2010:warmest year ever since records began

[Diogenes]

the Inuit

Darwin in action. Evidently they are not well adapted to alcohol. Perhaps a wider range of available drugs would better serve their needs.

Which begs the question. If they haven't needed drugs for thousands of years, why would anyone think they need them now? They need drugs like they need venereal disease.

Ibuprofin or aspirin? Suppose Ibuprofin was removed due to fear of liver damage and aspirin due to fears of internal bleeding? (real problems BTW) Then what?

Do we normally deny the many because of the problems of a few? Perhaps peanuts are next.

Excessive generalization. We do not deny needed medicines to individuals even though giving them out like candy is bad for the majority.

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives ... lse_a.html

Let me add that it looks to me like the forces of control are breaking down all over the world. In so many areas. The forces of "We will make you do it for your own good are in temporary retreat. There will be excesses. And the pendulum will swing.

It appears to me that the only force of control which is breaking down is the force of self control, because people have nowadays become such pampered whiny little bags of entitlement, that they simply no longer know how to behave like citizens.

====

The prostitution question is an interesting one. Perhaps the problem is a lack of brothels? i.e. protection for the ladies.

What? More police? I'm aghast! Funny thing is, Sex is also a drug. The drug is secreted by the male brain in response to proper stimuli. Endorphins, serotonin, and dozens of other chemical soups are released upon engaging in the activity and climax. Not only that, but the trans dermal chemical transfer from a female is also responsible for the sense of well being that males experience. (This is why Gay sex doesn't function properly, because there IS no functional hormonal transfer between members of the same sex. Chemical Locks and Key's, not Locks and Locks. )

Let me guess. Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht! (as Einstein proclaimed upon Szilard's explaining Fission to him. )

And there is something else - some women from abusive homes want to be abused and controlled. All such relationships are to a greater or lesser extent voluntary. And that leads us to root cause discussions. What to do about bad parenting? Hard to say. Every child's needs are different.

White slaves WANT to be controlled? Really? As for bad parenting, there was a time when the entire community looked after each others kids. (And chastised the parents if the parents wouldn't straighten them out. )
Nowadays, people have no concern for their neighbors vandal child, unless it affects them directly. I blame television, the Liberal Megaphone. A device so evil, that just watching it makes you dumber than doing anything else.

[Diogenes]

Ibuprofen intoxication - I was going to say that. I couldn't remember if it was that or Aspirin.

Anyway. Prostitutes and drugs aren't comparable. Or if they're comparable, they're not similar enough where it matters for arguing the relative merits/demerits of prohibiting/legalizing them.

They are exactly the same thing. Sex is a drug, and the prostitute is the drug delivery system. (Literally.) The Drugs are delivered in two ways. One, through release from the brain when subjected to the proper stimuli, and Two, Transdermally through intimate contact with the patch of skin that is designed for this exact purpose.

Yes, the Penis has the greatest transdermal absorption characteristics of any part of the human body. It (the skin surrounding the penis) is designed to acquire Female hormonal chemicals to assist in creating the satiated feeling in a male.

The naturally occurring addiction to sex is evolved to create pressure to reproduce. Nature writes a lot of it's instructions in the form of chemical urges and responses. Of course foolish people come along and try to screw with evolved systems by playing with chemicals similar to the body's own endocrinal secretions. What's truly hilarious is that they think they're enlightened!

Do we normally deny the many because of the problems of a few? Perhaps peanuts are next.

Some glues known to be sniffed are regulated. Dynamite is regulated. I think it's pretty clear that hard drugs should be regulated, if not privately (just like it's left to individuals to drink responsibly now) then as govt does for e.g. dynamite, so that you can firecracker yourself into chemical relief instead of dynamiting your brains into coma. The chemistry just needs to be tamed. Obviously gangsters aren't who you'd hire for that job. I doubt that chem/pharma industry couldn't tackle that problem of designing drugs for clean and accurate neurochemical targets.

Not only that but I think that on top of being duly left to individual choice and treating those that naturally need the compounds for their health, the industrial motivation to satisfy the market would have some great consequences for neurochemical knowledge.

Children playing with a chemistry set, outraged that adults tell them no.

