Legalize marijuana, says Canada’s largest mental health/addiction center

from seattlepi.com


Posted on October 9, 2014 | By Jake Ellison


“We can’t go on pretending the war on drugs is working,” said Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.Branson made this comment in this story (link). “We need our leaders to look at alternative, fact-based approaches. Much can be learned from successes and failures in regulating alcohol, tobacco or pharmaceutical drugs. The risks associated with drug use increase, sometimes dramatically, when they are produced, sold and consumed in an unregulated criminal environment. The most effective way to advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs under control through responsible legal regulation.”
(Getty Images)

In what has to be one of the most convincing and detailed arguments yet, The Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental-health and addiction-treatment teaching hospital, says only through legalizing marijuana can we combat pot’s negative effects.

Basically, the group is saying: Let’s be honest here. The war on pot causes more problems than it solves. And unless we pull our collective head out of our collective butt, we can’t address the real public health issues that are staring us in the face.

“Canada’s current system of cannabis control is failing to prevent or reduce the harms associated with cannabis use,” said Dr. Jürgen Rehm, director of the social and epidemiological research department at the hospital, in a news release.

“Based on a thorough review of the evidence, we believe that legalization combined with strict regulation of cannabis is the most effective means of reducing the harms associated with its use.”

Related story: Why legal marijuana will be good for Washington kids

Video: “Cannabis is not a benign substance. Frequent and heavy use can lead to significant health problems, especially for adolescents, whose brains are still developing. Criminalization only intensifies the harm associated with its use.”

Related story: Why legal marijuana will be good for Washington kids

Video: “Cannabis is not a benign substance. Frequent and heavy use can lead to significant health problems, especially for adolescents, whose brains are still developing. Criminalization only intensifies the harm associated with its use.”

UP NEXT:

Bill Clinton Jokes About Hillary, Grandchild

STARTS IN:

5

“We need an approach to cannabis that puts health first. The right set of regulations, carefully implemented and thoroughly evaluated, can help us achieve that,” said Dr. Jürgen Rehm, director of the social and epidemiological research department at CAMH, in an editorial.

CAMH Cannabis Policy Framework

Beyond marijuana: Legalize all drugs

from tennessean 

Froma Harrop11:03 p.m. CDT October 4, 2014

Thirty years ago, a college kid in Kentucky was caught growing marijuana plants in his closet. That turned him into a convicted felon, and though he has been on the right side of the law ever since, he still can't vote. On any job application, he must check the "yes" box next to "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"

All this misery for growing a plant whose leaves the past three presidents admit having smoked.

We know this story because Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky keeps telling it. That a Southern Republican probably running for president is condemning such prosecutions as unfair speaks volumes on the collapsing support for the war on marijuana — part of the larger war on drugs.

Two states, Colorado and Washington, already have legalized recreational pot. And the Colorado Supreme Court has been considering a question no one would have dreamed of asking two decades ago: whether an employer may fire a worker for smoking pot.

So what do we do about the rest of the war — the war on heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and the other nastier stuff? The answer is legalize them, too.

"What is the benefit, what have we derived from this drug war that even begins to offset the horrors we inflict on ourselves via this policy?" asks Dean Becker, a legalization advocate. He is editor of "To End the War on Drugs," a collection of politically diverse views published by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Over the past 40 years, the war has put more than 45 million Americans under arrest and cost taxpayers $1 trillion. And what do we have to show for it? Drugs on the street are cheaper, more powerful and more abundant than ever.

The war has fueled gang wars in our cities and enriched the criminal foreign cartels. It has created a vile class system, turning millions of poor and working-class Americans into felons while largely turning a blind eye toward users of the same drugs in suburban cul-de-sacs.

Harrop(Photo: Submitted)

And again, it's all been for naught. This summer, counties circling Houston, where Becker lives, have seen eight busts of major marijuana growing operations. Law enforcement just stumbled across them.

"There are some indications they were run by Mexicans sent by the cartels," Becker, formerly a member of the U.S. Air Force security police, told me.

