The second link discusses Gordon Todd Skinner, who was the informant that facilitated the arrest of Pickard. I don't know how much of that information is accurate, but it's an engrossing read and it paints a horrible picture of what a government informant can get away with.
VICE did a documentary on Krystle Cole, a friend of Mr. Skinner's prior to his arrest. It includes a tour of the missile silo that Skinner had been using as a lab.
Even more incredible is the perspective of Brandon Green, the man who Skinner is in jail for kidnapping and torturing. Brandon posted his version of events online at the end of last and beginning of this year: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/dosearch.php?uid=367971
I am totally in awe of his attempts to come to terms with what happened to him. I also credit him with the likely the greatest understatement I've ever read on the internet: "To all you guys who constantly say how badly they want to have sex with 'Neurosoup,' take it from me - I've been there and I can testify that its definitely not worth it!"
It's kind of creepy to watch that in light of the link on Mr Skinner's history, which included allegations that Ms. Cole was an enthusiastic participant in the brutal torture of Brandon Green. The details are fairly disturbing. The narrator's awestruck tone sounds pretty nauseating in that light.
Many of our drug laws are way too harsh, so it's a good thing that Obama is injecting a modicum of sanity into things.
In contrast, on Bill Clinton's last day in office, he shamelessly engaged in "cash for pardons". E.g.:
Critics complained that Denise Eisenberg Rich, [Marc Rich's] former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign.
Longtime Clinton supporters and Democratic leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, James Carville and Terry McAuliffe, were all critical of the Clinton pardon. Carter said the pardons were "disgraceful."
Agreed. I am no Obama fan - for one thing I think his unprecedented expansion of covert surveillance programs and defiant tone in the wake of the Snowden revelations did tremendous damage to US tech companies seeking to do business overseas. But I am quite happy he did this. It shows a measure of humanity and common sense that is rare in US politicians. These are traits that we are unlikely to see in the next President, regardless of which candidate wins.
According to the report on NPR, they are inmates would have served more time than they would if they were convicted today (due to changes in sentencing guidelines or criminal classifications). It seems to me like we should default to releasing such people or it should at least not require something as powerful as a presidential pardon.
The downside of this, sadly, is that he appears to have mental health issues. Unless he has some outside support, which may be difficult with his dad being dead and having been incarcerated since something like 1994, he would be rather likely to end up on the street, alone :(
Here's hoping there are people on the outside to help him out.
> Here's hoping there are people on the outside to help him out.
I thought the same thing and wondered whether he had been granted clemency, so I googled a bit and found a page by his sister[1], which at least suggests that he has family that thinks of and cares about him. So hopefully they could help out.
For those unaware his father died in Prison. Why was he in Prison? Well the son committed the crime in the house the father owned. His father died 8 years into a 10 year prison sentence. Cruel.
Ok, curious, what circumstances led to that? The enforcement nowadays seems limited to civil forfeiture, where they would have seized ownership of the house without ever charging the dad, also an egregious act but very different from what happened here?
I read that Timothy was selling LSD to a DEA agent so this implies the entire case was federal? Do the feds still act this way in charging the homeowner instead of "merely" moving to seize the house?
I can't find much info on the father but the wikipedia cite for his father going to prison goes to this:
> In May of 1992, Tyler sold pot and LSD to a longtime friend who was really a police informant. His father, who was also named Timothy and had a fireworks business in Florida, helped out with the deal and was charged along with his son.
... His father, who had a prior pot charge from 1969, got 10 years, Tyler-Stoafer told me. He had heart trouble and died in prison when he was 53, after serving 8 years in prison.
http://www.businessinsider.com/timothy-tylers-mandatory-mini...
I'm sorry I don't have an answer for that at this moment. I read the comment on a different medium that had posted this story. I cannot verify it at this moment and don't have the available time to research it further.
If this is the story I recall he was mailing it via USPS and they letters originated from the house the father owned. However, this is a fuzzy memory from some time back.
Those infamous 'carrier weight' LSD laws where the weight of what the single drop of LSD is on counts as part of the drug in calculating the sentencing. And it's not even the dumbest 'war on drugs' law in our arsenal of dumb 'war on drugs' laws.
There is a nice scene in the documentary "Le route de l'opium", where they interview, I believe the guy responsible for europol drugwar coordination. They ask why the laws and system are like this if they are so incredibly stupid and not working.
His answer: Because this is the way many individuals earn the most money with it. Change anything and manufacturers, dealers, corrupt politicians etc. would lose money.
It's dumb because even if they wanted to have that severe of a punishment for LSD specifically, they could do math and just make the sentence greater for smaller amounts of actual drug. Be as cynical as you like, but we'd see equivalent exaggerations for every other drug if your line of thinking made sense.
It depends on the audience for those drugs and their relationship to the people making laws. Take, for example, crack versus cocaine. Crack and cocaine are nearly identical drugs. Crack has the same sentence for one gram as cocaine does for eighteen. (The disparity used to be five times greater before 2010.) But crack users are more likely to be black, low-income, and less educated. I can't imagine why they'd be a preferred target for "tough on crime" legislation. Aside from, y'know, systemic, institutionalized racism (and good old-fashioned poor-stomping, but it is well-known that the War on Drugs was intended to target black people).
Similarly, LSD was widely associated with undesirables in the sixties and seventies--counter-culture movements. Do you have a better way to provide yourself with cover for attacking them?
If you're surprised or skeptical of either claim, I recommend you read Dan Baum's recent report regarding his discussions with John Erlichman and H.R. Haldeman's diaries[1] (themselves available in the Nixon Presidential Library). Both men were deep in the Nixon White House during the formation of the War on Drugs; it's illuminating stuff.
Essentially agree 100%. My minor nitpic is that while I'm willing to be cynical almost whole hog including your examples, we even have similar examples that are more dumb and less insidious than yours. E.g, truffles vs mushrooms in the netherlands (one is banned, the other isn't, I'm not aware of one being the uppity fungi vs the hood shroom)
Even in the LSD example, someone using a fancier stationary could be way more guilty than a cheapo two ply. The whole thing is ridiculous in ways the crack vs cocaine thing is relatively less so. If anything, this law encourages lsd to be made on the most portable medium possible. If you claim this too was intentional, then we enter the realm of the ridiculous.
This might sound like splitting hairs, but I'm just advocating to a caveat to cynicism for things once in awhile being just flat out dumb.
I'm not arguing that institutionalized racism doesn't exist, but this crack vs cocaine issue comes up all the time and the issue has more to it than "It's because of racism."
It's comforting to think it's all just a ploy to get at black people (like how cannabis was rebranded as "marijuana" because it associates it with those pesky Mexicans everybody hates) but there are valid reasons to be more afraid of crack than of cocaine despite both sharing practically the same active ingredient.
EDIT: I'm not saying the War on Drugs doesn't particularly affect people of color more than other groups, or whether that is intentional or not, but pointing at the active ingredients and saying "look, they're the same except racism" is simplistic.
From your article, it certainly does seem like injected powder cocaine and smoked crack cocaine are about the same on the body. And you can trivially make crack from powdered cocaine.
Nobody has said they're 100% the same besides racism. The claim is that racism plays a role in why the sentencing disparities exist.
