50 Years Of Failure – Total Wa$te Of Time And Money

How long does it take to see a failed social experiment for what it is – a total, abysmal failure, which has taken a wrecking ball to society?

Apparently, at least 50 years.

We learned much more quickly with beverage alcohol.

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The War On Drugs: 50 Years Later

After 50 Years Of The War On Drugs, “What Good Is It Doing For Us?”

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1006495476/after-50-years-of-the-war-on-drugs-what-good-is-it-doing-for-us

When Aaron Hinton walked through the housing project in Brownsville on a recent summer afternoon, he voiced love and pride for this tight-knit, but troubled working-class neighborhood in New York City where he grew up.

He pointed to a community garden, the lush plots of vegetables and flowers tended by volunteers, and to the library where he has led after-school programs for kids.

But he also expressed deep rage and sorrow over the scars left by the nation’s 50-year-long War on Drugs. “What good is it doing for us?,” Hinton asked.

As the United States’ harsh approach to drug use and addiction hits the half-century milestone, this question is being asked by a growing number of lawmakers, public health experts and community leaders.

In many parts of the U.S., some of the most severe policies implemented during the drug war are being scaled back or scrapped altogether.

Hinton, a 37-year-old community organizer and activist, said the reckoning is long overdue. He described watching Black men like himself get caught up in drugs year after year and swept into the nation’s burgeoning prison system.

“They’re spending so much money on these prisons to keep kids locked up. They don’t even spend a fraction of that money sending them to college or some kind of school,”  said Hinton, shaking his head.

Republican President Richard Nixon explains aspects of the special message sent to the Congress, June 17, 1971, asking for an extra $155 million for a new program to start his infamous social experiment which he called the “War on Drugs.” He labeled addiction and drug misuse “a national emergency” and said the money would be used to “tighten the noose around the necks of drug peddlers and thereby loosen the noose around the necks of drug users.” In 50 years, his plan has proven to be an abysmal failure. Behind him on the LEFT is Egil Krogh, Deputy Director of the Domestic Council. At right is Dr. Jerome Jaffe, MD who Nixon recruited to lead a new drug strategy. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges)

Hinton has lived his whole life under the drug war. He said Brownsville needed help coping with cocaine, heroin and drug-related crime that took root here in the 1970s and 1980s.

His own family was scarred by addiction.

“I’ve known my mom to be a drug user my whole entire life. She chose to run the streets and left me with my great-grandmother,” Hinton said.

Four years ago, his mom overdosed and died after taking prescription painkillers, part of the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Hinton said her death sealed his belief that tough drug war policies and aggressive police tactics would never make his family or his community safer.

The nation pivots (slowly) as evidence mounts against the drug war

During months of interviews for this project, NPR found a growing consensus across the political spectrum — including among some in law enforcement — that the drug war simply didn’t work.

“We have been involved in the failed War on Drugs for so very long,” said retired Major Neill Franklin, a retired Major with the Baltimore City Police and the Maryland State Police who led drug task forces for years.

During a press conference this week, he said,

Research Findings: U.S. Pays Over 2x for Medications Than Other Nations

There’s a fairly simple explanation for why Americans pay more for ALL medications – prescription, and non-prescription (Over The Counter):

Greed.

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News Release:
Prescription Drug Prices in the United States Are 2.56 Times Those in Other Countries
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2021/01/28.html
Thursday, January 28, 2021

Prescription drug prices in the United States are significantly higher than in other nations, with prices in the United States averaging 2.56 times those seen in 32 other nations, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

The gap between prices in the United States and other countries is even larger for brand-named drugs, with U.S. prices averaging 3.44 times those in comparison nations.

The RAND study found that prices for unbranded generic drugs—which account for 84% of drugs sold in the United States by volume but only 12% of U.S. spending—are slightly lower in the United States than in most other nations.

“Brand-name drugs are the primary driver of the higher prescription drug prices in the United States,” said Andrew Mulcahy, lead author of the study and a senior health policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. “We found consistently high U.S. brand name prices regardless of our methodological decisions.”

