• Budget bill outlaws pot sales in D.C. for 2 years

    The House budget language advanced would not block possession but it would continue an ongoing ban on sales
    The Washington Post (US)
    Thursday, June 11, 2015

    House Republicans advanced a budget plan that would prevent legal sales of marijuana in the District until at least 2017. Advocates for legalization, however, called it a victory. What the Republican budget does not do yet is roll back Initiative 71, the voter-approved measure from November that legalized pot for recreational use in the nation’s capital. Since early this year, D.C. residents have been allowed to possess, grow and, in the privacy of their own homes, smoke marijuana.

  • Monitoring legal pot: How do we know if it works?

    It’s going to be tough to quantify how this major social policy change is affecting everything from school suspension rates to traffic fatalities
    The Washington Post / AP (US)
    Wednesday, June 10, 2015

    Dozens of government officials and researchers from a half-dozen U.S. states and a few countries that have legalized marijuana or are at least thinking about it are gathering in Washington state this week for meetings focused largely on one question: How do we know if it’s working? Organizers say it’s crucial to get a better handle on what data are being collected about the impacts of legalization and to consider what further research is needed.

  • Companies urged to review drug testing policies to fit with ganja reform

    However, it is an employer's right to decide on who they choose to employ
    The Gleaner (Jamaica)
    Monday, June 8, 2015

    Justice Minister Mark Golding is advising employers to review their drug-testing policies to fall in line with the new regulations that now govern the use of ganja in Jamaica. Some organisations routinely do drug screening for new employees prior to confirmation, and person can be denied employment if prohibited drugs are detected in their bodies. Additionally, some companies also carry out random drug testing of employees, with serious penalties and termination for failed drug tests.

  • Weeded out

    As cannabis use rises in much of Europe, Britons lose interest
    The Economist (UK)
    Saturday, June 6, 2015

    In 2000 a report by Europe’s drug agency (EMCDDA) found that Britain had an unusually large number of young cannabis users: they "topped the EU league", as one British paper spun it. This year’s report showed that in the past 15 years the tables have turned. While the number of 15-34-year-olds using pot has risen or held steady in most countries, in England and Wales it has almost halved. Meanwhile, Britain’s domestic pot production is booming: the number of growing operations seized more than doubled between 2007 and 2009, overtaking the Netherlands and accounting for half the busts in Europe.

  • Why hardly anyone dies from a drug overdose in Portugal

    As US state legislatures debate issues like marijuana legalization and decriminalization, Portugal's 15-year experience may be informative
    The Washington Post (US)
    Friday, June 5, 2015

    joao-goulart-decrimPortugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it -- Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, but now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program -- not jail time and a criminal record. The prevalence of past-year and past-month drug use among young adults has fallen since 2001.

  • Bans on legal highs will drive booming trade underground, drug experts warn

    EU agency report says market is growing rapidly, with two new substances a week being identified, and is increasingly hard to control
    The Guardian (UK)
    Thursday, June 4, 2015

    The booming trade in legal highs will go underground in the face of blanket bans, such as that now being debated in Britain, European drug experts have warned in the annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). They say online "grey marketplaces" selling new psychoactive substances (NPS) and greater use of social media are emerging as alternatives to the high street "head shops" and public websites likely to be shut down by laws enforcing a blanket ban on the trade. (See also: Legal highs: which drugs will be banned in the UK?)

  • Exploring the land-drugs nexus

    Land is one of the key factors of production in the drug economy

    Opium poppy field in Gostan valley, Nimruz Province, Afghanistan"For many communities in Myanmar who grow opium, for them opium is not the problem, it is the solution to their problems," said local project consultant, Tom Kramer, from the Transnational Institute. And therein lies one of the greatest challenges for policy makers in the fight to eradicate the scourge of drug crops in developing countries. Most drug crop cultivating areas are greatly affected by poverty, physical isolation, landlessness, insecure land rights and conflicts over natural resources. For many poor farmers, the cultivation of drug crops represents a coping mechanism to prevail in difficult environments.

    READ MORE...

  • Lawmakers have high hopes for cannabis decriminalization

    Joint left-right support for rehashed bill makes green light likelier than ever for recreational use
    The Times of Israel (Israel)
    Thursday, June 4, 2015

    Newly proposed legislation could see Israel decriminalize cannabis for recreational use. Under the move spearheaded by freshman MK Yinon Magal (Jewish Home party), the plant would be legal for private use, with individuals allowed to keep small amounts of cannabis and derivative products in their homes. Similar bills have been shot down in the past, but legalization activists have high hopes this time, after a group of eight Knesset members from across the political spectrum indicated they would support the budding proposal.

  • Ganja is our 'life blood' – western farmers

    Residents want the government to go the route of Colorado, where the sales of recreational ganja is big business and raking in millions of dollars
    The Gleaner (Jamaica)
    Tuesday, June 2, 2015

    With Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Minister Phillip Paulwell stating that Jamaica plans to become a world leader in exploiting the economic value of ganja, ganja stakeholders are of the view that the government is finally seeing the light they have been basking in for a long time. During a visit to their community by Justice Minister Mark Golding, Security Minister Peter Bunting and Tourism Minister Wykeham McNeil, residents of Orange Hill, near Negril, Westmoreland, said that ganja is the 'life blood' of their community. "Ganja send most of the children from this area to school ... even up to the university level."

  • Lib Dem leadership candidate Norman Lamb calls for cannabis legalisation

    Lamb criticises ‘catastrophic failure’ of war on drugs and urges rational, education-based approach
    The Guardian (UK)
    Monday, June 1, 2015

    The Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Norman Lamb has called for the UK to legalise, regulate and tax the sale of cannabis. The former care minister said the UK should draw on examples from US states such as Colorado, which legalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use by over-21s in November 2012. He said he wanted immediate legalisation of the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and said there should be a swift evidence-based policy change in relation to recreational use.

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