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All Entries in the "Illegal Drugs" Category
Crackdown Fails: There’s Still Hash In Copenhagen
Six years later, an expensive and brutal crackdown has only produced one real change in the hash district: Now the dealers use tables instead of booths.
It was six years ago this week that Danish police held their first full-scale raid on Pusher Street, the world famous road in Copenhagen’s hippie district, Christiania, where people openly buy hashish.
The hash raids were the result of the government’s decision to crack down hard on the area’s hash trade. But today, both police and politicians admit the trade still thrives on the street, if in a slightly more discreet way.
Full Story: Crackdown Fails: There’s Still Hash In Copenhagen | NEWS JUNKIE POST.
U.S. Turns a Blind Eye to Opium in Afghan Town
KABUL, Afghanistan — The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf in Marja has put American and NATO commanders in the unusual position of arguing against opium eradication, pitting them against some Afghan officials who are pushing to destroy the harvest.
From Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on down, the military’s position is clear: “U.S. forces no longer eradicate,” as one NATO official put it. Opium is the main livelihood of 60 to 70 percent of the farmers in Marja, which was seized from Taliban rebels in a major offensive last month. American Marines occupying the area are under orders to leave the farmers’ fields alone.
“Marja is a special case right now,” said Cmdr. Jeffrey Eggers, a member of the general’s Strategic Advisory Group, his top advisory body. “We don’t trample the livelihood of those we’re trying to win over.”
Full Story: U.S. Turns a Blind Eye to Opium in Afghan Town – NYTimes.com.
My Experience with a Psychedelic Plant That Thousands Have Used for Release from Severe Addictions
Before Clare gives me the ibogaine she has me write out my intention for my journey, what I hope to get from the experience, and whatever questions I may want to ask the iboga spirits. She takes my intention and places it on a small altar she has built with candles and feathers. She runs my body over with burning sage and then spreads the smoke around the room, clearing spiritual energy and opening up the space for the iboga spirits to enter and do their work.
She has me lie down on the bed. Next to me on the pillow are a set of headphones hooked up to an ipod, and a special kind of visor allegedly designed by famedd psychedelic and spiritual artist Alex Grey that improves psychedelic visions. Clare takes my hand into hers.
“As part of the treatment plan here, I make a life contract with all of my clients. Sometimes the medicine will open a door to the other side and it will tell you you can go into it if you want. I make my clients promise me they’ll stay here in this life. They came here to live, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do. I know you’re not in that place, but I gotta say it anyway. Who knows what you may want to do once you’re up there.”
Full Story: My Experience with a Psychedelic Plant That Thousands Have Used for Release from Severe Addictions | Drugs | AlterNet.
How Many Mexican Drug War Deaths Can We Attribute to U.S. Pot Laws?
It’s time to remove the production and distribution of marijuana out of the hands of violent criminal enterprises and into the hands of licensed businesses.
It was less than one year ago when acting U.S. DEA administrator Michelle Leonhart publicly declared that the escalating violence on the U.S./Mexico border should be viewed as a sign of the “success” of America’s drug war strategies.
“Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very courageous Mexican counterparts are having,” said Michele Leonhart, who was recently nominated by President Obama to be the agency’s full time director. “The cartels are acting out like caged animals, because they are caged animals.”
Well, if the DEA’s chief talking head thought that some 6,300 drug cartel-related murders in 2008 was an indication of progress, one can only imagine that she believes that this weekend’s south-of-the-border killing spree — which included the murder of a pregnant U.S. official and members of her family — must be downright victorious.
Full Story: How Many Mexican Drug War Deaths Can We Attribute to U.S. Pot Laws? | Drugs | AlterNet.
Slowly, states are lessening limits on marijuana
James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.
“I ask kids all the time, and they’ll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government,” he said, noting that drug dealers don’t ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.
So Gray — who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican— switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana
Full Story: Slowly, states are lessening limits on marijuana – USATODAY.com.
A Generational Moment for Drug Policy Reformers
John Lennon’s voice is echoing somewhere over Texas tonight.
That’s because a moment has arrived — a very special moment, the likes of which drug policy reformers have not seen in a generation.
It all centers around a man named Henry Walter Wooten, a 54-year-old Texas resident who will likely be spending the rest of his life behind bars. That’s because a jury in Tyler sentenced him to 35 years in jail after he was caught in possession of just over a quarter pound of marijuana. The prosecutor originally sought 99 years, due to the man’s prior felony convictions in the 80s and his proximity to a day care center, deep within one of the dreaded “drug free zones” where legal penalties become much more stiff.
Thirty-five years. That’s 420 months. This jury, this court and this prosecutor are sending a message directly to marijuana consumers the nation over.
Full Story: A Generational Moment for Drug Policy Reformers – Stephen C. Webster – Brave New Hooks – True/Slant.
Let’s Be Smart and Regulate Synthetic Marijiuana ‘K2,’ and Drop the Prohibitionist Attitude
Lawmakers have a chance to learn from the failures of marijuana prohibition and respond to K2 with enlightened policy.
The recent emergence in the United States of “K2,” sometimes called synthetic marijuana, is testing lawmakers to see if they’ve been paying attention to the failures of marijuana prohibition and will respond to K2 with enlightened policy.
The first stories on K2, or “Spice,” broke out with headlines labeling the mixture of herbs and spices, which are treated with a synthetic compound, as “fake pot.” K2 was virtually unknown until the media hyped up its presence at tobacco and novelty shops.
Under U.S. law, and in all 50 states, the herbal product is legal, and also unregulated. People who have tried K2 often report psychoactive effects that are comparable to marijuana, but notably less pleasurable.
Full Story: Let’s Be Smart and Regulate Synthetic Marijiuana ‘K2,’ and Drop the Prohibitionist Attitude | Drugs | AlterNet.
Anti-Pot Propaganda As Stupid As Ever — Yet Our Alarmist Media Continues to Hype It
Once again mainstream media are running wild with the absurd notion that marijuana use causes psychological problems, despite much evidence to the contrary.
Once again members of the mainstream media are running wild with the notion that marijuana use causes schizophrenia and psychosis.
To add insult to injury, this latest dose of reefer rhetoric comes only days after investigators in the United Kingdom reported in the prestigious scientific journal Addiction that the available evidence in support of this theory is “neither very new, nor by normal criteria, particularly compelling.” (Predictably, the conclusions of that study went all together unnoticed by the mainstream press.)
Yet today’s latest alarmist report, like those studies touting similar claims before it, fails to account for the following: If, as the authors of this latest study suggest, cannabis use is a cause of mental illness (and schizophrenia in particular), then why have diagnosed incidences of schizophrenia not paralleled rising trends in cannabis use over time?
Full Story: Anti-Pot Propaganda As Stupid As Ever — Yet Our Alarmist Media Continues to Hype It | | AlterNet.
How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory
Visitors to Monticello don’t learn how Jefferson cultivated poppies, and his personal opium use may as well never have happened.
The following is an excerpt from Jim Hogshire’s “Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication” (Feral House, 2009).
Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson’s famous estate.
Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson’s crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.
The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the hell out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of “Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppies.” The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.
Employees even gathered the store’s souvenir T-shirts — with silkscreened photos of Monticello poppies on the chest — and burned them. Nobody told them to do this, but, under the circumstances, no one dared risk the threat.
Full Story: How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory | Drugs | AlterNet.
Mexican drug gangs increasingly target US public lands
Not far from Yosemite’s waterfalls and in the middle of California’s redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
“Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they’ve gone to mega, monster gardens,” said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have “supersized” the marijuana trade.
Full Story: Mexican drug gangs increasingly target US public lands | Raw Story.
Pot scare of the week: “may cause psychosis”
Here’s your alarmist marijuana headline for the week (from Businessweek): “Marijuana Use Can Up Psychosis Risk”
What researchers found, actually, was an association between tokers who start blazing heavily at a young age, and an increased likelihood they will develop a serious mental illness.
And, of course, we’ve known about the comorbidity of substance abuse and psychoses for many years.
But you can’t blame the media for going overboard, this time: The Australian scientists who found the association between heavy, early use of pot and psychotic symptoms (such as hallucinations), themselves suggest a causal link:
Full Story: Pot scare of the week: “may cause psychosis” | The Sci-Tech Heretic.
Pot use among seniors rises
In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.
Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and '70s grows older.
The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Full Story: Pot use among seniors rises | Raw Story.
Marijuana Provides Pain Relief, New Study Says
The first U.S. clinical trials in more than two decades on the medical benefits of marijuana confirm pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday.
Igor Grant, a psychiatrist who directs the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego, said five studies funded by the state involved volunteers who were randomly given real marijuana or placebos to determine if the herb provided relief not seen from traditional medicines.
“There is good evidence now that cannabinoids may be either an adjunct or a first-line treatment,” Grant said at a news conference where he presented the findings.
Full Story Marijuana Provides Pain Relief, New Study Says.
Hypocritical Obama and Corporate Media Are Agressively Undermining Pot Normalization
While marijuana is more mainstream than ever, legalization still faces backlash from the powers that be.
Fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes; 13 more have medical marijuana ballot or legislative measures on the horizon. And medical pot has paved the way for all-out legalization; for the first time ever, polls consistently show that a majority of Americans — albeit a slim one — believe marijuana should be legalized for adults over 18.
Drug reform observers and activists are excitedly awaiting the results of the Tax Cannabis ballot initiative in California this November. While it is not the first time electorates will vote on marijuana legalization (Nevada and Colorado rejected similar measures in 2006; the city of Breckenridge, Colo. legalized it late last year), experts believe California is the first statewide initiative that stands a fighting chance, as AlterNet has reported.
Yet in spite of the positive trend, there are some ominous harbingers indicating that common-sense drug reform relating to marijuana still has a ways to go. Here are five signs that pot legalization faces government and corporate backlash (which may affect public opinion as well), in no particular order:
Full Story Hypocritical Obama and Corporate Media Are Agressively Undermining Pot Normalization | Drugs | AlterNet.
The Marijuana Conspiracy – The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal
Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people. The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies.
Where did the word ‘marijuana’ come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant…as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years:
Full Story Make A History.
Colorado Medical Marijuana Lawyer Filing Complaint Over DEA Raid
A medical marijuana lawyer wants the U.S. Department of Justice to discipline agents who raided a the home of a marijuana grower in suburban Denver.
Rob Corry filed a complaint against the Drug Enforcement Administration on Saturday.