The RAND analysis is based on 2018 data and provides the most up-to-date estimates of how much higher drug prices are in the United States as compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Researchers calculated price indexes under a wide range of methodological decisions. While some sensitivity analyses lowered the differences between U.S. prices compared to those in other nations, under all the scenarios overall prescription drug prices remained substantially higher in the United States.

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U.S. Prescription Drug Prices Are More Than Double Those in Other Countries

Prescription drug prices in the United States are, on average, 2.56 times higher than the prices in 32 other countries. That’s according to a new RAND report.

Brand-name drugs are the primary driver of America’s higher prescription drug prices: For branded drugs, U.S. prices averaged 3.44 times higher than those in other nations. Prices for generic drugs, on the other hand, are slightly lower in the United States than in most other countries.

Transparency about prices

“Just say ‘NO’” has never worked. Here’s what does.

Freedom.

What a concept, eh?

The very idea that you have a brain, and therefore, can think independently to decide FOR YOURSELF what you want, or ought, to do, continues to frustrate others who think that they know better than you do what personal decisions you should make for yourself!

It’s an adult decision.

Why, it’s nothing short of… LIBERTY!

ENOUGH! of the “Nanny State”!

Take your religion home, and GET IT OUT OF GOVERNMENT!!

Practice it PRIVATELY, with your family, friends, and other like-minded individuals. STOP forcing your PRIVATE religious ethics and morals upon others by writing public laws that mirror your private interpretation of your religion.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists that cited the establishment clause of our nation’s Constitution, which as he wrote, erected a “a wall of separation between Church & State,” or as we now say, between government, and religion.

Religious nuts have been trying to tear it down, ever since.

And they’re STILL TRYING TODAY!

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‘Drug Use For Grown-Ups’ Serves As An Argument For Personal Choice

If you grew up scared of what illicit drugs could do to you — hearing about all the horrors that could befall you from everyone from Nancy Reagan to your parents — the threat may have felt very real: If you actually took a puff off that joint that the kid who slept through math class offered you, it could lead to failed relationships, chronic unemployment, self-destruction.

The shame would outlive you.

But drugs are a more complicated matter than they’ve been made out to be, according to Dr. Carl L. Hart. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the Columbia University professor of psychology and psychiatry zealously argues that drug use should be a matter of personal choice — and that, in more cases than not, personal choice can lead to positive outcomes. His positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense — and are backed up by ample research.

A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report:

“The practice spread widely…Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”

Then there was the post-Civil War use of cocaine among some Black day laborers, something Hart writes was at first encouraged by white employers because of the productivity it could promote. Soon enough, however, articles appeared widely that tried to make a connection between African American cocaine use and criminality. One particularly egregious article in The New York Times in 1914, cited by Hart, even reported that some police in the South “who appreciate the vitality of the cocaine-crazed” were switching to higher-caliber weaponry capable of “greater shocking power for the express purpose of combating ‘the fiend’.”

But horrifying history aside, one of the book’s most eye-opening aspects is its challenge of the long-running association between drugs and addiction. First the basics: Addiction, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM – 5), must be a source of distress for a drug user. It must also interfere with a person’s job, parenting or personal relationships. Other indications of addiction may be

Narcotrafficking: The Last Truly Free Market

Think about it… a massive global industry and multi-cultural international enterprise with tens, hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of employees, producers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and customers with ZERO Government regulation of any type, on anyone for any reason – no taxes, no regulatory oversight, nor requirements of any kind whatsoever, where a willing buyer and a willing seller meet each other.

And yet, the government seeks to eradicate it (even though their “efforts” have done exactly the opposite), by strengthening

Solving America’s Opioid Crisis

In a recent Press Conference, USAG Jeff Sessions said POS45 “asked her [Kellyanne Conway] to coordinate and lead the [opioid crisis response] effort from the White House,” saying she was “exceedingly talented,” noting a minor DEA Field Office reorganization was underway.
ref: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-sessions-and-acting-dea-administrator-patterson-announce-new-tools-address-0

As a licensed Healthcare Professional with immense interest in Public Health and related Public Policy, I have followed the aggressive increase in this epidemic for many years. And, I remain highly negatively critical of the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama administrations for chronic, abject failure to stop it, and of the Trump administration’s ongoing failure to effectively utilize American diplomacy to stop it.

