Linking "Cannabis" To "Medical" Put Your Dumb Asses To Sleep...,

themarshallproject |  “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence” is an intensively researched and passionate dissent from the now prevailing view that marijuana is relatively harmless. The book is a “bullhorn” (his word) for scientists and physicians whose research has, he argues, been drowned out by the triumphal cheers of the marijuana lobby.

He exchanged emails with TMP’s Bill Keller.

The Marshall Project: Alex, you’re really swimming against the tide. Both public opinion and the law have moved dramatically in favor of marijuana, and you’re arguing that pot is connected to psychosis and violent crime. Before we get to your evidence, what drew you to this subject?

Alex Berenson: My wife Jacqueline is a forensic psychiatrist. She evaluates the criminally mentally ill. She told me that nearly all her patients had used marijuana heavily, many at the times of their crimes. At first I didn't really believe her—stupidly—but she encouraged me to evaluate the evidence myself. And the more I read, the more I realized she was right. Marijuana drives a surprising amount of psychosis, and psychosis—besides being a terrible burden for sufferers and their families—is a shockingly high risk for violent crime.

TMP: Last I checked, 33 states and the District of Columbia had legalized marijuana specifically for medicinal purposes. Doctors are apparently prescribing pot for pain, Parkinson’s, PTSD, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and most recently some forms of autism. Pot has been held out as an answer to the opioid crisis—pain relief without the risk of a lethal overdose. Are you saying all these politicians and doctors are deluded?

AB: This question fundamentally misunderstands medical marijuana. The confusion is not surprising, as the cannabis advocacy community has done everything possible to confuse the way medical legalization works in practice. Marijuana is not "prescribed" for anything. It can't be, because the FDA has never approved it to treat any disease, and there is little evidence that smoked cannabis or THC extracts help any of the diseases you mention, except pain. Physicians "authorize" its use, usually after very short visits by patients who have come to them specifically to receive an authorization card. By far the most common conditions for which medical marijuana is authorized are pain and self-reported psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and insomnia, not diseases such as Parkinson's.

After receiving an authorization card, "patients" can then buy as much marijuana as they like for a year for any reason they choose. Nearly all were recreational users before they became "patients." And there is no difference between medical and recreational marijuana. They are the same drug. Further, the vast majority of physicians will not write authorizations, at least according to the states that keep track of physician authorizations. A tiny number of doctors—so-called "pot doctors"—write nearly all of them.

In other words, in nearly all cases, medical legalization is simply a backdoor way to protect recreational users from arrest. This has been a terrible mistake, mainly because it has further confused the public about marijuana's relative risks and benefits.

TMP: Your other—perhaps more contentious—conclusion is that marijuana may contribute to increases in violent crime. As you know, establishing causal links between crime rates and, well, anything, is extremely tricky. What convinced you that pot is a culprit?

AB: Psychosis is a known factor for violent crime. People with schizophrenia commit violent crime at rates far higher than healthy people - their homicide rates are about 20 times as high. Worse, they commit most of that crime while they are under the influence. Since cannabis causes paranoia—not even advocates dispute that fact—and psychosis, it is not surprising that it would drive violent crime. And in fact there are a number of good studies showing that users have significantly higher violence rates than non-users. Further, in researching the book, I found many, many cases where the causation appeared clear. In some cases it was as simple and obvious as, this person—with no history of violence—smoked, became psychotic, and committed a homicide.

TMP: You write that you don’t believe people should go to prison for using marijuana. How should the law deal with pot? Should it be regulated? Should it carry a warning label?

Cannabis Use Produces Persistent Cognitive Impairments

neurosciencenews |  Summary: Cannabis use leads to cognitive impairments that extend beyond the period of intoxication.

Source: Society for the Study of Addiction

A systematic review published today in the scientific journal Addiction has found that cannabis use leads to acute cognitive impairments that may continue beyond the period of intoxication.

This Canadian-led meta-review (review of reviews) merged the findings of 10 meta-analyses representing more than 43,000 participants.

The study found that cannabis intoxication leads to small to moderate cognitive impairments in areas including:

• making decisions,
• suppressing inappropriate responses,
• learning through reading and listening,
• the ability to remember what one reads or hears, and
• the time needed to complete a mental task.

“Our study enabled us to highlight several areas of cognition impaired by cannabis use, including problems concentrating and difficulties remembering and learning, which may have considerable impact on users’ daily lives,” said the study’s co-author Dr. Alexandre Dumais, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Université de Montréal.

