Why can't we put alcoholics in jail just for being alcoholics?

Don't the children whose lives were ruined by alcoholic parents matter as much as the children whose lives were ruined by meth addict parents?

If we have to put people in jail just for being addicts, then why don't we treat all addicts equally, like it says in the Bill of Rights -- equal protection under the law.

It's like we have two classes of citizenship for the victims of addicts.

If you grew up the victim of alcohol, then you're a second class citizen in that system and the damage you've suffered as a result of alcoholics doesn't really count.

The law does not consider your suffering equal to the suffering of a victim of an illegal drug.

But then look at who makes the law -- alcohol users. And they use the law to protect their own, don't they?

Like the Kerry campaign team -- how many G&T's did they down while deciding which marijuana users to kick out of college according to federal law?

It's disgusting in particular when you see how alcoholics get special treatment by the entire educational system.

They get special treatment because they're better than everyone else, right?

Forget equal protection under the law. We live in an alcohocracy.

I don't like having this fact relentlessly rubbed in my face, and that's why I am losing interest in Salon.

Maybe drug reformers should consider boycotting Salon from now on.

Personally I feel like Salon is a place where alcohol can do no wrong, despite all of the rape and domestic violence sagas we get to hear about in Broadsheet, most of which happen to involve ALCOHOL.

I saw a documentary on PBS where scientists claimed that after Britain started burning huge amounts of coal, the soot in the air cooled off the country by blocking sunlight.

This came along with an increase in respiratory illnesses, and some consequences for wildlife.

Back then it wasn't seen as a good thing to cool the country down. But now things are different. The tradeoff might be worth it now.

In the documentary, the scientists emphasized that clean air efforts have actually accelerated global warming because people have cleared the air of the pollution components that block sunlight, without getting rid of the CO2.

Researchers at Scripps Institute in La Jolla have been testing THC against Aricept and the other major Alzheimer's medication. They've found that THC blocks the formation of beta amyloid plaques almost 100%, compared with around 33% for the two FDA-approved drugs.

Okay, so what? you might ask.

Well, I was searching Medline ten years ago, and I found an article remarking on the remarkably low density of CB1 receptors in the brain tissue of people who died of Alzheimer's.

The authors noted that the pattern of the CB1 deficit made it appear that the CB1 receptors had not been destroyed by the disease.

Put these two results together and it suggests that perhaps a cause or contributing factor in Alzheimer's is some kind of problem that involves the CB1 system.

If you're running low on CB1 receptors, since these receptors are also involved in appetite -- the famous munchies effect of cannabis -- then your appetite might suffer a lot.

It's just a thought. A direction for people to look. All science is connected to all other science, after all.

He could have decided that the time he'd have to spend on travel was too valuable to take away from the city that needed him.

He makes a lot of bad choices. And he has a lot of people out there making excuses for him afterwards. People who should know better, because they're conservatives, and conservatives aren't supposed to be in the business of making excuses for bad choices.