SAFER CIA

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal

2012-02-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and replacing it with a system of treatment for problem users and addicts.

Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. One decade after this unprecedented experiment, drug abuse is down by half:

Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.
"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
The number of addicts considered "problematic" — those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.
Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.
"This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies."

Many of these innovative treatment procedures would not have emerged if addicts had continued to be arrested and locked up rather than treated by medical experts and psychologists. Currently 40,000 people in Portugal are being treated for drug abuse. This is a far cheaper, far more humane way to tackle the problem. Rather than locking up 100,000 criminals, the Portuguese are working to cure 40,000 patients and fine-tuning a whole new canon of drug treatment knowledge at the same time.

None of this is possible when waging a war. - Forbes.com

Dagga not linked to middle age mental decline

2012-01-04T09:21:00.001-08:00

Middle-aged adults whose memories have grown hazy can’t blame occasional pot smoking or other light illicit drug use for their forgetfulness, according to a British study, although experts warn heavy, prolonged use could harm mental functions.

The study, carried in the American Journal of Epidemiology, tested the mental function and memory of nearly 9 000 Britons at age 50 and found that those who had used illegal drugs as recently as in their 40s did just as well, or slightly better, on the tests than peers who had never used drugs.

Marijuana was by far the most common indulgence for the participants — who were surveyed at age 42 about current or past drug use, then tested at age 50 — with 6% saying they had used it in the past year, while one-quarter said they had ever used it.

Other drugs they were asked about included amphetamines, LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine and ecstasy — with anywhere from 3% to 8% of study participants saying they’d ever used those drugs.

“Overall, at the population level, the results seem to suggest that past or even current illicit drug use is not necessarily associated with impaired cognitive functioning in early middle age,” said lead researcher Alex Dregan, of King’s College London.

“However, our results do not exclude possible harmful effects in some individuals who may be heavily exposed to drugs over longer periods of time.”

A small subset of participants who said they had ever been treated for their drug use, which could suggest heavy or addicted drug use, did not fare as well cognitively at 50, but there were too few of them to draw meaningful conclusions, the study authors noted.

Dregan’s team used data on 8 992 42-year-olds participating in a UK national health study, who were asked if they had ever used any of 12 illegal drugs. Then, at the age of 50, they took standard tests of memory, attention and other cognitive abilities.

Overall, the study found, there was no evidence that current or past drug users had poorer mental performance. In fact, when current and past users were lumped together, their test scores tended to be higher.

But that advantage was small, the researchers said, and might just reflect another finding — that people who’d ever used drugs generally had a higher education level than non-users.

“In a Western population of occasional drug users, this is what you’d expect to see,” said John Halpern, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, who has studied the potential cognitive effects of drug use.

“In some ways, this is not surprising. The brain is resilient.”

Though some studies have found that drugs like marijuana and cocaine may cloud thinking, memory and attention in the short term, the current findings support the notion that those effects may be temporary, Dregan’s team said.

Halpern noted that work focusing on people who have smoked pot regularly for years showed that once they stop the drugs, their deficits on cognitive tests improve after a month.

Still, he said this should not be taken as an endorsement of drug use, noting that the current study did not rule out the possibility of lasting negative cognitive effects from heavy, prolonged drug use.

- Timeslive

Report shows fewer traffic fatalities after states pass medical-pot laws

2011-11-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

The passage of state medical-marijuana laws is associated with a subsequent drop in the rate of traffic fatalities, according to a newly released study by two university professors.

The study — by University of Colorado Denver professor Daniel Rees and Montana State University professor D. Mark Anderson — found that the traffic-death rate drops by nearly 9 percent in states after they legalize marijuana for medical use. The researchers arrived at that figure, Rees said, after controlling for other variables such as changes in traffic laws, seat-belt usage and miles driven. The study stops short of saying the medical-marijuana laws cause the drop in traffic deaths.

"We were pretty surprised that they went down," Rees said Tuesday.
The study was posted this month on the website of the Bonn, Germany- based Institute for the Study of Labor and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Rees said the main reason for the drop appears to be that medical-marijuana laws mean young people spend less time drinking and more time smoking cannabis. Legalization of medical marijuana, the researchers report, is associated with a 12-percent drop in the alcohol-related fatal-crash rate and a 19-percent decrease in the fatality rate of people in their 20s, according to the study.

The study also found that medical- marijuana legalization is associated with a drop in beer sales. "The result that comes through again and again and again is (that) young adults . . . drink less when marijuana is legalized and traffic fatalities go down," Rees said.

The study is sure to add fuel to a debate over the impacts of Colorado's medical-marijuana boom on traffic safety, which has embroiled cannabis advocates and law enforcement officials for more than a year.

The state legislature this year rejected a bill that would have set a threshold of THC — the psychoactive chemical in marijuana — that would qualify someone as too stoned to drive. After more research and a fractious debate, the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice will not recommend that the legislature try again with such a bill this year.

"The working group was not able to come to consensus," said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson, who led the subcommittee that studied the issue.

