All Entries in the "Illegal Drugs" Category
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.
via Scholars and Rogues » Chasing the dragon, pt. 3.
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.
***
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.
Argentina rules on marijuana use
Argentina rules on marijuana use - BBC NEWS
The supreme court in Argentina has ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal consumption.
The decision follows a case of five young men who were arrested with a few marijuana cigarettes in their pockets.
But the court said use must not harm others and made it clear it did not advocate a complete decriminalisation.
Correspondents say there is a growing momentum in Latin America towards decriminalising drugs for personal use.
The Argentine court ruled that: “Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state.”
via BBC NEWS | Americas | Argentina rules on marijuana use.
The world’s first cocaine bar
The world’s first cocaine bar – | | The Guardian
Route 36 has turned La Paz, Bolivia into a hotspot for drug tourism, tempting backpackers from all over the world
“Tonight we have two types of cocaine; normal for 100 Bolivianos a gram, and strong cocaine for 150 [Bolivianos] a gram.” The waiter has just finished taking our drink order of two rum-and-Cokes here in La Paz, Bolivia, and as everybody in this bar knows, he is now offering the main course. The bottled water is on the house.
The waiter arrives at the table, lowers the tray and places an empty black CD case in the middle of the table. Next to the CD case are two straws and two little black packets. He is so casual he might as well be delivering a sandwich and fries. And he has seen it all. “We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. They would take turns sleeping and the only time they left was to go to the ATM,” says Roberto, who has worked at Route 36 (in its various locations) for the last six months. Behind the bar, he goes back to casually slicing straws into neat 8cm lengths.
La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,900m above sea level – an altitude where even two flights of stairs makes your heart race like a hummingbird – is home to the most celebrated bar in all of South America: Route 36, the world’s first cocaine lounge. I sit back to take in the scene – table after table of chatty young backpackers, many of whom are taking a gap year, awaiting a new job or simply escaping the northern hemisphere for the delights of South America, which, for many it seems, include cocaine.
via The world’s first cocaine bar | World news | The Guardian.
Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession
Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession - - NYTimes.com
Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.
The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.
Anyone caught with drug amounts under the personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory — although no penalties for noncompliance are specified.
Mexican authorities said the change only recognized the longstanding practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs.
via Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession – NYTimes.com.
Campus Hypocrisy: Marijuana Is Safer, But Students Are Pushed to More Dangerous Booze
Campus Hypocrisy: Marijuana Is Safer, But Students Are Pushed to More Dangerous Booze - By Paul Armentano and Steve Fox and Mason Tvert, Chelsea Green Publishing.
The stats for death and injury tied to alcohol on campus are staggering, yet students are more harshly punished for pot — which is far more benign.
Two weeks ago, we published an excerpt from the recently released Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? It was so well received, we asked the authors for a second excerpt, which is included below. If you have found one or both of these excerpts compelling, we encourage you to participate in The Great Marijuana Book Bomb taking place today (August 20). The authors have organized a one-day campaign to drive the book to the top of the Amazon.com rankings. If you want to see it reach #1, click on the book title above and make a purchase of your own.
Campuses are a microcosm of the broader society when it comes to alcohol and marijuana use. Although both substances are illegal for students under the age of twenty-one, the punishments for those who use them are far from equal. Most universities impose policies mandating that students who are busted using cannabis will face more severe sanctions than students caught drinking alcohol. We are aware of numerous students who have been removed from campus housing for possessing a small amount of marijuana in their dorm room. Yet these same students would have received a slap on the wrist — most likely in the form of a warning or campus probation — if alcohol had been present.
Take Purdue University in Indiana, for example. This school imposes a “zero tolerance” policy for students who are caught with marijuana in their dorms. This means that the possession of any amount of cannabis will result in immediate cancellation of their campus housing contract. By contrast, Purdue employs a “three strikes” policy for underage possession of alcohol. Bob Heitert, director of administration for university residence halls at Purdue, justifies the school’s inconsistent policy this way: “Illegal drugs are against the law for everyone, while alcohol is against the law for a larger portion of students but not for everyone. Society seems to take a different approach to alcohol than they do to illegal drugs. We reflect that societal difference.”
Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers
Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers – The Raw Story »
Peter Moskos and Stanford “Neill” Franklin — one a college professor, the other a former police officer, both members of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) — saw their advocacy of ending drug prohibition published Monday morning by The Washington Post.
Their argument is compelling. Here’s an excerpt:
Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies — and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men — have we and other police officers begun to question the system.
Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn’t work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.
Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.
Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.
The column’s authors argue that among all the reasons for drug war reform, the most important to them is that ending America’s war on its drug users means “more police officers wouldn’t have to die.”
via The Raw Story » Law enforcement group takes ‘legalize drugs’ message to Washington Post readers.
New study: Up to 90 percent of U.S. paper money contains traces of cocaine
OPS: …and we’re winning the war on Drugs?
New study: Up to 90 percent of U.S. paper money contains traces of cocaine
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2009 — You probably have cocaine in your wallet, purse, or pocket. Sound unlikely or outrageous? Think again! In what researchers describe as the largest, most comprehensive analysis to date of cocaine contamination in banknotes, scientists are reporting that cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone.
Presented here today at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, the new study suggests that cocaine abuse is still widespread and may be on the rise in some areas. It could help raise public awareness about cocaine use and lead to greater emphasis on curbing its abuse, the researchers say.
The scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found “alarming” evidence of cocaine use in many areas. The U.S. and Canada had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85 and 90 percent, while China and Japan had the lowest, between 12 and 20 percent contamination. The study is the first report about cocaine contamination in Chinese and Japanese currencies, they say.
U.S. cities, a new study reports.
Credit: The American Chemical Society
High-resolution version
“To my surprise, we’re finding more and more cocaine in banknotes,” said study leader Yuegang Zuo, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth.
via New study: Up to 90 percent of U.S. paper money contains traces of cocaine.
Study say marijuana no gateway drug
Study say marijuana no gateway drug | Science Blog
Marijuana is not a “gateway” drug that predicts or eventually leads to substance abuse, suggests a 12-year University of Pittsburgh study. Moreover, the study’s findings call into question the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts and governmental policy for six decades and caused many a parent to panic upon discovering a bag of pot in their child’s bedroom.
The Pitt researchers tracked 214 boys beginning at ages 10-12, all of whom eventually used either legal or illegal drugs. When the boys reached age 22, they were categorized into three groups: those who used only alcohol or tobacco, those who started with alcohol and tobacco and then used marijuana (gateway sequence) and those who used marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco (reverse sequence).
Nearly a quarter of the study population who used both legal and illegal drugs at some point – 28 boys – exhibited the reverse pattern of using marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco, and those individuals were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than those who followed the traditional succession of alcohol and tobacco before illegal drugs, according to the study, which appears in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
via Study say marijuana no gateway drug | Science Blog.
The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City
The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City - AlterNet
Marijuana possession is decriminalized in New York State. Nonetheless, New York City makes more pot arrests than any city in the world.
There are two things that need to be understood about marijuana arrests in New York City.
First, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is not a crime in New York State. Since 1977 and passage of the Marijuana Reform Act, state law has made simple possession of less than seventh-eights of an ounce of pot a violation, like a traffic violation. One can be given a ticket and fined $100 for marijuana possession, but not fingerprinted and jailed. For over thirty years, New York State has formally, legally, decriminalized possession of marijuana.
Second, despite that law, since 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, mostly teenagers and young people in their twenties. Most people arrested were not smoking pot. Usually they just carried a bit of it in a pocket. In 2008 alone, the NYPD arrested and jailed 40,300 people for possessing a small amount of marijuana. These extraordinary numbers of arrests and jailings, continuing for over twelve years, now make New York City the marijuana arrest capital of the world.
via The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
The Top 5 Reasons Why We Should Grow Hemp
The Top 5 Reasons Why We Should Grow Hemp
While there are several reasons for legalizing Cannabis, hemp, which comes from the same plant genus as marijuana, definitely has the most tangible benefits. Besides, the strains of marijuana used in industrial and consumer products contain such a small level of the intoxicating substance, the two shouldn’t be classified under the same category.
