• Local councils support tolerant cannabis policy

    NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands)
    Wednesday, November 19, 2008

    Most of the Dutch local councils that have so-called coffee shops which sell marijuana say they have no problem with the current policy of tolerating these outlets, according to a survey by NRC Handelsblad. The newspaper sent a questionnaire to the 105 local councils which, between them, have a total of 353 coffee shops. Of the two-thirds that responded, only 14 felt these establishments should be closed. But over 75 percent want the national government to regulate wholesale supply to the coffee shops.

  • Fate of drug laws hazy but voters will decide

    Cannabis and heroin are once again high on the agenda as the campaign ahead of a nationwide vote on Switzerland's drugs policy gathers pace
    Swissinfo (Switzerland)
    Friday, October 24, 2008

    A first opinion poll found that the prescription of heroin for addicts stands a good chance of passing on November 30. However, a proposal to decriminalise cannabis attracts neither a clear majority of supporters nor opponents six weeks before the ballot. The people's initiative foresees the legalisation for personal consumption, while the trade and cultivation of hemp would be subject to state control. Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin said decriminalising pot smoking could pose problems for Switzerland as a signatory state of international drug control conventions. In its campaign the government cautioned against rushing through legislation for which there was no majority in parliament four years ago.

  • Coca Leaf: The Heritage of the Andes

    Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
    April 8, 2008

    A film by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)

  • Cannabis dreams drift away

    Authorities in Switzerland are clamping down on cannabis
    Swissinfo (Switzerland)
    Tuesday, April 4, 2008

    Following decades of rising cannabis use and talk of liberalisation, Switzerland had appeared poised to become the marijuana capital of Europe. The country still boasts some of the highest rates of cannabis use in Europe, but Switzerland's pot movement has taken a hit in the past few years: proposed liberalisation did not come to pass, enforcement has been on the rise and use among the country's youth has decreased. Enforcement varies widely from canton to canton, but cannabis remains an illegal narcotic throughout the country. Possession, use and distribution are punishable by up to three years in prison, and thousands of offences are recorded each year.

  • Coca Leaf Defended by Growers, Scientists… and Taxi Drivers

    Bernarda Claure
    Inter Press Service (IPS)
    March 24 , 2008

    "They will have to kill us to make us stop planting coca," Bolivian coca grower Luis Mamani told IPS in response to a call from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) to prohibit traditional uses of the plant like coca leaf chewing. "It is a historic error to try to ban coca. We are not going to allow it," Mamani vehemently stated.

  • Fighting for the Right to Chew Coca

    Time Magazine (US)
    Monday, March 17, 2008

    The Bolivian delegation was the first to issue what it called an "energetic protest" against the INCB's recommendations during the agency's annual meeting this week in Vienna. It also put forward a proposal to remove coca from the U.N.'s narcotics list. That's not likely to happen. The big question is whether the U.N. will adopt the INCB proposal — which would essentially leave Bolivia and Peru in breach of international law if they continue to allow coca's non-narcotic use and commercialization. That in turn could result in the U.N. calling for commercial or other embargoes against them.

  • Bolivia to defend coca leaf at UN

    BBC News
    Monday, March 10, 2008

    Bolivian officials at a conference on illegal drugs in Vienna are planning to ask the UN to remove the coca plant from its list of dangerous drugs. The UN's International Narcotics Control Board has called on Bolivia to ban coca chewing, and the use of the plant in products such as tea. Bolivia says such a ban would be an attack on its culture.

  • UN needs to chew on its drug policy

    Steven Edwards
    National Post (Canada)
    Thursday, March 6, 2008

    We don’t ban beer and spirits because some folk abuse alcohol. Yet as part of its bid to stamp out illicit cocaine consumption, the United Nations drug watchdog is telling millions of indigenous South Americans to ditch their millennia-old coca-chewing and coca tea-making traditions — and calling on their governments to criminalize the activities.

    READ MORE...

  • The Wire's War on the Drug War

    Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon
    Time Magazine (US)
    Wednesday, March 5, 2008

    If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

  • Just Say Coca

    Jimmy Langman
    Newsweek (US)
    October 30, 2006

    Bolivian president Evo Morales recently implored the United Nations to give the coca leaf a new life. A former coca farmer himself, Morales asked the General Assembly to focus on coca's possible future as the raw material for a lucrative consumer-goods industry--not its nefarious present, as the source of the international cocaine trade. "This is the coca leaf, it is green, and not white like cocaine," Morales lectured, waving one limp little leaf at the hall of surprised dignitaries. Why, he demanded, is it "legal for Coca-Cola" but not other consumer or medicinal uses?

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