FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

Methamphetamine Lab Seizures are falling in Tennessee:

Methamphetamine lab seizures in Tennessee are down 39 percent from a year ago, with state officials attributing that to a new law designed to make it harder to make the illicit drug.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, there were 82 lab seizures in May compared to 134 during the same period last year. May was the first full month in which the Meth-Free Tennessee Act was in effect.

Gov. Phil Bredesen signed the legislation into law in March. The law stiffens the penalties for making meth and requires pharmacies to move cold and sinus products containing pseudoephedrine, behind the counter.

Pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, is an ingredient used to make the drug. Methamphetamine is an addictive stimulant often called speed, crystal, ice or crank. The drug can be taken orally, injected, snorted or smoked.

The law was the product of recommendations made by the Governor’s Task Force on Methamphetamine Abuse.

Good News about Winning the War on Methamphetamine.

Read about the success in Portland, Oregon here.

The second case of Mad Cow Disease in the United States has been confirmed:

The Agriculture Department said tests confirmed mad cow disease in a U.S. cow previously cleared of having the brain-wasting illness.

“The results confirm the presence of (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in this animal,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said at a Friday news conference.

The animal didn’t enter the food supply, Johanns said.

A brain sample from the cow was sent to England for further study because a third round of tests conducted two weeks ago came back positive.

The Agriculture Department said the suspected case, in a beef cow, had earlier tested negative for the disease. The government won’t say if the animal was born in the U.S.

Video of the News Conference is here.

The first case of Mad Cow occurred in December 2003.and resulted in sanctions against the American Beef Industry.

Howard Dean Starts Therapy Fund for Rove:

Howard Dean Starts Therapy Fund for Rove
by Scott Ott

(2005-06-24) — Just two days after White House political adviser Karl Rove said so-called ‘liberals’ wanted to respond to the 9/11 terror attacks with legal action and psychological counseling, Democrat party chief Howard Dean announced creation of a fund to provide Mr. Rove with anger-management therapy.

In a speech to the Conservative Party of New York Wednesday night, Mr. Rove said, “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers…I don’t know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt as I watched the twin towers crumble to the earth.“

Today, Mr. Dean said, “Democrats should not take offense at Karl Rove’s remarks, which were aimed at liberals, not progressives like us. But as a doctor, I’m moved by compassion for the medical condition which produces these angry outbursts. Democrats have the fundraising muscle to get him the treatment he so desperately needs. It’s the least we can do to protect our nation from the threat he poses until he gets therapy.”

It was interesting to note that Karl Rove used the L-word (LIBERAL) and not the D-word (DEMOCRAT) in his remarks before the Conservative Party of New York.

So, why are Democrats like Hillary Clinton so upset?

“To go to New York City and say what he said is just almost unimaginable,” she said. “Either he said something in a hasty, ill-conceived, reckless moment … or he said it deliberately, as part of a continuing effort to divide Americans.”

“I would hope that you and other members of the administration would immediately repudiate such an insulting comment from a high-ranking official in the president’s inner circle.”

Flap thinks Governor Pataki has it right:

“I think it is a little hypocritical of Senator Clinton to call on me to repudiate a political figure’s comments when she never asked Senator Durbin to repudiate his comments. Senator Clinton might think about her propensity to allow outrageous statements from the other side that are far beyond political dialogue –insulting every Republican, comparing our soldiers to Nazis or Soviet gulag guards– and never protesting when she serves with them.”

Perhaps Dean could recommend some of Pataki’s therapy for Hillary?

The Oregon State Legislature and the Oregon board of Pharmacy have joined together to restrict the many precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine.