Hemp as paper: Hemp won’t just save trees, but paper made from Hemp is stronger and more durable. According to Ecomall
The hemp plant, like cotton, produces cellulose fibers that are much more pure than fibers derived from wood…Many of the early documents printed on hemp paper hundreds, or even one thousand years ago, are still in existence.
Hemp as a fuel: Hemp is more sustainable and burns cleaner than any other fuel. More importantly, though, EcoMall says:
via The Top 5 Reasons Why We Should Grow Hemp.
Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?
Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? - Chelsea Green Publishing.
The following is an excerpt from the just-released book, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert (Chelsea Green, 2009).
Dateline: February 1, 2009. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.”
But as the day’s festivities build to a climax, the nation is thrown into turmoil. Internet headlines announce that Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps, who months earlier had electrified audiences throughout the world by winning eight gold medals in Beijing, had been captured in full digital glory taking a bong hit at a private party. The horrors! How could he do such a thing?
Almost immediately online articles appear, replete with quotes of disillusionment from anyone with even a tangential connection to the world’s most decorated Olympian. Hours later, Phelps issues a public statement. He apologizes for his “regrettable” behavior and “bad judgment,” and promises “it will not happen again.” Was Phelps’s apology issued because he was reportedly also drunk and “obnoxious” at the same party? Of course not. Being drunk in public is not the sort of behavior that triggers public outrage and social condemnation.Taking a hit or two of marijuana, on the other hand, most certainly is.
via Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
The Benefits To Legalizing Pot You Haven’t Heard About (VIDEO)
The Benefits To Legalizing Pot You Haven’t Heard About (VIDEO)
The war on drugs may be a noble intention, but the illegal growing of marijuana is destroying our environment and we need to step in.
Primarily run by Mexican drug cartels in the fields of California — marijuana is the state’s largest cash crop generating nearly $14 billion a year — the marijuana growers aren’t your typical peace-loving hippies of the 70s. Hundred KW generators, diesel storage tanks, ATV vehicles and large quantities of animal poison are just some of the things involved here.
These men live illegally on farms all summer, putting tons of waste into the soil and water.
Irrigation tubes that snake for a mile or more over forested ridges. Pesticides that have drained into creeks and entered the food chain, sickening wildlife. Piles of trash and human waste in the most rugged and bucolic drainages.
via The Benefits To Legalizing Pot You Haven’t Heard About (VIDEO).
Florida’s Hydroponic Pot: House-Grown, and Super-Potent
Florida’s Marijuana Boom: House-Grown, and Potent – - TIME
California may be the center of the marijuana trade and the controversies over its legalization. But Florida has surpassed it in one important category: the Sunshine State is now the country’s leader in indoor marijuana cultivation. It is a potent distinction because most of the marijuana grown this way is cultured hydroponically — that is, mostly without soil and with a carefully calibrated cocktail of chemicals and lighting — to create some of the highest level of highs on the market.
In 2006, Florida law enforcement here discovered 480 homes growing marijuana indoors. Last year, 1,022 grow houses were busted. “This isn’t your grandma’s marijuana,” quipped a Miami-Dade narcotics officer at one bust as he tossed garbage bags stuffed with confiscated marijuana into an unmarked police truck. Levels of THC — the agent in marijuana that produces feelings of euphoria, and in some users mild hallucinations and paranoia — have risen dramatically because of indoor techniques. Thirty years ago, most marijuana contained about 7% THC. Today, indoor growers boast THC levels of 25% or higher thanks to the additional care that indoor plants receive. (See pictures of 4/20, the unofficial pot holiday.)
via Florida’s Hydroponic Pot: House-Grown, and Super-Potent – TIME.
Methland: The Drug Epidemic That Ravaged the Midwest
Methland: The Drug Epidemic That Ravaged the Midwest
By Charles Homans, Washington Monthly.
The meth epidemic tearing apart America’s small towns is in many ways a product of the global economy.
In an early scene in Nick Reding’s Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, a former meatpacker turned small-time methamphetamine cook in Oelwein, Iowa, named Roland Jarvis, inspired by a paranoid hallucination involving black helicopters, pours the hazardous chemicals comprising his home meth lab down the drain and then lights a cigarette, inadvertently blowing up his house and melting off most of his face. When the local police sergeant — a high school classmate of Jarvis’s — arrives on the scene, Jarvis begs him to shoot him. No one — the cops, the paramedics, Jarvis himself — quite knows what to do. None of them has really been here before.
