Deserving Life: How Judicial Application of Medical Amnesty Laws Perpetuates Substance Use Stigma

To combat the continued devastation wrought by the opioid crisis in the United States, forty-eight states have passed medical amnesty (or “Good Samaritan”) laws. These laws provide varying forms of protection from criminal punishment for certain individuals if medical assistance is sought at the scene of an overdose. Thus far, the nascent scholarly conversation on medical amnesty has focused on the types of statutory protections available and the effectiveness of these statutes. To summarize, although medical amnesty laws have helped combat drug overdose, the statutes are replete with arbitrary limitations that cabin their life-saving potential. This Note extends the dialogue on medical amnesty in two ways. First, it examines how judges, in applying these laws, can either frustrate or promote their life-saving purpose. Second, this Note connects the conversation on medical amnesty laws to the broader context they have entered—namely, the United States’ troubled history with the criminalization of addiction. Medical amnesty laws reflect a legislative interest in health over punishment. Today, substance use disorder is recognized as a medical, neurological issue and the overdose crisis is recognized as a public health phenomenon. This Note argues that, both in statutory language and judicial application, gaps in the medical amnesty response stray from this reality and instead reflect the stigmatizing, racist normative view promoted during the War on Drugs—that substance use is a moral failing, symptomatic of a lack of personal responsibility. This Note’s key point is that, as long as legislators and judges fail to acknowledge, interrogate, and learn from the United States’ prior failures in responding to addiction, fatal gaps will continue to exist both in medical amnesty laws and in the broader response to the drug overdose crisis

Oh Promise Me

Oh promise me that some day you and I will take our love together to some sky, Where we can be alone and faith renew, and find the hollows where those flowers grew, those first sweet violets of early spring, Which come in whispers, thrill us both, and sing of love unspeakable that is to be; Oh promise me, oh promise me! Oh promise me, that you will take my hand, the most unworthy in this lonely land, and let me sit beside you, in your eyes Seeing the vision of our paradise, Hearing God\u27s message while the organ rolls, its mighty music to our very souls, no love less perfect than a life with thee; Oh promise me, oh promise me

Synergistic ecoclimate teleconnections from forest loss in different regions structure global ecological responses

ABSTRACT: Forest loss in hotspots around the world impacts not only local climate where loss occurs, but also influences climate and vegetation in remote parts of the globe through ecoclimate teleconnections. The magnitude and mechanism of remote impacts likely depends on the location and distribution of forest loss hotspots, but the nature of these dependencies has not been investigated. We use global climate model simulations to estimate the distribution of ecologically-relevant climate changes resulting from forest loss in two hotspot regions: western North America (wNA), which is experiencing accelerated dieoff, and the Amazon basin, which is subject to high rates of deforestation. The remote climatic and ecological net effects of simultaneous forest loss in both regions differed from the combined effects of loss from the two regions simulated separately, as evident in three impacted areas. Eastern South American Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) increased due to changes in seasonal rainfall associated with Amazon forest loss and changes in temperature related to wNA forest loss. Eurasia’s GPP declined with wNA forest loss due to cooling temperatures increasing soil ice volume. Southeastern North American productivity increased with simultaneous forest loss, but declined with only wNA forest loss due to changes in VPD. Our results illustrate the need for a new generation of local-to-global scale analyses to identify potential ecoclimate teleconnections, their underlying mechanisms, and most importantly, their synergistic interactions, to predict the responses to increasing forest loss under future land use change and climate change

2016 International Land Model Benchmarking (ILAMB) Workshop Report

As earth system models (ESMs) become increasingly complex, there is a growing need for comprehensive and multi-faceted evaluation of model projections. To advance understanding of terrestrial biogeochemical processes and their interactions with hydrology and climate under conditions of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, new analysis methods are required that use observations to constrain model predictions, inform model development, and identify needed measurements and field experiments. Better representations of biogeochemistryclimate feedbacks and ecosystem processes in these models are essential for reducing the acknowledged substantial uncertainties in 21st century climate change projections

Oh promise me, that someday you and I will take our love [first line]

Performance Medium: Piano and Voice (with lyrics

Oh, promise me that someday you and I will take our love [first line]

Performance Medium: Piano and Voice (with lyrics

Oh, promise me that someday you and I will take our love [first line]

Performance Medium: Piano and Voice (with lyrics