse then it is now.
>
Drugs ARE legal. The most harmful of them all is legal. Why aren't
you out there calling for a ban on booze? It's the one that kills
the most people. It's the one kids are most likely to become involved
with. Why aren't you calling for a ban on it? Other drugs are already
illegal. Why waste your time advocating something that's already been
done? Why not put effort into making the REAL BAD DRUGS, such as beer,
wine, and distilled spirits?
If you're a juicer, why don't you just mind your own business and get
off the backs of people who are less of a danger to society than you
are... And get some integrity, while you're at it.
Anybody who advocates keeping "drugs" illegal, but does not call for
a ban on alcohol, has no integrity, and his opinions are worthless.
Billy Pulpit
John Flanery wrote:
>
> On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
>
> > so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> > what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> > huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> > legal job? do you really think that will happen?
>
Gosh, what happened to bartenders when alcohol prohibition ended?
They went on being bartenders, the only difference is that now
they're paying taxes, and not taking the law into their own hands
when they're victims of crime. And they're not nearly as often
the victim of crime, now that they've become legitimate.
Sheesh! Look at alcohol. Look at alcohol prohibition. Look at what
happened when it was banned, and then what happened when the ban
was lifted.
I'm losing my patience with these anti-drug people... maybe they
need a taste of their own medicine.
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Billy Pulpit wrote:
> Gosh, what happened to bartenders when alcohol prohibition ended?
> They went on being bartenders, the only difference is that now
> they're paying taxes, and not taking the law into their own hands
> when they're victims of crime.
The bartenders weren't the real problem - the real problem was
the people who were doing the supplying. Since the stakes were
very high, this drove out the more decent people and left the
more unsavory characters to dominate this field If you did not
have it in you to kill your competitors or anyone else who
interfered with your business (accidentally or on purpose), then
you were not right for this line of work. In contrast, look at
Safeways and Albertsons. Are they shooting at other? Are tavern
owners shooting at each other?
Bob T.
c...@teleport.com
In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.980702...@user1.teleport.com>,
Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
Not practiced is a personal choice and cannot be factored into the equation
of how far a 32 ounce jar of salsa will go to provide the recommended
amount of vegies. OTOH, if the only way to get a kid to eat vegies is to
give it salsa, that is some progress. Now, is a greasy order of fries any
better than canned salsa as a serving of vegies?
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998 c...@teleport.com wrote:
> Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
> > What is advised is not practised. A one ounce serving is
> > what will count as a serving of veggies, so a 32 ounce
> > jar will keep one kid in veggies for a month.
> Not practiced is a personal choice and cannot be factored into
> the equation of how far a 32 ounce jar of salsa will go to provide
> the recommended amount of vegies.
"One ounce" has apparently been declared a serving of veggies.
Why would a bureaucracy dish out more than the minimum? I have
no idea.
> OTOH, if the only way to get a kid to eat vegies is to
> give it salsa, that is some progress.
Actually, it is not progress at all to have a government
do anything about a skool menu. It has led to, at last
count, three absurdities:
Ketchup is a vegetable
Yogurt is a meat
Salsa is a vegetable.
Name a restaurant in the so-called untrustworthy, evil,
fraudulent, greedy private sector that got away with
anything like that.
Bob T.
steve knight
On Thu, 2 Jul 1998 22:39:30 -0700, John Flanery <jf...@efn.org> wrote:
>
>On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
>
>> so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
>> what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
>> huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
>> legal job? do you really think that will happen?
>
>Yes. What else would they do?
Who knows? sell guns? I don't know but when you take a big source of
income away form someone they are gonna fight back or figure out some
other way to make that money. undersell the government? who knows.
>
>> What about all the
>> real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
>> that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop.
>
>How do you figure?
Well they think smoking cigarettes's are cool. when drugs are legal
those will appeal to them. and most likely if the government deals
with drugs like they deal with tobaccos and booze kids will have good
access to them.
steve knight
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 05:20:40 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>Sheesh! Look at alcohol. Look at alcohol prohibition. Look at what
>happened when it was banned, and then what happened when the ban
>was lifted.
>
you are talking about something that was totally expected and then
taken away then brought back. That cannot be compared to drugs because
they were never accepted and never legal. Plus they are usually far
more addictive and debilitating. there were far less bartenders back
then there are drug sellers now. So who is going to feed all those out
of work dealers? pretty hard to employ 10 year olds. in the really
poor getto's drugs are the only income. people will die without that
pathetic income. Unless drug pushers lower the price and undersell the
government.
>I'm losing my patience with these anti-drug people... maybe they
>need a taste of their own medicine.
Maybe you need a taste. see what will happen when drugs are legal. all
hell will break loose kids will use them. You have this stupid idea if
drugs are legal people will stop using them. Ya right. kinda like they
stopped drinking when it became legal.
People have trouble as it is controlling drinking and smoking. now
you want to make them have to control drugs too?
John Lienhart
John Flanery wrote:
>
> On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
>
> > so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> > what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> > huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> > legal job? do you really think that will happen?
>
> Yes. What else would they do?
>
Hang around retirement centers selling black market Viagra. Can't wait
to see "Cops" during a bust when the police are looking for evidence.
John Lienhart
steve knight wrote:
>
> On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 05:20:40 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>
> >Sheesh! Look at alcohol. Look at alcohol prohibition. Look at what
> >happened when it was banned, and then what happened when the ban
> >was lifted.
> >
>
> you are talking about something that was totally expected and then
> taken away then brought back. That cannot be compared to drugs because
> they were never accepted and never legal. Plus they are usually far
> more addictive and debilitating. there were far less bartenders back
> then there are drug sellers now. So who is going to feed all those out
> of work dealers? pretty hard to employ 10 year olds. in the really
> poor getto's drugs are the only income. people will die without that
> pathetic income. Unless drug pushers lower the price and undersell the
> government.
