----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
> PRESS RELEASE
> Americans for Safe Access
> For Immediate Release: November 10, 2009
>
> AMA Report Recognizes Medical Benefits of Marijuana, Urges Further
> Research Largest and oldest U.S. physician-based group reverses
> long-held position on medical marijuana
>
> Houston, TX -- The American Medical Association (AMA) voted today to
> reverse its long-held position that marijuana be retained as a
> Schedule I substance with no medical value. The AMA adopted a report
> drafted by the AMA Council on Science and Public Health (CSAPH)
> entitled, "Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes," which affirmed the
> therapeutic benefits of marijuana and called for further research. The
> CSAPH report concluded that, "short term controlled trials indicate
> that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and
> caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and
> may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis."
> Furthermore, the report urges that "the Schedule I status of marijuana
> be reviewed with the goal of facilitating clinical research and
> development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery
> methods."
>
> The change of position by the largest physician-based group in the
> country was precipitated in part by a resolution adopted in June of
> 2008 by the Medical Student Section (MSS) of the AMA in support of the
> reclassification of marijuana's status as a Schedule I substance. In
> the past year, the AMA has considered three resolutions dealing with
> medical marijuana, which also helped to influence the report and its
> recommendations. The AMA vote on the report took place in Houston,
> Texas during the organization's annual Interim Meeting of the House of
> Delegates. The last AMA position, adopted 8 years ago, called for
> maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance, with no medical
> value.
>
> "It's been 72 years since the AMA has officially recognized that
> marijuana has both already-demonstrated and future-promising medical
> utility,"
> said
> Sunil Aggarwal, Ph.D., the medical student who spearheaded both the
> passage of the June 2008 resolution by the MSS and one of the CSAPH
> report's designated expert reviewers. "The AMA has written an
> extensive, well-documented, evidence-based report that they are
> seeking to publish in a peer-reviewed journal that will help to
> educate the medical community about the scientific basis of botanical
> cannabis-based medicines."
> Aggarwal is
> also on the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of Americans for Safe
> Access (ASA), the largest medical marijuana advocacy organization in
> the U.S.
>
> The AMA's about face on medical marijuana follows an announcement by
> the Obama Administration in October discouraging U.S. Attorneys from
> taking enforcement actions in medical marijuana states. In February
> 2008, a resolution was adopted by the American College of Physicians
> (ACP), the country's second largest physician group and the largest
> organization of doctors of internal medicine. The ACP resolution
> called for an "evidence-based review of marijuana's status as a
> Schedule I controlled substance to determine whether it should be
> reclassified to a different schedule. "The two largest physician
> groups in the U.S. have established medical marijuana as a health care
> issue that must be addressed,"
> said ASA
> Government Affairs Director Caren Woodson. "Both organizations have
> underscored the need for change by placing patients above politics."
>
> Though the CSAPH report has not been officially released to the
> public, AMA documentation indicates that it: "(1) provides a brief
> historical perspective on the use of cannabis as medicine; (2)
> examines the current federal and state-based legal envelope relevant
> to the medical use of cannabis;
> (3)
> provides a brief overview of our current understanding of the
> pharmacology and physiology of the endocannabinoid system; (4) reviews
> clinical trials on the relative safety and efficacy of smoked cannabis
> and botanical- based products; and (5) places this information in
> perspective with respect to the current drug regulatory framework."
>
> Further information:
> Executive Summary of AMA Report:
> http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/AMA_Report_Executive_Summa
> ry.pdf
> Recommendations of AMA Report:
> http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/AMA_Report_Recommendations
> .pdf American College of Physicians resolution:
> http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/other_issues/medmarij
> uana.p
> df
>
> # # #
>
> With over 30,000 active members in more than 40 states, Americans for
> Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based organization of
> patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens
> promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and
> research. ASA works to overcome political and legal barriers by
> creating policies that improve access to medical cannabis for patients
> and researchers through legislation, education, litigation, grassroots
> actions, advocacy and services for patients and the caregivers.
>
> --
> Kris Hermes
> Media Specialist
> Americans for Safe Access
> www.SafeAccessNow.org
> 1322 Webster Street, Suite 402
> Oakland, CA 94612
> Phone: 510-251-1856 x307
> Fax: 510-251-2036
> Email: kris@SafeAccessNow.org
>
> Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is the largest national member-based
> organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and
> concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for
> therapeutic use and research.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Attachment: http://drugsense.org/temp/WnufXBStuokE.html
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> asastaff@lists.safeaccessnow.org
> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
> asastaff-unsubscribe@lists.safeaccessnow.org
>
> For all list information and functions, including changing your
> subscription mode and options, visit the Web page:
> http://lists.safeaccessnow.org/lists/info/asastaff
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----

http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2009/fight-heroin-with-heroin.html