And what does the arrest of a drug trafficker do? It creates more business for the other drug traffickers.

As the conservative economist Milton Friedman once put it, "if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel."

Wouldn't legalizing all drugs set off a new explosion of drug use? Good question. Undoubtedly, some would try drugs for the first time. But regulating the sale could limit the problems. Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2000 and saw little rise in use.

Becker is not a big fan of small steps in easing the drug laws, though he thinks that's better than nothing. He wants full legalization.

Just decriminalizing drugs — that is, not arresting people possessing them but keeping their sale illegal — does not take criminals out of the business. And it stands in the way of regulating the drugmaking now done by untrained chemists in primitive labs. Furthermore, illegal businesses don't get taxed.

Prohibition of the 1920s was "decrim." Alcoholic beverages couldn't be legally sold, but one could drink them at home. A lot of good that did.

Make drugs legal, regulate them and tax them. The final destination for the war on drugs should be oblivion, the sooner the better.

Reach Froma Harrop at fharrop@gmail.com and on Twitter @FromaHarrop.

 301CONNECT 2TWEETLINKEDIN 7COMMENTEMAILMORE

Can Psychedelics Expand Our Consciousness?

from npr

by BARBARA J. KING

October 02, 2014 6:33 AM ET

One of the great responsibilities we have as a society is to educate ourselves, along with the next generation, about which substances are worth ingesting and for what purpose and which are not. ... If I knew that either of my daughters would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or heroin, I might never sleep again. But if they don't try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience."

Coming late in a new book by Sam Harris called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, this passage snapped me to attention. It's not that Harris' book had lulled me up to that point: It's a provocative, informative and, at times, infuriating look at consciousness and the self. Its main argument is that techniques exist, meditation prime among them, to reduce human suffering by helping us to understand that the self — as conventionally understood — is an illusion. Our feeling of "I" is a product of thought, and thoughts merely come and go in our consciousness; there's no self behind our eyes or in our head, and when we grasp this, it's easier to unmoor ourselves from the sources of suffering in our lives.

The ways in which Harris supports this thesis are worth reading. Yet as a parent of a college-age daughter, I found that it was his move beyond meditation — Harris' expressed hope that his kids, once they become adults, will ingest psychedelics — that made me stop and think hard. Is Harris' wish an ethical one? What can my field of anthropology bring to bear in thinking about this matter?

On this topic of psychedelics, Harris has an advantage that I lack. Not only has he spent considerable time in serious meditative practice, he also has experienced moments of immense beauty and love — and other moments of total terror — on MDMA (ecstasy), psilocybin (mushrooms) and LSD. I grew up in the '60s in a family whose lives centered closely on law enforcement — my father was a captain in the New Jersey State Police — and I wasn't exactly the drug-experimenting type. In high school and college, I watched a few friends go through trips good and bad, but that's as close as I got.

Harris is candid about the risks of ingesting psychedelics:

"There is no getting around the role of luck here. If you are lucky, and you take the right drug, you will know what it is to be enlightened (or to be close enough to persuade you that enlightenment is possible). If you are unlucky, you will know what it is to be clinically insane."

Harris describes one LSD trip as plunging him into "a continuous shattering and terror for which I have no words."

Some readers, Harris notes at the outset, may want to consult their mental-health professionals before carrying out any of the ideas he endorses (including meditation), and he concludes that after expanding one's consciousness through drugs, "it seems wise" to find other practices that "do not present the same risks."

So how should we think about the psychedelic-ingestion experience in connection with a search for enlightenment? Research in neuroscience certainly shows real change in the brain from the action of psychedelic drugs. But I don't think it's enough to say that the outcome of any given trip is a matter of which drug one ingests — and of individual luck.

