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High time: inside Amsterdam's 'coffee shops'
The Brisbane Times (Australia)
Thursday, October 20, 2011Accessibility has made most Dutch indifferent to smoking weed, and ironically, the Netherlands has one of Europe's lowest rates of cannabis usage. A coalition government, with minority parties wielding disproportional power have targeted coffee shops for reform. While they won't eradicate the tolerance policy, they have proposed a restrictive reform called the Weed Pass, which aims to make coffee shops work on a membership system.
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Legalizing drugs isn’t the answer
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Thursday, October 20, 2011Most of us can agree that current drug policy in North America is a disaster. The global war on drugs can’t be won. Locking up addicts in jail is both futile and inhumane. We’re squandering billions on policies that hurt people and don’t work. Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA, thinks our current policies are a disaster. But he also thinks the legalizers are just as misguided as the hard-liners with their fantasies of a drug-free world. His information-packed new book, Drugs and Drug Policy, is full of inconvenient facts that demolish both the hawks and the doves.
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It's Time For A New Approach To Policies Involving Illegal Drugs
Rich DankerForbes (US)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011Should drugs be decriminalized? That this question is still being kicked around after decades of debate through the war on drugs is indicative of how drug policy has hit a wall. No victory was ever declared because drugs remain a scourge on society, with approximately 23 million Americans addicted to illegal and legal substances. This comes against the backdrop of an overcrowded U.S. prison system whose population is one-fifth drug offenders, and recent reforms in Europe oriented toward harm reduction rather than criminal justice. Having failed to eradicate or even make large inroads against drug use and with current policy unsustainable, America is now obligated to come up with a new approach.
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How hemp got high: Canadian scientists map the cannabis genome
Physorg
Wednesday, October 19, 2011Canadian researchers have sequenced the genome of Cannabis sativa, the plant that produces both industrial hemp and marijuana, and in the process revealed the genetic changes that led to the plant's drug-producing properties. Detailed analysis of the two genomes suggests that domestication, cultivation, and breeding of marijuana strains has caused the loss of the enzyme (CBDA synthase), which would otherwise compete for the metabolites used as starting material in THCA production. The article describing the research findings, "The draft genome and transcriptome of Cannabis sativa," was published in the journal Genome Biology.
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Backlash to Crackdown Grows
Legal funds and protests are countering the federal demagoguery
East Bay Express (US)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Marijuana activists in California are gearing up this week for a flurry of statewide protests during President Obama's October 25 visit to the Bay Area, and then again for the election in the first week of November. The recent federal crackdown, in other words, is galvanizing the weed community. "We're pushing them back," said Stephen DeAngelo, founder of Harborside Health Center in Oakland. The medical cannabis club has started a legal defense fund to fight a recent $2.5 million IRS bill. "We're already beginning to regain momentum from this outrageous travesty of a federal assault." -
California's Coming Crackdown on Pot: What Do You Do if You Need It?
Time Magazine (US)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011Four California-based U.S. attorneys have announced their intent to prosecute the medical-marijuana dispensaries, growers and delivery services that are breaking state and federal laws. What constitutes violations of law, however, is murky — and may put the very existence of the dispensaries at risk. "California law says that it's essentially O.K. to grow, have and transport marijuana if you're a patient authorized by a doctor or if you're the patient's primary caregiver and if you're providing the marijuana not for profit," a spokesman for the U.S. attorney says. "Stores are violating California law because they're operating at a profit and they're not a primary caregiver. It's very clearly laid out."
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50% of Americans support legalizing marijuana: poll
AFP
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
An unprecedented 50 percent of Americans think it's high time that marijuana should become legal in the United States, according to a Gallup poll. That's up from 46 percent from a year ago -- and way up from a mere 12 percent in 1969, when Gallup first asked the question and 84 percent of respondents opposed to legalization. "If this current trend on legalizing marijuana continues, pressure may build to bring the nation's laws into compliance with the people's wishes," the pollsters said in a statement. -
Peru's new anti-drug czar in delicate dance with U.S.
Reuters
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Peru's leftist government has scored some early victories in its bid to overhaul anti-drugs policy in the world's top coca grower while keeping the United States as a key partner, the country's new drug czar said. Ricardo Soberon, a lawyer who previously worked for a legislator with close links to coca growers, was seen as a risky choice to lead anti-drug efforts in a country that may surpass Colombia as the world's top cocaine producer. -
California Medical Assn. calls for legalization of marijuana
Los Angeles Times (US)
Saturday, October 15, 2011
The California Medical Association, representing more than 35,000 physicians statewide, questions the medical value of pot and acknowledges some health risk from its use but urges it be regulated like alcohol. It is the first major medical association in the nation to urge legalization of the drug. Dr. Donald Lyman, who wrote the group's new policy, attributed the shift to growing frustration over California's medical marijuana law, which permits cannabis use with a doctor's recommendation. That has created an untenable situation for physicians: deciding whether to give patients a substance that is illegal under federal law. -
Home Office rejects decriminalising possession of drugs for personal use
Official advisory body says better to educate and apply civil sanctions rather than fine or imprison users
The Guardian (UK)
Friday, October 14, 2011The Home Office has quickly rejected a call from the government's official drug advisers to decriminalise the personal possession of all illegal drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has said it would be better if the tens of thousands of people caught with illicit drugs were sent on drug education and awareness courses rather than punished with fines and other penalties, up to imprisonment.
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