• How to Legalize Pot

    Bill Keller
    The New York Times (US)
    Sunday, May 19, 2013

    pot-legalizationThe first time I talked to Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at UCLA, was in 2002, and he explained why legalization of marijuana was a bad idea. “At some point you have to say, a law that people don’t obey is a bad law,” Kleiman told me when I asked how his views had evolved. He has not come to believe marijuana is harmless, but he suspects that the best hope of minimizing its harm may be a well-regulated market. Today the most interesting and important question is no longer whether marijuana will be legalized — eventually, bit by bit, it will be — but how.

  • Fate of LA pot shops left to voters

    The Seattle Times (US)
    Sunday, May 19, 2013

    med-marijuana-dr-inLos Angeles politicians have struggled for more than five years to regulate medical marijuana, trying to balance the needs of the sick against neighborhood concerns that pot shops attract crime. Voters will head to the polls to decide how Los Angeles should handle its high with three competing measures that seek to either limit the number of dispensaries or allow new ones to open and join an estimated several hundred others that currently operate.

  • Breaking the taboo about drugs

    In an open letter, former Latin American leaders call for legal regulation to help undermine organised crime
    Global Commission on Drug Policy
    The Guardian (UK)
    Saturday, May 18, 2013

    After more than four decades of a failed war on drugs, calls for a change in strategy are growing louder by the day. In Latin America, the debate is positively deafening. Statesmen from Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay are taking the lead for transformations in their own drug regime, which has set a strong dynamic of change across the region and around the world. Their discussion has expanded to the US, where public opinion toward regulation is also changing. (See also: Western leaders study 'gamechanging' report on global drugs trade)

  • OAS study eyes marijuana decriminalization

    Findings called historic by drug policy advocates
    The Washington Post (US)
    Friday, May 17, 2013

    An Organization of American States study in response to calls by some Latin American leaders for rethinking the war on drugs advocates serious discussion of legalizing marijuana. “Sooner or later decisions in this area will need to be taken,” the study says, although it no proposals or specific recommendations on any issue are made. The $2.2 million study was hailed as historic by drug policy reform advocates who call the more than $20 billion that Washington has spent on counterdrug efforts in Latin America over the past decade a damaging waste of taxpayer money.

  • Pot rules taking shape; public gets a taste of what’s ahead

    The Seattle Times (US)
    Thursday, May 16, 2013

    Washington Liquor Control Board officials released draft rules for a legal seed-to-store marijuana system. Washington residents and out-of-staters could buy an ounce of tested, labeled marijuana, seven days a week, up to 20 hours a day, in state-regulated stores. That rule is more permissive than in Colorado, the other state creating an adult recreational-pot market. The draft rules are likely to be refined in weeks to come.

  • Wash. set to release draft rules for pot industry

    The Seattle Times (US)
    Thursday, May 16, 2013

    They've spent nearly eight months visiting marijuana grow houses, studying the science of getting high and earning nicknames like "the queen of weed." Now, officials in Washington are taking their first stab at setting rules for the state's new legal weed industry, possibly covering an array of topics ranging from how pot should be grown, labeled and tested for quality assurance to what types of security should be required at state-licensed pot businesses.

  • Greek addicts turn to deadly shisha drug as economic crisis deepens

    Growing popularity of 'cocaine of the poor' in Athens has overwhelmed public health authorities already under strain
    The Guardian (UK)
    Thursday, May 16, 2013

    Nobody knows which came first: the economic crisis tearing Greece apart or shisha, the drug now known as the "cocaine of the poor". What everyone does accept is that shisha is a killer. And at €2 or less a hit, it is one that has come to stalk Greece, the country long on the frontline of Europe's financial meltdown. The drug crisis, brought to light in a new film by Vice.com, has put Athens's health authorities, already overwhelmed by draconian cuts, under further strain. (See also: 'Sisa', the drug of the poor)

  • Legal highs flooding UK pose immense overdose risk, warns drugs tsar

    Users face growing threat from 200-plus synthetic drugs in circulation across UK, says government's chief drugs adviser
    The Guardian (UK)
    Thursday, May 16, 2013

    The chief drugs adviser to the government has given his strongest warning yet on legal highs in Britain, saying there are now more than 200 synthetic psychoactive drugs being sold outside existing laws. He rejected a new approach in New Zealand, which tests and licenses the sale of these new psychoactive substances, as unworkable in Britain, but said a solution might be found by tweaking the Medicines Act or using consumer protection laws.

  • Drugs 2.0: The web revolution that's changing how the world gets high by Mike Power – review

    The web has transformed drug use in profound and unsettling ways
    The Observer (UK)
    Sunday, May 12, 2013

    Every day we hear about what the internet has done to books, music and newspapers. But there's one massive retail industry that has also been radically transformed by the web but which has gone almost completely under the radar: drugs. It's a global billion-dollar industry that has been revolutionised by the same forces that have revolutionised everything else and, in this carefully researched book, Power enumerates the ways.

  • Indoor pot production leaves giant carbon footprint

    Marijuana growing is not a green industry
    The Seattle Times (US)
    Saturday, May 11, 2013

    carbon-footprint-indoor-potDone mostly indoors in Washington, pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The carbon footprint of producing 2.2 pounds of marijuana indoors is equivalent to driving across country seven times, according to a peer-reviewed study. Yet almost no one is pushing for cleaner sun-grown weed as state officials make rules for legal growing operations. Pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The power-hungry crops rival data centers or server farms in intense use of electricity.

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