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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY BANSAN
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2015
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opinion
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to (785)289-8351 or at kansan.com
No one wants to hear you rant on something right before class gets out. It can wait!
Brownbackistan ha ha... That was clever, Kansas.
I get why they named the new halls what they did, but I was really hoping for Elmer and Burton halls for McCollum.
FFA OF THE DAY To-go coffee cups are really just portable wine glasses.
Is there a candy worse than DOTS?
No. The answer is no.
My favorite cereal isn't being sold anymore and I've just about had it with this life!!! Bring back my cereal!
KU Babes indeed, power to them.
The amount of candy I received from my mom on Valentine's Day is daunting... I don't think I'll be able to finish this anytime soon.
Mountaineers, you don't rush the court when you're ranked!
If we beat Kentucky in the national championship game, I will drink my own urine.
We don't ALL root for Mario. Luigi all the way!
The worst part about being forgetful is getting home with all your groceries and then finding out you forgot the one item you actually needed.
Gained 100 lbs. after splurging on delicious foods for Fat Tuesday.
When you are in line to get food and
you realize you left your wallet at
home... #ultimatefail
In other news: I massively over-caffeinated this morning. Everything is vibrating and I can SEE THROUGH TIME!!
When your apartment complex hasn't cleared their parking lots and you almost slide and hit another person's car.
Haven't had Chipotle in a few days and I'm starting to go through withdrawals.
Trying to read a whole book for class by 3 PM. Can I do it? No. No I can't
I just want to be a part of KU
Babes because it's a cute group
name. Sorry, can't weightlift for
s#*+!
Take me back in time so I can live through the 80's pleaseee. Looks so fun.
DRUG LEGALIZATION
PRO CON
Antidrug laws racist, violent and ineffective
Drugs — especially "hard drugs" such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines — are thought of as abhorrent substances, and for many legitimate reasons. There is no doubt that many drugs affect relationships and are harmful to the body. However, in my view, the systemic problems caused by drug criminalization dwarf the harm caused by the drugs themselves.
Antidrug laws actively undermine justice, as these laws result in the disproportionate jailing of minorities. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, minorities are "far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites." The Alliance also says that black people make up 37 percent of arrests for drug offenses, despite comprising only 14 percent of drug users. Beyond that, a black male arrested for possession is likely to spend roughly the same amount of time in prison as a white male would for a violent offense. If drug laws were eliminated, a prop of a racist justice system would be removed.
Antidrug laws also fly in the face of rudimentary economics. By making a broad swath of drugs illegal, the federal government creates a black market with exorbitantly high prices, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. As any microeconomics textbook
will tell you, high profits attract businesses to a market. In the case of illegal drugs, these "businesses" unfortunally tend to be violent and ruthless cartels.
What would happen if all drugs were legalized? Prices would plummet as the black market disbanded. An example of this can already be seen in the United States, where the growing wave of marijuana legalization has caused the wholesale price of cannabis imported from Mexico to collapse from $100 to less than $25 a kilogram, according to the Washington Post. Dramatic decreases in prices would dismantle most incentives for cartels to form and exist as production rapidly declined, as shown in Mexico with cannabis. Violence along the southérn border would also plummet.
The United States' War on Drugs has been an utter failure. Despite the federal government spending more than $51 billion a year to combat drugs, the National High School Senior Survey reports that 85 percent of high school seniors remark that marijuana is "easy to obtain." According to a 2010 article in the British Journal of Criminology, governments could be vastly more effective in combating drug use — and save money while doing so — by decriminalizing all drugs and funneling savings and new revenues into rehabilitation. An excellent case study of this would be Portugal, which pursued this very policy and saw drug prices collapse, usage decrease in adolescents and prison overcrowding ease.
The time has come to move beyond the elementary thinking of "just saying no" to drugs, and to instead say "no" to a racist, costly and counter-productive battle against the drug market.
John Olson is a sophomore from Wichita studying economics
Making hard drugs legal is unnecessary
Anissa Fritz
@anissafritz
The War on Drugs is not a new development; however, the support for the legaliza-
the support for the legalization of the drugs that the government has been fighting against has recently become a trendy epidemic. Since the legalization of marijuana, many have advocated for the legalization of all drugs in an effort to reduce crime and make drug use "safer." However, legalizing hard drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin would hinder our society. The use of drugs, especially highly addictive ones, could collapse the framework of our society. If drug use became legal across the country, someone who takes drugs wouldn't be seen as someone breaking the rules, nor would they be seen as irresponsible. Why would anyone get to work on time, or even show up to work at all, when they could get high and forget that money even matters?