>
Study your history. Marijuana, cocaine and some of the opium
devivatives were legal less than 100 years ago. Study a little bit
about why they became illegal. Use deja vu. Phil Smith reprinted a
great article about five years ago on this subject.
IMO, we are heading towards making cigarettes illegal. As much as I
dislike cigarettes, I think it will be a stupid move. The taxes are to
the point in some states and Canada where smuggling is already
profitable.
Billy Pulpit
Bob Tiernan wrote:
>
> Well, well, well.
>
> Ever since the Reagan Administration came up
> with "Ketchup is a vegetable", the liberals
> have had a good time quoting that to show
> Reagan's insensitivit, cruelty, and stupidity.
Oh, those liberals! How dare they criticize the
government!
> (It actually demonstrated why the government
> should have no say in menus).
>
> Clinton's Dept of Ag people (i.e. - his
> administration) came out last year with
> "yogurt is a meat" when they were designing
> the skool lunch menus.
>
Slandering yogurt! If they made a similar remark
in regard to beef, the State of Texas would no
doubt sue them.
> Now, it seems, they've decided that salsa
> is a vegetable. One ounce is a serving of
> vegetables, they say. This means a 32-ounce
> jar of salsa is a month's worth or vegetables
> for one person.
Funny how people have no problem accepting that
ground beef is meat, but think that a mooshed up
tomato is no longer a tomato. People are more
concerned with form than with content, I guess.
It's funny how people who are so upset that catsup
and salsa have been designated as vegetables, can't
even get to the best defense of their complaint --
that the nutrient value -might- be unacceptably low
due to the dilution of the vegetable ingredient, by
the vinegar. I don't know if this is the case or
not.
Regarding the 32 ounce per month thing, Bob, you really
should get more than one one-ounce serving of vegetables
a day. Get three bottles.
>
And as to the government being involved with skool menus,
I don't know... skools are still state-run affairs, no?
I don't have any problem with the government being involved
with nutritional evaluation of foods, and to researching
the effects on health, and that kind of stuff at all, though,
as long as the research is truely objective. Monitering food
quality is a legitimate function of government.
Terry Miller
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> legal job? do you really think that will happen? What about all the
> real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
> that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop. Making drugs
> legal will not solve anything. because it is not solving the problem.
> the only way to deal with it is to deal with the reasons people use
> drugs in the first place. Making drugs legal will just move the
> problem somewhere else. and it could be far worse then it is now.
Unfortunetly, our current methods aren't working. Perhaps, when we look
around the world and see different ways of dealing with the problems of
drugs we could emulate, to some degree, the successes. In the Netherlands,
where pot is available to any 18 year old, teen age use is one fifth of
our use. Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Luxemborg, Belgium, New
Zealand and Australia are all changing their laws on marijuana issues.
California has changed its laws. In the 12 states or so that will have
marijuana related issues on the ballot, ALL are expected to pass.
Prohibition doesn't work and ratcheting up the costs doesn't either. What
makes you think that prohibition will work today when it did not for
alcohol?
How many people do you think should be arrested and at what costs involved
will you feel like we have gained in the War On Some Drugs?
With the government's estimate of 30,000 regular pot users in Multnomah
County and 150,000 for the state, how do you think we can fit those folks
into the 9,000-10,000 jail cells in the state?
Corrections will replace education as the largest single budget item
inside of the next decade and we already incarcerate more folks than any
other nation in the history of the world. Why do you think more people in
jail will help the problem?
Its not a matter of legalizing, its a matter of regulating as to the least
harm to society. When we get pot out of the realm of Schedule 1 and base
our laws accordingly. Police will have the opportunity to concentrate on
real crimes.
And our society will reap the benefits.
The more you know, the more you'll question our current policy.
TD
pdxn...@teleport.COM Public Access User -- Not affiliated with Teleport
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-28800, N81)
Billy Pulpit
Bob Tiernan wrote:
> A one ounce serving is
> what will count as a serving of veggies, so a 32 ounce
> jar will keep one kid in veggies for a month.
>
Are you really that bad at math, or do you really believe
a kid only needs one serving of veggies a day, or do you
belive the government is supposed to provide kids with
ALL their veggies, or what?
Your conclusion is specious.
Terry Miller
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Tim Teitenberg wrote:
> The following discusses the DARE program, but the point made about it
> being a billion dollar industry applies more so to the War on Drugs as
> a whole. It has become a huge industry, and there exists a symbiotic
> relationship between those trying to enforce the prohibition, and
> those in the very lucrative black market which exists due to the
> continuance of the prohibition.
For more info on the DARE program, check out our web page in the
"Articles" area at http://www.pdxnorml.org. See the link to ennumerable
articles with the truth about DARE.
Terry Miller
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Billy Pulpit wrote:
> steve knight wrote:
> >
>
> > so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> > what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> > huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> > legal job? do you really think that will happen? What about all the
> > real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
> > that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop. Making drugs
> > legal will not solve anything. because it is not solving the problem.
> > the only way to deal with it is to deal with the reasons people use
> > drugs in the first place. Making drugs legal will just move the
> > problem somewhere else. and it could be far worse then it is now.
> >
>
> Drugs ARE legal. The most harmful of them all is legal. Why aren't
> you out there calling for a ban on booze? It's the one that kills
> the most people. It's the one kids are most likely to become involved
> with. Why aren't you calling for a ban on it? Other drugs are already
> illegal. Why waste your time advocating something that's already been
> done? Why not put effort into making the REAL BAD DRUGS, such as beer,
> wine, and distilled spirits?
Not to mention the 100,000 deaths per year from prescription drugs in
either overdoses or side effects from use with other drugs. Marijuana is,
on anybody's list (recently France's INSERM study) including the head of
NIDA the least harmful of a list including alcohol, tobacco, cocaine,
heroin, caffein and pot.
