Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
THE FAILED WAR ON DRUGS
PROHIBITION DOES NOT WORK
POLITICIANS WHO SUPPORT PROHIBITION
SUPPORT ORGANIZED CRIME!
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The Flower
The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition.
openDemocracy.net June 14, 2010
The Cannabis Papers: a citizen’s guide to cannabinoids
by Charles Shaw
Taking their inspiration from "The Federalist Papers," a group of Illinois reformers have penned a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
“Cannabinoids are good.”
Have you heard that truth before? – It’s something you will understand if you read any further. You see, science is a truth conspiracy. It’s a testing of reality and standing your ground when you find evidence.
In some ways, being American means confronting untruths. To voice “our” truth through language, to create a new set and setting, we turned to the founders and a collection of essays known as The Federalist Papers.
During 1787 and 1788, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote 85 essays in support of the US Constitution. They used the pen name "Publius" in honor of a famed Roman republican – someone they saw as a defender of liberty.
We became "Publius" for the same purpose: to make our sum greater than our individual parts. In doing so, we have created a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We began releasing the essays online in 2009 and will conclude this fall. The essays will then be available in book form as The Cannabis Papers: a citizen’s guide to cannabinoids.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
The so-called drug war is becoming better known as a war on citizens – a civil war. It has been a war with two distinct federal laws. The first was the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, which was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1966. Into this vacuum was sucked Nixon’s contribution to 21st century drug policy: the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. This law contains the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law making herbal cannabinoids Schedule 1. This means in Bizarro World that herbal cannabinoids have no medical value.
Here we are in 2010 still living under Nixon’s law. That is our history: our tomorrow is much different. That’s because the tide has turned – and it’s a scientific tide. The endocannabinoid system (ECS) and the science surrounding this remarkable biological modulator, have transformed the battlefield and the logic of the CSA. This is no longer a civil war: it has morphed into a war between science and ignorance.
Science is the language of Publius. As Madison, Hamilton and Jay detailed the workings of the US Constitution, piece-by-piece and Article-by-Article, we have given the same care and effort to describing the role of cannabinoids and the ECS in our bodies. We found that cannabinoids shared a strong characteristic from the founding period: the similarity is found in the famous phrase summing up the basic rights of free people – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It is no secret that many people think that there is a Life-giving quality to cannabis use. That is where we began – the anecdotal and lived cannabinoid experience. Since the 1970s, cannabis use has been defined by practice – some combination of the medical/patient model and the recreational/liberty model. We are describing something new – the idea that cannabinoids are necessary to life. The cannabis war will no longer be about use and ideology – about who is sick enough or free enough or responsible enough. What is new today is the science of cannabinoids – and you’ll find it more than compelling and often mind-blowing.
Liberty provides its own arguments. The war on cannabis users has compromised our liberty. It has been this way for so long that many of us don’t even recognize the unintended consequences placed on our collective liberty by cannabinoid prohibition – the collateral damage caused by the war. As this changes, as this prohibition comes to a close, we can look forward to a better culture – one with fewer invasions of privacy, fewer arrests, fewer imprisonments – and more human choices for relaxation, more affordable wellness/health care, more tax revenues, and, dare we say it – happier citizens. The days of Reefer Madness, when it was believed that marijuana smoking created homicidal maniacs, are behind us. The days of spaced-out tokesters are behind us. Clearer perceptions about cannabis are emerging. Someone like Montel Williams is the new face of the cannabis patient – a former Marine and successful talk show host who maintains his health through the use of cannabinoids while living with Multiple Sclerosis. Or even beyond any medical perception, someone like Rick Steves – a successful writer and host of travel shows on television and radio. Or even beyond celebrity – perhaps someone like you?
