The Obama administration disagrees, and argues that
since the records have already been submitted to a third
party (Oregon’s PDMP) that patients no longer enjoy an
expectation of privacy.
This follows the same(so far, legally defensible) reasoning of the phone records -- since you voluntarily gave your phone records to your phone company, you don't have an expectation of privacy regarding them. You could chose not to use a phone, but you didn't.
So by that logic, if I want to maintain my expectation of privacy regarding my prescriptions, I can either A) Not have them filled (so that I don't 'voluntarily' give them to a 3rd party) or B) source them illegally.
Not quite the same: there are strong legal protections on the privacy of medical records that don't exist as to phone records.
I'll also quibble about this part:
> since you voluntarily gave your phone records to your phone company
You didn't "give your phone records to your phone company." You never had any phone records. Your phone company created those records. That's another distinction with the case here: Oregon's PDMP didn't create those records. It received them with strict federal requirements as to how to handle them.
Here's a response, post law suit, for the Chicago's mayor's office's phone records.
Additionally, the Illinois Attorney General's Office Public Access Counselor ("PAC") has established that City-issued cell phone numbers are exempt from disclosure pursuant to 5 ILLS 140/7(1)(c), because the disclosure of these numbers would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. As the PAC reasoned, certain City employees are issued cell phones so they may be on call during non-work hours or while away from their offices. Disclosure of these numbers could subject staff to excessive phone calls from the public at all times of day. Further, if staff were forced to turn off their cell phones to reduce such intrusion, they may not be readily available to attend to the business of the public body, defeating the purpose of issuing them cell phones. (See 2010 PAC 8685, issued September 30, 2010, attached hereto as Ex. B.)
Thus, the only phone numbers which are not exempt under FOIA are those that are publically listed and are not home telephone numbers, personal telephone numbers, or work-issued cell phone numbers. In other words, FOIA only compels the production of listed numbers belonging to businesses, governmental agencies and other entities, and only those numbers which are not work-issued cell phones.
Yet.. per FOIA:
The disclosure of information that bears on the public duties of public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of personal privacy.
De-identified mostly just means that the names are removed. You still know each patient's doctor and zip code, so it's not especially difficult to merge this data with credit card transactions and other data to figure out who is taking what medication.
Considering how much information the NSA has collected and how regularly, i think they should have been able to stop drug sales and bust most if not all drug-dealers a long long ago, without any need for accessing medical data.
The NSA can know where drugs are and who is using them. That doesn't mean the NSA knows how to stop them. Drug users and dealers and importers have an army and are willing to fund it with whatever level of resources necessary to keep free commerce flowing.
And if the national government took the measures necessary to significantly reduce drug use, their resources would be cut off because voters wouldn't stand for the much heavier and pettier and more expensive police state tactics.
So the best bet for the government is burn vast amounts of money to randomly hurt random people without ever seeking any kind of improvement in the situation. More information doesn't affect that calculation.
This is really scary. Next thing you know, a positive drug test (for a job, or anything) will actually just take you in or be the probable cause for a search... makes me crave a poppyseed muffin.
Shouldn't they have a stock symbol for all the money they appropriated through the years? It's a publicly funded institution, so maybe it should be traded publicly as well.
The stock symbol DEA is already taken†. It belongs to Easterly Government Properties, a REIT which leases commercial property to federal agencies, such as "the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service ...". Market cap $616m.
This is generally true for all law enforcement agencies. However, since the hoi polloi have bought into their false legitimacy, getting rid of them cannot be achieved just like that.
The very same people complaining about their abuses on this site would be the first ones to utterly condemn you if you actually did anything even remotely effective to solve the problem.
This constituency fully deserves what they are getting. Seriously, the problem should NOT be solved whatsoever. If you do not like the problem, you must join another constituency instead.
When I live in Europe -- not right now actually -- I make sure to live in the middle of a muslim no-go zone. The police do not go there, because they cannot possibly guarantee that they would come back alive. Since I am publicly known to subscribe to the one-god theorem, I am not a target whatsoever for the locals. I am exceedingly safe from both the police and the criminals that often live there but do not dare to operate there.