There's no math to determine the quantity of active ingredient in illicit substances. That requires analysis. Including the carrier keeps it simple. It's also self-aggrandizing, as it's much more impressive for the DEA to announce they've seized 10g of "LSD" than 10mg. Again, this is coming from an agency that is known to weight the root ball when calculating the yield of seized marijuana grows.
Both you and eropple are spot on. I would have admitted both of your points but I'm not as knowledgeable.
The issue is, might_atomic says he is cynical that the reason the law is the case isn't dumb, it's intentional. If we're being cynical, I can think of many ways to be extra punitive against any particular drug you like for any reason. Even if we assume self-aggrandizement, my assumption was we could all be fall more cynically creative as to how a drug enforcement agency could get than arguing about the weight of paper.
For example, why not just call all the precursor chemicals drug as well, we could say they produced 50lbs of lsd because of the running water used in the process.
I'm just advocating for a level of cynicism that looks at a bigger picture to where once in awhile we could say something is dumber than it is insidious. Without doing so, I think it contributes to the persistence of laws that are in fact dumber than even their creators intended.
The carrier weight is significant because its proportional to the amount of substance, the paper is the distribution vector. Someone caught with a sheet of LSD is carrying significantly more than a single tab of LSD. The latter defying "personal consumption. And personal consumption vs intent to distribute is significantly different.
While I don't believe that non-violent drug offenders should be locked up for life, this individual failed to appreciate the gravity of being arrested for the serious offense of distribution on two prior occasions! To add to the stupidity , the Seth Faranti case was a huge cause célèbre in 1993 and he was put away for life. It was well known at the time that the Feds were taking a serious view of LSD distribution and were targeting Deadshows. Yet he continued his disregard for consequences well into 1994.
LSD is not physically addictive so this is not like someone who became physically addicted and was arrested as a recidivist offender as a result. This was someone who was financing a lifestyle by selling acid. There were plenty of other Deadheads that financed their road trips without selling drugs. It was a choice he made on at least three different occasions.
While I believe the war drugs is indeed dumb, getting arrested for the same serious crime three times is even dumber.
There is a difference between making a mistake in ones youth and throwing your life away.
Yes, doses are in the order of 100-150 micrograms, for a basic dose. 100ug will do as an approximation.
How many doses of 100ug are there in 1g? Oooh... About 10,000.
So yes, 1g of crystal is a substantial amount, that's the point. Compared to a handful of doses on a gram of paper, it makes a mockery of the law if I were to be charged the same way whichever of the two I was carrying.
(Of course the law is an ass anyway, where it comes to drugs)
The gram of paper is still mostly paper. Sure it could have varying amounts of actual acid on it, but still mostly paper.
it would be like if the ml in alcohol were measured along with the glass bottle it comes in - and something with low alcohol volume (say beer) would get you just as much time as a 100 proof whiskey or moonshine.
No thats not the point. With LSD the paper is the unit of distribution. Its the dosage vector. A sheet of of acid which is comprised of 100 hits of acid. So by considering the amount of surface area or weight is what allows the law to decide if the amount comprises personal consumption vs distribution.
So when the law is trying to decide how much of a threat the contraband is to society the potential damage of a sheet of acid us much much greater than a hit or a couple of hits(smaller pieces of paper.)
What are you proposing that the acid be recovered from the paper? What would that do? There's no threshold below which you are permitted to posses lysergic acid in the United States.
I'm not proposing anything, I'm suggestig that anything drawing an equivalent between weight of raw LSD and paper blotters is pants-on-head retarded.
Legislate penalty by doses if you want, but the fact remains that someone with ten mg of crystal is carrying with them just as many doses as someone carrying a few g of blotters.
He is saying that 1g of LSD (when including the paper weight) is maybe a couple hundred doses, while 1g of meth in a plastic bag is ~10,000 doses, but they are sentenced as if they are equivalent.
> The carrier weight is significant because its proportional to the amount of substance
This is not true. I can take a clean sheet of paper and dissolve as much LSD (or as little) on it as desired. 1g of near-pure crystal will definitely contain thousands of doses. 1g of paper could contain anything from 0, 1, 10, or 100 doses or more.
Now what would be point in that? Sure you can do that but in practice this is not at all how it works. Drugs are a business. You can also sell pure cocaine but it is never done at the retail level because it would be a completely non-sensical business decision. The unit of purchase is a single tab. More tabs equal more paper.
It most definitely does work this way in practice. If you go buy a sheet of acid from a random person, you can bet there is at least a 50% chance it contains no LSD at all. Why should I give you a sheet with LSD on it when I can give you a clean sheet with nothing on it and you wouldn't know the difference until at least 45-60 minutes after you took it? Plenty of time for me to get away with your money. More likely, it will contain some LSD (or something similar), but not nearly as much as one tab ~= one dose. Just like you say with cocaine, it makes business sense to dilute it; it also makes sense to make sheets of LSD such that 4, 5, or 10 tabs equals one dose, instead of just a single tab.
Your example with cocaine is a good one, people caught with cocaine aren't carrying pure cocaine either. They are usually charged with the weight of the cutting agent as well, which in my view is equally stupid. If you have a pound of baking soda with 1gm of cocaine mixed in it, you shouldn't be charged with having a pound of cocaine.
Right, you must think LSD dealers are so much more enlightened than dealers of other drugs.
According, to the studies shown here on erowid, the blotter tabs examined by labs since '97 range anywhere from 19 micrograms all the way up to 148 micrograms. The older lab tests from the 70s and 80s seem to have a greater range testing at anywhere from 5 micrograms to 500 micrograms per tab!
All of these blotter tabs are going to weigh roughly the same amount. Some of the weaker ones may even weigh more than the stronger ones due to the difference in the type of paper.
It's crazy to spend that much time in jail for a nonviolent offense, and such a small amount of substance in the US.
The war on drugs is a big waste of many things. But to put it in perspective, I am currently living in SE Asia where you are informed by airline announcements and signs that drug trafficking is punishable by death in several of the countries here!
I'm from Brooklyn, but I live in Indonesia now. I'm currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 138 Nigerians are awaiting death penalties in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore at this time.
You forgot the Philippines.
President Duterte has summarily executed nearly 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users since July 1st and vowed to execute 98,000 more.
The president literally said in a speech, regarding what to do if you suspect someone of dealing drugs: "Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have my support"
Yeah, and when I was over in Indonesia for a month a while back, I even had randos thinking I was an Aussie tourist and trying to sell me pills, weed, etc. on the street. Sorry buddy, but as much as I might love to roll up a spliff out on the beach this evening, I don't feel like either getting set up by some crooked scam where I end up having to give some cop all my money to let me go or, worse, end up in some prison for buying and possessing some cannabis or shitty E.
It wasn't an 'offense' it was plural 'offenses' as in three. And we aren't talking about personal possession we are talking about intent to distribute. The distinction between these are night and day.
I read that, and I get your point, but LSD, or marijuana, to me are not in the same league as heroin or cocaine and the amounts those are usually traded in along with the gangs and violence associated with them. I'm not at all addressing the law; I am expressing surprise over the extreme sentence in comparison to what I think are worse crimes. Rapists get what, 4 years in the US if prosecuted? There were/are people serving life sentences over marijuana sales, and now it's legal in some states.