Like everything else humans do, ingesting psychedelics — even if we are totally alone while doing so — is a cultural matter, and the outcomes are culturally contingent. Anthropologists Greg Downey and Daniel Lende, who co-blog at Neuroanthropology, each made the same point to me in separate emails this week when I invited them to respond to Harris' passages about enlightenment through psychedelic drug use: "One could say that Harris goes a bit far," were Lende's words. He continued:

"Certainly taking 100[micrograms] of LSD will produce a big pharmacological effect on the person; whether that relates to some understanding of personal significance is a more open book. Many anthropologists would say that he's over-emphasizing the individual view of things, in line with Western approaches to the mind. Put differently, the link between psychoactive effect and meaning is mediated by the immediate context, personal history, the framing given to the use, and larger cultural patterns.

"I'm sure there are people who have rather muted responses to psychedelics, or exaggerated responses, and part of that will lie in the person's biology, from genetics to states of arousal to how they've learned to interpret psychedelic experiences.

"And as I might put it as an anthropologist, experiences of spirituality can also be had through engaging with others, for example, talking to someone who has had psychosis (rather than Harris's exaggerated view of it, likely not grounded in personal experience but cultural ideas) or talking about transformative and spiritual experiences with others."

Downey made the point to me that no intoxicant has a predictable response:

"Across cultures, intoxicants of all sorts have quite different effects: even alcohol has no uniform effect. In some places, it leads groups of people to fight, in others to cry to themselves, in others still, to raucous singing or dancing. Although the chemical may have a specific effect — such as emotional disinhibition or visions — the effect in the brain does not necessarily produce the same emotional or perceptual effect. Hallucinogens may make us prone to have visions, but they do not determine entirely what sort of visions they will be, or whether they will be a profound and life changing event, or a temporary intoxication.

"To really have the sorts of effects that Sam Harris hopes for, you would need the symbolic resources and social support to leverage the hours of intoxication into serious insight. In a society hostile to visions, convinced that there is no higher form of consciousness than everyday awareness, I think it's unlikely that most users would have the sorts of experiences that Harris describes. Some will, and they show us what's possible; but they do not point the way to anything inevitable."

It's hard to escape our own cultural lens: It's a constant struggle, for anthropologists as much as anyone. Still, Harris' perspective would, I think, be strengthened by his explicitly considering the variable cultural contexts for what he's espousing.

"It is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life," he writes, then repeats this sentiment in similar words throughout the book.

Does Harris really think that mushrooms and meditation are enough to overcome, to take but one example, a life of hunger or poor health emerging from poverty? Of course not. Harris is smarter than that — but he's writing for a certain audience, and what comes to the fore is not a global perspective on human suffering or on what society should do about it.

Circling back to the passage from Waking Up that I used to open this post, I'll wager that we can collectively create a lengthy list of responsibilities that our society has — to each other, to our environment, to other animals — that take priority over eating mushrooms or dropping acid and urging our adult children to do so.

---

Barbara's most recent book on animals was released in paperback in April. You can keep up with what she is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

Froma Harrop: Beyond pot: Legalize all drugs

from nvdaily.com


Posted at 2:18 PM Oct. 2, 2014 | Updated: 2:25 PM Oct. 2, 2014 





By Froma Harrop

Thirty years ago, a college kid in Kentucky was caught growing marijuana plants in his closet. That turned him into a convicted felon, and though he's been on the right side of the law ever since, he still can't vote. On any job application, he must check the box next to "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"

All this misery for growing a plant whose leaves the past three presidents admit having smoked.

We know this story because Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky keeps telling it. That a Southern Republican probably running for president is condemning such prosecutions as unfair speaks volumes on the collapsing support for the war on marijuana -- part of the larger war on drugs.

Two states, Colorado and Washington, have already legalized recreational pot. And the Colorado Supreme Court has been considering a question no one would have dreamed of asking two decades ago: whether an employer may fire a worker for smoking pot.

So what do we do about the rest of the war -- the war on heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and the other nastier stuff? The answer is legalize them, too.

"What is the benefit, what have we derived from this drug war that even begins to offset the horrors we inflict on ourselves via this policy?" asks Dean Becker, a legalization advocate. He is editor of "To End the War on Drugs," a collection of politically diverse views published by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Over the past 40 years, the war has put more than 45 million Americans under arrest and cost taxpayers $1 trillion. And what do we have to show for it? Drugs on the street are cheaper, more powerful and more abundant than ever.