[Diogenes]

Well Msimon, I keep saying it, but you choose to ignore it:
The legalization of prostitution has done NOTHING to clean it up. It is still run by the same criminals. Many of these women (if not most) are still forced into prostitution. Women are still trafficked from other countries into Austria to become prostitutes here. The pimps are still scumbags. Women that resist are still mamed brutally, etc, etc.

First, sex, unlike drugs, is a primal drive that exists without having to be "addicted" to it. Honorable, responsible young men will try HARD (sorry) to get it in the most socially acceptable way. For some, unfortunately, if all other routes are blocked, resort to rape. Personally, I think prostitution is a more socially acceptable alternative.

Sex is a drug that humans are born addicted to. Especially the males. The way humanity evolved, it is unnecessary for the females to need sex, as the males will force them to it anyway. This is why some women are indifferent (and often cannot achieve climax) while others are nymphoid. Females secrete testosterone too, though in much smaller quantities. It has the same effect on Females that it does on males. It makes them randy. (Slap a "testiderm" patch on a woman's bottom and see what happens a few hours later. )

The more societal beneficial alternative is for young males and females to pair up in committed partnerships. While this reduces the genetic diversity in offspring one might achieve by multiple parings, it is compensated by the greater chances of survival for the offspring which do occur. A couple is far better suited to bring children to adulthood than single parents are.

Part of the pressure necessary to force the beneficial parings is the lack of alternatives. Prostitution bleeds off the naturally evolved pressure to the detriment of girls who might otherwise have obtained a husband. Also, the knowledge of forbidden sex can result in the pursuit of more of it, to the detriment of the pursuer and the pursued.

Women are losing the sex war, and the damage caused by this will take a long time to correct.

However, wrt scum-bag pimps, etc; I have a question for you. What percentage of the prostitutes in your country are addicted to drugs? In the US, I believe you will find that most are, except those in places where it is legal. Legalize drugs and that control mechanism goes away.

The other major mechanism whereby scumbag pimps can maintain a stable of prostitutes is to bring them from another country to a place where they have NO ONE to turn to. This is slavery, not prostitution, and that pimp should be put away forever, if not shot.

And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well? I've KNOWN pimps. They cruise around till they find a young girl and start sweet talking her. First they get her to try booze or weed, then eventually they get her hooked on crack. In a few weeks, she's turning tricks on the street to make easy money, and party all the time!

Once they are shown how much money they can make by prostitution, and how easy it is, and how much fun they can have partying on booze and drugs, that is all they want to do afterwards. The real danger is this knowledge, both to young girls who become hookers, and to young men that patronize them. Once learned, it cannot be unlearned.

Why is your government so lax wrt hideous crime? Personally, I suspect it is because their sense of right and wrong has been so perverted by years of "felonization" of vice that they can't distinguish vice from crime. This appears, from discussions herein, to be a common malady.

Trying to create boundaries between levels with no defining characteristics separating the two except degree, is the real malady, not just here, but everywhere else as well.

The injuries from vices are often far away in time, and not easily discernible from their causes, while the injuries from "crimes" are often concurrent and obvious.

Two of my uncles were killed by a drunk driver. Another of my uncle's was killed when his wife shot him in a drunken rage. My real father was a drunk who loved to party in the bars, he abandoned us when I was an infant. Two of my friends were deprived of their fathers for similar reasons. I know people who drank till their livers died, I knew people who drank amongst the wrong crowd and were killed, I know a guy who became belligerent when drunk, and was beaten so severely that they ruptured one of his eyes. (It had to be removed.)

What can I say, other than that I am less than impressed with your distinction between "vices" and "Crimes"? The fact that the injuries are ill defined and distant in time does not make them any less real.

[Diogenes]

It is true that drugs are not a primal need. Normally the body makes enough of its own drugs to fill the receptors. Only a small segment of the population needs to take supplements.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... holes.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... sease.html

Which minds me. Is it proper to punish those with a genetic deficiency disease for their deficiency? Only among our most moral.

No, it is not proper to punish people with a real medical/genetic need, but as with abortion, The vast majority of the cases don't fit into that category.

