• Cannabis & Hemp

    UK: Column: Why Can’t Our Politicians Come Clean on Drugs?

    Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis – California)

    Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis – United Kingdom)

    WHY CAN’T OUR POLITICIANS COME CLEAN ON DRUGS?

    What is the single most curable evil afflicting community life in London? The answer is the criminalisation of drug use under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.

    It blights half the capital’s youth at some stage or other. It hovers as a black cloud over every neighbourhood, pub and street corner.  It causes crime and gangland disorder.  It packs the courts and fills the prisons.  It costs billions of pounds in personal loss and public spending.

    Needless to say, not one party in the current General Election is prepared to discuss it.  As a result, London is about to be taught a lesson in social policy by, of all places, America.

    As I whiled away last week waiting in Los Angeles for Her Majesty’s Government to find an ash cloud policy, I decided to pop into one of many local cannabis “dispensaries” — strictly in the interests of research.

    Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n325/a03.html

  • International

    UK: Prescribe Heroin on the NHS, Says Nurse Leader

    Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?131 (Heroin Maintenance)
    Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?142 (Supervised Injection Sites)

    PRESCRIBE HEROIN ON THE NHS, SAYS NURSE LEADER

    Injection Rooms ‘Would Cut Crime and Infection Rates’ But Opponents Warn of Slippery Slope

    The NHS should offer heroin to drug addicts and open “consumption rooms” where users can go to inject under medical supervision in order to cut crime and keep public spaces free from dirty needles, the head of Britain’s biggest nursing union said today.

    Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing ( RCN ), said providing heroin on the NHS would cut crime rates and help wean addicts off the drug.

    Speaking in a personal capacity after a debate on the issue at the RCN’s annual conference in Bournemouth, he said: “I do believe in heroin prescribing.  The fact is, heroin is very addictive.  People who are addicted so often resort to crime, to steal to buy the heroin.”

    He said he was aware of the controversy over how chronic drug users should be treated, but said: “It might take a few years but I think people will understand.  If you are going to get people off heroin then in the initial stages we have to have proper heroin prescribing services.”

    Continues: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n326/a11.html

  • Cannabis & Hemp

    New Zealand: Bust ‘Breaks Cornerstone’ of Cannabis Industry

    Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?251 (Cannabis – New Zealand)

    BUST ‘BREAKS CORNERSTONE’ OF CANNABIS INDUSTRY

    Police Minister Judith Collins has congratulated police on shutting down what they allege is a major source of equipment for commercial cannabis growers.

    A nationwide drugs bust was executed today, closing down the 16 branches and distribution centre of hydroponic gardening chain Switched On Gardener.

    Hundreds of people, ranging in age from 20 to 60, were arrested and will appear before the courts, with many of them facing charges for selling equipment to make secret gardens for growing cannabis.

    Continues http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n326/a12.html

  • Cannabis & Hemp

    It’s MardiGrass time! That means the Ganja Faeries are dancing in Nimbin

    Visitors from around the planet are already gathering in Nimbin for MardiGrass – the famous cannabis law reform rally – this Saturday and Sunday, May 1 and 2.

    Mardigrass has been going since 1993 in protest against the prohibition of cannabis and will continue “every year until we are not criminals,” MardiGrass spokesperson Michael Balderstone said.

    http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n326/a01.html and http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n326/a02.html

  • Letter of the Week

    Maybe Legalizing Drugs Would Be Best Tactic

    LETTER OF THE WEEK

    MAYBE LEGALIZING DRUGS WOULD BE BEST TACTIC

    Re: “Mexico can’t win drug war without U.S.” ( editorial, 4-21 ).

    A colloquial definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.” We’ve been throwing billions upon billions of dollars and hundreds of law enforcement and military lives at the drug problem for decades.  At what point to do we take a breath and rethink our strategy?

    It is an immutable fact that humans will engage in certain behaviors for as long as they walk the Earth.  It has been going on since the first hominid ate a piece of overripe, fermenting fruit and got high from the alcohol content.

    Consumption of substances to alter our mental and/or physical states will never stop, at least not until medical science finds some permanent method, short of lobotomy, to do so.  Even then it will have to be a voluntary alteration.

