2010:warmest year ever since records began

[KitemanSA]

Apart from that, when you consider that drugs follow a similar rule to lawyers (the more of them you have, the more of them you need! ) perhaps you are mistaken in claiming the problem is suppression.

Once again you have that backwards. What follows the same definition as lawyers is suppression. The more you suppress, the more you need to suppress.

Repeated evidence supports the realization that for addictive drugs, the easier it is to obtain them, the FEWER addicts get created. The prime creators of addicts are other addicts PUSHING it on others to get a money sourse to maintain their own supply.

[MSimon]

Yes we do, it's don't let it start in the first place! EVERYONE is addicted to Heroin. They just don't know it because they haven't had a chance to try it.

Where do you get your information? The Government propaganda agencies? The very people who depend on this nonsense to maintain funding?

Fewer than 10% who try heroin get addicted. It was why Bayer thought they had invented a wonder drug. The first 10 people they tried it on did not get addicted.

Funny. You get that Global Warming is a wallet extraction scheme. You do not get that the Drug War is also a wallet extraction scheme. Exact same MO. The government invents a scare and then demands funds to fight the menace.

And you know what else is funny? You can't reason with a Warmist or a Drug Warrior. Their respective faiths are unshakable.

Faith is a wonderful thing. Faith in Government is.... Well let us just say that a conservative with faith in government is either a contradiction in terms or the "conservative" is really a progressive in disguise.

[TallDave]

BTW, I'm a believer in AGW - Ruddiman's paper on the subject was convincing. What's also interesting is that we'd apparently be nuts-deep in a scheduled (well, cyclical) ice age if it hadn't happened. (Page 3, Fig. 1, Graphs A&B)

There's certainly some small AGW effect, but I'm not sure I believe it's large enough to prevent an Ice Age. The Earth has seen Ice Ages at CO2 concentrations 10x higher than today's. And this study has some major flaws. It seems to ignore soil microbes entirely, and it says this:

Because half of the industrial-era increases in CO2 and CH4 has occurred within the last 30 years, the ocean has not yet had time to register a large portion of the equilibrium warming, and this future warming is still ‘in the pipeline’ (Figure8c).

This implies we've been building up a huge (and increasing) radiative imbalance which will cause the Earth to continue to accumulate heat until equilibrium is reached at some higher temp. But the data since 2003 (when that paper was published) argue that no such imbalance exists. The oceans have not been warming, and the ERBE data suggests the radiative imbalance is not large.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/t ... cean-heat/

[JLawson]

BTW, I'm a believer in AGW - Ruddiman's paper on the subject was convincing. What's also interesting is that we'd apparently be nuts-deep in a scheduled (well, cyclical) ice age if it hadn't happened. (Page 3, Fig. 1, Graphs A&B)

There's certainly some small AGW effect, but I'm not sure I believe it's large enough to prevent an Ice Age. The Earth has seen Ice Ages at CO2 concentrations 10x higher than today's. And this study has some major flaws. It seems to ignore soil microbes entirely, and it says this:

Because half of the industrial-era increases in CO2 and CH4 has occurred within the last 30 years, the ocean has not yet had time to register a large portion of the equilibrium warming, and this future warming is still ‘in the pipeline’ (Figure8c).

This implies we've been building up a huge (and increasing) radiative imbalance which will cause the Earth to continue to accumulate heat until equilibrium is reached at some higher temp. But the data since 2003 (when that paper was published) argue that no such imbalance exists. The oceans have not been warming, and the ERBE data suggests the radiative imbalance is not large.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/t ... cean-heat/

LOL. My thinking on global warming is that if we DIDN'T have it, we'd be in deep snow at this point. I'm a believer in AGW, to an extent - but the temps we have NOW are about the upper extent of that belief, and I also think the sun's activity (or lack thereof, considering the current lack of sunspot activity and low solar flux numbers) contribute considerably to the issue.

Frankly, as far as timelines go we're mayflies trying to figure out what's next as a cloud passes in front of the sun.

[KitemanSA]

Drugs, CREATE addiction. By not suppressing them, are you not increasing the probability that more people will become addicted?

Actually, this is not true. If you place drugs beside a person, that person will not become addicted. Drugs do not cause addiction. People pursuading others to take drugs cause addiction. And in most cases, the people doing the pursuading are other addicts looking for a source of money to maintain their own over priced addiction. If the drugs were available at reasonable price, the number of addicts created in that vacinity would reduce to almost nothing. Many events have demonstrated this phenomenon.

I would say the answer to this question can be found by examining the British Opium trade in China. At some point there was relatively few opium addicts. Eventually, there were so many that they had tstart killing them to save their nation.

The British in this case take the place of the "other addicts" and they did it for a VERY cynical reason. The emperor of China at the time would not let the British import anything legally to earn their gold back. The Brits were sending tons of it to China for Chinese goods and couldn't earn it back, so they used the drug trade as a tool of war to 1, get their money back, and 2, disrupt the government of China. If the emperor had allowed the drug trade (which was illegal in China at the time) and put a reasonable tarriff on the drugs, his family might still be in power.

The notion that tolerance of drugs would be beneficial seems contradictory to the historical facts.

Look at all of history, not just the part you want to bolster your argument.

[KitemanSA]

Regardless of the outcome, it is dishonest to claim my intention was to burn my wife's butt.

Not your intent, merely your responsibilty. And your intent does not in any way absolve you of your responsibility. The road to hell is paved with such irresponsibility.

[KitemanSA]

I assume you are talking about crime prevention. The fact that we still have rapes and murders after thousands of years of trying to minimize it.
No, I know you are talking about drug interdiction, but you are failing to concede that your argument applies exactly to crime in general.

The argument that because we cannot prevent all crime(drugs), we must stop trying to prevent crime(drugs) , is just plain silly.

Aha! It finally comes out. You are confused. Drug use is NOT a crime, it is a vice. The two are completely different things. They can both be made "felonies" by a stupid legal system, but they are physically and morally DIFFERENT things. And when you confuse them, and apply the kind of remedy that is appropriate for crimes, you get the adverse consequences being discussed.

People have the right to voluntary action. When you violate someone elses volunteer status (murder, rape) you are committing a crime. (Morality)

Some things may be bad for you. If you violate YOURSELF, (drugs) you are indulging in vice. (Ethics)

In America, all three activities are felonies (Legal, and thus usually stupid!)

[MSimon]

A nice site re: the China Opium trade:

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html

and its companion:

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boodleboys1.html

A little clue is in order. The Brits encouraged China to fight the opium trade. Then worked to deliver as much as they could to China. Why?

The Opium Trade
"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us."
-- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

The Brits grew the opium in India and SHIPped it to China.

======================

So how about some history: Americans at one point in our history consumed an average of 40 GALLONS a year of alcohol. As life got easier that rate of consumption declined considerably.

So is it possible that the real determinate of drug use overall is not availability but poverty? i.e. mind alteration helps the poor endure their misery.

I have never seen any studies on that. And I have been watching the topic for decades.

[93143]

Americans at one point in our history consumed an average of 40 GALLONS a year of alcohol.

Gallons of what? Beer? Wine? Hard?

Neat?

I'm curious... 40 gallons per annum isn't a lot of beer (<1.2 per day if you assume one is 12 fl. oz.), but it's quite a bit of bourbon...

[MSimon]

Americans at one point in our history consumed an average of 40 GALLONS a year of alcohol.

Gallons of what? Beer? Wine? Hard?

Neat?

I'm curious... 40 gallons per annum isn't a lot of beer (<1.2 per day if you assume one is 12 fl. oz.), but it's quite a bit of bourbon...

I asked the question on a list I'm on and was reminded that drug use does not vary much with respect to population or economic condition (in America) so I'm not going to put in the effort to track down the 40 gallons.

[93143]

Okay, no problem - not the most important question I've ever asked...

[Aero]

GOOGLE
Americans at one point in our history consumed an average of 40 GALLONS a year of alcohol

I found a maximum of 29 gallons per year, mostly beer, no data before 1790, but the early colonists didn't believe in drinking water. The lack of sanitation in Europe at the time left the colonists convinced that water was the cause of a raft of maladies, and didn't consider that clean water would be different.

[Diogenes]

Drug crime is rather unusual.

In what we normally think of as crime there is a perpetrator and a victim. The perp tries to make the victim do something against his will.

With drug crime the victim is the perpetrator and there is no conflict of wills. Just a business transaction.

No victim.



In a court of law they have the concept of hearsay. It means the testimony of people without first hand knowledge is inadmissible, and completely disregarded.

I have personal first hand knowledge of this issue and I can attest that there are indeed victims of illegal narcotics. I can name so many different types of victim and the different ways in which they were victimized that I cannot help but regard the statement as absurd.

Now you will contend they are not the victim of drugs, but instead are the victim of interdiction.

At this point I just don't know what to say except that I disagree.

There are always "useful idiots" to use Stalin's clever turn of phrase. Which is to say: what ever you think you are doing, objectively you are supporting the cartels. We didn't get rid of the American alcohol cartels by intensifying alcohol prohibition. But at least in some respects people were smarter back then.

We didn't get rid of them at all. We just took the profit out of that one business. The Kennedy family went on to use their illegal drug profits to invest in other things, and they remain rich (and corrupting our government) to this very day.

It falls into the same category as the useful idiots who promote socialism to help the poor. And the error in thinking is the same: if we put enough guns and power in the hands of the state we can fix this.

As it is properly regarded an issue of Law enforcement and Crime prevention, the government is the entity which is mandated to perform this task. This is not equivalent to demanding government intervention in issues that are NOT part of the governments mandate.

What tickles me is that the progressives say - we can fix the economic order with enough government power. While our erstwhile "conservatives" say - we can fix the social order with state power. What can the state do reasonably well? Kill people and break things.

Economic meddling is outside the proper mandate of the government as defined by the principles in our constitution.

As for the allegation that conservatives wish to use the power of the government to fix the social order, the accurate description is that the conservatives wish to STOP the government from interfering with the social order.

