Search Results: cocaine (264)

StoptheDrugWar.org
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has called for a new direction in drug policy

Colombia Part of Growing Trend in Latin America; Last Week President of Uruguay Called for Legal Regulation of Marijuana
 
Colombia’s Constitutional Court on Friday approved the government’s proposal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine and marijuana for personal use. Anyone caught with less than 20 grams of marijuana or one gram of cocaine for personal use may receive physical or psychological treatment depending on their “state of consumption,” but may not be prosecuted or detained, the court ruled.
Colombia, famed in the 1970s for the “Colombian Redbud” and “Santa Marta Gold” marijuana that flooded the U.S., is part of a growing trend in Latin America.
Last week, the government of Uruguay announced that it will submit a proposal to legalize marijuana under government-controlled regulation and sale, making it the first country in the world where the state would sell marijuana directly to its citizens. The proposal was drafted by Uruguayan President José Mujica and his staff and requires parliamentary approval before being enacted. 

VH1

​Twenty-five years after crack cocaine ravaged American cities, a new VH1 Rock Doc explores how the drug also transformed popular culture, especially hip-hop. The latest addition to the Emmy-winning franchise, “Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation” premieres Sunday, September 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on VH1.

Narrated and executive produced by Ice-T, “Planet Rock” is the first documentary to focus specifically on the connections between crack and hip-hop. Based primarily on the first-person accounts of four famous dealers turned rappers, the film also widens its lens at times to show how crack changed America culturally, socially and politically.

Photo: FOX 43 TV

​A marijuana component helps mitigate cocaine addiction in mice, according to a new study, lending further evidence to the notion that marijuana is an “exit” drug and could become the next big anti-addiction therapy.

The discovery by researchers in China and Maryland was announced in the July 2011 issue of Nature Neuroscience magazine, reports Stephen C. Webster at The Raw Story.
Cannabidiol (CBD), a medically useful component of marijuana that does not produce a “high,” effectively turns down a receptor in the brain that is stimulated by cocaine, the study found.

Photo: DEA
No, it’s still not legal, even in the Marshall Islands.

Cokeheads briefly thought on Wednesday that there was a place where their drug of choice is legal. 

But the Republic of the Marshall Islands said it hasn’t legalized cocaine, nor has it created a no-visa entry program allowing unrestricted access to the Pacific islands nation, reports Erin Thompson of Pacific Daily News.
“We do not, have not, and don’t intend to legalize any substance,” said Soye Brown, acting attorney general for the Marshall Islands.

Photo: Bradenton.com
Raymond Stanley Roberts: “I was thinking about my kids and putting food in their mouths”

​The Florida man who infamously got arrested in Manatee County last week for having marijuana and cocaine allegedly stashed in his butt — ony to later deny to cops that the cocaine wasn’t his — has confessed both controlled substances belonged to him.

Raymond Stanley Roberts told RadarOnline.com he was selling drugs “to support his family.”
“What am I supposed to do to earn money?” Roberts said. “I have two kids and we’re in a recession. No one is hiring. I’m a black man who has put in hundreds of applications for legit work, but always came up empty.”
Roberts was driving his four-year-old son to school when Manatee County Sheriff’s deputies pulled him over for allegedly speeding.
When deputies approached the vehicle, they claimed to smell marijuana coming from Roberts’ car, according to their arrest report.
“I do smoke marijuana,” Roberts admitted to RadarOnline.com.

Photo: Bradenton.com
Raymond Stanley Roberts: “The white stuff is not mine, but the weed is”

​The search of a 25-year-old Florida man following a traffic stop Wednesday morning revealed a bag of marijuana and a bag of cocaine in the driver’s buttocks, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office. The driver said only the marijuana belonged to him.

Raymond Stanley Roberts was pulled over at 8:40 a.m. in Manatee. As deputies approached the Hyundai, they claimed they could smell a “strong odor of marijuana” coming from the vehicle, reports Paradise Afshar at Bradenton.com.
After writing Roberts a speeding ticket, one of the deputies asked him if he smoked marijuana, and when he had done it last. Roberts replied that he smoked pot the night before and there was nothing in the car, according to the arrest report.
He then told the two deputies to search his car.
While searching Roberts’ person, deputies said they felt a “soft object in his buttocks.” Roberts then said, “Let me get it,” and pulled a clear plastic bag containing 4.5 grams of marijuana out of his butt, according to the report.
He was then asked if he was “holding” anything else, and Roberts said no.