He says the Highlands Ranch raid Friday violated the agency's new policy on enforcing drug laws in the 14 states that allow medical marijuana.
The policy says authorities shouldn't target those who are in clear compliance with their state laws.
Full Story Colorado Medical Marijuana Lawyer Filing Complaint Over DEA Raid.
Despite Obama admin’s promise, DEA continues raids on medical marijuana growers
On Thursday, a Denver news station interviewed Chris Bartkowicz about his medical-marijuana operation in the basement of his home. Bartkowicz, confident of his compliance with state laws, boasted of its size and profitability.
“I’m definitely living the dream now,” he told 9News.
The following day, the dream was over.
Drug-enforcement agents raided his home, placed him under arrest, and carried off dozens of black bags of marijuana plants and growing lights.
The Obama administration promised in October that the federal government would respect state laws allowing the growing and selling of marijuana for medicinal use, but the Drug Enforcement Agency sent a loud message with the arrest of Bartkowicz.
Full Story Despite Obama admin’s promise, DEA continues raids on medical marijuana growers | Raw Story.
Obama’s Drug War Budget Looks a Lot Like Bush’s
Obama has taken significant steps to treat drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal justice issue. But he’s failed to change the drug war budget in a meaningful way.
President Obama’s newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush’s, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention. This despite Obama’s statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. And despite his drug czar telling the Wall Street Journal last year the war on drugs should be ended.
While the president appears unwilling to change how taxpayer money is misspent, he can still seek reform. The White House’s forthcoming 2010 drug strategy is the best opportunity to do that. The administration has already directed federal law enforcement to stop arresting medical marijuana patients in states where medical marijuana is legal. The White House also worked with Congress to repeal the provision blocking states from using their share of prevention money on syringe exchange programs to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The administration has also urged Congress to repeal the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, a policy that creates enormous racial disparities and causes law enforcement agencies to waste resources on low-level offenders instead of dismantling violent crime syndicates.
Full Story Obama’s Drug War Budget Looks a Lot Like Bush’s | | AlterNet.
CBS Corporation Bans Ad Calling for Marijuana Legalization Over ‘Morals’
The fifteen-second ad, asserting that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise ‘billions of dollars in national revenue,’ was rejected out of hand
Representatives from the CBS Corporation and Neutron Media Screen Marketing have rejected a paid advertisement from the NORML Foundation, the educational arm of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), that was intended to appear on the CBS Super Screen billboard in New York City’s Times Square.
The fifteen-second ad, which asserts that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise ‘billions of dollars in national revenue, was scheduled to appear on CBS’s 42nd Street digital billboard beginning on Monday, February 1, 2010.
Representatives from Neutron Media approached NORML in mid-January about placing the ad, which was scheduled to air 18 times per day for a two-month period. The NORML Foundation entered into a contractual agreement with Neutron Media to air two separate NORML advertisements, and produced an initial ad exclusively for broadcast on the CBS digital billboard.
Full Story CBS Corporation Bans Ad Calling for Marijuana Legalization Over ‘Morals’ | Drugs | AlterNet.
Is pot legalization push in California a trend that will spread?
It’s almost a cliche these days that San Francisco and its sister to the east, Oakland, stand as the primary incubators of some of California’s infamously wacky but later transformational social and political ideas.
From the Silicon Valley to Oakland and Berkeley to the Napa Valley — if it was at first weird, untested, illegal and/or controversial, it probably got its start right here.
Now a small but determined coalition of Bay Area activists and politicos are on a mission to have California be the first state in the union to fully legalize, regulate and tax the use of marijuana – and they’re approaching that goal from several different angles.
Full Story Is pot legalization push in California a trend that will spread? | McClatchy.
Dutch crack down on marijuana tourism
And what's more, Dutch youth aren’t even interested in smoking weed.
In the back street cannabis den, a French-speaking Arab youth with a pierced lower lip and a rhinestone encrusted baseball cap leans across the bar to order his fix of choice.
“Hot chocolate, please,” he intones in heavily accentuated English.
“With whipped cream?” asks the fresh-faced young barrista in the 420 Cafe.
“Yes, please.”
A group of teenage English boys, their polite manners contrasting with the hair-raising heavy metal designs on their T-shirts, is also drinking the warm, frothy brew. Above them a large flat screen TV is showing a documentary about Antarctic bird life.
Full Story Marijuana Laws | Cannabis | Amsterdam | Dutch Pot.
Obama grows the drug war, with enforcement a clear priority
It was not long ago when President Barack Obama’s new drug czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, swept into Washington, D.C. and declared the “drug war” a public policy relic.
The Obama administration, he said, would move toward handling drug addiction as a medical problem, moving away from the brash enforcement tactics that hallmarked prior administrations.
“We’re not at war with people in this country,” Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May.
However, if the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) budget for fiscal year 2011 is to be believed, Kerlikowske was full of hot air.
According to 2011 funding “highlights” released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.
Full Story Obama grows the drug war, with enforcement a clear priority | Raw Story.
Pot legalization petitions filed in California
California appears headed for a rollicking November ballot fight over whether to legalize and tax marijuana cultivation and use for adults 21 years and older.
Proponents of the “Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010″ said Thursday that they had submitted to the state nearly 700,000 petition signatures – more than enough, if valid, to qualify the measure for the November ballot.
Secretary of State Debra Bowen has until June 24 to certify the measure, which needs 433,000 valid voter signatures to qualify.
Full Story Pot legalization petitions filed in California – Sacramento Politics – California Politics | Sacramento Bee.
Will Pot Go Corporate and Spoil It for Everybody?
Marijuana is at a crossroads.
In the warm, luminescent glow of the dust encrusted light fixture, the carpeted and dank hallway disappears into unvacuumed recesses. Darren grabs an unobtrusive handle along the wall’s flimsy wood paneling, pulls, and a crack of light pierces the gloom. Pushing aside a black screen of Hefty bags intended to block light and trap heat, he reveals his miniature grow closet. A heavy, supple branch tumbles out. It brushes my hand, leaving a telltale streak of sticky, stinky moistness. The resin goes away with a bit of water. The smell stays.
A ventilator and wooden door couldn’t dilute the pungent odor of the maturing female plants. When I point this out, Darren offers me only a mischievous smile. He’s proud of this little closet-conversion. Six plants in all, two to a shelf, a 150-watt lamp substituting for sunlight in this hallway cupboard. “You can hide it no problem, but the smell is crazy. Next week my whole house is going to reek! Clipping and all that,” he tells me. Ten days away from “pulling” the plants, Darren’s “babies” are reaching their most odorous phase.
On this trip, Darren is very ill, a result of his 24-year battle with HIV and his many years as a homeless addict. But he meets with me anyway. He closes the cupboard and I follow the trailing ties of his plaid terrycloth bathrobe to his bedroom where he unceremoniously plops himself on a frameless mattress.
Full Story Will Pot Go Corporate and Spoil It for Everybody? | Drugs | AlterNet.
CRACK THE CIA
Proves beyond a shadow of a doubt how the war on drugs is a farce just like everything else the government has a war on!!!
Do Employers Really Need to Give Drug Tests for Pot?
Many former police officers, city officials, even corrections officers now favor a new drug paradigm. Surely it is time to revisit a system that protects few and harms many.
Some months back, at the behest of a former boss, I attempted to register with a work agency. The work was data cleaning at the hospital where previously I was a well-regarded employee. During the physical exam, I had a mandatory drug screen. It came up positive for marijuana and I am now banned from this agency. What is it about my story that is important or germane? I cooked my own goose, deserve no pity, but the experience has had the exemplary effect of clarifying my thoughts regarding the whole subject.
I admit to smoking marijuana. Smoking makes me a calmer, more balanced person. I’m also a fool for getting caught. Time was when I was both a frequent and enthusiastic user; I am now an infrequent, but no less enthusiastic, user. I believe that responsible marijuana use is a benign activity; drug use needs to be distinguished from drug abuse. Consciousness-altering techniques range from prayer and wine to music and dance; evidence shows that humans have used these methods as far back in the history of our species as we can see. (Please note that I am not defending those who would indulge in any substance and then risk harm to others.)
I have a Master’s in Public Health (GPA 3.54). I am the mother of three bright, well-adjusted children. I am considered polite, articulate and generous. My house is relatively clean; meals are tasty and nutritious; laundry is dealt with in a timely fashion. My failing, according to some misplaced rules of law, is that I enjoy smoking marijuana a few nights a week after the kids are asleep. I do not drive or go to work after using even minimal amounts of marijuana. I can, however, tell my children about using Prozac, I can drink alcohol in front of them, I could even neglect them to play computer solitaire, but hike or play chess with marijuana in my system and I’m open to criminal prosecution.
Full Story Do Employers Really Need to Give Drug Tests for Pot? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
California’s medical marijuana possession limits are dropped
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state cannot impose legal limits on the amount of pot that medical marijuana users can grow or possess.
In a ruling certain to exacerbate debate over the governance of medical marijuana in California, the court threw out legislation that limited medical pot users to 8 ounces of dried marijuana and six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants.
The court ruled that the Legislature violated the state constitution when it passed Senate Bill 420 in 2003. The judges found that the plant limits set by the legislation improperly amended the Compassionate Use Act voters passed in 1996 legalizing marijuana for medical use in California.
Full Story California’s medical marijuana possession limits are dropped | McClatchy.
High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll)
High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll)
Eight in 10 Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use and nearly half favor decriminalizing the drug more generally, both far higher than a decade ago.
High Support for Medical Marijuana ABC News/Washington Post Poll: 81 Percent Support Legalizing Marijuana for Medical Use
With New Jersey this week poised to become the 14th state to legalize medical marijuana, 81 percent in this national ABC News/Washington Post poll support the idea, up from an already substantial 69 percent in 1997. Indeed the main complaint is with restrictions on access, as in the New Jersey law.
Full Story High Support (81%) for Medical Marijuana (ABC News/Washington Post Poll) – Democratic Underground.
Committee advances bill to legalize, tax pot
California lawmakers on Tuesday endorsed an overhaul of the state's marijuana laws by pushing forward a bill to legalize adult recreational use and taxation of the drug.
The 4-3 vote by the Assembly Public Safety Committee was the first in the nation by a legislative body supporting recreational use of the drug. But several of the lawmakers who voted for the plan said they did so only to extend debate.
“I do not support marijuana. I don’t use it, I don’t want my kids to use it, I don’t want anyone’s kids to use it,” said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who voted in favor. But he said he supported the plan because he wants “a more rational approach to … a failed criminalization policy.”