It can't be all there is to it. In Afghanistan, puppies have been cultivated in open fields for decades and the US hasn't done shit - besides patrolling. I remember reading somewhere that the US banks benefited from the liquid cash of these kind of activities during the financial crisis in 2008.
Puppies growing in open fields sounds adorable. But in all seriousness, no those activities do not generate "liquid cash" (if anything they're more likely to use physical cash as storage and withdraw it from circulation) and even if there was a plausible mechanism by which it could help US banks, the size of it is very small potatoes compared to the woes encountered in 2008.
I know the War on Drugs is unpopular in HN, and it should be clear from my comment I'm against it myself.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who wouldn't drive to a seedy neighborhood and risk arrest to secure drugs, but who would take drugs if buying them were cheap and safe. Some number of those people will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
Like I said, I don't think the putting a stop to that is worth what we're paying in terms of money and lost freedoms, but let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice. If and when we end the drug war there will be more junkies, more crack whores, more people who sit around staring at the wall instead of working and raising families, more people in the ERs from overdoses and drug-fueled mental breakdowns. It's a price I think we should pay, but it still a price.
like much of the Drug War storytelling, this perspective is based on fantasy. In this episode, drugs only exist in seedy neighborhoods. No charming, friendly people ever import them, make them available over craigslist, on college campuses, in white-collar workplaces.
As for groundless malice...you're half-right. It wasn't groundless, it was and still is racist in origin.
You didn't understand the point, apparently. Countries that were nearly 100% racially homogeneous when they banned drugs couldn't have been doing it because of racism.
> If and when we end the drug war there will be more junkies, more crack whores, more people who sit around staring at the wall instead of working and raising families, more people in the ERs from overdoses and drug-fueled mental breakdowns.
No, I'm not wrong, and you can stop spreading this sort of nonsense any time. Do you honestly think Drugs are illegal in every country in the world because people other than you are stupid?
Johann Hari wrote an excellent book [1] about how the bad plants came to be demonized and persecuted. Yes, Cocaine and heroin cause problems for people, but does that justify turning addicts' supply chains over to organized crime? Would it not be better to make sure that people who've decided to use the bad plants at least get what they're paying for?
When they decriminalized all drugs of abuse, they saw an initial, mild spike in usage rates, and now consistently see far lower rates of drug abuse, for all drugs than pretty much every other country.
This is called "moving the goalpost". First you're talking about "junkies" and "crack whores", and when you get shot down on that, you move to talking about dealers.
Pick a position, and argue it; when you're proven wrong, accept it and learn.
Maybe I should just declare victory and start trying to divide the spoils like you're fond of doing?
The point under discussion is the abolition of the DEA, meaning legalization of drugs. The DEA doesn't spend a lot of time running down drug users - this is about dealers.
Don't assume other people are moving goalposts because you didn't understand where they were to start with.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. That's, to my mind, one of the best aspects of Portugal's system: they treat drug abuse as a medical problem, and offer free treatment.
In the US, offering treatment like that would probably be decried as welfare-state redistributory nonsense.
> Unfortunately there are a lot of people who wouldn't drive to a seedy neighborhood and risk arrest to secure drugs, but who would take drugs if buying them were cheap and safe.
The evidence is, based on heroin use among white people, that nobody needs to drive to a "seedy" <cough>black</cough> neighborhood to get heroin.
And never mind driving! These people are using a needle drug which entails risk of hepatitis C, AIDS, etc. Is a lw goinf to deter them?
Yes the Drug War was created with malice. Just not "groundless." The grounds were to continue Jim Crow by other means. The Drug Warrors are an expensive evil.
It's hard to say. Were there fewer alcoholics during prohibition? Were there more after it was repealed? Was it statistically significant? I'm not sure, but it would be a pretty damn good case study.
The problem I have is that the US is so hard headed, they double down whenever something doesn't work rather than reevaluate. The US has been doubling down on the drug war every administration since the 1970s. The solution has been significantly more harmful than the problem since the 80s, and yet they keep doubling down. Sounds like we just doubled down again with painkillers. It's madness.
