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Via Unrea­son­able Faith

As we approach the ten year anniver­sary of the dead­liest attack on US soil while at the same time try­ing to solve major bud­get prob­lems, I feel this quote from Bin Laden him­self back in ’04 is some­thing more peo­ple should read:

We are con­tin­u­ing this pol­icy in bleed­ing Amer­ica to the point of bank­ruptcy. … We, along­side the muja­hedeen, bled Rus­sia for 10 years until it went bank­rupt and was forced to with­draw in defeat. … All that we have to do is to send two muja­hedeen to the fur­thest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is writ­ten al Qaeda, in order to make gen­er­als race there to cause Amer­ica to suf­fer human, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal losses with­out their achiev­ing any­thing of note other than some ben­e­fits for their pri­vate corporations

Source: Al-Jazeera via CNN​.com

But of course we should keep spend­ing bil­lions on unwinnable wars while we have a bud­get cri­sis and giv­ing up more and more of our free­doms and pri­vacy to gov­ern­ment intru­sion, because that makes sense some­how in a coun­try that sup­pos­edly val­ues its freedom.

Recently the Inde­pen­dent Sci­en­tific Com­mit­tee on Drugs pub­lished a report in The Lancet rank­ing twenty pop­u­lar recre­ational drugs based on the harm caused to the both user and oth­ers around them. The drugs were judged indi­vid­u­ally on six­teen total harm cri­te­ria cov­er­ing phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and social harm. The cat­e­gories were then weighted by impor­tance (like­li­hood to cause death is worth more points than like­li­hood to cause fam­ily prob­lems, harm to soci­ety is worse than harm to the indi­vid­ual, etc.) The results ended up rank­ing alco­hol as the most harm­ful by far (72÷100), fol­lowed by a close bat­tle between heroin and crack cocaine (55 and 54/100, respec­tively), then metham­phet­a­mine at the #4 spot (32÷100) and trail­ing off from there down to hal­lu­cino­genic mush­rooms at #20 with 6/100.

These results should be unsur­pris­ing to any­one who has read any sim­i­lar reports in the past. They also line up quite well with the argu­ments often made in favor of loos­en­ing or elim­i­nat­ing exist­ing drug laws (the “alco­hol is legal, why isn’t this?” argu­ment). Unfor­tu­nately they have almost no asso­ci­a­tion with the rank­ings used in mod­ern drug laws almost any­where in the world. In the major­ity of the world alco­hol and tobacco are legal and often sold directly by or under the close watch of the gov­ern­ment, yet in the name of “reduc­ing harm” the major­ity if not all of the rest of the drugs on this list are not only ille­gal but also carry stiff penal­ties for mere possession.

Of course the log­i­cal thing to do when sci­ence indi­cates pol­icy is wrong is to amend pol­icy, right? After all, the UK has a sci­en­tific board involved with their drug pol­icy, unlike the USA where the DEA is free to basi­cally set pol­icy as they see fit (fox watch­ing the hen­house, any­one?). Nope, of course when a gov­ern­ment is shown to be wrong by its sci­en­tists, the first thing they do is fire them, then change the law so they’re not needed, and finally go entirely in the oppo­site direc­tion and not only remove the require­ment that harm be demon­strated but instead assume any newly dis­cov­ered recre­ational drugs should be restricted until they are deter­mined to be OK by unspec­i­fied criteria.

It seems another coun­try is fol­low­ing America’s lead of ignor­ing sci­en­tific evi­dence for polit­i­cal gain: When the sci­en­tists don’t come up with the answers you want, don’t change your ideas, just get rid of the scientists.

I don’t get it. Why is it so hard to get a gov­ern­ment to admit that when com­pared to legal recre­ational drugs many ille­gal ones are less harm­ful, some­times to a sig­nif­i­cant extent?

Here are my thoughts on how to struc­ture sane drug laws:

• NEVER crim­i­nal­ize per­sonal drug pos­ses­sion. All this does is give crim­i­nal records to those who are in most cases oth­er­wise pro­duc­tive mem­bers of soci­ety and restrict those who may have real prob­lems from get­ting help for fear of per­se­cu­tion and/or prosecution.
• Base ALL pol­icy on sci­ence and sci­ence alone. Media and politi­cian fueled fear rarely makes for accu­rate pol­icy, so stan­dards should be set and then fol­lowed with­out spe­cial treat­ment for any substances.
• Reg­u­late the drugs you do allow, but only as nec­es­sary to ensure qual­ity and safety
• Revisit all poli­cies reg­u­larly. New stud­ies bring new evi­dence to light all the time and some­times changes will be needed.

