Politics

Denver decriminalizes ‘magic mushrooms’ in historic vote

The initiative… [will] not… [allow] the mushrooms to be sold under Denver’s cannabis businesses. “It’s a signal to the rest of the country that at least here in Denver we are ready to start remove some of these substances off the controlled substances list,” said Kevin Matthews, 33, who organized the decriminalization campaign. “A lot…

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Politics

Denver just voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms

Things looked bad for the initiative late Tuesday, as it trailed behind in the results. But on Wednesday, the final tally came in — and showed Initiative 301 had narrowly won with just less than 51 percent of the vote. Denver will become the first US city to effectively decriminalize mushrooms containing the psychedelic psilocybin,…

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Politics

Denver Elections releases Decriminalize Denver results

*Four Mesoamerican mushroom stones, each nearly two thousand years old, in nocturnal contemplation *Psilocybin pelliculosa sharing the same habitat with deadly Galerinas. Initiated Ordinance 301 Yes/For: 89,320 votes at 50.56%No/Against: 87,341 votes at 49.44% Initiated Ordinance 301 (I-301) was designed to decriminalize the use and possession of mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound. The…

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Politics

Why worldwide drug policy progress is driven from the ground up

A number of individual nations are moving faster than the United Nations; and in turn, many regional and local jurisdictions are outpacing nations. People on the ground—grassroots activists and civil society—are providing the real leadership … “Civil society is more present, more powerful, and more well -funded than in decades past,” she said. “It has…

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Politics

Mexico’s President proposes drug decriminalization with legal supply via prescription

The president of Mexico called the ongoing prohibition of drugs “unsustainable” and proposed a broad decriminalization policy as part of his administration’s “National Development Plan” that was released in April 2019. “The only real possibility of reducing the levels of drug consumption resides in lifting the prohibition of [those] that are currently illegal,” the document…

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Politics

329 NGOs call on world leaders to address the global health and human rights crisis among people who use drugs

Even more concerning is the fact that people who use drugs often remain a ‘population under attack’.Worldwide, one in five people is incarcerated for a drug offence, the overwhelming majority for simple possession. Hundreds of thousands of people who use drugs are held in compulsory detention centres where they are denied healthcare and are victims…

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Politics

Gathering allows Portugal to teach the world

She brought the house down when she stated, simply: “People do notlose their human rights because they use drugs.” Whether or not Portugal continues to advance rapidly, it remains an outlier in world terms. “There are still lots of places where users are living the same war that they were living in the ‘80s and the…

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Politics

Oakland lawmaker will sponsor psychedelics decriminalization measure, activists say

Activists in Oakland, California say they’ve secured a City Council sponsor for a resolution that would block the police department and other officials from participating “in the enforcement of laws imposing criminal penalties for the personal use and personal possession… The measure would also instruct the city’s state and federal lobbyists to “work in support…

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Politics

British police are raising their voices against the drug war

He points out that policing incentivizes the recruitment of children into drugs gangs to act as a buffer between police and adult dealers, reducing dealers’ risks. Very few communities anywhere in the world are untouched by the ravages of the drug war—and the millions of casualties include drug users whose health is threatened by unregulated…

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