Internet addiction same as drugs

That's the subject matter of the page A9 it the Vancouver Province newspaper,Monday,March 17,2008.One article quotes doctor Gabor Mate,an expert on addiction and obsession.He says that addiction is due to an imbalance in the brains reward and incentive circuitry. The second article views hours spent on the net as a brain disorder.Compulsive E-mailing and text messaging could soon be classified as a brain illness.This article goes on to quote all kinds of scientific journals and medical manuals that claim that internet addiction will soon be added to the list of psychiatric illnesses.Psychiatry's guidebook of mental disorders.I guess it's just a matter of time until we see politicians demanding laws to restrict the time a person can spend on the web.For our own good,of course.Tobacco is now illegal in prisons in Canada.How the government managed to pass such a discriminatory law is no mystery.The so called Liberal opposition has abdicated it's responsibility and the country now has to live with just about anything Steven Harper can come up with.He just postures and threatens an election and Dion runs for the washroom.He takes his caucus with him.Now we have mandatory minimum sentences for the cultivation of one pot plant and anyone that has no ID has lost the right to vote.It was a politically brilliant move as the poor and the homeless would never vote for Harper any way.Ditto for the working poor who often cannot afford to replace ID lost or stolen.People with no permanent address have also been disenfranchised as the ID required has to have a current address.By passing this law,the Conservatives have disallowed thousands of votes that would have been cast against them anyway.That the opposition allowed these bills to pass shows there is no difference between the two major political parties.No-one sees the poor let alone care about the fact their vote has been stolen out from under them.The right to vote is the one thing that we,as a democracy,should fight for to the death.That it's been stolen from thousands of our fellow citizens by sleazy politics and back room dealing makes any claim by Harper and his government that they care about the working poor an outright lie.They knew exactly who they were disenfranchising and why.They were patting each other on the back the other day over extending of the Afghan mission,smiling as another young Canadian was dying in the Afghan dirt.Of course they feel terrible every time a soldier dies.That's what they want us to believe.

meet the press

If anyone had any doubt witch side was responsible for the outrageous rhetoric it was all very clear on meet the press,Sunday,march 16'08.The Clinton representative was blowing so much smoke it must have been hard to breathe.If she'd said;" with due respect" one more time I would have puked.Hillary Clinton has changed positions so many times it's impossible to know what she really believes anymore.The woman representing Clinton did things like saying :"now I'm not speaking about Obama's preacher friend "etc.etc.They never stick with any position long enough to tell what they really stand for.Now they want to count Florida and Michigan although Obama wasn't on one ballot and didn't campaign in another because they had both agreed not to.The Clinton plan has been very obvious from mid contest.She will try to include Michigan and Florida and then hopes to be close enough to take it with super delegates.Just listen to Hillary or her surrogates and this becomes crystal clear.They know the only way they can win is to manipulate the numbers in whatever way favors her.They object to or ignore(that ruled on this day)any argument that shows Obama leading and taking more states.Their every move today sounded like hedging and obfuscating facts or just muddying the water.Hillary Clinton's people are fighting a dirty campaign and claiming to be doing nothing like that.They are disingenuous and dishonest at the very least.

More drug war non-sense

I've been reading up on recent media stories that relate to drug war politics and there's one thing that's very clear.Every article that makes a stand in favor of the drug war mentions harm and anarchy and blames drugs for it all.They never make any points as to just how the drugs are wreaking all this havoc.There's no question that drug abuse is a major problem and that there's currently no measures that are having a positive effect on the drug sub-culture.Just saying drugs are bad is not doing a hell of a lot of good.The drug laws currently in place were legislated near the turn of the last century and have absolutely no basis in science or logic.Most drug users do so for the respite that others find in alcohol.Like alcohol,some take the use too far.Yet the government sells alcohol and reaps the profit with very little concern for those that cannot handle their drink.Drug war advocates always say that this is why the legalization of drugs is so wrong.That alcohol does enough damage and we don't need any more intoxicants legalized in our society.Fine if you like to drink.That these people can claim to be taking the high road is just ridiculous.I've got mine so f'you.I can drink but if you choose to smoke pot you go to jail.Never a word about the reason.That's because there is no valid reason.Richard Nixon,The man that declared war on drugs.Did so against the report of his own hand picked panel of drug hardliners who told him that pot was fairly benign and should probably be legalized.Nixon had a hissy fit and went on his own"good judgment?",and declared the drug war.No-one can say why he chose this reasoning but we can say that it was against all best advice from the experts and from his own people.This was the sixties and there was still thought to be a link between pot and heroin.Heroin was taking a terrible toll on US troops in Viet Nam so there may actually have been some misguided logic in his stance.We now know,however that heroin and marijuana have no relationship other than that heroin addicts often smoked pot at some point in their lives.They also drank liquor and smoked cigarettes so there's absolutely no other connection.This is no longer in dispute but it is still often used as a reason for the law against pot.All the reasons given for the banning of marijuana have been dispelled one after another.Yet the law persists as politicians find it easier to be a drug hardliner than to do the actual research that dispells the myths.People like the current contenders for the democratic and republican nominations are either former drug users(democrats)or anti drug hardliners like John McCain who was in Viet Nam and was one of the hard drinking soldiers that were so opposed to their pot smoking fellow marines.This was demonstrated in the movie Apocalypse Now.It was just a movie but ask anyone that served in the Nam and they'll attest to the split.That split has carried on right through to today and it's hypocrites like the current democratic contenders who will speak loud and long about the danger of drugs.They did drugs and they are now running for president.I guess they must be made of sterner stuff than the rest of us.McCain is at least a dinosaur that has outlived his generation.It's clear what he stands for and what he believes.The democratic candidates,at least to this point in time,are hypocrites that speak out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.They probably relax with a bong hit after every anti-drug speach.That's drug war politics.