Cocaine-effects.com is a website devoted to the analysis of cocaine's short- and long-term effects on the human brain and body. At first glance it appears the use of cocaine boosts individuals' productivity, with the short-term side effects being increased energy and mental awareness. Cocaine seems like it wouldn't be a threat, and certain movies, like "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Blow," portray the drug as driving users' lives into a (tempo-arilly) better state.
However, this is the real world not a movie in which everyone is portrayed as Leonardo DiCaprio. Cocaine-effects.com also includes the long-term effects of cocaine use, which is where the real problems lie. These effects include irritability, restlessness, auditory hallucinations and mood disturbances. It doesn't take a doctor to see how the effects
of cocaine can easily inhibit and disturb an individual from doing normal, everyday tasks.
"JUST BECAUSE MARIJUANA HAS BECOME LEGAL DOES NOT RIGHTFULLY PAVE THE WAY FOR ALL DRUGS TO BE MADE LEGAL... TOO MUCH OF A GOOD HIGH COULD CAUSE OUR ULTIMATE LOW."
There are several other hard drugs that are just as dangerous, if not more, as cocaine. A 2014 Washington Post article titled, "100 Americans die from drug overdose each day. How do we stop that?" revealed that overdosing is the number one cause of accidental death in the U.S., "accounting for more deaths than traffic fatalities or gun homicides and suicides." These types of drugs are deadly, and addictive drugs such as these should not be made legal in our society for many reasons, but this reason alone should seal the argument.
Marijuana's intensity and effects are completely different than hard drugs'in comparison, and because they are so different, they should be treated as such. Just because marijuana has become legal does not rightfully pave the way for all drugs to be made legal. In our society, too much of a good high could cause our ultimate low.
Anissa Fritz is a sophomore from Dallas studying journalism and sociology
All-female 'Ghostbusters' is important
Victoria Calderon
@WriterVictoriaC
raul reig's all-female "Ghostbusters" reboot is now a reality. The new ghost-fighting team will consist of Melissa McCarthy, who has officially signed on to the project, along with "Saturday Night Live" alum Kristen Wiig and current "SNL"-ers Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The confirmation of a Ghostbusters reboot by director Paul Feig has many fans excited, and the subsequent announcement that the main characters would be an all-female cast has gathered even more support outside of the original fan base. Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon were cast as the four leads, which will garner interest from a wide variety of viewers. However, the reactions of some disgruntled fans proves that an all-female Ghostbusters cast is exactly what Hollywood and the United States needs.
BuzzFeed did an article after the announcement featuring negative tweets from men about the female-centric cast of the reboot such as: "I'm ok with reversing course and doing female ghostbusters, but why do you need all four of them to be women?," "All female cast burns me out. A gender mixed team with a female lead wouldn't bug me but this?", and my personal favorite, "Only soccer moms and feminist bimbos
watch that trash."
The tweet reflects a larger, but less evident problem that sexism poses in our society. Women may have been granted the right to vote, run for office and other political rights, but society still undervalue women's abilities. Our culture is still very much androcentric, which is even more obvious with this tweet. The man who wrote this tweet is fine with allowing women to have the same rights as him, so long as he gets to choose what they are. But when it comes to
But the most striking tweet in the mix said: "Why are they remaking Ghostbusters with 4 women? I'm all for equal rights but come on!"
recreating a male-dominated franchise into a female-dominated one, equal opportunity is swept under the rug.
This problem also affects women in the workplace, particularly in Hollywood, which has come to the forefront of public conversation after the Sony hack revealed the scope of sexism in their company. However, sexism extends far beyond Sony. New York Times columnist Manohla Dargis said that, "by the end of this year, the six major studios (not including their art-house divisions) will have released three movies directed by women... The researcher Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study
or women in Television and Film, found that in 2013. female characters made up just 15 percent of protagonists and 30 percent of all speaking characters in the top 100 grossing movies." Women make up half of the population of the world, yet they lack proper representation in the media. Women are second-class citizens in Hollywood. How these women are portrayed in movies, TV shows and music also shape our cultural attitudes, which in turn contributes to the backlash the concept of this reboot has caused.
their aesthetic visions and personal choices, and doubts about whether they can hack it in that male-dominated world. Dargis said.
"Sexism [in Hollywood] often works like a virus that spreads through ideas, gossip and stories about women,
Hollywood desperately needs more movies like the new Ghostbusters if we're ever going to progress. We need this movie to aid the movement away from a patriarchy that undervalues women's contributions to society.
Victoria Calderon is a sophomore from Liberal studying English and political science
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