Have Marijuana Tests Resulted in Tens of Thousands of False Convictions?
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Trying to prevent crime by criminalizing victimless actions only creates more crime.
In any case, I'm more comfortable with these scary and unlikely exceptions than with the government arbitrarily trying to prevent criminal acts by criminalizing things they believe (without sound research) may potentially lead to some harmful side effects.
That is much scarier than a nuclear reactor built in a back yard.
HOWEVER, if we say that anything should be legal as long as it doesn't encroach on someone else's freedom, where do you draw the line with hard drugs such as PCP/Crystal Meth that may increase violent tendencies with the user?
I could potentially see many making the argument that legalizing certain things simply hurts the lower class or keeps them in poverty, such as crack, etc. Should there be rules protecting people who aren't educated enough to make good long term decisions for themselves?
Let's say I have a 1,000 acre ranch and I build a nuclear reactor on it. I go to extreme lengths to make sure it's safe and secure. As far as my neighbors are concerned my operating a nuclear reactor has no impact on them. However, now I have the potential, should I choose, to make nuclear weapons, radiological "dirty" bombs, or otherwise contaminate the general vicinity (for potentially very large values of vicinity) with radioactive byproducts. It is for this reason that the operation of nuclear reactors is highly regulated.
One could imagine how this argument might apply to personal drug use. Drug use itself may not instantly impact anyone else but suppose that, as in personally operating a nuclear reactor, it enabled individuals to have a far greater negative impact on society than other normal human behaviors might.
I don't buy it and I'm not sure if that's the argument that runTIME was making, but it's an interesting argument I think.
Example: If I hold a knife in my hand, it is more likely that I will hurt someone than without it. This deterrent causes people to be more careful when holding knives.
Holding the knife itself is not a deterrent, just as using a substance is not in itself a deterrent, but the possibility of hurting someone else is greater.
I am surprised, as Judge Alsup has a good reputation in general...but an opinion is only as good as the quality of the data it's based on. The SFPD Drug Lab has turned out to be disastrously unreliable, and was shut down a couple of months ago. http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/ca/massullo_order.pdf If you are interested in reading about the conclusions of the judge who investigated the goings-on.
The UN wasn't founded until 1945. How did he do this work for the UN in the late 30s? Should that be late 40s?
Founded in 1921
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http://vimeo.com/10931182 (Alicia Danforth - Little Pieces of a Big Dream: Participants’ Stories from a Cancer Anxiety Study with Psilocybin)
http://vimeo.com/10918637 (Bob Wold - Suicide or Psychedelics)
Both videos are a lot more intellectually interesting than 99% of the stuff that gets posted on HN. In fact they're both a lot more compelling than the average TED talk.
Or check out this podcast by the founders of Erowid, The Role of Drug Geeks in Society:
http://www.matrixmasters.net/archive/Erowid/026-ErowidDrugGe...
I realize this stuff will never be popular on HN because it's just too long and it's somewhat difficult to fully grok, but nevertheless I think there is a lot of really cool stuff out there.
Like that article on DFS previously -- it's good to know about abuses in the system so you can be ready if/when it happens to you.
I imagine any articles about writing the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper would be dead pretty quickly.
You can't down vote articles.