Just say no. With those three little words, the war on drugs began. Some 20 years later, a new federal survey finds that more than 102 million Americans admit to having tried marijuana, the most pervasive of drugs, with 15 million saying they used it the previous month. Just say no? Not so much.
So perhaps it’s time to pause, inhale deeply and think about why legalizing pot actually makes some sense. After all, this is no longer a debate taking place in the far corners of society by people who just want to get stoned all of the time. Several state legislatures and political leaders, such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, are openly starting to discuss the value of decriminalizing marijuana. The conversation is quiet, but it’s happening and for good reason.
Just about every state in the nation is facing monster-size budget deficits. Nowhere has this drama played itself out more bleakly than in California where the legislature spent months closing a $26-billion gap, only to end up decimating a number of state services intended to help the neediest among us. Some economists estimate that pot is the largest cash crop in the Golden State, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. So there’s an enormous potential windfall in taxing it. A 10-percent tax would equal $1.4 billion. That’s big-time bank for a state that had to send out IOUs instead of actual dollar bills to pay its vendors over the summer.
And then there’s that tiny matter of justice, or lack thereof, when it comes to drug laws in the United States, a country with 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prisoners. Nearly $70 billion is spent annually on corrections. Nearly one-third of those in need of correcting are there for nonviolent drug crimes. Of all drug arrests, marijuana accounts for almost 50 percent. That’s a lot of money that could be going to improving schools, rapidly deteriorating roads and bridges, as well as – dare I say it – healthcare.
In New York, the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws, which stood firmly in place for decades, were changed this year to give judges more discretion in sentencing. Previously, punishment for possessing four ounces of drugs was a minimum 15-year-to-life sentence – the same as second-degree murder. While this was later relaxed for marijuana possession, the effect was an immediate surge in the percentage of nonviolent, low-level drug offenders making up the state’s prison population.
All of this says nothing of the fact that the brutal drug-related violence in Mexico, which has raged over the past few years, is fueled heavily by marijuana. Mexico is America’s drug dealer. The people who are happiest right now about the continued ban on pot and other narcotics are the dealers themselves.
Of course, there are serious moral and medical arguments from those that believe – with some good reason – that pot is a “gateway drug” to the harder stuff. Think needles. Or that pot causes physical damage. Although, others would quickly say it does no more damage than alcohol and cigarettes.
Marijuana is a drug.
It can be abused.
But so can McDonald’s.
And who’s to say that the damage caused by eating too many Big Macs is costing any less than the billions forked over each year to keep a bunch of stoners behind bars?
http://www.latimes.com/features/image/la-ig-potculture30-2009aug30,0,669328.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-druglaws2-2009sep02,0,4623257.story
Monday, September 14, 2009
2. To eat organic or not to eat organic
During the 1990s, organic farming exploded. In the U.S., organic is the fastest growing sector of the food marketplace with 17- to 20-percent sales increases over the past few years. Compare that to the 2- to 3-percent increases of conventional food. But there is a lot of disagreement over whether organic foods really offer greater nutritional value. This summer, the United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency published a study finding no scientific evidence that organic food is healthier than conventional produce, drawing the ire of many organic farming experts.
Organic food 'no healthier than conventional'
Organic food 'no healthier than conventional'
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Organic food is no healthier than conventional food, according to the world's biggest research project into the issue.A review of scientific studies for the past 50 years found there were no significant nutritional differences between conventional produce and organic fruit, vegetables, meat and milk.
The findings, intended to answer once and for all a long-running controversy, attack one of the pillars underpinning organic food produced without artificial fertilisers and with higher animal welfare standards: that is is healthier for individuals as well as better for the environment.
However organic farming experts criticised the study carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and questioned why it dismissed evidence it gathered that organic food is higher in some nutrients.
The Food Standards Agency commissioned the research to discover whether Britain's £2bn organic industry could claim higher health benefits for its products.
Of 162 scientific papers, researchers found 55 that were high quality and checked them for different minerals and vitamins such as Vitamin C and iron. In "satisfactory quality studies" there was no difference between the organic and non-organic farming in 20 of 23 nutritional categories. Organic was better satisfactory studies, organic food had "statistically higher levels" of phospohorous and acidity, but conventional was higher in nitrates.
Dr Alan Dangour, who led the study, said: "A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally-produced crops and livestock, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance.
"We found broadly that there was no important difference between organic and conventional produce."
The Food Standards Agency stressed that while people bought organic produce for several reasons, it considered that the long-running debate about whether they were more healthy was now over.
Gill Fine, FSA director of dietary health, said: "This study does not mean we should not eat organic food. What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally-produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."
The result accords with the FSA's previous advice that there was "no significant" health benefit from eating organic produce and also echoes the views expressed by previous Government Defra ministers that the case for organic food being healthier is unproven.
Supporters of organic farming, however, claimed that the results were flawed because of the criteria used to select the most important research.
When all 162 studies rather than the 55 highest quality ones were taken into account, organic farming was frequently higher in nutrients than conventional produce. For instance, beta carotenes were 53 per cent higher and flavanoids 38 per cent higher in organic food than non-organic food.
Peter Melchett, Policy Director at the Soil Association, complained: "The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences. This was because these studies did not meet particular criteria fixed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
"Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods."
A leading academic, Carlo Leifert, professor of ecology at Newcastle University, also attacked the study. Professor Leifert has been conducting a £12m four-year EU-funded study. Some initial research, published last year in the Journal of Science, Agricultural and Food last year, found that organic milk contained around 60 per cent more antioxidants and beneficial fatty acids than normal milk.
Provisional results from another part of the same study, which has not yet been published, suggests that organic wheat, tomatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce also had between 10 and 20 per cent more vitamins. Neither have been included in the FSA review.
"With these literarure reviews you can influence the outcome by the way that you select the papers that you use for your meta-analysis," Professor Leifert said.
"My feeling - and quite a lot of people think this - is that this is probably the study that delivers what the FSA wanted as an outcome. If you look at the differences they found – a 50 per cent increase in beta carotenes and a 30 per cent increase in flavanoids – they are quite significant differences, and they come to the conclusion that there's no systematic nutritional differences. That's just not very convincing."
During the past decade, sales of organic produce have soared, rising 22 per cent between 2005 and 2007, hitting £2.1bn last year.
Nine out of 10 households buy organic food. Britain has the third biggest market for organic food, after Germany and Italy, though it still only accounts for only 1 per cent of retail sales and 3.5 per cent of British farmland.
Although organic supporters have mostly trumpeted the environment as the biggest reason for buying organic, "quality and taste" is the biggest factor by buyers, shows research.
Britain's biggest organic farmer, Guy Watson, whose Riverford organic food network serves 40,000 customers, said the research was likely to hit his sales nationally. "In terms of the organic market industry as a whole, this is clearly not going to be helpful," said, adding that he did not believe his veg box scheme would be affected. "People buy from us really for flavour and freshness and secondly because they trust us in a general way."
The National Farmers Union said it had always said that both conventional and organic food to be "equally healthy and nutritious." The NFU said: "It is down to the consumer to choose what kind of food they wish to buy just as it is down to the individual farmer to decide which system he wants to employ – previous research has found there is no evidence to prove organic food is healthier than conventional and we believe there is space in the market for all models of farming to thrive and prosper."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/organic-food-no-healthier-than-conventional-1764448.html
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