Full Story Committee advances bill to legalize, tax pot.
Book Review: “Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class,”
Whom do you picture when you read the phrase “drug dealer”? It’s probably not the subjects of this book. They’re white, upper-middle class and beyond, upwardly mobile college students blithely enmeshed in a web of criminality — drug use and sales — that, for them at least, goes unnoticed, and even when noticed, largely unpunished.
And that really irks Mohamed and Fritsvold, a pair of Southern California sociologists who gained entrée into a network of drug sellers and users centered on a private college in San Diego and then spent six years interviewing and observing them as they partied hearty, gobbled and swapped pills, and peddled dope with reckless abandon. It’s not, as the authors make clear, that they wish their student subjects were punished with the same heavy hand awaiting a poor black kid slinging crack in on an inner city street corner.
In fact, Mohamed and Fritsvold make equally clear that they view US drug policies as harsh and counterproductive, in no small part because of the race and class biases they so inarguably exhibit. Healthy chunks of “Dorm Room Dealers” are devoted to delineating in detail just how racially skewed and cleaved by class the application of American drug laws are. That’s what really irks the authors.
And that partially answers the questions the authors posed at the beginning of the book. Why do privileged college students — who have everything to lose and little to gain — choose to sell drugs? Well, because they can do so with almost total impunity. They are not the target of the drug war. They’re the wrong color and the wrong class. They essentially get a free pass — from police, who ignore them; from college administrators, who don’t want to upset their parents; from doctors, who are happy to prescribe them whatever pills they desire… because they are the children of “good people,” i.e. white and wealthy people.
Genetic key to cocaine addiction: study
US scientists have found a key mechanism in the brain that helps explain why cocaine is so addictive and could pave the way towards a potential cure, a study showed Thursday.
Researchers revealed how the highly-addictive drug brings on changes in the brain through a process which influences the expression of genes without changing the brain’s gene sequence.
These changes in the brain’s pleasure circuits, which are also the first to be influenced by chronic cocaine exposure, appear to promote cravings for cocaine, said the study published in Science.
“This fundamental discovery advances our understanding of how cocaine addiction works,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
“Although more research will be required, these findings have identified a key new player in the molecular cascade triggered by repeated cocaine exposure, and thus a potential novel target for the development of addiction medications.”
Full Story Genetic key to cocaine addiction: study | Raw Story.
The Best Chance Yet for Legalizing Marijuana
Tax Cannabis 2010 faces hurdles as it prepares for its test on the California ballot next November.
It’s Dec. 14 and news that the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 has qualified for the California ballot next year has just exploded in time for the evening news cycle. I am sitting on a sofa in a nearly empty room at Oaksterdam University, filing an update to my scoop for AlterNet and waiting for a chance to speak more at length with Richard Lee, the man behind the measure.
For the better part of an afternoon I’ve observed — and waited for — Lee and his staff as they ably handle a flurry of calls from the media before disappearing into a campaign strategy meeting. It’s now dark out over downtown Oakland, as Oaksterdam students gather on the sidewalk after class.
The door opens and Lee parks his wheelchair, softly lands on the couch, and starts breaking up a bit of weed for a toke. After lucrative years in the advertising and marketing industry, he has reestablished himself as a pot entrepreneur and transformed a large sliver of downtown Oakland into Oaksterdam. As a major proponent of professionalizing the marijuana industry — Oaksterdam University is probably his biggest project in this effort — today is a big day for Lee. “It’s not a petition anymore, it’s an initiative,” he says with a grin, as he lights his joint.
Full Story The Best Chance Yet for Legalizing Marijuana | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Are America’s Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels?
Did Bush/Cheney rebuild Reagan’s “Iran Contra” drug gang?
News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money. In Afghanistan, the president’s brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world.
In Pakistan, President Zardani is found with 60 million in a Swiss Bank and his Interior Minister is suspected of ties to American groups involved in paramilitary operations, totally illegal that could involve nothing but drugs, there is no other possibility.
Testimony in the US that our government has used “rendition” flights to transport massive amounts of narcotics to Western Europe and the United States has been taken in sworn deposition.
American mercenaries in Pakistan are hundreds of miles away from areas believed to be hiding terrorists, involved in “operations” that can’t have anything whatsoever to do with any CIA contract. These mercenaries aren’t in Quetta, Waziristan or FATA supporting our troops, they are in Karachi and Islamabad playing with police and government officials and living the life of the fatted calf.
The accusations made are that Americans in partnership with corrupt officials, perhaps in all 3 countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are involved in assassinations, “unknown” criminal activities and are functioning like criminal gangs.
There is no oil. There is nothing to draw people into the area other than one product, one that nobody is talking about. Drugs.
Full Story Are America’s Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels? — Signs of the Times News.
The Year In Pot: Top 10 Events That Will Change the Way We Think About Marijuana
There has been a tidal shift in politics and on Marijuana laws in America, from Obama lightening up on pot prosecutions to the recognition of cancer prevention properties.
- Obama Administration: Don’t Focus On Medical Marijuana Prosecutions
United States Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum to federal prosecutors in October directing them to not “focus federal resources … on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The directive upheld a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, who had previously pledged that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.” Read the full story here. - Public Support For Legalizing Pot Hits All-Time High
A majority of U.S. voters now support legalizing marijuana, according to a national poll of 1,004 likely voters published in December by Angus Reid. The Angus Reid Public Opinion poll results echo those of separate national polls conducted this year by Gallup, Zogby, ABC News, CBS News, Rasmussen Reports, and the California Field Poll, each of which reported greater public support for marijuana legalization than ever before. Read the full story here. - Lifetime Marijuana Use Associated With Reduced Cancer Risk
The moderate long-term use of cannabis is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancer, according to the results of a population-based control study published in August by the journal Cancer Prevention Research. Authors reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.” Read the full story here.
more…..
Full Story The Year In Pot: Top 10 Events That Will Change the Way We Think About Marijuana | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Over two dozen states weighing marijuana reforms
Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb.
“In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we've ever seen,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which supports reforming marijuana laws.
Nadelmann said that while legalization efforts are not likely to get much traction in state capitals anytime soon, the fact that there is such an increase of activity “is elevating the level of public discourse on this issue and legitimizing it.”
Full Story Over two dozen states weighing marijuana reforms | Raw Story.
10 Reasons the U.S. Military Should (Officially) Use Pot
“There’s a lot of things I’m passionate about, but getting a prescription for my marijuana from the VA is probably at the top of my list. I’d be like a kid waiting up for Santa if I thought he might be bringing me one of those. Haha!”
On top of a 100 percent disability rating with PTSD, “Charlie” — who asked that his real name not be used — came home from Afghanistan with a traumatic brain injury, a back injury and gastrointestinal problems. The VA pulled every magic trick out of its bag to treat him. But nothing worked.
What did work was marijuana.
Shirak-e-Mazar, the milk of Mazar, is what got Charlie through his deployment in Afghanistan. Shirak-e-Mazar is what Afghanis call the paper-thin sheets of hashish that sell for about $1.50 an ounce. It’s a 5000-year-old recipe, perfected in the Mazar-e-Sharif region, for preparing the compressed resin glands of the marijuana plant, and unless things have changed since Charlie left Afghanistan in 2004, it’s available, well, just about everywhere.
Full Story 10 Reasons the U.S. Military Should (Officially) Use Pot | World | AlterNet.
Obama, drugs, common sense
Barack Obama, Jan 21, 2004: “The war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws … we need to rethink how we’re operating in the drug war. Currently, we are not doing a good job.” Amen to that! Since President Richard Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1969, seven successive administrations have spent billions upon billions on eradicating drug crops abroad, blocking shipments at the country’s borders, and enforcing tough drug laws at home. They failed to
curb demand or throttle supplies.
Obama made his assessment of the drug war during a debate at Northwestern University, near Chicago, when he was running for a seat in the US Senate, a key stage in his meteoric political career. Now that Obama is nearing the end of his first year in office as president of the United States, how much rethinking has there been and how good a job is his administration doing on the drug war? The record is mixed but after decades during which the words common sense and drug policy never fitted into the same sen
tence, American attitudes towards drug prohibition – and above all, punitive laws on marijuana – are changing too fast for policymakers and legislators to ignore.
Public opinion polls reflect steady change. Between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of Americans in favour of full legalization of marijuana rose from 31 percent to 44 percent, according to the polling organization Gallup. If the increase in support continues at the same pace, by 2013 more than half the adult population will back measures to treat marijuana like tobacco and alcohol.
Full Story Obama, drugs, common sense » Kuwait Times Website.
Bolivia to leagalize growing of coca plants
President Evo Morales said Saturday that he plans to make it legal for Bolivia’s farmers to grow small parcels of coca plants.
Morales, who also heads a coca growers association, said he wants to permit individual farmers to cultivate coca plots of 130 feet by 130 feet. Coca leaf is the key ingredient of cocaine.
The president predicted the measure will be enacted, noting he won re-election Dec. 6 with 64 percent of the vote and commands a strong majority in the national legislature.
Morales said Bolivia’s anti-drug laws allow the cultivation of a total of 29,640 acres of coca for traditional uses, but make no provision for what individual farmers can grow.
Full Story Bolivia to leagalize growing of coca plants- The New Haven Register – Serving New Haven, Connecticut.
California man sues for return of medical pot cop confiscated
Kyle Kelly had just paid $45 for an eighth of an ounce of pot at a Sacramento medical marijuana dispensary when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over on a routine traffic stop.
The officer noticed Kelly had a copy of the West Coast Leaf – “The Cannabis Community Newspaper of Record” – in the car and asked the 25-year-old Sacramento man if he had any weed on him.
Kelly admitted that he did. But he didn’t have his doctor’s certificate of approval as well, so the CHP officer confiscated the pot and wrote him a ticket for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Full Story California man sues for return of medical pot cop confiscated | McClatchy.
Colorado resort legalises cannabis, but not on the ski slopes
Breckenridge is boasting that it has become the Amsterdam of the Rockies
It’s already being dubbed “the Amsterdam of the Rockies” and an après-ski spliff is likely to become almost as common as a beer when cannabis possession is legalised in the hip mountain town of Breckenridge, Colorado, on 1 January.
Well known as a laid-back party resort characterised by baggy-trousered snowboarders and a vigorous happy hour, Breckenridge voted last month to relax marijuana laws.
