The Ohio Senate General Government Committee advanced a terrible bill, SB 56, that would create a legal minefield that re-criminalizes cannabis consumers.
Just as marijuana reform advocates predicted, marijuana in a legal market will be safer for users. In response to Colorado and Washington’s legalization laws, laboratories are springing up that test marijuana for its safety, purity, potency, and active ingredients.
Like alcohol, the regulatory boards in Colorado and Washington will require marijuana products to carry health warnings, ratings for potency, and certification that the product meets safety standards. The regulations are designed to control…
In what may be some sort of modern record for fact-free grandstanding on drug issues, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from the suburbs north of Chicago, has introduced a bill to ratchet up penalties for so-called "super pot". Under Kirk's proposal, penalties would be massively increased for those producing or selling marijuana with THC levels 15% or higher -- to the point where a single plant could land someone in jail for 25 years.
Small problem: THC is, for all practical purposes, nontoxic. Higher-THC…
In mid-May, spurred by a press release from the drug czar's office, the American news media reported with varying levels of hysteria that average marijuana potency had soared past the 10% THC level for the first time. Clearly the sky was falling, or at least was about to.
Small problem: According to the actual report, from the Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, average marijuana potency is only 8.52% -- a fact easily determined by doing something most journalists…
"If something is not legal, you can't regulate it very effectively."
-- Prof. Robin Room, School of Population Health, University of Melbourne
On October 2, the Global Cannabis Commission, a group of top scientists commissioned by the Beckley Foundation, issued its groundbreaking report, "Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate." Your faithful correspondent was able to attend the daylong seminar in which the report was discussed, held in the distinctly imposing Moses Room of the House…
It was probably inevitable: Lacking actual facts to make their case, opponents of Question 2 in Massachusetts have begun spinning fictional scare stories in order to frighten voters out of reforming that state's marijuana laws.
Question 2 would replace the current criminal penalties for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults with a civil fine. Marijuana would still be illegal, but simple possession of a small amount wouldn't require arrest, booking, and all the time and expense that…
I promise, we will not do a new post every time an ONDCP official lies. We'd never get any work done. But the falsehoods uttered by deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns in this interview in the Arcata Eye, a small northern California paper, are so blatant that they deserve mention. To avoid having to write a War and Peace-length tome, I'll focus on just two:
LIE #1: Tough laws and enforcement are reducing marijuana use: Burns says, "drug use is down in the United States dramatically since 2001 ... So we…
An editorial in the July 18 New York Times worries about rising drug overdose deaths among young people, but misleadingly brings marijuana into the picture, for no good reason.
While the Times is right to raise alarm over rising drug overdose deaths among youth, references to marijuana in that context are both puzzling and misleading.
Marijuana has never caused a medically documented fatal overdose. Because THC does not suppress vital functions such as breathing, the consensus among researchers…
