US

The hardline drug policies adopted during the 1980s in the “war on drugs”, including mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related crimes, has led to extremely high levels of incarceration in the country. The US has more than 2 million people in its jails – the second highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world – about half of whom were convicted of drugs-related crimes.

Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott says the government has decided not to appeal the Allard v. Canada decision – a February federal court ruling that allows for patients to grow their own medical marijuana.

“We will not be appealing the court’s decision,” Philpott announced to reporters Thursday.

“We will respect the decision of the federal court and as such we are now in a situation where we have responsibility to address the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations and they will be amended accordingly in order to address the concerns of the court.”

Today was the deadline to file an appeal.

As government opens registry for pharmacists wishing to sell marijuana, sales through pharmacies are expected to begin in the second half of this year.

The first country in the world to legalize marijuana sales was Uruguay, a tiny South American nation with a population of only 3.3 million wedged between Brazil and Argentina.

Grassroots groups in Michigan say they’re about to achieve something big. This year, if they get enough petition signatures, voters might get to decide at the ballot box whether to ban fracking and legalize marijuana.

There’s just one problem: the state’s Republican lawmakers are now trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

They are trying to cut us off and force us into court.

Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders' home state of Vermont may become the first state to use legislation to legalize marijuana recreationally without voter initiative if state legislators pass the bill, according to Reuters. In February, the state Senate passed a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana for those over 21 years old starting in 2018, but also ban people from growing plants and selling edibles.

The creation of the bill follows a year of convincing hearings in the Senate about marijuana, and its decision needs to be made before May, Reuters reported. However, having marijuana legalization in the hands of lawmakers would expedite the process, compared to voters'.

Ohio has at least three ballot issues in the works to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Then there's a bill at the Statehouse, possibly more on the way, and a marijuana task force. 

It can be hard to keep the proposals straight. So cleveland.com is laying out the possibilities.

And legalizing marijuana here is looking likely. Ohio voters last year soundly rejected a plan to legalize marijuana for recreational and medicinal use, but polls show more than 8 in 10 Ohioans favor allowing medical use.

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have comprehensive medical marijuana programs, meaning qualifying patients can purchase whole plant marijuana.  

The Massachusetts state senator who chairs a special committee on marijuana came out against legalizing the substance, warning voters about the proposed initiative on track for the November statewide ballot.

"I am opposed to the likely ballot question because this is the wrong time for Massachusetts to go down this road, and a commercial, profit-driven market is the wrong approach to take," Sen. Jason Lewis, a Winchester Democrat and a former McKinsey & Company consultant, told the Boston Globe.

President Richard Nixon and his administration invented the War on Drugs to vilify and unjustly punish African Americans and anti-war hippies, according to a just-published interview with Nixon’s late domestic-policy adviser John Ehrlichman.

The interview with Ehrlichman — published in Harper’s April issue — is so alarmingly dastardly that it’s hard to imagine how Colorado-based journalist Dan Baum (mostly) kept it to himself for all these years.

The 79-year old is running to be London Mayor for the Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol party.

Lee Harris mentions so many jobs in the course of our interview that it becomes hard to keep up. “Once I told my children I’ve done about 40 jobs”, he laughs. That list includes: actor, washing machine salesman, freelance journalist, playwright, house father for delinquent boys, market researcher, mortuary attendant, youth theatre group leader, dishwasher and supply teacher at a secondary modern girls’ school. To denizens of London’s counter-culture, Harris is best known as a spoken word performer, the publisher of Europe’s first cannabis magazine, and the owner of Alchemy, Britain's oldest head shop.

Bernie Sanders is the biggest cannabis legalization advocate to ever seriously contend for the presidency. He’s built a formidable campaign and fundamentally changed the way Hillary Clinton has run, from her policy positions to her messaging to her voter outreach. He dueled Clinton to a dead heat in Iowa, trounced her in New Hampshire, and pulled off a Michigan upset that confounded pollsters and pundits alike. His clear position on cannabis — a complete end to federal prohibition — is seen as a strength when set against Clinton’s half-hearted appeal for “more research.”