But there are two different things - selling and using. Using is only marginally criminalized. Selling and distributing is a much more serious offense. Alcohol in some ways is no different. I can home brew all I want and bottle it and put it in the refrigerator. If throw the garage door open and start selling it to the general public I can expect some trouble from the legal system. Crossing state boundaries and using a Federal system like the mail further compounded this individual's situation.
I can assure rapists don't get 4 years and they are almost always prosecuted if there is enough evidence.
You can't assure rapists don't get 4 years (or less):
> The convictions carried a potential sentence of 14 years in prison. Prosecutors recommended six years in prison while probation officials recommended a "moderate" county jail sentence.[19] On June 2, 2016, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months confinement in the Santa Clara County jail to be followed by three years of probation.
But he was NOT convicted and sent to prison for rape, it was sexual assault and in some states penal systems those are different crimes with different sentencing guidelines:
"On October 7, 2015, after reviewing the results of DNA tests, the two rape charges were dropped by prosecutors.[7][12][14][15] The trial began on March 14, 2016,[16] and concluded on March 30, 2016, with Turner's conviction on the three remaining charges of felony sexual assault."
Please show me one single rape conviction in the US where the sentence was 4 years.
How does someone downvote another for presenting a fact? What I have learned from Hackernews is at this point is not to participate in non-technical discussions. As they are mostly just mob mentality. How do you downvote someone that took the time to participate in a discussion? Its amazing to see that every single comment I have made in this discussion has been downvoted? I've said nothing outrageous, I have offered different points of view? I have taken the time to articulate myself and every single comment is downvoted?
I think you are splitting hairs here on rape. OK, 8 years average conviction on rape, if the victim pursues it. Still 8 years with possible time off for good behavior on a very violent crime vs. Selling LSD -> life sentence. I still fail to see aside from the law how you think the punishment is in proportion to the actions, which was the point I was trying to convey.
Well I'm not sure someone serving 8 years vs 4 years would agree with you. Its double the amount, I'm not sure I would say that's splitting hairs. Time off is a fact of many sentences in an overcrowded penal system.
I never stated that I agreed with the sentencing guidelines, which I absolutely and emphatically do not. What I said was that there was a reason in the eyes of the law for using weight including paper as metric. Whether you agree with it or not that's their logic. I never said anything more.
I guess that simply pointing that out there was another side to this was enough for being downvoted as if I am some "tough on crime, law and order" Republican?
That's unfortunate because it was a topic that I thought was interesting and a case that I have actually kept up on over the years.
I think your arguments were rational. Splitting hairs is not the difference between 4 or 8 years, but compared to life, or around 60 to 75 years depending on your incarceration age. I do agree with you pointing out that it was a multiple offense, and selling not buying to use. Still, life? And questions of mental health too.
"According to a pre-sentencing memorandum, Tyler was charged with selling 13,000 hits of acid, found on 13 sheets of paper and equivalent to several grams of liquid. Tyler pleaded guilty to drug distribution...."
Wikipedia. Plus the two prior offenses.
And here I was looking at the title and thinking they'd outlawed the Dead.
I get that the right to consume any substance one wants into one's own body is a basic human right, but outlawing LSD and cannabis are two cases of outrageous, striking dumbness and pointlessness. Neither one is addictive, and the LD50 of each is an incredible number of orders of magnitude higher than a normal dose. It is virtually impossible to harm yourself.
> I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
This is Dan Baum recalling a conversation with a dead Ehrlichmann after he got out of prison, 20 years after he served with Nixon. Dan puts quotes around this passage but I don't believe for a second that that is what Ehrlichmann said. And Ehrlichmann died 17 years ago, so he's not around to defend himself.
When you say 'recalling a conversation', you mean going over notes from the time he interviewed Ehrlichmann for a book. Given that Baum is a professional journalist, whose career depends on being able to accurately quote people, I reckon it's a bit better sourced that your phrasing suggests.
Note also that Erlichmann's family based their denial of the Baum story partly on the notion that he never said anything racist in front of them - though his propensity for racism is definitely confirmed in the Watergate tapes.
> Note also that Erlichmann's family based their denial of the Baum story partly on the notion that he never said anything racist in front of them - though his propensity for racism is definitely confirmed in the Watergate tapes.
Look, I'm not really here to stick up for Ehrlichmann. After all, he did go to jail for some time for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. First of all, that already makes him the least reliable of witnesses, even if he really did say that. Second, he's an easy target for a journalist that wants to sensationalize their story, and instead believing him just because "he's a journalist" is not rational. Dan Baum has written about that interview before and there was never anything close to that damning of a quote. This is why I think this quote is total hogwash. It fits exactly what you want to hear deep down about two bad people: Ehrlichmann and Nixon. Too bad it's likely a fabrication, with zero evidence otherwise.
> Look, I'm not really here to stick up for Ehrlichmann. After all, he did go to jail for some time for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. First of all, that already makes him the least reliable of witnesses, even if he really did say that. Second, he's an easy target for a journalist that wants to sensationalize their story, and instead believing him just because "he's a journalist" is not rational. Dan Baum has written about that interview before and there was never anything close to that damning of a quote. This is why I think this quote is total hogwash. It fits exactly what you want to hear deep down about two bad people: Ehrlichmann and Nixon. Too bad it's likely a fabrication, with zero evidence otherwise.
"likely a fabrication"
"with zero evidence otherwise"
The burden of proof is on you to show that the quote is a fabrication, not on the journalist.
Let's go through it, though.
Going to jail for conspiracy and obstruction of justice makes him a criminal, but not necessarily a liar on techniques the U.S. government used against counterculture.
Secondly, Nixon and his administration did outrageous things. You can hardly dismiss more allegations of outrageous acts as more-likely-to-be-fabricated because it fits pre-existing narrative. That's, like, the opposite of how priors work. "It fits exactly what you want to hear deep down about two bad people: Ehrlichmann and Nixon" -- YES! Nixon and Ehrlichmann were bad people and did bad things. Did they do what Ehrlichmann (allegedly) describes? Who knows, but it isn't an argument against their having done something horrific that they had other horrific policies.
Nixon, you may remember, bugged a Supreme Court justice.
Journalists' livelihoods are dependent on not misquoting those who they interview. The claim was that the quote is a fabrication. How can the journalist possibly defend against this charge? It's requiring him to prove a negative.
Actually, the previous poster's claim is worse than that. This journalist does have notes and so if it mattered enough, those could be subjected to forensic examination to see if they're consistent with the time period of the interview. The poster is basically denying something for which there is almost certainly actual physical evidence corroborating Baum's story, as well as apparently defaming a professional journalist.
Sorry, no, questioning a journalist's claims is not defamation.
The family thinks this quote is bunk, too.
"We never saw or heard anything from our dad, John Ehrlichman, that was derogatory about any person of color," wrote Peter Ehrlichman, Tom Ehrlichman, Jan Ehrlichman, Michael Ehrlichman and Jody E. Pineda in a statement provided to CNN.
"The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father. And collectively, that spans over 185 years of time with him," the Ehrlichman family wrote. "We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond. None of us have raised our kids that way, and that's because we were not raised that way."
