Menzies House

Rebelling Against A Red Media

Keith Topolski looks at how Rob Ford can admit to drug use, yet retain steady approval as Toronto Mayor.

 Basic human psychology tells us that people don’t like to be wrong. They don’t like to be told they’re wrong, either.

Andrew Bolt is right on drugs

In a follow-up to News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt's recent article about drugs, Ben-Peter Terpstra presents his three-point plan to combat drug abuse. Many, if not most Australians will agree with both journalists, but not our authorities, it seems. GC.Ed.@L.

I don’t always agree with Andrew Bolt. But, when it comes to drugs, well, he does make a strong case for a get-tough approach. Or as the Herald Sun columnist clearly articulates, “The ‘war on drugs’ can’t be said to be lost just because some people still take them. It’s like saying laws against murder have failed because some people still kill.” 

I mean, what’s next? “Rape is a part of life, so legalise it”? 

Following the drugs-first libertarian argument, we’d end up with anarchy, including LSD for primary-school students.

Keep in mind too that celebrity twits openly talk about their personal drug use in Australia, meaning that our drug laws aren’t scary enough. 

So, here’s my novel plan:

Teen Cannabis Use Lowers IQ, Despite Claims to Contrary

If ever you stumble upon a radio talkback discussion on the effects of pot smoking tune in, it's marvellous comedy. It's like honey to long-term potheads who go on air to extol the virtues of smoking dope.

The announcer: Welcome Fred and how long have you been smoking dope?

Fred: Hey man, like, er, how long was what man - what was the question?

Announcer: Do you think cannabis effects your brain?

Fred: Hey man, I've been toking daily, sometimes all day, for 40 years man, and to tell you the truth, my brain is sharper than ever it was before when it wasn't as sharp as now. I get good ideas now, but I forget most of 'em.

Announcer: Fred, do you have job, do you work?

Fred: Work, did you say, shit man, I grow me own and that's bloody work, a full time job man.

Announcer: I think we'll leave that one there listeners, I can hear the police knocking down Fred's door. GC.Ed.

A new study published in the scholarly journal PNAS questions the conclusion ofa paper from last year that was widely seen as greatly strengthening the evidence that regular cannabis use beginning in adolescence and continuing throughout young adulthood causes a decline in IQ by the late 30s.

In the original study, co-author of this article Madeline Meier and her colleagues assessed changes in IQ and specific cognitive abilities between adolescence and the age of 38 in 1,037 New Zealanders. All the subjects were born in Dunedin in 1972 or 1973.

Toke more: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/science/teen-cannabis-use-lowers-iq-despite-claims-to-contrary-336149.html

Get the government out of our brains

Dom Vasta questions why the United Nations has the right to tell us what chemicals we can have inside our own bodies:

N,N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT is a hallucinogen, it is also a commonly occurring trypamine in nature and structurally similar to serotonin, it is found in in the human body at mg/L concentrations in the cerebral spinal fluid, it’s exact function is still unknown but there’s no doubt of it’s importance in the brain. The active dose of DMT is 4mg intravenously, the average human has far more than this. It’s relatively easy to extract from the numerous plants that contain it, which are found on nearly every continent on Earth.

This brings us to the main problem: The 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic substances. It lists it as a schedule 1 substance; this means that DMT is illegal throughout all member nations, effectively banning people from having possession of it anywhere in the world. While it's not clear whether or not the UN convention was provided with this information before they banned it, the fact that the UN can ban a substance that occurs naturally in the human body as commonly as amino acids, shows that the government will just ban things left and right if given the power.

Marijuana Carbon Footprint: Indoor Pot Production Uses 1 Percent of U.S. Electricity, Study Says

Pot-smoking environmentalists take note: Grass might not be green. A new study reveals that indoor marijuana production carries a shockingly large carbon footprint.

GOOD reports that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher Evan Mills, Ph.D., has released a surprising new independent report, “Energy up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production.” Mills reports that indoor Cannabis production uses 1% of the nation’s entire electricity consumption. This comes to energy expenditures of $5 billion per year.

While 1% may not seem like a lot, the report claims that smoking one single Cannabis joint is equivalent to running a 100-watt light bulb for 17 hours. That Cannabis cigarette carries two pounds of CO2 emissions.

You can read the remainder of the huffington Post article here.

Not a lot of “Green” in smoking the “Green”.

So does that make Nimbin Australia’s no1 CO2 emissions emitter?

Via the Huffington Post

Andy Semple

Speak without fear and Question with Boldness

The Human Cost of the War On Drugs

To commentators here who have denied the existence of a War on Drugs, here is a map of botched drug raids that have recently led to deaths of innocents, complied by the Cato Institute. 

 Click on each marker on the map for a description of the incident and sources.

Death of an innocent.	Death or injury of a police officer.	Death of a nonviolent offender.
Raid on an innocent suspect.	Other examples of paramilitary police excess.	Unnecessary raids on doctors and sick people.

 

View Original Map and Database

if you are interested in further facts, you can read the Cato Policy Paper: Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Drug Raids. 

(Posted by TVA)

Portuguese drug decriminalization

An in depth study has just been released on the effects of drug decriminalization in Portugal.  

The issue of decriminalizing illicit drugs is hotly debated, but is rarely subject to evidence-based analysis. This paper examines the case of Portugal, a nation that decriminalized the use and possession of all illicit drugs on 1 July 2001. Drawing upon independent evaluations and interviews conducted with 13 key stakeholders in 2007 and 2009, it critically analyses the criminal justice and health impacts against trends from neighbouring Spain and Italy. It concludes that contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding. The article discusses these developments in the context of drug law debates and criminological discussions on late modern governance.

h/t Marginal Revolution 

(Posted by TVA)

Why illegal drugs should be legalized

The war on drugs is an enemy of civil liberties, writes Sukrit Sabhlok.

John Stuart Mill’s classic work, On Liberty, examines “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” and concludes: “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
 
In a democracy, however, the tyranny of the majority often tramples individual freedoms. If 51% of the people agree on a proposed measure that is oppressive towards some minority, in the absence of any constitutional limitation, that measure will become the law of the land.