Time to come clean
The Economist
November 5, 2009

Are your drugs laws working? Ask a scientist
By Ben Goldacre
Guardian (UK)
November 7, 2009

 

Downtown Eastside addicts grow tired of fight for prescriptions
By Shadi Elien
Georgia Straight
November 5, 2009

Organization eyes second supervised injection site
Plans include crack inhalation room
By Mike Howell
Vancouver Courier
November 5, 2009 
 

 Amid Rising Violence, Mexicans Fight Back
Government Efforts to Control Drug Turf Wars Aren't Enough, Some Say; Mayor Promises to 'Clean Up' Organized Crime
By David Luhnow and Jose Cordoba
Wall Street Journal
November 6, 2009

The Economist
Nov 5th 2009

Drugs policy

Blinded by science

An outspoken scientist is dumped, leaving the government in a mess

"THE Nutty Professor", as David Nutt is known in the Sun and other newspapers, has never been far from controversy. As chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Mr Nutt, who heads Bristol University's psychopharmacology unit, issued reports on narcotics and recommended where each should be placed on Britain's three-point scale of harmfulness. Such is the seething state of the drugs debate that more or less anything he said was guaranteed to enrage somebody.

Most recently he managed to upset Alan Johnson, the home secretary, who promptly sacked him on October 30th. His offence was to have repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy are both less harmful than the government implies in its classification of them. Cannabis, currently class B, and ecstasy, class A, should both be demoted to class C, he said, adding for good measure that both were less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.

His comments about cannabis, which Mr Johnson described as part of a "campaign" against government policy, were made in a lecture at King's College London in July, which was published as a pamphlet last month. It followed an article in the racy Journal of Psychopharmacology in January, in which Mr Nutt upset ministers by comparing the risk of taking ecstasy with the risk of riding horses, a pursuit that claims a few deaths each year. Both lecture and article represented Mr Nutt's personal views and were clearly billed as such.

The government insists that the professor was sacked not for his scientific views but for overstepping the boundary between advising government and criticising it. But lecturing and publishing papers is hardly something that a full-time academic can give up when he takes on an (unpaid) advisory role. Anger has spread beyond the drugs world: Lord Drayson, the science minister, sent a private e-mail to Downing Street asking if the "big mistake" of Mr Nutt's dismissal could be reversed (it could not), and many of science's great and good have voiced their dismay.

Two more of the 31-member ACMD have since resigned in protest, and at least five others are said to be wavering. Mr Johnson is due to meet remaining members on November 10th to explain himself. Unless he manages to reassure them, other scientific jobs in government may prove harder to fill. By coincidence, the chief scientific adviser to the Home Office is to step down early next year. That job, like many across government, looks decidedly less appealing now.

In the meantime, who would want to take Mr Nutt's place? Even before the latest fiasco the job was wretched. The ACMD's recent reports on cannabis and ecstasy were dismissed by ministers before they were published. Following his article on ecstasy and riding, Mr Nutt was told by the home secretary of the day, Jacqui Smith, to apologise to the families of ecstasy victims for his "insensitivity". (He may have enjoyed her own comically insincere apology last month for over-claiming thousands of pounds in expenses. Ironically for someone who repeatedly turned a deaf ear to the ACMD, she said that she had only been following the recommendations of advisers.)

Unfortunately, the Conservatives are unlikely to handle things very differently if they win power next spring. David Cameron, who leads them, spoke out as a backbencher in favour of reclassifying ecstasy but has now clammed up. His party says only that Mr Nutt should have been sacked sooner. Amid the squabbling, important work is being neglected.

One of the ACMD members to resign was Les King, an expert on Spice, a "herbal high" which is not banned but many think should be. His departure means that work on it has stalled. Not for the first time in the war on drugs, public safety is taking a back seat.

* * *

Economist.com

Nov 5th 2009

Drugs policy

Time to come clean

Politicians need to tell the truth about drugs, not sack those who are brave enough to do so

IT WAS unwise of Richard Nixon to describe the worldwide prohibition of narcotics as a "war on drugs". But the ban, which marked a gloomy 40th anniversary this year, has been very much like a war in one sense: the first casualty has been the truth. The latest victim is David Nutt, an eminent psychopharmacologist who was sacked from his role as chair of Britain's drugs advisory panel on October 30th after a bust-up with the home secretary (see article). Professor Nutt was held to have overstepped the line between advising and interfering when he repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy were less harmful than the government claims.

