As Conservatives target Trudeau, doctors' help sought for anti-marijuana campaign Ottawa Citizen August 13, 2014

 

 

 

Are police turning 'a blind eye' to pot charges? 'It's kind of the new vagrancy charge,' criminologist says CBC News August 12, 2014

 

 

Legalizing pot is OK, but not a priority for Canadians: poll CTV News August 12, 2014

 

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/British+Columbia/ID/2488563779/

Green College Special Lecture

http://www.greencollege.ubc.ca/whats_on/index/events1031/2014-09.php

 

Ayahuasca, Psychedelic Studies and Health Sciences: The Politics of Knowledge and Inquiry into an Amazonian Plant Brew

Kenneth W. Tupper, School of Population and Public Health , UBC; Beatriz C. Labate, Visiting Professor, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico; Green College Society Member ('06-'07)

 

Coach House, Green College, 6201 Cecil Green Park Road – University of British Columbia

Wednesday, September 10^th, 2014 – 5:00-6:30 p.m.

 

Abstract:

This talk offers critical sociological and philosophical reflections on ayahuasca and other psychedelics as objects of scientific research in medicine and health, situating current scientific inquiry on ayahuasca in the broader context of how early modern European social trends and intellectual pursuits translated into new forms of empiricism and experimental philosophy, but later evolved into a form of dogmatism that convenienced the political suppression of academic inquiry into psychedelics. Applying ideas from the field of science and technology studies (STS), Tupper considers how ayahuasca's myriad ontological representations in the 21st century—plant teacher, traditional medicine, religious sacrament, material commodity, cognitive tool, illicit drug—influence our understandings of it as an object of inquiry. He explores epistemological issues related to ayahuasca studies, including how the indigenous and mestizo concept of "plant teacher" or the notion of psychedelics as "cognitive tools" may impact understandings of knowledge. Should scientists engaged in ayahuasca research be expected to have personal experiences with the brew, and will this help or hinder the objectivity of their pursuits? He concludes with reflections on the politics of psychedelic research and impediments to academic knowledge production in the field of psychedelic studies.

 

UBC Campus Map - Green College location: http://www.maps.ubc.ca/PROD/index_detail.php?show=y,n,n,n,n,y&bldg2Search=n&locat1=412

 

 

 

Scientific American Psychedelic Drugs Hold Medical Promise Scientific American Almost immediately after Albert Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic properties of LSD in the 1940s, research on psychedelic drugs took off. Flag as irrelevant

 

The New York Times
July 30, 2014

What Science Says About Marijuana
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/opinion/what-science-says-about-marijuana.
html

By PHILIP M. BOFFEY

For Michele Leonhart, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, there is no difference between the health effects of
marijuana and those of any other illegal drug. "All illegal drugs are bad
for people," she told Congress in 2012, refusing to say whether crack,
methamphetamines or prescription painkillers are more addictive or
physically harmful than marijuana.

Her testimony neatly illustrates the vast gap between antiquated federal law
enforcement policies and the clear consensus of science that marijuana is
far less harmful to human health than most other banned drugs and is less
dangerous than the highly addictive but perfectly legal substances known as
alcohol and tobacco. Marijuana cannot lead to a fatal overdose. There is
little evidence that it causes cancer. Its addictive properties, while
present, are low, and the myth that it leads users to more powerful drugs
has long since been disproved.

That doesn't mean marijuana is harmless; in fact, the potency of current
strains may shock those who haven't tried it for decades, particularly when
ingested as food. It can produce a serious dependency, and constant use
would interfere with job and school performance. It needs to be kept out of
the hands of minors. But, on balance, its downsides are not reasons to
impose criminal penalties on its possession, particularly not in a society
that permits nicotine use and celebrates drinking.

Who Got Hooked

An Institute of Medicine study found dependency rates for marijuana were far
lower than those for other substances.

PERCENT

OF GENERAL

POPULATION

WHO HAD

EVER USED:

OF THOSE USERS, PERCENT WHO EVER

BECAME DEPENDENT ON THE DRUG:

Tobacco

Heroin

Cocaine

Alcohol

Anti-anxiety drugs

Marijuana

76

2

16

92

13

46

%

32%

23

17

15

9

9
Source: Institute of Medicine, 1999

Marijuana's negative health effects are arguments for the same strong
regulation that has been effective in curbing abuse of legal substances.
Science and government have learned a great deal, for example, about how to
keep alcohol out of the hands of minors. Mandatory underage drinking laws
and effective marketing campaigns have reduced underage alcohol use to 24.8
percent in 2011, compared with 33.4 percent in 1991. Cigarette use among
high school students is at its lowest point ever, largely thanks to tobacco
taxes and growing municipal smoking limits. There is already some early
evidence that regulation would also help combat teen marijuana use, which
fell after Colorado began broadly regulating medical marijuana in 2010.