This, in a nutshell, is what scared Americans about methamphetamine when it began to seep into the periphery of the national consciousness, building into a full-blown panic by the mid-2000s. The drug itself, a powerful stimulant, is unpleasant enough, but as Reding observes, “[i]n truth, all drug epidemics are only in part about the drugs.” What allowed meth to capture the public imagination so fully was the way in which it attacked the stories that Americans told themselves about the primordial decency of the heartland. Aside from its ease of manufacture — you can make meth out of readily available industrial and pharmaceutical products, enabling a twenty-first-century variant on the moonshiners of earlier generations such as Jarvis — the drug’s most novel aspect was its clientele: the same predominantly white small-town residents who had watched the urban depredations of crack cocaine from afar and told themselves that they weren’t that kind of people. “We’re in Iowa, for God’s sake,” a former Oelwein high school principal, explaining his decision to request police patrols of his school, tells Reding. “We don’t do that.” In mainstream America’s Rockwellian imagination, police officers in towns like Oelwein were supposed to be stopping high school kids from making out in cars on prom night. In the meth age they suddenly needed bulletproof vests and hazmat training.
via Methland: The Drug Epidemic That Ravaged the Midwest | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Is Big Pharma Trying to Take All the Fun out of Pot?
Is Big Pharma Trying to Take All the Fun out of Pot?
Drug researchers are trying to replicate marijuana’s therapeutic effects, but without the “side effect” of getting people high.
Pricey pharmaceutical-marketing newsletters have touted cannabis-derived drugs as the next blockbuster for the industry, but the biggest companies are primarily researching drugs whose effect is the opposite of the cannabis herb.
Numerous drug researchers are trying to develop medications that replicate the herb’s therapeutic effects without the harm of inhaling smoke and the side effect of getting people high.
Others are looking into cannabinoid agonists, drugs that enhance the body’s natural cannabinoid system — or cannabinoid antagonists, which disrupt it — and have been the pharmaceutical industry’s main focus. Despite the millions of medical-marijuana users, both U.S. government restrictions and drug companies’ need for exclusive ownership have limited research into herbal cannabis.
In any case, it will likely be a while before many cannabis-derived drugs arrive in your local pharmacy.
via Is Big Pharma Trying to Take All the Fun out of Pot? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers
Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers
OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland residents overwhelmingly voted Tuesday to approve a first-of-its kind tax on medical marijuana sold at the city’s four cannabis dispensaries.
Preliminary election results showed the measure passing with 80 percent of the vote, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.
The dispensary tax was one of four measures in a vote-by-mail special election aimed at raising money for the cash-strapped city. All four measures won, but Measure F had the highest level of support.
Scheduled to take effect on New Year’s Day, the measure created a special business tax rate for the pot clubs, which now pay the same $1.20 for every $1,000 in gross sales applied to all retail businesses. The new rate will be $18.
via Oakland Voters Pass Landmark Pot Tax To Boost City Coffers.
Daley takes pass on pot question
Daley takes pass on pot question - Chicago Breaking News 
Mayor Richard Daley today described the issue of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana in Cook County as, appropriately enough, “clouded.”
At an unrelated event on the South Side, the mayor was asked about the measure passed by the County Board Tuesday that would make it possible for someone to get a $200 fine if they’re caught with a small amount of marijuana in unincorporated Cook County.
“We just had a ban on smoking. People say you can’t smoke, they said, ‘Please don’t smoke.’ And now everyone’s saying, ‘Let’s all smoke marijuana.’ I mean, after a while you wonder where America’s going to,” Daley said.
But when asked if he was against such a measure, Daley didn’t take a position, saying he thought the issue is “really clouded.”
Board President Todd Stroger said after Tuesday’s meeting he had yet to read the ordinance and couldn’t say whether he would veto it. It would take 14 commissioners to override a veto. A Stroger spokesman could not immediately be reached today.
via Daley takes pass on pot question – Chicago Breaking News.
The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire
The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Assistant Professor of History, Tulsa University.