Just 12 and a drug traficker

That's the way they do things in Alberta Canada.A recent article in the Vancouver Province newspaper says a 12 year old Alberta school girl gave some pot to an eleven year old friend.This happened in a small town 780 klics from Edmonton.A town called High Level,could find no better way to deal with this situation than to involve this child in the criminal justice system.I know that there are people that will say that this is necessary.That this will send a message to her classmates.This is ridiculous and an over reaction to something that could have been handled so much better.This girl and her school friends will now fear the police and the legal system for the rest of their lives.Good move.Bringing the police into any drug situation should be an absolute last resort.They have very little discretion in their reaction to a situation.This will follow this child for the rest of her life.I know records are to be sealed at the age of majority but how many times have we heard of records being opened and old mistakes coming back to haunt someone?Anything would have been preferable to the action taken here.I won't go into the whole marijuana thing because I don't think there's anyone out there that's dumb enough to think a 12 year old should be in possession of pot.Let alone be giving it to others.That's a given.There has to be a better way of handling such a situation than to bring in the police and arrest the child.She's 12 years old for crissakes.Couldn't the parents have handled this themselves?The school probably should have kept this in house but probably had legal issues to think about.The article doesn't say who caught the play and exposed this dastardly crime but I suppose that in High Level any drug deal is a high level drug deal.Pathetic.This is another example of parental neglect.The parents neglected to use their heads and now two kids are criminals for life.This is the drug war at it's very best.Victims all round and no winners in sight .

Life In Juvenile Detention

That's what the B.C. government health minister was telling reporters on Friday.George Abbott was speaking of his governments reopening of the antiquated Willingdon Youth Detention Center in Burnaby. The building and grounds are to be used to house the victims of the "new" drug court that's being set up in Burnaby and scheduled to open this summer. The court will "offer a 'choice'" to anyone appearing before it,between jail and treatment.If there was treatment that had a statistical chance in hell of helping even a significant number of these chronic offenders(read drug addicts)there'd be nothing to talk about.Abbott is contending that the facility will be used solely for the housing of people with dual diagnosis,meaning drug and mental problems.I don't trust Mr.Abbott or his government.Retrofitting an old prison with 100 beds and suggesting that there's a very real possibility that some will be there for life is unconscionable but not a stretch for this government.The drug courts were tried in the 70's and so was the idea of locking up addicts for being addicts and keeping them in prison till they were cured or dead. Drug treatment should be available on demand and should be for as long as is necessary to attain it's objectives.Forced treatment is not has not been and never will be successful in treating addictions.This idea has been tried all over the world and has never been successful in a statistically prove-able form anywhere.Every time significant results have been claimed,they've been shown to be either in confined circumstances or just not true.I'm sure it's possible to keep an addict in custody forever and have them remain clean but there's no quality of life in prison.People that want treatment should have a place where they can go and stay for as long as it takes.Opening places like Willingdon and pretending we're doing these people a service is worse than doing nothing.It takes money away from projects and policies that might just have a chance of really working.We will never jail our way out of the drug problem.Things like this only fool the public into thinking something constructive is being done which couldn't be further from the truth.

No More Swat Style Pot Raids

If there's no changes,a recent B.C. Supreme court ruling should spell the end to SWAT style drug raids in B.C. Justice Catherine Bruce ruled that the police practice of using a battering ram to smash down doors and entering the premises with guns drawn and ready and pointed at peoples heads was a recipe for tragedy and could not be tolerated.The majority of Canadians seem to agree if the papers are any measure.The judge was probably aware of several recent cases in the US in which deaths occurred and not always to the correct targets.Of course there were the usual cries from the kill em all crowd,led by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts.Watts finds evil in every corner and has traveled all over Europe in an effort to support her drug courts and other lock 'em up measures.She managed to avoid all the countries with harm reduction policies and hit all the pro prohibition countries which proves that you can find evidence for just about any plan you want to back.Watts is first to claim success if it suits her but also first to complain of runaway crime if that fits her agenda.The simple fact is that the police have been using this kind of brute tactic for years and it is one of the last remaining practices from an era where they could do what they wanted to addicts as they were considered less than human.It's sad that there are still people like Watts and Steven Harper that still think they can arrest their way out of the drug problem.They've had nearly 100 years and it's just getting worse.They've scared off all the old hippie types and what's left is a bunch of criminal gangs with world wide connections and no respect for life.If that's progress,something is very wrong.