“We’re confronted now with the fact that the U.S. cannot enforce domestically what it promotes elsewhere,” a member of the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board, which monitors international compliance with the conference’s directives, told me. When the [United Nations] General Assembly convenes [in April 2016], it also will have to contend with the startling fact…
“Regulation before prohibition is the answer,” says Susan Ash, a founder of the American Kratom Association in Virginia, who says she uses the herb three times a day to treat pain and lethargy from chronic Lyme disease. Ash says the product should be restricted to adults, the supplement’s packaging should carry warning labels and…
“I’m proud to announce that next year, I will be releasing the first-ever Surgeon General’s Report on substance use, addiction and health. We’re going to look at the best science on everything, from heroin and marijuana, to alcohol and prescription opioids.” Under the Obama administration, federal drug agencies have made a point to talk…
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has responded to the ‘leak’ of its briefing paper calling for the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use. Before considering this response, it’s important to be clear this wasn’t really a ‘leak’ in the classic sense. The document was to be presented by the UNODC at…
The bill’s passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana. Under the provision, states where medical pot is legal would no longer need to worry…
Since 1998, U.S. college students relying on federal financial aid to help pay their tuition have put their access to education at risk every time they brought a joint to their lips. That year’s version of the Higher Education Act made it so that anybody with a conviction for possessing or selling an illegal drug…
The obstacles to drug policy reform are both daunting and diverse. Powerful and established drug control bureaucracies, both national and international, staunchly defend status quo policies. They seldom question whether their involvement and tactics in enforcing drug policy are doing more harm than good. Meanwhile, there is often a tendency to sensationalize each new “drug…
For decades, the U.S. government has fought the war on drugs with squads of police, drug raids and jail time. The prison population swelled, and many drugs were made difficult or impossible to study as a result. But a new era is dawning in which psychedelic substances are finally being seriously investigated for their potential…
Psychiatrist and honorary lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, at King’s College London, James Rucker, MRCPsych, is proposing to reclassify and improve access to psychedelics in order to conduct more research on their therapeutic benefits. He believes in the potential of psychedelics so much that late last month he took to the…
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