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.

The war on drugs has failed, fuelling higher rates of infection and harming public health and human rights to such a degree that it's time to decriminalize non-violent minor drug offences, according to a new global report.

The authors of the Johns Hopkins-Lancet Commission on Public Health and International Drug Policy call for minor use, possession and petty use to be decriminalized following measurably worsened human health.

Federal health regulators will add their strongest warning labels to the most widely prescribed painkillers, part of a multi-pronged government campaign to stem an epidemic of abuse and death tied to drugs like Vicodin and Percocet.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday plans to add a boxed warning — the most serious type — to all immediate-release opioid painkillers, including some 175 branded and generic drugs.

Even though marijuana use is still illegal federally, there are surprising signs it's going mainstream fast

Marijuana is going mainstream fast, and so is the marijuana industry. In a time of sluggish growth, the pot business is bursting with energy.

It’s a weird mix of righteous exhilaration at the victory of the weed over the dark forces of repression (at least in some places) and people walking around with dollar signs in their eyes. But like it or not, pot is hot.\

Here are some signs of the times:

It's a terrifying fact: More than 47,000 people in America died of drug overdoses in 2014 — in what's been widely called an epidemic. But the biggest killer of this epidemic isn't cocaine, meth, or even heroin; it's totally legal opioid painkillers. Here's how it happened:

Since the 1990s, doctors have been under more and more pressure to treat pain as a serious medical issue. Pharmaceutical companies took advantage of this desire, marketing opioid painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin as a safe, effective solution to pain.

The result: Millions of Americans got hooked on the drugs, and tens of thousands have died from overdoses. In 2014, nearly 19,000 died from overdoses linked to opioid painkillers.

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.

ArcView Market Research has published the fourth edition of its “State of Legal Marijuana Markets,” which it calls “The most comprehensive report on this industry to date.”

The full report, at more than 200 pages, offers forecasts, examines developments and outlines trends in the cannabis industry — with an emphasis on Washington and Colorado markets.

The full report, priced at $497, is available at arcviewmarketresearch.com. Among the comments and other information in an executive summary:

A study that followed children from birth to mid-life found that heavy marijuana users who smoked for years often fared worse as adults than their parents: Many ended up in jobs that paid less, required fewer skills and were less prestigious.

That wasn't so much the case for other people.

"The rest of the people in the study who were not regular and persistent cannabis users ended up in a higher social class than their parents," said Magdalena Cerda, lead investigator and associate professor at the University of California, Davis.

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.” 

The Cannabis CBD Controversy. Cannabis Sativa, the plant commonly known as marijuana, has been controversial since the 1600s. In the early 1920s prohibition of marijuana began and fell under national regulation as a narcotic in 1937. In 1970 the Controlled Substance Act gave it a Schedule 1 classification claiming marijuana had a high potential for abuse and no medicinal value.