Here’s why.

To be clear, full understanding of this matter requires understanding the complex nature of ALL interrelated & intersecting measures, including history & background. This matter also directly includes International Terrorism.

For many years, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) has tracked the world’s predominant grower of opium poppy, which is used to make illicit narcotics – NOT prescription medications. (I specifically differentiate between the words “drugs” to describe illicit substances, and “medicine” to describe prescription treatments.)

Afghanistan remains the world’s greatest

Government–Mandated Waste Drives Up Prescription Drug Co$t$

 

Just Like Food “Expiration” Dates, Drug “Expiration” Dates Are Also Fake… And It’s Co$ting You BIGTIME

Hospitals and pharmacies are required to toss expired drugs, no matter how expensive or vital. Meanwhile the FDA has long known that many remain safe and potent for years longer.

The box of prescription drugs had been forgotten in a back closet of a retail pharmacy for so long that some of the pills predated the 1969 moon landing. Most were 30 to 40 years past their expiration dates – possibly toxic, probably worthless.
But to Lee Cantrell, who helps run the California Poison Control System, the cache was an opportunity to answer an enduring question about the actual shelf life of drugs: Could these drugs from the bell-bottom era still be potent?

Cantrell called Roy Gerona, a University of California, San Francisco, researcher who specializes in analyzing chemicals. Gerona had grown up in the Philippines, and had seen people recover from sickness by taking expired drugs with no apparent ill effects.

“This was very cool,” Gerona says. “Who gets the chance of analyzing drugs that have been in storage for more than 30 years?”

Pharmacist and Toxicologist Lee Cantrell tested medicines that had been “expired” for decades. Most of them were still potent enough to be on shelves today. (Lee Huffaker for ProPublica)

The age of the drugs might have been bizarre, but the question the researchers wanted to answer wasn’t.

Pharmacies across the country in major medical centers and in neighborhood strip malls routinely toss out tons of scarce and potentially valuable prescription drugs when they hit their expiration dates.

Gerona and Cantrell, a pharmacist and toxicologist, knew that the term “expiration date” was a misnomer. The dates on drug labels are simply

Rethinking Addiction

Perhaps you’ve studied the 12-Step program, or perhaps you’ve practiced it. I have done both. Practicing it was not as a matter of addiction, or any such thing for myself, but instead, was a part of my personal spiritual growth and development.

Over the years, I’ve heard commentary, or news features which interviewed people with divergent perspectives on 12-Step programs, most notably which were skeptical of them, and were thoughtfully seeking answers themselves for the “whys and wherefores” of substance abuse, whether it’s long-term or temporary, and whether it is a genetic fault, or if it is a personality or character flaw in response to external or internal stressors. In other words, it’s the classic “Heredity vs Environment” argument.

As I have come to view it, there is validity for both sides, but I think the stronger case is made for a combination of environment and character flaw, instead of genetic defect.

—/—

“In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/

The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous
By Gabrielle Glaser, April 2015 Issue
Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found

Another One Bites The Dust… Hopefully

Another criminal scumbag has cost the taxpayers of Alabama untold tens of thousands of dollars.

Yeah.

Sho’ nuff!

That mofo be a dumbass, f’sho!

Chaunce Martel Williams, aged 28, driver of the vehicle seen here, sustained life-threatening injuries after he attempted to elude police, and led them on a chase of some distance. His two passengers are hospitalized in serious, but not life-threatening condition.

Here’s what the whelp did, according to local news reports.

Huntsville police say 28-year-old Chaunce Martel Williams

Should a “Mental Health Tax” be placed on Marijuana?

Let’s talk about drug abuse.

Abuse of any kind is improper use, or dependency. In some cases, so-called “recreational” use is “abuse,” for there is no other kind of use, since a drug may be already illegal.