The more you know, the more you'll question current policy.
Terry Miller
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jul 1998 22:39:30 -0700, John Flanery <jf...@efn.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> >
> >> so you think if drugs are legal all the problems will go away? Man
> >> what a pipe dream. you think all the people who sell drugs and make
> >> huge profits on them are just gonna say. Well it's over time for a
> >> legal job? do you really think that will happen?
> >
> >Yes. What else would they do?
>
>
> Who knows? sell guns? I don't know but when you take a big source of
> income away form someone they are gonna fight back or figure out some
> other way to make that money. undersell the government? who knows.
So your fear is what you don't know. Well read up, get informed and answer
why if alcohol prohibition didn't work, drug prohibition will. You can
check out our web page at http://www.pdxnorml.org for starters.
> >> What about all the
> >> real young kids that will be doing the drugs at the bus stop? the ones
> >> that smoke now. they will be smoking crack at the stop.
> >
> >How do you figure?
>
> Well they think smoking cigarettes's are cool. when drugs are legal
> those will appeal to them. and most likely if the government deals
> with drugs like they deal with tobaccos and booze kids will have good
> access to them.
Maybe you haven't figured out yet that the bars don't let in kids and the
massive teenage alcohol abuse during prohibition doesn't exist now with
government regulation. Kids currently list as the easiest drug (including
tobacco and alcohol) to obtain is pot. Change the laws and you change that
fact. In the states where marijuana was decriminalized, pot use DID NOT
RISE. In the Netherlands, where accessibility is easy for a teenager they
have one fifth the usage of the US.
Of course, you'd also be able to show the peer-reviewed, scientific
evidence saying that adding to the War On Sone Drugs will make things
better? Or the studies by any government that shows increasing penalties
lessens the number of users? Of course you won't, because there aren't
any.
The more you know....
Terry Miller
On Thu, 2 Jul 1998, Robb Topolski wrote:
> There is probably no desire by, and certainly no coordinated action by,
> those mentioned by Tom Jones to sustain illegal drug use. All (okay, it's a
> large group, so I'll say almost all if you promise to understand that I mean
> statistically all) these guys are actually working to stop drugs, enforce
> existing laws, create (their version of) better laws, etc.. There is no
> underground message to avoid killing the supply so that the cops and judges
> can keep their jobs. By and large, cops aren't on the take. In as much as
> cops are a cross section of society -- a well screened cross section but
> still a cross section -- there are exceptions. They are rare enough to make
> big news when they are discovered.
Generally speaking, I agree with you. But recently corruption of cops in
the drug wars has increased from 114 in 1994 to 548 this year in a small
number of cities. Locally we've seen two cops charged with marijuana
crimes of recent and one of the top notch DAs. Is it a conspiracy? No.
Is it happening on a larger and larger scale like alcohol prohibition did
with no significant reduction in use?
Oh, yeah.
Terry Miller
On Thu, 2 Jul 1998, Jeff in Portland, OR, USA wrote:
> Robb - I'll agree with your statement below. What I resent is the that
> almost all those mentioned work VERY hard to keep certain drugs illegal.
> Having drugs be illegal drugs drive up the cost of those drugs. I'm sick
> of having my car and house broken into and of being afriad to walk certain
> streets at night because someone needs to buy overpriced drugs.
>
> Also, having drugs illegal drives up my taxes to pay for police, courts,
> jails, etc. Making drugs illegal does NO good for me that I can see. (I
> won't mention corruption because that seems to be a touchy subject).
In "Sex, Drugs and Consenting Adults", we see DEA head Tom Constantine
talking about making tobacco illegal in the near future. If you think we
got problems now with enforcement, just wait.
Terry Miller
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 05:20:40 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Sheesh! Look at alcohol. Look at alcohol prohibition. Look at what
> >happened when it was banned, and then what happened when the ban
> >was lifted.
> >
>
> you are talking about something that was totally expected and then
> taken away then brought back. That cannot be compared to drugs because
> they were never accepted and never legal.
Please, how about reading some history here? Marijuana was not banned by
the government until 1937. Cocaine, heroin and numerous other drugs have
been legal until this century.
Plus they are usually far
> more addictive and debilitating.
Absolutely bullshit. Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine and NIDA is
the ones that say so.
there were far less bartenders back
> then there are drug sellers now.
And your source on this is....?
So who is going to feed all those out
> of work dealers? pretty hard to employ 10 year olds. in the really
> poor getto's drugs are the only income. people will die without that
> pathetic income. Unless drug pushers lower the price and undersell the
> government.
So your concern here is an employment problem? We spend over $100 million
per day in the War On Some Drugs, I believe that would employ and feed a
lot of folks.
> >I'm losing my patience with these anti-drug people... maybe they
> >need a taste of their own medicine.
>
> Maybe you need a taste. see what will happen when drugs are legal. all
> hell will break loose kids will use them.
And of course, your source for this is...? How come this didn't happen in
the Netherlands? And when California passed 215, the largest group of new
users was senior citizens.
You have this stupid idea if
> drugs are legal people will stop using them. Ya right. kinda like they
> stopped drinking when it became legal.
Check your history, you did read something about alcohol prohibition,
didn't you? Usage dropped the first year of prohibition and began rising
again until it was the same as before prohibition except that teenage use
soared. Kind of like today, huh?
> People have trouble as it is controlling drinking and smoking. now
> you want to make them have to control drugs too?
No, just regulate the sales and quit putting offenders in jail (its a
health problem, not a law enforcement problem). Meanwhile, you still
haven't answered why alcohol prohibition failed but our current policy
will work.
c...@teleport.com
In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.980703...@user1.teleport.com>,
Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
> Name a restaurant in the so-called untrustworthy, evil,
> fraudulent, greedy private sector that got away with
> anything like that.