I don't want to drown in minutiae, but at the end of that article, the author is supporting the drug war, so he is using statistics supporting his case. I did a little research and there are of course conflicting views on the effectiveness of Prohibition.
"John D. Rockefeller, a teetotaler, observed in 1932, 'drinking has generally increased, the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale.'"
To avoid a long drawn out argument about which statistics are more likely to be accurate, I'm willing to admit that both conclusions are possible and the actual answer lies somewhere in-between. The first guy estimated 30%, Rockefeller surmised that it increased, so lets go with 15% decrease in drug use because of the drug war. That's even hard to say because the drug war has lasted a lot longer than prohibition.
Unfortunately I couldn't quickly find any information about the repeal of prohibition which is more relevant to the topic since we are currently in a prohibition.
Anyway, I guess the country needs to decide if 15% increase in drug use is worth the cost of the drug war, so for every 20 current drug users, we'd get 3 more. In exchange, we'd get a lot of money in the treasury, respect for the law, return of our freedoms (maybe), much smaller incarceration rate, greatly weakened gangs and cartels, much less justification for surveillance, and an overall less hellishly scary police state.
Unfortunately, the US doesn't debate it rationally in those terms.
With your disclaimer about the war on drugs in mind, rebuttal to a few things:
> Some number of those will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
But most folks won't do this stuff. Most folks won't even get addicted. It isn't like the US has affordable facilities to help folks, staffed with medical doctors and psychologists to help folks along. They do have AA and NA. A few are helped, many others aren't.
Some of the key with Portugal's decriminalization was they offered help to those addicted. Affordable help. Right now, you have people getting pills for surgery, etc. and some of them wind up addicted. Instead of the doctor being able to have an honest conversation with the person about warnings signs, etc, and offering free(!) help to those that wind up addicted, we choose to treat them like criminals.
>... let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice.
Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism. Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example. And research shows that most of these would have less effect on society than alcohol. There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead. Punish for actual crimes instead of "a few of these folks could commit a crime".
>But most folks won't do this stuff. Most folks won't even get addicted.
That is absolutely true. I didn't say civilization will collapse or anything like that. I'm just saying there will be a price. There's certainly room for disagreement over how high the price will be. But I think it's pretty ridiculous to pretend ending drug prohibition will be free.
>Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism.
I don't find this compelling. Yes, there was a feeling of "Don't smoke pot - only jazz musicians smoke pot." But if you really thought only jazz musicians smoked pot there wouldn't be any reason to make it illegal. And if there were 88% of the country wouldn't tolerate prohibition just to oppress the other 12%.
>Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example.
Yes, that's true, though I think there's a big difference between marijuana and, say, opiods, amphetamines, or barbiturates.
>There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead.
If you read up a bit you'll see I'm in basic agreement with you on the right way to move forward. I just think it's naive to believe people won't take more drugs in the margin, and we won't be dealing with some problems as a result. The hope (and my belief) is the new problems will be fewer than the old problems we're getting rid of by getting rid of drug laws.
Indeed, it makes more sense to decriminalize obviously non-dangerous drugs, and revamp the schedules to get rid of 1930s "reefer madness" mentalities. The scientific and medical communities have a much better understanding of which drugs are actually dangerous and addictive, yet the federal government is still policing on a 100 year old level.
And I say that as someone who has never taken an illegal drug nor drank alcohol, and I avoid prescription and OTC medication as much as possible (I believe in living healthy in all aspects, though I concede that certain drugs are unavoidable for some people, including me with my wonderful thyroid issues).
Looks like the safest approach to managing health conditions in the US whose treatments involve politically-sensitive drugs is to obtain a diagnosis, so you know what's wrong with you, and then to manage your own treatment using gray-market pharmaceuticals. If it's for pain, I would seriously consider just not treating it.
Health care in the US is already such a shit-show that I would seriously consider moving out of the country if I developed a serious condition requiring constant treatment. I certainly won't have any expensive procedures done here.
