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]

Soldiers joined federal and state police Wednesday in a operation to arrest cops suspected of collusion with drug cartels, the governor of the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon said.

Gov. Rodrigo Medina told a press conference that the sweep began at 6:00 a.m. with simultaneous raids in a dozen different municipalities, including several in Greater Monterrey, the state capital.

Arrested early Wednesday were the former heads of the Monterrey and Guadalupe police departments, Amador Medina and Jose Santos Almaraz, respectively, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office said.

Gov. Medina said later that erstwhile Montemorelos police chief Alejandro Esparza was also picked up, as well as five lower-ranking... [Read More]

Marc Emery, self-proclaimed Prince of Pot and marijuana activist, was released from jail temporarily yesterday as he awaits his extradition to the United States.

“It was a difficult experience because it is maximum security, so that you don’t get outside and you don’t get far from your eight by 10 (jail cell) ... But I wrote some good material and read a lot,” he said.

Emery is free on a $50,000 bail bond.

He is to be sent to Seattle where he will be sentenced for selling marijuana seeds ordered over the Internet to Americans.

He said the experience... [Read More]

EU Struggles to Curb Hard Drugs

European efforts to curb cocaine and heroin use made little impact in the past year, the EU's main drugs watchdog says in its annual report. But cannabis use, particularly among young people, is declining, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).

The marketing of "designer" drugs is very sophisticated, the report warns.

Heroin use in Europe is "stable but no longer diminishing", the EMCDDA says.
Combinations of drugs pose increasing problems, as do new synthetic drugs, many of... [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]

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]

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]

Health, Law Enforcement Officials Bemoan Greater Public Tolerance of Drug

Smoking pot isn't what it used to be for Joe Lee, a 62-year-old vintage-record dealer in Rockville.

Back in the late 1960s, as an art student in Baltimore, he kept his landlord in a constant state of suspicion, with clouds of marijuana smoke poorly masked by clouds of incense.

These days, after four decades of regular use,... [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]

A schoolgirl who died of a cardiac arrest while partying with friends may have taken a dangerous new drug before she collapsed.

Gabrielle Price, 14, might have taken a mixture of ketamine and a new party drug 'meow meow' before she fell ill, according to neighbours.

The 'legal' drug, also known as Mephedrone and MCAT, can be bought over the internet and is billed as a cross between Ecstasy and cocaine.
Gabrielle, known as Gabi and described by friends as 'fun-loving and hyper',... [Read More]