From New Year’s Day there will be no criminal or civil penalties imposed on anyone carrying up to an ounce of marijuana – or the paraphernalia usually associated with it, such as long rolling papers, a small pipe or a bong. That also goes for tourists, in a resort popular with British visitors who flock there for the exciting ski slopes and the exuberant nightlife.
“I’m already getting calls from people outside the state asking questions, such as ‘Can I do it while I’m skiing?’, ‘Can I bring it to my hotel room?’, that kind of thing,” said Kim Green, spokeswoman for the Breckenridge police department.
Full Story Colorado resort legalises cannabis, but not on the ski slopes | Society | The Observer.
Drug violence leaves 23 dead in northern Mexico
Drug-related violence has claimed the lives of at least 23 people in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, authorities said.
Of the 23 deaths, 13 were in the city of Ciudad Juarez alone — not far from the US city of El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez is Mexico’s bloodiest city with more than 2,500 murders this year alone.
In one of the cases from Sunday to Monday, a couple was gunned down in front of their children, aged 3, 5 and nine, who were not injured, police said.
Full Story Drug violence leaves 23 dead in northern Mexico – Yahoo! News.
The ‘green’ mayor? McGinn wants to legalize pot and tax it, too
He hasn’t even taken office yet, but the words of Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn have already perked some citizens’ ears.
McGinn believes pot should not only be legal, but also taxed.
“We recognize that, you know, like alcohol, it’s something that should be regulated, not treated as a criminal activity. And I think that’s where the citizens of Seattle want us to go,” said McGinn on a public radio show on Friday.
McGinn asked for the public’s help identifying the issues he should tackle as mayor. Topping the list was light rail expansion. The second slot went to legalizing pot.
Now McGinn, as well as state leaders, are talking about it.
Drug War Sea Change in the US Congress?
Domestic Initiatives Are Cause for Hope; Foreign Drug War Funding Remains Unchanged For Now
The United States Congress set its sights on the drug war this week. Legislators have or will consider several important bills that address the drug war at home and abroad. According to decriminalization advocates, the news is mostly good.
On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives unanimously voted to create the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission. This week the House is expected to vote on the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes measures that would repeal a national syringe funding ban and allow Washington, DC, to establish a medical marijuana program. The Appropriations Act, also known as the Omnibus bill, also includes further funding for violent drug wars in Mexico, Central America, and Colombia.
Drug Policy Commission
The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission will evaluate US drug policy in the Western Hemisphere and “submit recommendations on future US drug policy to Congress, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP),” according to Federal Information & News Dispatch.
Full Story Drug War Sea Change in the US Congress? | | the narcosphere.
Medical Marijuana Apartheid: Different Rules Apply for Rich and Poor Pot Smokers | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet
A California hipster can hit the vaporizer without fear of harassment, but a lower-class person smoking a blunt may not be so lucky.
About 80 percent of Americans approve of medical marijuana laws, but some conservatives are incensed that state legislatures keep passing them. In a recent column, George F. Will, the Washington Post’s bow-tied curmudgeon, decried the reefer madness he sees taking over California, sweeping across Colorado and perhaps even coming to a normal state near you.
The pundit seemed especially incensed that states like Colorado and California had effectively legalized the drug through a “back-door” process, writing that medical dispensaries “serve the fiction that most transactions in the store — which is what it really is — involve medicine.” He lamented that “fifty-six percent of Californians support legalization,” and concluded: “They essentially have this.”
But Will is only half right. Pot in California is only legal for those of a certain class, or those who live in certain areas. It is effectively illegal in most communities of color. It’s not legal for pot smokers in many conservative counties and municipalities. And it’s effectively out of reach for California’s poor.
US: Reconsidering War on Drugs
As the war on drugs moves closer to home and a new administration presents new ideas, policymakers in Washington are taking notice of 30 years worth of ineffectual drug policy and beginning to think about different ways of addressing the northward flow of narcotics.
The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill last week that would create an independent commission to re-evaluate and make recommendations on domestic and international drug policies. This is being seen as an acknowledgment that current strategies meant to control illicit drugs are not working – and have not worked for a while.
“The premise of the commission is not, of course, that we’re doing great but that our policies aren’t working and we need a rethink,” says John Walsh, who works on drug policy at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). He says actions like this “speak to the level of frustration” over the impotence of past drug policies.
WOLA released its own recommendations Tuesday on new directions these policies could take. Their report says past policies that have focused on eradication of coca and opium crops are counter-productive unless they are preceded by rural development. “Proper sequencing is crucial: development must come first,” it reads, or else, without alternative livelihoods firmly in place, people will have no choice but to return to growing crops for illicit markets.
Full Story US: Reconsidering War on Drugs – IPS ipsnews.net.
Marijuana’s Big Fat Zero
Alcohol: 2 million, Tobacco: 5 million, Cannabis ZERO
It appears that legal does not mean good.
The World Health Organization has released a new report stating that about 5 million people die each year from smoking legal tobacco. They want this to change, for some reason.
And they don’t think that laws are sufficient for protecting us. If things don’t change, the WHO says up to 8 million people will be dying each year from this legal product.
We’re from the Government and we are here to help
The WHO appears to want more government intervention:
LONDON – Tobacco use kills at least 5 million people every year, a figure that could rise if countries don’t take stronger measures to combat smoking, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
In a new report on tobacco use and control, the U.N. agency said nearly 95 percent of the global population is unprotected by laws banning smoking. WHO said secondhand smoking kills about 600,000 people every year.
*****
“People need more than to be told that tobacco is bad for human health,” said Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO’s Tobacco-Free Initiative. “They need their governments to implement the WHO Framework Convention.
Full Story Marijuana’s Big Fat Zero | The Smirking Chimp.
CIA Efforts to Control World Distribution of ‘Illicit’ Drugs
Len Hart -
DEA agents were photographed among first responders on 911. That’s curious. What interest have drug enforcement agents in this alleged act of ‘terrorism’?
Connect some dots: upon the 911 pretext, the US invaded Afghanistan whose ‘cash crop’ of ‘poppies’ was under threat. Without poppies, US drug dealers may be hard pressed to stay in business. That applies, as well, to the CIA which most certainly financed Iran-Contra almost entirely ‘off the books’.
If the US/CIA hoped to control this lucrative trade, the Taliban had to go. I wonder how many CIA ‘black ops’ have been financed ‘off the books’ (as was Iran/Contra) with the proceeds of its various drug sales?
An August, 1996, series in the San Jose Mercury News by reporter Gary Webb linked the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras, a guerrilla force backed by the Reagan administration that attacked Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during the 1980s. Webb’s series, “The Dark Alliance,” has been the subject of intense media debate, and has focused attention on a foreign policy drug scandal that leaves many questions unanswered.
This electronic briefing book is compiled from declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, including the notebooks kept by NSC aide and Iran-contra figure Oliver North, electronic mail messages written by high-ranking Reagan administration officials, memos detailing the contra war effort, and FBI and DEA reports. The documents demonstrate official knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers. Court and hearing transcripts are also included.–The Contras, Cocaine, and Cover Operations
Full Story The Existentialist Cowboy: CIA Efforts to Control World Distribution of ‘Illicit’ Drugs.
10 Signs the Failed Drug War Is Finally Ending
2009 will go down as the beginning of the end of America’s longest running war. Here’s 10 reasons why.
2009 will go down as the beginning of the end of the United States drug war. I have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance promoting alternatives to the war on drugs for 10 years, and I can say without a doubt that there was more debate and movement toward sensible drug policies this year than in the last 9 years combined! Here are 10 stories that contributed to the unprecedented momentum to end America’s longest running war.
1) Three Former Latin American Presidents Call Drug War a Failure (February)
In February, the Latin-American Commission on Drugs and Drug Policy – co-chaired by three distinguished ex-presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -issued a groundbreaking report that declared the drug war a failure. The report further advocated the decriminalization of marijuana and the need to “break the taboo” on an open and honest discussion of international drug policy. The release generated hundreds of articles around the world and continues to be referenced by elected officials in Latin American and around the world.
2) Michael Phelps and the Bong Hit Heard Around the World (February)
The photo of Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer Michael Phelps taking a “bong hit” at a party in South Carolina was plastered across the front pages of newspapers around the world in February. The image of Phelps inhaling marijuana, just a few months after setting a record for most gold medals won in a single Olympics, dealt a powerful blow to the lazy, “couch potato” stereotype of pot users. Kellogg’s promptly dropped Phelps as a spokesperson, badly misreading public sentiment. Dozens of columnists slammed Kellogg’s for this decision, and a major AP story reported on groups calling for consumers to “Drop Kellogg’s” for dumping Phelps. A few weeks later, the advertising trade magazine Ad Age reported that Kellogg’s brand favorability had tanked since it dropped Phelps – even more than when the company instituted a massive recall due to a problem with salmonella in its peanut butter.
Full Story 10 Signs the Failed Drug War Is Finally Ending | Media and Technology | AlterNet.
The Secret to Legal Marijuana? Women
Why women have signed onto marijuana reform — and why they could be the movement’s game-changers.
In September, ladymag Marieclaire ruffled some feathers when it published a piece about women who smoke weed. But its most interesting effect was not the “marijuana moms” chatter it unleashed, and instead the fact that it brought to the mainstream media a more open discussion of the fact that women can be avid tokers, too.
Public acceptance of pot is at an all-time high, and the fact that women have drastically changed their attitudes may be what is most fascinating about the sea change in public opinion — and policy — regarding marijuana. In 2005, only 32 percent of polled women told Gallup they approved legalizing pot, but this year 44 percent of them were for it, compared to 45 percent of men. In effect, women have narrowed what had been a 12-point gender gap.
Women are also smoking more weed. The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that current marijuana use increased from 3.8 to 4.5 percent among women, while there was no significant statistical change for men.
Full Story The Secret to Legal Marijuana? Women | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time
This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.
The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan ? up to ten per cent ? led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.
But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.
But do these answers stand up to close analysis?
Full Story Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time | Mail Online.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up in Mexico’s Drug War
Drug Seizures are Down; Drug Production, Executions, Disappearances, and Human Rights Abuses are Up
Just a week before Mexican president Felipe Calderon completes half of his six-year term, La Jornada reports that 16,500 extrajudicial executions have occurred during his administration. 6,500 of those executions have occurred in 2009, according to La Jornada’s sources in Calderon’s cabinet.
These latest numbers mean that 2009 will be another record-breaking year in Calderon’s drug war. In just three years in office, Calderon has surpassed his predecessor Vicente Fox’s narco-murder rate for his entire term in office. It is estimated that there were anywhere between 9,000 and 13,000 drug-related murders during Fox’s six-year term. Calderon has also beaten his own record: with one month left in the year, 2009’s 6,500 executions thus far have already surpassed last year’s 6,262.