Screen Capture: Reality Catcher
The Stop Prop 19 people aren’t interested in your feedback on their little video. This is a one-way conversation, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!

​A far-right conservative political group called SaveCalifornia.com is turning its unwholesome attention from anti-gay marriage legislation, Prop 8, to fighting this year’s pro-marijuana legislation, Prop 19, the legalization measure on November’s California ballot.

The group’s inaugural television ad ignores decades of scientific evidence showing showing otherwise to claim that marijuana is a “gateway drug” leading to methamphetamine and cocaine, and that it’s the addiction most cited by teenagers in drug rehab (failing to mention that most of those teens were forced into “marijuana rehab” under threat of jail).
Tellingly, both comments and the “Like/Dislike” buttons have been turned off on the YouTube video. SaveCalifornia doesn’t want a dialogue with Californians — it wants to lecture Californians.

Photo: Kathleen Rice Campaign
N.Y. Attorney General candidate Kathleen Rice: “It was one of those stupid things that people do in their life and you regret and you move on”

​New York attorney general hopeful Kathleen Rice revealed Tuesday that she dabbled with marijuana and cocaine in her college days.

The Nassau County district attorney, a Democrat, told the New York Daily News that she tried pot and coke “a handful” of times when she was in her early 20s, reports Rich Schapiro.
“It was one of those stupid things that people do in their life and you regret and you move on,” Rice said.
The candidate has talked about her recreational drug use before, according to campaign spokesman Eric Phillips, reports Kathleen Kerr at Newsday.
“It was a mistake and she regrets it,” Phillips said.
But that hasn’t stopped the guessing.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Speculation continues about what anti-pot U.S. Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions could mean for the legal marijuana industry. The Associated Press says cannabis has the upper hand but could still collapse. Fortune says smaller companies, already dealing with larger competitors, can expect more pain.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee say Sessions will get an  contentious confirmation hearing.

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal says Sessions is not a racist, and in fact championed the end of sentencing discrepancies between cocaine, associated with affluent whites, and crack, which devastated inner cities. President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law in 2010. Sessions later said that by granting clemency retroactively to non-violent drug offenders, Obama was abusing the law.

D.C. pot-activists were received warmly at Sessions office but didn’t leave feeling especially reassured. Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D.-N.Y.) aides weren’t as welcoming. “So typical that you are taking this less seriously than Republicans,” an activist said. The whole piece, in USNews, is worth a read, and funny too.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price (R- Ga.), is another staunch prohibitionist who, if confirmed, would have the authority to interfere with state-legal MED access.

I wrote a story for California Sunday about efforts in Oakland to create a diverse cannabis industry. The photos are by Pulitzer winner Preston Gannaway.

 

President Obama discussed legalization at length in an interview with Rolling Stone, conducted the day after the election:

I’ve been very clear about my belief that we should try to discourage substance abuse. And I am not somebody who believes that legalization is a panacea. But I do believe that treating this as a public-health issue, the same way we do with cigarettes or alcohol, is the much smarter way to deal with it. Typically how these classifications are changed are not done by presidential edict but are done either legislatively or through the DEA. As you might imagine, the DEA, whose job it is historically to enforce drug laws, is not always going to be on the cutting edge about these issues.


            [Laughs] What about you? Are you gonna get on the cutting edge?
Look, I am now very much in lame-duck status. And I will have the opportunity as a private citizen to describe where I think we need to go. But in light of these referenda passing, including in California, I’ve already said, and as I think I mentioned on Bill Maher’s show, where he asked me about the same issue, that it is untenable over the long term for the Justice Department or the DEA to be enforcing a patchwork of laws, where something that’s legal in one state could get you a 20-year prison sentence in another. So this is a debate that is now ripe, much in the same way that we ended up making progress on same-sex marriage. There’s something to this whole states-being-laboratories-of-democracy and an evolutionary approach. You now have about a fifth of the country where this is legal.
Obama added that Trump voters “in large numbers” favor decriminalizing.
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