Sorry, can't be shocked by protestors holding signs. This one's fairly mild, even.

"Arbitrarily".

Because heroin, crack and meth have beneficial effects, felt not just by the user, but by those around her.

So A&E took "LivePD" off the air. It damned sure wasn't because it was unpopular - it couldn't be allowed to show a) that the police are often black, Hispanic and/or women, and b) that the consistent result of drug use is misery and crime.

It couldn't be allowed to show reality, because that is inconvenient to those who think everything is just fine and it's because of their policies.

That the public thinks that the police are the answer to this is a byproduct of the "somebody else's problem" attitude of those who don't wish to do anything unpleasant themselves. It's not because YOU want or need addicts in your house.

There is great irony in the picture showing the oblivious Ms. Yogapants standing in front of a billboard covered with signs reading “Listen To Black Women” holding her sign in front of, but not listening at all to the black woman (policewoman). It completely captures WhiTITe Privilege in a single picture.

The issue isn't that the various illegal drugs are arbitrarily categorized. Some may be mischaracterized due to historical reasons but the classifications are hardly arbitrary. And illegal drug users are hardly non-violent. The issue is that this doesn't work.

As Rad likes to say many addicts will do anything to get that next hit. Which is why the drug war should be ended. You flat can't stop them from using those drugs. You can't win. So resources should be repurposed to more effective tasks.

they say they nevertheless announced themselves before breaking in the door with a battering ram

Yeah, because no criminal ever announced themselves as police before committing a home invasion.

The problem is the attempt to forcibly prevent Americans from consuming arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants, which is fundamentally immoral because it sanctions violence as a response to peaceful conduct that violates no one's rights.

Right up until that junkie tries kicking in my door to find enough stuff to purchase a fix. You're just pushing the violence downstream. Unless there is a proposal to provide free fixes, which will be paid by taxpayers. Which will be collected at the point of a gun if necessary.

I agree with eliminating no-knock raids for drugs, but not with decriminalizing all drugs. I live in a rural area and we have meth-heads out here who will steal your stuff, break into your house, keep you up all night with "construction noise," and start fights and feuds with anyone around them. People can be functional marijuana users or drinkers, but I don't believe there are any meth users or heroine junkies that contribute to society.

...but I don't believe there are any meth users or heroine junkies that contribute to society. ~ ahw at June 24, 2020 8:44 AM

Heroine junkie, Billie Holiday, left a pretty nice catalogue.

Overall I'd agree with you. I lived in a rapidly-gentrifying working class suburb in The Bay Area and the town had problems with meth-heads breaking in to cars and houses. Prop 47 meant possession of small amounts of drugs was decriminalized, but the means to purchase the next fix was still up to the users, most of whom were unemployable and resorted to robbery to obtain the necessary funds.

No knock raids and swat teams all in black certainly cause people to shoot at them. They break in your door and start yelling in the dark--why would you think it is the cops? Any police serving a warrant should be dressed in a uniform.

A second problem is that during this process of raiding they are too quick to shoot those not the object of their warrant and do not necessarily try to save their life after shooting them.

The problem with drugs is that they are not harmless. Crack, heroin, meth all wreck your body before they kill you. You get addicted so fast. People with good reason believe that their stupid kids (I remember being one) will get hooked before they have any sense.

In previous times, it was very difficult to get a night-time and/or a no-knock warrant in Pennsylvania and I would hope in other states as well. It's a big problem that we've gone to the point where these police invasions are common. And used also as intimidation--think the SWAT raids on Scott Walker supporters in Wisconsin, and the arrest of Roger Stone which was carried out as though he was Mysterio.

I felt myself tense up just watching this. No one seems to be catching the sexism inherent in this encounter; how many times has a MAN commanded me to smile (too many to count, but it mostly disappeared once I was in my mid-forties)? That bitch thought it was brave and noble to insist that the officer smile--why not just call the officer a c-t and get it all out there?

Good news, everybody - the police are getting the message.

In yesterday's news, a white Florida prison guard broke a handcuffed white inmate's neck with a police baton, killing him.

"The problem is the attempt to forcibly prevent Americans from consuming arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants, which is fundamentally immoral because it sanctions violence as a response to peaceful conduct that violates no one's rights."

Ever seen someone on (or even worse, coming down from) meth, crack, PCP, bath salts, or any number of homemade "designer" drugs? It's not peaceful, and others rights are most definitely violated.

Well, I like a well-built and erudite heroine as much as the next guy, but I doubt if you'd call me a 'junkie'.

I can stop reading about them any time I want.

Well, I like a well-built and erudite heroine as much as the next guy, but I doubt if you'd call me a 'junkie'. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 24, 2020 3:24 PM

Nice, Gog.

Should be "Heroin junkie, Billie Holiday...." I'll give myself 20 lashes with correction tape as a punishment.

Now, if you want a well-built and erudite heroine, try the Modesty Blaise series. Never read 'em myself, but the summaries indicate they should meet those simple requirements.

Is anyone else having trouble posting?

This blog keeps acting as though I didn't type in "cars."