“Cannabis use in youth may consequently lead to reduced educational attainment, and, in adults, to poor work performance and dangerous driving. These consequences may be worse in regular and heavy users.”

Cannabis is the third most consumed psychoactive substance in the world (after alcohol and nicotine) and adolescents as well as young adults have the highest rates of cannabis use. 

Recent global changes in the legalization of cannabis suggest that public perceptions of its safety and acceptability are on the rise.

 

Mexico's Five Year Plan to Decriminalize All Drugs

ronpaulinstitute |  Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump, who has the unilateral power to send the United States military to bomb and invade other countries, as several of his predecessors have done, stated at Twitter that he is ready to send the US military to Mexico to defeat drug cartels.

Trump wrote:

This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!

Making clear he is talking about a US military action, Trump declared in another Tuesday morning tweet that “the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”.

The truth, however, is that the drug war waged by the Mexico government, with the help of the US government, ensures the continued existence of powerful and dangerous drug cartels in Mexico. Similarly, when the US had alcohol prohibition, there were dangerous criminal enterprises that thrived from satisfying people’s demand for prohibited products.

Eliminating drug cartels can best be accomplished by ending, not growing, the drug war. Indeed, this is the course of action the Mexico government seems poised to pursue. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who Trump referenced at Twitter, released this year a plan for Mexico to end its drug war. And the Mexico legislature appears to be preparing to take a major step toward ending the drug war — approving legislation to legalize marijuana countrywide.

I am guessing Obrador will not make the phone call Trump suggests. Obrador has available another, better avenue for dealing with drug cartels.

Your Views On Marijuana Legalization?

WaPo |  Jeff Sessions hates marijuana. Hates it, with a passion that has animated almost nothing else in his career. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” he has said. He even once said about the Ku Klux Klan, “I thought those guys were okay until I learned they smoked pot.”

He says that was a joke, but even so, it still says something about where he’s coming from.

So if you’re wondering why Sessions has endured the humiliation of being demeaned and abused by President Trump and stayed on as attorney general, one big answer is the policy change he announced this week, that he is rescinding an Obama-era directive that instructed federal prosecutors not to prioritize prosecuting businesses like dispensaries in states that had legalized cannabis. Sessions is finally getting the chance to lock up all those hippies, with their pot-smoking and their free love and their wah-wah pedals and everything immoral they represent. He’ll show them.

WaPo |  Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday that he will rescind a Justice Department memorandum — known as the Cole Memo — that granted protection to state-legal and regulated marijuana companies. In doing so, Sessions has not only brushed aside science, logic and the prevailing public opinion, but he has also contradicted the opinion of the president he serves and his own party’s governing values.

Sessions’s decision empowers U.S. attorneys to begin prosecuting an industry that has complied with state laws and regulations and has, since 2013, been granted an effective waiver from federal intervention. During this time, the legal marijuana industry has become a multibillion-dollar venture, employing tens of thousands of Americans from coast to coast.

This decision to reignite the drug war comes as little surprise. Sessions once said that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He has shown a deep ignorance of the realities of the drug war, which has been ineffective and costly and has disproportionately affected minority communities. And he has committed to numerous claims that have been dispelled by science, such as cannabis’s gateway effect and the idea that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin.

What Do You Expect When Your Drug Czar For The Drug War Is A General?

The drug-connected crime problem isn't all about the junkies - it's about the dealers. Especially the violent crime problem. The key to dealing with drug crime is drying up the profits of the illegal market. Reliance on incarceration has only made the power of organized criminal gangs stronger. It hasn't broken a single gang. A lawless marketplace staffed entirely by criminals who protect their inventory and personal safety with arsenals of weaponry and enforce and regulate business disputes with gunfire is a pretty unique business model. A global business that ranks third in revenues after arms and oil and hides its profits with sophisticated money laundering techniques that allow the top players access into corridors of political power while providing unparalleled liquidity advantages in business competition is a pretty unique business model.

Nixon's early 1970s globalization of the War on Drugs was ostensibly aimed at enlisting all UN members in a united effort to shut down drug supplies at their source. What resulted instead was much closer to a U.S. imperial protection racket for drug kingpins, with the US holding the power to confer a status of impunity on politically favored players overseas. In return, those who benefited were able to target internal law enforcement efforts at culling their business competition, which typically worked to produce results sufficient to bolster their anti-drug credibility.

In Dark Alliance the late investigative journalist Gary Webb documented connections that led through multiple Latin American countries- El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Mexico- to drug rings operating in several regions in the US. He wasn't alone in his investigations, either.

