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The war on drugs is an expensive battle, as a great deal of resources go into catching those who buy or sell illegal drugs on the black market, prosecuting them in court, and housing them in jail. These costs seem particularly exorbitant when dealing with the drug marijuana, as it is widely used, and is likely no more harmful than currently legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. There's another cost to the war on drugs, however, which is the revenue lost by governments who cannot collect taxes on illegal drugs. In a recent study for the Fraser Institute, Economist Stephen T. Easton attempted to calculate how much tax revenue the Canadian government could gain by legalizing marijuana.

The study estimates that the average price of 0.5 grams (a unit) of marijuana sold for $8.60 on the street, while its cost of production was only $1.70. In a free market, a $6.90 profit for a unit of marijuana would not last for long. Entrepreneurs noticing the great profits to be made in the marijuana market would start their own grow operations, increasing the supply of marijuana on the street, which would cause the street price of the drug to fall to a level much closer to the cost of production. Of course, this doesn't happen because the product is illegal; the prospect of jail time deters many entrepreneurs and the occasional drug bust ensures that the supply stays relatively low. We can consider much of this $6.90 per unit of marijuana profit a risk-premium for participating in the underground economy. Unfortunately, this risk premium is making a lot of criminals, many of whom have ties to organized crime, very wealthy. Stephen T. Easton argues that if marijuana was legalized, we could transfer these excess profits caused by the risk-premium from these grow operations to the government: If we substitute a tax on marijuana cigarettes equal to the difference between the local production cost and the street price people currently pay--that is, transfer the revenue from the current producers and marketers (many of whom work with organized crime) to the government, leaving all other marketing and transportation issues aside we would have revenue of (say) $7 per [unit]. If you could collect on every cigarette and ignore the transportation, marketing, and advertising costs, this comes to over $2 billion on Canadian sales and substantially more from an export tax, and you forego the costs of enforcement and deploy your policing assets elsewhere. One interesting thing to note from such a scheme is that the street price of marijuana stays exactly the same, so the quantity demanded should remain the same as the price is unchanged. However, it's quite likely that the demand for marijuana would change from legalization. We saw that there was a risk in selling marijuana, but since drug laws often target both the buyer and the seller, there is also a risk (albeit smaller) to the consumer interested in buying marijuana. Legalization would eliminate this risk, causing the demand to rise. This is a mixed bag from a public policy standpoint: Increased marijuana use can have ill effects on the health of the population but the increased sales bring in more revenue for the government. However, if legalized, governments can control how much marijuana is consumed by increasing or decreasing the taxes on the product. There is a limit to this, however, as setting taxes too high will cause marijuana growers to sell on the black market to avoid excessive taxation. When considering legalizing marijuana, there are many economic, health, and social issues we must analyze. One economic study will not be the basis of Canada's public policy decisions, but Easton's research does conclusively show that there are economic benefits in the legalization of marijuana. With governments scrambling to find new sources of revenue to pay for important social objectives such as health care and education expect to see the idea raised in Parliament sooner rather than later.

The 31 organizations are voicing their concerns about Google’s plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. The scanning creates lower expectations of privacy in the email medium and may establish dangerous precedents.

Health Information Chat now or call 1-888-644-6226 Monday – Friday 8:30 – 5:00 ET ASK your patients. TELL your providers. TALK about CAM. Most Popular Health Topics Acupuncture Arthritis Black Cohosh Cancer Chelation Chiropractic Dietary Supplements Depression Echinacea Ephedra Ginkgo Ginseng Glucosamine Homeopathy Herbs at a Glance Meditation Menopause St. John's Wort All diseases and conditions All treatments and therapies Información de salud en español More at Other Organizations MEDLINEplus: Alternative Medicine (National Library of Medicine) MEDLINEplus: Herbs and Supplements (National Library of Medicine) DIRLINE — directory of health organizations and research resources (National Library of Medicine) NIH Office of Dietary Supplements NCI Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine All links to other government agencies Understanding CAM What Is CAM? Biologically Based Practices Energy Medicine Manipulative and Body-Based Practices Mind-Body Medicine Whole Medical Systems Statistics on CAM Use Understanding Dietary and Herbal Supplements Be an Informed Consumer Are You Considering Using CAM? Selecting a CAM Practitioner CAM Use and Children Paying for CAM Treatment 10 Things To Know About Evaluating Medical Resources on the Web Time to Talk — Tell your doctor about your use of CAM

