I think this is the key. As FFF said, it's interesting that the apparent activation energy to flip between active and inactive is fairly small. The good news is that it should be 'easy' to treat runoff such that you really do destroy the bioactivity - you probably don't need large amounts of energy to do so. The bad news is that dumping metric shit tons of the stuff in a small, slow flowing creek isn't going to solve the problem and you will have to build a treatment plant.

Farmers hate that.

What some aspiring organic chemist needs to do is figure out a low energy synthesis between hormone disrupters and similar molecules and some chemical that has psychoactive properties. From my hazy memory of organic chem, I think that the indole nucleus is used in both hormones and amphetamine like drugs. Breaking bad on steroids, so to speak.

When you raise your middle finger?

You will be encouraged to think for yourself and explore other avenues of thought (at least theoretically, "thinking" and Twitter really shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence).

Al Jazeera has been making quiet inroads into the "Western World" for the past 5 years. That's who CNN should be afraid of since they are both playing the same game.

Actually it does differ. The 'Red Terror' (Socialist / Communist / ????) from the 1960's had a message they were trying to impart to the proletariat. Arise and shake off your chains. The Mujahedin / Muslim Radicals want to convert other non aligned Muslims to the cause (and then wipe out everyone else). There are different targets to the message and qualitatively and quantitatively different styles to the broadcast of the message.

I think most Westerners don't see that because blatant hate speech / incitement to violence is essentially heavily censored and things aren't so bad in (most) of the West as to have a huge pool of angry (usually) young men with nothing to lose.

TL;DR - YOU are not the target of these ads.

These are not the photons you are looking for.....

No, I'm sure Obama knows about it and either feels that he can't overcome whatever political support the DEA has or just doesn't care enough to get entangled in the controversy (likely the latter).

Remember, there still are lots of people who, if they saw 'Reefer Madness' would believe that they were looking at a documentary.

And yes, we need to scale back the DEA - but the problem is how to get enough political capital to do so. Won't happen for quite some time.

The Marijuana issue may indeed be the turning point. A mild, relatively harmless drug that has been demonized for years and that could be legalized giving states a wonderful new tax base and thousands of employment opportunities. Money is going to win over tired dogma sooner or later.

She's lucky and likely a 'model' patient (no obvious psychiatric illness, acts rather responsibly, has a defined condition). For many people in chronic pain, treatment is very problematic. First off, opiates aren't great drugs. Their efficacy wears off, they have lots of other nasty side effects, the controlled aspect of them makes travel and work difficult.

Lots off doctors have kinda bizarre worries about lots of things - lawyers, DEA agents, hospital administrators. I've personally worked with DEA field people in the past. They've been appropriate, professional, polite. The .50 caliber semi automatics seemed a bit overkill for the situation, but hey, whatever floats your boat. But, like many other large institutions, the people upstairs aren't the people downstairs and you really have to wonder about where the DEA's guidance comes from.

You can't possibly write an 'anonymous' prescription. The whole idea of a prescription drug is that it is tied to a provider and a patient.

That's what your friendly neighborhood drug dealer is for.

The feds will fall back on the Interstate Commerce Clause. That's one thing that has them upset with the attempts by several states to legalize marijuana. Since it can be grown and consumed locally, the Interstate Clause doesn't necessarily apply.

Not that it will stop them. If medical insurance is a bit of Interstate Commerce, than pretty much anything is - 'Hey - that air molecule crossed a state border. We're in charge now....'

The DEA jumped the shark a while back. If marijuana is a Schedule I drug (no accepted medical use, high probability of harm) and Marinol (concentrated, synthetic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana) is a Schedule III (Like low dose hydrocodone - Vicodin) then something's pretty wacky.

They have no interest in doing anything but increasing their fiefdom. Which is a shame. There is a complex interplay between useful and dangerous drugs and uncontrolled drug abuse is dangerous (witness the bath salts issue). But no one wants to work the with the DEA since administratively they're still mired in the Reefer Madness mindset.

The executive branch, ie. Obama, needs to slap on some testosterone patches (a Schedule III drug) and knock some upper level bureaucrats silly. There really is no possible law enforcement reason for this. If you are looking for the few doctors that really are the bad apples, the pill mill guys, then all you need to do is track the docs prescription volumes. Start looking at the folks, say two standard deviations from the mean. That should give you enough homework. You don't need to drill down to the individual patient level - that's not where the public health issue is.

Are you kidding? If that happened, then the small fraction of the US that doesn't think the FDA is a Big Pharma plant will get all riled up because the AYERABS and COMMIES will control their meds.

Which, on reflection, might not be such a bad thing ...

From the Countermeasures Department, Evil Dictator Removal Group:

We find your remote jammers, land some special ops troops and jack into your control systems.

Have a nice day. What's left of it, anyway.

So you want an app that's controlling an IV pump to be written to the same standards as your average fart app?

That's what this is about. The FDA neither has the time nor energy to look at every stupid 'medical' app in the store. They're only going to deal with ones that have an interaction to hardware that can cause problems or if the app is really, egregariously touting some medical benefit that it can't possibly provide.

Try logging in. Then we'll talk.