The big picture that results when that research is reviewed is that the political and military leaders of a great many Central American and Caribbean nations during the Cold War era were provided with protected status in the transshipment of cocaine in return for maintaining pro-US policies in their countries.

General Bueso Rosa in Honduras; Hugo Banzer in Bolivia; the Salinas brothers in Mexico, and other Mexican governments before and since; Sandoval Alarcon in Guatemala; Trujillo and Noriega in Panama; the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, in the 1970s; Uribe in Colombia, Cedras/Emmanuel Constant FRAPH junta in Haiti; the JLP in Jamaica - this US policy is blatantly in effect right now in Afghanistan, the top source nation for opium and heroin in the world. It has been in effect from the outset of US intervention in Central Asia. It has become standard U.S. necropolitical operating procedure.

But back to Dark Alliance, Danilo Blandon, the Contra-connected supplier who furnished most of Rick Ross's cocaine, offered him an unprecedented deal soon after establishing that he could move large retail quantities on the street: consignment, no money down, at a kilo price that worked out to less than $20/gram.

Ross was able to move 200 kilos a month. That's over 2 tons a year, at a time when the DEA was estimating the annual US supply at 70 tons. Blandon was a true drug kingpin. Up until the Blandon-Ross connection was dismantled, with the help of Danilo Blandon, who received immunity from prosecution and earned around $200,000 as a paid FBI informant for providing testimony to take down a huge LA cocaine ring that he.was instrumental in enabling to boom to an unprecedented level.

Danilo Blandon's supplier was Norwin Meneses, who had been identified as an even bigger kingpin by US Federal law enforcement since the 1970s. Meneses was the brother of the Somoza-era chief of police, and at least one other general in Somoza's Guardia Nacionale, which eventually became the largest Contra faction, the FDN, under military commander Enrique Bermudez. Meneses also benefited from some sort of arrangement with US authorities, remaining free of prosecution, residing in the US and traveling back and forth between there and Central America without interference.

Blandon was not Meneses' only wholesaler and Meneses was not the only person involved with Contra resupply who had a long history as a major drug supplier and transporter into the USA. The Contra effort made use of a network of long-time Cold War era US intelligence/covert operations agents including a nucleus of Cuban exiles drawn from the ranks of Bay of Pigs battle veterans.

Some 8% of the 1500 Bay of Pigs veterans, about 120 of them, had been identified as kingpins as early on as the late 1960s. Mostly heroin, at that point- supplying the NYC market out of Union City, NJ. They later showed up everywhere from Southeast Asia to the Argentine Dirty War, and eventually as field operators in the Contra effort.

Speaking of the neofascist junta-era Argentine military, they became the first overseas liason to the formation of the Contras in the Reagan era, offering them a safe haven and working to train and equip the Somocista Guardia Nacionale in exile in 1981.

In the previous year, the Argentines had provided the principal base of support for the military coup in Bolivia that put the Cocaine Junta into power, in July 1980. DEA agent Michael Levine, the top field agent in the Southern Cone of Latin America at the time, contends that this was done in collaboration with the local CIA faction down there, who were bitterly opposed to Jimmy Carter's "human rights" foreign policy, which had brought pressure to bear on right-wing President Col. Hugo Banzer Suarez to relinquish his martial law "autogolpe" rule and hold elections. The Cocaine Coup successfully derailed the ascension of a civilian government to power.

Banzer had long-standing connections to the US, having been trained at the School of the Americas, Ft. Hood's armored cavalry school, and as a US diplomatic liason in DC. He was also affiliated with the Falange Socialista Boliviana, and the Latin American Anti-Communist League affiliated with WACL; with the international right-wing assassination program known as Operation Condor, along with his ideological allies in Pinochet's Chile and the Argentina junta. Banzer's family relations and associates were also busted repeatedly in the US and Canada for smuggling cocaine; one case involved his son-in-law and another his chauffeur, iirc. And one of Banzer's cousins was Luis Arce Gomez, one of the chief plotters of the Cocaine Coup.

The Drug War Has Profoundly Compromised Prosecutorial Integrity

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is probably the single greatest disappointment for me with 45's administration. His anti-drug stance is retrograde cover for reinstituting the prosecutorial savagery which resulted in mass incarceration over the past forty years.  AG support for harsh or mandatory minimum sentences, coupled with the claim that it provides a vital service in making cases as leverage to flip people to inform on their associates, was the essential recipe for transforming America into the incarceration nation.

