The Obama administration has announced the deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. And, the chorus of voices calling for a real debate about drug policy continues to grow. This week that chorus included a retired DEA agent as well as a convicted smuggler.
]]>Now that the Obama administration has pledged to tolerate medicinal cannabis dispensaries in compliance with state regulations, the "next step" may be cash-strapped municipal governments muscling in on the action.
A new study has found that smoking cannabis may make smoking tobacco worse for you. Another good reason, short of criminal sanctions, to not smoke tobacco.
It may be a little disconcerting to some veteran cannabis law reformers to have their arguments finally taken seriously and repeated in the mainstream media.
]]>A piece from Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner this week highlights the possibilities for drug legalization - "the most straightforward way to reduce demand, of course," according to political scientist Francis Fukuyama. While drug prohibitionists may suppose legalization is a remote possibility, the same was true of alcohol prohibition a few short years before it too, was repealed. "The history of politics is stuffed with such transformation," notes Gardner.
From the U.K.'s Financial Times newspaper, author Clive Cook gives an overview of the "criminally stupid" regime of drug prohibition in the U.S. The "country's implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions," yet politicians can't stop ratcheting up drug-punishments all the same. "The consequences of prohibition corrupt governments everywhere, and the U.S. is no exception," notes Cook.
And finally from Colombia, ultra-right President Alvaro Uribe may not be able to stop drugs in any way shape or form, but he seems to have discovered a way to get Colombians to take more marijuana. You see, Colombians may legally possess up to 20 grams of cannabis, and have been able to do so since 1993. But only 2.3 percent of Colombians use cannabis - as compared to 5.8 percent of Americans who regularly take cannabis illegally. Uribe has been itching to remove Colombian citizens' right to take cannabis for years, but now appears to have growing political backing for a forced-treatment bill re-criminalizing marijuana users there. "Drug users are not criminals; they are sick," explained Interior Minister Fabio Valencia Cossio. And government only wants to help.
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