From The Washington Post:

The House yesterday lifted a nine-year-old ban on using D.C. tax dollars to provide clean needles to drug addicts, handing city leaders what they consider a crucial new weapon against a severe AIDS epidemic.

Well, I know what I'm doing tonight. Heroin. Because concerns about the availability of clean needles were the only thing stopping me.

Pro-AIDS activist Mark Souder is furious. He thinks this will cause a heroin epidemic or something. He's right, if you can call a bunch of heroin users that would otherwise be dead an epidemic.

Not to mention that all my friends are pawning their playstations in anticipation of getting super-wasted on uncut, AIDS-free H. I hear it's like having sex with a cloud.

I experienced the effects of the drug war up close and personal when I was 7 years old. In 1985, I was living in West Oakland, CA with my Mother and her boyfriend. Both were heavy drug users. Late one night, the police executed a no-knock warrant related to a drug and firearm investigation. The warrant had the wrong address. The boyfriend had me locked in the bedroom so he could abuse my Mother without interference from me. When the police encountered the door, they kicked it in. A few seconds later one of the officers discharged his weapon. I wasn't injured.

I generally don't read anything in the Controlled Substances Act beyond the schedules. Recently, I decided to look at the definitions section. The definition of "addict" and "marihuana" make it clear that you can't be addicted under the law. This fact highlights the insanity of cannabis being a class I controlled substance and drug policy general.