For the greatest part, those drugs, which are sometimes mistakenly called ‘narcotics’ (technically, narcotics are derivatives of and synthetic chemical relatives to the opium plant) are already illegal, and include LSD and other hallucinogens, heroin, methamphetamine (as “crystal meth”), etc. And, at the Federal level, like it, or not, agree or disagree, marijuana is included in that list.

Further, alcohol must be included in the list of abused substances, simply because we know that people’s lives can be, and are destroyed by alcohol abuse, directly and indirectly.

There’s a database of information based upon hospital admissions related to drug abuse. It’s called the Treatment Episode Data Set, or TEDS, and the information is collected anonymously by each facility in a state that receives “State alcohol and/or drug agency funds (including Federal Block Grant funds) for the provision of substance abuse treatment.”

It is not an exhaustive data set by any means, and there are limitations upon it, yet it does provide some reliable degree of accuracy to the extent, scope and nature of the problem. Consequently, information in “the tables focus on treatment admissions for substance abusers.”

In other words, someone abuses a substance on the list to the extent that they need some degree of care, including hospitalization, and that anonymous information about their admission gets collected and reported. For the purposes of that report, anonymous information is age, sex, ethnicity/race and drug(s) which led to the need for treatment.

The TEDS list of abused drugs are:

Afghanistan Opium Poppy Production Increases 3d Consecutive Year

In their Utopian Ivory-Towered existence, the “Libertarian” response is to legalize it all, ensure purity standards, and tax it.

But then again, Libertarians oppose taxes.

They also oppose governmental regulation ensuring purity standards, along with uniform weights & measures, too.

How messed up could one political ideology be?

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April 15, 2013

Production of Opium by Afghans Is Up Again

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan, erasing earlier drops stemming from a decade-long international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

The report’s findings raised concerns among international law enforcement officials that if the trend continued, opium would be the country’s major economic activity after foreign military forces depart in 2014, leading to the specter of what one official referred to as “the world’s first true narco-state.”

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year

NYC Seeks to Curb Painkiller Abuse With Hospital Limits

It’s only “deadly” if it’s misused or abused.

And yet, the idea is an excellent one because it limits potential for misuse and abuse by fraud.

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New York City is seeking to curb abuse of potentially addictive and deadly painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin with new limits on how widely the drugs should be prescribed.

Emergency departments at New York’s public hospitals will only prescribe a three-day supply of opioid painkillers, won’t refill lost or stolen prescriptions and shouldn’t prescribe long-acting versions of the drugs, according to voluntary guidelines the city issued today.

The move is aimed at

New images emerge of Miami Cannibal attack

Warning: You’ve probably seen graphic photographs before… right?

However, American media outlets rarely ever assault our sensibilities with such. They leave that to their regular programming.

This horrible tragedy was caused, no doubt, by the sudden cataclysmic loss of one’s mental faculties brought on by smoking so-called “bath salts.”

So, here’s to the “let’s legalize drugs” crowd.

Enjoy.

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Graphic image shows Miami cannibal and his blood-soaked victim seconds after grisly attack

• Image shows scene moments after Rudy Eugene was shot for refusing to stop eating Ronald Poppo’s face
• First images of Poppo since attack also released
• Nose is missing and face is covered with scabs
• May be blind after losing one eye in the attack and sustaining severe damage to the other
• But is walking and talking and asking for pizza

By Rachel Quigley and Lydia Warren

PUBLISHED: 11:27 EST, 13 June 2012 | UPDATED: 12:19 EST, 13 June 2012

A graphic new image shows the grisly scene just moments after the Miami cannibal was shot dead by police as he chewed off a homeless man’s face.

It shows Rudy Eugene lying naked in a pool of blood next to his victim Ronald Poppo, who was attacked as he slept by a busy highway.

Poppo, whose head is drenched in blood, is naked below the waist after Eugene stripped off his trousers before

Californians Speak: 50% Oppose Marijuana Legalization for Recreational Use

Proponents of marijuana legalization assert such things as “marijuana never killed anyone,” “no one ever crashed their car while on marijuana,” and other such nonsense.

Numerous records exist that prove otherwise. One such case is the unfortunate & preventable 2004 tragedy involving Lisa Torti, the Los Angelino who pulled her friend Alexandra Van Horn from her wrecked car, which also resulted in Miss Van Horn’s permanent paralysis.  It was colloquially referred to as a test or invalidation of the 1980 Emergency Medical Service Act, sometimes called California‘s Good Samaritan Act.

Court records indicate – such information can also be found in various news reports – that Misses Torti and Van Horn had both smoked marijuana and consumed beverage alcohol before that fateful event.

Concerning other negative health effects of marijuana usage, there are indisputable, verifiable, long-term, scientifically valid medical & health studies that conclusively prove a positive correlation, cause-and-effect for increased risk of schizophrenia with marijuana use.

In other words, smoke dope, and you risk losing your mind. It’s not hype, nor is it the assertion of a poorly made B Hollywood movie.

Yeah.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Marijuana and Schizophrenia – A Clear and Unmistakable Link… ignored in America

posted Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Marijuana Use Increases Psychosis Risk

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

In this nation, we are long overdue for a genuine discussion of behavior and mental health.

In some cases – for one reason or another – people turn to substance abuse (which can be of illegal or legal substances, including food), or irrational behavior to cope or deal with the problems of their lives. Substance abuse only serves to amplify behaviors or problems, and they certainly don’t lessen their severity.

If we were to address such root issues of human behavior, we could genuinely advance this nation, drive down criminality & incarceration associated with the production, sale & consumption of illicit substances, increase individual & national productivity, and so much more.

But only if we move forward… and that does not mean to “take the nation back.”

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USC DORNSIFE / TIMES POLL

Most California voters don’t support legalizing pot, poll finds

Eighty percent support doctor-recommended marijuana use for severe illness, a poll finds. But only 46% support legalization of ‘general or recreational use by adults.’

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times

May 31, 2012

In California, cradle of the marijuana movement, a new poll has found a majority of voters do not support legalization, even as they overwhelmingly back medicinal use for “patients with terminal and debilitating conditions.”

Secret Service Investigating ex-Rocker Ted Nugent for Terrorist Remarks against the President

Ex-rocker Ted Nugent made some violent, extremely vitriolic and blatantly ignorant remarks at at the National Rifle Association‘s 2012  Annual Meetings in St. Louis on April 14, 2012. He was speaking to Cam Edwards and took questions from NRA members.

Specifically, the most virulent remark he made concerning the security of the leader of the free world was that ”If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” 

His extremist remarks have now apparently garnered the attention of the United States Secret Service, which is charged with protection of the president.

The Secret Service takes all such threats against the president‘s life seriously, and investigates them all, because at their heart, they are terrorist threats.

It is a violation of federal law to threaten the president.

Specifically, 18 USC § 871 – “Threats against President and successors to the Presidency” – addresses that crime.

The New Yorker Magazine reported Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 10:17AM EDT that “a spokesman for the Secret Service tells us, “We are aware of it, and we’ll conduct an appropriate follow up.””

Popularly known as “The Motor City Madman,” it is also well documented that Mr. Nugent

Smuggler’s Blues: Mexican Narco-traffickers trick the unsuspecting

¡Advertencia! Los traficantes de drogas son los trabajos de publicidad para los conductores que cruzan a los Estados Unidos. No sea una víctima de la trampa de los contrabandistas!

That’s the Spanish translation to:

“Warning! Drug traffickers are advertising jobs for drivers to cross to the United States. Don’t be a victim of the smugglers’ trap!“

It’s the message that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is paying Mexican newspaper publishers to be printed in a Tijuana newspaper for 30 days at a cost of US$2000.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents

Unsuspecting though leery, some are falling prey to Mexican narco-traffickers ploy to smuggle illicit narcotics into the U.S.

It may be money well spent, since the costs associated with each arrest – incarceration, trial, etc. – far exceed the cost of advertising.

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Mexican cartels trick border crossers into being drug mules

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO, California | Sun Apr 15, 2012 5:34pm EDT

(Reuters) – The Mexican help wanted ads offer a quick $500 for a simple job – drive a car into California on an errand for an “important business” organization.