Resturants are not required by law to provide specific nutrition group
content meals. When you have such requirements (as do school cafeterias),
it is necessary to define into which group a menu offering falls. Just
helps get the paper work done so they can show the little children were at
least offered meals that contained the required food materials.
Laurel Halbany
>Excerpt from
>
>DON'T YOU D.A.R.E.
>by Stephen Glass, The New Republic, March 3, 1997
Er, is this one of the articles that Mr. Glass "fudged"?
Bob Tiernan
On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Billy Pulpit wrote:
> Bob Tiernan wrote:
> > A one ounce serving is what will count as
> > a serving of veggies, so a 32 ounce jar
> > will keep one kid in veggies for a month.
> Are you really that bad at math, or do you really believe
> a kid only needs one serving of veggies a day
No, I'm not bad at math, but the government is apparently
so good at it that they can make a 32-ounce jar of salsa
last a month for each kid. And we are talking about
only LUNCH here. We are only talking about the servings
they get at the skool cafeteria at lunchtime. In this
case, one 32-ounce jar per month will do per wach kid.
The kiddies will get more when they get home (and
more than salsa).
> or do you belive the government is supposed to provide kids
> with ALL their veggies, or what?
No, I don't believe that the government should or is
supposed to provide kids with all of their veggies.
But I do know that they are apparently providing
their lunches Monday thru Friday, and are doing it
as cheaply as possible. Thus a hot dog with a
squeeze of ketchup is "meat and a veggie",
yogurt and a pile of rice is "meat and rice",
and a plate of fish sticks and a dab of salsa
is "fish and vegetables".
Bob T.
In the busy streets, domains of trade,
Man is a surly porter, or a vain and hectoring bully,
Who can claim no nearer kindredship with me
Than brotherhood by law.
- Henry David Thoreau
Laurel Halbany
>In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.980703...@user1.teleport.com>,
>Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Name a restaurant in the so-called untrustworthy, evil,
>> fraudulent, greedy private sector that got away with
>> anything like that.
<snort> Restaurants are not required by law to be honest about their
food's nutritional content, what "light" or "low-calorie" meals mean,
to provide particular RDAs of any nutrient....
steve knight
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 05:06:01 -0600, Billy Pulpit <R...@ZZ.BAR> wrote:
>Drugs ARE legal. The most harmful of them all is legal. Why aren't
>you out there calling for a ban on booze? It's the one that kills
>the most people. It's the one kids are most likely to become involved
>with. Why aren't you calling for a ban on it? Other drugs are already
>illegal. Why waste your time advocating something that's already been
>done? Why not put effort into making the REAL BAD DRUGS, such as beer,
>wine, and distilled spirits?
>
Now why do you think there is such a problem with booze? because it is
available and accepted. drugs "illegal drugs" will have the same
problems if they become legal. most likely worse.
>If you're a juicer, why don't you just mind your own business and get
>off the backs of people who are less of a danger to society than you
>are... And get some integrity, while you're at it.
well coming from a pot head. I do not drink or do drugs.
>Anybody who advocates keeping "drugs" illegal, but does not call for
>a ban on alcohol, has no integrity, and his opinions are worthless.
You cannot with much success ban alcohol it has been tried and failed.
I can see that can you? But I can see making drugs legal will only
cause more problems. But they are illegal and as long as they stay
that way they will not become mainstream. and cause as much if not
more problems then alcohol does.
steve knight
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 14:47:10 GMT, Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>The bartenders weren't the real problem - the real problem was
>the people who were doing the supplying. Since the stakes were
>very high, this drove out the more decent people and left the
>more unsavory characters to dominate this field If you did not
>have it in you to kill your competitors or anyone else who
>interfered with your business (accidentally or on purpose), then
>you were not right for this line of work. In contrast, look at
>Safeways and Albertsons. Are they shooting at other? Are tavern
>owners shooting at each other?
yes can we see someone that kills off his competition and makes a
1,000 a day selling drugs apply to work at Mcdonolds?
Andrew
In pdx.general steve knight <ste...@ethergate.com> wrote:
: On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 14:47:10 GMT, Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com>
: wrote:
Well...if you make drugs, gambling, and prostitution legal, what other
lines of work are left for the Unsavory Character? Contract killing?
Murder is a little more risky if the person you are killing isn't
another unsavory character. Theft? That's risky, too, a hell of a
lot more risky than selling drugs to someone for big profits.
If you take away laws against drugs etc., most Unsavory Characters
will move on to more legitimate - and legal - lines of work, out of
necessity.
Andrew
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew ah...@bizave.com
Visit Andrew's Portland, Oregon Web Site: http://www.bizave.com
steve knight
On 3 Jul 1998 19:12:41 GMT, John Lienhart <the...@spiritone.com>
wrote:
>>
>
>Study your history. Marijuana, cocaine and some of the opium
>devivatives were legal less than 100 years ago. Study a little bit
>about why they became illegal. Use deja vu. Phil Smith reprinted a
>great article about five years ago on this subject.
Yes but things were far different then and now. I could not imagine
what would happen if the goverment tried to make booze iligal.
>IMO, we are heading towards making cigarettes illegal. As much as I
>dislike cigarettes, I think it will be a stupid move. The taxes are to
>the point in some states and Canada where smuggling is already
>profitable.
Yes you cannot stop people from doing dumb things. If we can keep
smokers from harming people and thier children let them smoke. and
the poor will always do it more so they will be looking for the cheep
smokes.
steve knight
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 21:04:45 GMT, Terry Miller <pdxn...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>
>Please, how about reading some history here? Marijuana was not banned by
>the government until 1937. Cocaine, heroin and numerous other drugs have
>been legal until this century.
Yes this is true But it is not what I meant. Back then drugs were not
used like they are today.
>Absolutely bullshit. Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine and NIDA is
>the ones that say so.