On top of that, some­thing I believe applies to all laws rather than just drug pol­icy, is to have goals for the law based on testable cri­te­ria. If after a cer­tain time the goals have not been met, maybe it’s time for another look. Is the goal still worth­while? How close did this pol­icy come to meet­ing the goal? If it came close, can it be tweaked? If it missed by a lot or made things worse, what’s a dif­fer­ent approach?

Cur­rent pol­icy is sold to us as reduc­ing harm to soci­ety and cut­ting back on crime, when in real­ity it’s wast­ing bil­lions in enforce­ment and cor­rec­tional resources, ruin­ing lives, and fuel­ing an enor­mously prof­itable black mar­ket which funds almost all lev­els of crime. Sci­ence and pol­icy are at odds and two of the most pow­er­ful coun­tries in the world are work­ing to keep it that way. We need to keep pres­sure on our politi­cians to resolve this.

Rather than going over the same top­ics time and time again, I fig­ure I’ll lay down a few posts explain­ing my posi­tion on hot-button issues and why I take the posi­tion I do. These posts are intended to pro­voke dis­cus­sion and as such I will attempt to limit my usual unfil­tered out­bursts of pro­fan­ity and ad hominem attacks on the vocal mem­bers of “the other side” to cases where the stu­pid is so extreme that it’s overwhelming.

Up first is the topic of health care reform. I’ve been mean­ing to write a post on this for months but work and real life get in the way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes­ter­day Pat Robert­son made another one of his trade­mark idi­otic state­ments. In response to Maine pro­vid­ing homo­sex­ual cou­ples the right to marry, Mr. Robert­son went on CBN and opened his mouth to let this shit drib­ble out:

Here is a tran­script, snagged from Think Progress:

HOST: Mean­while, the New Hamp­shire leg­is­la­ture has also voted in favor of gay mar­riage, but Pat, the gov­er­nor there still isn’t sure if he will approve that bill.

ROBERTSON: Lee, we haven’t taken this to its ulti­mate con­clu­sion. You got polygamy out there. How can we rule that polygamy is ille­gal when you say that homo­sex­ual mar­riage is legal. What is it about polygamy that’s dif­fer­ent? Well, polygamy was out­lawed because it was con­sid­ered immoral accord­ing to bib­li­cal stan­dards. But if we take bib­li­cal stan­dards away in homo­sex­u­al­ity, what about the other? And what about bes­tial­ity and ulti­mately what about child molesta­tion and pedophilia? How can we crim­i­nal­ize these things and at the same time have con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments allow­ing same-sex mar­riage among homo­sex­u­als. You mark my words, this is just the begin­ning in a long down­ward slide in rela­tion to all the things that we con­sider to be abhorrent.

He starts off with what is actu­ally a very good point. If polygamy was made ille­gal for reli­gious rea­sons, then it most cer­tainly should not be ille­gal. Of course my posi­tion is the reverse of his, so I see it as “so why is polygamy still ille­gal?” He then steps off the logic bus and boards the crazy train by claim­ing the next steps would then be bes­tial­ity and pedophilia. There’s this lit­tle detail he’s ignor­ing of course, and that is informed adult con­sent. Homo­sex­ual mar­riages are between two con­sent­ing adults. Polygamy would also be a num­ber of mar­riages between con­sent­ing adults. Bes­tial­ity, pedophilia, and all the other things the Chris­t­ian cra­zies claim nec­es­sar­ily fol­low gay mar­riage clearly don’t.

Can some­one please tell me why peo­ple keep lis­ten­ing to this igno­rant idiot?

Video cour­tesy Media Mat­ters.
Tran­script and inspi­ra­tion to write cour­tesy Think Progress.

