Elsewhere, the economic arguments for ending drug prohibition grow as financial news worsens for government; in a change of pace, the DEA looks for "savvy" applicants; and a Maine group wants to be exempt from marijuana laws based on religious freedom.
]]>Cannabis warriors in Hawaii are finding reasons not to implement a new lowest enforcement priority initiative on the Big Island.
Medicinal cannabis activists won a legal victory last week when the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of lower court rulings, which ordered the Garden Grove City Police to return a patient's now three year old stash.
Finally, an interview with High Times Editor David Bienenstock on his new cannabis smoker's handbook.
]]>Holland this week extended a ban of dried psychedelic mushrooms to include fresh psychedelic mushrooms, as well. Users say magic mushrooms can be used as "aids in spiritual awareness, [to] gain[] personal insight." To spare people from "unpredictable and therefore risky behaviour," the Dutch Justice Ministry will now jail people for up to four years for possessing them.
Peers (members of the U.K. House of Lords) last week "spoke out in the House of Lords to support delaying government plans to upgrade cannabis from Class C to Class B after it was opposed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs," the Lancashire Evening Post reported. The news that members of the House of Lords had spoken against government plans to re-classify cannabis to a more serious "Class C", came amidst a 151% increase in cannabis warnings handed out in Lancashire. "The police should be spending more time looking for real crime as opposed to busting people for a little bit of dope when they are not doing real harm," responded Don Barnard of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance.
And finally this week, scientists were stunned to find almost a kilo of "psychoactive" cannabis buried in a tomb in northwestern China about 2,700 years ago. "To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says Dr Ethan Russo, neurologist and author of numerous books and papers on the plant. Buried with what is believed to be a shaman, and preserved because of arid conditions, the cannabis was "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," says Russo.
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