That brings us to Happiness. – Each individual citizen has their own definition of what makes them happy. Notice that the goal is not the “right to be happy” but the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit is intrinsically related to freedom of choice – the right to pursue one’s happiness without infringing upon another’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to understand this is a legal problem – but it is also more than a legal problem. What we have, and what most of us have been born into, is a system that makes the pursuit of happiness a legal problem – one to be policed. This is a relatively new phenomenon. Americans have not always thought the pursuit of happiness was something best handled by the courts. At one time we believed in the “right to be let alone.” In 1928, nine years before cannabis prohibition began, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote of our constitutional right to be let alone in the case of Olmstead v. U.S.:
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
The war on cannabis has been an assault on the right to be let alone. This means it is also an attack on the conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. In fact, federal cannabinoid prohibition has contributed to a net loss of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – making its end clear.
One more thing: like the phrase Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, we, Publius, have many forms – many selves, if you will. In reading the essays in The Cannabis Papers (TCP), you will find that we speak in many voices. That is because there are many voices to be heard.
Allied voices in the cannabinoid truth conspiracy
Publius considers pharmaceutical companies to be kindred spirits and not the enemy. Why? – Because in their hypotheses cannabinoids are good. They assume that a healthy body needs a healthy ECS. They are also science-based and therefore an ally in the war against ignorance.
Tom Brock, a researcher for the pharmaceutical company Cayman Chemical, speaks like an ally. In a 2009 marketing essay titled Cannabinoids: to the Neurons and Beyond, he writes highly of cannabinoids and what they are capable of doing. He asks us to imagine the blessings of healthy cannabinoid receptors:
Imagine what could be achieved if signaling through these receptors could be controlled: happy, slim, and healthy people who remember that they’re pain-free.
Here is a representative of the pharmaceutical industry writing like a flower-child and friend of Publius. Amazing! If Cayman Chemical understands the potential of the ECS, then they are not our opposition, and in many ways they know more about cannabinoids than most cannabis consumers.
As mentioned above, Publius chose the familiar revolutionary phrase from the founding – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – to frame this new debate. If we debate cannabinoids and the ECS with the prohibitionists, we always win. They can’t speak this language, the language of cannabinoid science. Like the founding phase of our country, this one involves changing the way we look at an issue. The founders had to deal with how to frame federal power: we have to deal with how to reframe federal power. Thus our objective is Nixon’s law – the 1970 Controlled Substances Act – which is factual wrong.
The error is that herbal cannabinoids are presumed guilty of having no medicinal value – while Marinol and Cesamet, two synthetic cannabinoids, get pharmaceutical passes. From the perspective of cannabinoids and the ECS, this is nonsense.
Here’s why: beyond holding a patent on a medicinal property of cannabinoids, US patent #6630507, a search of the government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, Pub Med, shows that a revolution has taken place in the field of science. No longer are they looking at the evils of marijuana: the field as a whole has moved to a new understanding of cannabinoids and the ECS. Here are a few specific examples from TCP to support the idea that the endocannabinoid system is necessary to human health; the research is easily found on Pub Med:
- Retrograde signaling
From TCP #4 DSI for dummies: getting to know cannabinoid history
DSI stands for – Depolarized-induced Suppression of Inhibition. This is one of the ways cells talk back to each other. This form of communication is the chemical process called “retrograde signaling.” In 2004, a Scientific American article titled “The Brain’s Own Marijuana,” put it this way – “endogenous cannabinoids participate in retrograde signaling, a previously unknown form of communication in the brain.” The phrase “previously unknown” explains a lot. That is why most Americans don’t know anything about DSI, retrograde signaling, or the ECS.
- Anticancer
From TCP #5 Astrocytes and cannabinoids: reaching for the stars
2010 research in Cancer Investigation shows that THC “inhibited [cancer] cell proliferation, migration and invasion, and induced cell apoptosis.” Cell “apoptosis” is when a cell dies – like a cancer cell. By activating the cannabinoid receptor on the cancer cell, THC is able to tell it to die. Also, this isn’t new; the same thing was found in 1975. See “Anticancer activity of cannabinoids,” in the journal of the National Cancer Institute.
2010: S Leelawat, et al, The dual effects of delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol on cholangiocarcinoma cells: anti-invasion activity at low concentration and apoptosis induction at high induction, Cancer Investigation, May 2010:28(4):357-63.