If you like, you can read "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society."

As you can tell from the book's title, it covers many subjects, not just drugs.

Even so, I recommend getting your hands on the paperback edition, not just the online edition. (And definitely not the hardcover edition; the author was far wiser, later on, regarding cults.) Last I checked, there were a few chapters in the paperback edition that you can't read online.

Well, after trying to post the above post 15 times or so and getting rejected each time, it worked only after I removed the link for the online book! Honestly.

At any rate, here's a review by a member of the Cato Institute:

https://fee.org/articles/aint-nobodys-business-if-you-do-the-absurdity-of-consensual-crimes-in-a-free-society/

it just plain refuses to be posted.

You can find the link this way.

Search on one of the early chapters:

"WHY LAWS AGAINST CONSENSUAL
ACTIVITIES ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA"

Click on one of the top results, which should say "DrugSense."

After you do, scroll to the bottom and click on the orange button (there are four) that says "contents."

Also, when you get there, the orange book cover is the one for the paperback edition. But again, as I said, the online edition seems to be missing a few chapters.

The hardcover edition shows the Jacques-Louis David painting "The Death of Socrates" on the back cover (with the men in the painting quoting McWilliams about the millions of annual arrests and the billions of dollars wasted annually). The spine shows Rubens' "Venus and Adonis," and the front cover shows Francois Boucher's "The Toilet of Venus."

("Toilet" as in dressing and grooming, of course.)

And, in one of the last chapters, "Hemp for Victory," he quotes ABC News' Hugh Downs. (Keep in mind this was well over 20 years ago.)

"The reasons the pro-marijuana lobby wants marijuana legal have little to do with getting high, and a great deal to do with fighting oil giants like Saddam Hussein, Exxon and Iran. The pro-marijuana groups claim that hemp is such a versatile raw material that its products not only compete with petroleum, but with coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, pharmaceutical, timber and textile companies. It is estimated that methane and methanol production alone from hemp grown as bio-mass could replace 90% of the world's energy needs. If they're right, this is not good news for oil interests, and could account for the continuation of marijuana prohibition...

"...When Rudolph Diesel produced his famous engine in 1896, he assumed that the diesel engine would be powered by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils. Rudolph Diesel, like most engineers then, believed vegetable fuels were superior to petroleum. Hemp is the most efficient vegetable.

"In the 1930s, the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant that included hemp at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl acetate, and creosote—all fundamental ingredients for modern industry, and now supplied by oil-related industries.

"The difference is that the vegetable source is renewable, cheap and clean, and the petroleum or coal sources are limited, expensive and dirty. By volume, 30% of the hemp seed contains oil suitable for high-grade diesel fuel, as well as aircraft engine and precision machine oil. Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily-renewable fuel. And, if you think methanol means compromise, you should know that many modern race cars run on methanol."

Yes, I've had a lot of trouble posting comments lately. Sometimes I just give up.

> "The difference is that the
> vegetable source is renewable,
> cheap and clean, and the petroleum
> or coal sources are limited,
> expensive and dirty

Coal's a mess, though China can't live without it.

But if vegetable sources were renewable, cheap and clean, we'd know by now. Besides, they say price hikes of corn for American auto fuels have severely impacted third-world diets.

So long as most of the barbarian thugs who've been looting and burning our cities (and the malicious organizations behind them) are walking free, police brutality has shrunk to unimportance.

Police, go back to work with a vengeance. Get us our vengeance, before we pronounce you useless and take it for ourselves.

"The difference is that the vegetable source is renewable, cheap and clean, and the petroleum or coal sources are limited, expensive and dirty. By volume, 30% of the hemp seed contains oil suitable for high-grade diesel fuel, as well as aircraft engine and precision machine oil. Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily-renewable fuel. And, if you think methanol means compromise, you should know that many modern race cars run on methanol."

Lenona, this is almost useless, it says so little.

Methanol DOES mean compromise, because it entrains water and has 66% of the energy/pound of gasoline. That's a 50% mileage penalty.
Biofuels are a feel-good crock, as demonstrated by a simple number: 13% of the Nebraska corn crop went to provide 1% of its diesel fuel some years ago.

The chart in this post shows you the sources of all energy in the USA AND the unused fraction of each, called, "rejected heat".

The short story is that we cannot grow enough to fuel what we do, no matter what. Not even a significant fraction. Gasohol is a funding issue, NOT an engineering decision.

Rad...I SAID it was well over 20 years ago.

In other words, Hugh Downs may well have been wrong in many ways that he couldn't have always predicted, but at least he had more guts than many other news media people of his generation, even to the point of risking being ridiculed, when it came to solving national problems instead of fighting them.

No-knock raids? This was explained back here.

I'm afraid even 20 years ago it was clear that gasohol was a poor choice. You need to go prior to 1910 for the evidence to be unclear. And that is mainly because the early gas and diesel engines were designed around then. The properties of ethanol (and other alcohols) were known for centuries before that.

Ethanol biofuel has always been about providing an obscured subsidy to politically powerful corn farmers. It is in no way 'sustainable'.