Hemp Embassy :: Forum

BBC 5 Live New Zero Tolerance Drug Driving Law, Cannabis, Sativex - NORML UK [by Moose]

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:59:11 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: BBC 5 Live New Zero Tolerance Drug Driving Law, Cannabis, Sativex - NORML UK

I call in to the BBC Radio 5 Live to respond as a medicinal cannabis user to the new zero tolerance drug laws that do not rely on impairment. Sativex is available as a medicine for MS patients and contains cannabis, I spoke to the Head of Toxicology on Friday whilst attending a Cannabinoid Pain and Inflammation conference who was able to tell me that cannabinoids do not effect driving, but at the same time if one feels impaired they should know not to get behind the wheel. Sativex patients should not worry about driving whist being prescribed.

Moms Say, "No More Drug War!" [by Moose]

Sun, 13 May 2012 06:03:31 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Moms Say, "No More Drug War!"

"Mothers throughout history have come forward for the sake of their children," says Gretchen Burns Bergman, executive director of Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing (PATH). "We're coming forth saying that the drug war has been more damaging to our families than the drugs themselves."

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is well-known for helping push forward Prohibition in the United States. But perhaps less well-known are groups such as the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, who were instrumental in the effort to repeal the 18th Amendment.

In that the tradition, Moms United to End the War on Drugs gathered on the steps of the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse to deliver a message this Mother's Day: no more drug war. Reason.tv was on the scene to talk with mothers who'd had their families torn apart by U.S. drug policy.

"You don't realize the drug policies in this country until they have an effect on you," says Lorraine Rebennack. "And when you lose a child, your life is never the same. Nor is your family."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller.

Cannabis Champ Matt Mernagh on the Case that Could Bring Down Canada's Pot Laws [by Moose]

Fri, 11 May 2012 21:43:37 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Cannabis Champ Matt Mernagh on the Case that Could Bring Down Canada's Pot Laws

Arjan Roskam vs. Richard Branson - gets him to make a statement against new drugs policy in NL [by Moose]

Thu, 10 May 2012 21:46:51 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Arjan Roskam vs. Richard Branson - gets him to make a statement against new drugs policy in NL

Animated movie: 'This Is Maria. She Will End the War on Drugs' [by Moose]

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:49:43 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Animated movie: 'This Is Maria. She Will End the War on Drugs'
Animated movie: 'This Is Maria. She Will End the War on Drugs'

This is an animated movie featuring Maria, a composite character based on many Mexican victims of the drug war - their words and actions - who together are organizing to end the war, including Javier Sicilia, Maria Herrera and Julian LeBaron.

Tourist ban on cannabis 'coffee shops' kicks in [by crab]

Wed, 02 May 2012 06:32:58 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Tourist ban on cannabis 'coffee shops' kicks in

Tourist ban on cannabis 'coffee shops' kicks in

May 2, 2012 - 2:03PM

Protesters march against a ban on selling cannabis to foreigners, in front of the town hall in Maastricht. Photo: Reuters

New Dutch laws to stub out the sale of cannabis to foreign dope tourists kicked in yesterday -- and were met with defiance from southern coffee shops including in Maastricht.

At least one coffee shop in the southern city continued sales to Belgian and German buyers in contravention of the new "cannabis card" rules -- and was promptly slapped with a police warning to stop sales to non-residents within 24 hours.

"People, you can come inside without a cannabis card. We are open to everybody," Marc Josemans, owner of the Easy Going coffee shop told his clientele as they lined up outside his place.
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Josemans, who has been spearheading a pro-pot drive to get the new Dutch laws scrapped, opened his doors at around 11:15 am local time to some 20 customers, at least two from Belgium and one from Germany.

"I think the cannabis card is discriminatory and trouble in the streets will grow in the weeks to come," Josemans said as his customers bought the Dutch maximum legal quantity of five grammes of marijuana before leaving.

A few hours later with a police warning in hand, Joseman remained defiant, saying "obviously I will not stop sales" to foreigners. Some 14 other coffee shops in the popular tourist city kept their doors closed in protest.

"We prefer to smoke a joint," one customer, a 25-year-old woman from Liege in Belgium said as she left Joseman's shop, adding: "If we can't do it legally in the Netherlands, we will do it illegally", buying it off the street.

Famous for decades for its laid-back attitude toward cannabis, the Netherlands will now require so-called coffee shops in some regions to only sell to signed-up members who live in the country, not to foreign visitors.

The tougher rules, set to take effect nationwide from next year, effectively turn coffee shops into private clubs with no more than 2000 members, who must be over 18 and legal residents of the country.

Starting Tuesday in three provinces, coffee shops must turn away those without "weed passes", which allow locals and foreigners living in the country to enter and light up.

A last-minute challenge seeking to declare the law discriminatory by coffee shop owners -- including in the Limburg, North-Brabant and Zeeland provinces on the Belgian and German borders -- failed last week.

Elsewhere, in the university city of Tilburg, coffee shops like the Toermalijn (tourmaline) received a warning from the municipality after Belgians were allowed inside and local users did not put their name on a list, Dutch news agency ANP reported.

Some coffee shops however like the upmarket The Grass Company, also in Tilburg however said it will adhere to the new laws.

"I have had a huge number of Belgians, Germans, Poles and some French and I had unfortunately to show them the door," its manager Jasper Rutten said.

Many local residents have welcomed the change, saying they have had enough of traffic jams, nocturnal disturbances and drug pushers catering to the millions of foreign visitors drawn by the relaxed cannabis laws.

Maastricht, a popular destination for some 1.4 million "drug tourists" every year from Germany, France and Belgium, said last week it was ready to enforce the "weed-pass" legislation.

The centre-right government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte has for years prepared the ground for making the "cannabis card" obligatory when visiting one of the country's 670 licensed coffee shops.

Although cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, the country in 1976 decriminalised possession of less than five grammes of the substance under a so-called tolerance policy.

Belgium meanwhile has stepped up police cooperation with their Dutch counterparts over the issue, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

"This new policy of The Netherlands can have side effects in Belgium such as more cannabis planting, illegal sales moving (across the border) or more touts looking for potential customers on the highways," Interior Minister Joelle Milquet said in a statement.

Dutch and Belgian police are stepping up their cooperation as well as their presence along the border, and will conduct more frequent checks on roads and railways, she said.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-n ... ks-in-20120502-1xyj6.html

The war on drugs: which war … and what drugs? [by crab]

Wed, 02 May 2012 06:24:04 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: The war on drugs: which war … and what drugs?

The war on drugs: which war … and what drugs?

The different, contradictory and inconsistent policies on drug use control represent uneasy compromises driven by conflicting ideologies.
West Midlands Police/Flickr

The mantra “war against drugs” sounds great from a distance, but on closer inspection, it’s a misleading, sweeping generalisation.

There are, in fact, many different, contradictory and inconsistent policies on drug use control. These represent uneasy compromises driven by conflicting ideologies in our society.

Conflicts arise over the perceived damage the drugs might do, the amount of effort required to control the drug, and how accepted the drug is within sections of our society.

Let’s look at each drug in turn.

Deadly smoke

Smoking causes 80% of drug-related deaths. Wiechert Visser Visser

Most – 80% – of drug-related deaths are a result of diseases caused by tobacco. Through changing social attitudes and legislation, we’ve been able to reduce the prevalence of smoking, reduce the harm from smoking and improve community health.

The conflict has been considerable, as the current high court challenge of the Australian government by the tobacco giants illustrate. And, we now have huddles of addicts stand outside public buildings, creating a cloud of smoke to welcome visitors.

At the bottom of the glass

The widespread availablity of alcohol makes it difficult to resist. The Vault DFW/Flickr

Alcohol, our favourite drug, is also subject to policy control. These have undergone considerable liberalisation in the last 20 years, but widespread availability is tough for alcoholics, whose recovery is made more difficult by being surrounded by supermarket liquor outlets.

There’s enormous political resistance to taxing alcohol according to alcoholic content. While this would slug the wine industry, it would reduce the overall consumption of alcohol and improve public health.

The rise and rise of opioids

Policies on opioids such as morphine (good) and heroin (bad) show major inconsistencies. If the person is addicted to injecting heroin, they can reduce the harm of their addiction by attending a needle and syringe exchange program. Such an enlightened policy has reduced the spread of blood-borne viruses, especially HIV/AIDS, although it has had less success in reducing the spread of hepatitis C.

But we’ve had difficulty with further harm minimisation strategies. Safe injecting rooms are controversial. The experiment at Kings Cross in Sydney has finally been declared successful enough to be an ongoing funded program. Users can attend a safe injecting room where they can inject a dirty drug within a clean and safe environment.

But how do users in Cabramatta (within the same greater metropolitan area) cope with no such facilities? And in Victoria, the injecting facility canvassed for Richmond has been blocked by the Victorian state government for no sound scientific reason.