Even when it's used as prosecutors claim it is intended to convict ringleaders, the threat of harsh or mandatory minimum sentences to intimidate people into betraying their friends and family members is ethically suspect and legally corrupt. Claiming that it's used to dismantle illegal drug networks is at best historically suspect. In terms of practical results, this policy is has wreaked havoc and proven corrosive in terms of breaking down any pre-existing structures of social trust, community, and friendship that might have been built over time.  The explicit message of this policy is that treachery and betrayal is an act worthy of reward. The worst punishment is reserved for those who demonstrate loyalty and integrity. Drug Warriors justify this policy by asserting that Drug Dealers are already lower than murderers or violent rapists, and thus have no integrity to preserve, because they deal Drugs. But that isn’t the worst of it. What’s really ethically indefensible is the difference between the way the policy is described by politicians and prosecutors to the general public, and the way that it’s actually employed. 

Prosecutors routinely tout their use of the tactic as the use of informants to “bust up the ladder”- that is - to flip low-level retailers to snitch on the people above them in the hierarchy.  That's what's always depicted in the movies and on the teevee crime procedurals. Using snitches this way, the prosecutor claims he is working his way toward the “kingpin” at the top of the hierarchy.  The "kingpin" is finally made vulnerable to criminal conviction through informant testimony, or by having a snitch facilitate a transaction with government agents, as if there’s an ultimate "kingpin" whose conviction will lead to final victory in the Drug War. 

This simple plot line may hold a deep psychological appeal to children, buybull buddies, or people addicted to purely fictional crime procedurals - but there's no practical or historical reason to believe it's ever really happened, ever. Too many cases show that  drug selling organizations were dismantled in exactly the opposite manner.  The "kingpin" is the one who gets caught right up front and then receives lenient sentencing for informing on all his subordinates. 

Nicky Barnes is a name which comes to mind for buying leniency for himself and/or close relatives by ratting out everyone beneath him in his organization. Rayful Edmond is another prime example of the top-down snitching effect. 

Examining the stories of prisoners documented by FAMM and the Marshall Project shows cases where the heaviest time landed on the people at the bottom - people who literally had no one available to betray, no “substantial information” to provide to aid prosecutors. So all the time landed on the lowest underlings..  This is fine from the perspective of the harsh prosecutions system, because that System requires someone as a sacrifice to keep the numbers looking good and providing the image of an effective law enforcement campaign. (not to mention the profit motivation for the private for-profit prison-industrial complex itself)

People have been subjected to mandatory minimum sentences simply as a result of having once provided their residence or business as the location for a drug transaction. Mandatory minimums have been handed down for driving buyers and/or sellers to and from a transaction.  One instance of driving a buyer to the home of a seller is formally an overt act in furtherance of an illegal drug sale, and therefore all that’s required to convict someone of one count of “felony drug conspiracy.” 

Strictly speaking, millions of Americans have committed at least one felony in their lives. Anyone who’s gotten far enough into illegal drug use to purchase their own stash of weed and have acquaintances involved in the same activity has done the above at least once. From the prosecutor's perspective, conspiracy is conspiracy, no matter how minor.

Driving a friend over to a dealer’s apartment to buy a $15 bag of weed is taking part in a drug sales conspiracy, and conspiracy is a felony. Of course rendezvous like these take place daily in the underground marketplace. Most of the time the risk of getting arrested is negligible. In the event that someone is swept up in a raid and busted for that participation, felony conspiracy offers a lever for the prosecutor seeking people to snitch for them. This, notwithstanding the fact that someone who simply drives their friend over to a house and waits outside in the car while they do a deal may have no information of value to bargain with.

Meanwhile, those same ball-busting prosecutors reward those who have risen high enough in the hierarchy of a drug conspiracy to have detailed knowledge of its working and who can offer critical testimony against their companions with reduced sentences, comfortable confinement settings, or witness protection.

MUCH MORE Impressed with Tulsi Gabbard Than I Am With Myself...,

gabbard.house.gov |  Continuing her commitment to common sense criminal justice reform, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) spoke on the House floor today urging Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to federally decriminalize marijuana. If passed, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act (H.R.1227) would take marijuana off the federal controlled substances list—joining other industries such as alcohol and tobacco. Gabbard introduced the legislation with Rep. Tom Garrett (VA-05), an Army veteran and former prosecutor.  

“Our outdated policies on marijuana are having devastating ripple effects on individuals and communities across the country. They have turned everyday Americans into criminals, torn apart families, and wasted huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate people for non-violent marijuana charges,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. “Differences in state and federal law have also created confusion and uncertainty for our local businesses, who face contradictory regulations that affect their bottom line and ability to operate. I urge our colleagues to support our bipartisan legislation which would decriminalize marijuana, bringing about long overdue and common sense reform." 

