The Pie Graph of Theft

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New Jersey Jude Drive

New Jersey is now requiring all minor drivers to vandalize their own vehicles with decals:

WASHINGTON TWP. — New Jersey today became the first state in the nation requiring teen drivers to display a decal on their vehicles.

In the library of West Morris Central High School, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law Kyleigh’s Law, named after Kyleigh D'Alessio, a 16-year-old Long Valley resident who was killed in a December 2006 car crash involving a teen driver.

“The legacy of your daughter will save many lives in the years to come,” Corzine said to Kyleigh’s mother Donna Weeks, who was behind the push to require permit and provisional license holders to fix a decal on the front and rear of their vehicles.

The other bill Corzine signed into law limits young drivers to only one passenger in a car unless accompanied by an adult, forbids the use of wireless communications and sets the night driving limit at 11 p.m. instead of at midnight.

Both take effect May 15, 2010.

Emphasis mine. I suppose that for their next trick, the government of New Jersey will require all convicted drunk drivers to wear a yellow star patch on their clothing.

Decriminalization Simply Works

Why can't American politicians get it through their heads that ending prohibition is the only sensible solution to the "problem" of drug use? Or is it possible that the American politicians are not really interested in the well being of the citizens, and instead just want to continue pouring money into the prison-industrial complex?

Anyway, in Portugal, they decriminalized possession of pretty much every drug about 5 years ago, and the results speak for themselves:

In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.

Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.

Under the Portuguese plan, penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are unchanged; dealers are still jailed and subjected to fines depending on the crime. But people caught using or possessing small amounts—defined as the amount needed for 10 days of personal use—are brought before what's known as a "Dissuasion Commission," an administrative body created by the 2001 law.

Each three-person commission includes at least one lawyer or judge and one health care or social services worker. The panel has the option of recommending treatment, a small fine, or no sanction.

Peter Reuter, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says he's skeptical decriminalization was the sole reason drug use slid in Portugal, noting that another factor, especially among teens, was a global decline in marijuana use. By the same token, he notes that critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.

"Drug decriminalization did reach its primary goal in Portugal," of reducing the health consequences of drug use, he says, "and did not lead to Lisbon becoming a drug tourist destination."

Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal "appears to be working." He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, "because it smacks of legalization."

Drug legalization removes all criminal penalties for producing, selling and using drugs; no country has tried it. In contrast, decriminalization, as practiced in Portugal, eliminates jail time for drug users but maintains criminal penalties for dealers. Spain and Italy have also decriminalized personal use of drugs and Mexico's president has proposed doing the same.

A spokesperson for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office's new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.

Now of course, I would much rather see complete legalization for production, distribution, and possession of all drugs, but even mere decriminalization for possession only is already showing promising results.

True News 29 - Obama, Corruption and Guns