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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Bill who wrote (40470)11/1/2010 11:05:13 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof  Respond to of 103300
 
Expansion of Constitution's 'commerce clause' by the court in the early 'seventies.....

Both policies find the entirety of their legitimacy in the courts massive expansion of the "commerce clause"... dating to the early 1970s.

Remember alcohol prohibition?

The Supreme Court back then believed that actual AMENDMENTS to the US Constitution were required to give the federal government legal authority to control sale of a product that was within a State's purview.

They had to amend the Constitution to get the authority to control the product... then it required yet another amendment to remove their constitutional authority.

With marijuana there was *never* any amendment. The ONLY thing that changed was the Courts expansion of it's INTERPRETATION of what the "commerce clause" grants to federal power.



To: Bill who wrote (40470)11/1/2010 11:06:02 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 103300
 
Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin'

(UKPA) – 3 hours ago
google.com

Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin, ecstasy and crack cocaine, a new study has said.

Researchers rated alcohol the most dangerous substance based on the overall dangers to the individual and society as a whole.

The work was led by Professor David Nutt, the former government drugs adviser who was sacked for criticising the then Labour government's decision to upgrade cannabis from class C to class B.

His team analysed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body as well as other factors like environmental and socio-economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.

They found heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, to be the most lethal to individuals. When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most dangerous. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.

Marking substances from zero to 100 based on their criteria, alcohol scored 72 overall, compared to 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. Other drugs examined included: crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20), GHB (18), ketamine (15), methadone (13), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine (6) and magic mushrooms (5).

The study was produced by Prof Nutt's Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD), and published in medical journal The Lancet.

Its authors said: "Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm. They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

Other members of the ISCD include Prof Leslie King, who stepped down as a government adviser after Prof Nutt was sacked from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs last year. He was forced out after saying ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes and criticising the decision to reclassify cannabis.

He told The Guardian: "The Misuse of drugs Act is past its sell-by date and needs to be redone. We need to rethink how we deal with drugs in the light of these findings."

Copyright © 2010 The Press Association. All rights reserved.