The new numbers published by La Jornada suggest that the government had previously underreported drug war deaths. The government had previously reported 2,477 deaths in 2007 and 6,262 deaths in 2008, for a grand total of 8,739 deaths in 2007 and 2008. For the official numbers to have now reached 16,500 over the course of Calderon’s administration as sources within his own cabinet now claim, 7,761 people would have had to die in 2009, not the 6,500 that his cabinet claims. That’s a discrepancy of over 1,000 executions.
Full Story The Numbers Don’t Add Up in Mexico’s Drug War | | the narcosphere.
The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t
The government keeps pushing the BS that pot is addictive and has serious health consequences. And no wonder — lying about pot is a lucrative business.
Marijuana’s addiction potential may be no big deal, but it’s certainly big business.
According to a widely publicized 1999 Institute of Medicine report, fewer than 10 percent of those who try cannabis ever meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of “drug dependence” (based on DSM-III-R criteria). By contrast, 32 percent of tobacco users and 15 percent of alcohol users meet the criteria for “drug dependence.”
Nevertheless, it is pot — not booze or cigarettes — that has the federal government seeing red and clinical investigators seeing green. As I reported for AlterNet last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which overseas more than 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, recently appropriated some $4 million in taxpayers’ dollars to establish the nation’s first-ever Center for Cannabis Addiction. Its mission: to “develop novel approaches to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of marijuana addiction.”
Full Story The Feds Are Addicted to Pot — Even If You Aren’t | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Legal Marijuana: It’s Coming, Whether You Like it or Not
Paul Armentano has an exciting summary of various marijuana reform legislation, initiatives, etc. that are moving forward around the country. Meanwhile, The Washington Post had a report Monday entitled Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S., celebrating the issue’s forward momentum in terms of public opinion and political victories.
Looking around the room, it seems we’ve moved beyond the question of whether marijuana reform is possible, and everyone seems to be asking instead when the breakthrough will occur or what form it will take. And no, I don’t think there’s anything misplaced or unhealthy about this sudden sense of inevitability. Time has always been on our side and optimism is a very necessary virtue in the fight for social and political change.
A wise colleague (I think it was this guy) recently suggested to me that we should stop introducing our arguments with phrases like “if marijuana were legal…” and instead say, “when marijuana is legal…” and he’s exactly right. One of our greatest obstacles has always been a widespread lack of faith that our politicians and fellow citizens would ever stand with us in great enough numbers to create a mandate for reform. That simple assumption stops untold numbers of potentially great activists dead in their tracks before they ever sign up for an email list, send a letter to the editor, or make a small donation. It also helps explain why the press spent decades fueling anti-drug hysteria and investing in the drug war doctrine, even after the case for reform had begun to bubble beneath the surface.
Full Story Legal Marijuana: It’s Coming, Whether You Like it or Not | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet).
Support for legalizing marijuana gaining ground rapidly
Approval for medical use expands alongside criticism of prohibition
The same day they rejected a gay marriage ballot measure, residents of Maine voted overwhelmingly to allow the sale of medical marijuana over the counter at state-licensed dispensaries.
Later in the month, the American Medical Association reversed a longtime position and urged the federal government to remove marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, which equates it with heroin and cocaine.
A few days later, advocates for easing marijuana laws left their biannual strategy conference with plans to press ahead on all fronts — state law, ballot measures, and court — in a movement that for the first time in decades appeared to be gaining ground.
Full Story Support for legalizing marijuana gaining ground rapidly – washingtonpost.com.
The “Drug War” is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will
Jim Hightower –
The war on marijuana is insane; our officials keep sacrificing tax dollars, lives, civil liberties, and their own credibility in this misguided and losing effort.
You might remember Robert McNamara’s stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000 Americans (and even more horrendous numbers of Vietnamese) to their deaths in that disastrous war. In his 1995 memoir, the man who had been a cold, calculating secretary of defense for both Kennedy and Johnson belatedly confessed that he and other top officials had long known that the war was an unwinnable, ideologically driven mistake. “We were wrong,” he wrote, almost tearfully begging in print for public forgiveness. “We were terribly wrong.”
Yes, they were, and so are today’s leaders (from the White House to nearly all local governments), who are keeping us mired in the longest, most costly, and most futile war in U.S. history: the drug war. As one adamant opponent of this ongoing madness put it, “I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the War on Drugs is a failure. Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing War on Drugs, about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion.”
That was no ex-hippie stoner expressing himself through a haze of herbal smoke. It was America’s “Uncle Walter,” the journalistic icon Walter Cronkite, calling earlier this year for a new truthfulness and sanity in American drug policy.
Full Story Hightower Lowdown | The “Drug War” is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will.
Popping Adderall To Get That A
Can ADHD stimulants like Adderall be the answer for college students looking to increase academic performance? They think so.
It's a week before final exams and you haven't begun studying. These general education classes are, simply, a drag and you're already tired from fraternity, sorority or extracurricular activities. Besides, your friends are partying this weekend anyway.
You should, (A) clamp down and study for a few hours every night this week, pacing yourself for finals. But you know you'll probably (B) start absentmindedly perusing your books four days before the exam to make yourself feel better, or (C) free your mind of finals worries until two days before testing, then pop an Adderall pill and spend 10 and 12 hours a day in the library maniacally whirring through your textbooks.
For a small, but growing, minority of college students, the answer is clearly (C).
Full Story News Blog Articles | Popping Adderall To Get That A | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
The Relentless War on Drug Users Is Escalating Violence in the US: It’s Time for Harm Reduction
Hundreds gather in Albuquerque to celebrate a new dawn of wider acceptance of drug reform, while still feeling a little nervous about the path ahead.
Ethan Nadelmann is one of a handful of marvelously charismatic and motivating speakers within the liberal and progressive universe. He talks creatively and emphatically about race, class, gender, corruption, power, human rights, immigration and the devastating impact of prison-industrial complex on all aspects of society, all progressive touchstones. Yet relatively few people know who he is, or follow his efforts. Why? Because he has devoted his life to transforming America’s attitudes and laws about drugs, which is no easy task, and often a thankless one.
There exists a complex, almost paradoxical attitude toward drug use and the ramifications of “drug war” repression among many progressives. Even Baby Boomers, many who successfully navigated a journey through their own drug experimentation as they came of age, often overreact to the possibilities of their own childrens’ experimentations with drugs. And in the case of our last three presidents, all who used drugs, the consistent stance is to go out of their way to avoid any acknowledgement of any positive role that drugs play in our society, or even seriously consider a less destructive approach, which would be the legalization and regulation of drugs. President Obama, who has been quite honest about his personal drug use, nevertheless has been somewhat dismissive about even modest reforms concerning pot — a drug far less dangerous than the alcohol and cigarettes, which pervade our society and generate billions of advertising dollars to maintain dependencies and widespread social use.
First U.S. marijuana cafe opens in Portland
The United States’ first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration’s move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.
The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it — as long as they are out of public view — despite a federal ban.
“This club represents personal freedom, finally, for our members,” said Madeline Martinez, Oregon’s executive director of NORML, a group pushing for marijuana legalization.
“Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana,” said Martinez. “We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis.”
Full Story First U.S. marijuana cafe opens in Portland | U.S. | Reuters.
AMA to FEDS: stop calling marijuana ‘dangerous’.
Another brick in the wall, removed.
AMA Urges the FEDS to Stop Calling Marijuana Dangerous
the powerful prestigious doctor’s group, the American Medical Association has now changed its weed policy saying it would like to promote clinical research on it, and perhaps develop cannabis-based medicines.
I always discourage people from trying to relate “why marijuana was originally made illegal” with how and why it remains illegal after 40-some yers of efforts to correct the very bad law.
It matters not why it was made illegal almost 80 years ago.
It matters most why it would remain so illegal and so demonized in this modern, more scientific time, replete with better communication and such.
It remains illegal partly due to reefer madness – the frothing-at-the-mouth propaganda constantly regurgitated by the GOP and the ONDCP (on your tax dollar) – and a huge foundation of this propaganda is the LIE that marijuana is “dangerous”.
There is no end to the awfulizing some people continue to do about marijuana – most of them republicans, the rest just ignorant. Yes, there is a HUGE overlap, but I digress.
The AMA, way back in 1937, was NOT part of the illegalization but got on board later.
The salient point from this is that the AM, which became hugely supportive of reefer madness has all of a sudden begun to recant.
Mostly because they are educated in science.
Full Story Daily Kos: AMA to FEDS: stop calling marijuana ‘dangerous’..
Drug Policy Alliance Conference Comes at a Crucial Moment for Drug Reform
More people than ever grasp the need to shift from criminalization to a public health model — the Drug Policy Alliance’s conference leads the way on this discussion.
Every day we read national headlines about the war on drugs. More and more elected officials are saying the war on drugs is not working and that we need to consider alternatives.
There are stories about states like California considering taxing and regulating marijuana. There is coverage about drug prohibition in Mexico leading to a war zone where thousands of people are being killed every year. There are front page stories about countries from Portugal to Argentina to Mexico decriminalizing small amounts of drugs because they realize that they can’t incarcerate their way out of addiction. It is one thing to read about it, but it is another to jump in and try to come up with solutions to the failed war on drugs.
From Nov. 12-14, a wide range of advocates, doctors, lawyers, activists, treatment providers, law enforcement, students, educators and formerly incarcerated people will converge for the biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, where it was previously held in 2001. The conference returns to New Mexico because the state is a beacon of reform, recently passing innovative medical marijuana legislation and the nation’s first Good Samaritan law to prevent fatal overdoses.
Full Story Drug Policy Alliance Conference Comes at a Crucial Moment for Drug Reform | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug — Booze
Anti-pot propaganda drives most people to drink alcohol instead. But booze is far more dangerous than marijuana.
Professor David Nutt didn’t play the game. As the chief drug policy advisor in the British Government, an unspoken part of his job description was to help maintain a public fiction about marijuana – or cannabis, as it is known in the U.K. and other parts of the world. Specifically, he was expected to further the misperception of cannabis as a substance worthy of being classified and prohibited in a manner similar to more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine.
He made a big mistake at the end of last month. In a lecture at King’s College in London, he spoke honestly – and truthfully – about the fact that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and urged the government to factor the relative harms of substances into their policy-making. Moreover, he accused the British government of ignoring the evidence about the true harms of cannabis in order to reclassify the drug and increase penalties for possession.
