a return?

Seriously considering restarting this thing....

FDA

OK, for some reason, I've been getting a lot of the "ZOMG! THE FDA WANTS TO TAKE OUR HERBS AWAY!" emails and posts today. It really seems that the people sending/posting it haven't actually read the document. First of all, it's draft guidelines for public comment, not a statute going into immediate effect. Second of all, it's a clarification attempt. The one I've been getting a lot is the "THE FDA IS SAYING VEGETABLE JUICE IS A DRUG!!!1!" one. That's not even remotely what the document is saying. It's saying, with the vegetable juice example specifically, that if you try to, say, sell vegetable juice and say it cures cancer, you're making a claim of vegetable juice being a drug, and therefore you are subject to regulation and prosecution. If you, say, claim that vegetable juice promotes health, then it's either a food or food supplement. There's a bit in that particular email that says if you claim water cures dehydration, then you're marketing it as a drug. Which is probably, technically true. The document also talks about scientific evaluation and concurrence as being prima facie evidence for the claim, which exists for water. So, if you market water as a food, no problem. If you market water as a drug to cure dehydration that claim has already been evaluated.

Look, I'm no fan of the the prescription system in general. And this document isn't perfect, that's why there's a public comment period. But, this document deals almost entirely with clarifying the requirements for labeling things, and that's pretty much it. All those claiming that this document is going to make herbs prescription only haven't read the document, or haven't understood. Hell, "prescribed" only appears in the document 3 times, in the phrase "under the conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling thereof".

Personally, I think any drug/supplement/whathave you should be available to anyone (possibly over 18) with a label that describes the scientific consensus on effects, side effects, dangers, etc.

Fuck your drug war, con't.

Florida supreme court upholds the 25 year sentence of a man in chronic pain who had obtained more pills than he was legally allowed. He tried to get a morphine pump, and was denied that, so he forged some perscriptions to get more pills. Now he's going to prison for 25 years, where he will be given a morphine pump. The utter insanity of the drug war encapsulated in one case:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/07/america/NA_GEN_US_Drug_Sentence.php

In response to this ( http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/12/answer-is-no.html ), I wrote the below.

This post doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You can make generalizations about any group, and inside that group there's going to be various sub-groupings that proclaim that they're the "real" representatives of that group.

Yes, there is a subgroup of people who self-identify as libertarians that is only focused on tax cuts. What that actual proportion is I don't know, I don't have any hard data. Then again, neither did the person who pulled the 98% figure out of thin air.

I, when pressed, will generally self-identify as libertarianish. I've never found any group that I agree with 100%. I think everything's open to question, that's why my (woefully underupdated) blog is called I Might Be Wrong.

There are definite overlaps, to me, especially these days, between strains "liberal" and "libertarian" thought. Ending the war in Iraq, reversing the stripping of habeas corpus, ending the wiretapping program, fighting corruption, reproductive rights, those are all common ground, and there are others.

For me, libertarianism at it's core is a desire to not use coercion, unless it must be used. Essentially, seeing coercion as an evil, but a sometimes necessary one. It must be used to only stop a greater evil. Don't arrest a pot smoker, but do forcibly stop a murder. Don't go to war with a country unless there's a certainty that not doing so would be even worse. In other words, fight Hitler, but don't invade Iraq. Where that line is, where coercion becomes needed, is not always a clear one. It's messy, and it's debatable, and should be debated, and in many cases, agonized over.

So, no, private enterprise isn't the answer to everything, and neither is the state. Private enterprise certainly has its coercive elements (usually backed by the state), and the state does, too. And power, whether state generated, economic, religious or any other form, attracts the corruptible, so giving power to someone should be not done lightly, and they must be held to account.

My libertarianism, at least, takes the stance that you have to consider all solutions to a problem, and whether there is a solution to a problem that does not result in greater evil than the problem itself. Instead of saying "there ought to be a law", it's saying "what is the solution, if there is one, that inflicts the least amount of harm in this situation". It's also saying, "if we've decided this is a common good to be worked for, what's the best, least coercive, and most effective way to do it?". Markets, not in a pure economic sense, which seems to be the way they're being interpreted in the comments here, but in the sense of cooperation and competition.

That's a very compact, undetailed statment, and it may be 13 year old thinking, but it's the best I've been able to come up with in my life.

Fuck Your Drug War

Prosecutors try to sieze gold caps from drug suspects before trial...hmm...seems like there was some other group that pulled the gold out of people's mouth...trying to remember...

Ah, it's just like boot camp

This opinion piece by Max Boot misses one key thing: Consent. It is, after all, the thing that is the difference between sex and rape, a gift and robbery, and boot camp and torture.

Bush takes responsibility for faulty intelligence

OK, first off, if it's news that you're taking responsibility for something in your adminstration, that's not a good sign. Also, waiting until pretty much everyone knows something to admit it isn't really all that impressive. Also also, the whole "well, we did it for the wrong reasons, but it was still the right thing to do" argument is crap. If there was a right reason to do it, that reason should have been formulated properly before doing it. And, whether it was the right thing to do or not, is still up for debate. Yes, Saddam's a bad, bad man. But, were there other ways of dealing with him? And I do hope that Iraq is transformed into the wonderous democratic paradise that we are told it will be, but, even if it is, it doesn't mean this was the right way to do it.

Protests about the medical marijuana raids

So, the DEA, in its continued war on drug users, raided several medical marijuana dispensaries this weekend. In typical fashion, while plants and computers and the like were taken, no related arrests were made (there were three non-related arrests).

This is intimidation, pure and simple. The DEA very rarely actually files charges in any of these raids, one assumes because they don't really want these cases going to trial.

There is no justification for this. While they claim that they bought marijuana without a perscription, they didn't actually arrest anyone. You don't hear about 13 bars being raided and their liquor confiscated because one might have sold a drink to a minor.

I'm a pretty strong believer in ending all prohibition, but I can see some rational arguments being made for keeping, say, meth illegal. I disagree with them, but they seem rational to me. I have yet to hear a single rational argument for why marijuana is illegal. Anyone?

The return of the thin white puke

Well, after three years, the Tymblog returns. I've put a few (for now) links to other blogs of various political persuasions over there to the right.

Basically, I started this thing, then started using LJ more, and stopped using this. However, I do believe I will re-start it now.