I'm Canadian and I have done this. After trying to deal with bipolar disorder for years I decided I'd finally try medication. I'd seen psychologists off-the-record before to diagnose. Seeing how family members have been treated for having mental issues makes me afraid of getting an official treatment. So I source lamotrigine (Lamictal), titrated myself up and seem to be doing OK. I saw a psychiatrist under an assumed named to verify my understanding of things (hint: unfortunately, most of their psych treatments are guesswork and playing medical roulette).
I was a bit nervous as this medicine can make your skin die and fall off (SJS), so I found a private dermatologist to go to just in case. Fortunately it's working fine for me. No more days spent moping in bed. And no official diagnostic that I'm not sane. Costs me about $2000 a year. Small price to pay to not be treated like a child and having my volition called into question.
Who is they, why are they in your house, and why are they looking for drugs specifically? Nothing about the course of action I described would put you on the state's radar. Sure, if you start sourcing black market pharmaceuticals, then you have to take extra steps to be cautious, but the grey market is generally safe.
> If it's for pain, I would seriously consider just not treating it.
That's great in theory but not in practice. I would say to treat it with physical therapy if possible, rather than taking painkillers (as I posted elsewhere in this discussion, I avoid any drugs if possible, OTC or prescription) but sadly that's simply not the answer for everyone. There are some kinds of pain that no level of physical therapy can address, pain so debilitating it could make one suicidal.
I suffered that kind of pain when I was a teenager battling cancer, and I had no choice but to take the painkillers my doctor prescribed just to be able to function. I don't ever want to feel that kind of pain again, obviously, but I also don't ever want to take that kind of medicine again if I can help it. To this day I struggle with back pain left over from the bout with cancer (and I'm nearly 40), but I deal with it through exercise, posture, and willpower, rather than giving in to a cycle of addiction. I sympathize with people addicted to painkillers, and I wish there was an easy solution for everyone.
Bad for many people requiring medications for a wide array of conditions. It is completely wrong that warrantless searches are permitted. I hope more states follow Oregon's example and defend the privacy of medical care.
It's extremely disheartening to find out about the Obama administration's position. There are so many problems in the country that urgently need to be addressed, but instead the DEA is mucking around in prescription records which deserve protection.
We should indeed raise a stink about this foul situation. Most of all it's time to abolish the worthless DEA.
"So we’re doing this to help you.” ... "with 14 felony counts"
In the US, I think having a crippling drug addiction is better than 14 felony counts. What's that? 30 years in prison? Life? No chance of gainful employment for life? Shit paid public defender, or $300,000 to fight it? I thought we were getting more sensible about this stuff?
Absurd. Write or email your congressman. It's the only thing that will do any good.
Writing and emailing congresspeople may be better than nothing, but not by much. The only things that have consistently created change in this country are large groups of people, mostly working on the outside with a diversity of tactics (read: in the streets, and some violent/confrontational), some allies on the inside, and a lot of agitation.
> The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to access the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database using only an “administrative subpoena.” These are unilaterally issued orders that do not require a showing of probable cause before a court, like what’s required to obtain a warrant.
Related topic: I always get uneasy when law enforcement skirt around getting a warrant. Do we have any data showing that we're safer (e.g. accurate arrests are made more quickly) when law enforcement doesn't need a warrant?
Yes but since they have to be based on probable cause and taken before a judge, there is a higher bar. But really, pain killer abuse should, in a perfect world, be a health matter, not a DEA matter, unless you are getting enough medication to have to be selling it. I think there is the argument that an individual could go to multiple doctors, or a doctor could write prescriptions for fake patients.
Unrelated, but "gender identity disorder"? Is that a politically correct term or an homophobic one (or whatever you call it when it applies to transgender)?
I really can't tell, I thought it was no longer ok to refer to homosexuality as a disease. Is it ok now to treat "feeling like you are in the wrong sex" as a disease that can be treated?
Gender Identity Disorder is not homosexuality, and it's now called Gender Dysphoria (GD) in the most recent diagnostic manuals.
Homosexuality is not consider an illness, and does not require treatment, in fact no treatment is known. OTOH GD is the distress an individual has when biological status is inconsistent with internal experience of the "correct" gender. It's an uncommon condition occurring at a population rate of about 0.005%, affecting more males than females.