Reacting with the logic and reason of pub patron after last call, Home Secretary Alan Johnson immediately demanded that Prof. Nutt resign as the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He said Prof Nutt had “crossed the line between offering advice and … campaigning against the government on political decisions.”
Full Story Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug — Booze | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Warning of extra heart dangers from mixing cocaine and alcohol
A third chemical – cocaethylene – builds up in the liver over a number of years among those who mix the two drugs. And this is now having major health consequences
“I first took coke when I was 18 and at university. I remember two friends who did chemistry told me I should get really drunk first because it would mix into this new chemical in my blood and make me even higher,” a 30-year-old woman who works in publishing told the Observer yesterday.
What her friends did not tell her is that the combination of cocaine and alcohol in her then teenage body will have left a highly toxic chemical in her liver called cocaethylene.
While few outside the world of pharmacology have heard of the chemical, fewer still are aware of its life-threatening properties. Now, however, its side-effects, discovered in 1979, are threatening to become tragically familiar as they take their toll on users in their 30s and 40s.
Full Story Warning of extra heart dangers from mixing cocaine and alcohol | Society | The Observer.
Drug War Madness: Grassley’s Gag Rule
Rolling Stone :
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia) has bravely proposed legislation to create a Blue Ribbon commission to conduct an 18-month, “top-to-bottom” review of America’s criminal justice system with the goal of bringing U.S. incarceration rates in line with the rest of the civilized world.
The commission is to make sweeping recommendations for reform, and is tasked in particular with developing proposals to “restructure our approach to drug policy.”
Enter unreconstructed drug warrior Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has released the text of an amendment that would ensure the commission not reach any conclusions that threaten 40 years of failure. The commission would be prohibited, thanks to Grassley, from examining any “policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances.”
Below, the text of Grassley’s gag rule:
AMENDMENT intended to be proposed by Mr. GRASSLEY
Full Story Drug War Madness: Grassley’s Gag Rule : Rolling Stone : National Affairs Daily.
Mexican Pot Gangs Infiltrate Indian Reservations in U.S.
Police Chief Carmen Smith says he knows three things about suspected drug trafficker Artemio Corona: He’s from Mexico, prefers a Glock .40-caliber handgun, and is quite possibly growing marijuana on the Indian reservation that Mr. Smith patrols.
Last year, Mr. Smith’s detectives identified Mr. Corona as the alleged mastermind behind several large marijuana plantations on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. These “grows,” as police call them, had a harvest of 12,000 adult plants, with an estimated street value of $10 million. Five suspects were arrested and pleaded guilty to federal trafficking charges. But their alleged boss, Mr. Corona, who has not been indicted, remains a “person of interest” to federal authorities and hasn’t been found.
Cultivating marijuana in Indian country represents a new twist in the decades-old illicit drug trade between Mexico and the U.S., the world’s largest drug-consuming market. For decades, Mexican drug gangs grew marijuana in Mexico, smuggled it across the border, and sold it in the U.S. But in the past few years, they have done what any burgeoning business would do: move closer to their customers.
Full Story Mexican Pot Gangs Infiltrate Indian Reservations in U.S. – WSJ.com.
Breckenridge, Colorado voters legalize marijuana, paraphernalia
Voters in the ski resort town of Breckenridge, Colorado legalized marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia by a nearly three-to-one margin on Tuesday.
It is the first municipality in the United States to allow paraphernalia, such as pipes, bongs and bubblers.
“[The measure] passed 73 percent to 27 percent,” ABC 7 News in Denver reported.
“‘This votes demonstrates that Breckenridge citizens overwhelmingly believe that adults should not be punished for making the safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol,’ said Sean McAllister, a Breckenridge attorney who proposed the ordinance,” ABC continued.
“Possession remains illegal under state law, but Breckenridge Police Chief Rick Holman said his department will ’still have the ability to exercise discretion,’” Colorado’s Summit Daily News added.
Full Story Breckenridge, Colorado voters legalize marijuana, paraphernalia | Raw Story.
Breckenridge, Colorado voters may legalize pot, paraphernalia
On Tuesday, Breckenridge, Colorado could become the latest American city to legalize recreational use of marijuana for adults.
The legalization measure, placed on the ballot after campaigners turned in a petition with almost three-times the number of signatures required, would also permit adults to posses bongs, pipes, bubblers and other so-called marijuana paraphernalia.
Allowing paraphernalia would be a first for U.S. voters, according to Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken, who spoke with the Associated Press. “I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the country that has legalized paraphernalia,” he said.
Full Story Breckenridge, Colorado voters may legalize pot, paraphernalia | Raw Story.
Breckenridge Pushes To Legalize Marijuana
Voters in this Rocky Mountain resort town will decide next week whether to legalize pot for all adults at a time when the movement to allow medical marijuana is gaining steam around the country.
A measure before Breckenridge voters in Tuesday’s municipal election would legalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana along with bongs, pipes and other pot paraphernalia. Supporters of the measure say it would inch the whole state closer to full legalization.
Other cities around the country have taken similar action in recent years, including a measure in Denver that decriminalized possession.
Full Story Breckenridge Pushes To Legalize Marijuana.
Pot Is More Mainstream Than Ever, So Why Is Legalization Still Taboo?
More members of Congress have publicly questioned whether President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii than have endorsed legalizing marijuana.
This comes despite the birth announcements printed in the Honolulu Advertiser in August 1961 and marijuana’s deep inroads into the cultural mainstream.
Almost every voter under 65 in this country has either smoked cannabis or grew up with people who did. Among its erstwhile users are the last three presidents, one Supreme Court justice and the mayor of the nation’s largest city. The pot leaf’s image pervades popular culture, from Bob Marley T-shirts to billboards for Showtime’s Weeds.
America’s Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA
Dave Lindorff
Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”
Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll.
Okay, the article was lacking much historical perspective (more on that later), and the dead hand of top editors was evident in the overly cautious tone (I loved the third paragraph, which stated that “The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raises significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.” Well, duh! It should be raising questions about why we are even in Afghanistan, about who should be going to jail at the CIA, and about how can the government explain this to the over 1000 soldiers and Marines who have died supposedly helping to build a new Afghanistan). But that said, the newspaper that helped cheerlead us into the pointless and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003, and that prevented journalist Risen from running his exposé of the Bush/Cheney administration’s massive warrantless National Security Agency electronic spying operation until after the 2004 presidential election, this time gave a critically important story full timely play, and even, appropriately, included a teaser in the same front-page story about October being the most deadly month yet for the US in Afghanistan.
via OpEdNews – Article: America’s Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA.
Marijuana legalization expected to go to ballot in California
Opponents of a plan to legalize marijuana for personal possession in California have conceded that supporters of the measure are likely to get their proposal on a statewide ballot, the New York Times revealed in a longer story about possible legalization Wednesday.
California lawmakers are taking up a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a first in the United States. Officials estimate the bill could bring in additional $1.4 billion a year, a huge sum of money in a state bedeviled by financial woes.
While the “legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue,” the Times wrote.
Perhaps equally important, the paper adds:
via Marijuana legalization expected to go to ballot in California | Raw Story.
The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation
An exclusive look at the historic testimony prepared for a special hearing on legalizing marijuana to the California Assembly.
The following is the testimony NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano will deliver on Oct. 28 to the California Assembly Public Safety Committee’s special hearing on “the legalization of marijuana: social, fiscal and legal implications for California.” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, sponsor of AB 390, The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act, is the chairman of the committee.
By any objective standard, marijuana prohibition is an abject failure.
Nationwide, U.S. law enforcement have arrested over 20 million American citizens for marijuana offenses since 1965, yet today marijuana is more prevalent than ever before, adolescents have easier access to marijuana than ever before, the drug is more potent than ever before, and there is more violence associated with the illegal marijuana trade than ever before.
Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and 1 in 10 — according to current government survey data — use it regularly.
The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol.
via The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
George Will: US ‘probably in the process’ of legalizing marijuana
In the chronicle of America’s war against its marijuana users, conservative columnist George Will may have just earned credit for his own Walter Cronkite moment.
Appearing on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, the Pulitzer-winning journalist and longtime icon of America’s political right declared that with President Barack Obama’s new policy which respects the states right to allow medical marijuana, the United States is “probably in the process now of legalizing marijuana.”
He added that if there were to be a serious effort to fight the increasingly violent, powerful Mexican drug cartels, “you’d legalize marijuana,” the sale of which provides the gangs the vast majority of their funding.
Will’s comments come not even a week after a Gallup poll found record-breaking support across the United States for the legalization of marijuana, with nearly half of U.S. citizens in favor and a clear majority of support emerging among liberals, Democrats and moderates
via George Will: US ‘probably in the process’ of legalizing marijuana | Raw Story.
Pot Farming the Next Gold Rush?
How Are Some Middle-Class Families Coping with the Recession? Growing Pot. A financial stimulus for the recession-battered middle class: pot farming.
Sarah’s whole street reeks of pot. This is not hyperbole. When you turn the corner onto this lane of 1970s tract houses, you smell the tang: the sour, earthy, green odor that wafts up from lush marijuana plants steaming in the sun.
Sarah estimates that seven of 10 households on her semi-rural street, a couple miles from white-bread-suburban Rohnert Park, Calif., are growing weed. She ran into one neighbor at the hardware store, in the new section devoted to cultivation, with the special dirt, fertilizer and outsized plastic pots the growers use. Her next-door neighbors, two brothers, trade plant-sitting with her and let their pit bulls loose at night to patrol both yards. The women across the street have a small crop in their vegetable garden. And the new couple on the block, noticing the smell, mentioned they’d like to get in on it. In fact, she says, she doesn’t know anyone in Sonoma County who isn’t growing pot.
Full Story: Business & Economics Articles | Pot Farming the Next Gold Rush? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.
Gallup poll finds record support for legalizing marijuana
New data from U.S. polling firm Gallup shows nearly half of Americans — a record number — are in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana for recreational use by adults.
The poll clearly illustrates a generational and political divide on the issue, with 78 percent of self-described liberals saying they would like to see the drug legalized and 72 percent of self-described conservatives being opposed. Gallup also found that 50 percent of Americans under 50-years-old are in favor of legalization, but just 28 percent of seniors agree.
Perhaps the most important demographic to advocates of legalization are the moderate voters, among whom 51 percent now support ending prohibition
Full Story: Gallup poll finds record support for legalizing marijuana | Raw Story.