“There is growing consensus acknowledging that the effects of marijuana are less harmful than its criminal prohibition, which has increased incarceration rates, divided families, and burdened state governments with the high cost of enforcement, prison and probation. It’s clear that there are more vital needs that we as a society need to allocate our precious resources towards, such as education, mental health, and homelessness. Decriminalization is a step forward in making needed criminal justice reforms, which should also include more diversion to substance abuse treatment,” said Karen Umemoto, Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and juvenile justice researcher. 

“As long as marijuana is federally illegal, FDIC regulations make it impossible for banks to provide any services to the eight Hawaiʻi Medical Marijuana Dispensary licensees. Federal decriminalization will enable professional dispensaries to provide much needed patient access and cost savings,” said Richard Ha, CEO of Lau Ola, a medical marijuana dispensary on Hawaiʻi Island.    

  

“Descheduling cannabis will benefit Hawaiʻi patients by allowing for more rapid research to identify the best medical marijuana strains and dosages for individual medical conditions. Also, eliminating the barriers to banking will make it easier and safer for Hawaiʻi patients to purchase the medicine they need and eliminate unnecessary expense and complexity for dispensaries,” said Brian Goldstein, Founder and CEO of Mānoa Botanicals, a licensed medical marijuana dispensary on Oʻahu. 

Background: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard supports the full legalization of marijuana on the federal level as part of her overall effort toward criminal justice reform. Last month, she visited correctional facilities throughout the state, and met with inmates, criminal justice advocates and experts, health professionals, educators and others to discuss reducing recidivism and her continued efforts to pass federal criminal justice reform legislation like the SAFE Justice Act and the Sentencing Reform Act.

The congresswoman has also supported legislation like the Industrial Hemp Farming Act to support the cultivation of industrial hemp in Hawaiʻi and nationwide.

Permission? To Do GOD's Work?

nature |  Scientists in London have been granted permission to edit the genomes of human embryos for research, UK fertility regulators announced. The 1 February approval by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) represents the world's first endorsement of such research by a national regulatory authority.

"It’s an important first. The HFEA has been a very thoughtful, deliberative body that has provided rational oversight of sensitive research areas, and this establishes a strong precedent for allowing this type of research to go forward," says George Daley, a stem-cell biologist at Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts.

The HFEA has approved an application by developmental biologist Kathy Niakan, at the Francis Crick Institute in London, to use the genome-editing technique CRISPR–Cas9 in healthy human embryos. Niakan’s team is interested in early development, and it plans to alter genes that are active in the first few days after fertilization. The researchers will stop the experiments after seven days, after which the embryos will be destroyed.

unemployed vets find a niche in the legalized marijuana industry

nwaonline |  No industry is immune to thievery. But the owners of Colorado's 978 marijuana shop licenses and 1,393 marijuana grow licenses are particularly vulnerable. Because the federal government considers marijuana illegal, many banks won't work with cannabis businesses, forcing them to deal in mountains of cash.

Perhaps more significant, their product is also lucrative for criminals: A pound of marijuana worth $2,000 in Colorado can be sold for $4,000 or $6,000 across state lines. Stores and grow houses are often soft targets in darkened parts of town. And unlike cash, marijuana is untraceable, easily sold on Craigslist or driven to dealers in Chicago and New York.

"The black market is still booming," said Cmdr. James Henning of the Denver Police Department. Contrary to the popular narrative, marijuana is a burglar's typical prize. "They don't get cash," the commander said. "That's usually in the big old safe, and they can't get into that. Usually, it's plants and finished product."

The department said it believes that the city's marijuana businesses have been targeted by organized groups, though it has no evidence that the groups are linked to foreign cartels.

Surveillance videos of some burglaries show thieves sawing through the roofs of businesses, tracking law enforcement with police scanners, and tying up employees. In one case, in southern Colorado, a pair of guards spotted four men in tactical gear carrying AR-15 rifles through a field. The watchmen, former Marine snipers wearing night-vision goggles, scared them away with warning shots.

Denver, one of the few jurisdictions compiling data on crimes at marijuana businesses, has 421 pot-growing houses and shops. It recorded 192 burglaries and thefts at such businesses in 2015. In Aurora, a suburb with 19 operating pot shops, 18 burglaries and robberies have occurred since 2014.

But some business owners do not report break-ins, because they worry that they will be seen as targets or attract inspectors who will find a violation.

Criminals have netted anything from a few marijuana-laced sodas to a quarter-million dollars in plants. In June, much worse occurred: Two armed men entered a pot shop in Aurora, called Green Heart, and killed a guard, Travis Mason. The police called it a botched robbery.