    Whether by ingesting plant matter, fermented or distilled drink or some laboratory concoction, humans will intoxicate themselves.  We’ve had dramatic proof of what results from attempting to “prohibit” the use of alcohol: an era of gang violence, government corruption and numerous deaths caused by adulterated product.

    So what do we do about it? I submit it is time to give serious thought to legalization.

    I do not come to this opinion lightly.  In the course of my law enforcement career, I made hundreds of drug arrests.  I worked undercover buying drugs.  I fully understand the complex nature of what I’m suggesting.  Without question, there are legitimate, cogent arguments to be made against legalization.  It would be a complicated, problematic thing.

    It would, however, wipe out, literally overnight, the illicit drug trade and with it the violent struggle for turf and profit.  It would have international and national security benefits by undermining one of the main sources of funding for Middle Eastern terrorists, that being the heroin trade.  It would free up huge amounts of money for anti-drug education, job creation and urban reconstruction.

    It would allow for the reallocation of law enforcement personnel to tasks such as actually and effectively securing our borders, pursuing the illicit traffic in weapons and finally giving proper attention to securing our ports and other vulnerable targets.

    It would provide a new source of tax revenue.  It would, I believe, dramatically reduce crimes such as residential burglary, the vast majority of which are committed by dopers supporting their habits.

    Such a change in policy would require an increased attention to, and harsh punishment of, such offenses as driving while intoxicated.  Only in recent years has this begun to be treated as the scourge on society it so clearly is.

    One obvious and legitimate argument against drug legalization is the addition of yet more intoxicants to a society already plagued with the problems of inappropriate use of alcohol, not to mention the poisonous effects of tobacco use.  But they are already here: always have been, always will be.

    Drug use will not go away any more than prostitution will go away any more than third-pound cheeseburgers with extra bacon will go away.

    What we’ve been doing isn’t working.  It’s time to try something else.

    MacKenzie Allen

    MacKenzie Allen of Tacoma is a retired law enforcement officer.

    Pubdate: Thu, 22 Apr 2010

    Source: News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)

    Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n000/a008.html

  • Law Enforcement & Prisons

    New Zealand attempts to crush gardening industry

    Police in New Zealand raided garden shops across the nation earlier this week, because some of the materials being sold may have been used to grow cannabis.

    Some people arrested in Wellington are charged with selling drug-growing equipment, including 600-watt lightbulbs, bottles of Superior Potash, Guano Superbloom and Budzilla, pH test kits, mite and aphid sprays, and High Times cannabis magazines.

    The two-year Operation Lime has resulted in more than 250 arrests on more than 700 charges and busted more than 100 commercial cannabis-growing operations.

    Certainly, residents of the nation feel much safer today, but one wonders if the police time might have been better used elsewhere.

  • Law Enforcement & Prisons

    The dismal truth about “buy-bust” operations

    The SF Weekly in San Francisco takes a look at the city’s “buy-bust” program, which is supposed to take drugs off the streets.

    It would be more accurate to say the program takes police off the street who could be doing more important work:

    Buy-busts – in which teams of five to 11 undercover officers solicit drugs on the street – are a prized success story for the SFPD and the district attorney’s office, according to DA spokesman Brian Buckelew.  That’s one way of looking at it.  The other is that buy-busts are expensive wastes of time that accomplish little other than clogging up the courts with low-level addicts while providing gobs of overtime to narcotics cops, according to senior public defender Rebecca Young.  She figures that at least 150 cases like Mason’s go through the courts every month.

    The buy-bust program rounds up some professional criminals who deal drugs for a living, but these comprise “maybe 1 percent” of the total, according to Young.  Meanwhile, she says, this “dirty secret of the criminal justice system” accounts for 40 percent of the cases in San Francisco courts, and contributed to the fiasco at the SFPD crime lab, with overworked technicians forced to test dime bag after dime bag within 48 hours of seizure.  These include cases like that of a 30-year-old homeless man who sold a $60 eighth of marijuana to a cop on Haight Street last May, who faces prison time for the pot and the small quantity of psilocybin mushrooms he had stashed in a pocket.