• Cannabis & Hemp - Hot Off The 'Net

    Study: Marijuana Not Linked With Long Term Cognitive Impairment

    By Maia Szalavitz

    The idea that “marijuana makes you dumb” has long been embodied in the stereotype of the slow, stupid stoner, seen in numerous Hollywood movies and TV comedies and going unquestioned by much of American culture. But a new study says no: the researchers followed nearly 2,000 young Australian adults for eight years and found that marijuana has little long-term effect on learning and memory— and any cognitive damage that does occur as a result of cannabis use is reversible.

    Participants were aged 20-24 at the start of the study, which was part of a larger project on community health. Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.

    Light use was defined as smoking monthly or less frequently; heavy use was weekly or more often. Former users had to have not smoked for at least a year. Fully 72% of the participants were non-users or former users; 18% were light users and 9% were heavy current users. Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - What You Can Do

    Dispensaries are Indispensable

    As you may be aware, Health Canada last month announced some proposed amendment to the MMAR and are engaging in a consultation period this month. More information can be found on their website: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/index-eng.php.

    The Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries has launched a “Dispensaries are Indispensable” National Endorsement Campaign. The Campaign is aimed at collecting endorsements from medical cannabis patients who access their medicine at dispensaries across Canada. We want to send a message to Health Canada that dispensaries are providing patients with valuable and valued services and should be included in the legal framework of medical cannabis in Canada.

    Please sign an endorsement online if you access your cannabis at a dispensary in Canada, and please feel free to put a link to this campaign on your various websites: http://thecompassionclub.org/endorsementcampaign

  • Letter of the Week

    The U.S. Needs a Drug Policy That Works Much Better

    Obfuscation is the name of the game for Joseph Califano and William Bennett.

    The Netherlands has about half the marijuana use we do and, with no marketing link to cocaine, about one-eighth our cocaine use, according to a World Health Organization survey. Marijuana use is up 30% here in the past 20 years, and we have over a million teenage drug sellers in our schools. Legal drugs would be more available? Impossible! A federal government-sponsored report says that “marijuana has been almost universally available to American 12th graders over the past 31 years.”

    The pending bill in Congress would simply allow states to decide about marijuana. We used to call this approach the laboratory of democracy, but this pair prefers Chicken Little rhetoric to facts.

    According to the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey published July 2002: “Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.”

    Jerry Epstein

    Houston

    Pubdate: Fri, 08 Jul 2011
    Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
    Copyright: 2011 Jerry Epstein
    Contact: [email protected]
    Website: http://www.wsj.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
    Note: Second of 4 letters in response to http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n431/a02.html

  • Letter of the Week

    Should Marijuana Be Legalized And Regulated?

    To the Editor:

    Sylvia Longmire misses the mark in focusing on how legalizing marijuana won’t put drug cartels completely out of business (“Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels,” Op-Ed, June 19).

    Sure, some cartel members will continue selling other illicit wares once marijuana is legalized, but since they currently earn about 60 percent of their profits from illegal marijuana sales, ending the prohibition of that cash crop will seriously undercut their ability to finance continued operations.

    And removing such a significant chunk of the cartels’ funding will make it significantly easier for law enforcement to isolate and destroy them. As a former border patrol officer once charged with enforcing prohibition, I never dared dream of such success. Each arrest only created a lucrative job opening for someone else to step in and fill the insatiable demand for illegal drugs.

    We can either keep going through an endless cycle of cartel bosses brought to justice, or if we really want to reduce the violence, we can legalize marijuana — and other currently illegal drugs — thereby evaporating the profit motive that causes the carnage.

    TERRY NELSON

    Granbury, Tex., June 20, 2011

    Pubdate: Mon, 27 Jun 2011
    Source: New York Times (NY)
    Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
    Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
    Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
    Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
    Author: Terry Newson, Board Member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

  • Cannabis & Hemp - Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Softer pot laws saved Philadelphia $2 million in 2010

    By David Ferguson
    Saturday, July 9th, 2011

    The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office estimates that it saved the city two million dollars in revenue through a new program designed to deal with individuals arrested with less than 30 grams (slightly more than one ounce) of marijuana.

    According to The Philadelphia Daily News, new sentencing guidelines have meant that the city no longer has to foot the bill for court-appointed defense attorneys, prosecutorial fees, lab tests, or overtime wages paid to police officers who appear in court. Additionally, says the article, legal personnel at all levels are freed up to concentrate on more serious crimes.

    Thousands of cases have been diverted to through Philadelphia’s so-called Small Amount of Marijuana (SAM) program, which is designed to process marijuana users quickly through the system and leave them with a clean record. The effort might have been doomed to failure had it not received the support of law enforcement personnel, who say that efforts to take marijuana off the streets use up resources and do little to dent the supply available to users.

    In the year since the policy has gone into effect, police say that they’ve noticed no discernible change in the city’s quality of life.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/09/softer-pot-laws-saved-philadelphia-2-million-in-2010/

     

  • Drug Policy - Question of the Week

    Military and the Drug War

    Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-6-11

    As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-6-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3454

    Question of the Week: Does the military participate in the drug war?

    According the Washington Law Office on Latin America (WOLA), in 1986 …

    in 1986,  “…Bolivia became the scene of the first major antidrug operation on foreign soil to publicly involve U.S. military forces. One hundred sixty U.S. troops took part in Operation Blast Furnace…”

    Three years later, in 1989 per the Department of Defense, Joint Task Force 6 was formed under the U.S. Army …

    “to support local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies within the Southwest border region to counter the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.”

    That same year per the Air Force Law Review,

    “President George H. W. Bush’s so-called ‘Andean Initiative… involved the deployment of seven Special Forces teams and approximately 100 military advisors to Colombia, Bolivia and Peru…”

    Unfortunately, in 2001,

    “… a Peruvian A-37 interceptor, operating as part of a joint U.S.-Peruvian counternarcotics mission fired two salvos of machine gun fire into a small Cessna float plane. … Two people on the aircraft were killed, a U.S. missionary and her infant daughter.”

    In 2006, according to WOLA,

    “President [George W.] Bush ordered 6,000 National Guard troops to assist the Border Patrol for a two-year period in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.”

    That same year, he signed a repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, but under public pressure, it was restored in 2007.

    In 2010, “President Barack Obama announced the intention to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the border again. These troops will join the 340 already there under the ‘State Counter Drug Programs,’”

    These troops remain there today.

    These facts and others like them can be found on the “Brief Chronology of Domestic Military Involvement” table in the Military Participation Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.