The war has fueled gang wars in our cities and enriched the criminal foreign cartels. It has created a vile class system, turning millions of poor and working-class Americans into felons while largely turning a blind eye toward users of the same drugs in suburban cul-de-sacs.

And again, it's all been for naught. This summer, counties circling Houston, where Becker lives, have seen eight busts of major marijuana growing operations. Law enforcement just stumbled across them.

"There are some indications they were run by Mexicans sent by the cartels," Becker, formerly a member of the U.S. Air Force security police, told me.

And what does the arrest of a drug trafficker do? It creates more business for the other drug traffickers.

As the conservative economist Milton Friedman once put it, "if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel."

Wouldn't legalizing all drugs set off a new explosion of drug use? Good question. Undoubtedly, some would try drugs for the first time. But regulating the sale could limit the problems. Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2000 and saw little rise in use.

Becker is not a big fan of small steps in easing the drug laws, though he thinks that's better than nothing. He wants full legalization.

Just decriminalizing drugs -- that is, not arresting people possessing them but keeping their sale illegal -- does not take criminals out of the business. And it stands in the way of regulating the drug-making now done by untrained chemists in primitive labs. Furthermore, illegal businesses don't get taxed.

Prohibition of the 1920s was "decrim." Alcoholic beverages couldn't be legally sold, but one could drink them at home. A lot of good that did.

Make drugs legal; regulate them; and tax them. The final destination for the war on drugs should be oblivion, the sooner the better.

Email: fharrop@gmail.com

Legalizing Psychedelic Therapy

from youtube

Chronicle AM: Mexican Coca, Saudis Behead Another Trafficker, Feds Raid LA Fashion District, More (9/11/14)

from stopthedrugwar.org

by Phillip Smith, September 11, 2014, 03:03pm, (Issue #852)

Posted in: 

• 2014
• Alternatives to Incarceration
• Asset Forfeiture
• Busts & Seizures
• Coca
• Congress
• Death Penalty
• Marijuana -- Personal Use
• Marijuana Legalization
• Medical Marijuana
• Money Laundering
• News Brief
• Police Raids
• Politics Outside US
• Public Health
• State & Local Legislatures

A federal CBD medical marijuana bill picks up more sponsors, so does a federal asset forfeiture reform bill, Georgia advocates whole whole plant medical marijuana, Mexico's first coca patch is busted, Saudi Arabia beheads another drug offender, and more. Let's get to it:

Coca plant. Mexico has found its first plantation. (unodc.org)

Marijuana Policy

York, Maine, Selectmen Refuse to Put Legalization Initiative on Ballot, But… Town selectmen voted against putting the initiative from Citizens for a Safer Maine on the November ballot, but since petitioners have already gathered sufficient signatures to force the issue, they can get their petition notarized to be placed on the ballot. York will join Lewiston and South Portland in voting on initiatives this year; Portland approved one last year.

Medical Marijuana

Charlotte's Web Medical Hemp Act Picks Up More Sponsors. The Charlotte's Web Medical Hemp Act (HR 5226), which would exclude cannabidiol (CBD) from the definition of marijuana, has gained new sponsors. It now has 19 cosponsors -- 11 Democrats and eight Republicans. The latest are Reps. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Matthew Cartwright (D-PA), and Chris Stewart (R-UT).

Georgia Advocates Call for Whole Plant Medical Marijuana, Not Just CBD Oil. As legislative hearings in Macon continue to examine the use of CBD oil, medical marijuana advocates are calling for whole plant medical marijuana. "The cannabis plant contains many compounds that have proven to be effective in treating a variety of conditions," saidGeorgia C.A.R.E director James Bell. "We should not be determining who can and cannot benefit from this healing plant."