Addicts sick of their injecting can opt for substitution pharmacotherapy. This option is supported by a considerable body of scientific evidence but decried by drug-free society advocates, who claim the approach is promoted by the medico-pharmaceutical cartel.

Addicts sick of their injecting can opt for substitution pharmacotherapy. Dirty Bunny/Flickr

Those who decide to use these drugs need to find a medical prescriber trained in the management of substitution pharmacotherapy, but there’s a shortage of trained practitioners, and it can be difficult to get on a program.

If someone can persuade any doctor that they have chronic pain rather than opioid dependence, they can have an even wider range of opioids – oxycodone, slow-release oral morphines and the like. The dispensing of these agents is much more liberal and patients don’t have to pay the dispensing fee. As one wag put it, “The only opioid dependent persons on substitution pharmacotherapy are those not clever enough to persuade their doctors they have chronic pain.”

It’s not surprising then, that in the last 15 years we’ve seen a huge rise in use of prescription opioids in the community. These drugs are prescribed and dispensed by doctors and pharmacists untrained in opioid prescribing.

Xanax and its relations

Drugs such as Valium and Xanax are all part of a family called benzodiazepines. Initially, these drugs were freely prescribed to treat insomnia and anxiety, because they were much safer in overdose than the barbiturates they replaced. But as the medical professions recognized their addictive potential, they became more careful in their prescribing. Now, a black market has opened up on these drugs.

Add to this the availability of drugs on the internet from potentially unreliable sources, and a whole new dimension of drug availability and control has developed.

And then there’s cannabis

Is the effort required to control cannabis use proportionate to the harm it causes? Torben Bjorn Hansen/Fickr

The debate on cannabis is becoming intense, with pro and anti-groups lobbying hard. Different states in Australia take somewhat different positions. The key question is whether the effort needed to control the drug is disproportionate to its harm.

Cannabis' ability to precipitate psychosis in the vulnerable is increased with greater potency, although, for the bulk of users, the drug is a weekend escape from the pressures of life.

Stimulants of all sorts

Coffee is a daily addiction for many. JenK

Many Australia cities now proudly boast that they’re sophisticated coffee cities. No one would dream of curtailing the streams of coffee, and for many it’s a daily addiction.

Cocaine is the rich man’s coffee. Driven professionals, seeking to meet impossible deadlines, find stimulants useful, as do those using it socially at clubs or music festivals. Speed is more downmarket, but both these drugs can have long-term detrimental effects. And people on these drugs can show considerable psychological instability.

Where to now

This brief survey shows the mix of different responses to different addictive agents. The unscrupulous will usually find a way of exploiting the vulnerable and social controllers will always want to impose their values onto the rest of society.

We have to live with the resultant compromises. The problem will not go away and open slather is not the answer. In the end, if users learn to internalise their own control and feel able to replace the perceived benefits of these drugs with safer alternatives, we can reduce the demand and dry up the profits of those importing, making and selling these agents.

Source: http://theconversation.edu.au/the-war ... h-war-and-what-drugs-6313.

Time for Plan B in the war on drugs [by crab]

Wed, 02 May 2012 06:20:55 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Time for Plan B in the war on drugs

Time for Plan B in the war on drugs

One of 13 children arrested in Sydney for being unsupervised and under the influence of drugs.
AAP

Most of the avalanche of publicity around Australia 21’s launch of their report on drugs was quite favourable. The report called for vigorous community debate but was careful to avoid recommending any specific preferred policy response.

“The prohibition of illicit drugs is killing and criminalising our children and we are all letting it happen” was launched on April 3 at the national parliament.

Supporters of drug law enforcement attacked decriminalisation and legalisation rather than try to defend a national drug policy heavily reliant on criminal justice measures.

The commentary on the war on drugs resembles the end of the Soviet era when defenders of the regimes conceded that communism may not have worked as well as had been hoped, but warned that nations would be even worse off under capitalism.

Today, Albania, North Korea and Cuba are the last countries still willing to deny the importance of profits in achieving economic growth. Similarly, defenders of the war on drugs are still willing to deny the importance of profits in the growth of the illegal drugs market.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Attorney General Nicola Roxon, and Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott were united in their reluctance for a national debate about Australia’s drug policy. While these responses were quite predictable, they attracted considerable criticism.

Drug policy is not an easy subject for politicians, especially for Gillard and Abbott who have admitted smoking cannabis in their youth.