In a recent interview, Richard Holbrooke, White House Special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan and a key architect of President Obama’s “surge” strategy, declared the War on Drugs in Afghanistan to be a failure. After spending millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, he said, aerial eradication campaigns have not cut supply rates and contributed to the displacement of farmers and loss of their livelihood, causing many to gravitate to the insurgent camp. He might have added that many of these farmers have been poisoned by chemical sprays resulting in the spread of diseases like cancer, and that the U.S. supports some of the major opium warlords in the Karzai government responsible for turning the country into what even Fox News has characterized as a “narco-state.” Drug money has corrupted all facets of society, crippled the legal economy and made it nearly impossible to carry out the simplest development projects. Positions for police chief in many provinces are auctioned off to the highest bidder due to their enormous graft value. The cost for a job as chief of police anywhere on the border is rumored to be upwards of $150,000.
As Holbrooke is well aware, the failure of the war on drugs in Afghanistan fits a long historical precedent. Holbrooke started his career as an employee with USAID, which was involved in pioneering drug interdiction campaigns during another ill-fated occupation where they proved to be an important recruiting tool for the ‘Vietcong.’ American intervention in Vietnam was a watershed in the growth of the global war on drugs, stemming largely from the crisis of addiction in the American armed forces and revelations of CIA support for opium growing warlords in the Golden Triangle.
via The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure: From the Vietnam to the Afghan Quagmire.
Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance?
Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance?
As the anti-drug program spread into 3/4 of all school districts by the ’90s, America’s youth enjoyed a psychedelic renaissance.
The following is an excerpt from Ryan Grim’s new book, “This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America (Wiley, 2009) This is the 2nd excerpt in a series from the book. Read the first excerpt here).
The D.A.R.E. program is now in three-quarters of all school districts, reaching more than twenty-five million American kids. It also has branches in more than fifty nations worldwide. Ironically, it was born just as more than a decade of rising drug use was ebbing among all age groups, including baby boomers, who now had the sorts of responsibilities that can preclude taking recreational drugs: careers, mortgages, and, most important, children.
Apprehensive new moms and dads in the eighties and early nineties helped make D.A.R.E. a global phenomenon, but they were surrounded by countless other sources of parenting help. Best sellers such as Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More and Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, both published in 1987, helped to build a massive market in recovery and wellness literature during the period. Self-esteem, self-actualization, and self-help, pop-psychological leftovers from the individualistic sixties and narcissistic seventies, became buzzwords to live by as millions of Americans were introduced to their “inner child” and the potentially catastrophic consequences of neglecting it. “With our parents’ unknowing help and society’s assistance, most of us deny our Inner Child,” Whitfield writes of this hidden, wounded aspect of the psyche. “When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges.”
via Did Anti-Drug Propaganda Help Bring About a Psychedelic Renaissance? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
California sprouts marijuana ‘green rush’
California sprouts marijuana ‘green rush’
SAN FRANCISCO — A drug deal plays out, California-style:
A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there.
An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different pot strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift.
It’s a $102 credit card transaction carried out with the practiced efficiency of a home-delivered pizza — and with just about as much legal scrutiny.
More and more, having premium pot delivered to your door in California is not a crime. It is a legitimate business.
Marijuana has transformed California. Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.
No longer relegated to the underground, pot in California these days props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups designed to grow, market and distribute the drug.
via The Associated Press: California sprouts marijuana ‘green rush’.
Calif tax officials: Legal pot would rake in $1.4B
Calif tax officials: Legal pot would rake in $1.4B
California tax officials have found that a state bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol would generate nearly $1.4 billion in revenue.
A State Board of Equalization report released Wednesday estimates marijuana retail sales would bring $990 million from a $50-per-ounce fee and $392 million in sales taxes.
The bill introduced by San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano in February would allow adults to legally possess, grow and sell marijuana.
Ammiano has promoted the bill as a way to help bridge the state’s $26.3 billion budget shortfall.
The state could not begin collecting taxes under the bill, as written, until the federal government legalizes marijuana.
A spokesman says Ammiano plans to amend the bill to remove that provision.
via Calif tax officials: Legal pot would rake in $1.4B.
Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
Video at link
Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
The Marijuana Policy Project is running ads calling for California to tax the sale of marijuana.
