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  Matt 8:34 am on January 16, 2012 Permalink  

  Marc Emery’s Advice for Aspiring Activists 

  My wife Jodie Emery and I both receive thousands of letters and inquiries with impassioned pleas that read: “I want to do something to make a difference. I want to legalize marijuana. What can I do? Can you advise or help me start? Where do I begin?” This is a question, without rival, that we hear most often.

  It comes mostly from Americans and Canadians, but I have received the same question from India, Australia, Europe, the Philippines, Japan, and all over the world. It is a universal desire shared by many people in the cannabis culture the planet over.

  If all these millions of people, largely high school and college students, could be harnessed into productive purpose, it would be a huge political force indeed! But most people who consume cannabis and believe in its worth still do nothing to advance our cause in any meaningful way.

  • URL: http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2012/01/15/Marc-Emerys-Advice-Aspiring-Activists
   
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  Matt 1:57 pm on January 11, 2012 Permalink  

  Get Busted for Marijuana; Work as a Police Informant; Get Killed 

  By Tony Newman,

  No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. But getting busted with a small amount of marijuana has led to countless tragic deaths.

  This week, Shelley Hilliard, a 19-year-old woman from Detroit, was killed after working as a police informant. On October 20, Hilliard was arrested for a small amount of marijuana. The police offered her a way out: She could set up a drug deal. She called a drug dealer and said she had someone who wanted to buy $335 of cocaine and marijuana. When the dealer showed up he was arrested. The dealer was released, and three days later Hilliard was found dead in the streets. The dealer has been charged with murder.

  Hilliard tragic death brings back memories of Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old, Florida State graduate from Tallahassee who also worked as an informant after she was busted with a small amount of marijuana and Ecstasy. Hoffman was sent alone on a “buy and bust” and was given $13,000 to buy Ecstasy, cocaine and a gun. The men shot Hoffman five times, stole her car and credit card, and dumped her body into a ditch. This week Tallahassee approved a $2.6 million settlement with Rachel’s parents.

  These two women should still be with us on this earth, but were instead pawns in an unwinnable drug war that led to their violent deaths.

  • URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-newman/get-busted-for-marijuana-_b_1199896.html
   
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  Matt 10:14 am on January 9, 2012 Permalink
  Tags: Harm, Harm Reduction (15), Video (58)   

  LEAP visits Supervised Injection Site 

  LEAP’s Executive Director, Neill Franklin, visits Insite in Vancouver, where vulnerable people can meet the chemical part of their addiction in a legal, regulated environment. Witness a working model of the benefits of moving away from the criminalization of drug abuse.

   
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  Matt 8:45 am on January 9, 2012 Permalink  

  Frontline: Opium Brides 

  The unexpected collateral damage of the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan.

  Najibullah Quraishi journeys deep into the Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farm families have been forced to make with drug smugglers in order to survive.

  • URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/opium-brides/
   
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  Matt 2:13 pm on January 3, 2012 Permalink  

  Champion of Pain Relief, Siobhan Reynolds Dead in Plane Crash 

  All of us are irreplaceable to someone—but few are irreplaceable in the public sphere. Siobhan Reynolds, 50, founder of the Pain Relief Network, who died in a plane crash Christmas Eve, was the exception. She tirelessly, compassionately and at huge financial and emotional cost to herself, worked to debunk myths about opioid treatment of chronic pain that continue to emerge even now.

  The aspiring documentary filmmaker and mother of one was moved to activism by the overwhelming chronic pain suffered by her husband. Further spurred by learning that her son had inherited the same genetic disease, Reynolds was relentless.

  Why, she asked, when opioids can help treat chronic pain, are they frequently only available to the dying—but not if your agony will last years? Why, when addiction to opioids is actually rare, do we treat them as though everyone who takes these drugs is likely to get instantly hooked? And why do we seem to see addiction—even in the dying— as a worse side effect than agony or even death?

  To answer these questions, she educated herself in the intricacies of pharmacology, public policy, medicine and law. A master at simplifying complex stories for the media, Reynolds then used every means at her disposal to bring what she found to public attention.

  • URL: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/03/champion-of-pain-relief-siobhan-reynolds-dead-in-plane-crash/
   
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  admin 12:30 pm on December 24, 2011 Permalink  

  MAP Drugnews 2011 In Review 

  • Asia
  • Australasia
  • Canada
  • South America
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

   
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  Matt 2:34 pm on December 16, 2011 Permalink
  Tags: Harm Reduction (15)   

  Congress to Restore Federal Syringe Exchange Funding Ban 

  Ban on Allowing States to Use HIV Prevention Money on Life-Saving Syringe Programs was Overturned in 2009 After 20-Year Struggle

  Reinstatement of Ban will Lead to Thousands of New HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C Cases Annually

  As part of the 2012 spending package being voted on today, Congress is restoring a ban on using federal funding for syringe exchange programs that reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases. The ban, enacted in the 1980s and repealed in 2009, was largely responsible for hundreds of thousands of Americans contracting HIV/AIDS directly or indirectly from the sharing of used syringes. Advocates warn that restoring the ban will result in thousands of Americans contracting HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C or other infectious diseases next year alone.

  • URL: http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2011/12/congress-restore-federal-syringe-exchange-funding-ban-part-2012-spending-package
   
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  Matt 10:05 pm on December 15, 2011 Permalink  

  Count the Costs 

  By George Murkin

  Far from eliminating drug use and the illicit trade, prohibition has inadvertently fuelled the development of the world’s largest illegal commodities market – a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, controlled solely by criminal profiteers. Produced in collaboration with project supporters Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Release, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and Harm Reduction International, the latest Count the Costs briefing outlines how this illicit, unregulated market generates:

  Organised crime
  Street crime
  Mass incarceration
  Violent crime
  Crimes perpetrated by governments/states
  Vast economic costs in terms of drug war-related enforcement

  The briefing will form a key part of our outreach to mainstream NGOs working in the criminal justice sector, building on the endorsements Count the Costs has already received from organisations such as the Howard League for Penal Reform and Make Justice Work.

  • URL: http://www.countthecosts.org/blog/released-today-new-count-costs-briefing-crime-costs-war-drugs
   
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  Matt 10:44 am on December 14, 2011 Permalink
  Tags: Video (58)   

  Ending the Global Drug War: Voices from the Front Lines 

   
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  Matt 10:39 am on December 14, 2011 Permalink  

  Cigarette and alcohol use at historic low among teens 

  But NIDA’s 2011 Monitoring the Future Survey also shows continued high levels of abuse of alternate tobacco products, marijuana and prescription drugs

  Cigarette and alcohol use by eighth, 10th and 12th-graders are at their lowest point since the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey began polling teenagers in 1975, according to this year’s survey results. However, this positive news is tempered by a slowing rate of decline in teen smoking as well as continued high rates of abuse of other tobacco products (e.g., hookahs, small cigars, smokeless tobacco), marijuana and prescription drugs. The survey results, announced today during a news conference at the National Press Club, appear to show that more teens continue to abuse marijuana than cigarettes; and alcohol is still the drug of choice among all three age groups queried.

  MTF is an annual survey of eighth, 10th, and 12th-graders conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The survey was conducted in classrooms earlier this year.

  Read more: http://www.nida.nih.gov/newsroom/11/NR12-14.html

  • URL: http://www.nida.nih.gov/pdf/news/NR121411.pdf