Search Results: united nations (90)

By allowing Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C. voters to legalize limited amounts of cannabis for personal use, the United States has violated United Nations conventions. That’s the gripe from the head of the U.N. director of the Office on Drugs and Crime, Yury Fedotov, who says he plans to take official actions.
“I don’t see how (the new laws) can be compatible with existing conventions,” Fedotov told reporters this week.

The head of the United Nations’ International Narcotics Control board says that Uruguay didn’t consult them before the country moved forward with the “surprising” legalization of limited amounts of cannabis earlier this month.
To that, Uruguayan president Jose Mujica says: bullshit, it wasn’t a surprise to anyone who was paying attention. Further, Mujica says he was open to talking about it with anyone and everyone who asked.

John Moore
A man smokes a joint at a 4-20 celebration in front of the state capitol building, April 20, 2010, Denver, Colorado

By Artemis Hendy
Special to Toke of the Town
From all over the world, people regularly make hazy pilgrimages to the Mecca of cannabis smoking, Amsterdam. It is not only home to liberal drug laws and a huge selection of cannabis cafes; it is also a stunningly beautiful city with picture perfect canals all over the place, historic churches lurching out of the scenery and quaint buildings on every corner. You can’t help but want to move there. 
But chances are you have been there and bought the t-shirt — and now, Amsterdam is threatening to ban foreign “weed tourists,” anyway.
So why not try an alternative cannabis-conscious destination? Such as…

Photo: Green Patriot
David Bronner, Dr. Bronner’s Natural Soaps: “Cannabis for me is a daily sacrament and a communion that at the end of each day helps me get past my small petty self and find my moral center”

​With the election less than a month away, the campaign to pass Proposition 19, California’s marijuana legalization initiative, is pulling in some high-dollar donations.

The owners of a natural soap company and a hemp clothing store announced on Thursday a $100,000 contribution to pay for a voter registration drive aimed at California’s college students, reports John Hoeffel of The Los Angeles Times. That donation followed the contribution of $100,000 on Monday by Napster co-founder Sean Parker and the recent donation of $50,000 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, based in Escondido, Calif., announced the $100,000 donation to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) in The Huffington Post. Bronner put up $75,000, and the founders of Capitol Hemp in Washinton, D.C., kicked in $25,000.
“Something like this will benefit everybody in America, and we just want to do our small part,” said Alan Amsterdam, co-owner of Capitol Hemp. “It’ll trickle down to the rest of the states.”

Photo: Horsma / Hamppuforum, Wikimedia Commons
Sweet Tooth #3 cannabis bud, grown in Finland

​For all the progress toward a European Union, there is still no unified approach to medical marijuana in Europe, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Cannabis is legal for treating certain illnesses in the Netherlands, but Sweden, for example, doesn’t recognize any medical use for the herb at all.
Legal expert Catherine Sandvos of the Dutch Cannabis Bureau (a government agency providing high-quality medical marijuana) told the Journal that cannabis is just “too controversial and too political” to even be on the European agenda.
The Dutch have led the continent in legalizing medical marijuana, which is treated separately from the recreational cannabis available at Amsterdam’s coffee shops.

Your Black Bloggers

​Latin American Presidents’ Calls For Legalization Debate Go Unheeded At UN Drug Policy Meeting

The annual Drug War meeting of the United Nations is just wrapping up in Vienna, and sadly, none of the sentiments recently expressed by Latin American presidents about the need to consider legalization were raised during the sessions.
“Alarmingly, the U.S. even opposed amending one of its resolutions to include mention of the need to consider human rights when implementing drug policies,” Tom Angell, media relations director at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), told Toke of the Town on Friday morning.

Even while several Latin American presidents are calling for an outright debate on drug legalization, delegates at the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting this week failed to even discuss a change in the global prohibitionist drug treaties, reports a group of judges, prosecutors and jailers who were at the meeting in Vienna to promote reform.

Photo: Shroomery
Defiant Bolivian President Evo Morales — himself a former coca grower — holds up a coca leaf. Due to the United Nations’ banning of the ancient practice of chewing coca leaves, Bolivia is moving toward withdrawing from the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

​The South American nation of Bolivia is set to withdraw from the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, adopted in 1961 to outlaw “illicit substances” across the planet. It plans the move in protest of the U.N.’s classification of coca leaves as an illegal drug.

President Evo Morales — who, not coincidentally, is also leader of one of the country’s biggest coca producers’ unions — has asked the Bolivian Congress to pass a law that would take the nation out of the Single Convention, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Morales, an Aymara Indian who came to power as the leader of coca growers in the Chapare region, has moved away from the forced eradication of coca plantations while at the same time stepping up efforts against cocaine traffickers, with record seizures.

Graphic: ficiency.com

​Hear the latest from those prohibitionist drug warriors at the United Nations? They don’t like medical marijuana, and they’re offering free (and unsolicited) input to the 14 states in the U.S. that have legalized the medicinal use of cannabis.

The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) attempts to meddle in marijuana reform in the United States were denounced by the Marijuana Policy Project on Thursday.
The INCB, which is currently meeting in Vienna, Austria, said in a recent report that they were “deeply concerned” that the 14 U.S. states that have medical marijuana laws are sending the “wrong message to other countries.”
And here you were thinking that American states got to decide for themselves what “messages” to send! Silly you, they’re supposed to get the permission of the United Nations, first!
“The last thing the INCB should be doing is meddling in our states’ affairs,” said Aaron Houston, MPP director of government relations.

Graphic: TalkLeft
The United Nations wants us to stop questioning the almighty Drug War

​A fast growing movement in Latin America to relax the laws against marijuana and other illegal drugs may — horrors! — undermine the global Drug War, according to a United Nations group.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said in its annual report, released Wednesday, that is is “concerned” that Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico have decriminalized possession of drugs, particularly marijuana, for personal use reports Lucia Baldomir at Bloomberg Business Week.
The decrim movement “poses a threat” to the “coherence and effectiveness” (as if it ever had any of either) of the international Drug War if not “resolutely countered,” according to the report, and besides that, it sends “the wrong message to the general public.”
Hey, INCB, I guess you think the “general public” doesn’t have any say in policy matters? Maybe you’re the one with the same old “wrong message,” there in your ivory tower in Vienna. Have you considered that maybe people are beginning to see the folly of locking people up for growing and using an herb?
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