1975: AE Munson, et al, Anticancer activity of cannabinoids, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, September 1975:55(3):597-602.
- Neurogenesis
From TCP #10 “Cannabinoids” succeed where “marijuana” fails:
Research shows that the CB2 receptor “may assist in the treatment of neuropathologies by increasing neurogenesis.” This means cannabinoids support the growth of new brain cells. JR Rivers and JC Ashton, The development of cannabinoid CB2 receptor agonists for the treatment of central neuropathies, Central Nervous System Agents in Medicinal Chemistry, March 2010:10(1):47-64.
See also I Galve-Roperh, et al., The endocannabinoid system and neurogenesis in health and disease, Neuroscientist, April 2007:13(2):109-14.
In the forthcoming section Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness sections we work from more traditional cannabis reform ground. Topics include the 1972 Shaffer Commission, the arrests, getting high, healing, race, drug testing, economics and happiness – all through the science of cannabinoids and the ECS. Acknowledgement of the fundamental role of the ECS in human health – and other mammals we are fond of like dogs and cats and cows and pigs – makes the idea of arresting 800,000 citizens for exercising their ECS with an herbal cannabinoid absurd.
The essays on Liberty and Happiness take truths like "all human beings – in fact all mammals – use cannabinoids" and offers suggestions on how this will effect reform in the immediate future. Simply stated, cannabinoids and the ECS modulate other systems within the human body – and that fact alone represents a revolution in how we think about cannabinoids.
And it’s political! Meaning we need more than clarity. We already have clarity on Pub Med, our government’s science website. We need political focus. – And that focus is clearly Nixon’s law.
There is another important factor. We have a President who won an election based on the idea of change. The President of the United States is referred to by the acronym “POTUS” (www.potus.com). The political response to finding the 1937 law unconstitutional was led by POTUS 37 (Nixon) and is the CSA. Today, with POTUS 44 (Obama) in charge, it’s time to put Nixon’s law in its place. Based on the scientific evidence, it’s clear to Publius that POTUS 44 should end Nixon’s legacy.
And yes, it’s about the arrests. Arresting citizens for self-medicating with herbal cannabinoids, given the scientific tsunami of good news, is politically untenable. Cannabis arrests went from just under 400,000 to nearly 750,000 by the last year of POTUS 42 (Clinton). That is nearly five million citizens arrested for cannabis violations under POTUS 42.
During POTUS 43 (Bush), annual cannabis arrests remained at the 750,000 level through 2006. In 2007 and 2008 arrests topped 800,000. That is over six million citizens arrested for cannabis under POTUS 43.
Now to the POTUS 44 – Will the legacy of Obama’s administration be more arrests given that cannabinoids are proving to be one of nature’s best-kept secrets? – Or will POTUS 44 end the madness of arresting millions of fellow citizens for possessing herbal cannabinoids? –
The essays in The Cannabis Papers support ending this madness. A search of cannabinoids on Pub Med reveals a world of scientific data supporting cannabinoids as medicine. That’s because the ECS is necessary to life. This is a fact of biology and part of the truth conspiracy. Nixon’s law is a legacy of lies, cruelty and ignorance. – What will Obama’s legacy be?
Publius
Publius 2010 is Bryan Brickner, Julie Falco, Dianna Lynn Meyer, Stephen Young, William Abens, Danielle Schumacher, Derek Rea (1954-2008), David Nott, Dan Linn, Dan S. Wang, Brian Allemana, Peter Vilkelis, and many others.
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END PROHIBITION NOW
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Scientists have discovered evidence suggesting Stone Age peoples used herbal mixtures to get high.
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The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly ``cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
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Canada’s war on drugs has failed to curb the illicit drug trade, and proposed legal interventions to disrupt the drug market will have no effect on drug supply and may actually boost rates of drug-related violence, according to a new scientific review.
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After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
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“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs. What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure."
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So what has the war [on drugs] done? It has made a mockery of an anti-drug law that is simply ignored by millions ...
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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.
