Skip to main content

Home/ PDS GI Debate Group A '11-'12/ Group items tagged legalization

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Austin Buben

Alcohol, Tobacco Worse Than Illegal Drugs? - CBS News - 0 views

    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Found this First
  • New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.
  • The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain's Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • "The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary,"
  • "The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary,"
  • Tobacco causes 40 percent of all hospital illnesses, while alcohol is blamed for more than half of all visits to hospital emergency rooms.
  • The substances also harm society in other ways, damaging families and occupying police services.
  • Nutt hopes that the research will provoke debate within the UK and beyond about how drugs — including socially acceptable drugs such as alcohol — should be regulated. While different countries use different markers to classify dangerous drugs, none use a system like the one proposed by Nutt's study, which he hopes could serve as a framework for international authorities
  • "The rankings also suggest the need for better regulation of the more harmful drugs that are currently legal, i.e. tobacco and alcohol,"
  • "All drugs are dangerous," he said. "Even the ones people know and love and use every day."
  • Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts — psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise — to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD.
  • Heroin and cocaine were ranked most dangerous, followed by barbiturates and street methadone. Alcohol was the fifth-most harmful drug and tobacco the ninth most harmful. Cannabis came in 11th, and near the bottom of the list was Ecstasy.
  • According to existing British and U.S. drug policy, alcohol and tobacco are legal, while cannabis and Ecstasy are both illegal. Previous reports, including a study from a parliamentary committee last year, have questioned the scientific rationale for Britain's drug classification system.
    • Austin Buben
       
      Alcohol and tobacco, two legal substances in the U.S. and the U.K. are more harmful than marijuana.
Austin Buben

Stem the violence, make marijuana legal - 0 views

    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Found this First
    • Austin Buben
       
      This article basically tells how drug cartels would be hurt if marijuana is legalized.
  • Mexico's drug cartels would continue to be, in the words of the Justice Department's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009, "the greatest drug-trafficking threat to the United States."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • "Marijuana is the (Mexican cartels') cash crop, the cash cow," says Brittany Brown
  • Marijuana is cheap to grow and requires no processing. More than a million pounds of it was seized in Arizona in each of the past two years
  • First, Prohibition didn't work. • Second, even though alcohol sales are regulated, back-alley or school-yard sales of moonshine is not a billion-dollar problem. • Third, alcohol, like its addictive killer-cousin tobacco, is taxed, which helps cover its costs to society. Not so with marijuana
  • "People who smoke pot in the United States don't think they are connected to the cartels," Brown says. "Actually, they are very connected."
  • stead of paying taxes on their vice, pot smokers are enriching thugs and murderers
  • The DEA says cartels are "poly-drug organizations" that routinely smuggle cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and precursor chemicals through our state. "(But) marijuana generates the most profit,
  • Legalizing marijuana would not stop pushers from selling other, more lethal poisons. But taking away their most profitable product would hurt criminal organizations that have grown richer, more powerful and better armed during the so-called war on drug
  • While U.S. drug users enrich the cartels, the U.S. government pours huge amounts of money into defeating them.
  • According to a report last fall from the Government Accountability Office, the United States has provided more than $6 billion to support Plan Colombia since fiscal 2000. The goal of reducing processing and distribution of illicit drugs (mostly cocaine) by 50 percent was not achieved
  •  
    Decriminalizing marijuana reduces the enormous cash flow to drug cartels fueling the drug wars in Mexico. 
Shana Thomas

The Clear Benefits of Decriminalizing Marijuana - 3 views

  • The Justice Policy Institute argues that locking up drug offenders is an ineffective and inefficient way to address drug abuse
  • With 2,310,984 people being held in local, state, and federal prisons in 2008, the “number of people in prison is nearly 5 times what it was 30 years ago, despite crime rates being at historic lows
  • drug possession is the sole reason 83% of those arrested for drug offenses are charged with a crime and thrown into prison.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Marijuana Policy Project found that between 1995 and 2008 nearly 9.5 million individuals had been arrested due to connections with marijuana (whether it is cultivation, possession, or distribution).
  • Ongoing scientific research has shown tobacco and alcohol to be more addictive, harmful, and socially costly than marijuana.
  • As we have explored, marijuana is proven to be a less dangerous substance than tobacco and alcohol. Not only is it less dangerous in terms of its addictive properties and physical harm to people, it has critical cannabinoid chemicals that may relieve pain and aid the recovery of certain illnesses.
  • Marijuana is essentially in the same situation today that alcohol was in during Prohibition. Government law prevents marijuana from being sold in a legal manner, but it by no means eliminates the suppl
  • Rather than being produced and distributed peacefully through free trade, the marijuana market is limited only to the black market. This artificial legal limitation of the supply raises the p
  • of marijuana to extraordinary heights, thus attracting suppliers to enter the black market.
  • ome argue that criminalizing marijuana is a more harmful endeavor than the impact of the plant itself on society. The Marijuana Policy Project describes the situation: Because of marijuana prohibition, America’s largest cash crop is grown exclusively by unregulated criminals, often in environmentally damaging locations such as national parks and wilderness areas. Such problems are virtually unknown with legal, regulated crops such as tobacco or wine grapes (“Marijuana Prohibition Facts”).
  • Given that marijuana is less harmful to the human body than alcohol and tobacco, it makes little sense to continue the current policy of cannabis prohibition (particularly when you consider the detrimental results of alcohol prohibition).
  •  
    why decriminalization is a good thing/ help promote stability and peace
  •  
    found this article!
Austin Buben

BalancedPolitics.org - Legalization of Marijuana (Pros & Cons, Arguments For and Agains... - 1 views

    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Buben found this document first.
    • Austin Buben
       
      Everything that I highlight is something that is a weak topic.
  • Some c
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • are likely
  • could
  • could
  • could
  • harmfulness of marijuana are inconclusive and contradictory
  • Most doctors would agree that it's not very harmful if used in moderation
  • isn't abuse of almost any bad substance a problem
  • Most doctors believe that marijuana is no more addictive that alcohol or tobacco.
  • All illegal drugs are higher in price because the production, transportation, and sale of the drugs carry heavy risks.
  • chemotherapy
  • if someone in the drug trade screws you over, there's no police to call or lawyers to litigate. You must settle disputes yourself.
  • enormous amount of money is raised through government taxation of alcohol, cigarettes, and other "sins".
  •  
    This is a basic website that should help lead everyone in a general direction of what they should get started on and further research these subjects.
Kevin Gregor

Bad Borders, Good Neighbors - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • the country’s 1967 borders are not militarily defensible. But his use of this argum
  • Israel needs peace with the Palestinians, and that will likely require a return to the 1967 lines with a few adjustments. These borders can be made defensible if they come with a security package consisting of a joint Israeli-Palestinian security force along the West Bank’s border with Jordan, a demilitarized Palestinian state and a three-way Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian defense treaty. Combined with such a package, the balanced formula President Obama outlined in his May 19 speech can give Israel the security it needs and deserves.
Kevin Gregor

Netanyahu: Israel Cannot Return To 1967 Borders | Fox News - 1 views

  • A peace agreement, he said, must assure Israel's security: "Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 borders," he declared, rekindling the dispute with Obama in a possible effort to placate territorial hardliners in his government.
Onurcan Tatman

Israel really against new borders - 1 views

  •  
    Prime Minister NETANYAHU talks about his ideals and that he wants to help out the Palestinians and their refugee problems but not on Israel proper and that resolving the refugee issue will never happen on Israeli soil. He also talks about how Palestinians need to really stay on their own land and how he is completely against he 1967 border lines coming back into place.
Onurcan Tatman

hilltop heroes - 1 views

  •  
    oh yeah i got it
Kevin Gregor

Israel and Palestine: Those indefensible 1967 borders | The Economist - 0 views

  • Perhaps one would need to consider the scenario of a surprise attack against Israel, such as the 1973 war, but fought within the 1967 borders.
Katy Field

Debate Resolution #2: Caucasus - 0 views

Resolved: In order to promote peace and stability the ICJ should extend its ruling on the legality of Kosovo's independence to include recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence as well.

resolution

started by Katy Field on 09 Nov 11 no follow-up yet
Caroline Yevak

Russia and Georgia: South Ossetia is not Kosovo | The Economist - 0 views

  • WITH a flourish, Russia this week recognised the “independ
  • ence” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the enclaves that gave it a casus belli for its war on Georgia
  • The Russians saw it as a logical outcome of their victory, a further stage in their confrontation with the West—and a copy of what happened in Kosovo. As Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, argued, “you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Never mind that Russia is itself being incoherent in continuing to insist that Kosovo’s independence from Serbia is still illegal
  • NATO’s air war on Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 was, like the Iraq war in 2003, conducted without the legal approval of the United Nations.
  • Last February’s recognition by many Western countries of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia again lacked formal UN blessing (thanks to Russia’s threatened veto).
  • Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic long oppressed the Kosovo Albanians, as well as perpetrating war and ethnic cleansing right across former Yugoslavia. But it was the Georgians who ended up as the bigger victims of ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia in the 1990s, and have been again in South Ossetia in the past three weeks.
  • Motive provides an even clearer difference. Throughout the 1990s the Americans and Europeans were extremely reluctant to get involved in the Balkans.
  • After Milosevic’s withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999, the main role of the UN and NATO forces in the province was to protect the Serb minority and Serb religious sites. The Western powers devoted years to negotiations over the province’s future, culminating in UN-led talks under Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president. Only when these failed, again thanks mainly to Russian intransigence, did Kosovo’s unilateral independence become inevitable.
  • Russia has nakedly pursued its own interests in the Caucasus. It did its utmost to provoke Mr Saakashvili into a fight. Its “peacekeepers” have made no pretence of protecting minorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
  • The difference between Kosovo and South Ossetia has been starker still in the war’s aftermath.
  • The Russians invaded Georgia in a fever of war enthusiasm; have refused to pull out and rejected attempts to internationalise the dispute; and have now recognised the enclaves’ independence less than three weeks after the war began.
  • bringing in the UN and international peacekeepers.
  •  
    Loading recommended tags...
Austin Buben

"Traditional Gap" In The ICJ's Advisory Opinion On Kosovo - 0 views

  • Of course, one can argue that the territorial integrity of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova has already been recognized by many international organizations and by the majority of states in the world. The UN Security Council, notably, adopted many resolutions affirming the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia and Azerbaijan.47 That is why one could conclude that this standpoint reflects already the position of the international community, according to which the secession of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh has not been recognized (apart from Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru in Abkhazia’s and S. Ossetia’s case).
    • Austin Buben
       
      Shows the difference between Abkhazia being allowed their own independence and the international community recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as Sovereign States; Which will never happen. (IF it would have, it already would have been expressed.)
  • The Court did not state in the Opinion that Kosovo through its declaration of independence effectively seceded from Serbia and thus the new state of “Kosovo” emerged. As it did not call into question the validity of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), which legitimizes the presence of international territorial administration in Kosovo, one can conclude that this resolution is still in force until a new resolution is adopted by the Council. In fact, according to this resolution, Kosovo shall only be given substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia). Hence it can be stated that, from a legal point of view, Kosovo still can be seen as part of Serbia.
Austin Buben

10 Contemporary Drug Problems 1981 Review of the Effects of the Decriminalization of Ma... - 3 views

  •  
    Good back up organizations to support your quotations.
Austin Buben

Cons of Marijuana Legalization (Potential Incriminating Article) - 1 views

  •  
    Could come back to hurt us.
Shana Thomas

BOP: Quick Facts - 0 views

    • Shana Thomas
       
      tagline * there are other reasons ppl are put in prision/ marijuana isnt the only issue of crime in the USA
  • Total population:217,582
  • Drug Offenses:102,580(50.6 %
Austin Buben

CensusScope -- Population Growth - 0 views

  •  
    Alaska population in 1960-2000
1 - 19 of 19
Showing 20 items per page