> Sorry, no, questioning a journalist's claims is not defamation.
If you're falsely claiming a journalist is lying, it damn well is. We're talking about someone who referred to his notes of an interview and flat out quoted Erlichman by name with a lengthy quote. If you're contradicting him, it's hard to see how you're suggesting an innocent misquote - either Baum is lying or you're wrong.
> The family thinks this quote is bunk, too.
The family clearly doesn't know shit about Ehrlichman's racist views. He was caught on one of Nixon's tapes, released in 2003, ranting that black people were sexual degenerates with no family values, and in another tape that black people should be stuck in boxcars to work as domestics.
I'd point you at the recordings (good luck denying those), but the Nixon archives are really hard to search, so it might take some time. The latter is quoted in John Dean's book "The Nixon Defence", but google books isn't giving up the footnote today!
Comments like yours are very dangerous. They buy into the DARE framing of the dangers of drugs being death. But there are much more subtle dangers that get ignored when the discussion is framed this way.
And I say this as someone who went through a prolonged depression following ecstacy use in my early 20s. I stupidly evaluated the dangers of the drug and determined that the naysayers who were warning of possible death were full of shit and didn't think to consider the less severe negative consequences.
Folks go through depression after prolonged alcohol use as well, and likelwise use it to treat their own depression. But it is still legal. We tend to ignore a lot of subtle dangers of alcohol as well - or overemphasize them in some contexts.
Unfortunately, a lot of the context of illegal drugs is of the overemphasizing sort instead of normal, down-to-earth information taking good with the bad. Which leads to some things like your situation and stupid behavior.
Besides, it is really difficult to sort that depression stuff out. Pot and hash can induce panic attacks in a small portion of the population, but in general that only happens if they have a predisposition to it or if they have an untreated anxiety condition. And it seems to be the same sort of thing with other drugs - and I'm going to guess that it only happens with a small portion of users in reality, much like most folks don't get addicted to most drugs. I fully believe to get over that sort of hump, we not only need balanced and completely truthful information on drugs, but we also need to be able to have truthful and destigmatised discussion about mental health in addition to having facilities available to help folks out.
I went through depression after my first relationship. We don't warn children about the dangers of relationships, we just expect that they'll "figure it out" just like everyone else.
You figured out the dangers of high ecstasy usage yourself. Are you one of these people who thinks nobody but you is capable of figuring out how to use it safely?
The point was that I had to find out the dangers of prolonged ecstacy use the hard way because the dangers of the drug were so overblown by opponents and I didn't hear a more nuanced take on the subject. I cannot be the only one capable of figuring out how to use it safely because I did not figure out how to use it safely.
I just think that potential ecstacy users need to hear that there are consequences that can be very severe that don't work well as scare tactics. If they understand the risks and still choose to use, then more power to them. They've made an informed choice based on accurate information. But accurate information is the key and we do a disservice as a society by putting out the ridiculous message that ecstacy can kill you.
Oh, and to equate breakup misery with clinical depression is pretty ignorant. Depression has a specific meaning that doesn't equate to sadness.
When talking about potential harm of a substance, it is important to qualify the risk. Transient down-regulation of serotonin receptors is not really the same thing as post-relationship breakup blues.
MDMA is famous for inducing temporary depression, ala a "breakup blues". The risk of extended or even permanent depression issues is not well known at this time, it does not seem likely from occasional doses as I understand it. But it still seems to remain a possibility with very high or extended doses. Certainly there's enough anecdotal reports out there that seem to suggest this.
While I do agree that it is a human right to consume anything you want, I very much disagree that "It is virtually impossible to harm yourself" with LSD or Ganja ...
Just because you can't really physically kill yourself with the drug, doesn't mean it can't do you bad otherwise.
Minus the legality issues, neither of these have shown to be any worse than some of the dangers of alcohol. Either can be bad for folks with severe mental illness of certain types. It probably isn't safe to drive on LSD, and you'd not really want to be too stoned (or drunk) to take care of your kids.
But this same sort of stuff is true for so many other things. If it were that bad, I'm pretty sure there would be many more problems in places like Amsterdam.
Well, water is not any worse than alcohol, so that first statement doesn't really make sense. In general LSD is orders of magnitude safer than alcohol, even based just on the LD50. LSD is very potent, but not addictive, and for a few casual uses, which can be mind-expanding, it generally doesn't have any negative effects, outside of a few very rare cases.
LSD is not without risks. There are number of well known artists from the 1960s that experienced mental health issues related to LSD consumption. Look up Roky Erikson, Syd Barret, Peter Green and Skip Spence.
None of it is without risks. My understanding has generally been that LSD doesn't produce mental health issues, but can trigger it in some folks, most of the time because they already have it or enough of the markers, such as in Schizophrenia. (Yes, still a horrible risk). Other drugs can terse out underlying mental illness as well: Unfortunately this is one of the side effects of any drug. Contradicting this is the folks that are experimenting with microdosing as a drug to help mental illness, especially depression. Odd how minds work.
As far as the stuff in the 1960's, literature gets weird. Some say that the stuff from the 60's was stronger than the stuff from the 90's forward: Some say it is in general safer. Safety might just be because more folks know what to expect and the culture 'grew up' as they say. Some say there was more 'bad' acid back then. Doesn't change what happened to them, nor that the two might (or might not) have been related.
But to me, this is all a cry for legality so that such things can be regulated, down to earth talks about what to expect and side effects can occur, and much better mental health screenings (and diagnostics).
In the eyes of the traditional establishment, LSD is an extremely dangerous substance, not because of it's potential for causing physical harm (which is very close to zero), but because of it's consciousness altering ability, also called "mind expansion" ability.
People who go through a proper acid trip are permanently changed. Their core philosophy, religious and political views can be dramatically altered.
They stop believing the stories that the State and Church wants them to believe and some become hard to control, insubordinate, etc which I would sum up with one word - "free" (of course, with it's own set of consequences).
If the System "brainwashes", the LSD "braincleans".
And then people turn into "hippies", wearing flowers in their hairs, hugging trees and eating vegetarian food. They look at all people as "human beings", instead of "Communist", "Muslim" or "Gay".
They also want everyone to take it.
If I were the military-industrial ego-centric paranoid war-mongering establishment of the '60s, then I would definitely outlaw it and try to get rid of everyone who promotes its use.
Fortunately, LSD and Marijuana are making a major come back, now globally, with millions of young people "waking up", which in our day and age is vitally important, so I hope we'll see news like these more often, including the release of Ross Ulbricht of SilkRoad fame among others.
Because LSD ended up being used primarily within counterculture after academia dismissed its medical potential, I do believe there is some degree of truth in the Erlichmann quote / rememberance. But the fact that LSD culture was aligned with the rise of the beatniks and hippies does not mean that every person who takes LSD becomes a rebel-against-the-system hippie.
