News

As bad as getting off opioids the first time was, nothing prepared Briana Kline for trying to come back from relapse. She was in deep, past the Percocets and other pills. This time it was heroin, even a close brush with fentanyl. But the medicine that so helped slay her cravings before didn't seem to be cutting it.

DEATHS Why don't more jails use them? After Neila Rivera began using heroin as a teenager, she fell into a predictable and depressing pattern. She'd get locked up and go through detox, only to return to drugs as soon as she got out.

WITH CANNABIS? You can't take it with you. Actually, you can. But it's not a good idea when you're traveling, especially for the risk-averse.

July 1, a fated day in Massachusetts for advocates of recreational marijuana, came and went. The first day that stores were allowed to sell nonmedical cannabis passed without so much as a joint sold. No retailers had been licensed, and July 1 turned out much like any other day since December 15, 2016, when it became legal in Massachusetts to possess, grow and give away small quantities of cannabis.

Opinions

Seldom a day goes by when financial pages don't highlight new developments in the marijuana industry.

They might be reluctantly legalizing cannabis. But they'll never stop thinking they know better than us how we should live

A few years ago when I served on the board of the co-op building where I live in Brooklyn Heights - a fact suggesting a degree of squareness so profound it should discredit my authority to go on - my next-door neighbor came to me with recurring complaints that her apartment, at various points, but mostly in the evenings, reeked of pot (that, children, is what we of the Atari generation call it) so intensely that it seemed as if someone had come in and lit up right on her sofa. That her oldest daughter began to worry that she was getting a contact high while she was doing her homework made me despair for a generation and suggested that perhaps a certain unwarranted hysteria had taken hold. Then one night, at a moment of extreme fragrancy, my neighbor texted and asked me to come over and take a sniff for myself, and it seemed as if I had walked into a commune in the Redwoods sometime between the Tet offensive and the presidency of Gerald Ford.

New York City's Police Department suffered a major embarrassment this spring when a New York Times investigation demolished the department's claim that people of color were more likely than others to be arrested on petty marijuana charges, because citizens in their communities complained more about pot smoking. The investigation found that even when complaints were factored in, the police nearly always arrested people at a higher rate in black areas.

Letters

According to Messrs. Kennedy and Sabet, cannabis legalization is "a failed experiment." But in Washington state, which like Colorado legalized in 2012, support has increased from 56% to an astounding 78%. Some failure!

It makes sense to make marijuana readily available as a less harmful alternative to truly harmful drugs such as opiates. Why would a drug pusher carry marijuana in his inventory when you can buy it over the counter? Messrs. Kennedy and Sabet are behind the times.

The authors suffer from the same confirmation bias and first-order thinking that begot the demonstrably unsuccessful war on drugs and has sustained it, to tragic effect, for nearly 50 years. Despite enormous expense and countless American lives lost to street violence and incarceration, access to and abuse of marijuana and other drugs remains as prevalent as ever. Why, then, do intelligent people refuse to accept that the goals of the antidrug crusade haven't been, and cannot be, achieved by prohibition?

The costs and benefits of cannabis and cannabis policies are difficult to calculate, but cannabis legalization will remove many impediments to research.

Beer sales worked at Fresno State games, so how about pot at campus poetry readings? I was pleased to read that the (Fresno State) athletic department benefited financially from beer sales at their games. We all know beer and sports go nicely together. Perhaps the other departments at Fresno State should take their cues from this, but instead of serving beer, sell cannabis. It's legal (semi) now and probably just as profitable.

Jason Kenney stated recently that the best way to combat drug addition in general, and the opioid crisis in particular, is by controlling supply. This demonstrates that he is little more than a cynical, career politician. He will say whatever he thinks will resonate with his base in the hope of becoming the next premier.

To see how the NSLC's marijuana distribution will be a disaster take a tour of Halifax's "medical" marijuana dispensaries. There are a dozen, or more, at least. They all have lines, seven days a week, from open to close. Their inventory (marijuana) is sourced in the industrial black-market production infrastructure in BC which is vast, efficient and already produces a variety of products (in-demand strains of marijuana) and product formats (oils, vape cartridges, topicals, edibles, etc).