--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00034Date: 06/21/97 From: ALEX VASAUSKAS Time: 08:35am \/To: JANE KELLEY (Read 2 times) Subj: Marijuana [2/3] [13/15] >>> Part 13 of 15... If Jones manufactures cigarettes which Smith buys and which give him lung cancer, the government forces Jones to defend himself in court against the accusation of having harmed Smith, and forces Taylor (as taxpayer) to pay Smith's medical treatment. So long as we use this formula for managing risks everyone in Taylor's position has an incentive to limit Jones's right to sell cigarettes and Smith's right to smoke them. Suppose, then, that selling and buying cocaine were as legal in January 1996 as in January 1896. Jones sells cocaine, accurately labeled as to composition, side effects, lethal close, and so forth. Smith buys some and dies as a result of using it. Mrs. Smith sues Jones for causing her husband's "wrongful death." Given our mindset, the judge refuses to dismiss the complaint and orders the matter to go to trial; the plaintiff's lawyers retain the most prestigious experts to testify that the "victim" was not responsible for his behavior; the jury imposes a judgment for ruinous compensatory and punitive damages on Jones. In such a legal atmosphere, only the black marketer enjoys the caveat emptor protections of traditional contract. Not surprisingly, bringing a free market in goods and services into being in Russia has turned out to require more than abolishing the Gulag. Respect for private property and private profit, supported by a well-functioning commercial/legal system, is needed as Well. Mutatis mutandis, bringing a free market in drugs into being in America would require more than repealing criminal sanctions against selling and buying drugs. Respect for autonomy and responsibility, supported by a rational tort system, would be needed as well. I fear that we shall not be able or willing to re-embrace a free market in drugs (whose benefits we enjoyed from 1776 until 1914) until the drug war has caused us a great deal more suffering and until we become willing to attribute that suffering to drug laws (and their consequences) rather than to drugs (and their abuse). Steven B. Duke Mr. Duke is the Law of Science and Technology Professor at Yale Law School. He is co-author, with Albert C. Gross, of America's Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade against Drugs (Tarcher Putnam, 1993). Professor Duke pays special attention to the widespread assumption that legalization would bring on huge addiction. And ends by wondering why conservative politicians, with a single exception, are apparently indifferent to what is happening under our noses as a result of the unwon, and unwinnable, war on drugs. "The drug war is not working," says Bill Buckley. That is certainly true if we assume, as he does that the purpose of the drug war is to induce Americans to consume only approved drugs. But as the war wears on, we have to wonder what its purposes really are. If its purpose is to make criminals out of one in three African- American males, it has succeeded. If its purpose is to create one of the highest crime rates in the world-and thus to provide permanent fodder for demagogues who decry crime and promise to do something about it-it is achieving that end. If its purpose is de facto repeal of the Bill of Rights, victory is well in sight. If its purpose is to transfer individual freedom to the central government, it is carrying that off as well as any of our real wars did. If its purpose is to destroy our inner cities by making them war zones, triumph is near. Most of the results of the drug war, of which the essayists here complain, were widely observed during alcohol prohibition. Everyone should have known that the same fate would follow if the Prohibition approach were merely transferred to different drugs. It has been clear for over a decade that Milton Friedman's warnings about Prohibition redux have been borne out (see his "Prohibition and Drugs," Newsweek, May 1, 1972). At some point, the consequences of a social policy become so palpable that deliberate continuation of the policy incorporates those consequences into the policy. We are near if not past that point with drug prohibition. For forty years following the repeal of alcohol prohibition, we treated drug prohibition as we did other laws against vice: we didn't take it very seriously. As we were extricating ourselves from the Vietnam War, however, Richard Nixon declared "all-out global war on the drug menace," and the militarization of the problem began. After Ronald Reagan redeclared that war, and George Bush did the same, we had a drug-war budget that was 1,000 times what it was when Nixon first discovered the new enemy. The objectives of the drug war are obscured in order to prevent evaluation. A common claim, for example, is that prohibition is part of the nation's effort to prevent serious crime. Bill Clinton's drug czar, Dr. Lee Brown, testified before Congress: "Drugs - especially addictive, hard-core drug use - are behind much of the crime we see on our streets today, both those crimes committed by users to finance their lifestyles and those committed by traffickers and dealers fighting . for territory and turf.... Moreover, there is a level of fear in our communities that is, I