


Legal weed is 22.5% cheaper on the west coast

There are nine US states with legal recreational marijuana; five on the west coast and four in the east. Read the rest

114 candidates in Mexico's upcoming elections have been murdered, so far


Oregon employers warn that the state has run out of workers who can pass a drug test

Oregon state economists Mark McMullen and Josh Lehner say that employers have told them that they can't fill vacancies because every qualified candidate fails their drug test, which is sometimes mandated by the companies' insurers. Read the rest

Britain's hardline prohibitionist drugs minister is married to a weed grower




Trials confirm the use of psilocybin for depression without the "dulling" effects of traditional antidepressants

The prohibition on psychedelics was memorably described as "the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo" by former UK Drugs Czar David Nutt, and despite the ban, there has been a consistent, determined, very promising (sometimes surprising) drumbeat of scientific papers about the use of psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") and other psychedelics in treating a range of chronic illnesses, including mental illnesses. Read the rest



Big Weed: ten farms could supply all of America with marijuana


CBD is a non-psychoactive compound in marijuana that shows promise in epilepsy and pain therapy, so the DEA wants to class it with heroin




Flawed police drug-test kits, railroading prosecutors and racism: the police-stop-to-prison pipeline

The $2 roadside drug-test kit is the go-to weapon of the War on Drugs, despite its incredibly high failure rate and the scientific consensus that the tests need to be validated in labs later; once you've had a random crumb of sandwich or aspirin identified as drugs by one of these kits, you're almost certain to plead guilty, thanks to the heavy-handed tacts of prosecutors and the disarray of public defenders, and then you're off for prison time and a lifetime as a felon. Read the rest

Californians will get to vote on legal recreational weed

California, the most populous state in the USA and the sixth-largest economy in the world -- will give its residents the chance to vote on an expansive legal recreational week proposal on the ballot paper this coming November. Read the rest

Timothy Leary's archivist on Leary's prison escape, Algerian exile, and Swiss prison-time

Lisa Rein writes, "In less than a year, Timothy Leary was imprisoned in three different continents--and it could've been worse. After escaping from a California prison with the help of the Weatherman Underground and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, he and Rosemary fled Algeria from a 'revolutionary bust' by Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, only to be jailed in Switzerland when President Nixon personally demanded his extradition back to the U.S." Read the rest

Sinaloa cartel flies more aircraft than Aeromexico

Though most of the world's largest narcotics gang's aircraft are a lot smaller than the Mexican flagship carrier's planes, the Sinaloa have flown at least one Boeing 727; the planes fly drugs, gang members and bales of cash. Read the rest

Nixon started the War on Drugs because he couldn't declare war on black people and hippies

Nixon aide/Watergate jailbird John Ehrlichman confessed to Dan Baum that Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs because "We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." Read the rest

Gay Tory MP outs himself as a "poppers" user, slams proposed ban

UK Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, former Minister for Justice, has "outed" himself as a user of poppers -- alkyl nitrites, a psychoactive inhalant often taken before sex -- and decried his party's plan to class poppers as an illegal drug. Read the rest

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