• UN: Nearly 100 drug users died in Crimea after Russia closed methadone program

    Russian law forbids the use of methadone in drug rehabilitation programs
    The Moscow Times (Russia)
    Wednesday, January 21, 2015

    Russian Federal Drug Control Service officers burn bags of synthetic opioid Methadone during an operation in in Simferopol on December 23, 2014The United Nations' AIDS envoy sounded the alarm over an impending health catastrophe in Russia's newly acquired Crimean Peninsula, where nearly 100 recovering heroin addicts have died as a result of Russia's abolishment of a methadone program. "The causes of death, from what we have been hearing, are mainly from suicide and overdose," Michel Kazatchkine said. Prior to Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, 805 people were receiving opioid substitution therapy under Ukrainian rule. (See also: Number of Russians with HIV to reach 1 million by 2016)

  • German Green Party leader Cem Özdemir stripped of immunity over cannabis plant

    Berlin's district attorney office is investigating German Greens leader Cem Özdemir after he appeared next to a cannabis plant in an Ice Bucket Challenge video
    Deutsche Welle (Germany)
    Saturday, January 17, 2015

    Like countless people around the world, German politician Cem Özdemir took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge last summer. But now, according to German mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag, the Greens leader has had his immunity as a member of the German parliament repealed after authorities spotted a cannabis plant in the video uploaded to YouTube. When the video first appeared, Özdemir said that the plant had been "intentionally placed" as a political statement. (Özdemir und der Hanftopf)

  • A dozen ways to legalize the marijuana supply chain, in Vermont or any state

    Marijuana policy is not a binary choice between prohibition and the for-profit commercial model
    The Washington Post (US)
    Friday, January 16, 2015

    After months of research, the RAND corporation released a report for the state of Vermont exploring marijuana legalization and regulation there. The 218-page report, commissioned as a result of a May law, explores every aspect, option and pathway to legalization. The report breaks out 12 ways a state can regulate the supply of marijuana, grouped into three categories. Each of the 12 paths offers different benefits and risks to public health, government control of the industry, the ability to generate revenue and the level of conflict with federal law.

  • Seattle's legal marijuana euphoria over as industry undergoes growing pains

    Prices starting to come down in state’s licensed pot shops, but due to a surplus in supply, growers struggle to sell product
    The Guardian (UK)
    Friday, January 16, 2015

    The legal marijuana market in the state of Washington opened last summer to a dearth of weed. Some stores periodically closed because they didn’t have pot to sell. Prices were through the roof. Six months later, the equation has flipped, bringing serious growing pains to the new industry. A big harvest of sun-grown marijuana last fall flooded the market. Prices are starting to come down, but because of the glut, growers are struggling to sell their marijuana. Some are worried about going belly-up, finding it tougher than expected to make a living in legal weed.

  • Synthetic cannabis deaths show case for controlled sale of marijuana, expert says

    Researchers say the substances in synthetic cannabis are difficult to identify and constantly changing, making both treatment and law enforcement difficult
    The Guardian (UK)
    Thursday, January 15, 2015

    The deaths of two men in central Queensland after they smoked synthetic cannabis highlight the need to regulate marijuana and allow its controlled sale, the president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation says. Dr Alex Wodak said it was extremely difficult to determine the substances in synthetic cannabis, making its effects unpredictable and treatment for unwanted reactions difficult. He said people were drawn to synthetic drugs because they could be easier to obtain and because of the misguided perception they were legal and safe.

  • Null Gramm Toleranz im Görlitzer Park

    Orte wie der Görlitzer Park, in dem offen gedealt wird, sollen komplett drogenfrei werden
    Berliner Zeitung (Germany)
    Mittwoch, 14. Januar 2015

    Kiffer in Berlin dürfen weiterhin bis zu 15 Gramm Cannabis für den Eigenbedarf dabei haben, ohne strafrechtlich verfolgt zu werden – jedoch nicht mehr überall in der Stadt. Vom 1. April an soll der Drogenbesitz an Orten wie dem Görlitzer Park in Kreuzberg oder an Schulen auch bei geringeren Mengen unter Strafe gestellt werden, wie das bereits jetzt generell bei Konsum und Handel der Fall ist. (Die Gewerkschaft der Polizei spricht von Aktionismus: Junkie-Jogging um den Görlitzer Park)

  • Mexico: Challenging drug prohibition from below

    Sebastian Scholl
    Chapter from TNI's State of Power 2015
    Tuesday, January 13, 2015

    The horrific forced disappearance of 43 students in Iguala reveals how organised crime and corruption thrive in conditions of institutional or democratic weakness, shaped to a large extent by distinctive transnational relations (importantly, in this case, with the US). Fortunately groups like the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity are showing a burgeoning 'social power' that has the potential to change politics and policy in Mexico.

  • Losing marijuana business, Mexican cartels push heroin and meth

    Mexican criminal organizations are no longer going for bulk marijuana
    The Washington Post (US)
    January 11, 2015

    Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America’s marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade. The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states, displacing the cheap, seedy, hard-packed version harvested by the bushel in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains. That has prompted Mexican drug farmers to plant more opium poppies.

  • The war on drugs is burning out

    Leading at the ballot box from Alaska to Washington, D.C., Americans are charting a path to a saner national drug policy
    Rolling Stone (US)
    Thursday, January 8, 2015

    lincoln-smokingThe conservative wave of 2014 featured an unlikely, progressive undercurrent: In two states, plus the nation's capital, Americans voted convincingly to pull the plug on marijuana prohibition. Regardless of the final presidential matchup, pot initiatives in battleground states will make it impossible for the 2016 candidates to ignore the marijuana issue as they've done so often in the past, says Tom Angell, chairman of the advocacy group Marijuana Majority. "The road to the White House," he says, "travels through legal-marijuana territory."

  • Geneva committee backs legalizing marijuana

    Growing and selling marijuana may soon become legal in once staid Geneva
    The Local (Switzerland)
    Wednesday, January 7, 2015

    Authorities are considering a radical liberalization of drug laws in the Swiss canton in a bid to undermine the black market in cannabis. "We are agreed about going forward with this. Repression has failed as a policy," Geneva's Health Minister Mauro Poggia told Swiss newspaper Le Temps. "But that does not stop us thinking about going down other avenues." Geneva's cross-party Advisory Commission on Addiction urged the government to seek approval for the reforms from federal health authorities.

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