D.C. Metro train nearly takes out a group of safety inspectors.
VH1 bus crashes, spills dangerous slut.
Good Dahlia Lithwick piece showing the absurdity of Obama’s decision not to release innocent Gitmo detainees because . . . they’re from Yemen.
Minnesota to begin database tracking patient use of “often abused prescription drugs.” Translation: If you’re a chronic pain patient in Minnesota, your life is about to get more hellish.
Trials of “vaccine” to prevent cocaine high didn’t turn out so well.
http://runningfromcamera.blogspot.com/
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on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:22 am by Radley Balko
and is filed under General Drug War, Innocence, Pain Treatment.
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TheAgitator.com
Girl-on-girl paintball made be almost get milk & granola cereal in my nose. Gotta love The Onion. And ya gotta love a nipple shot in the AM.
That would be “me” not “be”…
I love the fake tease at the end of the Onion news report that Apple will be offering a new laptop that will come “preloaded with a half-written coming of age novel.”
Best photo blog of the year!
In a play on the Michael Madsen character in Kill Bill:
Those men released from gitmo deserve their revenge and we American’s deserve what ever they dream to dish out.
~Camera’s @ traffic lights to fine violators instead of improving traffic flow?
~Traffic control devices are unconstitutional in all of Maryland except Montgomery County?
~Public use includes a higher tax base for the a government?
~Interstate commerce includes non-commercial activity conducted entirely within a single state.
~”Shall make no law…” is merely a guideline to discard if it becomes an obstacle.
~”This is the most transparent congress in history”
I think we have lost our collective minds!!!!
Wouldn’t a “near-miss” by default be a hit?
I have to say, I’m afraid for the runningfromcamera guy. With our modern levels of paranoia, running from anything might cause someone to tackle, shoot at and/or arrest you–after all, if you’re running, you must be guilty of something. Setting a timer on an electronic device, and then running away from it as fast as you can is risky business.
I think we have lost our collectivist minds!!!!
Florida recently passed a similar law in regards to prescription pain pills. Unfortunately,nobody I talked to about the issue seemed to understand what I was saying. Or they didn’t care. Probably the latter. I’d make a point, and the response would be “B..b..but drug addicts!”. I’d make another point, and the response would be “B..b..but drug addicts!”
“You know,” explains an unnamed source at the Pentagon “Our studies indicates that being unlawfully and wrongly incarcerated makes a person resentful of the incarcerator, and seeing that we, the United States of America did the incarceration that means us… ehm, and you know, terrorists are people resentful of the United States of America, so, you know, we better keep them there, see?”
Radley: I don’t think that your take on the cocaine vaccine is accurate. All the “anti-addiction” vaccines do is decrease the blood level of the drug, and hence require more to overcome, i.e. more cocaine. The theory is that by decreasing the reward, there is less desire to use the drug. They work best when the person is already trying to go ‘clean’ and so is not using, because when the person re-uses (as happens) he doesnt experience the high.
How far back in time would you have to go before the “Running from Camera” blog would have taken the entire world’s computing resources to pull off? The entire computing resources of a large university? An entire western govt?
I can’t find an MSDS sheet for sluts. How are those firemen supposed to know how to handle those sluts?
@7 Bill
Well, he is dutch and doing most of the running in Holland and not the US, so you should be able to rest easy. Though you ‘merikan panic does spread to here on the old continent, it’s not that widespread yet and even if something happens, the likelyhood of him being shot is neglible compared to the US.
The cocaine story is creepier than I first realized:
“I sleep well at night because it’s unethical not to do well-designed studies”
Meaning, it was A-OK to subject the study participants to a potential vaccine for cocaine when NOT ONE OF THEM were seeking treatment for their addiction (which also makes me think they were not fully informed).
Sorry to Nazi it up, but Josef Mengele probably would have said his studies were “well-designed”, too.
This is really what medical research in our country has come to?
These are what the Internets am made for!
Anabuse is an effective treatement for alcoholism because it induces an extreme sensitivity: drinking any alcohol produces a very fast “super hangover” condition, often with the accompanying vomiting.
The cocaine vaccine people got it exactly wrong, with the predictable result.
Come on, guys, don’t you understand that it’s better that 10 innocent people suffer unholy amounts of pain and misery than 1 junkie gets high?
