Cooley Says He Will Ignore City Laws and Prosecute Dispensaries.

With the Los Angeles City Council poised to take up a medical marijuana ordinance after two years of contentious debate, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley warned Tuesday that he intends to prosecute dispensaries that sell the drug even if the city's leaders decide to allow those transactions.

"The L.A. City Council should be collectively ashamed of their failure to grasp this issue," Cooley said, arguing that state laws do not allow medical marijuana to be sold. "Undermining those laws via... [Read More]

We were somewhere around Ted’s Shark Bar on the edge of Manatee County when the drug began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And just like that I was lost. I turned around. Turned around again, and thanked all that was holy I was not in some huge 1971 red Chevy convertible drawing every cop’s attention.

How do you explain being in a condition like this after only enjoying the aromatic bliss of some incense? You don’t. So get it while you can: K2 Summit, pictured at right and available at every smoke shop in town, probably won’t be legal for long.

No doubt you’ll soon be hearing more about K2, as everyone just starting to enjoy it knows. Even those who don’t think it’s... [Read More]

More than a thousand people from around the globe gathered in Downtown Albuquerque from Nov. 12 through 14 to forge a plan for better drug laws.

The International Drug Policy Reform Conference brought together scientists, police chiefs and law enforcement officers, think tank policy-makers, human rights activists and government officials. Three days of workshops pointed toward one idea: The “war on drugs” is a failure.

This is the second time Albuquerque hosted the biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference. Reformers met here in 2001, two years after Gov. Gary Johnson called for an end to the nation’s drug prohibition. Johnson, a Republican, was at the time the highest-ranking elected official in the country to call... [Read More]

"Legal highs" illegal


Importing, possessing and supplying so called "legal highs" will become a legal offence under the Misuse of Drugs Law from 23rd November this year.

They have been classified as controlled drugs under the Misuse of Drugs (Jersey) Law 1978.

Minister for Health and Social Services, Deputy Anne Pryke, has made two Orders which make benzylpiperazine (BZP) and related compounds Class C controlled drugs, and a range of cannabinoid like substances, such as those found in the product Spice, Class B controlled drugs.

Dr Susan Turnbull, Deputy Medical Officer of Health, said: "It’s no surprise that these products have a similar range of side effects and harms to the illegal drugs they are designed to copy. Dealers have been exploiting the fact that because they have been technically 'legal', that means they must be safe - and this is just not the case. There has been a... [Read More]

Chicago man on trial in Buncombe for selling LSD at String Cheese concert

ASHEVILLE — A Chicago man who authorities say sold LSD to people attending a 2006 String Cheese Incident concert is standing trial on drug trafficking charges. It’s one of the most notable hallucinogenic cases in recent city memory.

Benjamin Thomas Schaeffer was caught with more than 6,000 doses of the hallucinogenic drug in a parking lot across from the Civic Center on Oct. 6 of that year, Assistant District Attorney Chris Hess said. Schaeffer is accused of possessing more than three times the entire amount of LSD seized by officers during last fiscal year, records show.

Hess told a Buncombe County jury in opening statements Wednesday that undercover officers moved in after watching people repeatedly come up to Schaeffer and give him cash in exchange for items he pulled from his pocket.

Asheville police were conducting surveillance because the... [Read More]

Low rates of use in the Netherlands demonstrate that the best way to assure teens will try Marijuana is to tell them it's illegal

It's official: the Dutch have managed to make pot smoking uncool. The Dutch don't smoke nearly as much cannabis as Canadians, which is surprising because cannabis use is legal in the Netherlands. What can we learn from this?

Cannabis is not taboo, as it is in North America, under prohibition. That could be why there is no real attraction for Dutch youth to take up the practice. UN statistics tell it like it is: 16.8 per cent of adult Canadians have tried cannabis, yet... [Read More]

Something extraordinary happened at a recent conference of Ontario doctors who use methadone to treat people addicted to heroin and other drugs.

The usually well-behaved and deferential physicians booed and jeered their licensing and regulatory body – the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario – and they were joined by patients and other health-care professionals.

The unprecedented public derision erupted during an attempt by the college to justify its targeting of these doctors with special audits, and for singling out methadone patients for invasive monitoring. The outburst was the culmination of 13 years of increasing resentment, and will hopefully herald bold new opposition to the unfair regulatory system that burdens these... [Read More]

The war on marijuana is insane; our officials keep sacrificing tax dollars, lives, civil liberties, and their own credibility in this misguided and losing effort.

You might remember Robert McNamara's stunning mea culpa, delivered a quarter century after his Vietnam War policies sent some 50,000 Americans (and even more horrendous numbers of Vietnamese) to their deaths in that disastrous war. In his 1995 memoir, the man who had been a cold, calculating secretary of defense for both Kennedy and Johnson belatedly confessed that he and other top officials had long known that the war was an unwinnable, ideologically driven mistake. "We were wrong," he wrote, almost tearfully begging in print for public forgiveness. "We were terribly wrong."

