For runs of 1 to a few dozen pieces of a board which would take me more than an hour to hand assemble, I just send my stuff to Advanced Assembly: http://www.aa-pcbassembly.com/

The hidden costs involved in assembling boards by hand are staggering, mostly in time. I've built an entire electronics lab, which is 3/4 storage. The buying, organizing, and storing of parts takes a big chunk of my time. If I were to set up a reflow oven, stock solder paste, etc., that would eat up more money and time. Consequently, I've become very skilled at building any type of SMD (except BGA) with just wire solder and an ordinary soldering iron. Then there is the hazardous waste management and chemical inventory overhead, and the entire day down the drain ordeals several times a year when I use the corporate application to do the waste tickets, which tells me I have to install a new Java version (different from the one in the corp. standard desktop--WTF?!?), which works after 4 hours of installing uninstalling and reinstalling, but then breaks all my other corp. apps (accounting) so I have to do the ordeal in reverse to reconcile my CC later.

Thus, even for smaller batches of fairly simple boards, I am going to be sending all my boards to places like Advanced Circuits. Even if it costs 50%-100% more than my time is worth, it's still worth it, because my co. will let me do it, and then I can use my time for stuff that actually matters for performance. I'm sick of building more than 1 of anything.

Ok, I'll spell it out for you:

Life of illegal pothead: Call up dealer, meet at parking lot, buy baggie. Go home and light up. Primary risk factor: contaminated pot, or bogus. Probability: very low. Bogus pot easily detected by experienced users. Consequence of smoking contaminated weed: hard to say. NOTE: The main risk of contamination comes from the US government spraying defoliants to kill marijuana fields in south and central America.

Life of legal pothead: Go to pot shop, buy baggie. Go home and light up. Primary risk factor: contaminated pot, or bogus. Probability: extremely low. Same potential consequences.

Life of illegal H addict:

Wake up in desperation. Try to score extremely expensive, hard to find substance in very dangerous neighborhood while beginning to suffer withdrawal syndrome. After scoring, enter filthy public restroom and draw water from toilet (yes, they actually do this sometimes, I've seen a video of it) into non-sterile needle and syringe. Inject drug without prepping injection site with alcohol.

Risk factors: Acquiring various life threatening infections such as HIV, Hepatitis, etc. due to use of non-sterile and/or shared needles, non-sterile water, and piercing unclean skin. Impurities in drug range from particulate matter which can clog capillaries, to toxic chemicals used to process the opium and not fully purified out, to cutting agents composed of whatever. Also, the concentration of the drug is completely unknown. Addict expects a certain strength. But if it turns out this batch is 66% pure instead of 33%, addict might die of overdose since ratio of therapeutic to fatal dose is only 2:1.

Most addicts can't hold a job and so resort to a life of crime not because it is impossible to function while high on H, but because it's illegal and stigmatized, so no one would employ an addict, and the lifestyle of constantly trying to score makes employability very difficult to maintain.

The illegal H addict is doomed to die of some miserable infectious disease, or overdose, if they don't get clean. Even if they do, a criminal record may prevent them from attaining full social acceptability. Since degree of social integration is a key predictor of tendency to become addicted to drugs, addict will always be at high risk of returning to drug use.

Life of legal H addict:

Wake up and get high using sterile needle obtained at pharmacy, and 100% pure heroin of pharmaceutical quality. No particulate matter, infectious microbes, no needle sharing, no chemical impurities, clean distilled water, use alcohol to clean skin to reduce infection risk to near zero.

Go to work at some job. The main limitation is that an H addict would be unable to operate heavy machinery or perform safety-critical roles. But an H addict on a maintenance dose (not completely zonked) of H can function about the same as someone who takes an anti-anxiety medication.

Purchase affordable heroin at pharmacy once a week for about $10/gram (100% pure), compared to $100/gram (10-90% concentration and highly impure) on the street. Low price and employability makes it unnecessary to steal to afford drug.

Risk factors: Not many. Driving would be a bad idea. But the drug and the injecting under sterile, controlled conditions will not cause a significant increase in risks of shortened life due to serious health consequences. This is not different than the situation of diabetes and other patients who need to routinely inject medicines. If the drug is legal, this will also motivate less use of injection. Addicts will choose to maintain on an oral dose, and only inject once in a while for a "rush."