And if a few of those 10 get ‘mistakenly’ convicted and thrown in jail to suffer or shot in some midnight raids, that’s the price we pay for freedom.
So this is what Dutch people do for fun, huh?
as a fireman, I know we can handle small spills, but ’2000 pounds of slut’ would be an epic disaster…
# 11 SJE
Right on. There is a psychological component that accompanies the physical addiction. You can’t really treat one without the other. Cigarettes are a good example. My aunt quit smoking 20 yrs ago. Well past the physical addiction, she tells me that not a day has gone by that she hasn’t thought about lighting one up. In other words, you have to want to quit.
#17 KB
I ‘m not sure how well anabuse works in the long run but it is certainly a better concept than the coke “vaccine.”
Stupid people (cocaine vaccine). Cocaine’s high is caused by its TOXICITY. Cocaine is an alkaloid poision produced by the plant to reduce predation and to make the probably of “offspring” more likely. This statement is true of nicotine, caffeine, cocaine, strychnine, capsaisin, and hundreds of other alkaloid compounds produced by plants as deterrents to predators.
Knowing the LD 50 gives one an idea of the probability of death by dose.
I explain this in my drug lectures in my chemistry courses. Then I tell them they are free to choose what they want to do. I also explain that the laws against drugs are unconstitutional proven by Amendment 18 being required to ban booze. Where are the ban drugs, etc amendments?
Alcohol is microbial excrement and is also a toxin that acts through a different metabolic system than do the alkaloid compounds. THC falls in a still different category than that of alkaloids and is related to vanillin and pisatin.
re fwd: cocaine has a more specific effect than alcohol.
@fwb,
Cocaine’s (and most other drugs of abuse) high is not caused by its toxicity.
SusanK @ 15: I agree that there are some pretty serious ethical implications with the study of this “vaccine”, but I think you may have misunderstood what the quote about “I sleep well at night…” was referring to. As I read the article, the researcher was talking about the ethics of giving people access to cocaine in a lab setting (her research was not the main study described in the article). Since her research was not directly concerned with the “vaccine” as an effective treatment for addiction but with how active cocaine-users responded to cocaine if they had/hadn’t received the drug, I don’t think that you can conclude that the participants can’t have been fully informed about the nature of the study. They may not have been, but the linked article doesn’t give enough information about how they were recruited to state that one way or the other.
I would also argue that controlled study of how cocaine-users who have received the “vaccine” respond to cocaine is absolutely necessary if research with the drug is going to proceed at all, and I don’t think that conducting such a study with people who are seeking treatment would pass an ethics board.
The major ethical problem I see is with the study of users seeking treatment; without some way to prevent participants from getting access to enough cocaine for a massive overdose that they otherwise would not need in order to get high, or some way to know who is going to be driven to do so and who isn’t, the “vaccine” doesn’t seem safe.
fwb,
As morally reprehensible drug laws in the US are, there is nothing unconstitutional about them. If there was an amendment that stated it is every citizens right to get their fix, it would be a different story.
@hamburglar007,
Then why did the prohibition of alcohol require a constitutional amendment? What’s the significant difference?
@hamburglar007
What if I consider using a substance to be a sacrament and thus an expression of religion? Even if you suspect I’m full of shit and it’s entirely for recreational purposes, to make a law that says, “this is not religion” is tantamount to Congress making a law “respecting an establishment of religion.” I’m not native american so under our current laws I don’t have the freedom to adopt their religious ceremonies that use peyote or ayahuasca. How is that not unconstitutional?
Cocaine prevents dopamine and Norepinephrine re-uptake at the nerve synapses. Cocaine is rarely used in medicine today it has a limited use in ENT surgeries as local anesthetic and vasoconstrictor. The mechanism of action and site of action is very similar to numerous direct and indirect sympathomimetic drugs used in Anesthesia, Critical Care and Emergency medicine to maintain heart rate, blood pressure, and cardiac contractility in patients in shock. What are the consequences of TA-CD on medical management in these types of situations? I haven’t seen anything in Anesthesia journals but I am curious.
“As morally reprehensible drug laws in the US are, there is nothing unconstitutional about them.”
Except maybe this….”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” and this “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
But its OK, I don’t blame you, the federal Government has forgotten about those too.
