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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (651546)	4/16/2012 1:51:40 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580695

Welcome to 'Ground Zero' for America's Pill Poppers KERMIT, WEST VIRGINIA, HOME TO DIE-HARD ADDICTS By Mark Russell, Newser Staff newser.com Posted Apr 15, 2012 12:28 PM CDT STORY COMMENTS (19) (NEWSER) – A tiny coal-mining town of barely 300 people and no supermarket is home to one booming business: pharmacies. In Kermit, West Virginia, two Sav-Rites alone moved 3.2 million doses of hydrocodone in 2006—a tad more than the 97,000 doses the average pharmacy sells in a year, reports Salon. Their customers were pill addicts from all over the Eastern seaboard. Now prosecutors have closed the Save-Rites, but more "pill mills" are cropping up in a game of Whac-A-Mole against America's biggest drug menace today: prescription medicine. Abuse of prescription pain relievers has reportedly soared 430% over the past decade, and it's not just Oxycontin (or "hillbilly heroin") anymore. Today's top pills include the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and opioid painkillers like Loracet, Lortabs, and Vicodin. Kermit became ground zero for pill addicts because its miners, long beset with aches and pains, turned to Oxycontin in the late 1990s. But the addiction has spread: One recovering opioid addict says she hopes to raise her son in nearby Gilbert—nicknamed Pillbert. "Of course," she admits, "nowhere is completely safe."

To: i-node who wrote (651546)	4/16/2012 1:56:17 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1580695

Secret Service Felled When Agent Didn't Pay Hooker 11 AGENTS PUT ON LEAVE, 5 MILITARY SERVICEMEN ACCUSED ALSO By Mark Russell, Newser Staff newser.com ( One dumbass didn't pay - that's ASKING for trouble! ) Posted Apr 15, 2012 6:50 AM CDT (NEWSER) – The Secret Service prostitution scandal that's threatening to overshadow the Summit of the Americas came to light after one agent refused to pay one of the women involved, reports the New York Daily News. “The agent said, ‘I don't owe you anything,’ but gave the woman some money,” says Rep. Peter King, who as head of the House Homeland Security Committee, has been briefed. The agents, part of an advance team that was supposed to secure President Obama's hotel, were caught with prostitutes in their hotel rooms, and the dispute caused a disturbance that got local police involved. “Number one, it is against basic ethics to go to a prostitute. Number two, it is incredibly embarrassing to the White House,” says one insider, who added that the agents' careers are probably over. “Yes, doubly good judgment there.” Eleven agents have been placed on leave in the incident, notes the AP, and another five military personnel have been accused of similar misconduct after violating curfew. None of the Secret Service agents involved were directly responsible for Obama's protection. A Secret Service rep has apologized "for any distraction."

To: i-node who wrote (651546)	4/16/2012 8:37:33 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1580695

And there are places where you be convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison for possession of an ounce of marijuana, with almost no legal recourse if they decide to charge you possession with intent to distribute because the penalty is so outrageously high you can't possibly consider rolling the dice on a trial. It is as though there is no legal recourse at all. State legislators in each state establish their laws based on what they think the voters want. It's always gonna be that way. >> OK, I'm not opposed to substitution drugs. But since you've said painkiller addicts (like oxycontin) function in society okay all ready, why are you saying we should transition them to something else? I didn't say that. I qualified it, saying that some people are able to function well. Others get totally out of control. Not all addicts end up rolling in the gutter and begging for spare change. OK, but since all don't, why not just let the ones who don't beg for change in the be addicted to whatever they end up addicted to (if its legal) w/o the state getting involved? One of the things that really opened my eyes was, oddly enough, watching the reality show "First 48", which I've watched for years. It struck me that almost all of the murders are a direct result of the illegality of drugs, and often, the people being murdered have nothing to do with the drug trade. The majority of them are over marijuana, and I can't think of a reason it should be illegal. It is true that other drugs pose a problem, but you could eliminate a large portion of it by legalizing pot. IMO. Not sure I'd base much on a tv show, as we don't know the cases picked are representative. "most of the people murdered have nothing to do with the drug trade. The majority are over marijuana" - maybe the producers are picking over the cases where the victims are so unsavory the public wouldn't care that they got killed.