Much of that debate has focused on marijuana's impact on an individual's driving abilities. Rees and Anderson say their study does not mean it is safer to drive stoned than drunk. Instead, they write, increased medical-marijuana usage at home might change patterns of substance use and driving.

Mason Tvert, the head of the pro- marijuana-legalization group SAFER, said the study suggests legalizing marijuana would be beneficial in unexpected ways.

"People who are drinking drive faster, take more risks, underestimate how impaired they are," he said.

- Denver Post

SA is a nation of boozers, addicts

2011-11-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

The average South African drinks a bakkie-load of booze a year, or 20.1litres of pure alcohol, research by the Central Drug Authority has found.

The authority 's acting chairman, Dr Ray Eberlein, told a parliamentary committee yesterday: "If we had a boozing world cup, South Africa wouldn't even have to practise."

The 20.1 litres are equivalent to 196 six-packs of beer, 62 bottles of spirits, 220 bottles of wine or 666 cartons of sorghum beer.

Eberlein told MPs that about 37% of South Africans "drink from early Friday afternoon until Monday morning, staying drunk all weekend".

"The worst of it all is on Monday, when 10% of the people on the road are likely to be drunk."

The research, which surveyed more than 200 000 people nationally between June last year and March, also found that the rates of substance abuse in South Africa were very high, with the use of drugs such as dagga and cocaine being twice the global average.

South Africans, said Eberlein, were among the top 10 consumers of alcohol globally.

He warned that binge drinking was becoming a serious problem - about 7000 people are killed by drunken drivers each year.

The authority also found that the problem of alcoholism had worsened since March.

The damage caused by alcohol abuse is estimated at R78-billion a year.

Eberlein also raised the alarm bells about a string of new addictive substances flooding into South Africa.

Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are awash with nicotine-rich "kuber", which is labelled as breath freshener and sold in shops in plastic sachets.

Eberlein said that, though the authority is still waiting for the results of drug analyses, the substance has reportedly been banned in Malawi because it is highly addictive.

Kuber reportedly sells for between R2.50 and R5 for a small packet.

The Times' sister publication, the Sowetan, reported earlier this year that Durban street vendors were selling a chewable tobacco as a "Chinese sweet" that "prolonged sexual enjoyment".

In Limpopo, children were plucking the ephedrine based-khat - khat is a flowering plant endemic to East Africa - and chewing it on their way to school.

The drug is also vacuum-packed and transported to Cape Town in refrigerated trucks, he said.

Tik was rapidly spreading from Cape Town to the Northern Cape, and pupils are also mixing cocaine with lip-ice, Vaseline, or Zambuk so that they can apply the drug to their lips during school hours.

"We have no indication that this is yet being sold," he said.

Eberlein said the Central Drug Authority had recently detected a 61% increase in the growth of opium-producing poppies in Afghanistan.

"So we are expecting an increase in opium on our shores and a drastic reduction in the price," he said.

With many drug users earning less than R1000 a month, "economic necessity dictates that drug users consume whatever they can get their hands on".

The Times reported last month that, according to the SA Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use, the most popular narcotic for people younger than 20 in Western Cape is dagga, followed by tik.

- timeslive

Let’s talk ‘people’ and not ‘addicts’

2011-10-25T00:15:00.000-07:00

There is no silver bullet in dealing with drug problems in our society. If we want solutions, we need a co-operative effort that has realistic, implementable and sustainable plans. More than that, these plans need to use a multipronged approach based on reason, research, knowledge and compassion.

Tony Ehrenreich’s suggestion (Friday Grill, October 14) that we need a “leader” in the “battle on drugs” looks at the drug problem, and more especially the solution, in a one-dimensional way.

Second, there is no “battle on drugs”. That is so last century. Unfortunately it is often the media that perpetuate such emotive terminology. The entire world has discovered that the “war on drugs” has been an enormous mistake. It has not only wasted financial and human resources, but has actually exacerbated some of the problems.

One “unintended consequence” of the drug war is that people can’t distinguish between the drug and the users. It makes it more difficult for people to access treatment because of the stigma – they feel the “war” is against them.

The worst unintended consequence was in Mexico, where it turned into a gang/drug war that has cost 25 000 Mexicans their lives. Some were even killed while they were in residential treatment or rehab.

Methamphetamine (tik) is the most widely used illicit drug in the world, except for cannabis. Forty million people worldwide regularly use tik, according to the UN World Drug Report, about 10 million use cocaine and 15 million use heroin.

We need to understand that it’s not only South Africa that has drug problems, nor indeed only the Western Cape – it’s global.

Our illegal drug problems came later than more developed countries, and they came rapidly. Seventeen years ago our only illegal drugs were dagga, mandrax and Welcanol. We were underprepared for the flood of drugs like tik, heroin, cocaine and crack through our borders.

Research tells us that alcohol and drug use underpins most of our family and community challenges – crime, violence, risky sexual behaviour, unemployment, abuse and poverty. Alcohol misuse alone is going to cost the Western Cape more than R3 billion in the next year

We need to learn from those who have gone before us; countries that have been dealing with tik for more than 20 years and with heroin for 40. Some of these countries are years ahead of us in skills, resources and systems, and have found many solutions, but still have drug problems.

