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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (187887)	11/28/2006 12:34:07 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794009

Lindy, since plants have been in chemical warfare with insects, primates and other plant eaters for billions or millions of years [in the case of primates] so it's not surprising that they have developed all sorts of chemical warfare strategies. Any biological function which they can disrupt has probably been tried. Aspirin is one of umpty thousand pharmacologically active chemicals. When we get things such as cancer, we can use toxic plant juice to preferentially kill the cancer cells while mostly leaving the rest of our cells intact; sufficiently so to keep us alive anyway. Of course some plants are our best friends and depend on us, and other animals, to distribute their seeds widely and provide them with some handy fertilizer in the new growing location. Specifically on opium, I have a good friend with a recent spinal injury who finds the medical industry's pain killers aren't very good. He reckons he should cut to the chase and get heroin, cocaine or the like, but of course that's illegal. He even had a silly doctor tell him a pain killer he asked about was addictive, meaning that would be an issue. But his pain is not going to go away so even if he is addicted, which I don't believe is true, so what?!! Anyway, as an elderly adult, it should be nobody's decision but his own what he decides to ingest for whatever purpose. Fair enough to keep polonium 210 out of layman hands because they could do serious harm to other people. Same for plenty of other poisons given our lax attitude to consequences for evil-doers. If he wants to smoke opium, it should be nobody's business but his own. I recall as a child that old Chinese in Greys Avenue in Auckland were rumoured to be keen on opium. Drugs didn't used to be illegal and almost nobody used them. Sure, some did. That was their problem. The huge state-funded advertizing campaigns over decades have resulted in a huge consumption of drugs and very high prices and lots of associated crime. It's daring to use drugs, so of course lots of people do, who want to be in the cool crowd. I have predicted that Al Q will do as they have done in the past, which is use USA strengths and weaknesses against them. The strength of airliners, loaded with fuel, and the weakness of the security, with cockpit doors left open for anyone to stand up and walk in, was an obvious example. American weakness for drugs and susceptibility for customs people to get cash for smuggling drugs is a ready made conduit for polonium 210 to be smuggled in with a load of opium [which will be given a nod and a wink which it wouldn't get if it was known to be nuclear]. Imagine how many people are trying to get hold of polonium 210 now! Great stuff to spray around in a transport system. Mqurice