Speaking of which, members of parliament in the U.K., Canada and New Zealand all seem to be cynically pandering to the popular, media- driven misconception that crime rates are rising, attempting to appear "tough on crime" by refusing to even discuss the merits of cannabis law reform.
Goods news from Iowa where the state pharmacy board voted unanimously to recommend legislators reclassify cannabis to allow for medicinal distribution and use.
The DEA in Colorado got the memo from U.S. Attorney General David Ogden advising them to back off dispensaries and patients complying with state law, but their interpretation of it has cast a chill.
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]]>When government and military talk, you can count on the Washington Times newspaper to faithfully parrot the party line. This week proved no exception to that rule of thumb, as the Times printed government pronouncements about the "assault under way in southern Afghanistan", which has a "secondary mission of disrupting insurgent drug trafficking". Presumably, this will provide comfort for readers who may find the primary mission unsettling.
>From Canada this week, two excellent pieces on the current train-wreck that is the far-right Harper regime's approach to crime and drugs policy. Maniacally bent on instituting mandatory minimums not for heroin dealing or gun crimes - but for petty pot farmers - many commentators see this as intentionally paving the way for privatized for-profit prisons, while at he same time pandering to police and a repressive political base.
The first piece, by Susan Riley in the Regina Post-Leader, notes "Only the marijuana bill -- it would impose a mandatory minimum six months in jail for anyone caught with five or more plants -- was significantly amended... [a]n irritated Nicholson has vowed to reintroduce the bill in March."
And Keith Baldrey, in the Maple Ridge Times newspaper out of B.C. ("War on Drugs an Abject Failure"), excoriates the ideologically-driven Harper regime for ignoring advice, law, statistics and common sense on the life-saving Insite supervised injection center in Vancouver. "[T]he so-called "war on drugs" - has been a complete, abject failure. To stick to the conventional method of dealing with drug addiction (i.e. prosecute addicts and do everything possible to deny them access to drugs) is a head-in-the-sand approach that is not only wrong but also dangerous."
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