Why It’s Important to Monitor Vaccine Safety John Iskander, MD, MPH, acting director, Immunization Safety Office, and Robert T. Chen, MD, MA, blood safety specialist, Epidemiology Branch, NCHHSTP, wrote a chapter in the new book Infectious Disease Surveillance to explain why it is important to monitor vaccine safety. Rare Reactions. The most important reason is to detect rare reactions. Although vaccines are tested extensively before they are licensed for use in the United States, not enough people are included in the tests to detect reactions that happen only rarely. If serious reactions are found when the vaccine is in widespread use, the vaccine may be withdrawn. Higher Risk Groups. Vaccine safety monitoring also makes sure new vaccines are safe for groups such as the elderly, those with chronic medical conditions, and pregnant women. Vaccine trials may deliberately exclude members of these groups. Public Confidence in Vaccines. Monitoring vaccine safety also helps to maintain public confidence needed to keep enough people vaccinated to prevent disease outbreaks. How We Know If Vaccines Are Safe Vaccine safety cannot be measured directly. Instead, it is estimated by the number of "adverse events" reported. An adverse event is "... a medical incident that takes place after an immunization ... and is believed to be caused by the immunization."1 Adverse events include— True reactions to the vaccine. Events that would have occurred even if the person had not been vaccinated (unrelated coincidences). Reactions related to mistakes in vaccine preparation, handling, or administration. Events that cannot be related directly to the vaccine; their cause is unknown. A formal scientific study usually is required to distinguish between coincidences and true reactions. It is rarely possible to say for sure whether a vaccine caused a specific adverse event. Almost all national immunization programs have a system for reporting adverse events. The United States Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)2 and the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS)* are examples. People who report a vaccine reaction to VAERS or CAEFISS are asked if the reaction led to hospitalization, life-threatening illness, disability, or death. These events are classified as "serious," and are often subject to further study that yields important information. For example, reports to CAEFISS identified a common illness among people who received flu vaccines from one Canadian manufacturer in one season.3 Equally important, such systems have supported the safety of new vaccines such as the new meningococcal B and C vaccines in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Other monitoring programs include the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) project, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Network, and the Brighton Collaboration. The VSD project is a collaboration between CDC's Immunization Safety Office and eight large managed care organizations that allows for planned vaccine safety studies as well as quick investigation of possible issues. The CISA Network of six medical research centers conducts clinical research on vaccine-associated health risks, and the Brighton Collaboration develops standard case definitions for problems following immunization as well as guidelines for data collection, analysis, and presentation. Vaccine safety monitoring becomes more important with new vaccines, expanded vaccine recommendations, and new global immunization initiatives. Reporting systems like VAERS will continue to be used to monitor adverse events, so vaccines can continue to be held to very high standards of safety.