Nowadays, we try to regulate all sorts of naturally occurring characteristics with synthesized drugs. Ritalin and ADHD comes to mind. I personally don't think people with ADHD are abnormal, I think they are just a variant on average, and well within the normal characteristics of human kind, though "experts" may think they need treatment.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ystem.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Now if what we call "addiction" is really self medication for a chronic deficiency disease. Well that is how the medical profession looks at it these days.

Except that humanity has a proclivity to become "addicted" to any numbers of drugs or behaviors, just for the purpose of Pumping up the dopamine etc.

It is exactly like the wire in the Rat's brain. Push the button, get high. We use chemicals instead of buttons, but the principle and the results are the same. The rats die. A lot of humans die too.

You get someone with a REAL deficiency (such as estrogen, or insulin, etc.) and you've got a real case of a chemical need for medical reasons.

Now that I think about it, there was a case years ago where a doctor treated a bunch of comatose patients with a synthetic dopamine called "L-Dopa" or some such. Brought them out of a coma, and they all experienced life again for awhile. Eventually, the drug stopped working and they all succumbed back into comas. They made a movie about this incident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings


A case like this would be a legitimate medicinal use for drugs.

[Diogenes]

What about prohibition of cock fighting and the social correlations of enabling (in legalization) that subculture?

I am absolutely for banning this. I consider it animal torture and barbaric.
I am all for eating animals and I love my meat, but I do respect animals and the food I eat. I dont think it is necessary to engage in unnecessary cruelty.

My brother in law used to be into the cockfighting thing. (Raising, training, equipping, etc.) His argument is that Chickens fight to the death in the wild (This is true.) and they are only acting out their normal instincts. You don't have to make them fight. You have to hold them apart to keep them FROM fighting. The ones that are highly successful get bred for offspring, and the ones that aren't, don't. (Again, like the wild.)

The only argument that could be made regarding cruelty is that an animal ends up fighting far more often than it ordinarily would in the wild. This is one of those things I wouldn't do myself, but I don't feel strongly about other people doing it. I guess it's just another one of those "moral" issues. If we only had as much tolerance on this moral issue as we do on partial birth abortion, it would still be legal!

[IntLibber]

the Inuit

Darwin in action. Evidently they are not well adapted to alcohol. Perhaps a wider range of available drugs would better serve their needs.

Which begs the question. If they haven't needed drugs for thousands of years, why would anyone think they need them now? They need drugs like they need venereal disease.

Actually, syphillis is native to native americans, the european explorers brought it back to europe from the Americas. And they had fun stuff like marijuana, peyote, coca, guarana, and psilocibin mushrooms for a pharmacoepaeia. So your premise is false.

[Diogenes]

Darwin in action. Evidently they are not well adapted to alcohol. Perhaps a wider range of available drugs would better serve their needs.

Which begs the question. If they haven't needed drugs for thousands of years, why would anyone think they need them now? They need drugs like they need venereal disease.

Actually, syphillis is native to native americans, the european explorers brought it back to europe from the Americas. And they had fun stuff like marijuana, peyote, coca, guarana, and psilocibin mushrooms for a pharmacoepaeia. So your premise is false.

We were talking about the inuit. How is my premise false in context?

[IntLibber]

Which begs the question. If they haven't needed drugs for thousands of years, why would anyone think they need them now? They need drugs like they need venereal disease.

Actually, syphillis is native to native americans, the european explorers brought it back to europe from the Americas. And they had fun stuff like marijuana, peyote, coca, guarana, and psilocibin mushrooms for a pharmacoepaeia. So your premise is false.

We were talking about the inuit. How is my premise false in context?

Inuit are native americans. Amanita muscaria is and has historically been used by them in their shamanistic practices pretty commonly.

[KitemanSA]

And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well?

I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here. I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.
I suspect that if the result of coming "out" concerning their drug addiction weren't so heinous due to the drug war, this type of lawsuit might actually happen with some regularity. Indeed, a criminal case for fraud (aside from enslavement) MAY be made against the drug pusher if that person were not up front about the dangers.