A pro-marijuana group is launching another television bid to legalize pot in California — this time with the pitch that legalizing and taxing the drug could help solve the state’s massive budget deficit.
The 30-second spot, airing Wednesday and paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project, features a retired 58-year-old state worker who says state leaders “are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes.”
“We’re marijuana consumers,” says Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, who says she began using marijuana after suffering multiple strokes three years ago. “Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share.”
via Raw Story » Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix.
The “War” on Drugs
The “War” on Drugs | CommonDreams.org
Among the key findings of a new UN world report on drugs: a drop in opium and cocaine production; a rise in synthetics and the potency of cannabis; the need to focus on drug treatment not incarceration, and traffickers not users; and the alarming rise of drug-related crime, as evidenced in the chart above. Still, it says legalization would be “an historic mistake.”
The report’s conclusions were challenged by Transform, a British drugs charity with special consultative status with the UN.
“Despite the ongoing attempts to put a positive spin on the data there is no hiding from the reality that the era of global drug prohibition, enshrined in the three UN drug conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988), has witnessed a consistent escalation in harms associated with illicit drug production, supply and use,” said Danny Kushlick, head of policy at Transform.
via The “War” on Drugs | CommonDreams.org.
UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report
UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report
In an about face, the United Nations on Wednesday lavishly praised drug decriminalization in its annual report on the state of global drug policy. In previous years, the UN drug czar had expressed skepticism about Portugal’s decriminalization, which removed criminal penalties in 2001 for personal drug possession and emphasized treatment over incarceration. The UN had suggested the policy was in violation of international drug treaties and would encourage “drug tourism.”
But in its 2009 World Drug Report, the UN had little but kind words for Portugal’s radical (by U.S. standards) approach. “These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users. Among those who would not welcome a summons from a police officer are tourists, and, as a result, Portugal’s policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism,” reads the report. “It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased.”
In its upbeat appraisal of Portugal’s policy, the UN finds itself in agreement with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald.
via UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report.
Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot
Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot 
A controversial law in Massachusetts could go national if Congressman Barney Frank gets his way.
Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana.
It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100.
“I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s,” said Congressman Frank, “when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don’t hurt anyone else. It’s a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don’t need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others.”
Frank filed a similar bill last year, but it failed.
The law passed in Massachusetts last November.
Ten other states have also reduced penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana – in some cases they are a civil fine. These states include California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
via Barney Frank Files Bill To Decriminalize Pot – wbztv.com.
A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen
A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen
Getting caught with a small amount of marijuana would not automatically lead to arrest if a Cook County Commissioner gets her way.
An ordinance proposed this week by Commissioner Earlean Collins (D-Chicago) would allow county sheriffs to write tickets for possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana rather than automatically making arrests. It’s an effort, she says, to simultaneously boost sagging county revenues and ease overcrowding at the Cook County Jail.
“I know we’re going to have a deficit budget,” Collins told the Huffington Post. “This ordinance would help the County generate money and reduce the jail population.
via A Ticket For Marijuana Possession In Cook County? Reduced Pot Penalty Proposed As Budget Woes Deepen.
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
As California goes, so goes the nation.
If that old adage still holds true, then the nation may soon see a gradual backpedaling from the criminal justice policies that have led to wholesale incarceration in recent decades. For the most populous state in the union is on the verge of insolvency–partly because it didn’t set aside a rainy-day fund during the boom years; partly because its voters recently rejected a series of initiatives that would have allowed a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to help stabilize the state’s finances during the downturn; partly because it has spent the past quarter-century funneling tens of billions of dollars into an out-of-control correctional system. Now, as California’s politicians contemplate emergency cuts to deal with a $24 billion hole in the state budget, old certainties are crumbling.
The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state’s political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the “war on drugs,” the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country’s harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.
via The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’.
Congressman Proposes 25 Years In Prison For Pot
OPS: Kirk, another sad excuse for a Human Being
Congressman Proposes 25 Years In Prison For Pot
By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
They say that every action spurs an opposite reaction. Well, that certainly seems to be the case in Congress.