You keep repeating your accusation and I keep correcting you, but I am confident you will go ahead and keep repeating them anyway.

As an example of what I'm talking about, the Social conservatives want the government to quit paying women to be welfare queens. Quit funding Abortion, Quit promoting immoral and disgusting principles in the schools, quit LYING about what are laws really say, quit trying to transform a sexual fetish into a new protected class, and quit undermining institutions that promote good behavior, like the Boy Scouts of America.

Did you know that the reporting of all transactions of over $10,000 was a drug war measure? Money laundering don't you know. Well our current Congress has lowered the threshold to $600. Swell. Just swell.

Now you are getting into an area of this issue where I feel your points are valid, and I am concerned.

What ever power you give the State will eventually be used against you and your interests. And you know this in every context except for the drug war exception. But to think there is a drug war exception is magical thinking.

Now you're going off the rails again. It is self evident that the people must give the government some power. A country with a powerless government is non-functional. What needs to be done is to constrain the government to do only those things which are necessary and proper for it to do. As I regard the issue of drugs to be that of crime prevention and law enforcement, It falls within the mandate of what the government is authorized and empowered to do.

Suppose for some odd reason the state takes an interest in you and the interest is not benign. What is the easiest way to violate your liberties with little or no recourse? Accuse you of a drug crime. Then the search and seizure rules go out the door. Especially if they bring some drugs with them to make sure you are guilty. There is no reliable way to protect yourself from a status crime. Because possession is 100% of the law in those cases. Of course as a suspected dope fiend the government will take away your children. To protect them from the dope. And even if you eventually get it all resolved in your favor you will have months and possibly years of family trauma to deal with. Why it is enough to drive people to drugs.

Now this part I agree with you on. The Government has gone too far, and is doing things which I regard as completely illegal. It needs to be reined in. On that I agree.

Well. It can't happen here. Except for the fact that we have a very vocal minority (probably a majority for now) cheering them on. And it has happened more than once (see Rampart scandal Los Angeles for one example). But for now it will be confined to "those people" until you are used to it. And then it will expand. In just the way $10,000 became $600.

Thanks for putting such powerful tools in the hands of our Masters.

Now that's not fair. The government is violating the law in a h3ll of a lot more places than the drug issue. You cannot claim that all of the government various excesses are caused by the drug war. They already had the power when they started it, and they were already violating rights and laws long before they started it.

[Diogenes]

Drugs, CREATE addiction.

simply: no

Addiction is a state of mind; the predilection for it is in the mind by a likely inherited factor. Drugs don't "hook" everybody who takes them; they hook those who need something to fill a hole. Even if drugs had not been invented, these people would be addicted to something.

How in the world can you say that? By what bit of arcane wizardry could you possibly have come by the knowledge that drugs addicts have some sort of social genotype?

To assert that if Drug X hadn't come along, they would be addicted to Drug "Y" because they needed to fill a hole in their soul, is just a non sequitur.

Drugs were originally plant toxins evolved by the plants to kill or incapacitate predators. The Plant Toxins work because they are modifications of chemicals normally used in the plant's organic processes. Because all life on earth is interrelated, a lot of the biological chemicals between species are conserved, sometimes with only minor modifications. As a result, a chemical designed to regulate an organic process in one species, can often affect organic processes in other species.

The reason drugs are addictable is because human cells have binding sites for similar chemicals that the body ordinarily uses to regulate it's own internal blood/cellular chemistry. Drugs mimic secretions of the endocrinal system. Genetic diversity is the reason that some people are immuned to addiction and others are not.

And really, we've pointed out the experimental programs in other countries to give away drugs to whoever wants, and they have REDUCED the number of addicts.

Yeah, like "Needles Park" in Switzerland where every morning the coroner's staff comes to the park to clean up all the dead bodies lying around from the overdoses. I can see how killing of the addicts would reduce drug usage. Puts an entirely different light on "REDUCED the number of addicts."

Last I heard, they canceled the program.

You seem incapable of or perhaps unwilling to read the literature.[/b]

Yeah, i'm a moron.

Listen, if Boeing publishes a report stating that a Lockheed aircraft is superior to theirs, I'll believe them. If they say instead, that their aircraft is superior to the Lockheed, I'll take it with a grain of salt.

I feel the same way about literature from people with an agenda, especially when the conclusions contradict my own first hand knowledge.

[Diogenes]

Apart from that, when you consider that drugs follow a similar rule to lawyers (the more of them you have, the more of them you need! ) perhaps you are mistaken in claiming the problem is suppression.

Once again you have that backwards.

I get a lot of stuff backwards, eh? Well please straighten me out.

What follows the same definition as lawyers is suppression. The more you suppress, the more you need to suppress.


Repeated evidence supports the realization that for addictive drugs, the easier it is to obtain them, the FEWER addicts get created. The prime creators of addicts are other addicts PUSHING it on others to get a money sourse to maintain their own supply.

Yeah, I saw a lot of Drug addicts quit lying cheating and stealing when they could get all the crack they wanted.

You need to peddle that Brooklyn Bridge somewhere else.