Vermont's War To Violate Medical Privacy Wages Ever Onward

This latest widespread abuse of confidential medical drug records is IN ADDITION to a story first broken at Green Mountain Daily a few months back and I noted here - and the invasion continues! - that Vermont State Police, apparently bored (not enough one-day-expired emissions stickers they can ticket?), are going to pharmacies and demanding records on anyone taking painkillers along with antidepressants, etc.

And yet Vermont (ha!) is called the People's Socialist Republic of the U.S.:

Lawmakers Tuesday complained that a new electronic database of prescription drug records goes too far into the private lives of Vermonters. Members of the House Human Services Committee, who worked on the plan creating the state-run database of all prescribed drugs in Vermont, said the program now appears to have powers beyond what they envisioned when they passed it two years ago.

Committee members said the proposed policies of the Vermont Prescription Drug Monitoring Program would allow the state to collect too much information on people prescribed medication and share it with too many other state government employees.Bowing to privacy concerns, the bill passed in 2006 called for the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health "personally" to share that prescription drug data to the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety "personally."

But the proposed rules for the law – the policies created and carried out by the state based on legislation passed by lawmakers – would now allow lower-level officials within the two departments to give and receive the sensitive information.

"I can't remotely think that anyone could construe from the word 'personally' that we meant designees," said Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who added that the changes had her "beyond stunned." "We had lots of discussions about this here in the committee."

The Vermont Legislature passed the drug-monitoring system two years ago to help stop the illegal use of prescription drugs, which is now the top source of fatal drug overdoses in the state. The system will be maintained by the Vermont Department of Health and information from it can be used by law enforcement officials for investigations into specific alleged crimes.

In at least three cases (and this isn't a case with a warrant for a specific person's records, but just wholesale "give us all you got on anyone" situation), they've gotten it, too, with these being only the cases we KNOW about. Many pharmacies, of course, would never admit to providing this information because this would be a pharmacy that would (guaranteed) lose customers.

But the Vermont Congress can't skate here; anyone who agrees to the establishment of such a database DAMN WELL KNOWS it will be abused far worse than what individuals might do with those meds.

Pot Boosts Brain Cell Growth?

It almost makes me wish my smoking days were not long behind me; this from Libby posting at Newshoggers under "Marijuana is good medicine":

The prohibition profiteers lie to you when they tell you that pot has no medicinal value. A new study just out shows marijuana increases brain cell growth.

ST. JOHN’S, Nfld — Supporters of marijuana may finally have an excuse to smoke weed every day. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that smoking pot can make the brain grow.

Though most drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells, injections of a synthetic cannibinoid have had the opposite effect in mice in a study performed at the University of Saskatchewan. ...

The researchers found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis — the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. A current hypothesis suggests depression may be triggered when the hippocampus grows insufficient numbers of new brain cells. If true, HU-210 could offer a treatment for such mood disorders by stimulating this growth.

Now cannabis is a complex plant and the research was conducted with only two of a multitude of elements it contains so this study isn't really a license to smoke pot, but this could explain why so many people who suffer from depressive disorders self-medicate with marijuana. Taken in moderation, it works better than Zoloft with a lot less dangerous side effects.

Meanwhile, I have mixed feelings about this research. It's good to establish that cannabinoids are useful as medicine but the focus on using synthentic compounds suggests to me that prohibitionists want to profit from marijuana without having to give up their equally lucrative war on the natural plant.

Another Bushie War, on Americans: More Senseless War on Drugs, VT Style

When the Bushie Republican Governor of Vermont didn't like that a (Democrat, I believe) lawyer and part-time judge didn't get serious prison time for possession of marijuana, he didn't just get mad. No, Jim Douglas ordered all state law enforcement officials to send marijuana (NOT heroin, NOT cocaine, NOT methamphetamine) cases to the FEDS directly, bypassing local and state courts.

Now, I'm not excusing the woman lawyer/judge who as an officer of the court certainly knows basic law. And yeah, 2.5 lbs DOES sound like a lot (except that drug cops are taught to pad the weight anyway possible and go to some truly ridiculous extremes to do so, often at the behest of higher ups and prosecutors who want to hit heavier charges as well as confiscate property).

But what the fuck is going on here? The War on Drugs has been such a miserable failure. And if you want proof, look at the Miserable Failure in the White House right now, a cokehead drunk with delusions of grandeur who actually thinks he's president when, you know, it's really Dick Cheney. I'm tired of fighting a war on Americans who as adults can make their own choices for what they consume, good or bad. If being a Bill O'Reilly isn't a federal offense (yet offensive, nonetheless), being a pothead shouldn't be either, I would think. And I say that as someone who hasn't used in God... I can't tell you how long.

No less than the Times-Argus, the Barre-Montpelier, Vermont newspaper that very few accuse of being a liberal rag, is kind of aghast at what Douglas is doing. And ALL American taxpayers should be: it's taking a local problem and, for the War on Drugs - and the war for the Bushie-style Ego, dumping it on feds that apparently need to focus on otherwise law-abiding potheads rather than on Bush corruption and Osama bin Laden and company.