The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) is uploading video from the 2011 Drug Policy Alliance Conference in Los Angeles. Here is a sample.
Check out the HCLU Youtube channel link below for more.
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By Jacob Sullum
As Mike Riggs noted this morning, the Obama administration last Friday night finally got around to addressing the “We the People” online petitions urging repeal of marijuana prohibition. First it had to deal with the clamor for excising “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance (a cause that attracted 20,328 signatures) and removing the slogan “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency (12,273). By comparison, the eight petitions recommending some form of marijuana legalization totaled more than 150,000 (possibly overlapping) signatures; the most popular one, “Legalize and Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol,” by itself attracted more than 74,000. If you bother to read drug czar Gil Kerlikowske’s embarrassingly weak response, you can see why the White House buried it in the weekend news graveyard. -
Coalition of BC Law Enforcement, Health and Academic Experts Call for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation to Reduce Gang Violence
New Polls Shows 87% of British Columbians Link Gang Violence to Organized Crime’s Control of Marijuana Trade
October 27, 2011 [Vancouver, Canada] – In the wake of high-profile gang violence related to the illegal marijuana industry in BC, a new coalition of academic, legal and health experts has released the first of a series of reports and polling results aimed at pressuring politicians to legally regulate marijuana sales under a public health framework.
The Angus Reid poll says 87% of BC respondents link gang violence to organized crime’s efforts to control the province’s massive illegal cannabis trade while the report, called Breaking the Silence, clearly demonstrates that cannabis prohibition in BC has been ineffective and caused significant social harms and public safety issues.
“From a scientific and public health perspective we know that making marijuana illegal has not achieved its stated objectives of limiting marijuana supply or rates of use,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a coalition member and Director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. “Given that marijuana prohibition has created a massive financial windfall for violent organized crime groups in BC, we must discuss alternatives to today’s failed laws with a focus on how to decrease violence, remove the illicit industry’s profit motive and improve public health and safety.”
The new coalition, Stop the Violence BC, released the report in tandem with results from an Angus Reid poll that overwhelmingly demonstrates that lawmakers lag far behind public opinion on revamping marijuana laws in BC.
Breaking the Silence: Cannabis prohibition, organized crime, and gang violence
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An independent reviewer has dismissed concerns over a study that shows a 35-per-cent decrease in overdose deaths after the opening of Insite, North America’s only supervised injection facility.
Published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet on April 18, 2011, the study, titled Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America’s first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study, was the first to assess the impact of supervised injection sites on overdose mortality.
The study was led by Thomas Kerr, an associate professor at UBC and co-director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and Julio Montaner, director of the BC-CfE and Chair of AIDS Research at UBC.
In a September 2011 letter to John Hepburn, UBC’s Vice President Research & International, a group called Drug Free Australia raised concerns over the interpretation of data in the study. Pursuant to UBC Policy 85 (Scholarly Integrity), Hepburn subsequently appointed Mark Wainberg, professor of medicine and director of the McGill University AIDS Centre, to review the matter.
Wainberg is a past-president of the International AIDS Society, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the International AIDS Society and editor of various other academic journals. He was a recipient of the Canadian Medical Association’s 2009 Medal of Honour and was named a Public Health Hero by the Pan American Health Organization for his work in antiviral treatment of HIV/AIDS.
After reviewing the submission by Drug Free Australia, the Lancet article and the authors’ response, Wainberg concluded:
“In my view, the allegations that have been made by ‘Drug Free Australia’ are without merit and are not based on scientific fact. In contrast, it is my view that the work that has been carried out by the team of Thomas Kerr et al is scientifically well-founded and has contributed to reducing the extent of mortality and morbidity in association with the existence of the safer injection facility. . . . The University of British of British Columbia should be proud of the contributions of its faculty members to the important goal of diminishing deaths due to intravenous drug abuse.”
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It has been interesting to observe the fallout from the recent Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decision which allows Insite, Vancouver’s largest supervised injection facility (SIF), to remain in operation.
In essence, the SCC found that the rights of the clients and staff of Insite to Insite outweigh any salutory effects arresting them for drug possession at Insite might have.
As the SCC put it:
… the effect of denying the services of Insite to the population it serves is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.
The court rejected the argument that Insite is a health facility under provincial rather than federal jurisdiction, but they agreed that, in this case, the Controlled Drugs and Subtances Act (CDSA) infringes on Charter rights.
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PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed
Watch the full episode. See more Ken Burns.
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Denial of health services and increased risk of death among drug users outweighs any benefit from absolute prohibition on drug possession
By Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun
If nothing else, Friday’s unanimous Supreme Court of Canada decision on the future of Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site, reveals the federal government’s striking ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And in spectacular fashion.
The plaintiffs, after all, lost on both of their primary grounds of appeal, yet still managed to win the case. The plaintiffs’ first argument, which previously persuaded the B.C. Court of Appeal, concerned the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity, while the second argument, which previously convinced the B.C. Supreme Court, concerned section 7 of the Charter. Yet, while these two arguments swayed lower courts, the Supreme Court of Canada wasn’t having any of either.
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Premieres October 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2011 at 8 PM on PBS
CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS
PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.
Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality.
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An Online Library About Marijuana Possession Arrests, Race And Police Policy In New York City And Beyond
U.S. government studies consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks or Latinos. Yet, in large cities and counties throughout the United States, young blacks and Latinos are arrested and jailed for marijuana possession at much higher rates than young whites.
In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites. Usually, the people arrested were not smoking in public. Police typically found the small amount of marijuana when they stopped, frisked, and searched the young people, often in their own neighborhoods.
Marijuana-Arrests.com is an on line library of materials about the huge numbers of racially-biased marijuana possession arrests, their consequences, and the law enforcement policies and operations which produce them.