Conflicts between the Michigan Medicinal Marijuana Act and federal law are still being reconciled.
Seeming to presage today's raids on dispensaries in Washington State, the Tacoma News Tribune editorialized against Spokane County tolerating "California-style dispensaries that operate like commercial marijuana shops."
]]>In Latin America, says Gwynne Dyer, writing in the Canadian Telegraph-Journal newspaper this week, people are "fed up to the back teeth with the violent and dogmatic U.S. policy on drugs, and they are starting to do something about it." That "something" is to rethink rigid prohibitionist ideologies that have packed prisons, but have not stopped drugs. Outside of the U.S., the war on drugs, says Dyer, "is coming to an end much sooner, and one can imagine a time when the job of the history books will be to explain how this berserk aberration ever came about."
In this week's Coast Reporter newspaper, from B.C. Canada, author Brent Richter suggests Canada legalize marijuana. "It's time to stop the nervous nail-biting and myopic prohibition of marijuana. Undercut the criminal economy, lessen the burden on the justice system, and install a regulated and lucrative legalized system for the benefit of all."
And from the New Zealand Herald this week, a reminder ibogaine treatment continues outside of the U.S. (it is banned in the U.S.). Ibogaine is notable as a hallucinogen because "it reduces craving and leads drug users to confront their drug-taking behaviour after one or two doses." Drug reform advocate Dana Beal was in New Zealand this week to address "a public forum at the University of Otago on the use of ibogaine". Supporters are hoping to have ibogaine "trialled" in New Zealand. "If that drug doesn't have long-lasting side effects from a one-off use and does fix addiction, that's potentially a major addition to our armoury," said Dr Fraser Todd, of the National Addiction Centre, Christchurch Medical School.
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