Yes, they were, and so are today's leaders (from the White House to nearly all local governments), who are keeping us... [Read More]

With multiple initiatives in circulation and an Assembly bill gathering headlines, discussions about legalizing Marijuana have become part of California's political discourse.

Advocates on one side argue that the result will be an economic boon as tax revenues rolls in and jails rid themselves of nonviolent offenders. Defenders of prohibition say legalization would be a nightmare of stoned kids, addiction and highway deaths.

Or maybe the reality would be a lot more mundane.

"Most of the popular debate is dominated by two groups-avid pro-Marijuana crowd, and the true prohibitionists," said Michael Vitiello, a University of Pacific law professor who has... [Read More]

Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have turned some parts of that country into a war zone. At the same time, arrests for drug offenses in the United States have soared, contributing to a jail population that is the highest in the industrialized world. Experts on the narcotics issue came together for a discussion of legalization and other ideas at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston Thursday.

The question before the panel was whether legalization of cannabis, commonly known as marijuana, would help reduce the power of the violent Mexican crime cartels. But the discussion also included the idea of legalizing other narcotics or changing the legal approach to the problem they pose.

Speaking in favor of legalization was Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance."I think the notion of taking certain psychoactive substances, certain plants and chemicals and treating those as criminal and treating anybody who... [Read More]

Editor's Note: Last week, we reported that a state legislator suggested CSU grow pot for the entire state. Read that story by clicking here

A busy week of legal developments has further muddied the already-murky waters of the law governing medical marijuana dispensaries.
... [Read More]

Promoted by the U.S. as a treatment for opiate addiction, buprenorphine has become one more item for sale in the illegal drug market

There's a new narcotic on the street in Baltimore and other communities - and taxpayers helped put it there.

The hexagonal orange pills some users call "bupe" are championed as an exceptional treatment for heroin and pain-pill addicts. Federal officials have spent millions of dollars to help create and promote buprenorphine, and are encouraging... [Read More]

Although morphine has been the gold-standard treatment for postoperative and chronic cancer pain for two centuries, a growing body of evidence is showing that opiate-based painkillers can stimulate the growth and spread of cancer cells.

Two new studies advance that argument and demonstrate how shielding lung cancer cells from opiates reduces cell proliferation, invasion and migration in both cell-culture and mouse models.

The reports--to be presented November 18, 2009, at... [Read More]

The medical marijuana debate is gathering steam in California, as two disparate engines are catapulting headlong down parallel paths that appear destined to collide in the distance. The impending collision could chart the future course on legalization of marijuana in America.

In just the past year, California has seen a proliferation of "pot... [Read More]

[top]Older addicts 'lose will to live'

Almost half last year's 574 drug deaths were among over 35s

Research to be published in Glasgow suggests rates of suicide among addicts aged over 35 may be higher than previously thought. The Scottish Drugs Forum, (SDF) said older drug users need more support.
Of 55,000 chaotic drug users in Scotland, 15,000 or more than 25%, are believed to be 35 or over but they have said services often ignore their needs.

SDF chief executive David Liddell, said they have been taking drugs for so... [Read More]

West Hollywood Enforces a Strict Ordinance and Eliminates the Drama That Plagues L.A.

A few miles from Los Angeles City Hall, a small experiment in marijuana regulation has been underway for years. While the state's largest city passed a flawed moratorium, failed to enforce it, debated proposed rules endlessly and watched flummoxed as dispensaries multiplied, West Hollywood pressed ahead.

Confronted with its... [Read More]

Dead heads and pot heads take note. While the straight economy goes up in smoke with double digit unemployment, job prospects for hippies are booming -- and not just for boomers.

At the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) they're looking to hire an official Grateful Dead archivist.

And in Denver, where Colorado's medical marijuana industry is legally flourishing, there are these two recent job... [Read More]

New studies are testing whether psychedelic drugs such as LSD and MDMA can treat OCD, post traumatic stress and cancer related anxiety.
On September 19 this year, 12 people gathered in the suburban Hermsdorf district of Berlin for a group psychotherapy session that allegedly involved illegal drugs. A day later, two of the participants were dead and another in a coma. The substances used and exact cause of death have yet to be confirmed. Local newspaper reports have claimed that heroin and MDMA (ecstasy)... [Read More]

Boulder patients, dispensary owners in legal limbo debate the way forward

Todd Young is concerned.

His lawyer assures him the grow operation and members-only dispensary he runs from a nondescript North Boulder warehouse is on the right side of the ambiguous regulations that constitute medical marijuana law in Colorado today. That doesn't stop him from worrying about what will happen if he's pulled over on the... [Read More]

Seventy years ago, Bill Wilson — the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous — declared his powerlessness over alcohol. The failed businessman contended that, as an alcoholic, he had to "hit bottom" before changing his life and that sobriety could only be achieved through complete abstention.

For generations, Americans took these tenets to be true for everyone. Top addiction experts are no longer sure.

They now say that many drinkers can evaluate their habits and — using new knowledge... [Read More]