Los Angeles Prepares for Clash Over Marijuana
There are more marijuana stores here than public schools. Signs emblazoned with cannabis plants or green crosses sit next to dry cleaners, gas stations and restaurants.
The dispensaries range from Hollywood-day-spa fabulous to shoddy-looking storefronts with hand-painted billboards. Absolute Herbal Pain Solutions, Grateful Meds, Farmacopeia Organica.
Cannabis advocates claim that more than 800 dispensaries have sprouted here since 2002; some law enforcement officials say it is closer to 1,000. Whatever the real number, everyone agrees it is too high.
And so this, too, is taken for granted: Crackdowns on cannabis clubs will soon come in this city, which has more dispensaries than any other.
Full Story: Los Angeles Prepares for Clash Over Marijuana – NYTimes.com.
Hemp Farmers Arrested Planting Hemp at DEA Headquarters
Hemp farmers, business owners and Vote Hemp representatives plant industrial hemp seeds on the DEA headquarters lawn and are arrested.
Full Story: YouTube – Hemp Farmers Arrested Planting Hemp at DEA Headquarters.
Cocaine addiction vaccine
The first working vaccine for cocaine addiction is now being tested.
The vaccine uses the immune system to block cocaine’s euphoric effect. Antibodies are created that bind to the cocaine and prevent it from entering the blood stream. A blood enzyme, cholinesterase, breaks down the cocaine continuously. The breakdown products are eliminated through the kidneys and liver.
The first trial involved 94 subjects. The majority of the subjects used crack cocaine. Randomized subjects received the vaccine five times over a twelve week period. The vaccine worked for 38 percent of the subjects that received it.
The vaccine’s effect depended on the level of antibody achieved. Those who reach high levels of
antibodies are more likely to be able to stay cocaine-free. The problem to be overcome is the lack of antibody response. Twenty-five percent of those treated did not have an antibody reaction. The group is pursing several alternatives to improve the results.
This is a relapse prevention medication.
Full Story: Cocaine addiction vaccine.
Cartels Face an Economic Battle
U.S. Marijuana Growers Cutting Into Profits of Mexican Traffickers
Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.
Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border.
Full Story: Cartels Face an Economic Battle – washingtonpost.com.
Pot legalization gains momentum in California
Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get as many as three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.
At least one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of more than 38 million the first in the nation to legalize marijuana.
Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.
Full Story: Pot legalization gains momentum in California – Yahoo! News.
Breathalyzer for drugs
Dr. Steven Bell of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University of Belfast in collaboration with colleagues from the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University and Forensic Science Northern Ireland have developed the technology to make drug breathalyzers possible. More importantly, the device can analyze chemicals on the person of suspected terrorists noninvasively as well as in packages and letters. Results are determined in matter of minutes.
Gel pads swipe the suspected individual or crime scene to collect the sample to be analyzed. The detection device uses Raman Spectroscopy. The sensitivity of the Raman spectrometer is increased by adding nanoscale silver particles to amplify the signal of the analyte or analytes.
Every chemical has a defined Raman signal or signals and a reference catalog of those spectra can be used for rapid comparison of a suspected analyte. Raman spectrometers have become smaller and cheaper with computerization.
Full Story: Breathalyzer for drugs.
How American-Grown Marijuana Is Hurting the Drug Cartels
Steve Fainaru and William Booth report:
Almost all of the marijuana consumed in the multibillion-dollar U.S. market once came from Mexico or Colombia. Now as much as half is produced domestically, often by small-scale operators who painstakingly tend greenhouses and indoor gardens to produce the more potent, and expensive, product that consumers now demand, according to authorities and marijuana dealers on both sides of the border. The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
Now imagine the blow to the Mexican drug cartels if prohibition were lifted. But we couldn’t do that, could we?
Full Story: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
Marijuana in America: More Mainstream Than Ever, More Arrests Than Ever
Marijuana’s coming-out party is kicking into high gear across America — but way to many people still are getting cuffed for it.
By Tony Newman, AlterNet. - Need more evidence that marijuana has gone mainstream in America? This morning on the Today show, Matt Lauer chatted up a piece on so-called stiletto stoners — educated, professional women with killer careers and enviable social lives who favor marijuana as their intoxicant of choice and are increasingly comfortable admitting it.
The TV piece draws its inspiration from an article titled “Stiletto Stoners” in the current issue of Marie Claire magazine. The story raises the question: Why are so many smart, successful women lighting up in their off hours?
The sympathetic article and TV piece feature interviews with a wide range of successful women who wind down at the end of the day with a joint instead of a martini. The women see no need to apologize for their drug of choice and offer various reasons for choosing pot over booze: Some don’t like alcohol, others say they enjoy more rewarding conversations with friends when they are indulging in marijuana.
Full Story: Marijuana in America: More Mainstream Than Ever, More Arrests Than Ever | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet.
Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness
For Many Americans, Weed is a Way of Life
By NORM KENT
During his tenure as the Fort Lauderdale Police Chief, the late Ron Cochran was one day asked how he relieved the stress of his tension-filled job: “Like everyone else” he quipped, “I smoke a joint.”
“Only kidding”, he quickly added to the reporter.
Well, I’m not kidding. And neither are twenty million Americans every day. They use marijuana medicinally and recreationally, but the bottom line, is ‘Weeds’ is more than a TV show on HBO. It is a way of life for good and decent people who openly inhale without apology.
Marijuana may be the second-largest cash crop in America. But we will never know until all the farmers who grow can openly distribute it. I can guarantee you this. When the day comes that the weed can be legally grown, openly marketed, and its revenue streams can be lawfully traced, we will have a new growth industry in America that rivals corn. Hemp has multiple uses. Heck, it was used as rope for our paratroopers in World War II. If it worked for George Bush, it can work for you.
Full Story: Norm Kent: Pot and the Right to Pursue Happiness.
CA OKs petition drive for pot legalization
Two prominent East Bay marijuana advocates got clearance from the state today to try to put a pot-legalization initiative on the November 2010 California ballot.
Richard Lee, executive director of the medical marijuana dispensary known as Oaksterdam, and Jeff Jones, former director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, are the sponsors of a measure that would allow anyone over 21 to possess or grow marijuana for personal use. It would allow each local government to decide whether to tax and regulate marijuana sales.
The secretary of state’s office approved the initiative for circulation along with a similar measure sponsored by John Donohue of Long Beach. Each needs at least 433,971 signatures of registered voters by Feb. 18 to qualify for the November ballot.
The Lee-Jones initiative would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. Lee says it would generate billions of dollars in tax revenue.
Full Story: State OKs petition drive for pot legalization.
5 Things the Corporate Media Don’t Want You to Know About Cannabis
Paul Armentano, AlterNet. – Recent scientific reports suggest that pot doesn’t destroy your brain, that it doesn’t cause lung damage like tobacco — but you won’t hear it in the corporate media.
Editor’s note: Come see Paul Armentano and many other top marijuana experts and advocates in discussion at NORML’s 38th national conference taking place this week from September 24–26 in San Francisco. Click here to learn more.
Writing in the journal Science nearly four decades ago, New York State University sociologist Erich Goode documented the media’s complicity in maintaining cannabis prohibition.
He observed: “[T]ests and experiments purporting to demonstrate the ravages of marijuana consumption receive enormous attention from the media, and their findings become accepted as fact by the public. But when careful refutations of such research are published, or when later findings contradict the original pathological findings, they tend to be ignored or dismissed.”
A glimpse of today’s mainstream media landscape indicates that little has changed — with news outlets continuing to, at best, underreport the publication of scientific studies that undermine the federal government’s longstanding pot propaganda and, at worst, ignore them all together.
Full Story: 5 Things the Corporate Media Don’t Want You to Know About Cannabis | Media and Technology | AlterNet.
Legalizing Marijuana in California
Of late, some influential people are trying to legalize marijuana in California. If you feel that the purpose behind such an impending act is to allow people of the entire state to get a high, you are absolutely wrong. The objective behind this move is to address the budget woes of the State of California.
To begin with, the amount of marijuana that is grown in California is more than any other state in the US (worth almost $14 billion each year). However, the harvest, sale and possession of marijuana in California are still not legal. Financial experts feel that being the biggest crash crop of the State that is operating completely outside the law, it would be prudent to legalize it, which in turn would help the cash-strapped State of California to reap the financial windfall. Reeling under the effects of the biggest state budget deficit of over $26 billion, California will be able to fill the state coffers even if tax on a fraction of pot sales are collected by the local or state governments.
Tom Ammiano – the Democratic state assemblyman, even introduced legislation that would have allowed California to control the trading of marijuana and collect tax from its sale. It was estimated that had this bill been passed, the State of California would have been able to add almost $1.3 billion every year as additional revenue. In spite of his bill being shelved this session, Ammiano is upbeat and plans to introduce a revised version of the bill early next year.
Full Story: Campaigns That Matter – Legalizing Marijuana in California.
Some Law Enforcement Support Decriminalization of Drugs
-ABC News – Every 18 seconds, an American is busted for drug possession, according to Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) crime statistics released Monday.
The new statistics point to a continued emphasis on drug interdiction — otherwise known as the “war on drugs” — that more and more law enforcement officers are now questioning.
While many experts hold the anti-drug campaign to be the key reason for the decline in the crime rate in the US, especially violent crime, since the 1990s, these police officers, as well as current and retired judges and prosecutors see, instead, thousands of American lives ruined for small drug infractions in a costly and possibly unwinnable “war.”
Full Story: Some Law Enforcement Support Decriminalization of Drugs – ABC News.
Jack Straw calls for heroin on NHS
– Times Online – JACK STRAW, the justice secretary, has called for the NHS to give out heroin on prescription to addicts for whom other forms of treatment have failed.
He claims “imaginative” solutions to hard-drug abuse are needed and believes there could be “huge benefits” to issuing the drug to chronic addicts.
Straw said: “For the most problematic heroin users it may be the best means of reducing the harm they do themselves, and of stamping out the crime and disorder they inflict on the community.”
Full Story: Jack Straw calls for heroin on NHS – Times Online.
FBI figures: One drug bust in US every 18 second
Raw Story » America is a nation at war, overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at home.
According to the newly released Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report for 2008 every 18 seconds someone is arrested and charged with violating drug laws.
Another striking figure in the report: of the 1,702,537 drug arrests in 2008, 82.3 percent were for simple possession of a contraband substance. Nearly half, 44 percent, were for possession of marijuana.