Just days after Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Barney Frank, along with 13 cosponsors, reintroduced HR 2835, the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act of 2009 in Congress, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk (Illinois) has called for federal legislation to sentence certain first-time marijuana offenders to up to 25 years in prison.
UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!! It gets even worse. Check out some of the comments and coverage from Rep. Kirk’s press conference (WTF is “koosh?!”), which took place this afternoon. You can also offer your opinions regarding this misguided and mean-spirited proposal on Alternet.org and the ever-popular Huffington Post blog by going here.
via Congressman Proposes 25 Years In Prison For Pot | NORML Blog.
NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize)
NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize) – The Raw Story »
In a major coup for pro-legalization group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Nicholas Kristof, columnist for The New York Times, hitched himself to the group’s mantra in a Sunday editorial exploring the downfalls of a government fighting a war against its own people.
From The New York Times:
Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:
First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.
Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)
via The Raw Story » NYT editorial on drug war: Time to legalize (or at least decriminalize).
Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model
Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model
Pot entrepreneur Richard Lee envisions a professional marijuana industry much like the one that exists in Amsterdam.
There is a buzz moving through the culture, as the public attitudes around cannabis use are rapidly shifting, that the legalization of marijuana in some states, particularly California, is a growing possibility.
Recent polling by Zogby in May demonstrated that a majority of Americans, say it “makes sense to tax and regulate” marijuana. The Zogby poll, commissioned by the conservative-oriented O’Leary Report, found 52 percent in favor of legalization, only 37 percent opposed. As Ryan Grim reports on the Huffington Post , a previous ABC News/Washington Post poll found 46 percent in support. In California, a Field Poll found 56 percent backing legalization and as a result California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for an open debate on legalization, all which suggest that American society may be reaching a tipping point when it comes to legal pot.
An array of new circumstances — Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border — support the growing public support for legalization of pot.
via Legal Pot in California in 2010? “Oaksterdam” Provides the Model | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Bad science: cocaine study that got up the nose of the US
Cocaine study that got up the nose of the US | The Guardian
“Health problems from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use,…”
In areas of moral and political conflict people will always behave badly with evidence, so the war on drugs is a consistent source of entertainment. We have already seen how cannabis being “25 times stronger” was a fantasy, how drugs-related deaths were quietly dropped from the measures for drugs policy, and how a trivial pile of poppies was presented by the government as a serious dent in the Taliban’s heroin revenue.
The Commons home affairs select committee is looking at the best way to deal with cocaine. You may wonder why they’re bothering. When the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs looked at the evidence on the reclassification of cannabis it was ignored. When Professor David Nutt, the new head of the advisory council, wrote a scientific paper on the relatively modest risks of MDMA (the active ingredient in the club drug ecstasy) he was attacked by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith .
In the case of cocaine there is an even more striking precedent for evidence being ignored: the World Health Organisation (WHO) conducted what is probably the largest ever study of global use. In March 1995 they released a briefing kit which summarised their conclusions, with some tantalising bullet points.
Hey Progressives: Why Don’t you Care About the “Drug War” Like You Care About Other Issues?
Hey Progressives: Why Don’t you Care About the “Drug War” Like You Care About Other Issues?
If the 500,000 nonviolent drug offenders in jail had white faces, would society allow it?
The following is the text of Drug Policy Alliance Director Ethan Nadelmann’s speech to the Momentum Plenary at the America’s Future Now conference in Washington. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The issue of over-incarceration and the overuse of the criminal justice system in America strike me as one of the most horrific violations of human rights in the United States today.
What I’m also struck by is the extent to which our American exceptionalism in this regard is unknown to so many who should know.
I’m going to throw some numbers at you:
* We have increased the number of people behind bars from roughly 500,000 people in 1980 to 2.3 million today.
* In the U.S., we have less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
* We rank first in the world in the per capita incarceration of our fellow citizens. First in the world — We are No. 1.
Keep in mind, we are not so different as people sometimes think when it comes to crime, and even drug use: Our rates of crime, apart from homicide, are not that different from other industrialized nations, and our rates of illicit drug use are somewhat higher, but not dramatically higher than these other countries.
Khat vs. Coffee: Taxi Drivers’ Wake-Me-Up or Terrorist Drug Threat?