But the new boss may be a drug cartel and the cargo may not be vital papers, or even money, but illegal narcotics. Hidden in the car could be marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines that, if found by law enforcement, could land the driver in prison for many years.

The drug traffickers’ ruse has

Alabama Legislators do a “Deliverance” move on it’s Citizens

Readers may want to refer to an earlier entry entitled, “I won the Alabama Lottery!” in which I added that, “…and all I got was this lousy governor and inept Republican legislature.”

One must wonder if going to Montgomery is cause of intellectual deprivation, or if it is evidence of the same.

Either way, Alabama sucks hind teat. (That’s a colloquial farming aphorism referring to the suckling which finds itself in a very disadvantaged position.)

God help us.

The Republican legislature is doing a “Deliverance” move on its citizens. Only thing is, they’re not asking us to squeal like a pig.

It’s just what Alabama needs in the midst of 10.6% proration… more

Pat Robertson: Legalize Marijuana, because “this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

What a shocker!

Reckon he’s been toking?

Read on!

Pat Robertson Says Marijuana Use Should be Legal

By JESSE McKINLEY

Published: March 7, 2012

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate.

Photo by: Clem Britt/Associated Press

Pat Robertson, center, has taken a surprising stance after his long career as an evangelical leader.

Related

• Times Topics: Marijuana and Medical Marijuana | Pat Robertson

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“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

Mr. Robertson’s remarks echoed statements he made last week on “The 700 Club,” the signature program of his Christian Broadcasting Network, and other comments he made in 2010. While those earlier remarks were

Marijuana Use Increases Psychosis Risk

Marijuana Use Increases Psychosis Risk

Well folks, here it is again. Yet more studies that conclusively demonstrate that SMOKING MARIJUANA IS BAD FOR YOU!!

Regular readers of my blog will have already read the other numerous scientific studies about which I have previously written.

Here are two more studies – one involving 20,000 people with psychotic illness, and another involving 1,923 people ages 14-24 over a period of 10 years.

Dutch researchers led by Jim van Os from Maastricht University conducted the decade-long youth study in Germany and ruled out those that presently smoked marijuana and those with pre-existing psychosis. They found that new marijuana use doubled the risk of new psychotic symptoms, even after accounting for age, sex, socio-economic status, other drug use and other psychiatric disorders.

Dr Matthew Large, from Australia’s University of New South Wale’s School of Psychiatry and Prince of Wales Hospital worked in partnership with Melbourne, Australia’s St. Vincent’s Hospital and the U.S.’s George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, pooled patient data from more than 80 studies which had probed the link between psychotic illness and substance abuse. Previous studies had examined the role of marijuana, alcohol and other psychoactive substances, but this new study examined marijuana alone. They found that most of the schizophrenic patients had been marijuana smokers, and of those who had been, the onset of mental illness occurred 2.7 years earlier.

Addendum: 5/5/14 – The reader should note that the majority of all such research upon the long-term, or delayed effects of marijuana usage has been focused upon the immature (and therefore, not-fully-developed) brain. Most researchers have concluded that the human brain reaches full maturity around age 25. The greatest risks for psychoses in later life is experienced when the immature brain is exposed to cannabis.

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Smoking pot may hasten onset of mental illness

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110207/hl_nm/us_smoking_pot
By Nancy Lapid Nancy Lapid – Mon Feb 7, 5:19 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Smoking marijuana has been linked with an increased risk of mental illness, and now researchers say that when pot smokers do become mentally ill, the disease starts earlier than it would if they didn’t smoke pot.

Yet ANOTHER reason NOT to smoke marijuana. (It makes you STOOPID.) What ~WERE~ you thinking?!?

From our “Names You Would Have Never Given Your Children Unless You Had Been Smoking Marijuana And Drinking Pepsi” department:

Steve Earle, Steve Earle, please write a song for me.

Steve Earle
CCKMP

Cocaine cannot kill my pain
Like a freight train through my vein
Cocaine cannot kill my pain

Whiskey got no hold on me
Left them chains in

Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll

Periodically, friends and family come to me seeking understanding about various medical and health related issues, which often includes information about procedures and medications.