According to San Francisco Weekly’s calculations, 2008 saw one marijuana arrest every 37 seconds.
Full Story: Raw Story » FBI figures: One drug bust in US every 18 second.
Better world: Legalise drugs
New Scientist
Far from protecting us and our children, the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place.
SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico’s drugs war – a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place.
Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do?
The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal.
The argument most often deployed in support of the status quo is that keeping drugs illegal curbs drug use among the law-abiding majority, thereby reducing harm overall. But a closer look reveals that this really doesn’t stand up. In the UK, as in many countries, the real clampdown on drugs started in the late 1960s, yet government statistics show that the number of heroin or cocaine addicts seen by the health service has grown ever since – from around 1000 people per year then, to 100,000 today. It is a pattern that has been repeated the world over.
Full Story: Better world: Legalise drugs – 11 September 2009 – New Scientist.
Over 100 Million Americans Have Smoked Marijuana — And It’s Still Illegal?
By Paul Armentano, NORML. 
41 percent of the U.S. population say they’ve tried cannabis at least once in their lives, 10 percent say they’ve used it in the last year.
he U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has once again released their annual survey on “drug use and health” — you know, the one where representatives of the federal government go door-to-door and ask Americans if they are presently breaking state and federal law by using illicit drugs. The same survey where respondents have historically under reported their usage of alcohol and tobacco — these two legal substances — by as much as 30 to 50 percent, and arguably under report their use of illicit substances by an even greater margin. The same survey that — despite these inherent limitations — “is the primary source of statistical information on the use of illegal drugs by the U.S. population.” Yeah, that one.
So what does the government’s latest round of ’statistical (though highly questionable) information’ tell us? Nothing we didn’t already know.
Despite 70+ years of criminal prohibition, marijuana still remains widely popular among Americans, with over 102 million Americans (41 percent of the U.S. population) having used it during their lifetimes, 26 million (10 percent) having used it in the past year, and over 15 million (6 percent) admitting that they use it regularly. (By contrast, fewer than 15 percent of adults have ever tried cocaine, the second most ‘popular’ illicit drug, and fewer than 2 percent have ever tried heroin — so much for that supposed ‘gateway effect.’) Predictably, all of the 2008 marijuana use figures are higher than those that were reported for the previous year — great work John Walters!
Full Story: Over 100 Million Americans Have Smoked Marijuana — And It’s Still Illegal? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Chasing the dragon, pt. 3
Part 3…God’s own medicine - Scholars and Rogues »
The Obama administration rescinded the Bush administration’s quixotic order to eradicate poppy fields in Afghanistan. Judging by hectare cultivation numbers and harvest yields, the plan was either never fully implemented or failed miserably. At the very least, farmers in Afghanistan are no longer being punished for trying to make a living. Like Bush, the Obama administration wants to reform Afghan agriculture and move it away from poppy cultivation. Unfortunately, these plans are still “being finalized”. To understand the problems inherent in the administration’s plans and possible futures for Afghan agriculture we need to examine Afghanistan’s situation, the opium poppy, and the history of opium cultivation.
Papaver somniferum (the sleep bringing poppy) has a long history with humanity: seeds have been found in Neolithic burials and recorded use dates to c. 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. For most of those years it was not an evil scourge, but one of the most important plants in the human cornucopia. Gods were depicted wearing its flowers. It offered pain relief without equal in the ancient world, along with mystical visions. But its downside was noticed at least as early as Galen, who wrote that opium users developed a need for the substance and the negative effects of habituation.
As late as the U.S. Civil War, opium was hailed as “god’s own medicine”. God is, apparently, merciful as the plant is widely tolerant of temperate conditions; capable of withstanding drought later in its life cycle; and not particularly susceptible to pests and diseases. More importantly, gathering opium is a fairly simple, if laborious, process. After the flower petals fall, the seed pod is allowed to ripen for roughly two weeks. Then a series of shallow slashes or pin-pricks are made in the pod; latex seeps from these incisions and is scraped from the pod. Sun drying removes the water content, and the result is raw opium.
Americans grow cannabis to beat the recession
Some people cancel holidays abroad, others stage yard sales or start shopping at low-cost supermarkets. To that list must now be added a new way to get through economic hard times: grow cannabis.
Law enforcers on the west coast of the US and in the middle states straddled by the foothills of the Appalachian mountains are reporting a common trend. It is boom time for marijuana cultivation, and much of the incentive they say is to beat the recession.
So far this year, police in parts of the country where cannabis is traditionally grown have chopped down plants with a street value of $12bn. The core growing area is in California, Washington and Oregon to the west, but the Appalachian states of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are also witnessing an explosion.
via Americans grow cannabis to beat the recession | World news | guardian.co.uk.
When Cocaine and Monsanto’s Pesticide Collide, the War on Drugs Becomes a Genetically-Modified War on Science
When Cocaine and Monsanto’s Pesticide Collide, the War on Drugs Becomes a Genetically-Modified War on Science - By Meg White, BuzzFlash.
Monsanto and the U.S. government are dealing with unanticipated hazards of the pesticide Roundup in the South American drug war.
At the intersection of cocaine and Roundup in rural South America, Monsanto and the U.S. government are struggling to keep up appearances. That’s becoming more and more difficult as the unanticipated hazards of genetic modification become clearer.
Back in April, Argentinean embryologist Andrés Carrasco gave an interview with a Buenos Aires newspaper describing his recent findings suggesting the chemical glyphosate, a chemical herbicide widely used in agriculture as well as in U.S. anti-narcotic efforts, could cause defects in fetuses in much smaller doses than those to which peasants and farmers in his country were already being exposed. Loud calls for a ban on the substance were issued by Argentinean environmental lawyers, and the country’s Ministry of Defense banned the planting of glyphosate-resistant soya crops in its fields.
Then came the backlash. An article in an Argentinean paper recently reported that Carrasco was assaulted in a way he described as “violent” by four men associated with agricultural interests:
Former president of Brazil says hardline war on drugs ‘has failed’
Former president of Brazil says hardline war on drugs ‘has failed’ – | | The Observer
Fernando Henrique Cardoso urges global decriminalisation of cannabis use
The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift towards decriminalising cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, says the former president of Brazil, writing today in the Observer. Fernando Henrique Cardoso argues that the hardline approach has brought “disastrous” consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the continent’s position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana.
His intervention, which will reignite growing debate in Europe about how to tackle drugs, was welcomed yesterday by campaigners for drug law reform who increasingly see the impact on developing countries where drugs are produced as critical to the argument.
“After decades of overflights, interdictions, spraying and raids on jungle drug factories, Latin America remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana,” Cardoso writes. “It is producing more and more opium and heroin. It is developing the capacity to mass produce synthetic drugs. Continuing the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous.”
via Former president of Brazil says hardline war on drugs ‘has failed’ | World news | The Observer.
DUI attorney challenges laws prohibiting driving while stoned
Is driving while under the influence of THC, one of marijuana’s – Raw Story »
active ingredients, actually dangerous? One prominent California DUI attorney believes it is not nearly as dangerous as driving drunk and has issued a challenge to laws that punish marijuana users who get behind the wheel.
San Diego defense attorney Lawrence Taylor, considered “The Dean of DUI Attorneys,” according to a release by his firm, is apparently arguing that DUI laws are unfair because they do not allow consideration for the varying degrees of inebriation caused by drugs of abuse.
Drivers convicted of marijuana intoxication are usually sentenced only after authorities have taken a blood sample. However that blood sample, he notes, only measures the body’s metabolism of marijuana’s compounds, not the actual level of impairment.
via Raw Story » DUI attorney challenges laws prohibiting driving while stoned.
Report: One-third of US cocaine cut with cattle de-worming agent
Report: One-third of US cocaine cut with cattle de-worming agent – Raw Story »
AP IMPACT: Tainted cocaine kills 3, sickens dozens
AP IMPACT: Cocaine made with animal medication kills 3, sickens dozens across US, Canada
Nearly a third of all cocaine seized in the United States is laced with a dangerous veterinary medicine — a livestock de-worming drug that might enhance cocaine’s effects but has been blamed in at least three deaths and scores of serious illnesses.
via Raw Story » Report: One-third of US cocaine cut with cattle de-worming agent.
Denver weighs $1 fine for marijuana possession
Denver weighs $1 fine for marijuana possession – Raw Story »
Denver may soon become the most laid-back city in America.
As far as its marijuana laws are concerned, that is.
A city panel recommended on Wednesday that Denver lower its penalty for marijuana possession by adults to just $1. The fine currently sits at $50. The state also mandates an additional $100 surcharge and an additional $10 fee.
“The panel was created by Mayor John Hickenlooper in December 2007 after voters passed an ordinance that made it so adult marijuana possession is the city’s ‘lowest law enforcement priority,’” noted Colorado’s NBC 9News.
The panel voted 6-2 to recommend the fee change, according to The Denver Post.
The $1 fine still requires approval by a Denver judge. Even if the judge agrees, the total penalty for marijuana possession will still stand at $111.
via Raw Story » Denver weighs $1 fine for marijuana possession.
Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer – By Fred Gardner, O’Shaughnessy’s
New research shows here seems to be something in pot that actually undermines cancer, instead of causing it. — and the media are doing their best to ignore it.
Editor’s Note: There is a groundswell of attention in the news to marijuana’s role in causing and preventing various types of cancers. Last week, AlterNet published an article from the Marijuana Policy Project about a new study finding that pot smokers have a lower risk of head and neck cancers than people who don’t smoke pot. Earlier this year, the corporate media pounced on a study suggesting that men who had been using marijuana at least once per week and who had started smoking pot prior to age 18 had an elevated risk of testicular cancer known as nonseminoma, which makes up fewer than half of one percent of all cancer cases among men.
Head, neck and testicular cancers are of course quite serious ailments to deal with, but what about cancer of the most obvious organ at risk with pot smoking, the lungs? Where’s the science on that? The article below by Fred Gardner, editor of the medical marijuana research quarterly journal O’Shaughnessy’s, shares the results of a major medical study the media completely ignored, and his conclusions are quite blunt on the matter: Smoking pot doesn’t cause lung cancer. In fact, the study found that cigarette smokers who also smoked marijuana were at a lower risk of contracting lung cancer than tobacco-only smokers.
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Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
by Fred Gardner
One in three Americans will be afflicted with cancer, we are told by the government (as if it’s our immutable fate and somehow acceptable). Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. and lung cancer the leading killer among cancers.
via Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