NOTE: It may seem that 100% pure heroin would be more dangerous than weak, diluted street drug. This is false. The danger comes from variability of concentration, not the absolute concentration. If the concentration is known and fixed, the user can always draw the correct, safe dose.

Well I certainly didn't mean to imply that no one has or would ever become violent on PCP, without provocation.

If one becomes violent on PCP, is it the PCP, or would they have become violent anyway?

What is the probability of becoming violent on PCP vs. alcohol?

Ultimately, if you wish to use moral relativity arguments (which I don't think hold any water, except for revealing the contradictions in the logic of the whole of drug prohibition), then you have to say that alcohol should be illegal since some people have become violent on it.

"If you take your kids to the park and I strip naked and start fapping away in their face is that fine too?"

From the dawn of the human species about 1.5 million years ago, up to about 9000 years ago, masturbating or copulating in visible proximity to others would have garnered little attention except for possibly a few giggles.

The "in their face" part, is a straw man.

Why should children be shielded from seeing nature? What is so abhorrent about nature? How can the sight of nature be a crime? Sex and fapping are natural.

Should we shield children's eyes from seeing the moon, death, the ocean, dog feces, sunflowers, etc.? Why not?

Explain how the view of human genitalia is somehow fundamentally different from that of the sky, water, shit, or flowers? You can't. It's completely arbitrary. Why don't we cover up all the animals cocks and cunts so the little ones can't see them? Good luck. You'll have to exterminate the entire dog population, because those poor creatures just can't help themselves but to fuck (or try to) anything that moves.

Maybe the people who find it offensive are just jealous that they aren't getting any?

Of course, the problem isn't nature.

The problem is religion. Specifically, western monotheistic religion.

The danger with marijuana is with beginning users. One of the first few times I got high as a kid (which I probably would have never gotten into if it were legal, and not "rebellious"), I rode my bike down a long moderate incline at the high speed I was used to, but at night which I wasn't used to.

I was so spaced out, that I didn't notice the flat bed truck with I-beams sticking out behind it. An I-beam whizzed past my head just a few inches away at about 25-30 MPH. Would most likely have killed me if that had smacked me in the face.

I remember looking back and after suddenly realizing that I had just narrowly escaped death, I don't think I was very high anymore. This is one of the very weird things about cannabis euphoria, it can be almost completely suppressed in an instant if something triggers the amygdala.

There are serious problems with our current "statist" "police enforcement" approach to controlling DUI. It just isn't going to work with cannabis.

We need to re-think this, which is very difficult when everyone just keeps regurgitating the same old ideas.

I think that a possible solution lies in a significant de-regulation of the auto insurance industry. Let them charge steep premiums to DUI people, and NOT let them squirm out of paying out in full when those people screw up. If ins. cos. had more leeway to base premiums on behavior such as alcohol and drug use, then people who engage in stupid behavior would be either banished from the roads, or would have to pay much higher premiums. This would motivate ins. cos. to figure out ways to let people discount their behavior by agreeing to contractual terms to not DUI, or to use a breath tester built into the car, or who knows what. I don't know exactly how to fix this. But I'm sure there is a way to do it more effectively with market and incentive based systems rather than by criminalization and law enforcement.

Stopping people in road blocks and demanding breath, urine, blood, hair, semen, and DNA samples at gunpoint by police is NOT the solution, yet is exactly what we are going to get if we do not start thinking outside the box and find a new approach to this.

We really need self-driving cars. I used to think this was absurd. Now I'm converted.

How do you abuse a drug? By hitting it with a hammer? Trying to fuck it?

Yes. What we do not understand, and it takes a great deal of empathic aptitude to consider this honestly, is that it is possible for some people's neuro-biological constitution to basically preclude them from ever experiencing much happiness or anything other than misery, boredom, and despair, from normal, everyday activities and forms of entertainment that are societal norms.

So they seek out drugs. These are people that perhaps cannot be fixed. We can't just shoot them (as some would advocate) or we would reduce ourselves to barbarians.

I cannot fathom doing violence (criminalization of drugs) to such people to stop them from pursuing their chosen ends, as long as they aren't committing a crime against me. And the most likely cause for them to commit a criminal act is the high price of illegal drugs.

Why can't we just leave them alone, unless they reach out for help?

Well, it's also a problem if it harms your health, and I am forced to pay for your heathcare! If it was entirely YOUR responsibility to pay for your health care (as it should be), then it wouldn't be a problem. And a lot more people would voluntarily give up smoking!