It is worth noting that rather than dragging their feet over the past five years, as Ehrenreich implies, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government have developed free interventions that are being complimented by professionals around the world.

The Matrix Institute on Addictions at UCLA has been successfully treating people with tik problems for the past two and a half decades.

The institute’s executive director, Jeanne Obert, recently wrote about Tafelsig Clinic in Mitchells Plain, the first of the city’s four free drug and alcohol treatment programmes: “Let me say that the Tafelsig Clinic is one I talk about all the time with people all over the world. The most amazing thing about that clinic is that you established it within a primary health care setting where it is just one of a number of services offered to surrounding residents.

“Countries like the US are struggling to emulate such a model. Giving patients access to such a wide array of services without sending them to many different locations is a wonderful and very futuristic model.”

The same model has been used in the Cares (Community Awareness, Rehabilitation and Education Services) project in Hout Bay. This is a prime example of everyone working together – civil society and the provincial departments of social development and health are partners in the project.

There is a wealth of local and international research that tells us what works, and there’s even more that tells us what doesn’t.

Drugs are a great leveller. It doesn’t matter what faith, nationality, colour, gender or social status, individuals, families and communities all have the same feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. A drug- or alcohol-affected family suffers the same anguish whether they live in Bishop Lavis or Bishopscourt. The difference is that one suffers in more comfort. But suffer they do.

All spheres of government have realised that drug problems are complex medical and social issues and there is no quick fix. There have to be inclusive plans with clear and measurable objectives; everyone needs to know what the plan is, what their roles and responsibilities are, and have enough knowledge to make informed decisions.

If all structures develop multi-pronged interventions, we’ll be making huge strides forward.

All spheres of government understand that the solutions lie in two separate, yet parallel, strategies: supply reduction and demand reduction.

Supply reduction includes police, customs and other law enforcement agencies, the criminal justice system and projects such as Ceasefire and Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading.

Demand reduction is all about a range of services, from prevention, treatment and after-care, to education, skills development and job creation. If we are successful with demand reduction it has a huge impact on supply reduction, and vice versa.

We need to intervene on every level and not wait until someone has become dependent. But we must ensure our interventions are practical, research-based and effective, not simplistic one-line messages or one-off talks at schools.

One key component is building knowledge, capacity and skills among our service providers. However, we need to ensure public money is well spent by the government on effective “training” programmes. In the past this sometimes wasn’t the case. Training was often eclectic, unmonitored and hardly ever sustainable.

An example would be the extensive (and expensive) “training” the previous provincial administration gave to religious leaders, Cosatu, the Siyavulela campaign (1 000 random community members) and others. Had this “training” been effective, Ehrenreich would be more informed.

The current provincial administration has recognised this as a problem, and so has provided bursaries at all three universities in the Western Cape for specific courses on addictions – a first in South Africa. It might also be a good idea for them to make sure city councillors and provincial MECs also receive reliable information so they can engage in informed debate.

The city has had a measurable strategic plan between 2007 and last year. It has achieved much of this, and in the new strategy moving forward to 2015, this will help communities to develop strategies for managing their specific drug problems and challenges.

It will also be an effective way of identifying referral routes and gaps in services, and planning community-based prevention and education campaigns and interventions.

As we learn more about what does and doesn’t work globally, we need to make changes. Language is one of the more subtle components needed to create change.

I would argue that for a newspaper to ask if “Cosatu (sic) and the ANC in Cape Town view drugs as a scourge akin to apartheid” is at best naive, at worst irresponsible and uninformed.

Newspaper reports, no matter how positive, often refer to “addicts”.

Often people refer to themselves as addicts but this is generally after they have stopped using drugs – and they are talking about themselves.

Let’s start talking about “people” with alcohol and drug problems rather than the stigmatising word “addict”, or worse still, “tikmonster”.

People with alcohol and drug problems, and their families, suffer. Let’s start to restore the individuals, their families and our communities, and let’s do it in a spirit of unity.

We need to start living in the solution and not dwelling in the problem, and we need to make sure everything we do is based on reason, research and compassion.

* Fisher is the executive director of Smart (Substance Misuse: Advocacy, Research, Training)

Sauce

Drinking is dangerous

2011-10-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

The alcohol and advertising industries have recently circulated a petition aimed at pressuring government to abandon its intended ban on advertising alcohol.

Their view is that while alcohol as a product has disastrous effects on individual users, families and communities, government should not focus on advertising or other strategies to reduce the demand and supply of alcohol. Instead, we should focus on the underlying factors driving alcohol abuse.

To them, the driving factors are solely the high levels of poverty, joblessness and the more vague notions of family issues.

We welcome their acknowledgement that alcohol has significant negative impacts, but we are committed to using evidence-based strategies to reduce the harm caused by alcohol use and abuse.

Before looking into strategies to reduce alcohol-related harm, it is useful to discuss the product itself.

Beneath the fancy bottling, packaging and slick advertising linking alcoholic products to sporting prowess, business savvy and overwhelming sexiness, lies a drug called ethanol.

