Uruguay has long been at the vanguard of social reform in Latin America. Today, it is on the verge of passing into law one of its most radical ideas yet. The Broad Front – the center-left coalition t ...
The 2012 Dutch elections were hailed as decisive for the future of the coffeeshops, where the sale of small amounts of cannabis is tolerated. The result is inconclusive. The parties in favour of rest ...
Leaders in Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American nations wracked by cartel violence are calling for a new approach in the U.S.-led war on drugs. Uruguay President Jose Mujica’s solution is to no ...
As Washington weighs its first chance to legalize recreational marijuana, prominent groups are taking sides about the initiative's potential impact on children. Initiative 502 got an unexpected vote ...
While Copenhagen's mayor, Frank Jensen, continues to be a vocal advocate for legalising cannabis in the city, arguing that a "paradigm shift" is in order, Copenhagen Police took a strikingly differen ...
A report by a group of prominent Australians that recommends Australia rethink its criminalisation of illicit drugs has been backed by the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association. The ...
The poll, conducted by ComRes for the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), found that 77% of MPs believed the UK's current policies were ineffective in tackling the problems caused by illegal drugs. Th ...
Starting September 1, the police will be stepping up efforts to cull Pusher Street’s estimated one billion kroner organised cannabis trade through the creation of a new task force. Past police effort ...
The world-wide debate over cannabis reform appears to be gaining uncommon speed and unexpectedly it is in Latin America that the winds of change have greatest force. So where is Mexico in this panora ...
Judging from what Uruguay’s President Jose Mujica told me in an extended interview last week, there is a real possibility that people in his country will soon be able to buy marijuana legally from a ...
The marijuana reform community in Washington State has become severely fractured, with various groups running competing initiatives and taking opposing positions on whether the state should be in the ...
The last few years have witnessed a boom in new cannabis user associations in Spain. Although there are no reliable figures for them, most are known to have been created for the collective cultivatio ...
Kronic-style drugs are expected back on the shelves under the new legal high law being crafted by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne. Experts say the law will create one of the world's first open a ...
With the decimation of St Lucia’s banana industry due to the collapse of preferential trade agreements with Europe, land which was once used to cultivate bananas is now being used to grow marijuana, ...
Should pot be outlawed, controlled, or just legalised? For anti-addiction experts, regulating consumption would counter a drug market associated with violent crime and lead to better public health an ...
Uruguay may be poised to become the first country to opt for a state controlled and legally regulated cannabis market for medical as well as recreational purposes, including cultivation and distribut ...
In Uruguay, the consumption of drugs, including marijuana, is not punishable with prison time. Even so, the cultivation of marijuana for personal consumption is a crime.
It is a remarkable statement - the rock musician and drugs activist credited with spawning the global legal highs industry is now calling for new laws in Britain to protect the millions of young peop ...
Several top public health officials are proposing a rethinking of current illegal-drug policies they assert spurs on a global problem involving ecstasy, one that even the White House says is made in ...
Uruguay's government plans to start growing marijuana soon after a law legalizing sales of the drug passes Congress, but a ban on selling to foreigners will stop the country becoming a drug tourism h ...
In the latest challenge from Latin America to drug war orthodoxy, on June 20, 2012, the Uruguayan government unveiled a proposal that, if adopted by the country’s legislature, would create legal, gov ...
B.C.'s top health official says taking pure ecstasy can be "safe" when consumed responsibly by adults, despite warnings by police in Alberta and British Columbia about the dangers of the street drug ...
For the first time ever, a solid majority of Americans supports legalizing marijuana for recreational use: 56%, according to the most recent Rasmussen poll. Support for legalization has been growing ...
Since his inauguration, drug policy reform advocates have tirelessly petitioned Barack Obama to have his "marijuana moment". And for good reason – during the 2008 presidential campaign Obama said tha ...
The pilot project to have state-run hash and marijuana dispensaries in Copenhagen received a setback after the Justice Ministry turned down the City Council's request to experiment with regulating ca ...