Treatment of GD is available though complex. In most cases appropriate counseling is provided, and treatment possibly includes hormone and other medications, and reconstructive surgery.
American Psychiatrist Association changed being gay to not be a mental illness in 1973. And for people who have Gender Dysphoria, probably more accurate to say affecting more people assigned male at birth then people assigned female at birth.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadSo by that logic, if I want to maintain my expectation of privacy regarding my prescriptions, I can either A) Not have them filled (so that I don't 'voluntarily' give them to a 3rd party) or B) source them illegally.
Seems like great options to me.
I'll also quibble about this part:
> since you voluntarily gave your phone records to your phone company
You didn't "give your phone records to your phone company." You never had any phone records. Your phone company created those records. That's another distinction with the case here: Oregon's PDMP didn't create those records. It received them with strict federal requirements as to how to handle them.
Pretty sure that was the entire point of the post.
Here's a response, post law suit, for the Chicago's mayor's office's phone records.
Additionally, the Illinois Attorney General's Office Public Access Counselor ("PAC") has established that City-issued cell phone numbers are exempt from disclosure pursuant to 5 ILLS 140/7(1)(c), because the disclosure of these numbers would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. As the PAC reasoned, certain City employees are issued cell phones so they may be on call during non-work hours or while away from their offices. Disclosure of these numbers could subject staff to excessive phone calls from the public at all times of day. Further, if staff were forced to turn off their cell phones to reduce such intrusion, they may not be readily available to attend to the business of the public body, defeating the purpose of issuing them cell phones. (See 2010 PAC 8685, issued September 30, 2010, attached hereto as Ex. B.)
Thus, the only phone numbers which are not exempt under FOIA are those that are publically listed and are not home telephone numbers, personal telephone numbers, or work-issued cell phone numbers. In other words, FOIA only compels the production of listed numbers belonging to businesses, governmental agencies and other entities, and only those numbers which are not work-issued cell phones.
Yet.. per FOIA:
The disclosure of information that bears on the public duties of public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of personal privacy.
In any case, I still got enough to make this (two tabs): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hgG79eIr8MbkjYrCvcTR...
Except for that pharmacies already sell your prescription data to anyone who wants it.
Paragraph 2c https://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fsC4/CA-medical
And if the national government took the measures necessary to significantly reduce drug use, their resources would be cut off because voters wouldn't stand for the much heavier and pettier and more expensive police state tactics.
So the best bet for the government is burn vast amounts of money to randomly hurt random people without ever seeking any kind of improvement in the situation. More information doesn't affect that calculation.
†https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADEA
The very same people complaining about their abuses on this site would be the first ones to utterly condemn you if you actually did anything even remotely effective to solve the problem.
This constituency fully deserves what they are getting. Seriously, the problem should NOT be solved whatsoever. If you do not like the problem, you must join another constituency instead.
When I live in Europe -- not right now actually -- I make sure to live in the middle of a muslim no-go zone. The police do not go there, because they cannot possibly guarantee that they would come back alive. Since I am publicly known to subscribe to the one-god theorem, I am not a target whatsoever for the locals. I am exceedingly safe from both the police and the criminals that often live there but do not dare to operate there.
http://www.reuters.com/article/financial-un-drugs-idUSLP6507...
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who wouldn't drive to a seedy neighborhood and risk arrest to secure drugs, but who would take drugs if buying them were cheap and safe. Some number of those people will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
Like I said, I don't think the putting a stop to that is worth what we're paying in terms of money and lost freedoms, but let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice. If and when we end the drug war there will be more junkies, more crack whores, more people who sit around staring at the wall instead of working and raising families, more people in the ERs from overdoses and drug-fueled mental breakdowns. It's a price I think we should pay, but it still a price.
As for groundless malice...you're half-right. It wasn't groundless, it was and still is racist in origin.
Right now: "Then why is gay marriage illegal in Japan et al?"
Etc. Your point has nothing to do with the drug war itself, it's broad enough to apply to any early-stage progressive proposal.