Ethanol is the drug found in beer, wines and spirits similar to the active ingredient Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that is found in the plant marijuana.

Like THC, ethanol when ingested – as a cold beer, in wine and in a shot of even the most expensive whisky – impacts negatively on the physiology of the drinker and impairs his or her senses.

The drinking of ethanol in its fancy packaging has been identified as a leading risk factor for death and disability globally. In an article due to be published in the journal Addiction, entitled “Alcohol Consumption and Non-Communicable Diseases: Epidemiology and Policy Implications” by Charles Parry, Jayadeep Patra and Jurgen Rehm, the role of alcohol as a risk factor in the spread of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is outlined clearly.

They found that alcohol accounted for 3.8 percent of deaths globally and 4.6 percent of Disability Adjusted Life Years in 2004. Alcohol was found to be the fifth highest risk factor for deaths in middle income countries. In terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years lost in 2004, alcohol ranked first in middle income countries. With South Africa being a middle income country, the scale of the problem is clearly a cause for alarm.

Parry et al also cite the International Agency for Research and Cancer which asserted that there was significant evidence for a causal link between alcohol and cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and female breast. These cancers showed evidence of what is known as dose-response relationship.

That is, the more people drink ethanol through their brand of choice, the higher the risk of getting any of these life-threatening illnesses. This research is backed up by similar evidence garnered by the World Health Organisation and medical research done here and abroad. Alcohol is not just another consumer product, but impacts negatively on the health of those who consume it and places an enormous strain on the health system.

The relationship between alcohol and social disorder may be worse. The South African Health Information network, using research by the Medical Research Council, indicates that alcohol intoxication is associated with morbidities arising from intentional and non-intentional injuries, with increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. It impacts negatively on the criminal justice system as the evidence indicates a significant association between drinking and committing or being a victim of a crime.

Mortuary statistics for 2002 indicate that alcohol played a role on average of up to 46 percent of transport-related deaths and homicides. The picture was more alarming in the metro areas where for example, in Port Elizabeth, alcohol accounted for 63 percent of transport-related deaths and 69 percent of homicides. The figures for the other major cities were equally startling.

In addition, research conducted by the Crime Research and Statistics component of Crime Intelligence over the past decade, has confirmed that about 70 percent to 80 percent of murders, 60 percent of attempted murders, 75 percent of rapes and 90 percent of all assaults involve victims and perpetrators who know one another.

The analysis indicates that alcohol, and to a lesser extent other drug abuse, frequently played a role in these crimes. This is why the five crimes in question are referred to as social contact crimes. The latest research indicates that roughly 65 percent of murders are associated with social behaviour fuelled by alcohol abuse.

The evidence related to the negative impact of alcohol on the health of South Africans and the social fabric shows that we have to be robust in reducing the harm caused by alcohol. This means we have to implement measures that will reduce exposure of young people and the general population to advertising that falsely portrays carefully packaged ethanol as being cool and successful.

We have to ensure that we raise the price of alcohol to make it less accessible. We have to ensure that we regulate the number of licensed outlets so that we limit access. We have to put in place measures that will raise the legal age for buying alcohol so that we can protect our youth and become very strict with regard to drink driving.

These strategies are regarded as common sense and serve as guidelines for good policy by the World Health Organisation.

The alcohol and advertising industries on the other hand would want us to ignore best practice and evidence garnered from local and international experts and have us focus on the one area that has been shown in research to be the least effective, that is, public education.

Public education and awareness campaigns are only successful if accompanied by legislative measures such as the restriction of advertising and increasing the price of alcohol. We intend to implement all these measures and not just one or two.

We are aware that alcohol consumption has occurred for thousands of years and is seen as part of “our culture”. However, many of its varied health effects have been discovered fairly recently. Notwithstanding this relatively new evidence of the link between alcohol consumption and its negative health and social consequences, we have to battle a well-resourced industry tasked with saving its bottom lines and preserving alcohol as part of a cultural identity that makes it an acceptable drug.

We hope that the public sees the difference between our attempts to promote public health and social integrity and the attempts of the industry to maintain the unhealthy status quo.

I would like to re-tell a story published by James Siddall, on his struggle with addiction. He tackles the myth related to drugs that asserts that “if it’s legal, it can’t be that bad”. He quotes William L White, author of the book Pathways From the Culture of Addiction to the Culture of Recovery: A Travel Guide for Addiction Professionals, who writes that society celebrates alcohol, tolerates nicotine and prohibits other drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.

White suggests that what separates legal from illegal substances is, to a huge degree, society’s perception (culture).

White further writes that anyone using prohibited drugs is painted as bad and worse. Alcohol, on the other hand, is part of the warp and weft of Western society. Never mind that, more than any other drug, it attacks every single organ and tissue in the body and has incalculable social costs.

He emphasises the dangers of alcohol by pointing out that alcohol is one of the few substances whose withdrawal can kill. Not even heroin shares that dubious quality.