Quarrels between ministers and their scientific advisers are neither new nor unusual: Winston Churchill harrumphed that experts should be "on tap, not on top", and advisers on everything from energy to education are routinely favoured or frozen out according to the whims of ministers. But in drugs policy the relationship is badly on the rocks, thanks to the yawning gap that has emerged between the evidence that scientists provide and the policies that politicians are prepared to support in public. The guilty party is the politicians-and until they adopt a more realistic approach to drugs, they will struggle to find any serious experts with whom they can get along.

Policy-based evidence

Overruling expert advice is a minister's prerogative. But in drugs policy, advice has come to be disregarded altogether. Despite claiming to follow an evidence-based approach to policy-making, Britain's government has serially ignored research that fails to support its own position. When its drugs experts began a review of the harmfulness of cannabis in 2007 (the third such review in five years, the previous two having failed to come up with the right answer), Gordon Brown, the new prime minister, made it clear that he intended to upgrade the drug on Britain's three-point scale of harm even if the report recommended otherwise (which it duly did). The following year, as the expert panel began a review of ecstasy, the then home secretary ruled out downgrading the drug, whether or not the report found evidence that she should (again, it did).

These repeated run-ins with the facts were embarrassing enough, but the solution that the government has now found in sacking Professor Nutt is more shameful still. The professor's inconvenient remarks were not part of a "campaign" against the government's policies, as ministers have shrilly suggested: they were made in an article in a peer-reviewed pharmacological journal and in a lecture at King's College London. If unpaid academic advisers are sacked for publishing such research, there will soon not be many left.

The debate about drugs has become so divorced from reality that it is hard to imagine what sort of advice-and what exquisite tact-would be required to avoid inadvertently embarrassing politicians over their wilder pronouncements on the subject. Mr Brown, for instance, is on the record as saying that cannabis is "lethal". It is not, and there is no way around that.

Sadly, the evidence-free approach to dealing with drugs seems no less popular with Britain's Conservative opposition. Before he became their leader, David Cameron supported a parliamentary report calling for ecstasy to be downgraded and for the government to get the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs talking about different ways to tackle drugs, including legalising them. Now that he is within a whisker of power, his confidence has deserted him: he says that no drug should be downgraded, and his party's line on Professor Nutt's dismissal is that it should have happened sooner. Such contempt for the facts-and for the lives that an evidence-based approach to drugs could save-is deplorable.

Press Advisory November 6, 2009

Sex Workers, Clients and the Law

You are cordially invited to a FIRST Public Forum,

November 23, 2009

VANCOUVER — Moderated by Madam Scarlett Lake, this public forum sponsored by FIRST will provide the public with an opportunity to learn about the men who buy sex, the experiences of sex workers with their clients, and why neither sex workers nor their clients should be criminalized.

Date: Monday, November 23, 2009


Time: Doors open: 6:30 p.m. Forum: 7 – 9 pm


Location: Vancouver Public Library, 350 W. Georgia, Alma Van Dusen & Peter Kay rooms

Admission by donation

Video (10 mins): 
"A Swedish sex worker on the criminalization of clients" (Pye Jacobssen)

Speakers:




§ Chris Atchison, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University. Topic: "John's Voice"

§ Trina Ricketts, BC Coalition of Experiential Communities; Naked Truth (nakedtruth.ca). Topic: "Trade Secrets" - Results of interviews with clients and sex workers

§ Jody Salerno, BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses. Topic: "The clients who paid me"

§ Katrina Pacey, Pivot Legal Society. Topic: "Why Decriminalize Prostitution?"

Contact

Esther Shannon: 604.254.9963

Tamara O'Doherty: 778.772.2998

FIRST is a national coalition of feminists that advocates for the complete decriminalization of sex work, for both sex workers and clients.

