The proponents of the "war on drugs" are well-intentioned people who believe they are saving people from the nightmare of drug addiction and making the world safer. But this self-image has turned into a faith – and like all faiths, it can only be maintained by cultivating a deliberate blindness to the evidence.

The recent furore about the British government's decision to fire its chief scientific advisor on drugs, Professor David Nutt, missed the point. Yes, it is shocking that he was ditched for pointing out the mathematical truth that taking ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding, and that smoking cannabis is less harmful than drinking alcohol. But this is how the war on drugs has to be fought. The unofficial slogan of the prohibitionists... [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]

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]

Our criminal justice system is in dire need of reform. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population, but houses 25 percent of the world's prisoners. With drug offenders accounting for half of federal prisoners and 21 percent of state prisoners, drug incarceration is a major cause of the burgeoning U.S. criminal justice system.

Many of those serving time are low-level offenders with no history of violence. In a 2008 Zogby poll, three out of four Americans said the war on drugs is failing. This clear indictment of U.S. drug policy falls directly into the lap of Congress. As a whole, Congress has been hesitant to address the shortcomings of U.S. drug policy because of the perception that it is a controversial and politically damaging issue.

With Congress afraid to touch the issue, the need for an independent commission with full investigative powers is apparent. That's why Sen. Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, and 35 other senators are... [Read More]

Time to Transform Drug Policy

A heavyweight new report from the Transforrm drug policy foundation (released this week) has called for the regulated legalization of all narcotic drugs.

Under their plans, cannabis and opium would become freely available from licensed, membership-based coffee shops, while cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines would be available to licensed users from pharmacies. This is an eminently sensible idea.

The Home Office, however, has reacted with a predictable display of willful stupidity. A spokesman told the BBC: “[We have] no intention of either decriminalising or legalising currently controlled drugs… Drugs are controlled... [Read More]

Professor David Nutt's take on cannabis is a creed and not science

The evidence shows that cannabis is more damaging than Professor David Nutt believes, says Alasdair Palmer. To listen to some of the reactions to Alan Johnson's decision to sack Professor David Nutt, the Government's leading adviser on drugs, you'd think it was a re-run of the Catholic Church imprisoning Galileo for claiming that the Earth goes round the Sun.

But Prof Nutt isn't a martyr to science who lost his job
merely for confronting the Government with incontestable facts. He was sacked because, as Mr Johnson insisted, "he cannot be both a Government adviser and a campaigner against Government policy".
Prof Nutt and his supporters think that this just shows how unreasonable Government policy on drugs has become; if Mr Johnson was rational, he would change that policy so it was in... [Read More]

Six in dock after $4m in P found at airport


Four Japanese and two Iranians have been arrested for their alleged involvement in an international drug syndicate smuggling methamphetamine worth millions of dollars into New Zealand.

Japanese nationals Toshiyuka Toda, 52, Kazuhiko Takiguchi, 39, Takako Takiguchi, 31, and Yoshinori Tanakawa, 40, were arrested at Auckland Airport on Wednesday.

The Herald understands customs officers found about 4kg of methamphetamine - with a street value of $4 million - in the lining of their suitcases.

A joint operation between police and customs orchestrated a "controlled delivery" of the drugs to a pre-arranged hotel room in Auckland.

Two Iranian men, Nader Ghaffari, 38, and Fardien Nourian, 42, were... [Read More]

As President Obama and his advisors debate future troop levels for Afghanistan, a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan's drug production.

The report, entitled "Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium," gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug production. It also implies that drugs are the main reason why the Taliban are gaining in strength, absolving the United States and NATO of their own responsibility in fomenting the insurgency.

In fact, the United States and its Afghan allies bear a large share of... [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]

It is said that almost everyone in the marijuana law reform movement has a seminal moment they can point to when their public activism started. My moment was in the fall, six years ago.

I’m a past president of our local Kiwanis Club. I’ve been a member for years; we meet for breakfast at 6:30am, every Wednesday morning. My fateful “activism moment” was meeting face-to-face with one morning’s Kiwanis Club program, our town’s newly acquired dope dog. Some rock-ribbed citizen had left money in his will for the city to buy a dope dog for our town of 3,000, in a county of 18,000 people. The dog’s handler and the police chief were up at the speaker’s table. I had to fight back the urge to turn around and run.

As I sat down at my usual spot, ordered breakfast and clipped on my Kiwanis Club nametag, my heart was just racing! Thank God, my neck pain had not been severe enough that morning that it had required some marijuana medication, because, I imagined,... [Read More]

High-altitude partying is a deeply carved tradition in ski country, where alcohol in the open and illicit drugs in the shadows have been intertwined for years.

Even before last week’s town vote here that decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, one of the best-selling T-shirts at Shirt and Ernie’s on Main Street winked at what it means to live and play 9,600 feet up in the Rockies.

“Dude,” the shirt says, “I think this whole town is high.”

But what the... [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]

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]

Previously I wrote about a small study finding that smoked marijuana helps with HIV-related pain. In the last month, two more clinical trials of medical marijuana - or rather, marijuana-based drugs - for pain have come out.

First, the good news. Johnson et al tested a mouth spray containing the two major psychoactive chemicals in marijuana, THC and CBD. Their patients were all suffering from terminal cancer, which believe it or not, is quite painful. Almost all of the subjects were already... [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]

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]

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]