And on occasion, I continue to be asked to identify certain medications.

Particularly problematic are the numerous herbs and Over The Counter (OTC) non-prescription remedies that neither treat nor cure, yet proliferate and line the pockets of those unscrupulous enough to market and sell them to the unsuspectingly ignorant.

On one such occasion, I was asked by a friend to identify several foreign concoctions of apparent Asian origin, which I succeed in identifying, though I suspect I merely added levity to our communication. Fortunately, the request wasn’t anything of any seriously substantial nature.

It’s becoming more difficult to identify many items, though I count myself fortunate to have access to the numerous resources I do.

Here’s the text of my response. Perhaps you’ll find it enlightening.

Marijuana and Schizophrenia – A Clear and Unmistakable Link… ignored in America

There is a significant and growing scientific body of medical evidence that marijuana use contributes significantly to schizophrenia – a particularly debilitating mental health condition that strikes during the most productive years of one’s life.

Medical marijuana anyone?

Maybe you’d prefer your mental health, instead.

It’s a shame that mental health professionals and other researchers in the United States almost wholly ignore the vast, longitudinal (long-term) and increasing body of evidence that conclusively demonstrates that marijuana DIRECTLY contributes to schizophrenia.

Of course, the elemental breakdown between reality and perception most characteristic of schizophrenia does seem to be present in this latest (and I believe ill-fated) and contradictory decision by the Mexican government to legalize small quantities of all illicit narcotics, including cocaine, heroin and LSD.

While this recent decision allows “small amounts” for “personal use,” apparently it doesn’t allow manufacture, sale or distribution of large amounts. However, “small amounts” always come from “large amounts.”

Complicating matters, the Mexican government has a long-time, well-known and rightfully-deserved reputation for corruption at all levels.

Mexico has continually been a “Third World” nation in the Western hemisphere. For years, in hopes for a better life abroad, their people have

Sex, Drugs & Rock-n-Roll, “I want my MTV,” and… the end of Titty Bars.

Ever been to a strip club?

It’s almost a “who hasn’t?” response.

We see them on teevee and in the movies, so if one has never been, it’s almost as if they have, even if they haven’t been physically.

Even Huntsville, Alabama – a conservative, strongly religious, Republican-leaning state, and Huntsville, it’s most highly educated city – has strip clubs.

Otherwise and sometimes known as titty bars, and a variety of other pseudonyms, the venues are typically bars or lounges where alcohol is served to predominately male patrons by female employees, and whom quaff their brews while seated together in a dark room watching a female dancer gyrate to various popular musical tunes, accompanied by various stages of disrobing.

Sometimes, depending upon locale and local or state law, the female dancers may be required to wear “pasties” which are opaque adhesive coverings which cover their areolae and nipples. Sometimes also – again, depending upon state and/or local law – alcohol may or may not be served, though it frequently is consumed on premises.

Typically, the dancers will be

“What did I learn?”

“What did I learn?

Huntsville, AL 9-1-1 Operators “a bunch of retards”

My recent conversation with a Huntsville Police Officer and a HEMSI EMT gave me some pause for thought.

They both shared some fascinating experiences, and opined about the same.

We three – the HPD officer, the HEMSI EMT, and I – are friends.

In context, our HEMSI EMT friend was relating a story about how, when sometime ago, he called 9-1-1 and informed them in detail of a particular off-duty scenario upon which he arrived and began rendering aid, the operator seemed to be mindlessly reading from, or following a script. In other words, the 9-1-1 operator didn’t listen.

My HPD friend shared an equally disappointing story, which he prefaced saying that

Wachovia Bank Guilty of Mexican Drug Money Laundering

“For a root of all the evils is the love of money, which certain longing for did go astray from the faith, and themselves did pierce through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10 (YLT)

Wachovia Bank officials in Miami plead guilty to federal drug money laundering charges in Miami. As part of their agreement, the bank will forfeit $110,000,000 ($110 Million) and be fined $50,000,000 ($50 Million).

Federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, and Drug Enforcement Administration officials found detailed evidence supporting