March 2011
26 posts
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Drug laws 'may make matters worse' →
Police efforts to fight drug gangs tend to lead to more violence and an increase in murders, according to a new international study.
The authors, writing in the International Journal of Drug Policy, admit they were surprised by their own findings. …
Following a systematic review of 15 peer-reviewed studies in North America and Australia, the researchers at the University of British ...
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Happy 50th Birthday! to the Single Convention on...
Back when the UK was yet to have a Prime Minister who’d been born in the twentieth century, and after over a decade of drafting, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was signed on the 30th March 1961. I shan’t bother to discuss whether it’s been a success, but I think it’s time for us to put the old chap out of its misery. It’s time for a framework that works with,...
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Matthew Norman: Rule by the right-wing press dooms... →
…Let’s take a punt and presume that [judges, experts etc.] and their colleagues are a sober, well-meaning, intelligent and cautious bunch who understand the issues at least as well as headline writers; and that if, after exhaustively studying the evidence, they have concluded that prison isn’t invariably the most effective way to punish tiny cogs in turbo-charged drug...
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Merging national insurance and income tax too... →
There are some very good reasons why National Insurance, which is essentially now a second, parallel income tax, should be scrapped (also see this excellent article). I had been personally promoting the idea so I was pleasantly surprised to hear George Osborne’s suggestion that NI would be merged with income tax.
However, in today’s budget vote, he revealed that he’s only...
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Is it time to make horse riding illegal?
Horse riding can cause catastrophic chest and heart injuries! The odds of injury are quite high. The state must intervene and ban horse riding and horses! Think of the children!
Unlike drugs, it’s pretty difficult to smuggle and hide horses. So why don’t we prohibit horse riding? Or rather, why is health and regulation the framework we use for horse riding, climbing, alcohol,...
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Survey: is cannabis more dangerous than skydiving?
YouGov have released the results of an interesting survey into how dangerous various activities - such as drug use and sports - are considered to be.
The first thing to note, of course, is that the public are not the best authority on how dangerous these things actually are.
Drinking alcohol was considered by our panellists to be the safest activity (even more so than eating out-of-date food)...
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Death penalty for drug offences continues
As was emphasised by NGOs at last week’s meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs:
“The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifies that in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, the sentence of death may be imposed only for the “most serious crimes”. The concept of “most serious crimes” is limited to those where it can be shown that there...
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USAF give pilots amphetamine
I’d known that amphetamine was used in WWII but not that it’s still given to US Air Force pilots. These “go pills” have been suggested as factors in several incidents but the USAF say that “it is the gold standard for anti-fatigue […and] has never been associated with a proven adverse outcome in a military operation. This is a common, legal, ethical, moral and...
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Survey shows Brits are confused about religion →
This survey of a couple of thousand people in England and Wales has produced some very odd results (yet is consistent with others):
When asked “What is your religion?”, 60% give one (53% Christian & 7% other) rather than “no religion”.
But when asked “Are you religious?” only 29% say “yes, I am”.
And of those who identify as Christian, only...
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ilyagerner:
Newsflash: Plurality Voting Sucks, Canada Edition
Any break this American political junkie gets from the fever swamps of US politics is blessed relief, so news of a no confidence vote in the Canadian Parliament is most welcome. To get myself psyched for the rumble in the Action in the Arctic (for the purposes of this post, everything north of the 49th parallel is hereby arctic), I...
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I don't hate Macs, but they do give me a syncing... →
Apple’s “sync” bullshit is a deception, which pretends to be making your life easier, when it’s actually all about wresting control from you. If you could freely transfer any file you wanted onto your gadget, Apple might conceivably lose out on a few molecules of gold. So rather than risk that, they’ll choose – every single time – to restrict your options,...
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War on Drugs: Count the Costs - campaign launch
“Fifty Years of the War on Drugs; Time to Count the Costs and Explore the Alternatives”
The War on Drugs: Count the Costs global campaign will be launched by NGOs from around the world at a side-event at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna … [on] Wednesday 23 March. See www.countthecosts.org for more details.
The War on Drugs: Count the Costs campaign...
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Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine →
A new TED talk from Hans Rosling.
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Libya crisis: Military action against Gaddafi... →
“Britain, France and the US, along with several Arab countries, are to join forces to throw a protective ring around the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi as soon as a UN security council vote on military action is authorised, according to security council sources.
A source at UN headquarters in New York said military forces could be deployed “within hours” of a new...
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Ending drug prohibition: the ultimate austerity... →
The ban on recreational drugs promotes crime and is bad for public health.
“Austerity measures to cut public spending are a hot topic for debate everywhere in Europe. In the Netherlands, where a new parliament will be elected next month, several proposals to reduce spending by 30 billion euros are on the table. All of these proposals hit where it hurts, but one option could...
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Surgeon performs self-appendectomy (50 years ago) →
Soviet base in Antarctica: 29 April 1961
“After several weeks Rogozov fell ill. He noticed symptoms of weakness, malaise, nausea, and, later, pain in the upper part of his abdomen, which shifted to the right lower quadrant. His body temperature rose to 37.5°C. Rogozov wrote in his diary:
“It seems that I have appendicitis. I am keeping quiet about it,...
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Selective skepticism - climate change and global...
ilyagerner:
Climate Change: A Conspiracy So Immense
On Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up Republican-backed legislation to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. Democrats proposed a series of amendments that simply admitted the reality of global warming — they didn’t require regulation or a carbon tax. Just an admission of the ...
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US think tank calls for independent review of... →
A new report from the Council on Foreign Relations, the USA’s ‘most influential foreign-policy think tank’, recommends that:
The U.S. Congress should commission an independent advisory group to examine the fiscal and social impacts of drug legalization as well as other alternative approaches to the war on drugs. The commission should be provided adequate funding—-at...
Anonymous asked: What about the 'New Scientist' idea of lifting the ban on Big Pharma developing 'fun' products?
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A proposed survey on drugs policy
Having just shared an excellent link about drug surveys - which included one by the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform which, for example, showed only 25% of people to be against some kind of regulatory system for cannabis - I’d like to propose a successor. Both move on from almost-pointless black and white questions such as “Should this drug be legalised: yes/no” (see...
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How to skew polls and influence people (drugs... →
“…you may feel disheartened at the lack of public support for a more progressive UK drug policy. In [a 2010] poll, participants were shown a list of banned substances, including cannabis, along with the question ‘Do you support or oppose the legalisation of each of the following drugs?’. Unsurprisingly, when formulated bluntly like this, the question yielded only a 35% level of...
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International Narcotics Control Board: Wrong on... →
BMJ blog: “It would appear that the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, has issued a report [ex: a pretty horrible document, it seems - see this brilliant article] in which it advocates the prohibition of whole classes of substance.
This approach is wrong-headed: banning things does not make the demand go away – it just means that the production evolves. Banning whole...
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My Daily Star Hell - Reporter quits, admits all →
The hilarity of this article is only slightly dampened by the knowledge that The Daily Star is more popular than The Times/Guardian/Independent or Financial Times.
Richard Peppiatt admits producing a number of entirely fictional stories about celebrities during his two years at the tabloid, a practice he implies was sanctioned by his seniors. The reporter, who was once made to dress up in a...
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"Classifying offenders could lead to criminal... →
Sherman has developed a Crime Harm Index (CHI) – a way of consistently measuring the harm done by crime rather than simply counting offences. Clearly, a murder does a lot more harm than shoplifting and so should carry more weight. Most crime measures – as well as government targets – focus purely on numbers of crimes, so a conviction for smoking a single joint of cannabis counts the same as...