Yes it is very addictive. But there far worse drugs then cocaine out
there.
>there were far less bartenders back
>> then there are drug sellers now.
>
>And your source on this is....?
Just logic. because it is a high profit trade. and it is about the
only way to pay for the habits. Plus drug dealers are usually not high
quality humans. Bartenders are normal people.
>So your concern here is an employment problem? We spend over $100 million
>per day in the War On Some Drugs, I believe that would employ and feed a
>lot of folks.
I cannot see a dealer who makes a 1,000 a day go to work for
Mcdonalds. or hold much of any job that requires upstanding
citizenship. not the pushers I see around. I would not let them near
food. or anything else I want to touch.
>And of course, your source for this is...? How come this didn't happen in
>the Netherlands? And when California passed 215, the largest group of new
>users was senior citizens.
I observe do you? KIds use tobacco right now quite a bit. and booze.
what you think they will not use the legal drugs? get real. The
Netherlands are far different then here. and as far as california goes
give it time. It took time for children to really get heavy into
smoking like they do now.
>Check your history, you did read something about alcohol prohibition,
>didn't you? Usage dropped the first year of prohibition and began rising
>again until it was the same as before prohibition except that teenage use
>soared. Kind of like today, huh?
But there is a little difference. people drank before prohibition it
was legal and accepted. why would it rise when it again became legal?
But other drugs are a no no so are not used by as many people who
drink or smoke. But if they become legal they will be acceptable and
so more people will use them because it is not wrong to do so. A lot
of people smoke and drink because it is social and as humans we need
that very badly. so drugs will follow and we will be far worse off.
teen use will soar just like you have said.
>No, just regulate the sales and quit putting offenders in jail (its a
>health problem, not a law enforcement problem). Meanwhile, you still
>haven't answered why alcohol prohibition failed but our current policy
>will work.
Yes in some ways this is true. anymore it is the dealers and on up
that are targeted not the user. the dealers are the ones that do more
then just sell it. I am not saying our current policy is great But
making it legal will not help people only crime. it will make more
problems for more people. the only solution is to educate and solve
the problems that make drug use desirable. that is the only thing that
will work.
Bob Tiernan
On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, Laurel Halbany wrote:
> >Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com> wrote:
> >> Name a restaurant in the so-called untrustworthy, evil,
> >> fraudulent, greedy private sector that got away with
> >> anything like that.
> <snort> Restaurants are not required by law to be honest about their
> food's nutritional content, what "light" or "low-calorie" meals mean,
> to provide particular RDAs of any nutrient....
Earlier, C. L. Waltemath wrote:
> Resturants are not required by law to provide specific nutrition group
> content meals. When you have such requirements (as do school
> cafeterias), it is necessary to define into which group a menu offering
> falls. Just helps get the paper work done so they can show the little
> children were at least offered meals that contained the required food
> materials.
Read it again. Point being made is that no restaurant is going
to have on their menu the line "All main dishes come with a
serving of vegetables" and then give you an ounce of salsa as
the said vegetable serving.
Bob Tiernan
On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> Terry Miller wrote:
> > So your concern here is an employment problem? We spend over $100
> > million per day in the War On Some Drugs, I believe that would
> > employ and feed a lot of folks.
> I cannot see a dealer who makes a 1,000 a day go to work for
> Mcdonalds. or hold much of any job that requires upstanding
> citizenship.
Why not? There was a case about eight years ago of a
17-year old high skool student who was dealing drugs
and driving a fancy car and living in a $1,000 a month
condo along the Willamette. Without the drug trade
he would have been making near the minimum wage I guess.
He was only 17. Other dealers who are older won't
necessarily work at McDonalds. Many of them currently
have regular jobs that pay much more than that.
Bob T.
steve knight
On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 20:55:15 GMT, Terry Miller <pdxn...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>So your fear is what you don't know. Well read up, get informed and answer
>why if alcohol prohibition didn't work, drug prohibition will. You can
>check out our web page at http://www.pdxnorml.org for starters.
How can I read up on something that has not happened?
I never claimed it worked I am saying making hard drugs legal to
reduce crime is like trying to remove a wart with a gun. There will be
big problems. There never was a drug prohibition for one thing. second
Alcohol was very very commonly used and it was legal. where as "hard
drugs" are not legal (no it does not matter they were legal a 100
years ago that is pointless) making them legal will increase the use.
Because they went from unexpected to expected. and I bet it rises in
california too. all it will take is advertizing. a camel smoking a
doobie does wonders. But may take awhile. But pot is far different
then hard drugs are. and they cannot really be compared together. it's
usually not addictive and not as debilitating.
>Maybe you haven't figured out yet that the bars don't let in kids and the
>massive teenage alcohol abuse during prohibition doesn't exist now with
>government regulation. Kids currently list as the easiest drug (including
>tobacco and alcohol) to obtain is pot.
really? well they smoke cigarettes far more then Pot is that is kinda
silly don't you think. Hell tobacco company's make it easy for kids to
start smoking. they fight the laws that make cigarettes less
available. I am not too worried about pot it is the harder drugs that
are the problem. I do not think anyone really cares that much about
pot anymore. hell it is small potatoes.
>
>Of course, you'd also be able to show the peer-reviewed, scientific
>evidence saying that adding to the War On Sone Drugs will make things
>better? Or the studies by any government that shows increasing penalties
>lessens the number of users? Of course you won't, because there aren't
>any.
>
never said they were I am saying making them legal will not make it
better. crime may go down but use will go up and people will suffer
more in different ways.
Dan Clore
[a.f.n-c added]
Anti-Prohibition Lg wrote:
>
> Tom,
> What a great post! You hit the nail square on the head, it's sometimes
> called the Drug War Prison Industrial Complex (I think Noam Chomsky coined
> the phrase).