With the Obama admin­is­tra­tion look­ing like they will be rolling back Bush era poli­cies allow­ing doc­tors to refuse to per­form cer­tain pro­ce­dures and/or refuse to pre­scribe or sell cer­tain med­ica­tions (let’s say RU-486 for exam­ple) the Internet’s polit­i­cal debate hotspots have erupted as expected. Over at the Some­thing Awful forums I saw a great post that com­pletely explains my posi­tion on this issue:

It’s a sad reflec­tion on the influ­ence of the reli­gious right that this is even a note­wor­thy issue. If you work at Burger King, and one day you decide that you don’t like the Dou­ble Whop­per and won’t serve it to peo­ple any­more (say, for rea­sons of their health), you get fired. If you’re an net­work admin­is­tra­tor and one day decide that TCP/IP is the devil’s pro­to­col and you won’t use it, you get fired. The list goes on. Giv­ing peo­ple the legal med­ica­tion they need is the job of the phar­ma­cist and doc­tor. Their job is not “Make value judg­ments about my patients and then pre­scribe what med­ica­tions I per­son­ally believe are good”. We have a cen­tral reg­u­la­tory body that deter­mines what med­i­cines and pro­ce­dures are legal to give out and per­form. Doc­tors and phar­ma­cists are expected to adhere to these. A phar­ma­cist who decided that he would no longer give can­cer patients their drugs or a doc­tor who decided he will sub­sti­tute phrenol­ogy for a gen­eral exam would find them­selves out of jobs in short order. The only rea­son this is an issue is because for some rea­son “It’s my reli­gion!” is taken as a valid excuse for not doing your job.

If you are a phar­ma­cist, it is your job to dis­pense med­ica­tions as pre­scribed. Your per­sonal morals have absolutely no legit­i­mate influ­ence on this. If you do not like this fact, find another job. What the right wing wants here would be equiv­a­lent to a paci­fist join­ing the Marines and then com­plain­ing that they were being sent to war.

If you’re still con­vinced that this “reli­gious free­dom” is the right option, pre­tend you live in a small town with one local doc­tor. Now pre­tend that doc­tor is a Jehova’s Wit­ness. Now think about what hap­pens if you or a loved one needs a trans­fu­sion. Your local doc­tor would then be fully able to refuse to give you/your loved one a trans­fu­sion because it goes against their religion.

If you don’t like the job require­ments, find another job. Don’t whine that you chose a job that con­flicts with your beliefs. Put up or shut up, either way your morals don’t have any effect on me.

Accord­ing to CNET, Billy Cor­gan (of Smash­ing Pump­kins fame) went in front of Con­gress to argue against the exemp­tion that allows ter­res­trial radio broad­cast­ers to only pay song­writ­ers and pub­lish­ers, but not artists, for the right to play their music. Satel­lite and inter­net broad­cast­ers by com­par­i­son must pay all three.

I’m 100% in favor of mak­ing things even between the three radio medi­ums, as it’s absurd that ter­res­trial broad­cast radio is treated as some­thing spe­cial, but I think it should go in the other direc­tion. Rather than rais­ing the rates paid by ter­res­trial broad­cast­ers to equal those paid by satel­lite and inter­net broad­cast, I believe the lat­ter two should have their rates low­ered to match ter­res­trial. Some sta­tions are simul­cast on all three (Clear Chan­nel has a part­ner­ship with XM satel­lite radio and is also push­ing their inter­net stream­ing heav­ily now with their “iheartra­dio” iPhone app) with three dif­fer­ent rates apply­ing. Wouldn’t it make more sense over­all to just have one sim­ple charge based on num­ber of lis­ten­ers? This charge should be much less than it is now, as the radio is sec­ond only to word of mouth for how peo­ple find new bands.

Radio is a dying medium as it is thanks to satel­lite (which isn’t doing too hot right now either), stream­ing, and MP3 play­ers. We don’t need to make it worse.

PZ over at Pharyn­gula linked to this Face­book group, so I had to share. Blas­phemy Day Inter­na­tional 2009.

I’m not the first to post this today, but it’s cer­tainly worth the read. The fol­low­ing is from Robert Ingersoll’s “What I Want For Christmas.”

If I had the power to pro­duce exactly what I want for next Christ­mas, I would have all the kings and emper­ors resign and allow the peo­ple to gov­ern themselves.

I would have all the nobil­ity crop their titles and give their lands back to the people.

I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vest­ments, and admit that he is not act­ing for God, is not infal­li­ble, and is just an ordi­nary Italian.

I would have all the car­di­nals, arch­bish­ops, bish­ops, priests and cler­gy­men admit that they know noth­ing about the­ol­ogy, noth­ing about hell or heaven, noth­ing about the des­tiny of the human race, noth­ing about dev­ils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would have them tell all their “flocks” to think for them­selves, to be manly men and wom­anly women, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness.