To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime. The psuher should be dealt with appropriately for those real crimes. Since one of the characteristics of being a child (in law and by social norm) is that the child is not competent to volunteer for such things, this would mean that the pusher has de-facto perpetrated a fraud against that child and should be prosecuted. The difficulty arises when the pusher is a child too. However, surely in that case "Faginy" charges should apply to the adult trafficker.

[KitemanSA]

Why is your government so lax wrt hideous crime? Personally, I suspect it is because their sense of right and wrong has been so perverted by years of "felonization" of vice that they can't distinguish vice from crime. This appears, from discussions herein, to be a common malady.

Trying to create boundaries between levels with no defining characteristics separating the two except degree, is the real malady, not just here, but everywhere else as well.

Either you are too dense to get it or you are willfully misrepresenting the situation. I have provided "defining characteristics seperating the two" perhaps a dozen times in this thread alone. Specific, definate, exact and unambiguous characteristics. So either quit lying (stop your willful misrepresentation) or admit you are too dense and just go away. Please?

[IntLibber]

And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well?

I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here. I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.
I suspect that if the result of coming "out" concerning their drug addiction weren't so heinous due to the drug war, this type of lawsuit might actually happen with some regularity. Indeed, a criminal case for fraud (aside from enslavement) MAY be made against the drug pusher if that person were not up front about the dangers.

To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime. The psuher should be dealt with appropriately for those real crimes. Since one of the characteristics of being a child (in law and by social norm) is that the child is not competent to volunteer for such things, this would mean that the pusher has de-facto perpetrated a fraud against that child and should be prosecuted. The difficulty arises when the pusher is a child too. However, surely in that case "Faginy" charges should apply to the adult trafficker.

Claims that people get 'forced' into drugs is one more of the shibboleths of the ignorant antidrug gestapo. "Peer pressure" isn't force, either, any more than society made you spend too much money on your car or house.

[MSimon]

And yet, those who ruin a person's life by getting them addicted to drugs, should not be in this category as well?

I'm not quite sure what you are proposing here. I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.
I suspect that if the result of coming "out" concerning their drug addiction weren't so heinous due to the drug war, this type of lawsuit might actually happen with some regularity. Indeed, a criminal case for fraud (aside from enslavement) MAY be made against the drug pusher if that person were not up front about the dangers.

To the degree the pusher uses force, fraud, or coersion against an individual in order to hook them, that pusher has involved that person involuntarily and has committed a real crime. The psuher should be dealt with appropriately for those real crimes. Since one of the characteristics of being a child (in law and by social norm) is that the child is not competent to volunteer for such things, this would mean that the pusher has de-facto perpetrated a fraud against that child and should be prosecuted. The difficulty arises when the pusher is a child too. However, surely in that case "Faginy" charges should apply to the adult trafficker.

OK. Now suppose we change the premise to one more in accordance with facts. Addiction is a deficiency disease.

Should pushers be paid extra for helping to alleviate the deficiency against the force of government?

Now I know you will not read my links but for those who may:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... holes.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... sease.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ystem.html

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Schizophrenia and Tobacco
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives ... t_439.html

And finally (for now) what doctors know:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ecret.html

====

I'd really love it if some day people discussing this subject were well up on the medical literature. Or at least had seen it in passing.

I mean it is silly. The medical profession has come to the conclusion that addiction is a result of genetic predisposition and a triggering event: most likely trauma. There is good evidence of that here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/09/heroin.html

And yet here we have people arguing with a straight face "pushers".

The pushers are doing a really bad job when only one out of ten who try heroin wind up with a habit. And why is the habit so bad? Well it costs hundreds of dollars a day to fill it. Now imagine the same habit costs $1 a day.

http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/ ... rpool.html

The Chapel Street Clinic in Widnes (a suburb of Liverpool) run by Dr. John Marks is the most famous holdout for the old system of free drug maintenance. The incredible success of this small institution has been a stark contrast with the documented failure of the other alternatives. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has maintained constant pressure to shut down this glaring example of an approach that flies in the face of American drug war orthodoxy.