believe, unprecedented in our history ..." >>> Continued to next message... ___ X Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 X --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: Who's Askin'? (1:17/75) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00035Date: 06/21/97 From: ALEX VASAUSKAS Time: 08:35am \/To: JANE KELLEY (Read 2 times) Subj: Marijuana [2/3] [14/15] >>> Part 14 of 15... If these remarks had been preceded by two words, "Prohibition of," the statement would have been correct, and the political reverberations would have been deafening. Instead, Dr. Brown implied that drug consumption is by itself responsible for "turf wars" and the other enumerated evils, an implication which he and every other drug warrior know is false. The only possibility more daunting than that our leaders are dissembling is that they might actually believe the nonsense they purvey. I have little to add to the catalog of drug-war casualties in the other essays assembled here. I do, however, see another angle of entry for Mr. Buckley's efforts at "quantification." I have argued elsewhere that the drug war is responsible for at least half of our serious crime. A panel of experts consulted by U.S. News & World Report put the annual dollar cost of America's crime at $674 billion. Half of that, $337 billion, was the total federal budget as recently as 1975. The crime costs of drug prohibition alone may equal 150 per cent of the entire federal welfare budget for 1995. I also think Mr. Buckley understates the nonquantifiable loss of what he quaintly refers to as "amenities." Not only is it nearly suicidal to walk alone in Central Park at night, it is impossible in sections of some cities safely to leave one's home, or to remain there. Some Americans sleep in their bathtubs hoping they are bullet-proof. Prohibition-generated violence is destroying large sections of American cities. We can have our drug war or we can have healthy cities; we cannot have both. In this collection of essays, we critics have focused on the costs of the drug war. The warriors could justly complain if we failed to mention the benefits. So let's take a took at the "benefit" side of the equation. Were it not for the drug war, the prohibitionists say, we might be a nation of zombies. The DEA pulled the figure of 60 million from the sky: that's how many cocaine users they say we would have if it weren't for prohibition. Joseph Califano's colleague at the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Dr. Herbert Kleber, a former assistant to William Bennett, puts the number of cocaine users after repeal at a more modest 20 to 25 million. In contrast, government surveys suggest that only about 3 million Americans currently use cocaine even occasionally and fewer than 500,000 use it weekly. The prohibitionists' scenarios have no basis either in our history or in other cultures. In many countries, heroin and cocaine are cheap and at least de facto legal. Mexico is awash in cheap drugs, yet our own State Department says that Mexico does "not have a serious drug problem." Neither cocaine nor heroin is habitually consumed by more than a small fraction of the residents of any country in the world. There is no reason to suppose that Americans would be the single exception. Lee Brown used to rely on alcohol prohibition as proof that legalization would addict the nation, asserting that alcohol consumption "shot straight up" when Prohibition was repeated. He no longer claims that, it having been pointed out to him that alcohol consumption increased only about 25 per cent in the years following repeal. Yet even assuming, contrary to that experience, that ingestion of currently illegal drugs would double or triple following repeal, preventing such increased consumption still cannot be counted a true benefit of drug prohibition. After repeal, the drugs would be regulated; their purity and potency would be disclosed on the package, as Mr. Buckley points out, together with appropriate warnings. Deaths from overdoses and toxic reactions would be reduced, not increased. Moreover, as Richard Cowan has explained (NR, "How the Narcs Created Crack," Dec. 5, 1986), the drugs consumed after repeal would be less potent than those ingested under prohibition. Before alcohol prohibition, we were a nation of beer drinkers. Prohibition pushed us toward hard liquor, a habit from which we are still recovering. Before the Harrison Act, many Americans took their cocaine in highly diluted forms, such as Coca-Cola. We would also end the cruel practices described by Ethan Nadelmann wherein we deny pain medication to those who need it, preclude the medical use of marijuana, and compel drug users to share needles and thus to spread deadly diseases. The proportion of users who would consume the drugs without substantial health or other problems would be greatly increased. In comparison to any plausible post-repeal scenario, therefore, there simply are no health benefits achieved by prohibition. Given the forum, I should perhaps confess that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a conservative. As an outsider, therefore, perhaps I can be pardoned for my inability to see consistency in the positions conservatives commonly take on drugs and related issues. I can understand how one who believes that government should force us to