You are brainwashed with completely false propaganda.

You can live a normal lifetime addicted to pure heroin, even if injected, if using sterile needles and proper procedures, and suffer practically no adverse health effects. You can even hold a job. Just not one involving safety-critical activities like operating heavy machinery.

The same cannot be said about tobacco. It is far more harmful than heroin.

Even meth isn't so bad. If it were legal, more people would consume it orally and get educated about how to maintain their nutrition and avoid destructive binges and loss of sleep. They would become workaholics and help the economy. Over-doing it with meth for a long period of time IS harmful, but I'm certain that if it were legal, the harm would drop dramatically compared to what we have now with impure garbage consumed by people who are forced into a criminal lifestyle to get it, which is the reason for much of the harm. It is fully possible also to be a meth addict, yet manage it so that it isn't harmful to the point of severely shortening one's life or damaging to one's mental health.

Meth and cocaine addiction are actually self-limiting for most people. I went berzerk with coke for a few years, then one day decided that I would never touch the crap again because I never wanted to feel that depressed again during the come down. And that was the end of it. The same thing happened with meth. Ultimately, I decided to never take ANY rec. drugs again, including alcohol. They just aren't the answer for me anymore, and have remained out of my life for 26 years.

The hardest thing to quit though, was smoking. Fortunately I did quit, because that would probably have killed me with cancer. Same cannot be said about heroin, meth, cocaine, marijuana, LSD, or any other banned drug.

Alcohol can give you cirrhosis, and cause life threatening seizures upon withdrawal.

It's totally f*ing surreal, that the truly most harmful drugs: alcohol and tobacco, are the only ones that are legal! What a hell-hole of nonsensical contradictions we have created.

"One drug that I think probably *should* be illegal is PCP. OTOH, I doubt that having it illegal is a big problem. Few people appear to be attracted to it. The reason that I think it probably should be illegal is that reports are that it causes people to become excessively violent without warning."

1. If other, less intense drugs were legal, the attractiveness of PCP would be even lower.

2. It is highly likely that the so called reports that it causes people to become excessively violent are because, being illegal, people were confronted by police while on PCP, and freaked out. If PCP were legal and you didn't get arrested just for acting odd, then these people would not have freaked out and acted violently. Thus, the popular beliefs about PCP heavily distorted by confirmation bias. They are basically pure propaganda.

3. In a world of legal drugs where you can purchase PCP at a pharmacy or chemical supplier simply by signing a waiver that relieves the seller of any liability for the effects of your taking it, then information about the REAL effects, dangers, and value of doing and particular drug would be more freely available and factual. It is unlikely that PCP would be frequently used except by a tiny fraction of the population.

"heroin is 2x as physically harmful to the user as alcohol or tobacco..."

BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL!!!

Bingo. Thank goodness, there's someone with a brain.

Addiction is a problem only to the extent that we define it to be a problem and then as a result do everything in our power to make it as big a problem as possible to justify the definition, which is really rooted either in aesthetics, or theistic (and false) world view.

You think wanting to execute drug dealers and criminalizing drug use, which means police shooting people, beating people up, dragging them off to prison where they face a high likelihood of being assaulted and raped, and having their family finances liquidated for legal fees, is not being an angry and violent person, huh?

This is why statism is such an insidious poison to civilization. It makes people able to delude themselves into believing they are well intentioned when they argue for applying state power (which is violent coercion) to accomplish societal ends that they deem proper. Someone is going to be dragged away in the night. Someone is going to be beaten to death in prison. Some child is going to loose an imperfect but still sincerely loving and willing to die for that child parent because they have a behavior that displeases others.

Criminalization must be reserved only for those acts that by their very nature deprive others of life, liberty, and/or property. Period!

So we should execute and imprison people because of what you would "rather want to see?"

And what if a significant proportion of society decides they don't want to see what you like to do?

Notice how it's always "decriminalization" rather than legalization. The problem with this is that by keeping the production and distribution illegal, it retains the black market which is where much of the crime occurs. Also, this continues to justify the police apparatus that attempts to "interdict." Finally, the addicts are still going to be getting black market drugs of unknown and frequently unsafe composition. Thus, the harm is not fully minimized. The solution is legalization. Even with legalization, every effort will be made to fully corporatize it, by "regulating" it to high heaven. Pun intended! However, decriminalization recommended by an important entity such as WHO is a step in a better direction than what we have now.