A new national poll shows a clear majority of Americans in favor of legalizing and regulating marijuana – "the strongest support ever recorded," according to one pro-marijuana activist. The Rasmussen ...
Federal agents struck at the heart of California's medical marijuana movement, raiding the nation's first pot trade school and a popular dispensary, both run by one of the state's most prominent and ...
De exportcijfers van nederwiet die de Taskforce Aanpak Georganiseerde Hennepteelt veelvuldig in de media bracht, zijn sterk overdreven. Dit blijkt uit een vertrouwelijk rapport van het Korps Landelij ...
Over half of EU countries, as well as the United States and Canada, ban the stimulant qat, a sort of mild amphetamine. But attempts to do so in Britain, most recently in 2005, left experts unconvince ...
Who is going to clean up the mess OxyContin has left behind in Ontario? Health Minister Deb Matthews' move to delist the addictive prescription painkiller from the provincial drug benefits program - ...
Drivers who use cannabis within three hours of driving are twice as likely to cause a collision as those not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, says a Canadian study. This is because cannabis i ...
In response to an opinion piece in Politiken newspaper, in which a former Christiania resident encourages residents of the commune to stand up to the gang members that control its hash market, the ch ...
Efforts to legalize marijuana for recreational use are gaining momentum in Washington state and Colorado, despite fierce opposition from the federal government and a decades-long cultural battle over ...
A measure to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Washington State is likely to be on the November 2012 ballot, after the secretary of the state's office certified the initiative, saying the ...
A quarter-century after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first prescription drugs based on the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, additional medicines derived from or inspir ...
New psychoactive substances (commonly known as legal highs) are spreading across Europe with growing speed. Between 1997 and 2010 the early-warning system of the European Monitoring Agency on Drugs a ...
The Copenhagen City Council is pushing ahead with a proposal to decriminalise cannabis, and has set up a committee to investigate the best way to regulate the supply and distribution. The favoured op ...
Backers of an effort to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana use in Washington state submitted more than 340,000 signatures Thursday to try to qualify their initiative, a move protested by so ...
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) traveled to California and attended the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in LA to find out what are the latest development of the battle for lega ...
Health officials of the Basque Country, an autonomous region of Spain, announced that they will introduce a bill to regulate the "cultivation, sale and consumption" of hashish and marijuana. The bill ...
The Basque Parliament will approve a law bill in the first few months of 2012 on drug addiction, which will regulate "the growing, sale and consumption of cannabis". For the new ruling, for which "te ...
Imagine an extremely expensive government policy proven to be completely ineffective at achieving its stated objectives. Consider also that whenever this policy is subjected to any kind of impact ass ...
A committee has now been established to determine the best way to legalise the sale of hashish, with special stores owned by the council presenting itself as the preferred candidate. The sale, consum ...
The former head of MI5 believes the "war on drugs" has proved fruitless and it is time to consider decriminalising the possession and use of small quantities of cannabis. Eliza Manningham-Buller has ...
Marijuana legalization in Washington has been an activist's pipe dream for decades, but a new campaign with deep pockets and prominent supporters is poised to force the state Legislature to vote on t ...
The California Medical Association made news when it became the first state medical association to recommend the legalization and regulation of cannabis. The CMA's Council on Scientific and Clinical ...
In 1976 the Netherlands adopted a formal written policy of non-enforcement for violations involving possession or sale of up to 30 g of cannabis. The ‘gateway theory’ has long been seen as an argumen ...
A grey area has emerged between what is legal and what is not as states struggle with how to respond to the many new synthetic compounds emerging onto the market. Of the various types of ‘Legal highs ...
This paper aims to set out some of the policy and public health issues raised by the appearance of a wide range of emergent psychoactive substances of diverse origin, effect and risk profile (commonl ...
More than one in ten adults – and about one in three young adults – report past year cannabis use in Canada. While cannabis use is associated with a variety of health risks, current policy prohibits ...