• Mexican states should start legalizing marijuana - tourism minister

    Drug policy is one of the major issues in Mexico's July 1 presidential election
    Reuters (UK)
    Thursday, April 12, 2018

    Taking a lead from the United States, Mexico should allow states to begin legalizing marijuana while broader efforts are in limbo, Tourism minister Enrique de la Madrid said, as the country seeks ways to tackle record gang violence. De la Madrid, confronting rising lawlessness in and around the resort cities of Cancun and Los Cabos, said it made no sense for Mexico to maintain prohibition given permissive U.S. policies in states such as California. "I think in Mexico we should move towards regulating it at state level," he said, calling it "illogical" to divert funds from fighting kidnapping, rape and murder to arrest people using marijuana. (See also: Former Mexican President Fox calls for opium poppy legalization)

  • Can excessive marijuana use lead to psychosis?

    Correlation is not the same as causation
    The Globe and Mail (Canada)
    Wednesday, April 11, 2018

    Psychosis is quite rare – fewer than three in 100 people will experience a psychotic episode in their lifetime. People who smoke or otherwise consume cannabis, especially in significant quantities, have a higher incidence. Some people have vulnerability, a genetic predisposition to psychosis, and cannabis can be a trigger, as can other things like trauma or amphetamines. Severe mental illness like schizophrenia tends to arise in late teens and early adulthood, the same time young people tend to experiment with drugs, so the psychosis can be coincidental. Finally, many people with severe mental illnesses that feature psychotic episodes self-medicate, with cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis.

  • Massachusetts is the new testbed for cannabis legalization

    The Cannabis Control Commission will allow small “craft” cultivators to cultivate collectively
    Forbes (US)
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018

    For the past several years, Colorado, Washington and Oregon have served as the testbeds for policies governing state-legal cannabis markets. But now it’s Massachusetts’ turn. Massachusetts, whose residents voted in 2016 to legalize cannabis for adult use, is on the cusp of implementing experimental, never-before-seen rules that will be closely watched by both the cannabis industry and regulators around the country. Last month, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission, the regulatory agency tasked with overseeing the rollout and implementation of Massachusetts’ new adult-use cannabis industry, released the final rules that will govern the market.

  • Senate Foreign Affairs Cmte won’t have time to examine how cannabis bill will affect international treaties

    It is rare and may be unprecedented for the Senate to send a bill other than a budget bill to multiple committees
    The Hill Times (Canada)
    Monday, April 9, 2018

    The Senate committees are under a ‘tight timeline' to review the cannabis bill, and Conservatives say they could save major cannabis amendments for the final debate. Meanwhile, Senators are still hashing out whether or how to change the bill, while Canadians flood their email inboxes. The Senate Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee won’t be able to examine all the ways the government’s cannabis legalization bill will affect Canada’s international treaties before reporting back to the Senate by May 1, says Saskatchewan Conservative Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who chairs the committee.

  • Cannabis : le gouvernement souhaite mettre en place une amende de 300 euros pour les usagers

    Le gouvernement s’oriente vers un système d’amende forfaitaire
    Le Monde (France)
    Mardi, 3 avril 2018

    Le gouvernement avait annoncé, en janvier, vouloir mettre en place un système d’amende forfaitaire pour usage de stupéfiants, et en particulier de cannabis, que pourraient infliger directement les forces de l’ordre sur la voie publique. On connaît maintenant le montant que pourrait représenter cette amende : 300 euros. Le choix du gouvernement va au-delà des préconisations du rapport parlementaire consacré à « l’application d’une procédure d’amende forfaitaire au délit d’usage illicite de stupéfiants » et qui envisageait une amende comprise entre 150 euros et 200 euros. (Lire aussi: Légaliser, dépénaliser ou non le cannabis : le débat résumé en une conversation SMS | Cannabis : Esther Benbassa dénonce « une pénalisation à deux vitesses »)