Pushing the drug policy envelope
By Mindelle Jacobs
Winnipeg Sun
November 4, 2009

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/November2009/04/c5665.html
>
> Mandatory minimum sentences fail to deliver, says CAMH
>
> TORONTO, Nov. 4 /CNW/ - Mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related
> offences are an expensive and ineffective approach to substance use
> problems in Canada. That's the message being delivered today by an
> addictions professional at Canada's largest mental health and
> addictions treatment and research hospital to a Senate Committee on
> Bill C-15 - legislation that would create mandatory minimum sentences
> for certain drug-related offences.
>
> Wayne Skinner, deputy clinical director of the Addictions Program at
> the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), has worked in
> substance abuse for more than three decades. He appears at the Senate
> Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs today alongside
> Dr. Gabor Mate, a physician and author with extensive experience in
> addictions.
>
> "The evidence from the U.S. and other jurisdictions tells us that
> mandatory minimum sentences are most effective at increasing prison
> populations and the cost of jailing them," Skinner tells the Senate
> Standing Committee today. "Reducing the demand for illicit drugs by
> investing in addiction treatment, including drug treatment courts,
> have proven to be much more cost effective and successful approaches."
>
> CAMH submitted a brief to both the House of Commons and Senate
> Committees examining Bill C-15. The submission is available at
> www.camh.net . CAMH believes that drug use is fundamentally a health
> problem that should be dealt with within a public health framework.
> Incarcerating large numbers of small scale drug dealers who are
> selling drugs to support their own substance use problem only adds new
> problems such the risk of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C. Also, the U.S.
> experience with mandatory minimums has led to ballooning prison
> populations. This policy is now being reversed in several states and
> resources are instead being directed to drug treatment programs.
>
> "I encourage Senators to reflect on the overwhelming evidence telling
> us that mandatory minimum sentences cost governments more and fail to
> reduce the significant harm and cost of substance abuse," said
> Skinner.
>
> For further information: For more information or to arrange interviews
> contact Michael Torres, CAMH Media Relations,
> 416-595-6015 ormedia@camh.net
>
>
> __._,_.___

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Attachment: http://drugsense.org/temp/PvEVIkrL3Pik.html

NewScientist
Magazine issue 2733
4 November 2009

David Nutt: Governments should get real on drugs

by David Nutt

IF THERE is one thing that politicians can and should do to limit the damage caused by illegal drugs, it is to take careful note of the evidence and develop a rational drug policy. Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead.

I can trace the beginning of the end of my role as chairman of the UK's official advisory body on drugs to the moment I quoted a New Scientist editorial (14 February, p 5). Entitled, fittingly enough, "Drugs drive politicians out of their minds", the editorial asked the reader to imagine being seated at a table with two bowls, one containing peanuts, the other the illegal drug MDMA (ecstasy). Which is safer to give to a stranger? Why, the ecstasy of course.

I quoted these words in the Eve Saville lecture at King's College London in July. This example plus other comments I have made - such as horse riding is more harmful than ecstasy - prompted Alan Johnson, the home secretary, to say that I had crossed the line from science to policy.

This, he said, is why I had to go.

But simple, accurate and understandable statements of scientific fact are precisely what the advisory council is supposed to provide. Why would any scientist take up some future offer of a government advisory post when their advice can be treated with such disdain?

As well as ignoring its own advisers, the UK is falling out of step with international trends. When Portugal softened its drugs laws in 2001, drug use remained roughly constant, but ill health and deaths from drug taking fell. Decriminalisation quietly crept up the agenda in Vienna this year at a meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, where governments heard new, independent evidence on how the harms of criminalisation were outweighing the benefits. In August, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico approved a law decriminalising possession of small amounts of marijuana and other drugs. And just last month, Eric Holder, the US attorney general, instructed federal prosecutors to stop hounding medical users of marijuana in the 14 states where such use is legal.

No one doubts that heavy users of marijuana are risking trouble with their mental health. What I have simply pointed out is that we need a consistent policy, recognising that heavy users of alcohol and tobacco are more numerous and are causing themselves - and others - even more trouble through their indulgence.

Policies that ignore the realities of the world we live in are doomed to fail. This is true for just about all the biggest issues that we confront, from energy and climate to criminal justice, health and immigration. I'm not arguing that science dictate policy; considerations such as cost, practicality and morality also have a role. But scientific evidence should never be brushed aside from the political debate.

The current British government has said repeatedly that it wants its policies to be evidence-based, but actions speak louder than words. On ecstasy, for example, it made policy first, sought advice second - and cynically rejected the advice it was given. The result is shambolic policy-making which gives great cause for concern if that is how governments operate more generally.

The results of a government inventing its own reality and acting on it can be seen in the appalling consequences the George W. Bush presidency had for world peace, the environment and human rights. The message for the British government is a simple one: don't exclude rational argument in order to exploit a visceral public response. Politicians have to win the hearts and minds of their electorate. If your policy is informed by an underlying moral imperative, be open about what that is, and don't try to disguise it with a veneer of pseudo-science. We ignore scientific evidence at our peril.

David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, was chairman of the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs until he was dismissed last week by the UK home secretary.