You're probably thinking of this interview:
Taken from this excellent site:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/3761/
The War on Drugs
The Drug War Industrial Complex
HT Interview with Noam Chomsky, April 1998
by John Veit
transcribed by Paul Freedom
HT: You've defined the War on Drugs as an instrument of population
control. How does it
accomplish that?
CHOMSKY: Population control is actually a term I borrowed from the
counterinsurgency literature of the Kennedy years. The main targets at
the time were Southeast Asia and Latin America, where there was an awful
lot of popular ferment. They recognized that the population was
supporting popular forces that were calling for all kinds of social
change that the United States simply could not tolerate. And you could
control people in a number of ways. One way was just by terror and
violence, napalm bombing and so on, but they also worked on developing
other kinds of population-control measures to keep people subjugated,
ranging from propaganda to concentration camps. Propaganda is much more
effective when it is combined with terror.
You have the same problem domestically, where the public is constantly
getting out of control. You have to carry out measures to insure that
they remain passive and apathetic and obedient, and don't interfere with
privilege or power. It's a major theme of modern democracy. As the
mechanisms of democracy expand, like enfranchisement and growth, the
need to control people by other means increases.
So the growth of corporate propaganda in the United States more or less
parallels the growth of democracy, for quite straightforward reasons.
It's not any kind of secret. It is discussed very frankly and openly in
business literature and academic social-science journals. You have to
"fight the everlasting battle for the minds of men," in their standard
phraseology, to indoctrinate and regiment them in the way that armies
regiment their bodies. Those are population control measures. This
engineering or manufacture of consent is the essence of democracy,
because you have to insure that ignorant and meddlesome outsiders --
meaning we, the people -- don't interfere with the work of
the serious people who run public affairs in the interests of the
privileged.
HT: How does the War on Drugs fit into this?
CHOMSKY: Well, one of the traditional and obvious ways of controlling
people in every society, whether it's a military dictatorship or a
democracy, is to frighten them. If people are frightened, they'll be
willing cede authority to their superiors who will protect them: "OK,
I'll let you run my life in order to protect me," that sort of
reasoning.
So the fear of drugs and the fear of crime is very much stimulated by
state and business
propaganda. The National Justice Commission repeatedly points out that
crime in the United States, while sort of high, is not off the spectrum
for industrialized societies. On the other hand, fear of crime is far
beyond other societies, and mostly stimulated by various propaganda. The
Drug War is an effort to stimulate fear of dangerous people from who we
have to protect ourselves. It is also, a direct form of control of what
are called "dangerous classes," those superfluous people who don't
really have a function contributing to profit-making and wealth. They
have to be somehow taken care of.
HT: In some other countries you just hang the rabble.
CHOMSKY: Yes, but in the U.S. you don't kill them, you put them in jail.
The economic policies of the 1980's sharply increased inequality,
concentrating such economic growth as there was, which was not enormous,
in very few hands. The top few percent of the population got extremely
wealthy as profits went through the roof, and meanwhile median-income
wages were stagnating or declining sharply since the '70's. You're
getting a large mass of people who are insecure, suffering from
difficulty to misery, or something in between. A lot of them are
basically going to be arrested, because you have to control them.
HT: It's absolutely true, but how do you prove it?
CHOMSKY: Just by looking at the trend lines for marijuana. Marijuana use
was peaking in the late '70's, but there was not much criminalization.
You didn't go to jail for having marijuana then because the people using
it were nice folks like us, the children of the rich. You don't throw
them into jail any more than you throw corporate executives into jail --
even though corporate crime is more costly and dangerous than street
crime. But then in the '80's the use of various "unhealthy" substances
started to decline among more educated sectors: marijuana and tobacco
smoking, alcohol, red meat, coffee, this whole category of stuff. On the
other hand, usage remained steady among poorer sectors of the
population. In the United States, poor and black correlation -- they're
not identical, but there's a correlation -- and in poor, black and
hispanic sectors of the population the use of such substances remained
steady.
So take a look at those trends. When you call for a War on Drugs, you
know exactly who you're going to pick up: poor black people. You're not
going to pick up rich white people: you don't go after them anyway. In
the upper-middle class suburb where I live, if somebody goes home and
sniffs cocaine, police don't break into their house.
So there are many factors making the Drug War a war against the poor,
largely poor people of color. And those are the people they have to get
rid of. During the period these economic policies were being instituted,
the incarceration rate was shooting up, but crime wasn't, it was steady
or declining. But imprisonment went way up. By the late '80's, in terms
of imprisoning our population, we were way ahead of the rest of the
world, way ahead of any other industrial society.
HT: Who benefits from incarcerating young black males?
CHOMSKY: A lot of people. Poor people are basically superfluous for
wealth production, and therefore the wealthy want to get rid of them.
The rich also frighten everyone else, because if you're afraid of these
people, then you submit to state authority. But beyond that, it's a
state industry. Since the 1930's, every businessman has understood that
a private capitalist economy must have massive state subsidies; the only
question is what form that state subsidy will take? In the United States
the main form has been through the military system. The most dynamic
aspects of the economy -- conputers, the Internet, the aeronautical
industry, pharmaceuticals -- have fed off the military system. But the
crime-control industry, as it's called by criminologists, is becoming
the fastest-growing industry in America.
And it's state industry, publicly funded. It's the construction
industry, the real estate industry, and also high tech firms. It's
gotten to a sufficient scale that high-technology and military
contractors are looking to it as a market for techniques of high-tech
control and surveillance, so you can monitor what people do in their
private activities with complicated electronic devices and
supercomputers: monitoring their telephone calls and urinalyses and so
forth. In fact, the time will probably come
when this superfluous population can be locked up in private apartments,
not jails, and just monitored to track when they do something wrong, say
the wrong thing, go the wrong direction.
HT: House arrest for the masses.
CHOMSKY: It's enough of an industry so that the major defense-industry
firms are interested; you can read about it in The Wall Street Journal.