The situation became critical following a CBS "60 Minutes" broadcast on the clinic in 1990. The facts in this story completely debased fundamental U.S. policy assumptions. The most startling statistic was the crime rate. Beginning in 1988, the local police began tracking the criminal records of 112 addicts who entered the drug maintenance program at Chapel Street. According to the Cheshire Drug Squad, there was a 93 percent drop in theft, burglary, and property crimes among this group over the next two years -- thus illuminating the age-old argument about whether it is the drugs themselves or the pursuit of drugs that drives addicts to criminal behavior.

In addition, the HIV infection rate among these injecting drug users was zero. Zero. And the incidence of death among addicts -- normally 15 percent per year -- was also zero.

Black market heroin is very dangerous. Properly manufactured heroin: not so much. It may be that it is not heroin that makes heroin so dangerous. It is heroin prohibition.

If you are really rooting for dead drug users the system we have now is one of the best. It kills off users and the government has plausible deniability.

Of course the same was true during alcohol prohibition. People went blind from adulterated alcohol. That ended (at least on a mass scale) with the end of alcohol prohibition.

But I do understand how hard it is for most people to change their minds once government has taught them to think a certain way. Parrots. Millions of squawking parrots. Amusing. What is even more amusing is that it is faith based and thus immune to reason.

Which is why I don't have much truck with faith. Reason is better. When you can get it.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning. - The Book of Lies

[MSimon]

And may I add - Engineering is not a faith based activity. Which may be why I have so little trust in faith.

"Test all things. Hold fast to that which is true."

[Skipjack]

I think it fully appropriate that an individual should be free to sue whoever cons them into becoming addicted. And if they threatened them with great physical harm to maintain the addiction, then perhaps enslavement is also at work.

Like the tabacco companies...
Anyway, you guys are still refusing to see the parallels between drugs and prostitution. You are also refusing to accept that criminals choose to do illegal things because they allow them to make more money. If drugs where legalized, they would have to be regulated. The current drug dealers would switch to sell drugs outside of those regulations so they can still have a market, when large drug companies take over. So once again, they will be criminals and the same thing will keep going on, even worse...
Is the case here with prostitution.

[MSimon]

We do not deny needed medicines to individuals

Of course we do. Every day. Clue here:

It is a War On Drugs.

Suppose for instance you have diabetes and learn in California that it pot is the best medicine for you.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... betes.html

In America that makes you subject to felony prosecution by the Feds. Although they generally don't do small cases unless they have a political axe to grind against you.

Now suppose for some reason you have a cannabinoid deficiency (you know - those drugs the body makes) and you find that pot helps (while you were in Amsterdam say. Or Portugal.). Too bad. Because although CB1 and CB2 receptors are all over the body and in the brain, cannabinoid deficiency is not yet recognized as a medical condition.

Or suppose you were repeatedly raped by your step-father and despite being in your 30s you are not over it. And God forbid some how you find out that heroin helps:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/09/heroin.html

Well you can't find doctor one who will prescribe opiates for your medical condition. Because solving those kinds of "mental" problems with that kind of drug is just not allowed.

So yes. We deny drugs to plenty of people. For political reasons. What I like to call "torturing people for their own good" or maybe for the good of people down the street. Can't happen here? Guess again.

Robin Prosser didn’t look or sound much like a fighter, but she was. A mother and a musician, the Missoula woman also acted as Montana’s most outspoken advocate for medical marijuana, the only remedy that could ease the ravaging pain of the lupus-like immunosuppressive disease she endured for 23 years. Prosser’s fight ended Oct. 18 when she took her own life.

<snip>

She spoke, too, of her 2004 agreement with the city of Missoula—when police charged her with marijuana possession following a thwarted suicide attempt—that deferred prosecution and allowed her to use marijuana before medical use was legalized.

During the subsequent campaign for medical marijuana, which won support from 62 percent of Montana voters, she became a literal poster child for the effort, appearing in campaign ads. And when the state issued her a medical marijuana ID card, things seemed to be looking up.

Then in March, federal Drug Enforcement Agency agents seized a small shipment of medical marijuana in transit from Prosser’s state-approved caregiver. Though she was never criminally charged, Prosser was crushed. She said caregivers became afraid to supply her with the medicine she needed so badly.