Some early LSD use was actually intended for therapeutic treatment, recall. LSD was also experimented with by those same military-industrial complex you are talking about, in the infamous Project MKULTRA experiments. These experiments may have contributed to making a hippie or two (Ken Kesey famously was a participant), but clearly not all participants became a hippie for sure. (Some individuals in fact received negative effects from what I recall, LSD is safer than DARE videos would have it, but the potential for causing mental harm is there, paranoia / schizophrenic type issues in particular) Do also recall that the Hell's Angels (in the California / Hunter S. Thompson circle at least) were also pretty big fans of LSD "back in the day". Biker culture is quite far away from hippie culture.
Today, with marijuana in particular, currently I think you are seeing somewhat of a "normalization" with marijuana in that it's becoming more "normal" to use in a casual manner (ala casual consumption of alcohol). It's not just "hippies" smoking marijuana anymore, it's anyone from CEOs to Olympic athletes these days. It's why, in my opinion, it eventually will be legalized. It won't happen with LSD as easily in my opinion, not enough potential for casual usage, but marijuana's story is a good reason why one has to be careful conflating the recreational substance with the culture it is associated with.
I favor precision in language. One may develop a cannabis psychic dependency or habit, but addiction means physical dependence including a real physical withdrawal syndrome.
Always amazes me that LSD is illegal while alcohol is legal, the latter causing all host of metal and physical ailments, the former causing mostly hilarious navel-gazing
Alcohol is probably only legal because it's easy to make and has existed in the culture for ages, nothing to do with any ailments. History defines the laws far more than logic does.
I'm intrigued by this line of argument - have always assumed it's mainly because alcohol can be enjoyed on its own merits, whereas most drugs are taken solely for the impact on the mind (e.g. wine for taste etc...).
Really? I know I have no data to back up my point that all drugs are only taken for their impact on the mind, but I know that alcohol isn't solely taken for its impact on the mind.
Wine is tasty. Beer is tasty. Brandy is tasty. And (anecdotally) know many people who aren't just drinking them to get out of their heads...
Most alcoholic drinks are extremely acquired tastes. Try finding people who haven't drunk much alcohol before adulthood and give them tastes of a selection of beers and wines, and I'd be willing to bet that most would find most of them disgusting.
I'm 41, and I still haven't acquired a taste for beer. I find it absolutely awful. I can tolerate most wines, but outside of extremely sweet dessert wines I have never tasted any that actually taste particularly enjoyable to me. I'm sure I could change that if I forced myself to drink more, but I don't really have any incentive to do so.
There are liquors that taste nice to me, but they are generally the ones that hide the alcohol taste quite well, like e.g. amaretto.
I'm sure taste is an element of it, but the point being that very few alcoholic drinks taste nice until you've spent a lot of time getting accustomed to the taste of alcohol without enjoying the taste first due to social expectations or a desire to get drunk.
There's a very similar argument for dark chocolate - most children hate the taste, but as their palettes develop they acquire the taste for it. My parents introduced alcohol to us from a young age so that it was never a rebellious activity in later years - but since we're in the land of anecdotes again, my original opinion still holds: noone has ever argued they take drugs because they enjoy anything other than the mind altering effects, whereas there are plenty of people who enjoy alcohol for reasons other than those.
Yes. I think there is a good analogy to be made with spicy foods. I enjoy spicy foods, but I developed a taste for them over the years and the "natural high" induced by eating them. As a particular example, I remember absolutely hating the flavor of crushed red pepper, but now I can't get enough of the stuff.
Of course, once you've developed a taste, then you might seek out foods that balance spice with flavor, and you appreciate novel interplays between the two --- in the same way that a consumer of alcohol might seek out a variety of beer, wine, or liquor that balances flavor and alcohol content.
I'm the same way, and I don't think many people first tasted beer or other alcoholic drinks and said "wow, this is very tasty". Especially whiskey, which I find repulsive.
Maybe they aren't drinking to get "out of their heads" but they will at least partially be drinking for the relaxation properties, or the social lubricant properties of the drink.
Yes, people enjoy the taste of these things, they have trained themselves to, usually because of the effects.
FYI not everyone using every other drug is trying to get "out of their head" either. A little cannabis or sedative use may be for relaxation. A little stimulant to stay awake and increase talkativeness and confidence. LSD does rather take people somewhere else though...
But my point is that it can be enjoyed solely for the taste - whether you like it or not, there is at least an element of flavour choice when it comes to alcohol. It's an exceptionally skewed view to totally dismiss the taste aspect - whereas I've yet to hear anyone mention that drugs can be taken for any other reason than for their (even if only slight) mind altering affects.
Plenty of people would pair a nice red with their pasta even if it had no other impact on their mental faculties, same with other drinks and food. I'm perplexed at such an unhealthy view of alcohol.
I am with you on this. I've had some pretty awesome flavors coming from alcoholic drinks.
It's expensive, and I don't make any friends by drinking expensive drinks (my friends don't really care)
I would love to see someone make "virgin" versions of various stronger drinks I like, but so far they don't taste anywhere near as good.
It sincerely annoys me that drinks make me sleepy and such. I'm only having one or two, but I would like to still be able to study and play chess, AND have nice flavors.
I've even starting trying to find creative ways to water them down without losing flavor so I can enjoy them without the side-effects.
(I should probably mention that I don't really enjoy "sweet" flavors, so part of it is that only alcoholic drinks get the bitter/sour flavors done well)
I like the idea, it would allow me to enjoy those drinks without the "downside". Since it makes me sleepy too unless I am engage in a rigorous physical behavior.
>> Plenty of people would pair a nice red with their pasta even if it had no other impact on their mental faculties
If it had no effect they likely wouldn't have acquired the taste, so I doubt very much they would in significant numbers, no.
There is an element of flavoir choice. But just look at how many concoctions there are that are, at least the popular ones, designed specifically to make drinking alcohol a more flavourful experience, and to hide the taste of the base alcohol as much as possible while still getting it into the drinker.
I'm sorry, I just don't believe that, absent the positive effects of the alcohol, anyone would drink much booze.
For the most part I would agree with you, but historically this hasn't always been the case.
Before modern times, the quality of water was terrible pretty much everywhere. Because of this, many regularly drank alcoholic drinks instead of water because it was cleaner due to the alcohol it contained.
Although they weren't drinking it because it paired well with their pasta, many times they also weren't drinking it because of the impact on their mental faculties.
Oh and IMHO, people are drinking that glass of red because they like the feeling of what a small dose of alcohol does to them. It's all bound up in the taste acquisition.
FYI one can teach oneself to enjoy the taste of amphetamines, if one creates enough positive associations with their use. I've been there.
>Wine is tasty. Beer is tasty. Brandy is tasty. And (anecdotally) know many people who aren't just drinking them to get out of their heads...
I did coke for a few years, at first it tasted gross but I liked the effect by the end it was 'tasty'. That is your brains reward center at work, it shapes experiences that release dopamine and makes them more positive. In reality coke tastes like baby laxatives and bleach and alcohol tastes like fungal piss, as that is what they are.
Interesting. I've never smoked pot but I really enjoy the smell. But that could be because my parents were hippies when I was young, so I got a lot of second-hand exposure and it has pleasant associations for me.
It always amazes me how many people on HN trivialise extremely dangerous drugs saying that alcohol is more dangerous.
I'd rather stay in a room with someone that drinks a glass of wine a day than with someone that assumes LSD every day.
