• The old global consensus on the war on drugs is crumbling

    "A country should be in a position to design its own regime"
    Los Angeles Times (US)
    Sunday, April 10, 2016

    Once a decade, the United Nations organizes a meeting where every country in the world comes together to figure out what to do about drugs — and up to now, they've always pledged to wage a relentless war, to fight until the planet is “drug-free.” They've consistently affirmed U.N. treaties written in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly by the United States, which require every country to arrest and imprison their way out of drug-related problems. But at this year's meeting in New York City later this month, several countries are going to declare: This approach has been a disaster. We can't do this anymore. Enough.

  • Cannabis legalisation: 47% support sale of drug through licensed shops, poll reveals

    The findings were welcomed as a breakthrough by campaigners for reform of drug laws
    The Independent (UK)
    Saturday, April 9, 2016

    Strong support for legalising the sale of cannabis through licensed shops has emerged in an opinion poll in the UK. Some 47 per cent of people back the idea, while 39 per cent oppose it and 14 per cent are “don’t knows”, according to the survey of 2,000 people by polling company ORB. The proposal has been adopted by the Liberal Democrats, after they commissioned a study by experts which found that controlled sales of cannabis to over-18s in specialist shops could generate £1bn of tax revenue by cutting out the criminals who profit from the trade in the drug.

  • Colombia’s "lost city of marijuana"

    Now that a peace deal is close, many pot farmers fear their livelihood is about to be destroyed
    Quartz (US)
    Friday, April 8, 2016

    colombia-ciudad-perdidaThe jungle around Toribío in southwestern Colombia is filled with vast pot plantations that stretch as far as the eye can see. At night, the greenhouse lights glow like a sea of fluorescent plankton. Colombia’s 50-year civil war devastated this region. But it also gave the residents a way to earn a living. The fighting turned the hilly terrain around Toribío and adjacent municipalities into a no-man’s land that government authorities dared not enter. The locals, most of them members of the Nasa indigenous people, tended the marijuana plantations while the army and the leftist guerrillas battled it out.

  • Drug expert says Australia's presence at UN summit a waste of money

    Alex Wodak says conference in New York is ‘the last big international forum before global drug prohibition collapses’
    The Guardian (UK)
    Friday, April 8, 2016

    The president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Dr Alex Wodak, has questioned Australia’s attendance at the special session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) on the world drug problem, describing the conference as “the last big international forum before global drug prohibition collapses”. The UNGASS is being held in New York from 19 to 21 April. It follows the failure of member countries to achieve a UNGASS goal set in 1998 for a drug-free world by 2008 by following a war-on-drugs approach.

  • How Canada got addicted to fentanyl

    Manufactured in China, it easily crosses our porous borders, triggering a heroin-like bliss in users – and, all too often, death
    The Globe and Mail (Canada)
    Friday, April 8, 2016

    fentanyl-pillsThe supply chain for illicit fentanyl begins in China, but the problems Canada is experiencing start right here at home: No other country in the world consumes more prescription opioids on a per-capita basis, according to a recent United Nations report. The widespread use of prescription opioids is behind the rise of a new class of drug addicts, many of whom are turning to the black market to feed their habit. In British Columbia and Alberta, the two hardest-hit provinces, fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl soared from 42 in 2012 to 418 in 2015. (See also: As the opioid crisis shows, politics shouldn’t drive public health)

  • Cash crops poisoned in Pondoland

    Police helicopters spray marijuana plantations every year
    Ground Up (South Africa)
    April 7, 2016

    The villagers keep watch from January, waiting for police helicopters to thud over the hills. Every year, for nearly three decades, their plantations have been poisoned towards the end of summer, right before harvest, leaving behind fields of withered stalks. Marijuana farming sustains entire communities in the rural Eastern Cape, an important cash crop in a deeply impoverished subsistence economy. It has also been illegal under South African law since 1929. For more than 60 years the state has conducted regular eradication programmes but failed to halt the practice. (See also: Battle to stop dagga spraying | Dagga spraying: police ‘expert’ accused of bad science)

  • The world's most powerful drug lord has been linked to the Panama Papers

    A simple investigation would have led the law firm to the questionable histories of two of her business partners
    Business Insider (UK)
    Thursday, April 7, 2016

    El ChapoDocuments from global law firm Mossack Fonseca leaked to journalists have linked the firm to two alleged money launderers and drug traffickers tied to notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. The two people in question — Marllory Chacón Rossell and Jorge Milton Cifuentes — have been linked to illegal activities led by Guzmán, who escaped from a Mexican prison but was recaptured in January. (See also: How the U.S. became one of the world’s biggest tax havens | For just $309, you too can hide your assets — in the U.S.)

  • Wenn der Jugendanwalt das Betäubungsmittel liefert

    Seit mehreren Jahren erarbeitet Zürich mit den Städten Basel, Bern und Genf ein Projekt, um Cannabis legal abzugeben
    Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)
    Mittwoch, 6. April 2016

    Wie gelingt es, den Konsum von Cannabis zu verringern? Darüber zerbrechen sich einige Schweizer Grossstädte schon seit Jahren den Kopf. In einer Arbeitsgruppe tauschen Basel, Bern, Genf und Zürich Ideen aus. Die Stadt Bern will die Drogen in Apotheken verkaufen, das Basler Projekt richtet sich an Personen, die Cannabis aus medizinischen Gründen benötigen, und in Genf soll es Klubs geben, in denen der Konsum erlaubt ist. (Mehr dazu: Basel will medizinisches Cannabis-Forschungsprojekt)

  • Cannabis arrests down 46% since 2010 - police figures

    "Decisions on individual investigations are an operational matter for Chief Constables based on the evidence available to them"
    BBC News (UK)
    Monday, April 4, 2016

    Arrests for cannabis possession in England and Wales have dropped by 46% since 2010, figures obtained by BBC Breakfast suggest. Cautions fell by 48% and the number of people charged fell by 33%, according to data from police forces released under the Freedom of Information Act. Crime survey data suggests cannabis use remained roughly level from 2010-15. One force which no longer targets cannabis users said officers had been "freed up" for "more important" work. The Home Office said all crimes reported to the police should be taken seriously, investigated and, where appropriate, taken through the courts.

  • The UN’s war on drugs is a failure

    Is it time for a different approach?
    The Observer (UK)
    Sunday, April 3, 2016

    ungass_decadesA policy of prohibition has put the drugs trade in the hands of criminals and led to suffering for millions. 2008 was the year that the world didn’t eliminate the illicit drugs problem. This quixotic goal had been set a decade earlier at a United Nations general assembly special session when, under the vainglorious slogan “We can do it”, the supranational body pledged that, by 2008, the world would be “drug free”. As the UN prepares to host another special session on drugs in New York, the failure of the 1998 assembly to realise the goal is recorded in the vast amounts of money, resources, time and blood that have been expended in pursuing the apparently impossible.

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