DrugSense Weekly - March 7, 2008 #539

DrugSense Weekly - Domestic News- Policy - March 7, 2008 #539

New Jersey's needle exchange programs are providing services, but some are better funded than others.

Boise Weekly has an interesting interview with the sponsor of a series of initiatives to liberalize cannabis laws in Idaho towns, including the sponsor's contention that he's not really that concerned about cannabis.

And, another state legislature is getting its collective undies in a bunch over salvia divinorum. At least in California, they are considering just banning it for minors, not everyone.

DrugSense Weekly - Law Enforcement and Prisons - March 7, 2008 #539

In Alabama, prisoners whose crimes don't involve "moral turpitude" (including minor drug possession) should be able to vote, but that hasn't been happening. An activist is trying to change the situation.

Last week's federal prison report showed a continuing growth in inmate populations. On a more local level, Colorado has seen its prison population triple in 15 years. And, two more stories show disturbing abuses among the ranks of drug law enforcement.

DrugSense Weekly - Cannabis and Hemp- - March 7, 2008 #539

Efforts to prohibit alcohol and curtail petrol sniffing in Australian aboriginal communities have once again demonstrated that cannabis, alcohol and other more problematic substances are economic substitutes with cross-price elasticities. What's more, the substitution fad appears to be spreading from young to old.

Police in Michigan, whom you may recall merely enforce the law, offered their expert medical opinions in opposition to an initiative that would regulate possession and personal cultivation for medical purposes.

Police officials in New Hampshire are lobbying against a bill that would decriminalize simple possession. Hopefully Richard Van Wickler of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who supports the bill, brought hand puppets.

A Modesto medicinal cannabis dispensary owner is suing the city for conspiring with the DEA to shut down his very lucrative business.

DrugSense Weekly - International News - March 7, 2008 #539

If Canadians thought their laws were made-in-Canada, they received a shock last week when the head of the U.N. drug control board, Philip Emafo, called on Canada to ban Insite, North America's only supervised-injection center. The center, credited for saving lives from accidental overdose, "cannot go on forever," proclaimed Emafo. But Nathan Allen, co-ordinator for the Insite For Community Safety campaign, says Insite is not violating any treaties. "Insite is in compliance, and all it's doing is providing an intake bridge to recovery for users,"

Meanwhile in Canada, Harper's Draconian new supposedly "anti-crime" laws Bill C-26, continued to worm its way through parliament, denounced by criminologists and just about everyone else who doesn't stand to directly gain monetarily from the Bill's passage. As such, police associations, crown attorneys, prison profiteers and other assorted drug war camp followers heartily support the government scheme to pack newly-built for-profit prisons, just like they do in the states. "Most grow-ops are mom and pop operations, and they are generally non-violent. Mom and pop might be scared off by tougher legislation, but organized crime is not dissuaded. If mom and pop go out of business, organized crime will leap into the vacuum, and organized crime is violent and dangerous."

The "latest" drugs scare is dutifully transmitted with the all the speed and efficiency of a modern communications system. However, when the original scare stories turn out to be false, that same modern mainstream media is somehow muffled. Which might explain how a West Oxfordshire U.K. police officer was taken in by a warning of sinister child-corrupting Strawberry Quick Meth. You know, the meth we all read about last year, meth laced with strawberry flavor to make it easier for schoolyard pushers to hook unwary kids? Trouble is, Strawberry Meth is as real as Blue Star' temporary tattoo LSD - another urban myth. The misunderstanding came to light after an Oxfordshire police officer sounded the ill-conceived warning to schools there.

Why did Moses hear God on the mountain? Drugs. Moses was dosing on heavy psychedelic drugs, according to cognitive psychology professor Benny Shanon of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was... an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics." Psychedelic drugs might have accounted for Moses seeing the burning bush. "The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a classic phenomenon."