• Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net - International

    Drug Policy in Portugal

    The Benefits of Decriminalizing Drug Use

    By Artur Domoslawski

    In 2000, the Portuguese government responded to widespread public concern over drugs by rejecting a “war on drugs” approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. It further rebuffed convention by placing the responsibility for decreasing drug demand as well as managing dependence under the Ministry of Health, rather than the Ministry of Justice. With this, the official response toward drug dependent persons shifted from viewing them as criminals, to treating them as patients.

    Drug Policy in Portugal: The Benefits of Decriminalizing Drug Use is the second in a series of reports by the Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program that documents positive examples of drug policy reform around the world (the first being From the Mountaintops: What the World Can Learn from Drug Policy Change in Switzerland). Drug Policy in Portugal describes the process, context, ideas, and values that enabled Portugal to make the transition to a public health response to drug use and possession. Now, with a decade of experience, Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism, and HIV infection, and create safer communities for all.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Parents Using Pot

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-20-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-20-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3512

    Question of the Week: How many parents use marijuana?

    The U.S. Census estimates that families in households with minor children – married and single parent male or female – comprised roughly 62 million persons in 2010. An average of the percentage use figures in the 2010 Monitoring the Future study indicate that around 15% of those within the childbearing years of age 20-35 consume cannabis monthly, with about 5% being daily users. Daily use likely equates to medical use. Simple multiplication of these two percentages times the estimated 62 million persons heading family households places the number of marijuana using parents in the United States at least as high as 9.5 million and patient parents near 3 million.

    The U.S. Census also estimates the number of children ages 12-17 at 24.8 million. Monitoring the Future projects the percentage of adolescents who currently use cannabis at 13.8%. The result of multiplying the two figures is roughly 3.4 million young people who use cannabis at least monthly.

    Ironically, the aforementioned Monitoring the Future percentages indicate a steep decline in cannabis consumption during childbearing years. The prevalence of those using it within the last 30 days drops from 20.6% of 18 year-olds to 12% of 29-39 year-olds.

    “The Social Epidemiology of Substance Use” report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health confirms this trend, finding that, “in the context of family relations, it is primarily the assumption of greater family responsibilities that has been associated with cessation of use. For example, becoming a parent for the first time has been associated with cessation of marijuana use.”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the Families and Youth chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Coca Leaf vs. Cocaine

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 8-3-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 8-3-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3488

    Question of the Week: What is the difference between coca leaf and cocaine?

    According to a paper from Yale University,

    “Coca leaves are grown from bushes native to the Andes. The leaves contain alkaloids that can be extracted to produce commercial cocaine.”

    The Transnational Institute says,

    “Coca leaf consumption is an integral part of Andean cultural tradition and world view. The principle uses are [as an] energizer, medicinal, sacred, and social.”

    And goes on to describe,

    “One of the main properties of the coca leaf, which has been and continues to be used industrially, is its medical potential as an anaesthetic and analgesic.”

    Accion Andina recounted that,

    “A new use for the leaf was discovered between 1855 and 1860. Two German scientists …are given credit for having first extracted the pure cocaine alkaloid from coca leaves.”

    A Fordham University Law Review article describes the leaf’s conversion to cocaine hydrochloride.

    “After pulverizing [the leaves] into a coarse powder, alcohol is added and distilled off in order to extract the most pure form of cocaine alkaloid.” Cocaine anesthetizes and stimulates the central nervous system.”

    However, according to Accion Annida,

    “The prophetic “Legend of the Coca Leaf” presages us of the difference between the way the leaf is used traditionally in the Andes, and the corrupted form used by Western conquerors. As the Sun God said to the Andean wise man Kjana Chuyma: “[coca] for you shall be strength and life, for your masters it shall be a loathsome and degenerating vice; while for you, natives, it will be an almost spiritual food, for them it shall cause idiocy and madness”

    These facts and others like them can be found on the new Coca Leaf subchapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

  • Events - What You Can Do

    International Overdose Awareness Day

    DPA Coordinating Events for International Overdose Awareness Day (August 31) to Remember Lives Lost and to Educate About Solutions to Overdose Crisis

    Accidental Overdose Deaths Have Quadrupled Since 1990 — More than 26,000 Americans Die Every Year

    Radio Stations and Supporters Urged to Play Music by Artists who Died of Drug Overdose

    The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) will be joining dozens of organizations in the U.S. and abroad who are participating in International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31. The day honors and remembers those who have lost their lives to an overdose. The occasion is also an opportunity to educate policymakers and the public about the growing overdose crisis in the United States and abroad – and to offer concrete solutions that save lives.

