Legal Drugs 101: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Legalize LSD and MDMA

Submitted by Prakash Sharma on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 11:39

As per reports, it has been revealed thatProfessor David Nutt, who is the government's former chief drug advisor, has advised the government that they should legalize LSD and MDMA.
He further affirmed that the drugs are no more harmful than alcohol, and it will be in the interests of thegovernment to let them be available with pharmacists. "They should be decriminalized; there is no doubt about that. It is clear, if you are using a drug less dangerous than alcohol, that is a rational choice", said Nutt.
Nutt said that if the government is concerned about drug addiction then banning is absolutely not a right thing to do. Best thing will be to allow the drugs to be available in the markets as well as educate people about it.
It is very important that people should know about pros and cons of the drugs and then let it be available with pharmacists. Nutt said that the government can make sure that pharmacists are abiding all the trade laws.
It shall however, be noted that he does not advocate people to take such drugs without prescriptions. It will be beneficial for people that they get prescriptions for such medicines and then buy them.

Legalize drugs. Next problem, please.

Posted: 05/24/12 11:55 pm

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Well, seems time for another shot at the stupidity of drug laws, yeah? Especially after New Jersey legislators seem to have some momentum to get a law decriminalizing marijuana possession up to about a half-ounce.

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While that’s all well and good, why don’t we take it to it’s logical conclusion: Legalize everything.

You ask me, illegal drugs are only a problem because they are illegal. If you agree with me, you may as well stop reading now. Go fishing or something. If you don’t agree with me, I’m now going to hammer you over the head with statistics. Read on. The first three, which I’ve numbered for your convenience, are courtesy of the

Centers for Disease Control .

1) Cigarettes kill 443,000 Americans each year.

2) About 15,000 Americans die from alcoholic liver disease, and another 11,000 or so from drunk driving.

3) More than 36,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, and “most” of these deaths were from prescription or over-the-counter drugs. While the number of illegal drug deaths vary, a safe bet is around 17,000.

Let’s stop here for a moment. Cigarettes, booze, and legal drugs kill almost a half million Americans each year. For some perspective, that’s just about every man, woman and child in Mercer and Hunterdon counties. That said, illegal drugs kill about

17,000 . That’s a little bigger than Robbinsville. (Sorry, Robbinsville.)

Putting that 17,000 illegal drug death number in further perspective, over 22 million Americans copped to using illegal drugs in 2010, according to the government’s 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. And according to that same survey, some 17 million of those users are just - yes, just - smoking marijuana. Math is simple on this one. People who do drugs — including that devil weed — run a one in 1,300 risk of dying each year. (And no one’s died from too much pot, right?)

Furthermore — there’s a lot of furthermores — that 22 million number of drug users in America is based on people older than 12; so take out the pre-teen American population, and what you’re looking at is shocking, namely: One in eight Americans aged 13 and over used illegal drugs in 2010. Which means one in eight Americans are criminals.

Now ...
Now I could end right here and feel I stand on the moral high ground. How could anything that one in eight people do be illegal? Shouldn’t there be a better way to deal with this issue?

But I’m not done. Consider this …

In the fight to stop the use of illegal drugs, the American government

spent over $15 billion in 2009, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and state and local governments spend an additional $25 billion, according to a

CATO Institute study.

And those numbers are the lowest ones I’ve found.

A little simple math yields this: The government spends nearly $2,000 a year on each drug user in their failed attempt to keep drugs off our streets.

Because it is a failure, right? I’m confident I can get my hands on any drug in the next 45 minutes, and I haven’t bought anything illegal since the turn of the century. (And it was just pot.)

In fact, let’s take pot off the table for a moment. Just legalize it already. That leaves the harder stuff. What should we do there?

Well, again, after looking at all the numbers up there, I say legalize ‘em all. Take the money spent trying to keep it off the streets and turn it into treatment and education. You do that, I bet the number of users goes down within half a generation.

Not only that, imagine the reduction in crime if drugs were legalized.

Now I’m sure there’s holes in my argument, and I’m equally sure someone else can take all those numbers I vomited up up there and make them say something else, but from where I’m sitting, America’s stance on drugs only serves to make criminals out of one in eight of us and keeps the spectre of drug violence shining bright in our cities and towns.