Dlamini is Minister of Social Development

- Sunday Independant

‘Cannabis should be legalised in UK’

2011-09-19T01:53:00.000-07:00

Cannabis should be legalised in Britain and all other personal drug use decriminalised, delegates voted on Sunday by an overwhelming margin.

They called for the creation of a panel to review the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act so that “possession of any controlled drug for personal use would not be a criminal offence”.

The motion said those caught with hard drugs should be dispatched to a panel of social workers.

It also paved the way for the British government to set up “a strictly controlled and regulated cannabis market” - effectively legalising the drug.

Ewan Hoyle, from South Glasgow, proposed the policy and told the conference that politicians had not tackled the issue because of “cowardice”.

He said: “The motion calls for models of cannabis regulation to be investigated. I personally favour sale from pharmacies.”

George Miles, a delegate sporting a green T-shirt emblazoned with the image of a cannabis leaf, declared: “John Lennon and Eric Clapton didn’t say legalise heroin or cocaine, but Bob Marley says legalise cannabis.”

The plans immediately become binding Liberal Democrat policy, though they will not be enacted by the government because they are not in the coalition agreement.

The proposals will be opposed not just by the Tories but also by the Labour Party, which got into a huge mess over the classification of cannabis.

When the Blair government reduced it to a Class C drug, evidence from scientists about its psychotic properties caused a U-turn.

Tory MP Charles Walker said the Lib Dem motion “sends out the message that taking drugs is okay but it is not”.

He added: “If the Liberal Democrats think taking heroin, cocaine and smoking skunk is OK then that is up to them but the government and I think most people in Britain do not agree with them.” - Daily Mail

‘Alcohol abuse costs SA’

2011-09-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Alcohol abuse costs South Africa's economy R9 billion a year, Deputy Trade and Industry Minister Elizabeth Thabethe said on Monday.

This amounted to one percent of the country's gross domestic product, she told the start of a Sobriety Week campaign in Pretoria, according to a statement issued by her office.

“According to the World Health Organisation, the annual liquor consumption by South Africans amounts to 7.81 litres of pure alcohol per person. This level of consumption ranks South Africa 52nd on a list of 191 countries.”

The effects of alcohol abuse on the economy could be seen in absenteeism, poor productivity, high job turnover, interpersonal conflict, injuries and damage to property.

The campaign called on all South Africans to ensure fellow citizens were protected from the irresponsible consumption of, and trading in, alcohol.

Public awareness and education campaigns would be launched in areas where alcohol abuse was most prevalent. - Sapa

WC substance abuse 'fuels mental illness'

2011-08-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

Western Cape Health Department officials fear the province may have the highest incidence of mental illness in the country due to high levels of substance abuse.About 75 percent of patients admitted to psychiatric institutions have a history of drug or alcohol abuse.

Health Department officials said more institutions are needed as the patient load increases.

The new Somerset Hospital unveiled its bigger psychiatric unit on Tuesday.

The psychiatric unit’s walls are painted stark white and have bright fluorescent lighting.

Patients addicted to tik, dagga, heroin and alcohol share rooms while undergoing treatment.

One patient dressed in a blue gown banged on his room door in a bid for attention.

If there are psychotic mood swings and outburst patients are isolated in a small room with just a mattress on the floor.

The Health Department’s Dr Linda Hering said nurses are trained to deal with dangerous situations.

Some patients stay an average of five and a half days at a facility, but many of the same patients return over and over for treatment.

(Edited by Lindiwe Mlandu)

Source

Jackson FUCKING IDIOT Mthembu!

2011-07-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

A warning from this poster: Jackson FUCKING IDIOT Mthembu , please call me so I can say this to your face!

The Drunk Driving ANC Spokesasshole can't take the blame for failing to raise his own child, who now has a drug problem.

So now he wants to tell society what's it's problems are so that they can fix the problems. YOU DIDN'T NOTICE FOR 5 YEARS - ehm too busy drinking and driving?!?!?!?!

OH Jackson FUCKING IDIOT Mthembu! YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You're bad example is WHY YOUR child turned out like this - don't fucking blame anyone else boet!

2011-04-08T12:15:00.001-07:00

Dagga plantation found in Atteridgeville

2011-02-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

Police discovered a two hectare dagga plantation in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, with an estimated street value of R5-million.

"We've never come across such a huge dagga plantation in Tshwane... It is [larger than] two rugby fields," City of Tshwane spokesman William Baloyi said on Thursday morning. It was located in the Brazzaville informal settlement.

Some 60 officials from the parks division started cutting it down at 9am. It would then be burnt down. This would probably take the whole day.

The discovery was made following a tip-off from local residents.

Baloyi acknowledged Tshwane had a large drugs problem, particularly in schools.

- Timeslive

Time To Decriminalise Drugs? – South African Medical Journal

2011-02-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

An article published in the Feb 2011 edition of South African Medical Journal (SAMJ). The article, written by JP de V van Niekerk, editor of SAMJ and former Dean of the UCT faculty of Health Sciencies, broadly covers the failed war on drugs and how South Africa needs to rethink its drug policies. JP de Van Niekerk will also be on on radio today at 3:30pm and will be discussing these issues further. You can tune in on 567 Cape Talk if you’re in Cape Town, or radio 702 if you’re in Johannesburg. Alternatively, you can stream it online.