In July, she penned an op-ed piece in the Billings Gazette, pleading with Montana’s politicians and her fellow citizens to speak out against the DEA’s actions and improve the lives of people like her.

http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/mis ... id=1139381

The Schillings were arrested earlier this year after a snitch told the Waukesha Metro Drug Enforcment Unit they had a grow-op in their home. An undercover policeman and another snitch bought a total of $120 worth of marijuana from the couple, after which police raided the home, finding 21 plants, 12 grams of pot and "drug paraphernalia." On June 27, the Schillings and their son Joshua were charged with maintaining a drug house, manufacturing marijuana and mushrooms, and possession with intent to deliver marijuana and mushrooms.

All three faced possible years in prison, but that wasn't enough for the drug warriors. On September 20, US Marshals hand-delivered a notice of forfeiture action against the couple's home. Although no one has explained why federal authorities were involved in seeking seizure of a home in a small-time state-prosecuted case, US Attorney Steven Biskupic, whose office filed the forfeiture motion, called the Schillings' set-up "a substantial grow operation."

In a suicide note left at the scene, Denise Schilling offered a different explanation, citing her efforts to overcome a lifetime of disease. "I had tried every politically correct route, from religion to psychotropic drugs, and none of them helped me in any way," she wrote. "Perhaps someday people like me will not be persecuted. Perhaps someday it will not be a crime to take care of your health."

Another of the couples' children, Caleb Schilling, pointed an accusing finger at the legal system. "We're being screwed by these people," he said.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old ... ings.shtml

Shirley Dorsey 56 years old
Placerville, California
April, 1991
Rather than being compelled to testify against her 70-year-old boyfriend (Byron Stamate) for cultivating the medicinal cannabis she depended upon to help control her crippling back pain, Shirley Dorsey committed suicide. She saw it as the only way to prevent the forfeiture of their home and property. Despite her suicide, Stamate was sentenced to 9 months prison, and his home, cottage, and $177,000 life savings were seized.

http://www.marijuana.com/legalization-d ... ctims.html

Here is a guy I was corresponding with (e-mail) just a few days before his death. He asked for my help in locating some facts. I don't remember the subject. Probably on the Drug War. Although he was a libertarian and dealt with other issues as well.

http://www.hr95.org/mcwilliams.p.htm

Peter McWilliams was a best-selling writer and publisher of many self-help and other books. Among his best-known works are How to Survive the Loss of a Love, Life 101 and Ain't Nobody's Business if You do. Having repeatedly pulled his life together after hardships and bouts with depression, he wrote books to help others rise above adversity.

In March1996, Peter was diagnosed with AIDS and cancer. Using the chemotherapy and radiation to fight the cancer and combination therapy for the AIDS, he found that the cure was almost worse than the disease. Nauseous, unable to eat and bereft of his appetite, Peter began to waste away at his scenic hilltop home overlooking the Los Angeles basin. Fortunately, he found that using cannabis allowed him to keep down the drugs and fight the diseases.

Peter told himself that if he lived, he would devote his life to getting medical marijuana to all the sick people who needed it. He made a remarkable recovery and was once again his positive, vivacious, productive self. Even better, California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized cultivation and use of medical marijuana. Peter became an outspoken advocate, and he commissioned Todd McCormick, an activist and patient, to write a book on cultivating different strains of medical marijuana for different illnesses. Todd began his research by doing his own grow, which was soon raided by the DEA.

Peter, Todd and others were charged with a marijuana conspiracy. Since federal law does not allow medical marijuana, the judge and prosecutors forced them to stop using medical marijuana as terms of their release. Random drug testing and the prospect that his mother's and brother's homes would be forfeited if marijuana was detected in his urine assured Peter's compliance with these terms. With no legal defense left and facing a 10-year sentence, McWilliams pled to a lesser charge and got five years. While awaiting sentencing, Peter choked to death on his own vomit. For this AIDS patient, the government's denial of the medicine that controlled his nausea became a death sentence.

Prohibition is not a victimless crime.

Now here's a moral question: How many Mexican police have to die because American parents believe that U.S. drug laws will keep their teenagers from doing something their kids may or may not do whether it is or isn't legal?

http://www.pokemon.creators.com/conserv ... count.html

Good question.