En diciembre de 2013, Uruguay asumió el control de la producción, comercialización y distribución de la marihuana con el objetivo de "terminar con el narcotráfico y mejorar la salud de la población". No han sido pocos los obstáculos a los que se ha enfrentado y sigue enfrentando a día de hoy esta ley. La negación de los bancos a trabajar con empresas que comercializan marihuana, el avance del turismo cannábico y los mercados clandestinos surgidos a raíz de la ley o el escaso desarrollo del cannabis medicinal son algunos de los problemas a resolver tras cinco años de regulación. Sin embargo, pese a los problemas, las resistencias de parte de la sociedad y del propio aparato del Estado, Uruguay ha establecido un modelo innovador y ha marcado un camino para otros países que ahora se plantean un proceso similar.

The largest chain of unlicensed cannabis dispensaries in Victoria is no more. Police and provincial cannabis enforcement officers raided the downtown Trees dispensary location, one day after shuttering the company's location near Mayfair mall. In response, all three remaining Trees locations in the city have been shut down, while the future of the company's two shops in Nanaimo is up in the air. While cannabis has been legal in Canada since October 2018, retail operators are required to follow a rigid regulatory framework, attain a series of approvals from the city and provincial government, and source their inventory solely from federally licensed cannabis producers. The closure has left 92 people out of work and thousands of customers without a trusted medical cannabis supplier.

The government’s focus on jailing drug users while providing only little funding to help users get healthy again is not effective in combating drug abuse in Indonesia and amounts to “a waste of money”, a study finds. The policy study from Rumah Cemara, a community-based organization helping drug users and people living with HIV/AIDS, proposes an increase in spending on health treatment for drug users from 0.3 percent of the total antidrug budget to 10 percent by 2020. Dubbed 10 by 20, such a policy would be more effective in reducing drug abuse, the researchers believe. Ingrid Irawati Atmosukarto, a researcher with Intuisi Inc. and Rumah Cemara, said the government currently allocated only Rp 6.5 billion of the total “war on drugs” budget of Rp 1.9 trillion to health programs.

The global “war on drugs” has been such a failure that illegal substances are now cheaper and purer than at any period over the past two decades, warns a new report by the Vancouver-based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. Data from seven international government-funded drug surveillance systems show that drug use should be considered a public health rather than a criminal justice issue.

Last week, the internet exploded with a fairly shocking allegation: President Richard Nixon began America's war on drugs to criminalize black people and hippies, according to a newly revealed 1994 quote from Nixon domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman. But Ehrlichman's claim is likely an oversimplification, according to historians who have studied the period and Nixon's drug policies in particular. Nixon's drug war was largely a public health crusade — one that would be reshaped into the modern, punitive drug war by later administrations, particularly President Ronald Reagan. (See Dan Baum article in Harpers Magazine)

The study 'The Netherlands and synthetic drugs: An inconvenient truth' by the Dutch police academy on the role of the Netherlands in the production of synthetic drugs has the sound of "We, the people at Toilet Duck, recommend Toilet Duck". The rather predictable conclusion of this investigation is that law enforcement needs more money and resources. In passing, competitors for limited government budgets, like those who advocate a public health approach to drug policy, are rendered suspect; they stand in the way of an “effective” policy of repression.

Dire warnings of legal loopholes, a mental health crisis and drug driving fears accompanied the legalisation of cannabis in the ACT last year. But one year on, cannabis users and stakeholders alike say that, while overall the impacts have been subtle, the change has been for the better. "Overall, we found cannabis use hasn't changed and, in some ways, that's the big story, because there were really dire predictions at the outset," Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Association ACT chief executive Devin Bowles said. Cannabis offences have dropped by 90 per cent in the last 12 months. ACT Health data shows there has been no increase in hospital presentations since the laws passed

Cannabis dealers who stuck hundreds of unauthorised adverts on London's Tube trains say they are now swamped with orders and have more guerrilla marketing tactics up their sleeve. Dispenseroo, a cannabis selling start-up which mimics the branding of online food delivery giant Deliveroo, said over the last three weeks it had put up 2,500 adverts on London Underground trains. The posters, which were clipped or glued into advert panels by 10 workers employed via job site Gumtree, said: “Do you love 🍃? Use code ‘tube’ for £5 off,” alongside the Dispenseroo hashtag. Transport for London confirmed the posters were unauthorised and said it was removing any found on the network.

Skeptics of the movement to defund or abolish police departments often invoke the threat of a 911 call in the middle of the night that goes unanswered. But a lot of 911 calls could be answered by someone who’s not an officer in a uniform with a gun: Medical concerns about unhoused people, reports about individuals in the throes of a mental health crisis, and complaints about minor nuisances like loud music dominate the 911 wires. Nationwide, an estimated 80% of 911 calls are made for nonviolent, non-property offenses, says Frankie Wunschel, a research associate at the Vera Institute. The New York Times found that the share of time officers spend handling violent crime in New Orleans, Sacramento and Montgomery County, Maryland, this year was only 4%.

Marijuana possession led to nearly 6 percent of all arrests in the United States in 2017, FBI data shows, underscoring the level of policing dedicated to containing behavior that’s legal in 10 states and the nation’s capital. But the figure obscures the considerable variations in enforcement practices at the state and local levels. In many areas of the country in 2016, more than 20 percent of all arrests stemmed from pot possession, according to newly released county-level arrest figures from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. The figure exceeds 40 percent in a handful of counties, topping out at nearly 55 percent in one Georgia county.

Joe Biden has selected Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his vice presidential running mate. She has evolved significantly on marijuana policy over her career. Though she coauthored an official voter guide argument opposing a California cannabis legalization measure as a prosecutor in 2010, she went on to sponsor legislation to federally deschedule marijuana in 2019. Harris is the chief Senate sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act—a comprehensive piece of legalization legislation that includes various social equity and restorative justice provisions. Advocates will be watching to see if she continues to advocate for the reform move as she’s on-boarded to the Biden campaign. (See also: 67% of Americans are ready to end federal cannabis prohibition)

In its report for 2022, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the “independent, quasi-judicial expert body” that monitors the implementation of the UN drug control conventions, focuses on the legalisation of cannabis. Each year, in the first chapter of its annual report, the Board addresses a specific issue it deems important for drug policy discussions and the functioning of the international drug control system. This year, cannabis legalisation is the focus, because as many have noticed, a decade after the first state legally regulated adult recreational cannabis “a growing number of States have adopted policies that permit the use of cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes”.

The Home Office should climb off its “high horse of oppression and prohibition” and stop pursuing the “fantasy” of a drug-free society, the chair of an influential international consortium on drug policy has said. As a new Global Drug Policy Index is set to rank each country’s approach to tackling narcotics, former New Zealand prime minister and chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy,Helen Clark, said that the UK was fixated with a “self-defeating” strategy to the issue that bred misery. Clark also said that the Home Office’s approach to drug policy meant it deterred police and crime commissioners in England and Wales who might otherwise advocate for a more liberal strategy.