Same Tired Old Drug War Rhetoric
Claire Wolfe at Sierra Times - A Cut of Catastrophe - f.e.m.a. investigates a minor earthquake in the country and offers handouts to all and sundry. The particulars are fictional, but f.e.m.a. really does this kind of useless garbage. [sierra]
Claire Wolfe - Think Free to Live Free - Claire's new book is available from Loompanics. $14.95. Yay! Remember to change your "Location" to outside of Washington state so you won't pay taxes.
William Bennett at the Wall Street Journal via MAPInc - The Drug War Worked Once - It Can Again - George Bush the Elder's drug czar continues his attempt to convince America that destroying our hard-won liberties will end drug abuse. I wrote the following letter to the editor:
Prohibition Doesn't Work
Yawn. William Bennett's article in the May 15 WSJ repeats the same tired old drug war rhetoric. If we run the Bill of Rights through the shredder just one more time, we can end drug abuse. Prohibition didn't work 80 years ago, and it won't work now. Its primary results are prisons filled with peaceful people, obscenely rich criminal organizations, and corrupt cops and politicians. I own my body. The state has no place telling me what I may or may not ingest. End the war on freedom, er... some drugs. End it today.
Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com
Virginia Postrel at The Scene - Drug Deal - Comments on the f.d.a. advisory panel's recommendation to allow over-the-counter sales of Claritin, Allegra, and Zyrtec.
In fact, the original law establishing prescription requirements, passed in 1938, was sold as a way to help consumers make informed choices about their medications, not as a way to transfer those choices to physicians, drug makers, and regulators. The goal, W. G. Campbell, then head of the FDA, told a Senate committee, was merely "to make self-medication safe." The government broke that promise. As economic historian Peter Temin recounted in his 1980 book, Taking Your Medicine, "The agency moved within six months of the bill's passage to curtail self-medication sharply and thereafter used a substantial and increasing proportion of its drug resources to enforce its imposed limitations." The agency created a new class of medicines that could be sold only by prescription--a category that has greatly expanded over the succeeding decades. In doing so, Temin wrote, it "appointed doctors as the consumers' purchasing agents." While hardly obliterating that idea, the panel's allergy-drug recommendation at least establishes some limits.
Joseph Eisenschmidt at Ohio Valley IMC - The African American - A call to protest today in Cincinatti, not necessarily peacefully. A resounding response from proff daddy.
Pierre Lemieux at Laissez Faire City Times - Tyranny Laundering: Why Big Brother Attacks "Money Laundering" - Mr. Lemieux appropriately names one of the invented crimes of the modern-day state.
The concerted effort of the most powerful states in the world to fight victimless crimes and crimes against the state, like tax evasion, is nothing but an effort to hide an increase in their taxing and surveillance powers. It is nothing but tyranny laundering.
Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - Little Things: Harassment by Laws and Law Enforcement - once we allow the state to get away with making crimes out of victimless consensual behavior, it gets worse and worse. Some thoughts on the Supreme Court's recent seat-belt arrest decision.
The only behaviors that should be illegal in this country -- the only laws that are just and justifiable -- are actions that threaten or use physical force (either directly or indirectly) against an unwilling person. Robbery, theft, assault, rape, fraud and the like are the clearest examples of this principle. The police should only be authorized to make arrests that protect our rights against violation. They should never have the power to arrest, harass, or otherwise intimidate citizens engaged in peaceful, voluntary behavior.
...
Unjust law enforcement logically follows from unjust laws.
Reuters via Wired - Medical Editor Rips Into FDA - One good reason that the f.d.a. must die. [grabbe]
"It is an impossible conflict for safety issues to be overseen by a center that receives funding from industry to review and approve new drugs," Horton added.
Dave Winer's DaveNet - Foreword to O'Reilly's XML-RPC Book - a good account of the birth of Dave's first internet protocol. [script]
