By Ted Smith No event in cannabis activism around the world has been as highly anticipated as the release of Marc Emery. After spending over 4 years trapped in various US jails, the Prince of Pot is getting ready to return to his native homeland to begin the next chapter of his life. No one […]
World
The Life and Struggles of Educators For Sensible Drug Policy
Battling Daren the Lion This is the story of Educators For Sensible Drug Policy. It begins in 2001, when 21-year-old Adam Jones, an education major at the University of Montana at Billings, was arrested for possession of ½ gram of psilocybin mushrooms. He was sentenced to five years in prison, a sentence later […]
Cannabis in Costa Rica – Part 5 – Conclusion
A future for Cannabis in Costa Rica As we move into July, the Costa Rica Medicinal Cannabis Movement signature gathering campaign has surpassed 100K and are now seeking more in case of invalid or duplicate signatures. Costa Rica has only had one successful referendum in the past. The citizens decided by vote that […]
Canna-Dunces: Suppression of Cannabis Science
Suppressing Scientific Study of Cannabis is an admission of Ulterior Motives. There has been a virtual ban on scientific research on marijuana since the La Guardia Committee report came out in 1944. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, commissioned a scientific study of the effects of Marijuana during 1939-1944. In this study Mayor La Guardia […]
Cannabis in Costa Rica – part 4
Photo from www.TicoTimes.net Costa Rica’s Sloth Kong enjoys some legal weed from Uruguay after success at the World Cup The 5th Latin America Drug Policy Conference Costa Ricans (and mascot Sloth Kong) are doing a lot more than just knocking top teams out of the World Cup. In my previous blogs on Costa […]
And Now For Something Completely Historical: Updating Reefer Madness
Many readers will be familiar with the story of America’s War on Drugs. As most of us know it, the story goes something like this. Following political upheavals in Mexico in 1910, large numbers of Mexicans immigrated to the US, especially to the Southwest. For predictable reasons, the immigrants became objects of contempt. They spoke […]
Cannabis in Costa Rica – Part 3
What will the new law look like? In the previous blogs I gave my personal impression of prohibition in Costa Rica and I looked at the likelihood that the Costa Rica Medicinal Cannabis Movement would succeed in their attempts to trigger a referendum to legalize medical cannabis. If they gather all of the signatures they […]
Cannabis in Costa Rica – Part 2
The Costa Rica Medicinal Cannabis Movement Will they succeed? In the last blog I introduced cannabis prohibition in Costa Rica from the perspectives I gathered while visiting earlier this year. My interview with Gerald Murray of the Costa Rica Medicinal Cannabis Movement suffered some technical difficulties but I was still able to ask […]
The Early Exportation of Medical Ganja in Jamaica
The Historical Rastafari Settlement at Pinnacle This year commemorates the 60thanniversary of the strategic destruction of the historical Rastafari settlement at Pinnacle by the colonial state of Jamaica. In legal possession of nearly 500 acres of land accredited to him in 1939, the Honorable Leonard Percival Howell, the most influential leader of the early Rastafari […]
Growing Demands for UN Drug Policy Reform
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime discouraging criminal sanctions for drug use The United Nations’ Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) has wrapped up the High-Level Segment portion of its annual meeting in Vienna. The session revealed schisms among countries about future steps on global drug control even as the global drug bureaucrats gave signs […]