The drug trade has increased globally in intensity and reach, and substance abuse in South Africa has escalated rapidly. Drug misuse is a major social, legal and public health challenge despite the war on drugs, in which the USA has a disproportionate influence. Why this lack of progress and what can be done about it?

The use of psychotropic substances is as old as human history. Some use drugs as part of religious observations. The majority of people who partake of drugs use them for recreational purposes. Some become addicted and may cause harm to themselves, their families and society. If drugs are bad it seems logical to wage war on them. However, although ‘get tough’ measures sound attractive they are often counterproductive.

Attempts to stem evil

Over the centuries, countries, societies and communities have fruitlessly tried to regulate perceived evils, often related to powerful human needs and drives, namely sex, food and seeking happiness. The Victorians were obsessed with what they perceived as the evils of sex, leading to distorted teachings and actions and much unnecessary emotional suffering.

Despite alcohol having been used since antiquity, many countries have tried prohibiting its use. The most familiar is the failed prohibition experiment in the USA from 1920 to 1933. Breweries and distillers in surrounding countries flourished as widespread bootlegging and organised crime took control of the distribution of alcohol in the USA. Countries have gone to war over drugs: the Opium Wars (1839 – 1842, 1856 – 1860) resulted from trade disputes between China and the British Empire after China sought to limit illegal British opium trafficking. China lost the wars and had to tolerate the opium trade. War-torn Afghanistan now cultivates as much as 90% of the world’s opium, its trade also supporting the Taliban.

In the USA Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs in 1970. Another lifestyle result of human excesses is the rising tide of obesity, though war has not yet been declared on foods.

Harmful substances

The International Narcotics Control Board established by the United Nations under the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, lists a vast spectrum of narcotic drugs, psychotropic agents and precursors ‘under international control’. However, the substances that cause by far the most damage to individuals and societies, namely alcohol, cigarette smoking and prescription medicines, are not illegal. (To this we should perhaps add the lifestyle matters of food and sex?)

Harmful drugs are regulated according to classification systems that purport to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. Nutt and colleagues found that the current classification of drugs is unscientific, unsystematic and arbitrary. Using an evidence-based expert delphic procedure they developed and explored a rational scale to assess the harms of illicit drugs and also included five legal drugs of misuse (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrates and tobacco). They provide a systemic methodology and process that could benefit regulatory bodies in assessing the harm of drugs of abuse. Their ranking, based on categories of harm (physical harm, dependence, effects on families, communities and society), differed from those in current use. Tobacco and alcohol together account for about 90% of all drug-related deaths in the UK. They are the most widely used unclassified substances, but were both ranked in the top 10 higher harm group and cannabis (marijuana) in the lower 10 (out of 20). Drugs that can be taken intravenously, such as heroin, carry a high risk of death and score highly. Their results also emphasise that excluding alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary and that there is no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances.

Effects of the drug wars

Declaring war means that one must have enemies. In the USA these are the drug dealers but also the users. A large percentage of the population has used and currently uses illegal recreational substances such as marijuana and cocaine. Apprehending these ‘enemies’ has resulted in the USA having the world’s largest prison population, 738 per 100 000 people (other examples per 100000 people are 335 for South Africa, 124 for the UK and 30 for India). A large sector of the population is thus criminalised.

Producer countries have been politically destabilised by the US war on drugs. Huge profits made from cocaine and other drugs from countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, largely because they are illegal in the USA, have resulted in flourishing drug cartels. Those controlling the supply routes to the USA through Mexico and Caribbean countries wreak havoc through their criminal paramilitary and guerrilla groups, with murder, kidnapping, bribery and corruption, money laundering, etc. Coca has been cultivated for centuries in the Andes. Its legitimate uses include chewing the leaves for their mild stimulant and appetite suppression effects, and as a tea that reduces the effects of altitude sickness. Coca farmers are often at the difficult and potentially violent intersection of government-sponsored eradication efforts, illegal cocaine producers and traffickers seeking coca supplies, anti-government paramilitary forces trafficking in cocaine as a source of revolutionary funding, and the hardships of rural subsistence farming. Further pressure to grow coca for the cocaine trade is caused by the dumping of subsidised surpluses of fruit, vegetables, grain, etc., mainly by the USA and European Union.

Drug prohibition inevitably leads to political and police corruption. Jackie Selebi, former head of South Africa’s police and Interpol President, was found guilty of corruption and sentenced for accepting bribes from a drug trafficker in 2010. ‘Wars’ on, for example, local growers of coca, marijuana and poppies increase the price of drugs, lessen competition, and encourage cartels by increasing their potential profits. People who become addicted to substances often cannot fund the high prices of illicit products and turn to drug running, robbery and other criminal methods to meet their needs.

