(Warning: Lazy Blogger Post) Around the Blogosphere
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:55 PM

(1) Mark Kleiman has prepared a study (24-page pdf here) on the links between illicit drugs and terrorism. He talks about it here, and includes a topic not in the report, the question of whether the terror links might suggest legalizing cocaine and regulating it a' la alcohol. Mark offers a tentative "no" to that question, but Drug WarRant begs to differ, while suggesting that a legal regime for cocaine more strict than that generally applied to alcohol in the US might be a possibility, too.

(2) Last One Speaks provides the latest on the DEA's war on pain treatment: a mandatory 25-year prison sentence facing a wheelchair-bound Florida man self-medicating with painkillers acquired through forged prescriptions. Another level of cascade: once you declare a substance to be evil when not used in the precise, officially approved manner, you become willing to put multiple sclerosis sufferers, 45-year old fathers of three, in prison for a loooong time if they ignore your strictures. And to think, there are Americans alive today who were also alive when there was no prescription system at all, not even for narcotics. What progress we have made in the span of one lifetime! (Mark Kleiman also notes the Florida story. Most recent related Vice Squad post is here. Home page of the Pain Relief Network here. I can't seem to find out what has happened to the March on Washington on behalf of pain treatment that had been planned for next week.)

(3) Reason online offers a fine article on the current federal crackdown on obscenity, with a good deal of attention paid to the prosecution of Extreme Associates. [Most recent related Vice Squad post here. Update: BuzzMachine and Mark Kleiman, and Volokh have more.]

Labels: cocaine, Drug WarRant, Kleiman, litigation, obscenity, pain