  • Letter of the Week

    The Point

    We unequivocally support removing marijuana growing operations from the Mendocino National Forest and all other public lands.  We consider this a no-brainer.  However, it is our obligation as elected officials to do more than simply line up behind what’s popular.  We also consider it our duty to define solutions to long-standing problems.

    The point we made at the Board of Supervisors meeting of August 2 was that illegal growing on public lands will not end until the federal laws are changed.  We did not criticize Sheriff Allman’s efforts, not did we criticize the other jurisdictions – county, state, and federal – – that participated in Full Court Press.

    This is a time when government must spend its dollars wisely.  It is our shared opinion that the war on drugs is not a wise expenditure.  The horrors of the Prohibition era ended shortly after President Roosevelt lifted the ban on alcohol.  Interestingly, that’s also when our local alcohol industry began its steady ascent.  We believe that ending marijuana prohibition would have a similar beneficial effect.

    John Pinches, Supervisor, District Three, Laytonville

    Dan Hamburg, Supervisor, District Five, Ukiah

     

    Powered by MAPMAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

    Pubdate: Wed, 17 Aug 2011
    Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA)
    Contact: [email protected]
    Copyright: 2011 Anderson Valley Advertiser
    Website: http://www.theava.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667
    Authors: John Pinches and Dan Hamburg


  • Events

    The Boston Freedom Rally

    The 22nd Annual Masscann/NORML Boston Freedom Rally, September 17, 2011, High Noon, Boston Common

    Boston Freedom Rally

    The Boston Freedom Rally is an annual event in Boston, Massachusetts. Held on the third Saturday in September, it is traditionally the second largest annual gathering demanding marijuana law reform in the United States, after the Seattle Hempfest. It is organized by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MASS CANN), the Massachusetts state affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws also known as MASS CANN/NORML.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net - Law Enforcement & Prisons

    Too Many Cops?

    The crime rate is down but police forces are growing. We’re poorer as a result, but not necessarily any safer.

    by Ken MacQueen, and Patricia Treble

    This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied with a thank you card, wrote her name and return address on the envelope and, in a decision certain to haunt her for years to come, enclosed four grams of her homegrown marijuana, enough for perhaps four cigarettes. On an April morning some days later she returned to the post office to pick up another package. Moments later, police pulled her over, handcuffed her, put her in a cruiser and hauled her off to the police station.

    It made quite a spectacle, says the 41-year-old mother of four, who suffers from colitis and is one of more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients registered with Health Canada. “It was embarrassing,” she says. “I was still in my pyjamas.” She emerged four hours later with a trafficking charge for giving away those four grams.

    Her charge is part of a recent marked increase in arrests for cannabis offences. Cannabis arrests jumped 13 per cent in 2010 to 75,126. Of those, almost 57,000 were for simple possession, a 14 per cent jump from the year before. (The statistics reflect cases where the arrest was the most serious charge a person faced, not the thousands more where a pot charge was tacked onto a string of more serious crimes.) The cannabis arrest rate is an anomaly at a time when the overall crime rate in 2010 fell to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.

    Ironically, Cartwright’s legal predicament may be linked to that falling crime rate, which comes at a time when policing costs are climbing relentlessly and the number of sworn officers in Canada is at its highest level in almost 30 years. It may simply be that with less overall crime, police have the time, staffing and inclination to focus on minor drug arrests. The vast majority of those arrested are younger than 24, and mostly male, if past findings hold true. And the majority of those arrests are for pot possession, “the low-lying fruit,” as Dalhousie University criminologist Christopher Murphy puts it.