Legalize it all, tax it all, education, treatment and patience. Seems a lot smarter than prison, murder and ruined lives.

But that’s just me.
Read Jeff Edelstein every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at jedelstein@trentonian.com,

facebook.com/jeffreyedelstein and twitter.com/jeffedelstein.

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Legalize drugs

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4:45 p.m. CDT, May 31, 2012

I'm so sick and tired of hearing how the mayor and the police superintendent are going to stop the violence in Chicago, violence that is brought on by the insidious drug culture that permeates our streets.

Drug dealers are among the lowest common denominators infecting society. They lack empathy, sympathy, decency, respect for life, productivity and a sense of responsibly over their illegal and amoral actions. They are filthy parasites who feed on the innocence of our youth, sucking them into their anti-culture and destroying their lives.

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Unfortunately, the market that keeps this human detritus in business will continue to exist, and no war on drugs and no amount of criminal persecution will stifle the quest for the unholy profit as long as the market for the products exist.

And this is where it gets complicated, especially by the policymakers who think they're in the know aboutaddictive drugs.

If we really want to eliminate the drug dealers, legalize and regulate the products they pedal. Make the distribution as safe and comprehensive as the sale of alcohol; then as a society, we can deal with the problems of drug addiction the same way we deal with the problems of alcohol addiction. Legalizing drugs will not make me go out and buy them. However, if I wanted to use, I'd find them no matter how illegal they were.

A drug is a drug and alcohol is no exception. Our leaders, unfortunately, think they can throw hundreds of billions of dollars at a drug war that has accomplished nothing.

-- Joseph G. LeSanche, Chicago

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Drug-Legalization Democrat Beats Rep. Silvestre Reyes in Texas Primary

By Rachel Rose Hartman

May 30, 2012

Eight-term Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes lost his bid for re-election in Texas Tuesday night, suffering a tough defeat to former El Paso City Councilman Beto O'Rourke.

"We're going to take this 'can-do' attitude to Washington, D.C. and we're going to get the job done," O'Rourke told supporters as the audience chanted "Beto!" at his election night party Tuesday. "We're taking over from a man who has served El Paso in Washington, D.C. for the last 16 years and there's no two ways about it.... that's a tough job... And for that, we owe Silvestre Reyes our respect and our gratitude."

With all precincts reporting, O'Rourke received 50 percent of the vote to Reyes' 44 percent in the El Paso-area 16th District Democratic primary. O'Rourke's total was just over the 50 percent mark, which was required to avoid a July runoff with Reyes.

Incumbent Reyes championed his experience, his ability to bring federaldollars to the district and his future role protecting Fort Bliss during the Base Realignment and Closure process. He also attacked O'Rourke for his inexperience, his past drunk driving arrests and his support to legalize drug use.

O'Rourke, co-author of "Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico," supports marijuana legalization as a step towards ending the War on Drugs. The primary winner serves as a stark contrast to his opponent when it comes to this issue. Former congressman Reyes worked as a border patrol officer for over 25 years and staunchly opposes drug legalization.

At the tail end of the primary, Reyes ran an ad suggesting that children have more sense than O'Rourke when it comes to drugs. "Legalizing drugs is not the answer. Even our children know that," the television ad stated as children shook their heads and slapped their foreheads in disbelief. Watch that commercial below:

O'Rourke did not make his position on drugs the focus of his campaign, however, but drug legalization advocates touted his position as part of a changing tide on the issue.

"It's increasingly clear that the era of drug policy reform being a political third rail is over," Tom Angell, spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said in a statement early Wednesday morning. "Supporting clearly failed prohibition policies that cause so much crime, violence and corruption is becoming a political liability."

O'Rourke mainly gained traction by running an anti-incumbent campaign focused on ethics and corruption, accusing Reyes of being out of touch, while championing issues such as shortening travel time on bridges to Mexico as a way to boost trade and jobs related to international retail while also focusing on unemployment.

Ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) listed Reyes as a member who steered contracts and money to his family due to his position in office. And the accusation was picked up by the anti-incumbent super PAC, Campaign for Primary Accountability, which ran a television ad on the issue.

A competitive primary took no one by surprise. The incumbent rolled out huge primary endorsements from President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, both of whom campaigned in person for the long-term lawmaker.

O'Rourke is now favored to win the heavily Democratic district this fall.