Some objective research is useful here. Lancet did an evaluation across multiple spectrums, harm to self, harm to environment, harm to society, harm to others, crime, etc...
Alcohol is unquestionably the more destructive of substances, LSD ranks far lower in this scale. Importantly, Alcohol results in a lot of harm to other people (violence, drunk driving, etc...).
> Alcohol is unquestionably the more destructive of substances
Because it is the most popular one. The "harm to others" part of the score is not per user. At the margin, one typical heroin or crack consumer creates more costs to society than one typical alcohol consumer.
Is that really the case? I can't think of any reason why a heroin addict would be harmful to others, whereas people who drink alcohol tend to drive and kill/injure others. Indeed, if a heroin addict has clean needles, safe place to inject, and a safe supply of heroin, (close to zero mortality in Vancouver Safe Injection sites) then it's relatively benign substance, other than addictive component.
I bet if you put one alcoholic against one heroin addict, more damage across almost every spectrum than the heroin addict.
In the very paper that you cited to support your position they claim that the "community", "economic" and "family" harm is about three to five times larger for alcohol than for heroin. Which, given that there are more than two orders of magnitude of difference in the prevalence of alcohol and heroin usage, suggest that somehow heroin users are not as harmless as you paint them. The score for "crime" ("beyond the use-of-drug act") is actually higher for heroin than for alcohol.
Let's give anyone that wants a glass of wine a shot of heroin then, we'll save the world because we are giving them a chance to use a less dangerous drugs.
I'll be quite curious to see how it goes, as you say only 25% of heroin users might become addicted.
And of course more than 1/4 of the people that drinks a glass of wine is an addict, as you can see around you. :)
Where did you read that heroin was less harmful than alcohol?
The post you reply to compares alcohol and LSD. The abstract of the linked paper says that heroin is one of the most harmful drugs, more so than alcohol to the user, but grouped with alcohol in terms of harm to others.
ghshephard changed the conversation talking about the position of alcohol in the ranking "of substances" by destructiveness. You might think that he meant "of substances that are either alcohol or LSD," but given that he can't think of any reason why a heroin addict would be harmful to others I think he had a wider interpretation in mind.
Looking at the sentence structure I'm afraid it's obvioua toe he was still talking about the comparison of the two, he mentions both in the post, and the context of talking about the comparison is there.
Regardless, his/her interlocutor has hopefully had their eyes opened by the conversation, in which they said that even making the comparison was offensive.
According to the author of the comment your interpretation is correct, but it's far from obvious.
"Alcohol is unquestionably the more destructive of substances, LSD ranks far lower in this scale."
- The sentence comes right after he points to the chart of 20 drugs ordered by "harm score", where alcohol is #1 and LSD is #18.
- He says "of substances" without any qualification like "of those substances" or "of both substances".
- He mentions that LSD ranks much lower. However, both interpretations 1) "alcohol is unquestionably the more destructive of alcohol and LSD, because LSD ranks much lower than alcohol in the scale of harm" and 2) "alcohol is unquestionably the more destructive of all substances because it's #1, and LSD ranks much lower in the scale" are possible.
It's true - I was originally referring to Alcohol versus LSD (as that was what the parent was trying to compare, and couldn't believe that LSD wasn't terribly dangerous). But, I was prepared to also discuss the relevant merits of Alcoholic abusers and Heroin Abusers (and users) as well.
I think, much like people get used to the death rate from Car Accidents, and don't think of Cars as dangerous, people have gotten used to Alcohol issues in society, and don't think of it as dangerous, when it very much is. (Front page of New York Times is discussing an Alcohol related sexual also case in Palo Alto that almost certainly wouldn't have happened if the two parties had been sober).
First, it is pretty rare for folks to take LSD daily, outside of the current trend of microdosing for treating depression, etc. In this case, it seems generally no more faulty than a glass of wine a day. Besides, this is comparing apples to oranges - you'd need to compare an alcoholic, drinking vodka, to the daily user for that to be an apt comparison. And honestly, at that point I'm not too sure who I want to spend time with.
In addition, the comparison would work better with pot. Would you rather spend time with someone drinking a bit or that smokes a bowl every night? That gets to be a much more fuzzy.
In addition, there are questions like: Assiming folks are taking as many responsible precautions as would be expected, is it better to get wasted by alcohol once a month or two or to take some lsd once a month or two? What about once or twice a year? These sorts of questions are closer to mimicking most folks' use of lsd.
But most folks use such things in a much more responsible manner. Occasionally. There will be outliers, just like alcohol. Most folks don't get addicted: 25% of heroin users might, and the rest is at 10% or less (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/neil-woods-u...).
As far as dangers are concerned: Part of the danger is not having honest sources and not having access to good information (think about how much more dangerous alcohol was during prohibition). Sure, there is a risk of addiction, but you have that with alcohol, prescription drugs, gambling, and a myriad of other things. Effects on society are heaviest on the illegal things because of the illegality. Current laws would cover a lot of the other 'dangers' much as they do with alcohol (don't be violent, take care of your kids, drive sober). We can regulate potency much like we do with alcohol. Sure, some things can be dangerous, but most folks aren't doing it in those ways. Just like alcohol. We just hear about the bad stuff more because of the political and moral stance on them.
I'm not sure where they are getting their 25% figure for heroin in your linked article. They link to yet another article as a source, but I see no mention of the 25% there.
The claim seems to be that only 25% of people who try the drug once will end up being addicts. While I doubt this claim in itself, I think this percentage would go way up if you looked only at people who had reasonable access/resources to acquire more of the drug.
If you keep doing heroin (or any opiate) and have the access/resources to get more, you will get addicted.
It may take a few successive uses within a given amount of time, but beyond that you will have physical withdrawal symptoms, 100% of the time.
This is not the same as alcohol, pot, or LSD, all of which are not physically addictive in the same way.
Well, the other two (pot and LSD) are not physically addictive at all, so it would be impossible to be less addictive than that.
Yes, alcohol can have physical withdrawal symptoms for people that stop after already having abused the drug for long periods of time.
According to what I am able to find, even of alcoholics already with a long term problem, only 50% experience withdrawal at all, and only 3 to 5 percent of that 50% experience DTs (tremors) or seizures.
As far as I can tell, even these withdrawal symptoms result from damage to the nervous system, rather than being due to a sudden desaturation of certain receptors in the brain, which cause the craving most associate with addiction.
The big difference for me is the difference in the craving aspect, and the time and number of doses it takes to start feeling the effects of the "addiction".
The thing is that alcohol is objectively more dangerous and more harmful than many/most illegal drugs.
It has both acute and chronic health effects, it's addictive and it causes (or at least facilitates) all sorts of social problems including a lot of violence. It kills its users and its users sometimes kill or hurt other people when under its influence.
It always amazes me how willing people are to overlook the evils of alcohol while highlighting the evils of other drugs.
Absolutely no.
It may be true to some extent for alcohol abuse.
Saying that alcohol is objectively more harmful and dangerous than many/most illegal drugs is simply an outrageous lie.
I never saw anyone die for a glass of wine a day, I guess that there is plenty of cases of death for regular drugs users.
It's simply disconcerting that you encourage the use of illegal drugs saying that are not dangerous on a public website.
