• The new opium wars

    The links between Australia’s poppy industry and opioid addiction crisis
    The Monthly (Australia)
    February 2017

    Are pharmaceutical companies based in advanced economies the right ones to soothe the developing world’s pains? The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a UN-established independent body supervising global access to opioids, often points out that millions of people with end-stage cancer and AIDS in developing countries die in avoidable agony each year. One of its officials, Stefano Berterame, recently told the Los Angeles Times this could be solved with “very cheap morphine” – but that this held little prospect of profit for multinational drug firms. “Companies prefer to market expensive preparations.”

  • Marijuana legalization must include justice reform

    People who were previously convicted of marijuana offenses and have since been released from prison or jail should also have their records expunged
    The Hill (US)
    Tuesday, January 31, 2017

    Across the US, we routinely take a pledge that ends in “with liberty and justice for all.” Yet that fundamental promise has been broken in six of the eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana use, as tens of thousands of people remain in state prison for nonviolent marijuana crimes. Now, it’s the responsibility of these eight state governments, concerned citizens and the leaders of the marijuana industry to also demand justice reform for those who have been the past victims of the war on marijuana, those that will not enjoy the privileges and freedoms that come with this new legislation.

  • Wie Düsseldorf Cannabis legalisieren will

    Aufklärung und Jugendschutz im Mittelpunkt
    Vorwärts (Germany)
    Dienstag, 31. Januar 2017

    Düsseldorf will als erste deutsche Stadt Verkauf und Konsum von Cannabis legalisieren. Dem Körper ist es egal, wie die Droge erworben wurde, meint Gesundheitsdezernent Andreas Meyer-Falcke. Aufklärung, Prävention und der Jugendschutz müssten im Mittelpunkt des Projekts stehen. Der entscheidende Impuls zu einer präventiven Neuausrichtung der städtischen Drogenpolitik kommt aus dem Düsseldorfer Stadtrat. Der Rats-Fachausschuss für Gesundheit und Soziales hat die Verwaltung beauftragt, beim Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM) eine Ausnahmegenehmigung zum Betrieb von lizenzierten Abgabestellen von Cannabisprodukten in Düsseldorf zu beantragen.

  • Boulder DA Stan Garnett named to group that will advise Trump administration on pot

    The group has toyed with the idea of issuing a majority and a minority opinion on different issues
    Daily Camera (US)
    Monday, January 30, 2017

    The National District Attorney's Association created a policy group featuring 14 district attorneys from across the country who will issue advisements on possible law or policy changes regarding marijuana as more and more states legalize it, and help advise the Trump administration on policies regarding marijuana. District Attorney Stan Garnett is the only active prosecutor from Colorado in the group, but there are also DAs from California and Oregon — other states with recreational marijuana. While a wide variety of states in different stages of marijuana legalization are represented in the group, for the most part NDAA still is conservative.

  • ‘Building the airplane while it’s being flown’

    How California looks to build $7B legal pot economy
    The Denver Post / AP (US)
    Monday, January 30, 2017

    In the outskirts of Sacramento, a handful of government workers face a daunting task: By next year, craft regulations and rules that will govern California’s emerging legal pot market, from where and how plants can be grown to setting guidelines to track the buds from fields to stores. Getting it wrong could mean the robust cannabis black market stays that way — outside the law — undercutting the attempt to create the nation’s largest legal marijuana economy. The new industry has a projected value of $7 billion, and state and local governments could eventually collect $1 billion a year in taxes.

  • In Indonesia, getting this drug is just a text message away

    To buy super tobacco in Indonesia all you need is a mobile phone, an Instagram account and a bank account
    Rappler (Philippines)
    Monday, January 30, 2017

    Gorilla TobaccoSo-called “super tobacco”, particularly a variant known as “Gorilla brand tobacco,” is the street name of a drug that has recently been in the spotlight in Indonesia. It consists of what is mostly normal tobacco that is mixed with a powdered form of the compound AB-CHMINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid - a drug that, though chemically different from cannabis, seeks to simulate the effects of marijuana. Doctors consider AB-CHMINACA to be one of the more dangerous synthetic cannabinoids as, unlike marijuana, which only partially binds to cannabis receptors in the brain, AB-CHMINACA fully binds to receptors, making the effect of the drug all the more powerful. (See also: Cannabis in Indonesia)

  • Maryland lawmakers to push for recreational marijuana

    The proposal is modeled after a similar system in Colorado
    The Washington Post (US)
    Monday, January 30, 2017

    A group of Democratic lawmakers in Maryland want the state to join a growing number of others that have legalized marijuana for recreational use, taxing and regulating sales of the drug similar to the way the state deals with alcohol. Legislators said that adults ages 21 and older in Maryland would be able to possess and grow limited amounts of marijuana if the two bills sponsored by Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), Del. Curtis S. Anderson (D-Baltimore) and Del. Mary L. Washington (D-Baltimore) are approved. (Maine: Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em, as legalized marijuana takes hold)

  • Illicit drug users and doctors who treat them push to end ‘stigmatizing’ language

    Saying that someone has a substance-use disorder rather than calling them an addict is an example of understanding their struggles and needs
    The Globe and Mail (Canada)
    Sunday, January 29, 2017

    Calling someone a junkie was once the norm, but many people who use illicit drugs and those who treat them say the word addict is just as stigmatizing. At the Crosstown Clinic, which provides pharmaceutical heroin treatment for people hooked on the opioid, someone has crossed out “addicts” on a notice posted by a group called the Addicts Union and substituted “patients.” Dr. Scott MacDonald, lead physician at Crosstown, said the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders no longer lists the term addict. People who chronically use illicit drugs are now considered to have a substance-use disorder, not an addiction, which is more stigmatizing.

  • Awash in overdoses, Seattle creates safe sites for addicts to inject illegal drugs

    The sites are not currently legal under federal law
    The Washington Post (US)
    Friday, January 27, 2017

    dcr copenhagenOfficials in Seattle approved the nation’s first “safe-injection” sites for users of heroin and other illegal drugs, calling the move a drastic but necessary response to an epidemic of addiction that is claiming tens of thousands of lives each year. The sites — which offer addicts clean needles, medical supervision and quick access to drugs that reverse the effects of an overdose — have long been popular in Europe. Now, with the U.S. death toll rising, the idea is gaining traction in a number of American cities, including Boston, New York City and Ithaca, N.Y.

  • Families of slain Filipinos file Supreme Court challenge to Rodrigo Duterte’s drugs war

    More than 7,000 people have been killed since Duterte took office seven months ago
    South China Morning Post (China)
    Thursday, January 26, 2017

    Families of alleged drugs suspects killed by Philippine police petitioned the Supreme Court on Thursday to force police to disclose evidence linking them to narcotics, in the first legal challenge to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Lawyers representing families of four men killed in a run-down Manila neighbourhood in August, and one survivor, urged the top court to allow scrutiny of police operations because the official accounts were “sheer incongruity” and read like film plots “from bygone days of Filipino cinema”.

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