Khat vs. Coffee: Taxi Drivers’ Wake-Me-Up or Terrorist Drug Threat?
E. African taxi drivers in Washington, DC may see their stimulant of choice outlawed because, well, it’s not American — or something.
For hundreds, if not thousands, of years, residents of the Horn of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula have partaken of khat, an evergreen plant native to the region. When the fresh leaves of the plant are chewed, they produce a mild stimulating effect. Friends of the plant liken the high to the buzz achieved from drinking strong coffee; foes, typically in law enforcement, are more apt to liken it to an amphetamine high.
But with decades of war and internal strife in the late 20th Century, an East African diaspora occurred, with Ethiopians and Somalis scattering and creating new immigrant population centers across Europe, Australia, Canada, and the US. Not surprisingly, these emigrants brought with them their khat chewing habit.
Khat is not illegal under international law, although two of its active compounds are. Cathinone, the more powerful, is a Schedule I drug under the 1988 UN Convention on Psychotropic Drugs, while cathine, the less powerful, is Schedule IV. Cathinone is found only in fresh leaf, degrading rapidly once the plant is harvested.
via Khat vs. Coffee: Taxi Drivers’ Wake-Me-Up or Terrorist Drug Threat? | DrugReporter | AlterNet.
Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy
OPS: cutting the lawn could become a religious experience. You’d have the kids fighting over it. “It’s MY turn to cut the lawn…”
Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy
Oakdale, CA: Scientists at Montsaint Genie Tech Inc. announced today that they have successfully transferred the gene segment that produces the psychotropic chemical THC in cannabis plants to many other common garden plants, including tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and more.
“We probably can put the THC segment into almost any plant in existence,” says lead scientist Rebeca Vale. “It’s a very simple process. We are starting work on oak and maple trees now.”
Asked if the resulting plants could be used in ways similar to cannabis, Vale replied, “Well, you can’t make twine out of a tomato plant, but if someone were to dry it and smoke it, all of the medicinal and psychotropic effects of marijuana would be present. And what’s more, we have learned that tomatoes, in particular, actually produce more THC than cannabis itself.”
via Company makes any plant produce THC and the tomatoes are especially yummy : thecrit.com.
White House unveils plan to combat drug trade at border
White House unveils plan to combat drug trade at border 
(CNN) — Top Obama administration officials were in Albuquerque on Friday to announce new efforts to combat the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico.
The White House released a summary of its National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy, aimed at not only stemming the trafficking of illegal narcotics, but also slowing the flow of cash and illegal firearms into Mexico.
The plan involves increased intelligence and enhanced technology. It also includes “targeted financial sanctions to disable drug trafficking
organizations,” as well as heightened cooperation with Mexico, the White House said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, and White House Drug Policy Chief Gil Kerlikowske planned to discuss the strategy at a news conference.
Rising drug violence in the United States is one of the administration’s top domestic concerns.
–CNN’s Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
Congress Sends Drug War South, Taxpayer Money to Defense Firms
Congress Sends Drug War South, Taxpayer Money to Defense Firms
Just when the Obama administration showed signs of rethinking the disastrous “war on drugs” at home, Congress decided to export it big-time to Mexico. On foreign land, this monument to wrong-headed policy takes a particularly bloody and bellicose form.
A little-known measure buried in the U.S. 2009 Supplemental Bill would provide millions of dollars to corrupt Mexican security forces engaged in an unwinnable drug war. Disguised as a way of “helping” our beleaguered neighbor, the measure goes beyond even what the Bush administration planned. The aid package will push Mexico closer to a Colombia scenario and create a new quagmire to suck up scarce U.S. public resources.
The House version of the supplemental delivers an extra $470 million to Mexican security forces. Of that, $310 million goes directly to the Mexican armed forces. This comes on top of $700 million already provided for in the Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, to fund Mexican military, police, intelligence agencies and judicial reform in 2008 and 2009.
What is incomprehensible is that Congress has inserted this pork barrel at a time when the U.S. economy is reeling and its top priority for scarce resources is supposedly to stimulate a flagging U.S. economy that is spitting out workers at a record rate.
via Congress Sends Drug War South, Taxpayer Money to Defense Firms | | the narcosphere.
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
moveon.org
