The Wacked Out War on Drugs

For many years I have been fighting to persuade people to agree with my perspective on the government’s “war on drugs”. Basically, I believe that all drugs should be legalized, with some restrictions. This belief arises not just from an urge to experience different states of mind myself but also economic and safety reasons as well.

In the US, marijuana is the largest cash crop, meaning it makes more money (~$25 billion per year) than any other plant grown and sold, including wheat (~$19 billion), tobacco, cotton, and corn. Why don’t we tax this huge pot of money, control its distribution, and save a whole hell of a lot of money spent on prisons, law enforcement (coast guard, boarder patrol, and police)?

Doctors have been using the dissociative drug Ketamine for a long time now to anesthetize patients. It has also been used as party drug because at slightly lower doses Ketamine can produce hallucinations and out of body experiences. Recently researchers have also found that at lower doses than those used at parties, Ketamine actually works incredibly well as an anti-depressant.

If other psychoactive drugs, such as LSD, Mescaline, or MDMA can also have such positive results should the government reschedule them as Schedule II drugs so that physicians and researchers can more easily purchase them for use in medical research? LSD and Mescaline have both been shown to help treat schizophrenia, alcoholism, and several other diseases and they are not addictive or cause any physical toxic effects.

What about the drugs that do cause addiction in some people and can be very damaging to their health and life? Well one thing that legalizing the drugs would do is put the drugs in the hands of people who know what they are doing with them. Pharmacists, if they were going to sell the drug, could be legally forced to maintain an online list of people who have purchased the drug and the date that it was purchased on, that way they would know not to sell to anyone who had purchased a dose of Heroine within the last week, or whatever arbitrary time is needed for the brain to recuperate from a dose of Heroine, from any pharmacist connected to the network. Pharmacists would also have to give sterile needles. The addictive nature of Heroine does not manifest itself until after multiple successive uses of it that cause a tolerance to build in the person using the drug. The tolerance is an indicator that the brain chemistry has been altered and there is now a dependence on the drug to maintain a normal state of mind and sensation, this is called addiction. If enough time is separated between each use then a tolerance never builds and the damaging effects on the brain are greatly reduced, if not altogether eliminated.

So in conclusion, the US could make billions of dollars by taxing drug sales, reducing the number of people in prisons, and by no longer wasting money trying to prevent the import of the drugs. Control on who used the drugs would be far greater, and therefore usage would be far safer, and new therapies for difficult to treat diseases and disorders could be researched. The is no good reason to make drugs illegal as far as I can see. Making drugs legal would make them easier to get but would also make them less dangerous and better information surrounding their use could be disseminated (D.A.R.E. would have to stop lying about the negative effects of use of marijuana, and other drugs).

Why rush legislation?

So the Democrats took Congress. As expected, the lame duck, Republican-controlled 109^th Congress is scrambling to get in last-minute judge appointments and legislation. Pelosi has the first 100 hours of the 110^th Congress planned out. The rush is on to dazzle voters with fresh ideas and fast action. So, what is it we want to see moving forward? Do we want an end to corruption, as many voters indicated in exit polls? Do we want to see a lot of legislation passed as quickly as possible, catering to every whim on the national radar? I think what we can all agree on is that we need compromise. I’d rather see Congressional leadership take the time to develop majority legislation – something that can bring people together. Sadly, politics has turned to picking battles to fight versus finding solutions and reaching compromise. The Bush administration will most likely sign legislation increasing the minimum wage. Will the same be said for stem cell research. Is that the battle that will be fought? We must put an end to steamrolling legislation through Congress simply because we have a slim majority and begin to develop relationships with those on the other side of the aisle. Voters want to see progress. Voters want to see improvement.

Welcom Ian

Ian is the newest admin to help work on This Life and Time so pay close attention to see how his posts are sure to add another level interest and open the doors to relevant discussion. We now have three intelligent and intriguing editors for this blog and I am extremely excited to see where this will lead and how new discussions will develop.

Million Dollar Ideas

I'm tired of getting up at 8am to go to work. I want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want, but in order to do that I need a lot of money and in order to get a lot of money I have to work. So I've been trying to come up with some ideas on how to limit the amount of work and maximize the amount of money I make. Here is a short list of some, potential, million dollar ideas I have:

1. Sell t-shirts with 3D stereograms printed on them, like Magic Eye posters, where if you cross your eyes and stare at it long enough a 3D image of breasts pops out. Each shirt: $15. Only need to sell 66,666 of them to make a million bucks, and I'm sure there would be a demand much larger than that for such a sweet shirt. Okay, this one might not make me a millionaire but I would love to see that shirt on a girl some day.

2. Culturing autologous keratinocyte stem cells isolated from plucked hairs of the temporal region to be injected back into the scalp to regrow hair for alopecia and burn victims. The cells can also be used for skin grafts. This is a person by person procedure, similar to plastic surgery only non-invasive and no surgical procedures would need to be done only plucking hairs and small intradermal injections of cells. Price per person: $5000. So 200 people would need to be treated before $1,000,000 was made. To cover the cost of setting up a lab to culture the cells and an office to perform the injections about 220 people would need to be treated. Seems easy enough. That would be 1 person per day so in less than one year I could have $1,000,000. There are roughly 6 billion people in the world, 3 billion are men, 2.25 billion men go bald by age 80, 1.5 billion by age 40, 750 million by age 30. A large fraction of women begin to lose hair later in life also. So lets say I was able to treat two people per day working 200 days per year I could have $10 million in 5 years. Not bad. The down side: I would have to hire an MD and the the FDA would have to okay the procedure which takes years and plenty of clinical trials, and requires money. I could, however, do this from my garage easily, black market style, and charge $7000 instead.

3. Create a comedy cartoon where the characters are derived from images of funny graffiti and drawings found while walking the streets of the greater Boston area. There is already Snowman and Freddy and I'm sure in the days to come I will find a lot more.

Welcome Jeremy

I just recently added Jeremy (aka Jerems) as another admin for This Life And Time. Hopefully with his addition and the soon to be addition of Ian we will have more consistent posts, and a larger readership (anything more than one person per month will be an improvement). As always I hope anyone that reads this site will comment on their posts so that we can get good discussions going...plus it makes a writer feel to good to know that they have readers.

Halloween Pictures

From top left to bottom right:
1. Ben, Jeremy, me, and Ari; Gangster, Carl (from Aqua Teen Hunger Force), Che Guevara, Hermione (Harry Potter).
2. Ari, Paula, Heather, Jeremy, Ian, Lisa, Ben; Paula was a witch, Ian was a Vietnam vet, and Lisa was Snow White.
3. Andrew Rossa, Beatrice aka Bea. I don't remember what they were.
4. Ben, Paula.
5. Ian.
6. Heather.
7. Jeremy.
8. Hui fai, Jeremy, Danny; Hui Fai was Princess Toadstool and Danny was Mario.

Thanks Jeremy for the first and last picture.