I guess that in some countries it may be even a crime, but regardless I find it extremely offending.
Sorry you disagree but the data really isn't on your side here. I'm not sure why you find it offending.
The line between alcohol use and abuse is a very fine one, plenty of people cross it all the time. Many of them end up dead.
If you look at all the people who try, say, cannabis, and count who gets addicted and who dies or gets sick from it, then compare those percentages to alcohol, alcohol comes out far, far worse.
You don't get to say "it's ok, those people were abusers, users are all fine" because the addictive nature means some users become abusers, and many, many people are harmed by it. That's the whole point of measuring harm, to see what actually happens when humans use these substances in large numbers.
Nowhere have I or will I say that drugs are not dangerous. But I'm afraid it's you that's absolutely wrong about the relative harms here. It's not a lie, I suggest you actually try reading about this sometime.
My recommendation to get started would be "Drugs without the hot air" by Professor David Nutt.
Alcohol is not physically addictive in the same way opiates or cocaine is addictive. It's silly to be scared of becoming "addicted" to alcohol.
After many years of abuse, alcoholics can get to the point that their bodies dont function properly without some alcohol, but they already have to have a problem for many years to get to that point.
> Alcohol is not physically addictive in the same way opiates or cocaine is addictive.
That's true; of the basic axes by which things are typically labeled "more" or "less" addictive (all of this IIRC) alcohol is high on habituation (which is sometimes not considered "physical", as if any behavior could exist without a physiological bases) and withdrawal, fairly low on tolerance and reverse tolerance. Cocaine has a dangerous combination of featuring tolerance and reverse tolerance, is moderately high on habituation (though perhaps not as strongly habituating as alcohol), and fairly low on withdrawal. Opiates are strongly habituating, feature significant tolerance effects, and have serious withdrawal (on average more severe than alcohol, but, less often fatal by itself than alcohol withdrawal.)
So, alcohol, while definitely physically addictive, and in some respects as much or moreso than cocaine or opiates, is, truly, not physically addictive like cocaine or opiates.
Also, alcohol is very habit forming, regardless of physical addiction.
What's silly to me is that alcohol somehow gets excused from its acute effects (overdose deaths, accidents) and its chronic effects (cirrhosis, premature aging, weight gain, cancer and all sorts of other stuff, because it's just a beer... but drugs, nooo, drugs are evil, the big bad boogeyman.
Alcohol is considered one of the more addictive drugs, when compared to LSD, cannabis, ketamine, ecstasy and all sorts of other recreational substances.
It just pales in comparison to heroin and cocaine. And meth.
I agree with you there. Although, I don't really think LSD, cannabis, ketamine, or ecstasy are addictive at all, other than being potentially habit forming, which just about anything can be.
I would just put alcohol more in the habit forming category though, maybe a bit more potential than cannabis over the very long term.
Opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, meth, benzos, and even Ambien are in another league.
> I never saw anyone die for a glass of wine a day, I guess that there is plenty of cases of death for regular drugs users.
And I've never seen anyone die from taking "regular drugs" recreationally.
This is just a stupid comparison. You're comparing "a glass of wine" to a "drug user". A more apt comparison would be "someone who drinks three bottles of wine a day" and "a person who smokes heroin/crack/amphetamines daily" (IV use would be closer to drinking bottles of hard booze).
Both of these groups of people have an increased risk of death, permanent health damage, mental issues and a risk to others around them.
The theory that everyone who tries drugs will become an addict and a daily user simply isn't true.
> It's simply disconcerting that you encourage the use of illegal drugs saying that are not dangerous on a public website.
It's a perfectly valid opinion that drugs should not be illegal. You do not have to agree with that and you should definitely not be offended by it. It's a discussion that will likely be taken in your country too in the next few decades.
No-one is saying they aren't dangerous (and if they are, that's misleading), but making comparisons to e.g. alcohol and tabacco is a valid thing to do. And if you look at the hard facts, the illegal status isn't that obviously justified.
TIL it's offensive to have an informed opinion. First, lets cover the fallacies - no one said alcohol is more dangerous than crack. No one said alcohol is more dangerous than heroin. Several people did say alcohol is more dangerous than LSD, MDMA, other drugs. The data backs this up, in terms of mortality and in social ills that come of alcoholism. Being nonaddictive and having such an insanely high lethal dose, there isn't even regular data on how many people die to LSD yearly! So if we're playing the "outrageous lie" game, then you're winning.
There are plenty of drugs other than alcohol that can safely be taken regularly. Legality and safety aren't correlated at all, at least in the US.
I've never seen anyone die from a joint per day. Plenty of other drugs are the same. They can all be dangerous, including alcohol, if you take enough of it or take it too frequently.
> I guess that in some countries it may be even a crime
Not in any country I would want to be in. Who needs freedom of speech anyway?
The equivalent of drinking a glass of wine every day is microdosing LSD, which, interesting, is something that's increasingly popular in the tech community. You may be already be around people every day who are consuming LSD.
To avoid a false dichotomy, you should say you'd rather spend your days with your friend who's drunk to the point of constantly hugging you and telling you "I love you bro, we're fucking bros, man, lets move to Mexico and become fucking PIRATES, man"
Last, it sounds like you've never been around someone who's on LSD, because at low doses they're usually very tame and can at times provide great conversation.
Sounds like a good idea. If politicians were held accountable for their actions for their whole career, they might actively look for the long term better policies instead of blindly mirroring whatever nutty ideas their current round of voters want.
Overly cynical viewpoint - I know my own views on a whole host of things have changed over the last decade. If we were all held to account for things we believed at other times in our lives/careers we'd never progress as individuals.
Lots of things can be seen as politically convenient, e.g. drumming up fear of Islam and Mexicans. I'd rather a politician that was advocating for a politically convenient positive change than a politically convenient negative one.
Sure, one that consistently advocated for positive change would be best. But have you seen polls about the number of people who believe in witchcraft or support Trump? In the US, we arrive at bad choices because around half of the country believes and supports bad things. We'll have to fix that before we can expect more from democratically elected politicians.
This kind of thinking helps nothing. If you are outraged, push to change it. If you seriously think the best way to do that is to not vote for Hillary, I'd love to hear your reasoning.
I wouldn't worry about it much - there are a lot of us out there who aren't exactly "single-issue voters", but for whom a single issue can make a candidate completely unpalatable.
For me, that's guns. For you, that's drugs. For many others, it's abortion.
Last time I checked Clinton promised to move marijuana to schedule II, not do anything like pledge to end the completely pointless war on drugs.
Do you have millions in donations to a campaign or millions of followers to vote for your cause? Then I wouldn't hold your breath "pushing for change" within a campaign on either side of the aisle because your opinion simply doesn't matter to them.
well then lobby to get your electoral system fixed instead of copping out. not voting for Hillary Clinton increases the chances of Trump winning, and who even knows what his actual policy on drugs are?
To be clear I was not a Bernie supporter either(since you mention lobbying the electoral system), I just used the MJ example because it was easy and at hand.
I do not support Trump either.
By voting for someone I support, I am not voting anyone else into office, that is up to their supporters.