Their goals: Slash local meth production, and ease growing pressure on resources in the fields of law enforcement, treatment and prevention.
And it worked: The amount of meth on the streets went down.
This year, right? Try 1987.
The Legislature and the Board of Pharmacy effort 18 years ago helped cops and prosecutors almost totally eradicate the then-prevalent form of meth, called “p2p” for the recipe’s reliance on a chemical called phenyl-2-propanone. But when they attacked the chemicals they did, they ignored another recipe available today in many an illegal neighborhood drug market.
The primary strategy in Salem and Portland this year is the same: Limit the availability of the chemicals used to make the dominant form of meth.

The difference this time, they say, is that no heir-apparent recipe exists.

Now the DEA and the Department of Justice need to further restrict the off-shore importation of the precursor chemicals from Eastern Europe, China and India. A map of importation routes can be viewed here.

And restrict the importation of these precursors to Mexico, where over half of all American methamphetamine is imported.

In September 1987, a year after the Portland Police Bureau reconstituted its Drugs & Vice Division and discovered huge caches of meth in houses, cars, motel rooms and storage units, the Board of Pharmacy voted to add four meth-making chemicals to its list of controlled substances.
Two of the four, ephedrine and phenylacetic acid, were the largest precursor chemicals. The first widens air passages in the lungs and appears in bronchial medicines. The second is a common ingredient in perfume.
The board also agreed to review two chemicals in addition to the four and later added them to the list. The same month, a bill passed by the Legislature took effect, requiring buyers and sellers of 17 chemicals to report all such transactions to the Oregon State Police.
Meth production dropped. Cooks started driving north to Washington for chemicals, sometimes moving there and commuting to sell their product.
But lurking in the background was another recipe that had already hit Portland’s streets. None of the legislation, none of the rule changes had addressed it, and it flourished. The primary ingredient, pseudoephedrine, a decongestant, was available in cold tablets bottled and packaged by the thousands.
Still, then-U.S. Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., stood on the floor of the House of Representatives in June 1991 entreating his colleagues to target only ephedrine. Wyden, now a senator, did not respond to a request to discuss methamphetamine.

Politicans like Wyden should be embarassed that their lack of foresight has cost many citizens their lives and many millions of dollars in criminal and treatment costs.

However, today the problem is well understood and Oregon is again seeing improvement with precursor chemical restrictions.

Methamphetamine production and use decreases when precursor chemicals are restricted.

There is congressional work to be done on a bi-partsian basis to eliminate this drug’s manufacture, importation and use.

By 2004, the problem was much more clear — and growing. Portland police busted 53 meth labs in 2003. Last year, 116. Recipes were readily available online at pages like Totse.com and Neonjoint.com.
Meth’s evolving prominence in local law-enforcement dialogues coincided with a budget squeeze reducing the number of jail beds along with the number of deputy district attorneys assigned to drug cases, from 12 to seven.
“We’re just overwhelmed,” said Mark McDonnell, Multnomah County senior deputy district attorney. “We’re dying, or maybe drowning is the best word for it.”
Hoping to address such issues, Kulongoski formed his task force, and the Legislature and Board of Pharmacy again took up the issue. Pseudoephedrine moved behind pharmacy counters, accessible only with identification and, later, a signature. Pharmaceutical companies changed some of their cold-tablet recipes to exclude pseudoephedrine.
A meth congress in Portland last week attended by 23 elected officials, judges, lawyers, cops, health professionals and educators set priorities of immediate funding for jail beds and treatment. And two bills received public hearings in Salem on Thursday — a House bill stiffening punishments for meth cooks and a Senate bill expanding the definition of child abuse to include living with meth labs.

Again, as in 1987, methamphetamine production in Portland is down.

California State Senator, Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, reacted to yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling yesterday on Susette Kelo, et al. v. City of New London, Connecticut, et al., “the Supreme Court “broke the social compact by striking down one of Americans’ most fundamental rights.”

“Their decision nullifies the Constitution’s Public Use Clause and opens an era when the rich and powerful may use government to seize the property of ordinary citizens for private gain,” he said. “The responsibility now falls on the various states to reassert and restore the property rights of their citizens.”

