Since the tragic events at Columbine High School in April 1999, the terms “active shooter” and “active shooter on campus” have become part of the language of law enforcement, public and private school systems, and the news media. Following the mass shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in April 2007, the term “active shooter” quickly became part of the ...

Precipitous declines in Africa's native fauna and flora are recognized, but few comprehensive records of these changes have been compiled. Here, we present population trends for African elephants in the 6,213,000 km² Sudano-Sahelian range of West and Central Africa assessed through the analysis of aerial and ground surveys conducted over the past 4 decades. These surveys are focused on the best...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether national drug control laws ensure that opioid drugs are available for medical and scientific purposes, as intended by the 1972 Protocol amendment to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. METHODS The authors examined whether the text of a convenience sample of drug laws from 15 countries: (i) acknowledged that opioid drugs are indispensable for the relief...

OBJECTIVE To understand associations of punitive policies to the population prevalence of injection drug users and to HIV seroprevalence among injectors. DESIGN AND METHODS A lagged-cross-sectional analysis of metropolitan statistical area data. Estimates of drug injectors per capita and of HIV seroprevalence among injectors in 89 large US metropolitan areas were regressed on three measures o...

OBJECTIVE Fortification of food-grade (edible) salt with iodine is recommended as a safe, cost-effective and sustainable strategy for the prevention of iodine-deficiency disorders. The present paper examines the legislative framework for salt iodization in Asian countries. DESIGN We reviewed salt iodization legislation in thirty-six countries in Asia and the Pacific. We obtained copies of exi...

Should criminal law principles be applied to life insurance claims made by the beneficiaries of an insured person who commits suicide? Any discussion of the criminal law and the M'Naghten test of criminal responsibility, as sometimes used by the courts and recommended by the authors, obfuscates the resolution of contemporary issues.

After three-quarters of a century of prohibition, Australia's cannabis industry is the same financial size as her gold industry, twice the size of her wine industry and three-quarters the size of the nation's beer industry [1, 24 June 2000 no. 32]. More Australians consume cannabis than any other illicit drug. Of the 15 million Australians aged 14 years and over, 5.7 million report having ever ...

Section 2 of the 1957 Homicide Act is indefensible: the concept of 'mental responsibility' is a hybrid which turns the psychiatrist witness either into a thirteenth juryman or a spare barrister. But reform does not lie along the lines suggested by the Butler Committee or the Criminal Law Revision Committee. The latter leaves the jury with insufficient guidance; the former returns to the bad eig...