Regulation/legislation

Regulations vary widely from country to country. The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, under the auspices of which the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) was established, was regarded as a milestone in the history of international drug control by its proponents. The Single Convention codified multilateral treaties on drug control, including the cultivation of plants grown as the raw material of narcotic drugs. Its principal objectives are to limit the possession, use, trade, distribution, import, export, manufacture and production of drugs exclusively to medical and scientific purposes and to deter and discourage drug traffickers through international co-operation. The INCB monitors apparent violations of the treaties and addresses those within its mandate.

In the USA, where marijuana may be used for medical use in several states, there is a strong growing movement to have it legalised. However, the official US stance is to strengthen the war on marijuana. Elected officials are willing to acknowledge the failure of the drug war in private, but the degeneration of their political discourse and campaign tactics has made reforming the drug war synonymous with political suicide. And since politicians have short-term interests, who represents the interests of future generations?

South Africa has given much thought and effort to combating the abuse of illicit and legal substances. The Prevention and Treatment for Substance Abuse Act No. 70, 2008, and the National Drug Master Plan 2006 – 2011 seek to reduce demand, reduce harm and reduce the supply of illicit substances (including education and raising awareness) and associated crimes through law enforcement, prevention of community-based substance abuse, early intervention, drug treatment (including rehabilitation and risk reduction) and research. They are supported by many other Acts, government departments, statutory bodies, non-governmental organisations, etc. The City of Cape Town has an Operational Alcohol and Drug Strategy that recognises that the whole community is responsible for tackling the problem. This requires systematic, multifaceted, integrated responses; social inclusiveness; commitment to funding and resource allocation; and recognition that demand reduction is a key principle. The Central Drug Authority is a statutory body established to co-ordinate and direct drug counteraction across South Africa on both the demand and supply side. Further legal sanction is provided by the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act No. 140 of 1992, which determines what the legal acts are in terms of possession, distribution, manufacture, etc. of ‘any dependence-producing substance; or any dangerous dependence-producing substance or any undesirable dependence-producing substance’. South Africa is signatory to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, and other international and regional agreements concerning drugs.

The case for decriminalisation

The war on drugs has failed! Humans have always taken psychoactive substances and prohibition has never kept them from doing so. The international evidence suggests that drug policy has very limited impact on the overall level of drug use. Making people criminals for taking psychoactive substances is in itself criminal, for one is dealing with, at worst, a vice but not a crime.

The two most widely used legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, lie in the upper half of the harms ranking. This important information should surely be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use. Discussions based on formal assessment of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions would enable a more rational debate about the relative risks and harms of drugs. Pragmatism is urgently needed in debates about these issues and our responses to them. The tone of our debate about responses to the treatment and supervision of drug-dependent offenders should change. Focusing on enforcement and compliance further erodes discretion for those responsible for treating and supervising such offenders. Policy should aim to reduce the harm that drugs cause, and not to embroil more people in the criminal justice system. Society should have some faith in the capacity of drug-using offenders to change, and actively assist and enable them to achieve this goal.

People with a history of drug problems are seen as blameworthy and to be feared. Stigma is a major barrier to their successful recovery and prevents them from playing a more positive role in communities and re-integrating into society. People recovering from drug dependence should be part of the normal community. Such actions have been successfully implemented in some European countries. In the USA there is increasing support for initiatives such as the California Proposition 19, also known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, that would have legalised various marijuana-related activities, allowed local governments to regulate and collect marijuana-related fees and taxes, and authorised various criminal and civil penalties.

While much of South Africa’s approach to drug abuse is progressive and enlightened, evidence-based facts and sober reflection suggest that our strategies require re-thinking.

The Vision of the National Drug Master Plan is a drug-free society. Human history and international experience clearly demonstrate that this does not reflect reality. We should acknowledge this and develop better ways of dealing with human frailty.
A more evidence-based, nuanced approach to the harms of drugs is required. For example, it makes no sense to legalise the use of alcohol and tobacco but not the less dangerous cannabis
(which also has beneficial effects).
Using psychoactive substances may be a vice but should not be considered to be a crime, thus criminalising a large proportion of our citizens.
Making drugs illicit cedes their control to the drug dealer.
Escalating the drug war makes drugs more valuable and attracts more participants into the illicit drug economy.
Improved state control of substances, as with alcohol and cigarettes, could provide taxes and significantly reduce the roles of drug dealers.

A recent MRC Research Brief outlines strategies to effectively address substance abuse problems among young people, but decriminalisation is not mentioned. It is time to face realities squarely and rationally debate the question of decriminalisation. Vested interests in maintaining the status quo will have unexpected support from those who stand to lose the most, namely the drug dealers and those in their pay (including the law and politics). All the more reason to proceed!

