We don’t really have a category for this stuff, so I’m putting it under Guns, Drugs & Booze. Powertools really should be in there, because hey, what good is a chainsaw without booze and drugs – and vice versa.
My drill press has a notice on in: “Do not use if wearing gloves, loose clothes, or a neck tie.”
How the hell old school do you have to be, to be doing woodworking (or metal working) in a necktie?
[Warning: Old-school cussing to follow]

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Don’t we all feel safer knowing that these dangerous criminals are feeling the long arm of the law?
AN 81-year-old war veteran and his 77-year-old wife were today handed suspended prison sentences for possessing cannabis with intent to supply, after 19kg of the drug was found hidden in their home.
Perth pensioner David William Sidney Davies and his wife, Florence Gladys Davies, walked free from Perth District Court after Judge Peter Williams accepted that the blame for the crime lay with their son, who had hidden the drugs in their house.
…
The Davies denied knowing about the drugs in the roof but Florence Davies said she had used some of the 300g of cannabis found in an ice-cream container under their bed.

A few years ago while reading a book on the history of public health in the United States (much more interesting than it sounds, believe me), I became somewhat fascinated with the theory of herd immunity:
A population without an immunisation programme against a disease is vulnerable to all the effects of that disease. Many people will suffer, some die, some may be left with a permanent disability.
Even if there is a vaccination programme, if not enough people get the vaccination, the germ can still infect those who aren’t protected.
When enough people are vaccinated, it is very hard for the germ to find anyone who isn’t vaccinated. Because of this ‘herd immunity’, non-immunised people are protected. They are protected both from catching the disease and suffering any permanent disability.
When enough people are protected, it’s possible for some diseases to disappear forever, as happened with smallpox, and will happen with polio and eventually measles.
When this happens, the World Health Organization can certify the world to be free of that disease and vaccination for that disease will no longer be needed.
In a nutshell, the people who don’t want the vaccine don’t have to get it, because as long as a 90% majority of the population DOES get it, the disease will find it very hard to propagate itself. The vaccinated and the unvaccinated will equally benefit from the actions taken by the vaccinated majority.
Recently I started thinking about this in other terms:

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“New York’s medical marijuana bill, A. 5796, scored its third big committee win of the legislative session yesterday, passing the Assembly Ways and Means Committee with a bipartisan vote of 24 to 8. …The bill, which would allow seriously ill patients to use medical marijuana with their doctors’ recommendations without fear of arrest or jail, has received solid support from New York’s medical community. A statement signed by more than 1,100 New York doctors declar[ed] that ‘seriously ill people should not be subject to criminal sanctions for using marijuana if the patient’s physician has told the patient that such use is likely to be beneficial’ …”
While in Britian they backtrack a bit.
“People who allow cannabis to be smoked at parties at their homes could face a 14-year jail sentence under new laws designed to show that the [UK] Government is not going soft on drugs. Ministers have delayed the controversial reclassification of cannabis from Class B to Class C until the end of the year to coincide with the introduction of the harsh new penalties. The move was originally planned for next month, but was postponed after lobbying by police and anti-drug groups, who feared that the Government was sending out the wrong message.”
Both via: Rational Review

This from Rational Review
“A federal judge who handed down a one-day sentence to medical marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal in California should be commended along with the jurors who pressured him to do so, Libertarians say. ‘Judge Charles R. Breyer just gave every drug warrior in America a cold, hard slap in the face,’ said Ron Crickenberger, political director of the Libertarian Party. ‘If every judge displayed this much common sense, the government’s war on sick and dying Americans could be over within weeks.'” (06/19/03)

This is a very interesting piece on drugs policy. It is written by Michael Gilson de Lemos on Anti-State.com. Its not only the right to self-medication libertarians are concerned with, its the right to not be medicated by force.