lead proper lives can, albeit mistakenly, support drug prohibition. But I cannot comprehend how any conservative can support the drug war. That is my major mystery. I am also perplexed by some subordinate, mini-mysteries, of which here are a few: - Why do so many conservatives preach "individual responsibility" yet ardently punish people for the chemicals they consume and thus deny the right that gives meaning to the responsibility) Many of these same conservatives would think it outrageous for the government to decree the number of calories we ingest or the kind of exercise we get, even though such decrees would be aimed at preserving our lives, keeping us >>> Continued to next message... ___ X Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 X --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: Who's Askin'? (1:17/75) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00036Date: 06/21/97 From: ALEX VASAUSKAS Time: 08:35am \/To: JANE KELLEY (Read 2 times) Subj: Marijuana [2/3] [15/15] >>> Part 15 of 15... productive, and reducing the drain on scarce medical resources. The incongruity of these positions is mystifying, and so is the willingness of conservatives, in order to protect people from their own folly, to impose huge costs in death, disease, crime, corruption, and destruction of civil liberties upon others who are entirely innocent: people who do not partake of forbidden drugs. Newt Gingrich, Charles Murray, and other conservatives are rightly concerned about the absence of fathers in the homes of so many of America's youngsters. Where are those fathers? At least half a million are in prison, often for nothing worse than possessing drugs. - Countless conservatives revere the right to one's property. Yet many conservatives support drug forfeiture as gladly as liberals. Congress has made a criminal prosecution unnecessary for persons with property who are associated (even if indirectly) with illicit drugs. An apartment house may be forfeited if a tenant grows a marijuana plant in his bathroom. A grandmother's home may be forfeited if a grandson hides drugs in the basement which he sells to his friends. The Supreme Court has said that there are constitutional limits on forfeitures, but it has yet to find any. With the notable exception of Congressman Henry Hyde (see his book, Forfeiting Our Property Rights), most legislators are unconcerned about drawing a line. - Many conservatives strongly support schemes to "devolve" matters from the Federal Government to state and local governments. Yet there does not appear to be a single conservative politician in America who applies this principle to drug prohibition. The mystery deepens when we remember that this is precisely the way we handled alcohol prohibition. When we repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, we didn't declare that all forms of alcohol distribution were beyond the reach of prohibition; in the Twenty-First Amendment, we simply let each state decide how it wanted to handle alcohol. Some remained dry. Many devolved the issue to cities and counties, some of which have elected to maintain prohibition to this very day. Judge Sweet and others make a powerful case for applying this approach to other drugs in addition to alcohol. Why hasn't any conservative in elective office at least suggested that it be considered? The only benefit to America in maintaining prohibition is the psychic comfort we derive from having a permanent scapegoat. But why did we have to pick an enemy the warring against which is so self-destructive? We would be better off blaming our ills on celestial invaders flying about in saucers. ___ X Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 X --- Maximus 3.01 * Origin: Who's Askin'? (1:17/75) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00037Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 10:35am \/To: JANE KELLEY (Read 2 times) Subj: Adhd JK>Mark, this contradicts what you said above and is essentially the JK>same damn thing that the researcher at Swedish Hospital told me JK>several years ago! That new virus(es?) (i?) (what is the correct JK>plural of the critters?) are hard to find. Considering that new virii are found nearly every year with new flu strains I find that laughable. --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00038Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 10:18am \/To: DIA SPRIGGS (Read 2 times) Subj: Re: Genetic Religion??!!! DS>I'm not tolerating the whole thread. None of this is alternative DS>medicine. I have asked, begged, pleaded and reasoned with all of you DS>over and over again and still it seems that it can't get into some DS>heads this is NOT the place to talk about racial, sexual, religious DS>preferences etc. This echo is about ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE...PERIOD. DS>There is a great invention called the internet and email that is DS>readily available to everyone and people can spend all the time they DS>want writing copious messages about whatever they wish to rant and DS>rave about. I suggest people start using that media. Hmmmm...that had nothing to do with alternative medicine, either. :-^ --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00039Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 10:24am \/To: DIA SPRIGGS (Read 2 times) Subj: Re: lucy DS>Where is the Altmed thread here? Is there any Jewish, Russian or any DS>other mention of such alternative medicine? If you want to talk DS>about non altmed things, please use email. You'd have to quote for anyone to know what this pertains to. Still, alternative medicine is generally not a white american male dominated area. Statements of ethnic or regional import ARE within the scope of Altmed, in my opinion, therefore. Maybe if you posted a *subject* instead of complaining a new thread will evolve. Or is it up to everyone else to entertain and/or inform you? --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00040Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 10:52am \/To: JANE KELLEY (Read 2 times) Subj: Marijuana [2/3] JK>AV>Knowing that 36 states have passed legislation recognizing JK>AV>marijuana's therapeutic value; [9,10] and JK>Legistlators can be easily swayed by constituents who vote. Yeah, that's called democracy. Go figure. JK>AV>Also knowing that the only available access to legal JK>AV>marijuana which was through the Food and Drug JK>AV>Administration' s Investigational New Drug Program has been JK>AV>closed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services since JK>AV>1992; [11] and JK>Good use of common sense. We have more than enough teenagers using JK>the stuff now. We don't need any stamp of approval on this noxious JK>weed at all. Yeah, so lets have people suffer so that parents can be free of responsibility. Please! I'd dare say that the casual use of marijuana is partly responsible to the laziness of parents...and the false and misleading "information" given to kids about pot has made them suspicious of ANY information given them about ANY drug. After all, the kids will think, if their gonna lie to me about this...they might very well lie to me about that. Truth is a GOOD thing, lies are ALWAYS bad. Do you actually believe that kids are going to be swayed into using pot because cancer patients are allowed RIGHTFULLY to use it? I'd say they would have more of a respect for the government as a whole for its doing the just and caring thing, instead of its doing the illogical and cruel thing..all in the name of *saving our stupid kids*. You see, kids are smart. They actually see logically because they haven't been jaded by hypocracy, YET, like their parents have. --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00041Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 10:32am \/To: LAURENT DE FONTENAY (Read 2 times) Subj: marijuana/men breast canc LD> GL> breast cancer. Don't smoke marjuana it is harmful for your lungs LD> GL> and your health. Cooking it is not good either It is illegal LD> GL> too. It's not illegal in California if you need it for medical purposes. The small amount needed to ease the ill effects of chemo-therpy when smoked is hardly harmful to the lungs or ones health, either. So, I'd dare say Gayle is all wet on all counts. LD>Sure, I'd certainly go with all of that... But cooking the stuff! LD>Why would one want to do that? Well, eating it is O.K. Although the *buzz* is a little long lasting. Thus, why over medicate. This is the same reason that I'm against Marinol. A couple of hits off a joint is preferable to taking a pill because it can be done as needed and give immediate relief of nausea. --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00042Date: 06/21/97 From: STEVE KEMP Time: 11:03am \/To: DIA SPRIGGS (Read 2 times) Subj: Re: No "Red Indians" here DS>I am always interested in alternative practices of any group, culture DS>etc..many of the old methods of treating and preventing disease are DS>very valid....lately people have been getting off on tangents that DS>are NOT related to any medicine...alternative or otherwise. Well, I'm new here..but the "Red Indian" thread, in my opinion, is a short side issue that WAS valid. I would think that the subject of Alternative Medicine WOULD often go into other territory. Law, government, ethics, religion, on and on could come into play quite easily. AltMed is "on the edge" and thus is apt to often come into conflict with one or more of these areas. --- * CMPQwk #1.42* UNREGISTERED EVALUATION COPY --- HyperMail! v1.22 * Origin: CENTRAL PARK WEST - FOLSOM CA - 916.351.1476 PPI 33.6! (1:203/1476) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 257 ALTERN. MEDICINE Ref: EAR00043Date: 06/21/97 From: BOB MOYLAN Time: 11:11am \/To: JASON HUFF (Read 2 times) Subj: A Drink Or 2 A Day Jason Huff (On 17 Jun 97) was seen scratching his head and saying to Jane Kelley: JH> i'm new here, and i saw something that confused me, maybe you can help JH> clear it up for me. ------8<------ JH> that first part you say there is some genetic protection for native JH> americans, but they currently do, and always have had a problem with JH> alcohol. and i don't understand your rebuttal to Bob's comment at JH> all. how does the whites introducing alcohol have anything at all to JH> do with their supposed genetic protection? JH> i'll look forward to reading your reply, and clearing things up for JH> me. I usually look forward to Jane's replies. Unfortunately they very seldom clarify _anything_ she's previously said. Bob ... Happiness is a tagline you haven't seen a hundred times already. --- PPoint 2.03 * Origin: What's The Point? Virginia Beach, VA USA (1:275/429.5)