Comparing the Dangers As with other recreational substances, marijuana's
health effects depend on the frequency of use, the potency and amount of
marijuana consumed, and the age of the consumer. Casual use by adults poses
little or no risk for healthy people. Its effects are mostly euphoric and
mild, whereas alcohol turns some drinkers into barroom brawlers, domestic
abusers or maniacs behind the wheel.

An independent scientific committee in Britain compared 20 drugs in 2010 for
the harms they caused to individual users and to society as a whole through
crime, family breakdown, absenteeism, and other social ills.
Adding up all the damage, the panel estimated that alcohol was the most
harmful drug, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana ranked eighth,
having slightly more than one-fourth the harm of alcohol.

Federal scientists say that the damage caused by alcohol and tobacco is
higher because they are legally available; if marijuana were legally and
easily obtainable, they say, the number of people suffering harm would rise.
However, a 1995 study for the World Health Organization concluded that even
if usage of marijuana increased to the levels of alcohol and tobacco, it
would be unlikely to produce public health effects approaching those of
alcohol and tobacco in Western societies.

Most of the risks of marijuana use are "small to moderate in size," the
study said. "In aggregate, they are unlikely to produce public health
problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and
tobacco."

While tobacco causes cancer, and alcohol abuse can lead to cirrhosis, no
clear causal connection between marijuana and a deadly disease has been
made. Experts at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the scientific arm of
the federal anti-drug campaign, published a review of the adverse health
effects of marijuana in June that pointed to a few disease risks but was
remarkably frank in acknowledging widespread uncertainties.
Though the authors believed that legalization would expose more people to
health hazards, they said the link to lung cancer is "unclear," and that it
is lower than the risk of smoking tobacco.

The very heaviest users can experience symptoms of bronchitis, such as
wheezing and coughing, but moderate smoking poses little risk. A 2012 study
found that smoking a joint a day for seven years was not associated with
adverse effects on pulmonary function. Experts say that marijuana increases
the heart rate and the volume of blood pumped by the heart, but that poses a
risk mostly to older users who already have cardiac or other health
problems.

How Addictive Is Marijuana? Marijuana isn't addictive in the same sense as
heroin, from which withdrawal is an agonizing, physical ordeal. But it can
interact with pleasure centers in the brain and can create a strong sense of
psychological dependence that addiction experts say can be very difficult to
break. Heavy users may find they need to take larger and larger doses to get
the effects they want. When they try to stop, some get withdrawal symptoms
such as irritability, sleeping difficulties and anxiety that are usually
described as relatively mild.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine, the largest association of
physicians specializing in addiction, issued a white paper in 2012 opposing
legalization because "marijuana is not a safe and harmless substance" and
marijuana addiction "is a significant health problem."

Nonetheless, that health problem is far less significant than for other
substances, legal and illegal. The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of
the National Academy of Sciences, said in a 1999 study that 32 percent of
tobacco users become dependent, as do 23 percent of heroin users, 17 percent
of cocaine users, and 15 percent of alcohol drinkers.
But only 9 percent of marijuana users develop a dependence.

"Although few marijuana users develop dependence, some do," according to the
study. "But they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs
(including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears to be
less severe than dependence on other drugs."

There's no need to ban a substance that has less than a third of the
addictive potential of cigarettes, but state governments can discourage
heavy use through taxes and education campaigns and help provide treatment
for those who wish to quit.

Impact on Young People One of the favorite arguments of legalization
opponents is that marijuana is the pathway to more dangerous drugs. But a
wide variety of researchers have found no causal factor pushing users up the
ladder of harm. While 111 million Americans have tried marijuana, only a
third of that number have tried cocaine, and only 4 percent heroin. People
who try marijuana are more likely than the general population to try other
drugs, but that doesn't mean marijuana prompted them to do so.

Marijuana "does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the
cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug
abuse," the Institute of Medicine study said. The real gateway drugs are
tobacco and alcohol, which young people turn to first before trying
marijuana.

It's clear, though, that marijuana is now far too easy for minors to obtain,
which remains a significant problem. The brain undergoes active development
until about age 21, and there is evidence that young people are more
vulnerable to the adverse effects of marijuana.

A long-term study based in New Zealand, published in 2012, found that people
who began smoking heavily in their teens and continued into adulthood lost
an average of eight I.Q. points by age 38 that could not be fully restored.
A Canadian study published in 2002 also found an I.Q.
loss among heavy school-age users who smoked at least five joints a week.

The case is not completely settled. The New Zealand study was challenged by
a Norwegian researcher who said socio-economic factors may have played a
role in the I.Q. loss. But the recent review by experts at the National
Institute on Drug Abuse concluded that adults who smoked heavily in
adolescence had impaired neural connections that interfered with the
functioning of their brains. Early and frequent marijuana use has also been
associated with poor grades, apathy and dropping out of school, but it is
unclear whether consumption triggered the poor grades.

Restricting marijuana to adults is more important now that Colorado
merchants are selling THC, the drug's active ingredient, in candy bars,
cookies and other edible forms likely to appeal to minors. Experience in
Colorado has shown that people can quickly ingest large amounts of THC that
way, which can produce frightening hallucinations.

Although marijuana use had been declining among high school students for
more than a decade, in recent years it has started to climb, in contrast to
continuing declines in cigarette smoking and alcohol use. Marijuana was
found -- alone or in combination with other drugs -- in more than
455,000 patients visiting emergency rooms in 2011. Nearly 70 percent of the
teenagers in residential substance-abuse programs run by Phoenix House,
which operates drug and alcohol treatment centers in 10 states, listed
marijuana as their primary problem.

Those are challenges for regulators in any state that chooses to legalize
marijuana. But they are familiar challenges, and they will become easier for
governments to deal with once more of them bring legal marijuana under tight
regulation.


--
Transnational Institute (TNI)
Drugs & Democracy Programme
De Wittenstraat 25
1052 AK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 20 662 66 08
Fax: + 31 20 675 71 76
Email: drugs@tni.org
http://www.druglawreform.info/en/home
http://www.tni.org/work-area/drugs-and-democracy

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https://lists.tni.org/mailman/listinfo/dd-world

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http://io9.com/the-world-health-organization-wants-to-decriminalize-se-1607894662  

The World Health Organization Wants to Legalize Sex Work and Drugs

Annalee Newitz

Today 11:29am

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released guidelines for helping to prevent the spread of HIV in key populations. The group, which also monitors the globe for pandemic outbreaks, says we have to decriminalize sex work and drugs if we want to stop HIV.

HIV can be controlled with medications and safer sex, especially among people in the developed world who can afford treatment. But outside these pockets of privilege, the virus continues to be a health problem of epidemic proportions. Following the principles that many epidemiologists recommend, the WHO seeks to contain the spread of HIV by identifying key populations where it spreads the most quickly. By bringing treatment to these groups, doctors block the main avenues that the virus uses to get into the general human population.

How to stop a pandemic (and how to make it worse)

We already have many of the medicines we need to kill pandemic diseases. But to stop a pandemic…Read more

This new report explains who those key populations are, and offers ways we can stop HIV from spreading among their members. These populations include men who have sex with men, transgendered people, people who use or inject drugs, sex workers, and certain groups of adolescents.

What unites these groups is that their activities are either illegal or heavily stigmatized in many parts of the world. That means that they are unlikely to seek out medical help or advice simply because they don't want to be arrested for being gay or having sex for money. In the case of adolescents, many live in countries where they need parental permission to get birth control or medical care. So they, too, must hide their activities from doctors to avoid being "turned in" to their parents.

When you have populations of people who fear that a trip to the doctor may land them in jail, it makes sense that those populations won't follow medical guidelines about safer sex or clean needles. Either they don't know how to reduce their risks; or if they do, they don't have have access to materials that would allow them to have sex or inject drugs safely.

And that's why the WHO is calling for all countries to decriminalize the behaviors and identities of all these groups so that they can get the health care they need.

Under a section in the report called "decriminalizing the behavior of key populations," the WHO writes:

Supporting the health and well-being of key populations whose sexual behaviours, drug use, gender expression or perceived sexual orientation are currently criminalized may require changing legislation and adopting new policies and protective laws in accordance with international human rights standards. Without protective policies and decriminalization of the behaviour of key populations, barriers to essential health services will remain; many people from key populations may fear that seeking health care will expose them to adverse legal consequences.

Specifically they suggest that all countries immediate decriminalize homosexuality and transgender identities. They also want countries to decriminalize sex work and drugs. Finally, they want countries to allow adolescents to receive reproductive health care without notifying their parents.

Here's how the report puts it:

Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize same-sex behaviours.

Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration. Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize the use of clean needles and syringes (and that permit NSPs) and that legalize OST for people who are opioid-dependent. Countries should ban compulsory treatment for people who use and/or inject drugs.

Countries should work toward decriminalization of sex work and elimination of the unjust application of non-criminal laws and regulations against sex workers. The police practice of using possession of condoms as evidence of sex work and grounds for arrest should be eliminated.

Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize same-sex behaviours and nonconforming gender identities. Countries should work towards legal recognition for transgender people.

Countries are encouraged to examine their current consent policies and consider revising them to reduce age-related barriers to HIV services and to empower providers to act in the best interest of the adolescent. It is recommended that sexual and reproductive health services, including contraceptive information and services, be provided for adolescents without mandatory parental and guardian authorization/notification.

The WHO isn't known for taking controversial stances on social issues. Instead, they are a pragmatic and clear-eyed organization that stands for public health above all else. Though this report sounds radical, it is actually just plain common sense when looked at from a medical perspective.

What the WHO sees are groups of at-risk people who can't get health care because they have been stigmatized for behaviors that do not harm anyone. The solution isn't to crack down on these groups more, because we've already seen that strategy causes HIV to spread — not just to at-risk groups, but beyond them. The at-risk group becomes a vector that harms all of society. So the only sane solution is to decriminalize things like sex work, so that sex workers get proper health care and don't endanger their clients (who in turn endanger their partners, and so on).

The point is that criminalizing sex work and drug use winds up harming everyone. And the WHO is trying to eliminate that harm, but going to the source of the problem.

Read the full study on the WHO's website.

 

 

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/07/16/most_canadians_want_pot_laws_relaxed_poll_show.html

 

Most Canadians want pot laws relaxed, poll shows

Seven out of ten Canadians polled in a survey for the Department of Justice said they support decriminalization or legalization of marijuana.

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Keith Beaty / Toronto Star file photo

In an Ipsos-Reid poll commissioned by the Department of Justice 37.3 per cent said Ottawa should legalize marijuana, while 33.4 per cent said the possession of small amounts should be decriminalized.

By: Alex Boutilier and Tonda MacCharles Ottawa Bureau, Published on Wed Jul 16 2014

OTTAWA—A strong majority of Canadians think the federal government should either legalize marijuana or decriminalize the possession of small amounts, according to a new Department of Justice poll obtained by the Star.

The poll, kept secret by the Conservatives for months, found 70 per cent of respondents believe pot laws should be loosened.

Of the 3,000 respondents, 37.3 per cent said the government should legalize marijuana, while 33.4 per cent said the possession of small amounts should be decriminalized.

Only 13.7 per cent of respondents supported the status quo, while 12 per cent said they believe Ottawa should impose harsher penalties.

The Conservatives have made Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s pro-legalization stance a cornerstone of their recent attack ads, suggesting legalizing marijuana would make it the drug more accessible to children. But the poll numbers suggest more Canadians support Trudeau’s stance on marijuana, or the New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair’s support for decriminalization, than leaving the laws as is.

The Department of Justice commissioned the $175,000 Ipsos-Reid poll after the Supreme Court’s Bedford decision in December, which struck down certain prostitution laws as unconstitutional. The telephone poll focused almost exclusively on opinions on marijuana laws and prostitution, as did additional focus groups conducted by the pollster in seven cities.

While most respondents to the poll were in favour of loosening possession laws, the focus groups were less sure about the current laws and whether they should be changed.

“There was a great deal of confusion about whether the possession of small amounts of marijuana is a crime, a ticketable offence, or completely legal,” the report, which the Conservatives intended to withhold until the end of July, states.

“Participants often used the two terms ‘legalization’ and ‘decriminalization’ interchangeably and did not demonstrate a clear understanding of the distinction between the two.”

 

Hi all,

In response to new federal anti-spam legislation I am now required to ask you if you would like to remain on this drug policy information list.  This list is not intended for any commercial function as I am not selling anything to the recipients of this list. At any point in the future should you wish to be removed from this list just “reply” with the simple requrest “please take me off this list”.

If you would like to remain on this list please “reply” with the statement “please keep me on this drug policy information list”.

Thanks,

Mark Haden