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For too long, advocates of prohibition have framed their arguments on the false assumption that the continued enforcement of said laws “protects our children.” In fact, just the opposite is true.
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Recent scientific reports suggest that pot doesn't destroy your brain, that it doesn't cause lung damage like tobacco -- but you won't hear it in the corporate media.
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Obama was frank about his own drug use, so why isn't he more honest about what a disaster war on drugs has been?
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While marijuana is more mainstream than ever, legalization still faces backlash from the powers that be.
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As FDR did in 1933, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade against marijuana.
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The current budget is still overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the drug war approach -- indeed, it allocates more to drug enforcement and less to prevention than even George Bush did.
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The drug war has never been about facts—about soberly weighing which policies might alleviate suffering, save taxpayers money, rob the cartels of revenue. Instead, we've been stuck in a cycle of prohibition, failure, & counterfactual claims of success.
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The government keeps pushing the BS that pot is addictive and has serious health consequences. And no wonder -- lying about pot is a lucrative business.
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Anti-pot propaganda drives most people to drink alcohol instead. But booze is far more dangerous than marijuana.
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Marijuana is virtually non-toxic to healthy cells & major organs. The active components in marijuana – known as cannabinoids -- actually mimic chemicals naturally produced by the body (endocannabinoids) that are necessary for proper health
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For decades many academics and professionals have regarded the current blanket prohibition on recreational drugs (though not alcohol or tobacco) as absurd, counter-productive and destructive.
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We are handing one of our biggest industries over to armed, criminal gangs
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New research shows there seems to be something in pot that actually undermines cancer, instead of causing it. -- and the media are doing their best to ignore it.
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75 years later, we still think we can prohibit a popular, socially accepted drug -- marijuana (which, by the way, is undeniably safer and less addictive than alcohol) -- despite all the evidence that marijuana prohibition isn't working.
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The Americans who voted in 1933 to repeal prohibition differed greatly in their reasons for overturning the system. But almost all agreed that the evils of failed suppression far outweighed the evils of alcohol consumption.
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Prohibition - and the violence, corruption and health hazards that followed - lives on in its modern version, the so-called War on Drugs.
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Join MPP’s Dan Bernath as he takes a look at the failures of Alcohol Prohibition and examines how we have still not learned our lesson. Prohibition doesn’t work. Taxation and Regulation does.
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WHO survey of 17 countries finds that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.
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Now that noted stoner magazines like The Economist and Foreign Policy are calling for an end of prohibition and even the federal drug czar wants to retire the phrase "war on drugs," is it time for a new US drug policy?
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Pot has lots of medicinal and financial benefits and millions of people use it without harm, but TV stations still do everything they can to avoid mentioning it.
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The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.
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Does Cooley really believe it's better for either patients or communities to have the state's medical marijuana patients - who number more than 200,000 by most estimates - getting their medicine from street dealers?
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We know — repeat, we know — that marijuana can be effective against certain types of pain. As The Lancet Neurology put it a few years ago, “cannabinoids inhibit pain in virtually every experimental pain paradigm.”
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A top drug cartel chief expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it 'a sham put on the American tax-payer' that was 'actually good for business'." He was right -- prohibition is the dealer's friend. They depend on it. They thrive on it.
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Regardless of how one might feel about drug users, syringe exchange is effective, is essential and there is momentum for change.
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"There's a real drug war weariness in Latin America and its bad enough to feel like a policy had been imposed, and its worse when the policy doesn't work."
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Fernando Henrique Cardoso urges global decriminalisation of cannabis use
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The "war on drugs" has been a disaster say some of Latin America's most powerful politicians and writers.
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The evidence from Portugal since 2001 is that decriminalisation of drug use and possession has benefits and no harmful side-effects
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In the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped
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Ironically, the only real gateway that exists is created by marijuana prohibition, yet proponents of harsh marijuana laws cynically cite the damage they've caused as evidence that the drug itself is acutely harmful. It's truly the height of absurdity.
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The pro-war idealogues have less credibility then ever before. This is a time to put big ideas on the table. We have to learn how to coexist with drugs. They have been around for thousands of years and will be around for thousands more.
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Once derided and dismissed by lawmakers, law enforcers and the law-abiding alike, marijuana reform is now sweeping the nation.
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Our professional experiences have led us to conclude that the more dangerous an illicit substance--from crack to krank--the greater the justification for its legalization, regulation, and control.
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A new poll shows that most Americans are ready to legalize marijuana, but not drugs like cocaine or heroin. A 34-year police vet says it's time to legalize them all.
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Researchers, physicians and social workers say alcohol is responsible for much more health and social damage than any other substance or drug in Canada.
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The costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?
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Even the most mainstream figures are now taking the idea of legalizing and taxing pot seriously -- budget-crunched governments should listen.
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Wasted resources are further compounded by the total capitulation of the massive pot market to an underground economy to gangsters who laugh all the way to the bank.
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“Young blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young whites. Yet from 2004 through 2008 blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites,”
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Our country is creating criminals, not citizens.
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Tens of millions of Americans have voluntarily quit smoking a legal, yet highly addictive intoxicant. Many others have refused to initiate the habit. And they've all made this decision without ever once being threatened with criminal prosecution.
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Enough is enough. It's time to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws, a 36-year failed experiment in racism, injustice and government waste.
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The Rockefeller Drug Laws represent not just bad, expensive policy, but a misguided and ineffective regime for addressing drug use and addiction -- health issues, not criminal issues. Imagine if we incarcerated people for being addicted to cigarettes.
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Voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.
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John Walters has misused treatment statistics to suggest that marijuana is dangerously addictive when the government's own data suggest that arrest-driven treatment admissions have wasted tax dollars by treating thousands who were not truly drug-dependent
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The numbers are in. Marijuana prohibition is a wasteful farce. And John Walters' tenure as drug czar has been a failure.
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The federal government must turn the decision on drug policy back to the states and the citizens themselves.
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Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States, 89% of them for mere possession.
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Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to enforce Canada's drug laws, with little to show for it.
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In the United States, however, conservative politics and "Drug-Free America" rhetoric keep punishment as the primary response to drug use.
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The Downtown Eastside has been the country's most notorious centre for illicit drugs for a century now. Recent law enforcement campaigns have either been ineffectual or have simply shuffled drug activity onto the streets.
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The push for enlightened drug reform in Vancouver is 50 years old. Government crushed it then, as it wants to now.
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Now that the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal has struck down the government's monopoly on supplying medical marijuana, commercial agricultural production of pot is around the corner and the sky's the limit.
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As long as Washington continues to focus on cutting the supply to the US rather than treating the drug problem from within, questions must be asked about its complicity in the escalating violence seen across the border.
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Looking to the U.S. as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid South Africa for how to deal with race.
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Law enforcement has "little adverse effect" on the availability of drugs in Britain, new research claims.
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Britain is losing the war against cocaine with new figures showing a dramatic increase in people using the drug over the past decade and a slump in the volume seized by police
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2m Britons take illegal drugs each month; 1 in 3 adults has tried banned substances; 1 in 4 school-aged children has used drugs
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British think-tank publishes report for next year's United Nations Strategic Drug Policy Review, suggesting that a decriminalised, regulated market in cannabis would cause less harm than the prohibition of the drug currently in force in most countries.
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The international community is not able to report unequivocal success in anti-drug programmes as drugs are purer, cheaper, and more widely available than ever before.
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Billions of pounds spent on attempts to reduce the availability of drugs on the streets have been in vain.
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Gordon Brown is expected to announce tougher laws against cannabis possession, even though medical experts and the police believe he is wrong
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The day we legalize drugs is the day we can begin to clean up the mess that the drug prohibition experiment has created.
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The U.S., with its harsh user penalties, outpaced all other countries on use of pot and coke -- way beyond even the Netherlands, where legal action is not taken for pot possession for personal use.
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Will Bolivia's increased drug control achievements actually reduce the global supply of cocaine?
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The war on drugs is politically, emotionally and spiritually corrupt. This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on drug addicts.
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When discussing treatments for drug addiction, instead of arguing about ideology, let's look at science.
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Tobacco smuggling causes 4,000 deaths a year, four times the number of deaths caused by the use of all smuggled illegal drugs combined, but the UK government is not doing enough to tackle the problem, claim experts on the British Medical Journal website.
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Tobacco killed 227 people a day in England in 2007 – equivalent to a jet airliner crashing every 24 hours – and caused 1,200 hospital admissions
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The alcohol poisoning death rate in the United States is shockingly high, consistently between 300 and 400 a year. It's zero for pot.
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We're a race of well-practiced, high-functioning junkies. After all, regular human consumption of caffeine began at least 2,000 years ago, and until recently there was no reason to think our little global addiction posed any threat.
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Many prescription drugs have effects similar to those of illegal drugs. But we still view some users as criminals -- the others as patients.
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Easing pain is arguably as important as saving a life. But far too many U.S. physicians focus only on the latter.
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Rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs is three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.
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Oxycontin, Lorcet, and other pain control drugs are the leading cause of the tens of thousands of annual drug overdoses -- why the silence?
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The media pounced on his admitted love of weed and coke but did little to investigate the prescription drugs that did him in.
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Half of all Americans take prescription medications. Eighty one percent take some type of pill. 100,000 die every year from a prescription med that they either didn't need or that was not properly prescribed.
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Scientific studies indicate that marijuana can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells, including the type that Kennedy suffers from
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Rhetoric should not be driving drug policy. Legalization would strip addiction down to what it really is: a health issue.
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The first casualty of any war is truth and the war on drugs is no exception. The Church of Prohibition is based on faith and a perverse idea of creating security. It is so overwhelmingly counterproductive that only propaganda can sustain support for it.
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"If policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral"
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Lord Ramsbotham argued that the huge number of people in jail with a drug problem proved that current policy, based on "prohibition", was not working.
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A two-year study from a British commission is recommending a reality-based approach to drug law, rooted in science and focused on reducing harm. Americans should take note.
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Twenty years ago a DEA chief judge concluded that doctors should be allowed to prescribe pot -- and the government is still ignoring his ruling.
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Should drugs like marijuana, heroin, and cocaine be legal? Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, clashes with David Murray, chief scientist at the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.
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Interview with Adam Scorgie and Brett Harvey, makers of the documentary, 'The Union - The Business Behind Getting High.'
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The drug war's built on a myth that we can create a drug free society. But there has never been a drug free society in human history.
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A considerable body of data shows that no state with a medical marijuana law has experienced an increase in youth marijuana use since its law’s enactment. All states have reported overall decreases...
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Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana -- it's time everyone faced this and the rest of the compelling arguments for legalizing it.
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Five signs that pot might become legal soon -- and five reasons why it probably won't.
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With key medical marijuana ballot initiatives likely to pass, and a more pot-friendly majority in Congress, there is room for optimism.
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Congress is for the first time in a generation (1978) taking a serious look at reforming components of cannabis prohibition laws.
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"The Canadian government has never provided a valid reason for the criminalization of marijuana," said Osborne. "This study indicates that people who use marijuana are no more a criminal threat to society than are alcohol and cigarette users.
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Lou Dobbs talks nonsense to explain Mexican drug violence. Face it: Drug prohibition creates a profit motive that people are willing to kill for.
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An ex-convict says we cannot address poverty and race in America, nor can we talk about needless death and expense, without addressing the drug war.
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Not acknowledged anywhere either by Associated Press or most other news outlets, is the very large body of evidence suggesting that the whole "it's not your father's marijuana" scare story is phony.
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Claims that a large increase in the strength of cannabis over the last decade is driving the occurrence of mental health and other problems for users are not borne out by a study of the worldwide literature, say researchers in Australia
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For years now, British police and news reporters have blamed everything from psychosis and suicide to criminal acts like rape and murder on the after-effects of smoking “skunk,” aka allegedly super-potent pot.
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So for the second month in a row we have researchers from New Zealand telling us that pot smoking has little-to-no association with cancer.
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Headlines suggested a study proved pot is a greater cancer risk than tobacco -- but the media didn't even wait for the report to be released.
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So why does the mainstream media continue to get the story wrong when it comes to pot?
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It's laughable that the Feds are pushing the concept of pot addiction when science shows that withdrawal symptoms from caffeine are far worse.
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Join Marijuana Policy Project's Sara Cannon as she takes a look at some untruthful statements made by the Drug Free America Foundation
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Since 1972, U.S. taxpayers have spent well over $20 billion enforcing criminal marijuana laws and 16.5 million people have been arrested. It's time to put an end to this waste
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Marijuana has been proven one of the safest therapeutically active drugs known to mankind. I have used it with little or no harm for 40 years. My mind still finds cannabis fun and enlightening after decades of inter-cranial adventures.
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Canada should learn from America's mistakes in the war on drugs and just say no to mandatory minimum sentencing, because of mounting evidence that it doesn't work.
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The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent and millions of Americans incarcerated, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available in every community.
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The government's war on marijuana users has done real harm to our nation while chewing up billions of dollars every year.
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U.S. arrests for pot possession were up to 739,000 in 2006. And the cost to tax payers? $1 billion a year.
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President Bush's plan for battling the war on drugs will only cost taxpayers dearly and make trafficking more profitable.
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The 'war on drugs' has evolved into a war on weed. Billions of dollars spent, tens of thousands incarcerated, and marijuana is still as popular as ever.
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74 percent of all Americans busted for pot are under age 30, and one out of four are age 18 or younger. An entire generation has been alienated to believe that the police and their civic leaders are instruments of oppression rather than protection.
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Across Mexico, the carnage is impossible to hide, with severed heads and decapitated bodies turning up, sometimes nearly a dozen at a time. There have been more than 3,700 killings related to drugs and organized crime this year
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Pot isn't illegal because the paper industry is afraid of competing with hemp -- it's because of racism and the culture wars.
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The "war on drugs" has led to an explosion in the female incarceration rate.
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Recent surveys of drug habits among Americans found that blacks and whites use drugs at equal rates, yet blacks are more often prosecuted because the laws are biased against them.
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The drug war is still being waged only on some people and on some drugs. In other words, it's still a racist crock.
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The attorney general's last-ditch attempt to preserve our federal crack cocaine sentencing guidelines was pure "War on Drugs" propaganda.
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The newest exhibit in the DEA's museum is a desperate attempt by the flailing agency to hitch its wagon to the 'war on terrorism.'
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Cannabis is proven to be a fairly harmless drug -- so why is the American right still waging a massive war on weed?
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Last week's ludicrous governmental report, which denied the efficacy of medical marijuana, is the Bush administration's latest attempt to divorce science from policy.
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Cocaine may be considered a scourge in America's cities, but in the Andes, the plant from which it's derived is a way of life that provides food, shelter, healthcare and education.
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Why are we still incarcerating people who use controlled substances, when we have ample evidence that this "cure" is worse than the "disease"?
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After a 40-year moratorium, credible research for treating illnesses and addictions with psychedelic compounds has made a miraculous comeback.
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In 1986 he founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and is on the board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a body working to repeal laws banning medical and recreational use of cannabis.
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It's the refusal to look at the evidence that keeps pot illegal. They misrepresented marijuana as an evil weed. I've always had a libertarian attitude toward drugs. I believe people should be able to do anything as long as it's not harmful to someone else
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Californians have chance with the NORA initiative to reject decades of fear mongering and try alternatives to jail for drug abuse.
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DIRTY COPS
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Barry Cooper should know better than anyone that you don’t mess with the police. He was once a cop, and a dirty one at that. But for the past three years, this former narcotics officer has been irritating the hell out of law enforcement.
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Police caught Hoffman with pot but promised to drop charges if she agreed to go undercover in a drug bust. She was killed soon afterward.
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