D.C. Metro train nearly takes out a group of safety inspectors.
It’s the “nearly” part that bugs me.
What #29 said ….. our country is supposed to be governed by the Constitution and negative rights, which means that you have the right to do something unless it’s explicitly stated that you don’t. Positive rights mean that you don’t have the right to do anything unless it’s explicitly stated that you do.
Another “don’t call 911, don’t help the police”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/46620.html
I’m well aware of the text of the constitution. First point, every state have their own anti-drug laws, and barring an amendment stating that every one has the right to them as they do with free speech (not getting into any of the finer points here) the states have every right to pass such laws.
Second point, the 18th amendment guaranteed that prohibition be enforced nationwide, not proof that an individual state or locality couldn’t enact laws that resembled the 18th (which some did and some continue to).
Third point, I do agree that much of the federal legislation regarding drug control is probably unconstitutional (with the exception of perhaps ones that control the interstate regulation of drugs), but I wasn’t arguing that it was, just that the much broader assertion that the 18th amendment proved drug laws unconstitutional was false.
Fourth point, you can’t hide everything (reasonable or unreasonable) under the guise of freedom of religion. I think that you can make an argument from many constitutional theories.
Last point, just because a law is incredibly stupid and you disagree with it doesn’t point to it being unconstitutional. My last post was in no way an endorsement of what the government chooses to enact. I would only hope that when you are teaching your chemistry course and telling students that they can do what they want with respect to drugs and that the laws prohibiting those drugs are unconstitutional, you are also telling them that the police department, prosecutor, and court up to SCOTUS disagrees with that assertion and if they get caught their life might very well get rather unpleasant.
I don’t really think this is a case of “hiding something under the guise of religion.” There are numerous now-illegal drugs that have thousands of years of history of religious use. Your statement speaks directly to my point: if the government can simply declare, “using this drug does not have any acceptable religious application” despite thousands of years history to the contrary, how is this not a law respecting the establishment of religion? Especially since there is a conspicious example of one drug that is permitted for religious use (even during prohibition), but only because it happens to be favorable with the most widely practiced religion. How is this not a de facto establishment of christianity (or other beliefs that don’t incorporate the use of drugs) as the only acceptable religion?
#34,
Cannibalism and stonings have been a tradition in some religions for thousands of years and continue to this day. I have no problem with someone smoking, shooting up, snorting etc. just about anything for religious reasons, or any reasons for that matter. Vagueness in the US constitution is one of its greatest strengths and most exploited weaknesses. It is open to interpretation, ultimately the SCOTUS gets to decide what is constitutional for all intents and purposes, and even then the ruling isn’t necessarily consistent. My point was that freedom of religion has to have some limits, and what you may see as being within reasonable bounds doesn’t necessarily point to its constitutionality.
While I personally find cannibalism “distasteful,” I’d have to say that under a system with true freedom of religion, as long as the eater has first obtained the permission of the eaten, it should also be permitted. Stoning is different because your religious freedom ends where another’s right to life begins.
I get what you’re saying that in the end the words of the Constitution don’t really count as much as what SCOTUS says. I’m just trying to understand how “shall make no establishment of religion” jibes with “you can’t practice that religion because it includes using drugs we disapprove of.”
I don’t see what reasonable bounds has to do with the price of tea in china. In fact “reasonable bounds” sounds like exactly what the ammendment was intended to prohibit: the legislature deciding which religions people can practice and which they can’t.
Please tell me you saw this and facepalmed:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWNlNTg5YmRlZWQ3N2IxZmY4MThiYmZhNThhYzY4YTc=
“Of course, we have not endorsed the brutal, barbaric torture of any American citizens. But as to this question — why not use enhanced interrogation techniques on crack dealers if we are willing to use them on terrorists? — the answer is simple: The same reason we don’t send Special Operations Forces to bust in into crack dens or target crack dealers with Predator drones. Selling crack is a crime, trying to blow up an airplane is an act of war.
Crime vs. war. It’s a distinction that Andrew (and President Obama) seem to have trouble grasping.”
Marc Thiessen and National Review everybody!
You do realize there are people who go to rehab on their own, right? Not everybody enjoys an over-the-top coke addiction and they actually decide on their own that their crack/coke habit has to go.