Asset Forfeiture

Civil Asset Forfeiture Act Picks Up New Sponsors. The bill, HR 5212, now has five cosponsors. The latest are Reps. Stevan Pearce (R-NM), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Reid Ribble (R-WI). All cosponsors so far are Republicans. The bill, filed by Rep. Tim Wahlberg (R-MI), would increase citizen protections against federal asset forfeiture actions.

Law Enforcement

Feds Raid LA Fashion District in Cartel Money Laundering Probe. More than a thousand law enforcement officers spread out across LA's fashion district Wednesday, raiding more than 60 warehouses, storefronts, and residences, arresting nine people and seizing $65 million in cash that they said was being laundered for Mexican drug trafficking organizations. The feds called the mass bust Operation Fashion Police.

International

OAS Head Claims Regional Consensus on Drug Reform. Speaking in front of the Inter-American Dialog in Washington, DC, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said Wednesday that regional leaders have reached consensus on four drug policy reform issues: to emphasize a public health approach, to seek out alternatives to incarceration, to stay strong against organized crime, and to work on strengthening regional institutions. Insulza's remarks come ahead of an OAS Special General Assembly to be held in Guatemala next week.

Mexico's First Coca Plantation Discovered in Chiapas. Mexican soldiers have seized more than 1,600 coca plants being cultivated in southern Chiapas state, near the Guatemalan border. Mexican military and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) officials said it was the first time coca planting had been discovered in the country. "It's a pretty troubling discovery," said UNODC Mexico representative Antonio Mazzitelli. It could amount to "a small-scale experiment to see if there is a possibility of replicating" coca production in Mexico. Coca is currently grown only in the Andes, although there is nothing stopping it from being cultivated elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia Beheads Another Drug Offender. Authorities in Saudi Arabia Tuesday beheaded a Pakistani national convicted of smuggling "a large quantity of heroin." They have executed at least seven other drug traffickers in recent weeks, and 49 people overall so far this year. It's unclear how many of the 49 were drug offenders.

Coalition Urges Nations to Decriminalize Drugs and Drug Use

from nytimes


By SOMINI SENGUPTASEPT. 8, 2014

A coalition of political figures from around the world, including Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and several former European and Latin American presidents, is urging governments to decriminalize a variety of illegal drugs and set up regulated drug markets within their own countries.

The proposal by the group, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, goes beyond its previous call to abandon the nearly half-century-old American-led war on drugs. As part of a report scheduled to be released on Tuesday, the group goes much further than its 2011 recommendation to legalize cannabis.

The former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a member of the commission, said the group was calling for the legal regulation of “as many of the drugs that are currently illegal as possible, with the understanding that some drugs may remain too dangerous to decriminalize.”

The proposal comes at a time when several countries pummeled by drug violence, particularly in Latin America, are rewriting their own drug laws, and when even the United States is allowing state legislatures to gingerly regulate cannabis use. The United Nations is scheduled to hold a summit meeting in 2016 to evaluate global drug laws.

The commission includes former presidents like Mr. Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Ruth Dreifuss of Switzerland, along with George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state in the Reagan administration, among others.

The group stops short of calling on countries to legalize all drugs right away. It calls instead for countries to continue to pursue violent criminal gangs, to stop incarcerating users and to offer treatment for addicts.

Strong resistance is expected from world powers, including the United States and Russia, which favor maintaining strict criminal prohibitions. Several Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, impose the death penalty for drug smuggling.

Drug laws are being reconsidered by some countries around the world.Uruguay last year became the first country to establish a state-run market for marijuana. Colombia established a national commission to re-evaluate its own national policy. In Europe, some countries have long stopped making arrests for marijuana use and possession. President Obama has alsoquestioned the fairness of prosecuting marijuana users.

The global commission takes aim at criminalizing drug use and possession. “Punitive drug law enforcement fuels crime and maximizes the health risks associated with drug use, especially among the most vulnerable,” its report goes on to say.

John Walsh, drug policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization, said members of the commission “realize that even if the debate is now really open for first time in half a century, different countries are going to be able to proceed at different paces.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 9, 2014, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Coalition Urges Nations to Decriminalize Drugs and Drug Use. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe