California's Prop 19, on legalizing marijuana, could end Mexico's drug war
By Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge G. Castañeda
Washington Post
September 5, 2010

Britain looks at Portugal's success story over decriminalising personal drug use
System would see those caught with drugs for personal use sent to a 'dissuasion board' instead of being prosecuted
By Peter Beaumont, Mark Townsend and Toby Helm
Guardian (UK)
September 5, 2010

Mexico looks to legalisation as drug war murders hit 28,000
President joins calls for debate after figures reveal extent of violence since launch of military offensive against cartels in 2006
By Jo Tuckman
Guardian (UK)
August 4, 2010

Most want to decriminalize or legalize and tax pot: poll
By Kathleen Harris
Toronto Sun
August 4, 2010

 

Marijuana may cause Canada's economic comedown
A thriving marijuana industry has aided Canada's economy – but political shifts in the US and at home are now threatening this
By Douglas Haddow
Guardian (UK)

 

see attached

The Guardian
Monday 16 August 2010

Leading doctor urges decriminalisation of drugs

Former president of the Royal College of Physicians says blanket ban has failed to cut crime or improve health

Sarah Boseley, health editor

One of the UK's leading doctors said today the government should consider decriminalising drugs because the blanket ban has failed to cut crime or improve health.

"I'm not saying we should make heroin available to everyone, but we should be treating it as a health issue rather than criminalising people," said Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians.

Gilmore put his position on the record publicly today after telling fellows and members of the college last month in a statement that he felt like "finishing my presidency on a controversial note".

He gave his backing to Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, who recently suggested individual use be decriminalised.

"This could drastically reduce crime and improve health," said Gilmore, who added that drugs should still be regulated.

He praised an article published on 13 July in the British Medical Journal by Stephen Rolles, senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which, he said, clearly made the argument for decriminalisation.

Rolles pointed out not only that criminalising drug use had exacerbated health problems such as HIV, which can be spread by the use of contaminated needles, but had created a much larger array of secondary harms, including "vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market, corruption of law enforcement and governments, militarised crop eradication programmes (environmental damage, food insecurity, and human displacement), and funding of terrorism and insurgency."

Decriminalisation in Portugal in 2001, Rolles said, had led to a fall in drug use among young people. A study by the World Health Organisation, he added, has shown that countries taking tough action do not have lower levels of drug use than countries with liberal policies.

The editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr Fiona Godlee, gave her personal support to Rolles' call for decriminalisation.

"He says, and I agree, that we must regulate drug use, not criminalise it," she wrote in the journal.

Danny Kushlik, head of external affairs at Transform, which campaigns for legalisation, said the intervention of senior medical professionals was significant.

"Sir Ian's statement is yet another nail in prohibition's coffin," he said. "The Hippocratic oath says: 'First, do no harm'. Physicians are duty bound to speak out if the outcomes show that prohibition causes more harm than it reduces."

He added: "With a prime minister and deputy prime minister both longstanding supporters of alternatives to the war on drugs, at the very least the government must initiate an impact assessment comparing prohibition with decriminalisation and strict legal regulation."

Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, made his comments in a report in the profession's magazine, in which he said that drug-related crime costs the economy about £13bn a year. There was growing evidence that decriminalisation could free up police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.

Last month, Professor David Nutt, who was sacked as the Labour government's top drugs adviser after saying ecstasy was less harmful than alcohol, said the UK needed a radical new approach to drugs laws, which may include the regulated sale of some drugs.

--
Drugs & Democracy Info <drugs@tni.org>
Transnational Institute (TNI)
De Wittenstraat 25 | 1052 AK Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Tel +31-20-6626608 | Fax +31-20-6757176 http://www.tni.org/drugs http://www.druglawreform.info/ http://www.ungassondrugs.org/ _______________________________________________
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Subject: US: Mapping The Legal Marijuana Industry

Forbes
August 17, 2010

Mapping The Legal Marijuana Industry

Quentin Hardy

OAKLAND, CALIF. - Welcome to Oaksterdam, California's newest, least orthodox tourist attraction. Welcome, possibly, to the future of a multibillion-dollar business around legal marijuana.

Spread over an eight-block area of formerly disused downtown Oakland, the self-described Oaksterdam district neighborhood includes clinics and dispensaries for medical marijuana, coffee shops catering to cannabis patient, pot-themed souvenir shops, specialist law offices and Oaksterdam University, an education center for growing and dispensing marijuana. There are Segway tours, tourists and film crews.

There is also a busy office where a mostly young and energetic staff work to pass Proposition 19, a California ballot initiative that would allow people over 21 to grow, possess and transport marijuana for personal use, subject to local regulation and taxation. They foresee a day when licit marijuana use is widespread, tax revenues reach $1.6 billion despite collapsing prices for the product, and perhaps 100,000 union jobs are created in the legal dope industry.

It is difficult to say what the proposition's chances are in the Nov. 2 vote. The ballot-betting website Intrade puts the odds at about 60-40 against, but that is on relatively small volume. In opinion polls the race is much tighter, though still against it, if a person is asking the question. In automated polls the measure passes overwhelmingly, leading organizers to conclude that the winning swing vote is people who say one thing in public, and vote another way when alone in the ballot booth.

Oaksterdam University's founder, Richard Lee, is one of Prop 19's original proponents. He thinks it will pass, and that legal pot will be an industry "like vintners or brewers... that's why we started a trade school." Oaksterdam's classes involve issues in growing and preparing marijuana, as well as legal and business issues. Lee says 12,000 people have taken classes there over the past three years.

Inside the Prop 19 lobbying office, Dan Rush, a special operations executive with Local 5 of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, figures legal cannabis is good for his business. "This is an industry that should be regulated, and unions are how you do that," he says. "We want to see tens of thousands of good-paying jobs from a dignified industry that has good worker principles." Besides growing and regulating sales, he says, there are jobs to be had in preparation of pot-laced foods, packaging and labeling, transportation, and hemp-based products that use parts of the plant without the drug.

In Oaksterdam, things already have a feel of legalization's normality.
Prices for both cannabis and a doctor's prescription have fallen with increased competition. Lines form outside the dispensaries after 5 p.m., as some very fit-seeming patients get off work. Seeds and plants come with brand names like Purple Dawg and Sweet Tooth. Somewhat like wines described by their grape varieties, these brands carry info on their genetic heritage (Dairy Queen is a cross of U.K. Cheese, Cindy 99 and Romulan, a once-popular brand).

As with many other industries, the real money in legal marijuana may be less in the product as in the means to produce and manage things--think picks and shovels in the gold rush, Cisco routers in the Internet or Halliburton in oil. Prices for cannabis itself may fall. Lee figures an ounce will be "$100, with $50 of that in taxes," down from $300 or more today. But the business of indoor growing equipment makers and nutrient companies is likely to increase, along with lifestyle publications, as localities license home and industrial growers. Ed Rosenthal, a noted expert in the field, lists his consultancy services in one magazine.

Advocates figure they could still lose, but seem encouraged even by the close call of the polls--a 1972 legalization vote lost by two-thirds--as well as the cash-strapped needs of localities. If California goes, they figure, other states will soon follow, but the earlier legalization and storied past will give California a lasting presence in the business.

"I tell growers in Mendocino [County, a noted cannabis producer] to patent processes, create brands," says Rush, the ironically named union organizer. "They need to think about eventually stimulating exports beyond the border to Taiwan, Ecuador--anywhere."
_______________________________________________
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http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/08/20/injecting-truth/

RCMP and the truth about safe injection sites

The Mounties were set to publicly acknowledge the benefits of projects like the Insite facility. Then they backed away.

by John Geddes on Friday, August 20, 2010 2:42pm - 98 Comments

Austin Andrews/Zuma/Keystone/ Arlen Redekop/The Province/ Tom Hanson/CP

It would have been quite a news conference, and it very nearly happened. Last fall, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, after months of intense, private talks, agreed to face the media together to declare their agreement that research shows the "benefits" and "positive impacts" of supervised injection sites for intravenous drug users.
For the RCMP, making such a statement would have been a turning point: the Mounties would have had to distance themselves from dubious studies, commissioned by the force itself, that were critical of Insite, Vancouver's pioneering safe injection facility. And that would have been a politically awkward move for the federal police, since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government is firmly committed to shutting down Insite.

But senior officers seemed ready to take that dramatic step. "I can confirm we are good to go from our end," said Chief Superintendent Bob Harriman, a top RCMP drug enforcement officer in Vancouver, in an email he sent on Oct. 28, 2009, to Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. centre. Harriman's email included "proposed messaging for [a] joint media release" of the RCMP and the research centre. The RCMP would acknowledge "an extensive body of Canadian and international peer-reviewed research reporting the benefits of supervised injection sites and no objective peer-reviewed studies demonstrating harms." As well, Harriman said the RCMP would admit that "reviews" commissioned by the force, which contested the centre's research, "did not meet conventional academic standards."
The proposed joint media release was never issued. Nor did the RCMP officers and the centre's doctors appear together for their planned news conference. According to Montaner, two days before the scheduled event last December—after a venue had been booked at the University of British Columbia and "the banners were ready"—he received a telephone call from Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass, the most senior RCMP officer in British Columbia. "He said, 'Julio, can't do it,' " Montaner recalls. "I said, 'What do you mean, Gary?' He said, 'I'm really sorry, I've been ordered not to go ahead with the news conference.' " Montaner says Bass made it clear that the order came from RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.
Even after that setback, Montaner pursued his grievance further up the RCMP chain of command. He's known for his tenacity. Along with heading the research centre, Montaner is a professor of medicine at UBC, and it was announced recently that he will receive the Order of British Columbia for his groundbreaking AIDS work. A charismatic figure in the international movement to combat the disease, Montaner straddles science and advocacy. When his negotiations with Bass didn't pan out, he pressed on early this year to develop what he describes as a remarkably productive relationship with Deputy Commissioner Raf Souccar, a high-ranking RCMP officer in Ottawa, who is responsible for the force's federal and international operations, and has an extensive background in drug investigations.
Despite forging those key links, Montaner finally failed to get the RCMP to agree to publicly admit any mistakes on Insite. On June 24, his centre instead filed a complaint with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, hoping that the watchdog body would, among other remedies, order the force to acknowledge that it had wrongly tried to discredit the centre's legitimate research demonstrating Insite's benefits. However, the commission sent him a letter late last month saying that sorting out this tangled episode went beyond its mandate. At that point, Montaner told Maclean's his story in an interview and his centre provided key documents supporting his version of events. The RCMP declined to make a senior officer available to be interviewed for this article or to answer any questions.
Insite has been controversial ever since it was established in 2003 as North America's first legal facility where drug addicts could go to inject themselves. Located in the heart of Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside, Insite has 12 booths where users inject the illegal drugs they bring in with them, with nurses standing by. They're given clean syringes, cookers, filters, water and tourniquets. More than 400 overdoses have occurred at the facility, but nobody has ever died there from one. Counsellors and social workers are available to help addicts who want to make a bid to change their lives.
The former Liberal government allowed Insite to open by exempting it from drug enforcement laws for three years. Health Canada provided funding to evaluate it as a sort of pilot project in harm reduction.
Montaner's centre took on the bulk of that research. Although he's emerged as a forceful advocate for Insite, he denies his centre set out to produce supportive findings. "We honestly came into this without knowing if it would be all good, all bad, or somewhere in between," he says.
The main conclusions of more than 30 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine in the U.S. and The Lancet in Britain, were overwhelmingly positive. For instance, addicts who used Insite were found to be more likely to go into detox than those who didn't.
The amount of drug-related litter, like used needles, in the neighbourhood around the site decreased measurably. Insite's nurses treated a lot of injection-related infections.
From the outset, though, Conservative politicians were uncomfortable with Insite. Tony Clement, who is now industry minister but was health minister from 2006 to 2008—the key period when the government's position against the facility hardened from skeptical to staunchly opposed—once called it an "abomination." Active RCMP officers also occasionally voiced skepticism, but the extent of opposition to Insite inside the force wasn't clear. However, the documents assembled by Montaner's centre for its filing to the RCMP complaints commission suggests at least some Mounties were actively seeking to raise doubts about the centre's research, without drawing attention to the force's involvement.
According to the centre, the RCMP commissioned four studies reviewing the stack of articles published in medical and scientific journals. The first two, delivered in 2006 by consultants Raymond Corrado and Irwin Cohen, didn't offer much ammunition to criticize the mainstream research into Insite. Corrado found that the researchers' methodology was "appropriate" and that the "policy inferences made were generally carefully presented." Cohen uncovered no serious problems, but stressed the need for "further empirically sound evaluations."
The RCMP asked for two more reports, by Garth Davies, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, and Colin Mangham, research director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, a group opposed to Insite's harm-reduction model, founded by former Conservative MP Randy White. Both were sharply critical of the academic literature. Mangham faulted the research into Insite for failing to discuss the fact that "only a small percentage of IV drug users use Insite for even a majority of their injections." Davies cast doubt on the statistical validity of the whole body of research into safe injection facilities, including those in Europe. But neither review was published in a peer-reviewed journal, the usual sign that an academic paper stands up to expert scrutiny. Instead, they appeared in 2007 on a website called Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice, a site supported by U.S. groups that advocate a strict line on illicit drugs.
The RCMP's involvement in commissioning the Mangham and Davies reports was subjected to a burst of publicity in the fall of 2008, when the Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit lawyers' group based in the Downtown Eastside, released emails it obtained under the Access to Information Act. In them, police officers discuss strategy surrounding the studies. "Dr. Mangham's report has now been published," reads one email from an RCMP drug enforcement officer. "As per our request, the report has no reference to the RCMP."
Pressing the RCMP to come clean on its role in generating these reports was one goal of Montaner's protracted talks with senior officers. Their conversations started soon after Pivot went public with the incriminating emails on Oct. 8, 2008. Montaner said he was stunned. He called Deputy Commissioner Bass's office, but couldn't reach him until a Saturday. They met that day at Montaner's home. "To his credit," Montaner says, "he showed up at my place not knowing what to expect." That first two-hour meeting ended, he says, with Bass agreeing to look into RCMP involvement in the studies. Many more meetings followed, bringing Bass and his officers together with Montaner and his AIDS researchers.
By last October, the RCMP seemed ready to fess up to the shortcomings of its bid to generate critiques of the centre's research. "Soon after Insite was opened, the RCMP commissioned several reviews on the impact of supervised injecting facilities, including Insite," Harriman said in his email proposing "messaging" for a joint media release. "These reviews, conducted by Cohen and Corrado, concluded that supervised injecting facilities, including Insite, were associated with positive impacts. Subsequent reviews were commissioned by the RCMP or one of its affiliates (i.e. the Addictive Drug Information Council) to provide an alternative analysis of the existing [supervised injection facility] research. The RCMP recognizes that these reviews did not meet conventional academic standards." Harriman's email admits the police should never have waded into the debate: "The RCMP is not qualified to comment or engage in discussion over the merits of this research."
After the stage seemed set for a coordinated public event to clear the air, Montaner says he was shocked when Bass called to tell him the RCMP wouldn't be issuing that mea culpa or participating in any news conference.
Unwilling to give up, Montaner arranged a meeting with an even more senior Mountie, Deputy Commissioner Souccar from the force's Ottawa headquarters, early this year.
Montaner again laid out his case against the RCMP's covert actions. At their first meeting, Souccar repeatedly said he couldn't accept that version of events. But, according to Montaner, Bass, who also attended, repeatedly interjected on points of dispute, saying, "Dr. Montaner is right."
Montaner says Souccar soon came around to sounding more sympathetic to the centre's viewpoint. But on Feb. 12, Souccar dashed the physician's hopes again with a letter. "After considerable reflection, I must respectfully decline any further involvement of the RCMP in any joint media release with your organization relating to supervised injection sites," Souccar wrote to Montaner. He did, however, seem to acknowledge in the letter that the RCMP should never have sought out anti-Insite research in the first place. "I sincerely regret," Souccar wrote, "that the RCMP's best intentions to participate in finding solutions to such an important social issue, unwittingly took us down a path outside our mandate."
Even though Souccar pulled the plug, once and for all, on the idea of a joint news event, he didn't sever ties with Montaner. In fact, Souccar invited Montaner to address a meeting last winter in Vancouver of the leadership of major North American drug enforcement agencies. And Souccar went even further—asking Montaner to set up guided tours of the Insite facility for the same skeptical law enforcement leaders. "It was a great experience," Montaner says.
His respect for Souccar and Bass leaves Montaner suspecting others are to blame for the ultimate failure of his centre and the RCMP to come to terms. "The [centre] draws a very strong distinction between the co-operative response provided by the RCMP leadership in B.C. and Raf Souccar, and the cancellation of the media conference by Ottawa," the centre declared in its statement filed on June 24 with the complaints commission. But exactly who in Ottawa made the decision to cancel is far from clear. A spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, the minister responsible for the federal police force, said his office doesn't know anything about the matter.
Closing down Insite, though, remains a fixed priority for the Conservative government. Senior RCMP officers might have been ready back in 2008 to acknowledge the "extensive body" of studies on the benefits of supervised injection sites, but federal cabinet ministers have never accepted anything of the sort. A key figure in the saga is Clement. At the 2007 annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, he took the doctors to task over the CMA's support for Insite. Clement claimed there was "academic debate going on" over the research into supervised injection, and alluded to new studies "questioning of the research that has already taken place."
It's likely he was referring to the critique of Insite produced for the RCMP, given that his remarks came a few months after Mangham's review was posted on the Internet. Still, Clement appointed his own expert advisory committee to review the research, too. That committee's April 2008 report found that Insite encourages drug users to seek counselling and treatment, and that its public image is positive.
On the facility's local impact, the committee concluded that Insite cuts down on shooting up in the surrounding neighbourhood, without increasing petty crime. However, Clement zeroed in on certain of its findings about Insite's limited impact, such as mathematical modelling that shows the facility probably only saves one addict a year from death by overdose, and an estimate that only five per cent of Downtown Eastside drug injections take place at Insite.
Clement wouldn't renew Insite's exemption from the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act beyond summer 2008, which would have forced the facility to close. But the group that manages Insite took the issue to court and won a reprieve. That complex legal battle continues. Early this year, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the initial decision of a lower court that allowed Insite to stay open. The court ruled, in part, that Insite provides a health service, which brings it under the province's power over health, although there are overlapping federal jurisdictions, including criminal justice. The federal government appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada, which agreed in late June to hear the jurisdictional arguments. (The RCMP cited this ongoing case, along with the centre's application to the complaints commission, as reasons for not answering questions from Maclean's.)
There's a striking contrast between the government's waging of a public campaign against Insite, while top RCMP officers simultaneously engaged in private bridge-building sessions with Montaner. As the politicians sought the power to close Insite, senior Mounties quietly learned about the research into supervised injection. They seemed—based on Harriman's email to Montaner on Oct. 28, 2008—to accept the centre's findings supporting Insite. And they appeared—based on Souccar's letter to him on Feb. 12, 2010—to regret the RCMP's attempts to cast doubt on that research. The question now is whether these revelations about the undisclosed evolution in the RCMP's perspective on the Insite experiment will have any impact on the government's determination to end it.

--
"Only Connect"

The following announcement is sent to you by the Canadian Harm Reduction Network
http://www.canadianharmreduction.com
Please visit our website, check it out and support us by becoming a member.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Please circulate widely . . .

 

Two essential drug / harm reduction conferences this autumn

 

in ... Toronto, Ontario
November 5 - 7, 2010

DARING TO BE SENSIBLE
Canada's only youth-led drug policy reform conference!

hosted by the
Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy,University of Toronto Chapter

Join students, young people, researchers, social workers, policy makers, activists, academics, curious onlookers, and more for an exciting weekend featuring panel discussions on pressing topics in drug policy, interactive workshops, student poster presentations, social events and more. We are bringing together inspiring people to ask what are 'sensible' approaches to drug use and related issues.

Full details on the website:
http://www.cssdp.org/our-campaigns/conference-2010

 

---

 

in ... Austin, Texas
November 18 - 21, 2010

HARM REDUCTION BEYOND BORDERS
The 8th National Harm Reduction Conference 
North America’s major harm reduction conference

sponsored by the
Harm Reduction Coalition

This conference is a place to organize, network, relax, refresh, reboot, and rekindle. It’s a conference of ideas, experiences and passion, and a gathering of a diverse crew of drug users, ex-users, researchers, frontline workers, social workers, doctors, nurses, politicians, policy wonks - all harm reductionists at heart.

Full details on the website:
http://www.8thnationalharmreductionconference.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To unsubscribe from the Canadian Harm Reduction Network’s mailing list, please reply to this message, with the subject of your mail reading "Unsubscribe" (without the quotes).

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Canadian Harm Reduction [mailto:noharm@canadianharmreduction.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:30 PM
To: Young, Sara Kathryn [VC]
Subject: Essential Drug/Harm Reduction Conferences This Autumn

The following announcement is sent to you by the Canadian Harm Reduction Network http://www.canadianharmreduction.com
Please visit our website, check it out and support us by becoming a member.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please circulate widely . . .

Two essential drug / harm reduction conferences this autumn

in ... Toronto, Ontario
November 5 - 7, 2010
DARING TO BE SENSIBLE
Canada's only youth-led drug policy reform conference!
hosted by the
Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy,University of Toronto Chapter Join students, young people, researchers, social workers, policy makers, activists, academics, curious onlookers, and more for an exciting weekend featuring panel discussions on pressing topics in drug policy, interactive workshops, student poster presentations, social events and more. We are bringing together inspiring people to ask what are 'sensible' approaches to drug use and related issues.
Full details on the website:
http://www.cssdp.org/our-campaigns/conference-2010

in ... Austin, Texas
November 18 - 21, 2010
HARM REDUCTION BEYOND BORDERS
The 8th National Harm Reduction Conference
North America's major harm reduction conference
sponsored by the
Harm Reduction Coalition
This conference is a place to organize, network, relax, refresh, reboot, and rekindle. It's a conference of ideas, experiences and passion, and a gathering of a diverse crew of drug users, ex-users, researchers, frontline workers, social workers, doctors, nurses, politicians, policy wonks - all harm reductionists at heart.
Full details on the website:
http://www.8thnationalharmreductionconference.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To unsubscribe from the Canadian Harm Reduction Network's mailing list, please reply to this message, with the subject of your mail reading "Unsubscribe" (without the quotes).