The big law firms and investment houses are interested: Merrill Lynch is
floating big loans for prison construction. If you take the whole
system, it's probably approaching the scale of the Pentagon.
Also, this is a terrific work force. We hear fuss about prison labor in
China, but prison labor is standard here. It's very cheap, it doesn't
organize, the workers don't ask for rights, you don't have to worry
about health benefits because the public is paying for everything. It's
what's called a 'flexible' workforce, the kind of thing economists like:
you have the workers when you want them, and you throw them out when you
don't want them.
And what's more it's an old American tradition. There was a big
industrial revolution in parts of the South in the early part of this
century, in northern Georgia and Kentucky and Alabama and it was based
mostly around prison labor. The slaves had been technically freed, but
after a few years, they were basically slaves again. One way of
controlling them was to throw them in jail, where they became a
controlled labor force. That's the core of the modern industrial
revolution in the South, which continued in Georgia to the 1920's and to
the Second World War in places like Mississippi.
Now it's being revived. In Oregon and California there's a fairly
substantial textile industry in the prisons, with exports to Asia. At
the very time people were complaining about prison labor in China,
California and Oregon are exporting prison-made textiles to China. They
even have a line called "Prison Blues."
And it goes all the way up to advanced technology like data processing.
In the state of Washington, Boeing workers are protesting the exports of
jobs to China, but they're probably unaware that their jobs are being
exported to nearby prisons, where machinists are doing work for Boeing
under circumstances that the management is delighted over, for obvious
reasons.
HT: And most of these prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders.
CHOMSKY: The enormous rate of growth of the prison population has been
mostly drug related. The last figures I saw showed that over half the
federal prison population, and maybe a quarter in state prisons, are
drug offenders. In New York State, for example, a twenty-dollar street
sale or possession of an ounce of cocaine will get you the same sentence
as arson with intent to murder. The three-strikes legislation is going
to blow it right through the sky. The third arrest can be for some minor
drug offense, and you'll go to jail forever.
HT: The Drug Czar's office estimates that Americans spend $57 billion
annually on illegal drugs. What effect does this have on the global
economy?
CHOMSKY: Well, the United Nations tries to monitor the international
drug trade, and their estimates are on the order of $400 to $500 billion
-- half a trillion dollars a year -- in trade alone, which makes it
higher than oil, something like 10 percent of the world trade. Where
this money comes and goes to is mostly unknown, but general estimates
are that maybe 60 percent of it passes through US banks. After that, a
lot goes to offshore tax havens. It's so obscure that nobody monitors
it, and nobody wants to. But the Commerce Department every year
publishes figures on foreign direct investment -- where US investment is
going -- and through the '90s the big excitement has been the " new
emerging markets " like Latin America. And it turns out that a quarter
of US
foreign direct investment is going to Bermuda, another 15 percent to the
Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, another 10 percent to Panama, and so on.
Now, they're not building steel factories. The most benign
interpretation is that it's just tax havens. And the less benign
interpretation is that it's one way of passing illegal money into places
where it will not be monitored. We really don't know, because it is not
investigated. This is not the task of the Justice Department, which is
to go after a black kid in the ghetto who has a joint in his pocket.
HT: What do you think of the US policy of offering trade and aid favors
to countries who
promulgate so-called antidrug initiatives?
CHOMSKY: Actually, US programs radically increase the use of drugs. Look
at the big growth in cocaine production that has exploded in the Andes
over the last few years, in Columbia and Peru and Bolivia. Why are
Bolivian peasants, for instance producing coca? The neoliberal
structural-adjustment policies of the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund, which are run by the US, try to drive peasants into
agro-export, producing not for local consumption but for sale abroad.
They want to reduce social programs, like spending for health and
education, cutting government deficits by increasing exports. And they
cut back tariffs so that we can pour our highly subsidized food exports
into their countries, which of course undercuts peasant production. Put
all that together and what do you get? You get a huge increase in
Bolivian coca production, as their only comparative advantage.
The same is true in Columbia, where US "food for peace" aid, as it is
called, was used to destroy wheat production by essentially giving
food---at what amounts to US taxpayer expense---through US
agro-exporters to undercut wheat production there, which later cut
coffee production and their ability to set prices in any reasonably
fashion.
And the end result is they turn to something else, and one of the things
they turn to is coca production. In fact, if you look at the total
effect of US policies, it has been to increase drugs.
HT: Well, anybody who looks into the history of American drug policies
in this century...
CHOMSKY: I'm putting aside another factor altogether, namely clandestine
warfare. If you look into the history of what is called the CIA, which
means the US White House, it's secret wars, clandestine warfare, the
trail of drug production just follows. It started in France after the
Second World War when the United States was essentially trying to
reinstate the traditional social order, to rehabilitate Fascist
collaborators, wipe out the Resistance and destroy the unions and so on.
The first thing they did was reconstitute the Mafia, as strikebreakers
or for other such useful services. And the mafia doesn't do it for fun,
so there was tradeoff: Essentially they allowed them to reinstitute the
heroin-production system, which had been destroyed by the Fascists. The
Fascists tended to run a pretty tight ship; they didn't want any
competition, so they wiped out the Mafia. But the US reconstituted it,
first in southern Italy, and then in southern France with the Corsican
Mafia. That's where the famous French Connection comes from.
That was the main heroin center for many years. Then the US terrorist
activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out
terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you
also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well if
you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren't
many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden
Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug-producting
area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars
against those populations.
In Central America, it was partly exposed in the Contra hearings, though
it was mostly suppressed. But there's no question that the Reagan
administration's terrorist operations in Central America were closely
connected with drug trafficking.
Afghanistan became one of the biggest centers of drug trafficking in the
world in the 1980s, because that was the payoff for the forces to which
the US was contributing millions of dollars: the same extreme Islamic
fundamentalists who are now tearing the country to shreds.
