Drug courts did not significantly reduce the average amount of time offenders spent behind bars, suggesting that any benefits realized from a lower incarceration rate are offset by the long sentences imposed on participants when they fail the program. Drug courts eliminate the experience of incarceration for many drug-involved offenders, but they also do not…
[This report] is based on interviews with health care professionals, social workers, judges, lawyers, drug court staff, and drug court participants. “Drug courts regularly set participants up for failure. Few communities have adequate treatment facilities, insurance plans often won’t finance effective treatment programs, and the criminal justice objectives of drug courts often overrule the medical…
There is no evidence that enforcement of drug-induced homicide reduces drug use or sales, or deadly overdoses. Rather, the only behavior that is actually deterred is the seeking of life-saving medical assistance for fear of prosecution. This is especially true because police and prosecutors are widely abusing their discretion in investigating and prosecuting drug-induced homicide…
The news from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office was welcome by organizers of the statewide proposal, known for now as the California Psilocybin Legalization Initiative. “It’s definitely encouraging,” says Dimitric “Kitty” Merchant, co-author of the measure. “State and local governments could receive additional revenues, such as sales taxes from psilocybin sales permitted under this measure,”…
Two decades’ worth of clinical research was first ignored and then forgotten; laboratories and careers were shut down; the War on Drugs claimed thousands of psychiatric patients as the first of its many civilian casualties. If you’ve been paying attention recently you’ll know we are in the midst of a Psychedelic Renaissance, discovering the clinical…
Most drug courts do not reduce imprisonment, do not save money or improve public safety, and ultimately fail to help people struggling with drug problems. Today’s drug courts are no more effective — but are considerably more costly — than voluntary treatment, and often leave their participants worse off for trying. Most U.S. drug courts…
The OLCC will allocate some of the tax revenue from licensed cannabis sales to fund teams of OLCC investigators and state police in Medford, Eugene, and Portland. There are currently two OLCC investigators and two inspectors in the Medford area, but five more inspectors will be hired to assist the investigations. The agency has increased…
Fifty-one percent of Republicans tell Gallup that, yes, marijuana should be legal, up from 42 percent last year. What has changed? Half the country has moved toward marijuana legalization in some form — with more than a half-dozen states having legalized pot for recreational use and more than dozen others having legalized medical marijuana. As…
Is it not curious? And ridiculous? And brutally tragic? How we condemn and destroy the natural spiritual enhancer/potential cure (psilocybin) , and reward, to the tune of billions of dollars to Big Pharma, the obvious poison? Saunders [mayor who launched the 2018 ballot initiative to decriminalize psilocybin) himself claims that psilocybin helped him kick heroin…
Perhaps it’s also a joke that a law-enforcement agency has the final word on a medical issue. Despite the regulatory barriers, dozens of scientists—myself included—have been engaged in research on the harms and benefits of marijuana for decades, and the evidence shows that the drug has many helpful therapeutic uses … Therapeutic benefits such…
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