News

PHOENIX - Foes of legalizing adult recreational use of marijuana in Arizona are trying to keep the issue from going to voters in November.

Criminalization of simple drug possession has had 'devastating effect,' says AIDS Saskatoon director

As state law enforcement played whack-a-mole with illegal marijuana fields, local communities protested the "invading army."

A recent poll suggests 51 per cent of British Columbians are buying all product legally B.C. has had a difficult road to getting cannabis users interested in purchasing from legal retailers over their neighbourhood dealer, but a recent poll suggests that the province may finally be winning the battle over bud.

Opinions

Prof Joe Boden, of the University of Otago, provides a view from inside the expert panel on cannabis ahead of this year's cannabis referendum.

If the idea of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of illicit drugs once sounded radical, the coalition of people who now espouse the idea would certainly seem to be strange bedfellows.

Listen to the police Let's talk about decriminalizing all drugs We're having a national conversation about policing and criminal justice. Examining our drug laws is a natural extension of this debate

State-sanctioned marijuana shops are contributing to the rise in lung illnesses and deaths at a higher rate than previously believed.

Letters

Like myself, I suspect many citizens of Lethbridge were alarmed by the finding of misappropriated funds within ARCHES, and the subsequent withdrawal of provincial funding to their supervised consumption site (SCS). As an RN who has worked for a number of years in harm reduction, I am reeling for our clients and their families in terms of how this will impact them.

Give Marijuana Tax Revenues to the Harmed We have a moral imperative to try to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. We should start by investing in the very communities it harmed.

Using cannabis tax revenues to plug local budget holes has been an effective talking point in advancing marijuana-legalization proposals across the country ("Cities Look to Marijuana Taxes for Help," U.S. News, Feb. 5). However, it is vital that lawmakers also use these cannabis tax revenues to fund programs that serve the individuals whose lives and communities have been destroyed by the misguided, racially biased policies of America's war on drugs. Decriminalization and expungement bills don't go far enough.

Kevin Sabet has it backward in "How Legal Weed Shops Feed the Vaping Crisis" (op-ed, Jan 21). Here in California, not a single case of vape disease has been traced to a legal, state-regulated source, according to the state Bureau of Cannabis Control. Rather, the source of the problem is illicit manufacturers of contaminated goods on the underground market.

One in five Americans reside in a jurisdiction where the adult use of cannabis is legal under state statute, and the majority of citizens reside some place where the medical use of cannabis is legally authorized. Many of these latter programs have been in place for the better part of two decades.

"Is Marijuana Fueling a Public-Health Crisis?" The statistic from your editorial, that "95% of heroin and cocaine users report first using pot," doesn't prove much. Remember, 99% of criminal motorcycle-gang members started by riding bicycles.

It is difficult to keep track of the fallacies and straw men in your reefer madness rant. Start with the obvious: The federal ban on cannabis makes it impossible for legal, federally regulated e-cigarette makers to develop and market safe THC cartridges for vaping. Consequently, most THC cartridges are dangerous bootleg products sold on the black market. Federal legalization would lead to improved product safety for which manufacturers would be held accountable.