Legalize Heroin

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 14 Jun 2001 12:00:00 GMT
A Man and His Dog is a nice story/joke I received via email.

damaged justice at Music for Misanthropes - Wednesday, June 13, 2001 - Ian extols the virtues of grapefruit juice, but not too loudly. If the gummint finds out he's having too much fun, they'll ban it. [MfM]

This Friday is the deadline for passing Ron Paul's H.J.Res.38, "Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Health and Human Services on December 28, 2000, relating to standards for privacy of individually identifiable health information." These so-called "privacy" rules actually do exactly the opposite. They require medical providers to turn over all medical information to the federal government. They establish a medical ID number that will be used to track this information. To learn more, visit pages at defendyourprivacy.com and thelibertycommittee.org. The Libertarian Party is also supporting H.J.Res.38. I received email from them yesterday, but the press release hasn't yet appeared on their web site.

David H. Freedman at Technology Review - The Light Brigade - Weapons-grade lasers are almost ready to deploy. Strangely, the biggest complaints from human rights groups are that they could be used to blind people. More like vaporize their heads.

Once a newly launched missile is located by conventional sensors such as radar, the hard part for the Airborne Laser is placing the basketball-sized beam on the streaking missile's fuel compartment--then holding it there for the five or ten seconds it takes to work its magic, all while atmospheric turbulence distorts the beam. The weapon therefore enlists computerized systems that monitor the target image, calculate the distortion and then adjust the beam to cancel it out.

The advantage is that each missile-killing shot will burn about $10,000 worth of chemical fuel (aircraft should carry enough fuel for about 30 shots), compared to the $1 million cost of a conventional antiballistic missile. "We'll be worldwide deployable as early as 2008," says air force colonel Lynn Wills, who heads Airborne Laser acquisition. Wills expects to field seven aircraft, two of which will be in the air over hot spots at any given time. Early prototypes of the laser and targeting systems are already undergoing testing at TRW's secluded facility north of San Diego. A prototype of an integrated 747 aircraft and laser is scheduled for a maiden flight and test firing in 2004.

Nick Davies at the Guardian Unlimited - Make heroin legal - Many of the problems associated with class A drugs are due to prohibition, not the drugs themselves. Solution: legalize them. I only skimmed this. It starts with a reminder that the drug laws were created in response to bald-faced lies to our congress critters. [grabbe]

Now, move on to the allegation that heroin kills its users. The evidence is clear: you can fatally overdose on heroin. But the evidence is equally clear, that - contrary to the claims of politicians - it is not particularly easy to do so. Opiates tend to suppress breathing, and doctors who prescribe them for pain relief take advantage of this to help patients with lung problems. But the surprising truth is that, in order to use opiates to suppress breathing to the point of death, you have to exceed the normal dose to an extreme degree. Heroin is unusually safe, because - contrary to what those US congressmen were told in 1924 - the gap between a therapeutic dose and a fatal dose is unusually wide.

...

Take away the lies and the real danger becomes clear - not the drugs, but the black market which has been created directly by the policy of prohibition. If ever there is a war crimes trial to punish the generals who have gloried in this slaughter of the innocent, the culprits should be made to carve out in stone: "There is no drug known to man which becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals."

Tony Smith at The Resister Transmeta to launch 1GHz Crusoe on 26 June - they're late, but they're here. The TM5500 and TM5800 will ship at PC Expo at the end of the month. [wes]

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