There have been many previous media discussions about our drug policy in recent decades. But never before has its critique provoked such an intense, sustained and positive response.

Clearly, the perception that relying so heavily on drug law enforcement simply doesn’t work is widely shared; it’s been an expensive way to achieve terrible outcomes.

Mick Palmer alluded to the fact that the war on drugs has indeed failed. AAP

Never before has a former commissioner of the Australian Federal Police been as unambiguous and forthright as Mick Palmer was in his declaration at the launch of the Australia 21 report that law enforcement makes very little difference to the drug market.

A few days after the report’s launch, Otto Perez Molina, president of Guatemala, described how he had been responsible for drug law enforcement in his country 20 years earlier. But after becoming president, Molina was struck by the fact that drug consumption, production and trafficking had all increased despite two decades of fighting the war on drugs.

At the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, on 14 to 15 April, over 30 heads of government (including US President Barack Obama) took part in a closed-door discussion about the failure of the war on drugs. President Obama was forced to concede that this discussion was legitimate. And conservative Canadian Prime Minister Steve Harper surprised many at the summit when he also conceded that the war on drugs had failed.

Nigel Inkester, a former chief of MI6 in the United Kingdom, declared on 17 April that the war on drugs had been lost and that drug legalisation had to be considered.

First academics started saying these things, then retired politicians, judges and police chiefs. Now serving presidents and prime ministers are also finally admitting that the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

When Plan A doesn’t work. it’s time to think about Plan B. As Gramsci said, “the old is dead but the new is not yet born.

Evidence gathered from a northern Melbourne house on April 18, 2012, contributing to the 5,000 seized marijuana plants. Julian Smith AAP

The media in Australia scarcely reported the intense debate about drug policy now raging in the Americas and Europe. But the seizure of 5,000 cannabis plants outside Melbourne on 18 April was widely reported.

We should wish drug law enforcement every success while recognising that such endeavours are futile. While there remains a strong demand for illicit drugs, there will always be a supply.

Employing 250 police to carry out raids on the 5,000 cannabis plants meant that these police were temporarily unavailable to attend more serious and violent crimes. Meanwhile, others involved in supplying cannabis will have been delighted at the temporary elimination of a major competitor.

The Age reported that $29 million worth of plants had been seized while the ABC reported that the plants were worth $20 million. Estimates like these are based on retail rather than the more realistic wholesale prices. They inflate the apparent benefits of the raid but is typical of the dishonesty required to keep the war on drugs going.

One of the lessons of the drug debate is to make sure that we only consider bite-sized chunks. So far, there only seems to be a growing consensus that Plan A doesn’t work.

Source: http://theconversation.edu.au/time-fo ... -in-the-war-on-drugs-6559

"We Can't Arrest Our Way Out of the Drug Problem" [by Moose]

Tue, 01 May 2012 22:40:08 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: "We Can't Arrest Our Way Out of the Drug Problem"

Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore narcotics cop, presses Obama administration "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske over the contrast between his remarks about how "we can't arrest our way out of the drug problem" and the fact that under President Obama more than 1.6 million people are still arrested on drug charges in the U.S. every year. Neill is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which anyone can join for free at http://www.CopsSayLegalizeMarijuana.com

Australia Sport Coalition: Marijuana Isn't a Performance-Enhancing Drug [by Moose]

Tue, 01 May 2012 21:49:43 -0100

Cannabis and the Law:: Australia Sport Coalition: Marijuana Isn't a Performance-Enhancing Drug
Australia Sport Coalition: Marijuana Isn't a Performance-Enhancing Drug

300) this.width=300" />As lawyers and sporting commissions in the United States are fighting over whether MMA fighter Nick Diaz had violated drug rules in testing positive for marijuana, Australian sport commissions deemed today that marijuana should be removed from the list of performance-enhancing substances.

The word came today from the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports, representing Australian Rugby Union, Australian Rugby League, Cricket Australia, Australian Football League, Football Federation of Australia, Tennis Australia and Netball Australia.

The coalition believes that marijuana shouldn't be in the same group as Human Growth Hormone and anabolic steroids (which result in a two year ban) - but rather considered an illicit substance.

Malcolm Speed, the coalition chief, will be meeting the World Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday for a meeting and according to the Seattle Times, will ask that "where a substance is on the banned list but isn't a performance-enhancing substance, it should be removed."

Source; http://www.kushmagazine.com/news/2843 ... erformance-enhancing-drug