It's been true throughout the world. It's not that the US is trying to
increase the use of drugs, it's just the natural thing to do. If you
were in a position where you had to hire thugs and gangsters to kill
peasants and break strikes, and you had to do it with untraceable money,
what would come to your mind?
HT: Where do you stand on drug legalization?
CHOMSKY: Nobody knows what the effect would be. Anyone who tells you
they know is just
stupid or lying., because nobody knows. These are things that have to be
tried, you have to experiment to see what the effects are.
Most soft drugs are already legal, mainly alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco
is by far the biggest killer among all the psychoactives. Alcohol deaths
are a little hard to estimate, because an awful lot of violent deaths
are associated with alcohol. Way down below come "hard" drugs, a tiny
fraction of the deaths from alcohol and tobacco, maybe ten or twenty
thousand deaths per year. The fastest growing hard drugs are APS,
amphetamine-type substances, produced mostly in the US.
As far as the rest of the drugs are concerned, marijuana is not known to
be very harmful. I mean, it's generally assumed it's not good for you,
but coffee isn't good for you, tea isn't good for you, chocolate cake
isn't good for you either. It would be crazy to criminalize coffee, even
though it's harmful.
The United States is one of very few countries where this is considered
a moral issue. In most countries it's considered a medical issue. In
most countries you don't have politicians getting up screaming about how
tough they're going to be on drugs. So the first thing we've got to do
is move out of the phase of population control, and into the sphere of
social issues. The Rand Corporation estimates that if you compare the
effect of criminal programs versus educational programs at reducing drug
use, educational programs are way ahead by about a factor of seven.
HT: But alarmist drug-propaganda programs like DARE and the Partnership
for a Drug-Free
America's TV ads have been found to increase experimentation among
teenagers.
CHOMSKY: The question is, what kind of education are you doing?
Educational programs aren't the only category. Education also has to do
with the social circumstances in which drugs are used. The answer to
that is not throwing people in jail. The answer is to try and figure
what's going on in their lives, their family, do they need medical care
and so on? This very striking decline in substance abuse among educated
sectors, as I said, goes across the spectrum -- red meat, coffee,
tobacco, everything. That's education. It wasn't that there was an
educational program that said to stop drinking coffee, it's just that
attitudes toward oneself and towards health, how we live and so on,
changed among the more educated sectors of the population, and these
things went down. And none of it had to do with criminalization. It just
had to do with a rise in the cultural and educational level, which led
to more care for oneself.
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord We˙rdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
Welcome to the Waughters....
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm
Because the true mysteries cannot be profaned....
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
steve knight
On Sat, 04 Jul 1998 06:26:02 GMT, Bob Tiernan <zu...@teleport.com>
wrote:
>
>Why not? There was a case about eight years ago of a
>17-year old high skool student who was dealing drugs
>and driving a fancy car and living in a $1,000 a month
>condo along the Willamette. Without the drug trade
>he would have been making near the minimum wage I guess.
>He was only 17.
so do you think he will give up his car and condo to work at Mcdonalds
if drug became legal? would you?
Other dealers who are older won't
>necessarily work at McDonalds. Many of them currently
>have regular jobs that pay much more than that.
and there are alot of them who only sell drugs for a living. better
money then mostly jobs. remember the pushers are getting younger and
younger. they will not want to give up the good money because it is
all they know.
steve knight
On 4 Jul 1998 05:35:45 GMT, ah...@bizave.com (Andrew) wrote:
>: yes can we see someone that kills off his competition and makes a
>: 1,000 a day selling drugs apply to work at Mcdonolds?
>
>Well...if you make drugs, gambling, and prostitution legal, what other
>lines of work are left for the Unsavory Character? Contract killing?
>Murder is a little more risky if the person you are killing isn't
>another unsavory character. Theft? That's risky, too, a hell of a
>lot more risky than selling drugs to someone for big profits.
>
>If you take away laws against drugs etc., most Unsavory Characters
>will move on to more legitimate - and legal - lines of work, out of
>necessity.
well do you want these people working along side you at your job? I
can jus see you ask the guy what he did for a living before he worked
there. Well I used to sell drugs and women, killed off my competition.
Ya that should go over well with the boss. I can see the whole ggang
applying at Mcdonalds. then there is unenployment. they were laid off
by hte goverment so they should get compensation 1,000 a week too
much?
Bob Tiernan
On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, steve knight wrote:
> Bob Tiernan wrote:
> > There was a case about eight years ago of a
> > 17-year old high skool student who was dealing drugs
> > and driving a fancy car and living in a $1,000 a month
> > condo along the Willamette. Without the drug trade
> > he would have been making near the minimum wage I guess.
> > He was only 17.
> so do you think he will give up his car and condo to work at
> Mcdonalds if drug became legal? would you?
He wouldn't have to "give up" his car and condo, because he
would not be able to earn the same income selling the same
products in an open market. How many 17 year olds do you
know of who are living in nice condos and have sports cars
just from money earned selling beer and other alcoholic
drinks? If so, where's his shop, and how does he get
customers when there's so many legitimate stores around
where one can get these items, plus their money back if
the product is no good?
> > Other dealers who are older won't necessarily work at
> > McDonalds. Many of them currently have regular jobs
> > that pay much more than that.
> and there are alot of them who only sell drugs for a living. better
> money then mostly jobs. remember the pushers are getting younger and
> younger. they will not want to give up the good money because it is
> all they know.
That's right - it's all they know. Now ask yourself: What would
they be doing if drugs were de-criminalized all these years?
Why was it that the mobs in the 20's and early 30's were against
repealing Prohibition? Why were they on the same side as the
Bible-reading temperance movements that were the most vocal
supporters? Was it because if it was repealed, the business
would be open and thus appealing to many more competitors?