Maybe we're at long last starting to win the war, but not in the way we had planned. It was always crazy that you could buy a gallon of vodka at any grocery store, while a joint would land you in a jail. But "crazy" is one of the more apt adjectives describing America's- War on Drugs, a multi-decade, multibillion-dollar effort that in the end . . . assuming this is, please God, the beginning of the end . . . produced what? Plentiful, ever cheaper street narcotics and a prison system jammed with drug offenders. [continues 350 words]
Growing old has drawbacks - you tire easily, you start to look like hell and you get jostled by packs of young folk sporting full sleeve tattoos, braided beards and Polynesian ear lobe discs, all earning what you earn at their entry-level tech jobs. But aging has good aspects, too. The technology that youngsters shrug off still will awe an older person - when I first used an iPod, it made me proud to be a human being, to be part of the same race that made this. [continues 821 words]
The strangest things excite the frenzy of Bush Republicans. I don't know why they were so hot to drill in the Arctic National Wilderness. But they were, to a degree that can't be based solely on energy policy. Maybe they thought it was a Moral Victory. Or pot. Kids shouldn't take drugs, because they're a waste of time and can be dangerous. But pot is not exactly packing them into the emergency rooms, certainly not in proportion to the rabid White House assaults upon it. Talk about reefer madness. [continues 195 words]
Opening Shot Medicine was once ruled by tradition. Doctors resisted for years the radical notion that they should wash their hands before examining patients or operating. They found the suggestion insulting; it implied they were dirty. We like to think we're more open to new ideas nowadays, and we are. But not as much as we like to think. A mass of scientific evidence and overwhelming professional approval, for instance, mean nothing when it comes to the issue of medical marijuana, not to the government, not compared to the long-held notion that pot is a drug and all drugs are bad. [continues 955 words]
Opening Shot Medicine was once ruled by tradition. Doctors resisted for years the radical notion that they should wash their hands before examining patients or operating. They found the suggestion insulting; it implied they were dirty. We like to think we're more open to new ideas nowadays, and we are. But not as much as we like to think. A mass of scientific evidence and overwhelming professional approval, for instance, mean nothing when it comes to the issue of medical marijuana, not to the government, not compared to the long-held notion that pot is a drug and all drugs are bad. [continues 205 words]
Next week in Washington, D.C., opening arguments begin in a federal lawsuit that you might not have heard about. A few months back, a new law tucked discreetly into a government spending bill cut off federal funds to any public transit system that accepts advertising that advocates certain changes in the nation's drug laws. If the Chicago Transit Authority accepts an ad from a group trying to improve the terminally ill's access to medical marijuana, the CTA will lose its federal funding. [continues 141 words]
Opening Shot There are more victims of the culture wars than gays forced to live as second-class, quasi-citizens or religious righters forced to dwell in a world that also contains people who hold beliefs different from their own. There are, for instance, gravely ill cancer patients, those coping with AIDS and old ladies with glaucoma who can't avail themselves of the medicine that best alleviates their suffering -- pot - -- due to our hidebound notions about what is medicine and what is an evil drug. [continues 76 words]
When did using your judgment go out of style? Why are people frantically trying to abandon what slim responsibility they possess in favor of rigid rules and procedures? A week doesn't go by without a child somewhere in the country being expelled from school for offering a Tylenol to a headachy classmate, or naively bringing a toy weapon to class, or, as was causing the hubbub in our neck of the woods last week, firing a paper clip with a rubber band. [continues 827 words]