Well, I’m glad I was too busy to check out that link to the Onion at lunch. A NSFW warning would have been nice there Radley. I’ve definitely never seen bare breasts on their site before.
#15,
You gotta admit one thing! They had at least one side that was blinded to the study! (Was it triple blinded?) This would sure question giving cocaine addicts, unknowingly, a substance that killed their desire for it. Sounds like one guy spent a small fortune trying to overcome the effects. (if he had been a knowing participant, it might have saved him a few thousand bucks?) I don’t know. Sounds like a good idea for those who don’t want the craving. Not so good, done to an unknowing victim. In that way it was successful.. But, I would also worry about someone conducting a study as deceptively as these researchers seem to have done. Now we treat drug addicts that way instead of inhabitants of Auschwitz.
tariqata – your reading might be right. The report uses an odd juxtaposition of questioning ethics of giving crack to addicts (who weren’t seeking treatment). Was the reporter referring to the ethics of administering crack or the ethics of giving a “vaccine” to unsuspecting people who are perfectly happy being crack addicts? It’s not clear, but I get the feeling that the researcher didn’t even consider the ethics of
vaccinating unknowing people.
With all these laws making it difficult for people who have chronic pain to obtain medication to treat it, one wonders how the legislators with chronic pain get around these laws. I mean government usually exempts itself from what it inflicts on us but in this case it would seem to be more difficult to do.
Thank you, thank you for the Onion’s ‘slut’ link. LMAO!
SusanK: Just for our peace of mind, and because I’ve had to get ethics approval for human participants for explicitly and obviously non-harmful studies, and one is required to be very, very clear about what participants will be told and how, and ethics boards frown on any fudging of potential risks, I took a look at Haney’s paper, “Cocaine-Specific Antibodies Blunt the Subjective Effects of Smoked Cocaine in Humans”, published in Biological Psychology (2009). Having looked at it, I’m less concerned by the way this study was conducted; the methods section indicates that the participants knew that they would receive a drug to blunt the effects of cocaine. I do agree that the Washington Post article is very poorly written, so it is hard to tell what was meant in the paragraph in question.
From the methods section: “Cocaine-dependent research volunteers who were explicitly not interested in treatment for their cocaine use signed a consent form approved by the New York State Psychiatric Institute Institutional Review Board that described the procedures and outlined the possible risks, including administration of an experimental vaccine and smoked cocaine. Volunteers were compensated for their participation.” There’s also a section that details the safety monitoring for the participants that indicates that after every vaccine administration, they were counselled by doctors about the potential risks of seeking cocaine outside the confines of the study.
Haney would have been required to demonstrate how she would ensure that the participants did understand what they were going to do in the study in order to get IRB approval. That’s standard, and medical and psychological researchers have to be very explicit; in a study that involved administration of an addictive drug to people with an addiction, the bar for approval would have been quite high. The actual participants still may not have understood, but I think it’s less far less likely. It’s of course also impossible to know whether Haney herself cares or not about the ethical implications of her study, but that’s why the IRBs exist, after all.
It was a quiet week in Lake Wobeggon. Or at least it was up until the momment the SWAT team burst through the door of the Chatterbox Cafe. It turns out Pastor Inkfist had taken a few to many Vicoden for his own good and the local police had decided to handle it the way Minnesotans handle such things: by shooting his dog and handcuffing all his friends and kicking them in the ribs. The rest of the town probably would have complained, but, after all, they’re Lutherans, and the way Lutherans deal with tragedy is by pretending it never happened. So after spending several hours of lying on the floor and having machineguns pointed at their heads, most of them just wanted to go home…
Multiple stories of cops being arrested for various crimes …
To borrow a phrase from Radley, “Yet more isolated incidents”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/46703.html
Tariqata,
Nice explanation. I guess I have not learned not to trust MSM, about questionable reports that they put out, yet! But, if this vaccine helps 50%, or more, of those that want it, it would well be worth it! At least, I think so.
#43, Elroy,
Same old story, MONEY TALKS! How do you think the celebrities get away with all the crap! There seems to be, at least, a two tiered form of treatment, if not many gradations, depending on the “patients” financial situation.
#18 Dread re drug war:
If any form of pleasure is exhibited,
Report to me and it will be prohibited.
I’ll put my foot down — so shall it be;
This is the land of the free!
— from “Duck Soup”