In 1998, unbeknownst to the general public and even to most of Congress, Congressman Mark Gouder, a conservative republican from Indiana snuck an amendment into the federal Higher Education Act. His amendment, called the Aid Elimination Penalty (and known to many as the Drug-Free Student Loan Amendment), denied federal aid to aspiring college students with prior adult drug convictions. More »

The common assumption is that the rich despise the poor. In reality, the rich love the poor. They need the poor. Poor people manufacture and buy their products. Drugs are a prime example of this relationship. From the fields of Columbia to the hoods of Atlanta, poor people fuel the billion dollar cocaine industry. Love is a strange game. 

Take of tour of the fringes here:

Video: Cocaine Lab in Colombia

Video: Crack House in Atlanta

I love B.I.G., but we’re taking his rhymes a bit too seriously.. The man could definitely wax prophetic from line to line, verse to verse, song to song, but let’s move away from making his words the Ten Commandments of what we can become.. I know I have y’all wondering what I’m talking about, and I’ll get to it in a second..

I keep hearing the “voice” of our people (at least to mass media, which I disagree with) in magazines, interviews and every other outlet they can reach quoting BK’s finest..

“either you slang crack rock, or you gotta wicked jumpshot”.. More »

Of course, I feel Kanye when he raps: “n-n-now-th-that don’t kill me can only make me stronger,” but I think some of our favorite athletes and entertainers are taking his words too far. When it comes to Human Growth Hormone, we know it makes us stronger, but without any legitimate studies on its long-term effects can we really conclude that it’s not killing us? AlterNet has a good article on the drug. Read it here.

Check out this new anti-smoking ad for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), which substitutes the image of the Twin Towers with two towering cigarettes. The fine print reads: Terrorist related deaths since 2001: 11337. Tobacco-related death since 2001: 30,000,000. Around the Net, bloggers are condemning DDB, the ad agency responsible for the image. Copyranter asks, “Next time, why not add little floating pieces of ash to represent the WTC workers who jumped to their deaths?” My question: Does this cross the line or is it an effective way of communicating the dangers of smoking?

“The roadside Breathalyzer test is actually an excellent way of estimating the amount of alcohol consumed, even though 95 percent of the alcohol a person drinks is metabolized before the body excretes it. Only about 5 percent of the absorbed alcohol is eliminated unchanged, in the urine or through the lungs, but it is enough to result “alcohol breath”– and the proportion exhaled stays constant enough to give a very accurate estimate of how much alcohol is in the blood.” More »

An article in today’s Los Angeles Times highlighted an issue that I’ve considered for some years now; an issue that saddens me to explore. The article was about the HIV drug market becoming profitable. Click here to read:

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I was talking to a friend of the family the other day and she was telling me that she was prescribed a new drug to help her take Prozac. I thought “A drug to take another drug? That can’t be good.” I soon learn that my friend is not the only one; there is a steady increase in the amount of youth using Prozac. More »

Crack is back and it can be bought legally in the supermarket. Crystal meth, which is just as addictive and taken in the same manor as the infamous rock, has more Middle American doped up than a little bit. Why exactly someone would wish to ignite a chemical compound which has the potential to explode may boggle the mind, but mainstream America is now tuning in and freaking out as the formerly invisible rural and suburbanites get their 15 minutes of fame on Cops.

If prohibition has taught us anything, it’s that people are resilient and innovative. It didn’t work in the 1920’s against alcohol, (it diversified the types through homemade breweries) and its not working now against everything else. Since it’s near impossible to stop the flow and use of illegal drugs, we should take a lesson from the more progressive European countries and begin to decriminalize and legalize them. More »