I would have all the pro­fes­sors in col­leges, all the teach­ers in schools of every kind, includ­ing those in Sun­day schools, agree that they would teach only what they know and not palm off guesses as demon­strated truths.

I would like to see all the politi­cians changed to statesmen:

• Men who long to make their coun­try great and free
• Men who care more for pub­lic good than pri­vate gain
• Men who long to be of use

I would like to see all the edi­tors of papers and mag­a­zines agree to print the truth and noth­ing but the truth, to avoid all slan­der and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and to let the pri­vate affairs of the peo­ple alone.

I would like to see drunk­en­ness and pro­hi­bi­tion both abolished.

I would like to see cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asy­lum, refor­ma­tory, and prison. Cru­elty hard­ens and degrades, kind­ness reforms and ennobles.

I would like to see mil­lion­aires unite and form a trust for the pub­lic good.

I would like to see a fair divi­sion of prof­its between cap­i­tal and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to min­gle a lit­tle June with the Decem­ber of his life.

I would like to see an inter­na­tional court estab­lished in which to set­tle dis­putes between nations, so that armies could be dis­banded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in per­fect peace.

I would like to see the whole world free — free from injus­tice, and free from superstition.

This will do for next Christ­mas. The fol­low­ing Christ­mas, I may want more.

I think many of us could agree that if some­how these requests could be granted the world would be a vastly bet­ter place.

Via Unrea­son­able Faith and Cynical-C

Today is the 75^th anniver­sary of the repeal of Pro­hi­bi­tion.  As a fan of alco­hol in all its forms, I fig­ured I’d write up a bit of his­tory and my thoughts on the lessons of Prohibition.

The roots of Pro­hi­bi­tion can be traced to the mid-1800s when cer­tain Chris­t­ian groups, par­tic­u­larly Methodists and later Bap­tists.  Many states passed dry laws lead­ing up to Decem­ber 1917 when the eigh­teenth amend­ment was pro­posed.  The amend­ment took over a year before it was rat­i­fied in Jan­u­ary of 1919 when Utah approved it.  Rhode Island and Con­necti­cut were the only two states to not rat­ify the amend­ment, and in fact both put out state­ments reject­ing it.

Of course many Amer­i­cans did not like the gov­ern­ment telling them what they could drink, so the new ille­gal sta­tus didn’t really do much except cre­ate a black mar­ket.  Now what comes with a black mar­ket?  That’s right, crime.  If it weren’t for Pro­hi­bi­tion, do you really think gang­sters like Al Capone could have made as much money as they made and had the power that they had?

We all know by now that the gov­ern­ment is slow to real­ize its mis­takes, and even slower when those mis­takes are still being backed by pow­er­ful polit­i­cal groups.  Due to the incred­i­ble influ­ence of the reli­gious groups who sup­ported pro­hi­bi­tion it took four­teen years before the twenty-first amend­ment was pro­posed in Feb­ru­ary of 1933.  Once again, Utah was the state that made it offi­cial by cross­ing the 2/3 require­ment on this day 75 years ago.  South Car­olina rejected the amend­ment and North Carolina’s vot­ers decided against hav­ing a con­ven­tion to con­sider it.

I believe these lessons need to be applied to many other recreational-use drugs such as mar­i­juana.  The mod­ern alco­hol dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem shows how to effi­ciently oper­ate and reg­u­late such drugs, and sales num­bers show how many of us are respon­si­bly using it.  I don’t see any rea­son the same can’t apply to the world’s favorite smok­able plant.

Some argue that legal­iz­ing mar­i­juana for recre­ational use will put every­one in dan­ger with peo­ple work­ing and/or dri­ving stoned.  Again I say just look at alco­hol.  The vast major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion con­sumes it safely and those who don’t are dealt with strictly.  When vapor­ized it has very lit­tle effect on res­pi­ra­tory health (unlike tobacco), not to men­tion it can be eaten, and it is impos­si­ble to over­dose with­out a direct IV injec­tion of THC (unlike alcohol).

It just seems hyp­o­crit­i­cal and point­less to make a safer and more enjoy­able drug ille­gal, fuel­ing a black mar­ket, when we could be reg­u­lat­ing qual­ity and fund­ing projects with taxed while also allow­ing our cit­i­zens to alter their state of mind as they choose.