Free Republic

Marijuana legalization advocates in Oregon have launched a $2 million-plus ad campaign starring a 33-year police veteran. The new ad, embedded below, features Pete Tutmark, a former patrol sergeant and sheriff’s deputy. Tutmark criticizes what he calls a “broken” system that diverts resources from important crime-solving to drug arrests and urges his fellow Oregonians to vote yes on measure 91 this fall, which would legalize and regulate recreational marijuana use. “Last year in Oregon, there were 13,000 citations and arrests for marijuana,” he says in the ad. “That takes time, time better spent solving murders, rape cases, finding missing children....

The number of pre-teenage girls on the Pill has increased fivefold in the past decade, shocking figures reveal. Last year doctors prescribed the oral contraceptive to more than 1,000 girls aged 11 and 12, usually without their parents' knowledge. Another 200 aged between 11 and 13 were given long-term implanted or injectable contraceptive devices on the NHS. Family campaigners said the figures showed how children were being sexualised at an ever younger age and raised disturbing questions about the prevalence of underage sex. Although the age of consent in Britain is 16, GPs are allowed to prescribe the Pill to...

ONDON, July 5 — The House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, resolved today to limit, but not forbid, the right of parents to hit their children, changing a 144-year-old law that gave parents the right to strike children as "reasonable chastisement" for misbehavior.The vote represented a victory for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who opposes an outright ban on hitting and supported an alternative proposal for physical punishment that caused neither physical nor mental harm.For those who oppose punishing children by hitting them, the debate surrounding the vote was part of a campaign to secure for children the same...

When Chad Taylor noticed his son was apparently experiencing serious side effects from Ritalin prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he decided to take the boy off the medication. Now, he says he may be accused of child abuse. In February, 12-year-old Daniel began displaying some symptoms that his father suspected were related to the use of Ritalin. "He was losing weight, wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating," Taylor told ABC News affiliate KOAT-TV in New Mexico. "[He] just wasn't Daniel." So Taylor took Daniel off Ritalin, against his doctor's wishes. And though Taylor noticed Daniel was sleeping better and his appetite...

OTTAWA (CP) - The Supreme Court of Canada is set to decide whether a parental smack on a childish bottom - a disciplinary measure specifically permitted by federal law for more than a century - is a violation of the Charter of Rights. The high court has scheduled this Friday as judgment day in a constitutional challenge mounted by children's rights advocates who want the so-called spanking law struck down. "We're looking forward to the decision," says lawyer Paul Schabas. "It's been a long battle." Schabas and co-counsel Cheryl Milne represent the Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law,...

<p>LONDON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Britain's government is moving toward outlawing the spanking of children, even if it is done by parents in their own home.</p> <p>Officials plan to tack an amendment onto the Child Protection Bill to outlaw parental spanking because too many parents cover up abuse by claiming their children's bruises are the result of normal discipline, the Sunday Observer reported.</p>

MAKING CHILDREN WARDS OF THE STATEDate: Friday, May 30 @ 06:09:27 Topic Letters to Editor THREE- AND FOUR-YEAR OLD KINDERGARTEN: MAKING CHILDREN WARDS OF THE STATE Margaret Brogley 5/30/03 Dear Editor: Has your state or community begun promoting the enrollment of three- and four-year-old children? The Van Buren/Fort Smith area has -- big time. Our daily newspaper, the Southwest Times Record, 5/19/03, had a huge article about it and was so convincing that I wanted to rush right down to enroll the three- and four-year-olds that I don¹t have for fear I would miss a good thing! The title...