Mason, 24, a former Marine and father of three, was believed to be the first cannabis employee to die on the job in Colorado, and the episode alarmed the industry. Some security businesses reported a rush of requests for armed guards.

"Thieves in this industry are getting much more brazen, much more aggressive," said Ryan Tracy, 38, general manager at the Herbal Cure, which now has a guard on duty every night.

the problem is not Colorado’s law, it’s the fact that other states don’t have Colorado’s law

bostonglobe |  Yet Mason Tvert, a key Colorado and national legalization advocate, said the idea of eliminating a legal, regulated market as a way to undermine the black market is logically unsound.

.  .  .

With rain on the horizon, dozens of shoppers headed for the Safeway in Pueblo West one evening last week. Residents were split on whether to embrace the marijuana repeal — and it’s not clear how the vote will shake out.

Shannon McPherson, a social worker, said marijuana legalization has “been bad for the whole Pueblo community.”

The 47-year-old, who works at a hospital, said “we see a lot more homeless people — we see a lot of people that have come without resources, that end up tapping our resources.”

Jason White, 44, owns a property management company and expressed frustration he has had to deal with marijuana-smoking squatters in some of his properties.

“We’ve got more crime. We’ve got more people on the street. Our hospitals are filled with people,” he said. And what of the economic benefits? It’s a net negative, he insisted. The extra revenue that comes in, “all it’s doing is going to the overwhelmed homeless shelters, hospitals, and the police.”

Davis Dossantos, 43, said he’s seen an uptick in vagrancy and panhandling since legalizatio But, walking out of the grocery store, Dossantos said he would vote against the ballot initiative because, he indicated, people will still use marijuana but will probably not drive somewhere else to buy it legally.

“You’re not really tackling the issue,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re forcing the individuals to go back to the drug dealers, and the black market will flourish even more.”

there's something missing from our drug laws: SCIENCE

WaPo |  Congress and President Obama are under pressure to reschedule marijuana. While rescheduling makes sense, it doesn’t solve the state/federal conflict over marijuana (de-scheduling would be better). But more important, it wouldn’t fix the broken scheduling system. Ideally, marijuana reform should be part of a broader bill rewriting the Controlled Substances Act.

The Controlled Substances Act created a five-category scheduling system for most legal and illegal drugs (although alcohol and tobacco were notably omitted). Depending on what category a drug is in, the drug is either subject to varying degrees of regulation and control (Schedules II through V) — or completely prohibited, otherwise unregulated and left to criminals to manufacture and distribute (Schedule I).  The scheduling of various drugs was decided largely by Congress and absent a scientific process — with some strange results.

For instance, while methamphetamine and cocaine are Schedule II drugs, making them available for medical use, marijuana is scheduled alongside PCP and heroin as a Schedule I drug, which prohibits any medical use. Making matters worse, the CSA gives law enforcement — not scientists or health officials — the final say on how new drugs should be scheduled and whether or not old drugs should be rescheduled. Unsurprisingly, law enforcement blocks reform.

Starting in 1972, the Drug Enforcement Administration obstructed a formal request to reschedule marijuana for 16 years. After being forced by the courts to make a decision, the agency held two years of hearings. The DEA chief administrative law judge who held the hearings and considered the issue concluded that marijuana in its natural form is “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man” and should be made available for medical use. Similar hearings on MDMA, a.k.a. ecstasy, concluded that it also has important medical uses. In both cases, the DEA overruled its administrative law judge and kept the drugs in Schedule I, unavailable for medical use.

5 reasons marijuana is not medicine - if you believe in and make your livelihood from prohibition...,

WaPo |  Bertha Madras is a professor of psychobiology at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, with a research focus on how drugs affect the brain. She is former deputy director for demand reduction in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Data from 2015 indicate that 30 percent of current cannabis users harbor a use disorder — more Americans are dependent on cannabis than on any other illicit drug. Yet marijuana advocates have relentlessly pressured the federal government to shift marijuana from Schedule I — the most restrictive category of drug — to another schedule or to de-schedule it completely. Their rationale? “States have already approved medical marijuana”; “rescheduling will open the floodgates for research”; and “many people claim that marijuana alone alleviates their symptoms.” 

Yet unlike drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration, “dispensary marijuana” has no quality control, no standardized composition or dosage for specific medical conditions. It has no prescribing information or no high-quality studies of effectiveness or long-term safety. While the FDA is not averse to approving cannabinoids as medicines and has approved two cannabinoid medications, the decision to keep marijuana in Schedule I was reaffirmed in a 2015 federal court ruling. That ruling was correct.

marijuana is a gateway drug - if you believe in prohibition...,

NYTimes |  It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of heroin users have used marijuana (and many other drugs) not only long before they used heroin but while they are using heroin. Like nearly all people with substance abuse problems, most heroin users initiated their drug use early in their teens, usually beginning with alcohol and marijuana. There is ample evidence that early initiation of drug use primes the brain for enhanced later responses to other drugs. These facts underscore the need for effective prevention to reduce adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana in order to turn back the heroin and opioid epidemic and to reduce burdens addiction in this country. 

Marijuana use is positively correlated with alcohol use and cigarette use, as well as illegal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. This does not mean that everyone who uses marijuana will transition to using heroin or other drugs, but it does mean that people who use marijuana also consume more, not less, legal and illegal drugs than do people who do not use marijuana.

People who are addicted to marijuana are three times more likely to be addicted to heroin.

The legalization of marijuana increases availability of the drug and acceptability of its use. This is bad for public health and safety not only because marijuana use increases the risk of heroin use.

A better drug policy is one that actively discourages marijuana use as well as other recreational drug use, especially for youth.

look north, look south, legalize and industrialize those greens....,

theantimedia |  Later this month, the supreme court of Mexico will review the country’s current prohibition of marijuana, as well as the possibility of legalizing the plant for medical and recreational use. Medical marijuana is currently legal in Mexico, but the black market drug trade in the country continues to cause widespread violence, drug cartel, and gang activity, just as it does in America. 

Marijuana legalization has traditionally been a very popular concept in Mexico, where people understand the real-life consequences of the drug war and prohibition. However, the United Nations has forced many countries around the world, including Mexico, to comply with the drug prohibition policy the United States government has championed.

Now, with many U.S. states choosing to legalize the plant, Mexico is seeing a window of opportunity to change the laws at home, keep non-violent offenders out of jail, and minimize the violence created by the black market.

On October 28th, supreme court judges in Mexico will vote to decide whether the current prohibition on marijuana is unconstitutional. If they do choose to legalize the plant — which many believe they will — the country will follow a number of countries that are beginning to change their drug laws.

In 2001, Portugal became the first country in the world to end the drug war within its borders, and in the short time since, the country has seen a radical improvement in  society. Drugs now have fewer negative effects in Portugal than they did prior to decriminalization. There are now fewer drug-related deaths, fewer children getting ahold of drugs, and fewer people doing drugs in general.

legalization has reduced colorado to a lawless dystopian hellscape..., NOT!

policymic |  It's now been six months since Colorado enacted its historic marijuana legalization policy, and two big things have already happened: 

1. Colorado's cash crop is turning out to be even more profitable than the state could have hoped. In March alone, taxed and legal recreational marijuana sales generated nearly $19 million, up from $14 million in February. The state has garnered more than $10 million in taxes from retail sales in the first four months — money that will go to public schools and infrastructure, as well as for youth educational campaigns about substance use.

According to his latest budget proposal, Gov. John Hickenlooper expects a healthy $1 billion in marijuana sales over the next fiscal year. That's nearly $134 million in tax revenue. Sales from recreational shops are expected to hit $600 million, which is a more than 50% increase over what was originally expected.

2. Denver crime rates have suddenly fallen. Marijuana-related arrests, which make up 50% of all drug-related crimes, have plummeted in Colorado, freeing up law enforcement to focus on other criminal activity. By removing marijuana penalties, the state is estimated to save somewhere between $12 million and $40 million, according to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.

 

According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 42.1% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through May 31. Violent crime in general is down almost 2%, and major property crimes are down 11.5% compared to the same period in 2013.

As the Huffington Post notes, this is a far cry from wild-eyed claims by legalization opponents that legal weed was the devil's work and Colorado would see a surge in crime and drug use.

"Expect more crime, more kids using marijuana and pot for sale everywhere," said Douglas County Sheriff David Weaver in 2012. 

"I think our entire state will pay the price." Gov. Hickenlooper at one point said. "Colorado is known for many great things — marijuana should not be one of them" 

With only a quarter of the year's data to work from, it may be too soon to definitively attribute these changes to marijuana legalization, but the possibility of a correlative pattern is certainly worth noting.

We are witnessing the fruits of Colorado's legal weed experiment, and those fruits are juicy indeed.

the mysterious history of marijuana (raises more kwestins than it answers)

npr | Marijuana has been intertwined with race and ethnicity in America since well before the word "marijuana" was coined. The drug, , has a disturbing case of multiple personality disorder: It's a go-to pop culture punch line. It's the foundation of a growing recreational and medicinal industry. , it's also the reason for more than half of the drug arrests in the U.S. A deeply disproportionate number of marijuana arrests (the vast majority of which are for possession) befall African-Americans, despite similar rates of usage among whites and blacks, the ACLU says.

Throughout the 19th century, news reports and medical journal articles almost always use the plant's formal name, cannabis. Numerous accounts say that "marijuana" came into popular usage in the U.S. in the early 20th century because anti-cannabis factions wanted to underscore the drug's "Mexican-ness." It was meant to play off of anti-immigrant sentiments.

A common version of the story of the criminalization of pot goes like this: Cannabis was outlawed because various powerful interests (some of which have economic motives to suppress hemp production) were able to craft it into a bogeyman in the popular imagination, by spreading tales of homicidal mania touched off by consumption of the dreaded Mexican "locoweed." Fear of brown people combined with fear of nightmare drugs used by brown people to produce a wave of public action against the "marijuana menace." That combo led to restrictions in state after state, ultimately resulting in federal prohibition.

But this version of the story starts to prompt more questions than answers when you take a close look at the history of the drug in the U.S.: What role did race actually play in the perception of the drug? Are historical accounts of pot usage — including references to Mexican "locoweed" — even talking about the same drug we know as marijuana today? How did the plant and its offshoots get so many darn names (reefer, pot, weed, hashish, dope, ganja, bud, and on and on and on) anyway? And while we're on the subject, how did it come to be called "marijuana"?

Let's start with the race question. Eric Schlosser recounts some of the racially charged history of marijuana in (some of the source material for the best-selling book):

"The political upheaval in Mexico that culminated in the Revolution of 1910 led to a wave of Mexican immigration to states throughout the American Southwest. The prejudices and fears that greeted these peasant immigrants also extended to their traditional means of intoxication: smoking marijuana. Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a "lust for blood," and gave its users "superhuman strength." Rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this "killer weed" to unsuspecting American schoolchildren. Sailors and West Indian immigrants brought the practice of smoking marijuana to port cities along the Gulf of Mexico. In New Orleans newspaper articles associated the drug with African-Americans, jazz musicians, prostitutes, and underworld whites. "The Marijuana Menace," as sketched by anti-drug campaigners, was personified by inferior races and social deviants."

In 1937, U.S. Narcotics Commissioner Henry Anslinger testified before Congress in the hearings that would result in the introduction of federal restrictions on marijuana. , Anslinger's testimony included a letter from Floyd Baskette, the city editor of the Alamosa (Colo.) Daily Courier, which said in part, "I wish I could show you what a small marihuana cigaret can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That's why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who [sic! such an enthusiastic sic!] are low mentally, because of social and racial conditions."

Folks weren't just worrying about Mexicans and jazz musicians, either. "Within the last year we in California have been getting a large influx of Hindoos and they have in turn started quite a demand for cannabis indica," wrote Henry J. Finger, a powerful member of California's State Board of Pharmacy, (page 18). "They are a very undesirable lot and the habit is growing in California very fast; the fear is now that it is not being confined to the Hindoos alone but that they are initiating our whites into this habit."

the emperor wears no clothes

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the fascinating endocannabinoidal system

stanford |  A new study led by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine has implicated the blocking of endocannabinoids — signaling substances that are the brain’s internal versions of the psychoactive chemicals in marijuana and hashish — in the early pathology of Alzheimer’s disease.

A substance called A-beta — strongly suspected to play a key role in Alzheimer’s because it’s the chief constituent of the hallmark clumps dotting the brains of people with Alzheimer’s — may, in the disease’s earliest stages, impair learning and memory by blocking the natural, beneficial action of endocannabinoids in the brain, the study demonstrates. The Stanford group is now trying to figure out the molecular details of how and where this interference occurs. Pinning down those details could pave the path to new drugs to stave off the defects in learning ability and memory that characterize Alzheimer’s.

In the study, published June 18 in Neuron, researchers analyzed A-beta’s effects on a brain structure known as the hippocampus. In all mammals, this midbrain structure serves as a combination GPS system and memory-filing assistant, along with other duties.

“The hippocampus tells us where we are in space at any given time,” said Daniel Madison, PhD, associate professor of molecular and cellular physiology and the study’s senior author. “It also processes new experiences so that our memories of them can be stored in other parts of the brain. It’s the filing secretary, not the filing cabinet.” Fist tap Dale.