• Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Bush Crony Working for Obama Seeks to Undermine Medical Marijuana Industry

    By Mason Tvert, Executive director and co-founder, SAFER

    According to an e-mail just unearthed by Complete Colorado, a Bush holdover in the U.S. Drug Czar’s office is fishing for information that links crime to the growing number of medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado.

    The e-mail is addressed to Colorado’s chief medical officer, Ned Calonge, at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and it appears to be authored by an Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) research assistant on behalf of former Bush (and current Obama) drug warrior Kevin Sabet.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Marc Emery: U.S. Federal Prison Blog #5

    Free from 21 days of isolation

    By Marc Emery

    (Marc Emery’s U.S. federal prison blog #5 originally ran here on the Cannabis Culture Web site.)

    At 6:00pm on Thursday, June 24th, I was finally released from solitary confinement after three weeks of isolation.

    The Disciplinary Hearing Officer was very gracious (in so much as I was in solitary for 21 days) and agreed that the phone use infraction – the podcast to supporters that was never released – was minor in the big picture. He made it a “397” which involves no loss of good time (the discount of 15% a year on my sentence). He also said “Everyone here knows you are famous and it was a shout-out to your supporters that was not harmful, and we know you didn’t criticize the Federal Detention Centre, but you can’t do third-party political lobbying over the phone.” So lesson learned. I don’t have phone access until July 25th, but at least I can “email” Jodie through CorrLinks and have visits in person, instead of the cruel “video visits” they’ve recently designated for inmates in solitary confinement.

  • Hot Off The 'Net - What You Can Do

    Experts call for new course on illegal drugs in fight against HIV

    VIENNA (June 28, 2010): A team of experts and health organisations on Monday called for a scientific approach to illicit drugs, arguing that their criminalisation has been costly and ineffective and has fuelled a high HIV infection rate among intravenous drug users. The experts made the appeal in the lead-up to the 18th International AIDS Conference, to be held July 18-23 in the Austrian capital Vienna. They are launching a global signature drive for a declaration on a “science-based” approach to illegal drugs.

    “As scientists, we are committed to raising our collective voice to promote evidence-based approaches to illicit drug policy that start by recognizing that addiction is a medical condition, not a crime,” Julio Montaner, conference chairman and president of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.

    The failure by law enforcement to prevent the availability of illegal drugs where there is demand “is now unambiguous,” the so- called Vienna Declaration says. The declaration – drafted by 32 medical doctors and leading specialists – appeals to governments, the United Nations and other international organisations to review the effectiveness of current drug policies, increase “evidence-based” drug addiction treatments and abolish compulsory drug treatments that violate human rights.
    The declaration also calls for an increase in funding for drug treatment and “harm reduction” measures.

    The consequences of failed drug-enforcement efforts are manifold, the declaration says, pointing to HIV epidemics fuelled by the unavailability of sterile needles, HIV outbreaks among prisoners and record incarceration rates in many countries.

    The massive market for illicit drugs, worth some 320 billion dollars annually, has also destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan. Outside sub-Saharan Africa, intravenous drug use accounts for roughly one in three new cases of HIV, the declaration says. In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as many as 80% of those infected with HIV are intravenous drug users.

    Alternative approaches to illicit drug use – such as those implemented in the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and other countries – have proven effective, conference organisers said

  • Hot Off The 'Net - International

    Drug and Health

    June 26 marks International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. According to World Drug Report 2010 by the UN, drug use is shifting towards new drugs and new markets. To better understand the current situation on drug use around the world, we have ….

    Guests:

    Jack Cole, Executive director of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
    Prof. Dr. Liu Renwen，Director of the Department of Criminal Law with Law Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
    Prof. Lu Lin, Director of National Institute of Drug Dependence, Peking University Health Science Center

  • Hot Off The 'Net - International

    UN, Western Nations Complicit in Drug Of…

    UN, Western Nations Complicit in Drug Offender Executions, Report Says

    from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #638, 6/25/10

    With the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking set for tomorrow, the timing couldn’t be better for a new report from the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) decrying the complicity of Western governments and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in international drug control efforts that result in the execution of drug offenders.

    Tehran Take what happened in China on global anti-drug day 2008 as a case in point. As has been its wont in the past, the Chinese government used the occasion to execute numerous drug offenders, including Han Yongwan, a regional trafficker who had been arrested by police in Laos and later extradited to China. Han had been arrested thanks to the East Asian Border Liaison Office program, initiated by UNODC in 1993, and chiefly funded by the United Kingdom (24%), the United States (24%), Japan (24%), and Australia (10%). Other funders included the European Commission (3%), Sweden (3%), Canada (2%), and UNAIDS (5%).

    Although the European Commission and nearly all of the donor nations reject the death penalty, the funding of programs like the East Asian Border Liaison Office means that those governments and organizations are complicit, if inadvertently, in the application of the death penalty to drug offenders, the IHRA found in a report issued this week, Complicity or Abolition? The Death Penalty and International Support for Drug Enforcement.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Launch of world’s first prescription cannabis medicine

    Porton Down, UK, 21 June 2010: GW Pharmaceuticals plc (GWP:AIM) today announces the UK launch of Sativex®, its Oromucosal Spray for the treatment of spasticity due to Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Sativex® is the world’s first prescription cannabis medicine and the UK is the first country in the world to grant a full regulatory authorization for the product.

    Sativex® contains two cannabinoids or active ingredients – THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol). It is the first cannabinoid medicine derived from whole plant extracts from the cannabis sativa plant.

    Sativex®, available as a prescription only medicine, was developed by GW in specific response to calls from people with MS for a prescription cannabis-based medicine. Today’s launch means that MS patients suffering the spasms and cramping associated with spasticity have access to a new treatment option which has been shown to improve their symptoms where current treatments have failed.

    Sativex® is manufactured by GW under Home Office licence at an undisclosed location in the UK. The medicine is being marketed in the UK by GW’s UK licensee, Bayer Schering Pharma.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    In Which Another Drug Warrior Extracts Facts From His Behind

    In Which Another Drug Warrior Extracts Facts From His Behind

    Another drug warrior invents facts. Check the video below from Stossel’s show last week, in which former ONDCP official and narcotics officer Paul Chabot debates former narcotics cop and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition speaker Neil Franklin.

    At one point, Chabot says the “majority” of crimes that take actual victims are committed by people under the influence of illegal drugs. That isn’t true. According to data from Chabot’s former employer, it’s around 22 percent at federal level, and 33 percent at the state level. And of course that doesn’t mean the drugs caused the crimes. Or even contributed to them. Though I’m sure there’s some of both. The only conclusion you can safely draw from those numbers is that there’s some overlap between people who use illegal drugs and people who commit violent and property crimes.