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Feature: Vested Interests of Prohibition I: The Police Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter Issue #542 11 July 2008 StoptheDrugWar.com Website at <http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/542/vested_interests_drug_prohibition_law_enforcement> Drug prohibition has been a fact of life in the United States for roughly a century now. While it was ostensibly designed to protect American citizens from the dangers of drug use, it now has a momentum of its own, independent of that original goal, at which it has failed spectacularly. As the prohibitionist response to drug use and sales deepened over the decades, then intensified even more with the bipart…

Check out my most recent Blog... Ali xx LEAP Blog: June 26, 2008 A Leader in the Movement Canada remains at the forefront of Drug Reform with INSIGHT - Canada’s first Safe Injection/Intravenous Drug Facility. Some cutting edge news came down a few weeks ago that I thought was just too important to miss and which none of us at LEAP Blogged about in detail… Canada’s and the World’s first Safe Injection Site - INSITE - is being threatened once again with Government initiated closure and we as a Country - have stood up in protest! Letters to Editors of local and National newspapers, demonstrations, meetings, conferences and the like are being attend…

Not sure If I posted this already? Either way, here is my most recent LEAP Blog.... Hope you all enjoy! Alison xx Hi Folks… My apologies for not being around again for a while. Not only have I been extremely busy again, I had also run out of cannabis the past few weeks and found it difficult to get out of bed and stay awake thanks to all the pills I take when I have no cannabis. Between being so busy and then dropping like a rock I feel like I've been run over by a train! I SWEAR my Government knows this is how I become when I can`t fill my prescription for this plant. Very disheartening to say the least. Speaking of my being busy, I had another trying m…

Hi Everybody... Please pass this on to whom ever you think should know.... ;-D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIOi_6o9gjY%20 Thanx tons in advance! Love and stuff, Alison xx

The UN is hosting a historical meeting of NGOs to provide input to the next CND review in March 2009: http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/event...rum_070708.html "Global NGO Forum on the 1998-2008 Review of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on illicit drugs. The forum to be held in the Vienna International Centre (Austria) is organized by the Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs, in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The forum will allow civil society to have a say on drug policy through the adoption of a global NGO Declaration along with three topic specific resolutions that will be tabled at the high …

Two more milestones in the failed war on drugs Sandra Kanck MP 2 July 2008 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7576 For those interested in drug laws based on health rather than criminality, June 2008 saw the passing of two anniversaries of note, one at the South Australian level, and the other internationally. In June 2002, the South Australian Drug Summit was held, and the final communiqué recommended a heroin prescription trial and further consideration of the use of cannabis for medical and therapeutic purposes, recommendations which were strongly supported. Six years on, neither of these has happened and, as memories of the Summit recede, the likel…

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7642 July 3, 2008 - Washington, DC, USA Washington, DC: The United State’s top federal anti-drug agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), turned 35-years-old this week, according to US Department of Justice press release. “The Drug Enforcement Administration was created 35 years ago on [July 1] by President Richard Nixon, who through an Executive Order established a single unified command to combat ‘an all-out global war on the drug menace,’” the DOJ release states. “At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents, a budget of less than $75 million, and a presence in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents…

Stolen from http://cannabisnews.com/news/24/thread24054.shtml USA -- The United States has some of the world's most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough "war on drugs" policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world's leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use. The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough p…

Author: Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Jerry Norton Date: 7/7/2008 Source: Reuters Copyright: © Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved HANOI (Reuters) - Police have detained two custodians who were about to harvest their first crop of cannabis, a source of drugs like hashish and marijuana, from a cemetery in Vietnam's capital, a state-run newspaper reported on Monday. Police took in Nguyen Manh Hung, 44, who heads the caretaker team at the cemetery in Hanoi's outer district of Hoang Mai, and Ho A Lau, 46, after the authorities found cannabis plants grown on a 25 square meter (82 square feet) patch, the Vietnam Labour Confederation-run Lao Dong newspaper said.…

Harm minimisation: just say no Miranda Devine June 19, 2008 http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/harm-mi...3770730340.html Three weeks ago, on May 27, Tony and Angela Wood went to a Chinese restaurant to mark what would have been their daughter Anna's 28th birthday, had she lived. As they do each year, they ordered her favourite meal, Peking duck, and remembered the 15-year-old girl who died in 1995 after taking ecstasy for the first time. But while her parents have been touring schools and spreading the message that illegal drug use is never safe, Anna Wood was being co-opted without their permission as a poster girl of the drug harm-minimisation lobby, which has shape…

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6630507.html US Patent 6630507 - Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants Application: filed on 2/02/2001 US Patent Issued on October 7, 2003 Assignee: The United States of America, as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services Abstract Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants…