Ammat The Ankh posted:

7

Randler posted:

You did notice the rope made ouf bedsheets, right?

spoon0042 posted:

Don't get my hopes up. Unless by "retired" you mean "is just phoning it in now" because this is just lazy as gently caress.

zakharov posted:

Bill de Blasio is a mainstream Democrat who, like many people, wasn't wild about the Reagan administration's policies in Latin America back in the day. COMMUNIST!

pd187 posted:

Hey, look what I found on archive.org - issue #1 of the early '90s classic "New World Order Comix" !!!


https://archive.org/details/Saga_Of_White_Will

OldTennisCourt posted:

"I'm sorry sir...your wife and child are dead..."

"OH GOD! WHAT HAPPENED?!"

"The doctor performing the C-Section...~zoom in~ was high"

~zoom in on Surgeon wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, laughing manically~

~the father falls to his knees~

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Discendo Vox posted:

I don't want to turn this into a big drugs debate- I avoid the drugs threads on SA because they'd just make me pop a blood vessel. Most of the debate on drugs/addiction is grounded in really poor understanding of addiction, research, and the law. There are difficult, nuanced issues, but they don't get presented that way. Here's a rough attempt at the nutshell elements, though:

• Marijuana is addictive. The justification for banning particular drugs(along with a set of policy considerations considering secondary effects and the rate of abuse) is that they're addictive. Other factors come into play, but addiction is the reason we talk about drugs being drugs.
  
• The reason we ban addictive substances is because addiction appears to be a chronic, whole-mind disease. That means it's permanent, and it effects every part of lived experience- conscious and unconscious.
  
• Addiction in the drugs context is best defined by access-seeking behavior. Addicted individuals will, through conscious or unconscious processes, justify, rationalize and seek access to the drug. Their autonomy or free will is permanently reduced by the addiction. If you like liberal theories of rational agency, this is a really bad thing for a democratic country.
  
• Addicts are not intrinsically aware that they are addicted. This is part of why 12 step programs tend to start with acknowledging that the person has a problem and/or recognizing the existence of some higher power. Addicted people have to acknowledge that they can't trust their own mental processes any more, and this is a very difficult thing to do. (There are some interesting tie-ins to libertarians here, but this is already )
  
• Withdrawal? Negative health effects? Those are secondary elements of the addiction definition, primarily concerned with determining whether the individual is dependent on the drug. Many researchers/policy analysts use the words interchangeably, and they shouldn't. Dependency may be easier to measure, but it's not why we ban drugs.
  
• Yes, that's a really loose definition. Addiction is a mental illness, and mental illnesses tend to operate that way. Addicts are also not necessarily going to show external signs of addiction. We have this stereotype of addicts as people who will do anything for another hit, or who are ravaged by the effects of the drug. This isn't the norm- addicted people can function relatively well, but their agency is still compromised, and that is still a Very Bad Thing. There's a reason why pro-pot activists have the stereotype of being psychotically single-minded; many of them are addicted.
  
• Research: It's very difficult to ethically conduct research on addiction or drug abuse, so progress on that area in any direction is slow. This isn't because of some pharma coverup, it's because you can't legally give people access to an addictive substance in most clinical research settings.
  
• Health benefits: God, these make me mad. Studies purporting to find health benefits from pot are categorically poorly done or mischaracterized. They tend to target qualia, be case studies, lack blinding, and lack transparency. I won't get into details, if you have a particular study you think is solid, PM me and I'll point out all the flaws. The structural reasons for the apparent glut of pro-pot studies are diverse, and surprisingly not all of them come from would-be green tycoons.
  
• Treatment: There are no cures for addiction. Treatment programs can put the person in a state where the condition effects the mind less profoundly, or even put addiction effects into a sort of remission. This is why most 12-step programs teach you to say you're a "recovering" addict, never a "recovered" one. Believing that you are cured is usually the first step toward rationalizing using the substance again. NIDA has been working on a sort of "addiction vaccine" for the past couple years that they're really excited about for certain substances(not pot), but I don't think it's likely to pan out due to methodological and implementation issues. This is part of why the over-incarceration has occurred: we don't have a good way to deal with addicts. Even the best treatment programs have dismal success rates.
  
• Discrimination against minorities? Over-incarceration? Yes. I agree. The mechanisms of enforcement should be changed to focus on dealers/distributors/creators, and obligatory treatment should be the only real punishment for many people using banned substances. This isn't the same as legalizing the drug though!
  
• War on Drugs This phrase gets tossed around, but it's worth noting that federal policies using the original model stopped more-or-less after Reagan left office, and it officially left administration vocabulary in 2009. Calling it the War on Drugs is shorthand for not knowing the details of current drug policies, or why they are the way they are. On this note, a lot of the terrible over-prosecution, etc. are occurring at state government levels, so that's where the changes should occur.
  
• Caffiene? NIDA is trying to figure out how to deal with research that increasingly suggests caffeine is addictive (the research still isn't clear- remember, it's hard to test or define addiction, and researchers don't agree on it. It's likely that the FDA will begin regulating caffiene more stritly in the coming years, but it will likely not get scheduled.
  
• Tobacco? Alcohol? Remember that part of the first bullet where I said other policy factors are an issue? A ton of public health dollars are being spent on reducing cigarette use, but nobody thinks banning tobacco would go over well- at least not until we've spent several decades reducing smoking rates. It does not follow from this that marijuana should be legalized. Alcohol will probably never be banned again, for the same reasons of realpolitik. There's not really hypocrisy here, just an understanding of what would or wouldn't work. Marijuana use rates may be high, but with effective policy and education, the rate of use could be reduced.
  
  
• The choice isn't "Status Quo or legalization". There are other changes that could be made to how drug policy, including marijuana, is enforced. These changes would ultimately address a number of other structural problems in our society(black people aren't just over-incarcerated for weed, after all!). Unfortunately, the details of why marijuana(and other drugs) is illegal are complicated enough, and the public is so poorly educated, that right now most lay members of the public just seem to go "dur hur Reefer Madness, Prohibition, War on Drugs Freedom").

What Bors attacks in his cartoon is a strawman. Unfortunately, it's a strawman that both sides of the debate seem willing to indulge. In these libertarian times, arguing that addiction as a mental disease is something we should oppose is a difficult task, and a lot of anti-legalization people choose easier to frame, less valid arguments. That doesn't mean that better arguments don't exist, though. Sorry for the derail, but the response was strong enough I thought it was warranted. If you want to continue to argue with me, I'd suggest that after some point we go to PM so as not to cloud up the thread(see what I did there? pot humor!).To the thread's knowledge, has there ever been a gay Uncle Sam depiction?

euphronius posted:

My chronic, whole-mind disease prevented me from reading the whole post.

Discendo Vox posted:

This lady's approach appears counterproductive. What point is Latuff trying to make?

Rebochan posted:

10

seiferguy posted:

The Atlanta Braves used to have this as their logo:



They recently tried to bring it back as a "Spring Training only" (that's the preseason for anyone unfamiliar with Major League Baseball) hat but tons of people shouted backlash and they pulled it, thankfully.

VitalSigns posted:

So is the unemployment rate 30%, or is Lester counting children and retired people?

Hmmmmmmmm.

crowfeathers posted:

Are you ready for the best Hope and Change ever?

KillerJunglist posted:

Chicago accent, you hack. Just do one of those old "Da Bears" style things and you would have gotten a pass on this one.


Anyway, Here is a Clovis to remind you that Jamaica has a bobsled team (and that a Jamaican won on "The Voice"):

Apple Pie Hubbub posted:

Fandyien posted:

I guess I just hadn't had my coffee yet but I read that as "someone should murder Punxatawney Phil".

rodbeard posted:

Well here in New York state you have to can't sell both beer and other alcohol in the same store and people get around it by just opening multiple businesses side by side.

loquacius posted:

Guys, I've thought long and hard for about ten seconds, and I've figured out a way that filling Europe up with Muslims could possibly be called a Zionist act. If all the Muslims are in Europe, they're not in the West Bank or Gaza! It's brilliant.


Hahahahaha the big mean well-established millenials are refusing to hire poor impoverished Gen-Xers oh my stars and garters

I think this is drat near evangelical-Christianity level in terms of misplaced persecution complex.

The Ape of Naples posted:

In NY, wine and beer is fine just not hard liquor. I think it has to do with a law that a place that sells liquor can't sell 'mixers' such as soda and juice. I think in NYC the liquor laws are such that restaurants without a liquor license can sell wine and beer but not hard alcohol.

Edit it may have to do with alcohol content too. I suppose supermarkets don't sell most wines but they do sell some which I assume is weaker than normal wine.

Apple Pie Hubbub posted:

colonel_korn posted:

Saint Sputnik posted:

An Obamacare Cartoon.

Rorus Raz posted:

Oh hey JJ released a new car-

Mordiceius posted:

Jerusalem posted:

Well what happens when the sun goes down, huh smart guy?

Sir Rolo posted:

What?

crowfeathers posted: