Hemp won a victory in New Zealand, where the world's most southern legal hemp crop could be harvested as early as next spring.

The LA Times asked the question, "Medical Marijuana: What Does Science Say?," as if science matters. Sorry. Of course science matters, but it is easy to become cynical when the debate becomes monotonous.

The Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana made progress on the legal front. "Utilizing selective arrests and prosecutions, the federal government has sought to sabotage California's reasoned approach to medical marijuana use," said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. "For the first time, a court has recognized that a calculated plan by the federal government to undercut state medical marijuana laws is patently unconstitutional."

Also in the U.K. last week, a backlash against prohibition-defector Julian Critchley (a former top anti-drug official) as staunch prohibitionists are trotted out to recite the official rationale behind jailing, say, cannabis users. In a piece run by the Independent newspaper, former Chief Constable Ian Oliver reveals that such ideas are "dangerously naive views" because "legalisation of drugs would lead inevitably to a greater number of addictions." Crime "would not be eliminated or reduced." You see, there exists a "global movement to overturn the United Nations Conventions and secure the legalisation of all drugs driven by people who see huge profits to be had from marketing another addictive substance."

In Canada, Health Minister Tony Clement continued to attack very the idea of a supervised injection center, hectoring doctors in the process last week. Howls of derision were heaped upon Clement from papers large and small. "Presumably, Clement would rather see addicts perish in a place outside of medical supervision," wrote one B.C. paper editorial. "The idea that Insite does more harm than good," continued the column "has been so thoroughly undermined by clinical data as to be laughable." Even the normally Harper-regime-friendly Globe and Mail opined, "Not himself a doctor, Mr. Clement's scolding would have been presumptuous under any circumstances... As his own party distributes literature dehumanizing that disease's sufferers, Mr. Clement is in no position to deliver lectures on compassion."