Bluelight.org

uh, a lot of those treatments came about because of the UN's drug policies. Fucking geniuses.

Dear Bluelighters,

As some of you may remember, February 12th is the twelfth anniversary of the passing of one of our own. To most it will be remembered as the first day "Bluelight went black." To those of us who knew Ryan Haight (a.k.a Quicksilver) it is also the day we lost a friend.

The impact of Ryan's life and untimely death have echoed forward in the passage of the Ryan Haight Internet Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, signed into law by President G.W. Bush in October of the same year. In honor of Ryan, Bluelight is proud to announce the launch of a new collection of forums designed to support sober living, and provide help to those struggling with drug use. The Recovery Forums will be launched shortly, and represent a reaffirmation of Bluelight's mission of drug-related harm reduction.

For those of you who knew Ryan, please take a moment in your day to honor his memory. We hope you'll stop in the Recovery Forums and share your thoughts and wisdom in the coming days.

Sincerely,

Sebastians_Ghost & TheLoveBandit
Co-Owners, Bluelight.ru

New York Times

THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

Ah. So it was because we were/are racist.

Still prefer how things are here where I am, since I have a lot more freedom here than someone of my stance in North Korea would, but that's good to know that they're toking there. Very surprising.

Thanks for posting this! The 'diversion system' is such a great idea, it's a shame it hasn't yet been tried in North America. What the hell are we waiting for?

Tessie Castillo, AlterNet
December 6, 2012

In the pale light of early morning, a mobile unit sits curbside in Atlanta, Georgia’s most notorious crime zone. A woman in a tattered coat shuffles up to the vehicle. She’s diabetic and carries a bag of over 300 used syringes. The people in the mobile unit are happy to accept the needles, and they offer her clean insulin syringes in exchange. Mostly volunteers, they have braved the cold to bring public health services to the neighborhood’s residents. In doing so, they are breaking the law.

Syringe exchange, the act of exchanging a used syringe for a clean one, is an accepted practice for reducing bloodborne disease transmission in much of the northern United States. Not so in the South, which has steadfastly refused to endorse syringe exchange, and the practice is more or less prohibited in all Dixie states. But despite a legal situation that is ambiguous at best and often outright hostile, 13 syringe exchange programs exist in the South. Scattered across nine states, the programs and the people who run them are as colorful as they are unexpected. A program in New Orleans runs a clandestine exchange through volunteers on bicycles, advertising their services through a circus and the local music scene. In South Carolina, a doctor, two reverends and an atheist formed an unlikely alliance to create the first syringe exchange program in their state. In North Carolina, a former drug user living with HIV and hepatitis C distributes needles from the back of his van to help others avoid his fate.

Midnight came, dozens of pot smokers descended on the Space Needle, and a large cloud of smoke headed skyward. No arrests were made and no federal officials were at the scene. A bigger crowd was expected Thursday night.
Local police weren’t even at the midnight smoke-in, partly because the state hasn’t passed a law to detail the procedure for busting people for public pot smoking.why is a new law required to simply detail a procedure to enforce an existing law?

alasdair

Medicine should not be kept from kids just because it makes them feel better, that's absolutely absurd.

Good on the Mother.

prostitution should totally be decriminalized

statistically it would work out better for everyone except the military-industrial complex