You're dead wrong. And unless you intend malice you need to stop spreading this BS. Portugal legalized ALL drugs and a decade later they saw abuse fall by 50%. Source: http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminal...
But almost all U.S. DEA prosecution is over trafficking, not possession. So decriminalization wouldn't get rid of it.
[1] http://www.chasingthescream.com/
When they decriminalized all drugs of abuse, they saw an initial, mild spike in usage rates, and now consistently see far lower rates of drug abuse, for all drugs than pretty much every other country.
Pick a position, and argue it; when you're proven wrong, accept it and learn.
The point under discussion is the abolition of the DEA, meaning legalization of drugs. The DEA doesn't spend a lot of time running down drug users - this is about dealers.
Don't assume other people are moving goalposts because you didn't understand where they were to start with.
I'm not sure the same would be true in the US, seeing the piss-poor state of mental health treatment in the US.
In the US, offering treatment like that would probably be decried as welfare-state redistributory nonsense.
The evidence is, based on heroin use among white people, that nobody needs to drive to a "seedy" <cough>black</cough> neighborhood to get heroin.
And never mind driving! These people are using a needle drug which entails risk of hepatitis C, AIDS, etc. Is a lw goinf to deter them?
Yes the Drug War was created with malice. Just not "groundless." The grounds were to continue Jim Crow by other means. The Drug Warrors are an expensive evil.
The problem I have is that the US is so hard headed, they double down whenever something doesn't work rather than reevaluate. The US has been doubling down on the drug war every administration since the 1970s. The solution has been significantly more harmful than the problem since the 80s, and yet they keep doubling down. Sounds like we just doubled down again with painkillers. It's madness.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
"John D. Rockefeller, a teetotaler, observed in 1932, 'drinking has generally increased, the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale.'"
To avoid a long drawn out argument about which statistics are more likely to be accurate, I'm willing to admit that both conclusions are possible and the actual answer lies somewhere in-between. The first guy estimated 30%, Rockefeller surmised that it increased, so lets go with 15% decrease in drug use because of the drug war. That's even hard to say because the drug war has lasted a lot longer than prohibition.
Unfortunately I couldn't quickly find any information about the repeal of prohibition which is more relevant to the topic since we are currently in a prohibition.
Anyway, I guess the country needs to decide if 15% increase in drug use is worth the cost of the drug war, so for every 20 current drug users, we'd get 3 more. In exchange, we'd get a lot of money in the treasury, respect for the law, return of our freedoms (maybe), much smaller incarceration rate, greatly weakened gangs and cartels, much less justification for surveillance, and an overall less hellishly scary police state.
Unfortunately, the US doesn't debate it rationally in those terms.
> Some number of those will end up hooked, and some number of those people will be breaking into houses (or worse) looking for stuff to sell so they can get their next hit.
But most folks won't do this stuff. Most folks won't even get addicted. It isn't like the US has affordable facilities to help folks, staffed with medical doctors and psychologists to help folks along. They do have AA and NA. A few are helped, many others aren't.
Some of the key with Portugal's decriminalization was they offered help to those addicted. Affordable help. Right now, you have people getting pills for surgery, etc. and some of them wind up addicted. Instead of the doctor being able to have an honest conversation with the person about warnings signs, etc, and offering free(!) help to those that wind up addicted, we choose to treat them like criminals.
>... let's not pretend these substances were made illegal out of groundless malice.
Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism. Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example. And research shows that most of these would have less effect on society than alcohol. There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead. Punish for actual crimes instead of "a few of these folks could commit a crime".
That is absolutely true. I didn't say civilization will collapse or anything like that. I'm just saying there will be a price. There's certainly room for disagreement over how high the price will be. But I think it's pretty ridiculous to pretend ending drug prohibition will be free.
>Only that isn't really true either. Some of the campaigns to make them illegal were based in racism.
I don't find this compelling. Yes, there was a feeling of "Don't smoke pot - only jazz musicians smoke pot." But if you really thought only jazz musicians smoked pot there wouldn't be any reason to make it illegal. And if there were 88% of the country wouldn't tolerate prohibition just to oppress the other 12%.
>Misinformation was spread, both before and after. My grandmother thought pot would make people insane, for example.
Yes, that's true, though I think there's a big difference between marijuana and, say, opiods, amphetamines, or barbiturates.
>There are drugs that I think are bad for folks that take them and their families, but we could actually help folks and their families instead.
If you read up a bit you'll see I'm in basic agreement with you on the right way to move forward. I just think it's naive to believe people won't take more drugs in the margin, and we won't be dealing with some problems as a result. The hope (and my belief) is the new problems will be fewer than the old problems we're getting rid of by getting rid of drug laws.
And I say that as someone who has never taken an illegal drug nor drank alcohol, and I avoid prescription and OTC medication as much as possible (I believe in living healthy in all aspects, though I concede that certain drugs are unavoidable for some people, including me with my wonderful thyroid issues).
Health care in the US is already such a shit-show that I would seriously consider moving out of the country if I developed a serious condition requiring constant treatment. I certainly won't have any expensive procedures done here.
I was a bit nervous as this medicine can make your skin die and fall off (SJS), so I found a private dermatologist to go to just in case. Fortunately it's working fine for me. No more days spent moping in bed. And no official diagnostic that I'm not sane. Costs me about $2000 a year. Small price to pay to not be treated like a child and having my volition called into question.
How were they treated? Seems surprising to me, given how prevalent mood disorders are.
Up to a point, surely.
That's great in theory but not in practice. I would say to treat it with physical therapy if possible, rather than taking painkillers (as I posted elsewhere in this discussion, I avoid any drugs if possible, OTC or prescription) but sadly that's simply not the answer for everyone. There are some kinds of pain that no level of physical therapy can address, pain so debilitating it could make one suicidal.
I suffered that kind of pain when I was a teenager battling cancer, and I had no choice but to take the painkillers my doctor prescribed just to be able to function. I don't ever want to feel that kind of pain again, obviously, but I also don't ever want to take that kind of medicine again if I can help it. To this day I struggle with back pain left over from the bout with cancer (and I'm nearly 40), but I deal with it through exercise, posture, and willpower, rather than giving in to a cycle of addiction. I sympathize with people addicted to painkillers, and I wish there was an easy solution for everyone.
Seriously though, this is bad for privacy, bad for addicts, and bad for patients who need painkillers.
Who thinks of this shit? Aging drug warriors I suppose.
Oh yes they can; the very reason he's even retaining them is to have some plea-bargaining material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8
It's extremely disheartening to find out about the Obama administration's position. There are so many problems in the country that urgently need to be addressed, but instead the DEA is mucking around in prescription records which deserve protection.
We should indeed raise a stink about this foul situation. Most of all it's time to abolish the worthless DEA.
that is fucked on multiple levels. 14 counts? 14!
and all dropped because they were ridiculous to begin with. ugh.
In the US, I think having a crippling drug addiction is better than 14 felony counts. What's that? 30 years in prison? Life? No chance of gainful employment for life? Shit paid public defender, or $300,000 to fight it? I thought we were getting more sensible about this stuff?
Absurd. Write or email your congressman. It's the only thing that will do any good.
Related topic: I always get uneasy when law enforcement skirt around getting a warrant. Do we have any data showing that we're safer (e.g. accurate arrests are made more quickly) when law enforcement doesn't need a warrant?
It seems silly that this legal theory is so broad and convenient a tool that there is virtually no limitation on its powers to access information.
I really can't tell, I thought it was no longer ok to refer to homosexuality as a disease. Is it ok now to treat "feeling like you are in the wrong sex" as a disease that can be treated?
Homosexuality is not consider an illness, and does not require treatment, in fact no treatment is known. OTOH GD is the distress an individual has when biological status is inconsistent with internal experience of the "correct" gender. It's an uncommon condition occurring at a population rate of about 0.005%, affecting more males than females.
Treatment of GD is available though complex. In most cases appropriate counseling is provided, and treatment possibly includes hormone and other medications, and reconstructive surgery.
I think the point is that it's your biological sex that's treated as "wrong" in this case, and treatment involves making it conform to how you feel.