On 7/29/2010 1:47 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:32:12 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> On 7/28/2010 4:08 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> PMFA, but where did you get your medical degree from?  If you're going
>>> to make assertions like that, I'd like to see them backed up by some
>>> sort of credentials that show you have some expertise in the field.
>>> (And before you ask, no, I don't have such expertise).  Or a cite from
>>> a reputable source would suffice as well.
>>>
>> You don't need a medical degree to read articles on the effects of these
>> things, and no, I don't have, or remember, the specific magazines, or
>> which issues.
>
> Fair enough, but are you certain you're not falling to confirmation bias?
>
How is, "Taking there chemicals does X, and we can test people that take 
it and *show* that it does. Not to mention it never goes away, and every 
medical professional says that the people they treat never lose the 
addiction, they just learn to avoid every place, person, or thing that 
helped trigger it.", qualify as confirmation bias? That is the point of 
medical science, versus all the woo cures people shovel, you are 
***required*** to show that its true, and verify the facts you are claiming.

>>>>>     * Prices can be standardized and normalized, potentially reducing
>>>>> violent crime from people who can't afford to get their 'fix' today
>>>>>
>>>> No it won't. As I already said, 90% of the drugs out there make the
>>>> person need more, and more, and more, the longer they use them, its
>>>> the nature of the chemical process they work by. This, short of a
>>>> treatment like Ibogaine appears to provide, is **permanent** and
>>>> **cumulative**.
>>>
>>> Depends on the drug.
>>>
>> I did say most. And, as I pointed out, it also depends on the person's
>> own biology. Some people seem to be damn near completely immune to
>> addiction. Others.. would be addicted by something as mild as caffeine.
>
> So basically, people need to be protected from themselves?  I don't buy
> that.  Making mistakes is part of life, and not something people should
> be insulated from.  Experience is one of the best teachers out there.
>
We protect people from themselves all the damn time. Everything from, "
"Don't drive drunk, or we will arrest you.", to, "You can't swim in the 
sewage pond, so we put big warning signs and a fence around it.", to, 
"You vehicle **must** have working turn signals.", etc., are all about 
protecting not just the rest of the people, but the moron doing it. 
Experience, **a lot of the time** won't teach you anything, because in 
most of those cases you will be either dead, or permanently disabled, by 
experiencing it. So, don't give me the whole, "We shouldn't protect 
people from themselves.", BS. This is only true for the things *you* 
think we shouldn't do that for. I am certain there are plenty of things 
that you do think we should, a whole host of laws and rules to do so, 
and like most people that want to treat drug use as a "special" category 
of, "Stupid things people do to themselves.", you just don't like *it* 
being in that category, for no reason that I, personal, can see as rational.

>> Sound all well and good, but you are presuming that the criminal system
>> always catches these people, and no one that is sitting at home doing
>> that didn't do anything wrong to get their hit.
>
> I'm presuming nothing.  I meet about once a month with a representative
> of the SLC police department, and he and I have very interesting chats
> about how police work is actually done and how effective it is.
>
> One of the things I take away from the conversations time and again is
> that if they didn't have to spend so much time dealing with non-violent
> offenders, they might actually be able to catch more people committing
> crimes against people&  property.
>
I don't dispute that, and have said so, but the problem is that you are 
classing people that are, "not in their right minds", by choice or 
otherwise, in the same category as, "non-violent", in some cases. We 
also prefer to arrest someone who is intentionally acting in a way that 
*could* cause someone else harm. As I said, people on certain drugs do 
not just all, "sit around at home, being stoned", they go places, they 
do it in public, they get into their heads, while in a state of mind 
where they *can't* make rational decisions, to do things that get 
themselves and others killed. By your logic, it would be perfectly fine 
to let mental patients out, even if classed as, "potentially dangerous", 
because that particular day they are not "acting" dangerous, never mind 
that they could turn at any moment, due to their condition.

As for effectiveness.. Watched something a while back on the subject of 
law enforcement and we have two **huge** problems - 1) forensic 
techniques that are "assumed" to be scientific, but have never been 
tested under those conditions, and 2) a tendency of far too many labs to 
"focus", not on where the evidence leads, like on CSI, but on who the 
district attorney says they "suspect" committed something, thereby 
sidelining everything from the evidence collection, to evidence 
examination, to the *much* sloppier, and less precise, piecing together 
of that evidence, to form a theory on what took place, and who did it. 
End result - lot of people never get arrested at all, and a lot more 
than should end up jailed. Finger prints, for example, are not as 
certain as most people figure. The human method of comparing *can* 
produce flawed results, and the computer version assumes that every 
print on 3 billion people, will have completely different 
characteristics, on some 50 comparison points, or the like. Neither is 
"certain", or logically plausible, especially when, in many cases, you 
often only have one print, and it may contain less than half of the data 
points.

>> Any other way of looking at it only appears *sane* if you assume neither
>> you, nor anyone you know, will *ever* be the victim. Which one could
>> argue is either arrogant, or stupid.
>
> Nobody every said life was safe.  Or fair.
>
> Jim
No, but one of the functions of society is to make it safer, and at 
least try to make it fairer (even if some people still seem to want to 
make it as unfair as possible, but that is a whole other issue..)


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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