In counter-point, a student journalist argues that "cannabis culture" is defined by prohibition and may, he posits, depend on it for its very survival. Prohibition once again promoting what it claims to suppress.
For example, carefully consider the justifications offered by a DEA official for investing significant resources into tearing up cannabis crops while Californian beds are burning.
Finally, an informative column on the evolving jurisprudence surrounding the integration of medicinal cannabis law with labor and civil rights law in California.
]]>The Irish government has an original, new way to stop drugs reports this week's Irish examiner newspaper: a new telephone hotline where people can denounce drug suspects to police. Similar programs, like "Dob-In-A-Dealer" in the U.K. and Australia, as well as "Crimestoppers" in the U.S. have failed to dent demand for, or reduce supply of illicit drugs.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper this week reports that the new chief of the Dangerous Drugs Board would fight the "war" on drugs in a most zealous manner. Vicente "Tito" Sotto III (formerly in the Philippine Senate), took the reigns of the prohibitionist agency following the admission last month by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Dionisio Santiago that police do "plant evidence," after all. Incoming DDB head Sotto did not mention Santiago's earlier promises to frame citizens to obtain drug convictions.
Speakers at a seminar on healthcare and drug abuse in Indonesia this week called on government to stop criminalizing drug users, reported the Jakarta Post in Indonesia. Harsh laws aimed at addicts make things worse by making people "too afraid to seek treatment because the police targeted them for arrest and criminal prosecution."
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