• Vancouver prescriptions for addicts gain attention as heroin and opioid use rises

    The clinic’s prescription program began as a clinical trial more than a decade ago
    The New York Times (US)
    Thursday, April 21, 2016

    crosstown-clinicVancouver’s Crosstown Clinic, the only medical facility in North America permitted to prescribe heroin at the center of an epidemic raging across the continent, has been successful at keeping addicts out of jail and away from emergency rooms that its supporters are seeking to expand it across Canada. But they have been hindered by a tangle of red tape and a yearslong court battle reflecting a conflict between medicine and politics on how to address drug addiction.

  • What a looming patent war could mean for the future of the marijuana industry

    Concern is rising among legal-pot pioneers about the need to lawyer up to defend their creations from imitators and patent trolls
    Vice (US)
    Wednesday, April 20, 2016

    On August 4, 2015, US officials quietly made history by approving the first-ever patent, No. 9095554, for a plant containing significant amounts of THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to the patent's holders, their lawyers, and outside experts in intellectual property law. But while the patent may inaugurate a new era of acceptance for marijuana in the US, it also opens up a new source of turmoil for the fast-growing industry: disputes over the intellectual property rights to America's most potent and innovative marijuana strains. When big corporations eventually decide to enter the market and compete with smaller growers, the stakes will be even higher — and the competition even fiercer. (See also: The Open Cannabis Project)

  • Bürgerschaft für liberalere Cannabis-Politik

    Rot-Grün will in Bremen einen Modellversuch starten
    Weser Kurier (Germany)
    Mittwoch, 20. April 2016

    bremen-cannabisBremen will mit einer Bundesratsinitiative die Grundlage schaffen für einen Modellversuch zur kontrollierten Cannabis-Abgabe an Erwachsene. Ein entsprechender Antrag der rot-grünen Regierungskoalition wurde nach einer teils hitzigen Debatte in der Bürgerschaft angenommen. Der Antrag sieht ferner vor, die lokalen Handlungsspielräume auszuschöpfen: Dazu gehört unter anderem dass der Besitz geringer Cannabis-Mengen und der Eigenanbau von wenigen Cannabis-Pflanzen nicht länger verfolgt werden sollen.

  • California’s big chance to set the gold standard for marijuana policy

    AUMA eliminates or reduces most marijuana offenses proactively and retroactively
    The Huffington Post (US)
    Wednesday, April 20, 2016

    Californians will have the opportunity to support the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), based on key lessons and guidance from Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, DC, and Uruguay, and is consequently the most advanced marijuana legalization measure to date. AUMA establishes a clear line between personal use and commercial activity. If you are 21 or older, you can use, share, store, transport up to one ounce of dried flowers (8 grams of concentrate), and you can have up to six plants growing in your home. If you have any more product than that on your person you need to have a license, it’s that simple.

  • Colombian president: persisting with prohibitionist drug policies is 'insane'

    Juan Manuel Santos expressed dismay at UN decision to continue supporting criminalisation of drug use: ‘The old way of doing things is the wrong way’
    The Guardian (UK)
    Wednesday, April 20, 2016

    Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, has said it is "insane" to keep approaching the global narcotics problem with the same failed policies of the past and called on drug war hawks to understand that "the old way of doing things is the wrong way". Speaking after a United Nations policy summit voted to maintain its support for prohibitionist drug policies, Santos said: "Let me be clear with them: the prohibitionist approach has been a failure." (See also: As Colombia’s leader, I know we must rethink the drugs war | Diplomacy or denialism? The language that the UNGASS Outcome Document overlooked)

  • Russia's 'cold turkey' approach highlights global divide over drug treatment at UN

    Russian representative suggests methadone and heroin are the ‘same narcotic drug’ as outside experts condemn country’s take on treatment
    The Guardian (UK)
    Wednesday, April 20, 2016

    As international leaders debated global drug law at the United Nations, a bizarre panel on heroin treatment showed just how divided countries are over how to treat addicts. The panel, sponsored by the Russian Federation, began with an international group of scientists and diplomats explaining the importance of evidence-based drug treatment, before a Russian doctor veered into addiction science denialism. "We prefer to treat people in a drug-free setting," Dr Oxana Guseva, a medical representative of the Russian Federation, told the Guardian afterward, "because methadone is the same narcotic drug as heroin." (See also: Russia, science, and the global war on drugs)

  • Weed and the UN: Why international drug laws won't stop legalization

    Cannabis is clearly the elephant in the room at UNGASS
    Vice (US)
    Wednesday, April 20, 2016

    cannabis-treatiesUnder the outcome document for UNGASS that was drafted by diplomats in Vienna and formally adopted at UN headquarters in New York, weed still remains strictly banned by the treaties that govern international law. The intransigence is a real problem that threatens to undermine the legitimacy of all types of international treaties. John Walsh, the senior associate for drug policy at the Washington Institute on Latin America (WOLA), is hosting one of two weed-focused "side events" scheduled at the UN. "Cannabis is clearly the elephant in the room at UNGASS," Walsh said. "It's there, it's huge, but no one wants to talk about it."

  • To win the war on drugs, stop brutalising farmers who grow them

    Reform of drug policy is essential to protect the rights of cultivating communities, and ensure they make a living from their land
    Pien Metaal
    The Guardian (UK)
    Tuesday, April 19, 2016

    manual-eradication_copyReform of international drug control is urgently needed. The war on drugs has left a trail of suffering and criminality in its wake and has manifestly failed to achieve its objectives. The UN special session of the general assembly (UNGASS) presents an opportunity. Many reformers put drug users at the centre of changes to international drug policies, but the people growing the plants producing the substances they consume are often overlooked. Farmers’ livelihoods and communities are inherently linked to reform of international drug policies. For hundreds of thousands of farmers’ families, existing crop control laws and practices cause conflict and poverty. (See: Contributions of grower representatives at UNGASS)

  • UN backs prohibitionist drug policies despite call for more 'humane solution'

    Plan adopted at special session focuses on reform and cooperation between nations but maintains policies that criminalise non-medical or scientific drug use
    The Guardian (UK)
    Tuesday, April 19, 2016

    The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) has approved an agreement that leaves in place the prohibitionist policies banning narcotics use, despite growing international discontent with the "war on drugs" – and the concerns of the nations that called the meeting. "So far, the solutions [to control drugs and crime] implemented by the international community have been frankly insufficient," Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto told the meeting. Within the General Assembly, the rift between countries interested in drug policy reform and those with repressive drug control regimes was evident.

  • Trouble in Europe's pot paradise

    A bloody gang war is raging in Amsterdam
    Vice (Netherlands)
    Tuesday, April 19, 2016

    Though the Dutch have struck a compromise with international treaties that shows great results for reducing harm for drug users, the approach has largely shielded problems with drug crime in the Netherlands from public view. All common illegal drugs are officially forbidden, but penalties for the possession are non-existent to low, depending on the substance and the amount in question. In reality, there are different gradations to the decriminalization of various substances, as well as a number of contradictory policies. Amsterdam's coffee shops are a notorious example. They dispense cannabis to locals and tourists alike, though the drug is illegal to produce, possess, and sell.

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