Elsewhere, an addiction specialist gets on the right side of the medical marijuana issue; a city council doesn't seem to want more drug testing; and the former deputy drug czar says she gets info from NORML and MPP websites, which incidentally, feature newsfeeds from MAP/DrugSense. You're welcome, former deputy drug czar!
]]>"Journalist" George Will deployed too many scare quotes in a recent "column" that "argues" that state-based medicinal cannabis regimes foster disrespect for prohibition. Please see "What You Can Do This Week" below for sources, headlines and contact information for letters-to-the-editor.
New Jersey may be the next state to regulate medicinal cannabis, although activists in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also have cause for optimism.
Having recently criticized the media for exaggerating the link between cannabis and psychosis, the Daily Mail is in a cannapanic again over a new study which concluded: "The finding that people with a first episode of psychosis had smoked higher-potency cannabis, for longer and with greater frequency, than a healthy control group is consistent with the hypothesis that THC is the active ingredient increasing risk of psychosis. This has important public health implications, given the increased availability and use of high- potency cannabis." ... under prohibition.
]]>Meanwhile, back in Fiji, the Fiji Times last week reports those "found with marijuana or selling the drug" will be "traditionally dealt with by chiefly warlords". Chiefly warlord punishments include exile, but not before "spanking and other disciplinary measures before being exiled." Still, while Fijian chiefly warlords savored spanking and other discipline for marijuana offenders, the Fiji Times let on "it has been difficult to find anyone dealing in or cultivating marijuana".
The Sunday Nation newspaper in Kenya has "established" a horrible new development in the world of drug abuse. Heroin addicts in Mombassa, according to the paper share blood, "injecting themselves with other addicts' blood to get high." This incredible procedure seems to ignore the existence of transfusion reactions. "One person injects himself while the others harvest his blood and inject themselves," which, "is like a scene straight from a vampire movie," explained the Kenyan paper.
And finally, we leave you with some thoughts from a column in the Guardian (UK) newspaper, penned by University College London professor of philosophy Jonathan Wolff. What is Wolff's philosophy on drugs and scientific evidence? "For many drugs there seems little evidence of physical harm. But that shouldn't be confused with the very different claim that there is evidence of little physical harm," Wolff elaborated. Scientists, said Wolff, are "over-claiming the quality of their results to publicise their research, journalists [are] whipping up a moral panic to sell newspapers, politicians [do] whatever they think will keep them in power".
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