Just think of how many persons are killed and injured skiing and snow boarding each year nationwide – an average of more than 38 persons per year, according to National Ski Areas Association. One could ask, what does skiing accomplish? What good is skiing? Well, it is fun, it is exciting. Isn’t it exciting because the speed creates a sense of risk? If we focused our attention just on hospital emergency rooms, we might think that skiing ought to be outlawed.

It might be an interesting exercise to imagine what the world of skiing would look like if it were outlawed. Imagine who would make skis, how it would be taught, where it would be done. Does anyone doubt that while there would be much less skiing, it would be much more dangerous to those who do ski, than it is now?

From BostonHerald.com:

Deadly meth marching toward New England: DEA battles Midwest scourge before it hits

The Hub is winning the war on crystal methamphetamine thanks to lessons learned from battles waged in the meth-gripped West and Midwest, a top federal drug official said yesterday, but she warned that the addictive drug is on a destructive march toward the East Coast.

Should I start putting sandbags around my house?

If I didn’t know better, I’d be bracing myself for a narcotic sandstorm of crystallized chaos. I’d be plugging my nostrils with cotton balls and spray-painting "stolen" on my valuables so I can’t pawn them.

But I’m not stupid. I know that meth doesn’t "march" anywhere, or make decisions of any kind. Meth doesn’t arrive at your doorstep like a military recruiter or Jehovah’s Witness and try to talk you into choosing a new direction in life.

The Herald makes it sound as if meth arrives arbitrarily and just finds its way into your nose or something. Like it instantly turns your life into a horrifying before & after shot, and the survivors can see the trail of debris winding its way back to Iowa as they escape by helicopter.

Fortunately, meth only goes where people take it and people only take it where it’s wanted. There’s actually plenty of it on the east coast already, it’s just not that popular here because it actually can’t just climb up your nose and drag your sorry ass kicking and screaming onto America’s Most Wanted.

But the boundless alarmism of The Herald even has an answer to that:

Conniving drug dealers have also been known to sell crystal meth to buyers while claiming that they are giving them cocaine or ecstasy in hopes of hooking them on another fix, Stansbury said. "Greedy drug traffickers try to make a market," Stansbury said. "It’s buyer beware. You never know what you are getting."

Maybe I should start drug testing myself. This could explain why I get the same thing for lunch everyday. Perhaps there’s drug dealers at Baja Fresh putting meth in my nachos. Mmmm, tastes like chicken.

Update: This post is a stab a just one of many absurd articles to emerge as a result of National Meth Awareness Day. Eric Sterling highlights a particularly disturbing  consequence of this peculiar celebration: the apparent practice of delaying meth lab raids for the purpose of conducting them on Meth Day.

Either there was a grave danger and DEA ignored that grave danger to the public in order to make a media splash, or DEA believes that the danger of explosion is greatly exaggerated but useful for snookering the news media.

Shameful. 

The discussion surrounding opium cultivation in Afghanistan has spiraled out of control as public officials who've accomplished nothing attempt to update us on their progress.

From the Washington Post:

"History teaches us that it will take a generation to render Afghanistan opium-free," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement.

"I ... propose that development support to farmers, the arrest of corrupt officials and eradication measures be concentrated in half a dozen provinces with low cultivation in 2006 so as to free them from the scourge of opium."

He said this would help double the number of provinces free of the opium poppy, the raw material for heroin, next year.

The U.N.-World Bank report also called for a "smart and effective" strategy to curb demand in consuming countries, mainly in the West.

Basically they’re saying, "we’ll implement the world’s first effective program for substituting crops and eradicating widespread corruption, while you guys focus on developing the world’s first effective strategy for convincing people to completely stop doing heroin."

It’s a 210-page report and these, I assume, are the highlights.

Even the majority justices say Sharon Lee Tracy is exactly the kind of person Washington voters intended to help when they passed a medical marijuana initiative back in 1998. She suffers from a hip deformity, migraine headaches and endured eight surgeries to repair a ruptured bowel and colon condition. So why was she arrested and convicted of growing marijuana back in 2003? Because Tracy had permission to use marijuana from a California doctor, but not a Washington doctor as required by law.

As I understand it, the decision is legally sound in that Washington’s medical marijuana law does require an in-state recommendation. Dissenting Justices argued that other medicines are available with out-of-state prescriptions, but to no avail.

Either way, there’s no excuse for sending this feeble woman to prison. I can forgive these judges for upholding the law as it’s written, but the prosecutors who fought this all the way to the State Supreme Court should be ashamed. Tracy should never have been charged in the first place.

I shudder to think that some smug DA walked out of court grinning after successfully convicting a woman with chronic migraines, a deformed hip, and a ruptured bowel simply because she tried to relieve her pain. Let’s hope the State Legislature moves to close this loophole forthwith. And if she’s sentenced to even a day in prison, let’s make some noise.

I understand that local officials are still coming to terms with the reality of medical marijuana. I understand that federal officials have painted themselves into a corner and will not now admit that they've acted in bad faith. I understand that people who've had the fortune of good health are sometimes challenged by the notion that a popular recreational drug also has unique medicinal properties. But I do not understand why resources are still being used to bring criminal charges against sick people. I just don't get it.

Can anyone explain why this is still happening?

Paramilitary tactics don't defuse violent situations, as police groups and their supporters sometimes claim. They create them. They make things more volatile for everyone -- cops, suspects, and bystanders. Does anyone honestly believe that Ms. Johnson would have opened fire had a couple of uniformed officers politely knocked on her door, showed her a warrant, and asked if they could come inside?

Violating the sanctity of the home with a violent, forced entry -- all to enforce laws against consensual acts -- simply isn't compatible with any honest notion of a free society.

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.