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Vienna, Virginia - The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), the nation's leading vaccine safety and informed consent advocacy organization, is urging state legislatures to investigate the safety and cost of mandating Merck's HPV vaccine (GARDASIL) for all pre-adolescent girls before introducing legislation amending state vaccine laws. In an analysis of reports made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since the CDC's July 2006 universal use recommendation for all young girls, NVIC found reports of loss of consciousness, seizures, joint pain and Guillain-Barre Syndrome. In a separate evaluation of costs for young girls being vaccinated in private pediatrician offices, NVIC discovered that parents living in the Washington, D.C. area will be paying between $500 and $900 to have their daughters receive three doses of GARDASIL. "GARDASIL safety appears to have been studied in fewer than 2,000 girls aged 9 to 15 years and it is unclear how long they were followed up. [1] VAERS is now receiving reports of loss of consciousness, seizures, arthritis and other neurological problems in young girls who have received the shot," said NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. "At the same time, parents who take their daughters to private pediatricians are going to be shocked to find that they will be paying two to three times the widely publicized $360 cost for the three-dose series. The cost is going to break the pocketbooks of parents and break the banks of both insurance companies and taxpayers, when the reality is that almost all cases of HPV-associated cervical cancer can be prevented with annual pap screening of girls who are sexually active." Between July 2006 and January 2007, there have been 82 reports of adverse events filed with VAERS following receipt of GARDASIL by girls and boys ranging in age from 11 to 27 years. Reaction reports have come from 21 states, including Virginia and the District of Columbia. All but three of the reports were for adverse events which occurred within one week of vaccination and more than 60 percent occurred within 24 hours of vaccination. "The most frequent serious health events after GARDASIL shots are neurological symptoms," said NVIC Health Policy Analyst Vicky Debold, RN, Ph.D. "These young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision, slurred speech, fainting, involuntary contraction of limbs (seizures), muscle weakness, tingling and numbness in the hands and feet and joint pain. Some of the girls have lost consciousness during what appears to be seizures." Debold added "The manufacturer product insert should include mention of syncopal episodes, seizures and Guillain-Barre Syndrome so doctors and parents are aware these vaccine adverse responses have been associated with the vaccine."

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and most persons naturally clear the infection from the body without symptoms. [3] However, many years of chronic HPV infection is associated with a higher risk of pre-cancerous changes in the cervix that can lead to cancer unless diagnosed and treated promptly. High risk factors for chronic HPV infection include smoking, long-term use of oral contraceptives and co-infection with HIV, herpes and chlamydia. [4] There has been a more than 70 percent drop in cervical cancer deaths in American women since the 1950's due to routine pap smears and nearly all cervical cancers can be prevented with regular pap smear screening and treatment. [5]

The argument of utilizing marijuana as a herbal remedy and naturopathic solution for sufferers of various serious and often chronic illnesses has overshadowed the previously dominant picture of marijuana as a drug primarily used for recreational highs. Recent organizations who picture marijuana with medicinal properties that should be supported and advocate legal access to marijuana include. AIDS Action Council American Academy of Family Physicians American Bar Association American Public Health Association California Medical Association California Legislative Council for Older Americans California Pharmacists Association California Society of Addiction Medicine Consumer Reports magazine Lymphoma Foundation of America Multiple Sclerosis California Action Network National Association of People With AIDS New England Journal of Medicine Plus state Nurses Associations like California, New York and Virginia The public's picture of marijuana has been greatly influenced as evidenced by ballot initiatives that have received a majority of votes in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state. The picture of marijuana is now a changing and improved landscape that holds much promise with growing public as well as professional support.

Today's News Today's News This Issue Letters to the Editor Writers Eminent Domain Reform To Be Introduced in U.S.House of Representatives Property Owners Still Left Unprotected from Federally Funded Abuses Two Years After Kelo By The Castle Coalition Arlington, Va. - July 12, Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2007 to stop taxpayer funding of eminent domain abuse. This bipartisan bill would counter the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which allows governments to use eminent domain to seize private property on behalf of private developers in hopes of increasing tax revenue. The Act would deny for two fiscal years economic development funds to state and local governments that use eminent domain for private development. In 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 4128, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005, by a vote of 376 to 38. The bill was co-sponsored by representatives from across the political and ideological spectrum, including Representatives Waters, Sensenbrenner, John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), and Henry Bonilla (R-TX). Despite unprecedented bipartisan political and public support, the bill languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee and ultimately died. "Federal protections from eminent domain abuse are long overdue," said Bert Gall, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, which argued the Kelo case on behalf of the homeowners. IJ and the Castle Coalition - a nationwide grassroots organization of property owners and activists dedicated to stopping eminent domain abuse - have led the fight to reform state and federal eminent domain laws. "Even though the vast majority of Americans oppose the abuse of eminent domain for private development, the federal government still funds that abuse." June 23 marked the two-year anniversary of the Kelo decision. In every poll since that ruling, the public is overwhelmingly against eminent domain for private use. Forty-two states have passed eminent domain reforms reining in the Kelo decision, including 10 states where voters passed ballot measures by wide margins in last year's elections. But many of those reforms

Shots In The Dark by Barbara Loe Fisher   The worldwide acceptance of mass vaccination to suppress infectious childhood diseases once fiercely resisted is one of the most successful public relations stories in the history of medicine. As a result, epidemics of smallpox, which once swept through 18th- and 19th-century port cities such as Halifax, New York, and Boston without warning and cut down entire families, are now dry facts relegated to medical books. Images of children struggling through whooping cough, walking down the street coughing spasmodically, and stopping at curbs to spit up sticky mucus are only fading memories for grandparents alive to talk about what their parents told them.  Baby boomers and their parents still remember lining up in school in 1955 for polio vaccinations, with the hope that this magic bullet would keep them out of the dreaded iron lung.  Mass vaccination has dramatically suppressed childhood diseases. In Canada, recorded diphtheria cases dropped from 9,000 in 1924 to two to five by 1994.  When measles vaccination began in the United States between 1963 and 1965, doctors reported more than 400,000 cases annually; by 1995, that number had dwindled to 309. Cases of tetanus are almost unheard of in North America and Europe.   Yet the universal use of vaccines as a worthy goal that prevents needless suffering and that benefits all mankind has begun to be challenged.   The voices of critics are heard in the living rooms of families whose children have been injured or have died from reactions to routine childhood vaccinations, and in courtrooms, where parents are suing vaccine makers and challenging mandatory vaccination laws. In the U.S. Congress, legislators who have heard them have set up a vaccine injury compensation program. At scientific conferences and in the pages of prestigious medical journals, researchers and physicians are risking their careers by discussing vaccine side effects.

Today, vaccinations are big business. In 1995, an international high-technology research firm, Frost & Sullivan, projected that the worldwide human vaccine market will increase from $2.9 billion to more than $7 billion by the year 2001.   Public health officials in every country assist the industry�s growth, often by force of laws that ensure citizens use about a dozen different viral and bacterial vaccines, including ones to suppress even generally mild childhood diseases such as chicken pox. Traditional public health measures, improving sanitation, nutrition, living conditions, health education, and access to affordable medical care, especially in underprivileged populations often take a backseat to achieving a 100 per cent vaccination rate.   Most medical doctors consider vaccines their single most important tool in protecting public health. Few would question the profound importance of vaccines to public health, wrote Richard B. Johnston, Jr., MD, medical director of the March of Dimes and chairman of the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Committee, in a 1994 National Academy of Sciences report, 

Adverse Events Associated with Vaccines Not only have deaths from the most common childhood infections been almost eliminated, but also so have the devastating morbidities of diseases like measles, paralytic polio, and congenital rubella. This revolution has . . . led to major savings in medical costs and gains in work productivity, as well as to reductions in deaths and suffering.   An ancient philosophical dispute goes modern   The whole idea of man versus nature can be traced back to the origins of western medicine more than 2,000 years ago. In a four-volume book series Divided Legacy: A History of Schism in Medical Thought by medical historian Harris L. Coulter, PhD, the centuries-old war between empiricism and rationalism in medicine is revealed as a contest between two competing health philosophies. Is each individual governed by a vital force that, through unique reactions to external stimuli, is capable of participating in the healing process, as empiricists, including Hippocrates, have maintained?  Or are all human organisms simply a series of complex chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, as rationalists, including Louis Pasteur, have maintained?   Empiricists accept the existence of viruses and bacteria as part of nature and illness as part of the life process. They consider fevers, diarrhea, and runny noses good, not bad, and do not suppress them with chemically based drugs that might interfere with the body�s natural ability to harness the immune system to participate in the healing process. They stress that each individual is unique and that individualized therapeutic techniques can stimulate the body to restore health. Empiricists dislike the one-size-fits-all mass vaccination approach. 

After all, richer people could be living there and paying more taxes

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