  • Regulated marijuana production test will include health warnings

    The aim of the experiment is to try to remove the grey area between the sale of small amounts of cannabis at licenced coffee shops and marijuana cultivation which is illegal
    Dutch News (Netherlands)
    Tuesday, April 3, 2018

    The Dutch government’s experiment with regulated marijuana is unlikely to start before the end of 2019 at the earliest and will run for five years and two months, the Volkskrant reported. The trials will go hand in hand with a publicity campaign warning people about the risks associated with smoking marijuana and coffee shops which sell the ‘legal’ drug will have to actively inform their clients about potential health problems. The Volkskrant bases its claims on a draft of the law legalising regulated cultivation which has been sent out to consultation to various organisations, including the police, public prosecution department and local authority association. (See also: Maximum of 10 Dutch municipalities to test regulated cannabis | Coffee shops react with caution)

  • Canadian banker snags $750-million in marijuana business as rivals say no

    The major banks are starting to circle
    The Globe and Mail (Canada)
    Tuesday, April 3, 2018

    In a down-and-out Canadian town, Bruce Linton dreamed of transforming an abandoned Hershey Co. chocolate plant into the Next Big Thing, a medical marijuana factory. But the pot entrepreneur faced a crisis typical of his edgy industry: Banks shut their doors in his face. Then Linton turned to an old-school credit union - that paragon of community, rectitude, and caution - and found a middle-aged banker named Rob Paterson. The chief executive officer of Alterna Savings & Credit Union Ltd. seemed an unlikely mark. He barely drank and hadn’t smoked a joint since his university days.

  • Philippine court halts govt move to keep drug war kill records secret

    The order covers drug-related deaths from July 2016 until November 2017
    Reuters (UK)
    Tuesday, April 3, 2018

    The Philippine Supreme Court ordered police to hand over full records of thousands of deadly encounters in the country’s war on drugs, thwarting a government bid to keep operational details of the bloody crackdown secret. The high court gave the solicitor-general, Jose Calida, 15 days to comply with a December order that he had challenged on the grounds of national security. Human rights and legal groups lauded the decision as a triumph that would help bring to book state officials involved in what they say are systematic abuses, cover-ups and executions during President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody 21-month campaign.

  • Europe is losing the fight against dirty money

    Europe is losing the fight against dirty money because it has used national solutions to tackle an international problem
    Politico (EU)
    Monday, April 2, 2018

    Rob Wainwright, who will be leaving his post as Europol director after almost a decade, said: “One of my favorite frustrations is on financial crime — the anti-money laundering regime.“ Professional money launderers — and we have identified 400 at the top, top level in Europe — are running billions of illegal drug and other criminal profits through the banking system with a 99 percent success rate,” he said. “We have created a whole ton of regulations … the banks are spending $20 billion a year to run the compliance regime … and we are seizing 1 percent of criminal assets every year in Europe.” According to the latest Europol figures, between 0.7 and 1.2 percent of EU annual GDP is “detected as being involved in suspect financial activity.” (See also: The EU’s latest agreement on amending the anti-money laundering directive: at the vanguard of trust transparency, but still further to go)

  • Opioids prescribed less in states where medical marijuana legal, studies find

    Two new studies have found a correlation using data from programs used by millions of older, poor and disabled Americans
    The Guardian (UK)
    Monday, April 2, 2018

    medical cannabis cbdIn one study, researchers at the University of Georgia, Athens, used data from Medicare Part D, a government-run prescription drug program for people older than 65. They found prescriptions filled for all opioids decreased by 2.11m daily doses a year when a state legalized medical marijuana, and by 3.7m daily doses a year when marijuana dispensaries opened. In a second study, researchers at the University of Kentucky examined opioid prescription data from Medicaid, a government-run program for the poor and disabled. More than 74 million Americans use Medicaid. State medical marijuana laws were associated with a 5.8% lower rate of opioid prescribing, and states with recreational marijuana laws were associated with a 6.3% lower rate of opioid prescribing.

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