That makes sense emotionally, but in reality in FPTP you just enabled the even worse other party. If you want your voice fairly represented, you'll need other voting mechanisms and non-partisan districting mechanisms. Your wish is legitimate, but unfortunately the current system limits your useful actions.
There's no mathematical reason why the two winning parties in FPTP have to be the same two parties forever. It is the media coverage that makes it so, and concerted voting for a single third party could make that party part of a new duopoly.
Sure, you're right about that. In fact, we may be in an era where that might be possible at the moment (probably in the next election though). However, when a third party is actually viable, you'll know it well before election day.
... and Trump, and any major party candidate for the past 75 years.
The unfortunate truth is that it's a democracy and the majority of the voting public still supports the drug war. That support in softening, but very slowly.
No.... it's a constitutionally limited democratic republic. That's supposed to prevent "the majority of the voting public" from mandating stupid laws and forcing the minority to live under them.
As such, place the blame where it belongs: the majority of Democratic and Republican party politicians, who have employed the drug war as a means to preserve or increase their political power, and to distract and propagandize the aforementioned voting public away from any issues of real importance that cannot be solved effectively without doing something unpopular among certain blocs of the electorate.
> No.... it's a constitutionally limited democratic republic. That's supposed to prevent "the majority of the voting public" from mandating stupid laws and forcing the minority to live under them.
No, its supposed to stop the majority of the voting public from mandating laws that violate essential liberty and forcing the minority to live under them.
Its not supposed to stop the majority of the voting public from mandating stupid laws, though of course one hopes that stupid laws would, if they fail to be recognized as such before passage, be corrected in short order most of the time.
Though experience would, perhaps, show that to be overly optimistic.
It would seem that the issue in dispute is whether a law can be stupid without also violating essential liberty in some way.
I think we can agree that all laws that violate essential liberty are intrinsically stupid.
Let's not examine it too closely, though, lest we uncover that republics may, in fact, be designed to protect the privileges of the land-owning elites from the sheer numbers of the unwashed rabble, and the defense of their essential liberties may only be a beneficial side effect.
You're correct, but unfortunately there is nothing about personal sovereignty over one's own biochemical processes in the constitution. The constitutional also permits the Federal government to enforce laws on interstate commerce, which effectively allows this kind of prohibition even if the states disagree internally.
The interstate commerce clause has been used as a dumping ground for federal overreach for a long time. It is likely that it was only intended to provide authority sufficient for the federal government to prevent a state like Missouri from treating Colorado cannabis any differently from California cannabis, if either happen to be imported into its jurisdiction. This interpretation is considered obsolete by many federal judges.
Interpreting it such that a cannabis plant grown, harvested, prepared, and consumed entirely within the state of Colorado, exclusively by Colorado persons, may still be subject to federal law is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion. But the prestigious paid professionals still do it.
It took the 18th Amendment to prohibit "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors...for beverage purposes" at a federal level in 1920. The Volstead Act was able to use that amendment as the basis for its authority. The 21st explicitly repealed it, thus obviating Volstead, which had already been unpopular for years. Note also that consumption was never outlawed. Even so, it was a disaster.
There was no such amendment to authorize prohibition or control of other, non-alcoholic intoxicants for recreational purposes. What happened to the Constitution between 1920 and 1970 that would have allowed Congress to pass another prohibition law like the Volstead Act? Nothing. Nothing at all. Or rather, New Deal politics happened. Federal power expanded without explicit authorization, just because of a temporary confluence between economics and political opportunity.
The various drug war laws are probably not authorized by the commerce clause, just as justices O'Connor and Thomas dissented (Rehnquist concurring with O'Connor) in Gonzales v. Raich [0]. It would seem that, looking also at Wickard v. Filburn [1] and US v. Lopez [2], the SCotUS is not likely to be of any help here. The underlying argument is that "drugs can be sold, therefore there exists an interstate market for them, therefore federal regulations on them are authorized by the commerce clause." Wickard v. Filburn seemed like politically-motivated bullshit to me, but who am I to argue with the precedent?
The laws will, like Volstead, mainly be overturned by the court of popular opinion long before any official federal action occurs.
> The interstate commerce clause has been used as a dumping ground for federal overreach for a long time. It is likely that it was only intended to provide authority sufficient for the federal government to prevent a state like Missouri from treating Colorado cannabis any differently from California cannabis
That's pretty clearly not the case; the so-called "interstate commerce clause" in Article I, Section 8 is perhaps more accurately the "interstate and foreign commerce clause", and expressly gives Congress the same authority to regulate trade among the states as it does for foreign trade and trade with Indian tribes; it clearly was not intended to be limited to preventing states from erecting protectionist trade barriers (which, in any case, is the focus of the Article I, Section 10, limits on states.)
> It took the 18th Amendment to prohibit "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors...for beverage purposes" at a federal level in 1920. The Volstead Act was able to use that amendment as the basis for its authority.
The Volstead Act went into effect in 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and went into effect in 1921. Its clear that Congress -- which proposed the 18th Amendment before passing the Volstead Act, which it did over a Presidential veto -- did not believe that the Amendment was necessary to support the act, though they clearly thought it was desirable (perhaps because it didn't just authorize regulation, it explicitly mandated prohibition.)
My objectivity regarding the interstate commerce clause is compromised to the point where I can't really have a rational discussion with anyone who disagrees with my opinion on it. It suffices to say that I am strongly anti-federalist, and excessive coprolalia quickly ensues whenever a strong federalist shows up.
In the most ferrous of ironies, the uniform commercial code--which was separately adopted by all 50 states in almost identical form--is probably the ideal form of legislation to be covered by the probable original intent of the interstate commerce clause, and yet there is no law that federalizes the UCC. Instead, it is used for all manner of laws that have no authorization anywhere else in the constitution.
Thus, anything further I might have to say on the topic is probably not appropriate for HN.
> This story is extremely sad, but now seems to be heading towards a happy ending.
Two lives (plus unknown others that they touched on) destroyed, and 20+ years later getting set free - with no acknowledgement of anything wrong with doing that to them in the first place - that fixes everything. /s
I don't see any mention of clemency on that page. Perhaps there was a mod-edit to point to a "better" source, which doesn't actually cover the clemency?
> use of a communication facility to facilitate the commission of a felony
How exactly is this an additional crime to said felony? How does using a telephone make the crime more heinous? This seems like one of those laws that's designed to be guaranteed to add more charges, similar to such gems as "non-violently resisting arrest".
Non-violently resisting arrest is a real thing and should most certainly be a crime. E.g. you put your hands firmly across your chest and force the police to overpower you and force you into handcuffs. You're not attacking anyone, but you're resisting arrest in a way that threatens the safety of the arresting officers and obstructs the lawful execution of an arrest warrant.
Also, when the charges are all for the same crime, the sentences are almost always concurrent, which means they run at the same time. It doesn't actually increase the length of the prison sentence.
Not exactly relevant but it's somewhat interesting that so many people apparently deserved life sentences but not even a mention of any of them on google.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard
http://www.freeleonardpickard.org/Skinner-Timeline.html
The second link discusses Gordon Todd Skinner, who was the informant that facilitated the arrest of Pickard. I don't know how much of that information is accurate, but it's an engrossing read and it paints a horrible picture of what a government informant can get away with.