McClintock announced he plans to introduce an amendment to the California Constitution to restore the original meaning of the property protections in the Bill of Rights.

“This amendment will require that the government must either own the property it seizes through eminent domain or guarantee the public the legal right to use the property,” he said. “In addition, it will require that such property must be restored to the original owner or his rightful successor, if the government ceases to use it for the purpose of the eminent domain action.”

The blogosphere is aghast at this outrageous and asinine decision.

McClintock is right on the issue, his constitutional amendment will have wide support but what we need is a federal constitutional amendment and new justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Update #1

The blogosphere is abuzz a day after the decision.

Michelle Malkin has a good piece: HOME MATTERS: THE DAY AFTER

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The (right side of the) blogosphere’s response to yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling on Kelo v. New London has been stunning. And heartening. Eminent domain isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks “blogswarm.” But the fierce reaction to the decision shows that core economic liberty issues can still unite disparate factions of the right (South Park cons, neocons, Schiavo-cons, whatever-cons) who have been fretting about a conservative crack-up.

My wonk-ish hope is that more attention will be paid to bogus community redevelopment/urban blight eradication/tax increment-financing schemes masquerading as “public use” projects. In the New London case, the private corporate beneficiary was Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant. In Seattle, it was Nordstrom (reg reqd). Across the country, it’s money-losing multiplexes and luxury stadium deals. In all cases, the losers are taxpayers, homeowners, and small businesses.

N.Z. Bear has created a Kelo topic page to track blog posts related to the ruling.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the Supreme Court’s reverse Robin Hoods.

The Kelo Topic Page by NZ Bear is espeically noteworthy (in fact to be mentioned twice).

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Flap was listening to Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on KRLA yesterday and up poped the Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney as a guest. Romney presented and discussed his new and astoundingly government controlling proposal for statewide healthcare Romney eyes penalties for those lacking insurance:

Massachusetts residents who choose not to obtain health insurance would face tax penalties and even the garnishing of their wages under a proposal Governor Mitt Romney unveiled yesterday.

Romney says the ”individual mandate” he is proposing, part of his broader plan to cover the roughly 500,000 people who are uninsured, would not cost the state any money. But some healthcare specialists say the approach might cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than state taxpayers currently provide for government health coverage.

Romney’s plan would require all residents in Massachusetts to have some form of health insurance or agree to pay their medical bills out of their own pockets. No other state has such a requirement, and if Romney manages to make it law, it would be a compelling accomplishment he could point to if he runs for president.

In an era where citizens demand less governmental instrusion in their lives here comes a child-support - alimony type government coercion plan to make sure you pay your medical bills.

This proposal reeks of 19th century Mormon self-reliance but is out of the mainstream of MODERN political thought and should be rejected as quickly as any notion that Romney has any chance for the Presidency in 2008.

”No more ‘free riding,’ if you will, where an individual says: ‘I’m not going to pay, even though I can afford it. I’m not going to get insurance, even though I can afford it. I’m instead going to just show up and make the taxpayers pay for me,’ ” Romney told reporters after a healthcare speech at the John F. Kennedy Library.

‘It’s the ultimate conservative idea, which is that people have responsibility for their own care, and they don’t look to government to take of them if they can afford to take care of themselves,” Romney told reporters after his speech.

This is not a conservative healthcare plan at all. It is government intrusion.

If you want a conservative healthcare plan, then go to a private, free market system with government vouchers for the truely indigent, poor and disabled.

“All around us, we see signs that government mandates and heavy-handed, command-and-control models of providing healthcare don’t work and people are abandoning those, and yet the governor seems to be running toward them,” said Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Gary Claxton — vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health policy — said individual mandates have been rejected before because Americans ”don’t like to tell individuals what to do.”

Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on health and social issues, said: ”The sticking point has always been the affordability of coverage. It’s one thing to tell people they have to buy it. If they can’t afford it, what do you do? Fine them? Put them in jail?”

Exactly!