J P de V van Niekerk
Managing Editor – South African Medical Journal

1. The Prevention and Treatment for Substance Abuse Act No. 70, 2008.
2. National Drug Master Plan 2006-2011.
3. UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961.
4. Nutt D, King LA, Saulsbury W, Blakemore C. Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse. Lancet 2007;369:1047-1053.
5. http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/prison_incarceration_rates_of_countries_2007.html (accessed 22 December 2010).
6. War on drugs. 2010. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs (accessed 7 January 2011).
7. Statement from ONDCP Director R Gil Kerlikowske. Why marijuana legalization would compromise public health and public safety. http://ondcp.gov/news/speech10/030410_Chief.pdf (accessed 22 December 2010).
8. Tree S. How to get politicians to admit in public that the drug war has been a complete failure. 2010 Institute for Policy Studies. http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/politicians_drug_war_failure (accessed 10 November 2010).
9. City of Cape Town Draft Operational Drug & Alcohol Strategy 2007-2010.
10. Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act No. 140 of 1992.
11. Feiling T. The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World. Penguin Books, 2009.
12. McSweeney T, Turnbull PJ, Hough M. The Treatment and Supervision of Drug-Dependent Offenders. A Review of the Literature Prepared for the UK Drug Policy Commission. London: Institute for Criminal Policy Research, King’s College London, 2008.
13. http://www.ukdpc.org.uk/publications.shtml (accessed 21 December 2010).
14. Ware MA, Wang T, Shapiro S, et al. Smoke cannabis for chronic neuropathic pain: a randomized
controlled trial. CMAJ 2010;182:1515-1521.
15. Morojele NK, Parry CDH, Brook JS. Substance abuse and the young: Taking action. MRC Research Brief, 2009. http://www.sahealthinfo.org/admodule/substance2009.pdf (accessed 7 January 2011).
16. Kolhatkar S. Reefer sadness. Bloomberg Businessweek 2010; 7 Nov: 62-65.

- SAMJ

Read the SAMJ Responses

Teens arrested over dagga plantation

2011-02-01T09:55:00.000-08:00

Five 14-year-old high school pupils were arrested on Tuesday in Lenasia South for allegedly owning a dagga plantation and dealing in the drug, Gauteng police said.

The eight square metre plantation was discovered when a boy reported to the police after smelling dagga in the area, Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said.

After being questioned, the boy led the police to the plantation where they found the four boys and arrested them.

“Some of the dagga plants were already picked up and dried. More schoolboys might have been involved.

“It is suspected that they were smoking it and a possibility that they were also selling it to other school children may not be ruled out,” Dlamini said.

The boys would be released to their parents. - Sapa

Fair and Free Trade! - Stop the rape of Africa!

2011-01-28T23:03:00.000-08:00

Drugs worth R6m found in bus

2011-01-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

Drugs worth R6-million were found in a bus on the N1 highway near Beaufort West on Tuesday, Western Cape police said.

Captain Bernadine Steyn said the bus was stopped by police who were searching cars on the highway around 2am.

Heroin weighing 7kg with a street value of R6-million was found in the bus and 950 Mandrax tablets with a street value of R47 500 were also found in the bus's luggage compartment, Steyn said.

The bus was going to Johannesburg to Cape Town.

Nobody was arrested in connection with the drugs and police were investigating.

- Sapa

We'll jail booze kids

2011-01-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

TEACHERS and parents, gatvol with bunking pupils, have welcomed calls for the arrest of pupils found loitering during school hours.

Mpumalanga is leading the way with safety and security MEC Vusi Shongwe on Friday ordering the police to arrest schoolchildren found roaming the streets in school uniform during school hours.

"We'll jail booze kids"
Pappa wag vir julle jonge dronkgatte!

"We will also arrest pupils found in taverns or shebeens during school hours," Shongwe said.

The latest tough stance highlights a hardening attitude towards rampant ill discipline among pupils as the new school year unfolds.

The call has received support from teachers and parents alike. They said it was long overdue.

Last week Limpopo health and social development MEC Miriam Segabutla complained that hair styles and make-up had negatively contributed to the dismal performance of female matriculants.

She felt the time children spent titivating could best be used to improve their performance.

Segabutla also warned that pupils who did not adhere to dress codes "will be dealt with".

She was addressing hundreds of pupils at Mopje Secondary School in Bolobedu South, which had the worst provincial matric pass rate.

A day later executive mayor for the Mopani district municipality Joshua Matlou told pupils that designer clothes and shoes were not permitted at school.

Pupils grumbled.

"He is jealous because during years of schooling he did not have the luxury to dress as he pleased," said one pupil.

In Soweto last week pupils photographed drinking alcohol in the street on their way to school have since been suspended.

Ronny Makalla of Lefiso Village in Mpumalanga, whose child is in Grade 10, praised the MEC.

"We as parents expect our children to be in class seven hours a day. If they do illegal things we will now be made aware of it.

"I was so shocked when I saw in the Sowetan last week pupils sipping cider on their way to school late. What we saw clearly is the tip of an iceberg and something needs to be done."

A teacher, Dintlhana Moagi of Malatse High School in Mpumalanga, said: "This call is long overdue and why limit it to Mpumalanga? It should apply to other provinces as well."

Boas Ramollo, a teacher at Dikgabo Combined School in Lefiso village, said: "This call by the MEC will surely enhance the culture of teaching and learning at our schools and help maintain discipline among our pupils."

Angel Ally, a teacher at Thembeka Secondary in KaNyamazane, said: "This will certainly help our children focus on their studies because they won't be hanging around in townships during school hours."

Ally said pupils arrived early, but most classes were half empty after break as pupils go to nearby taverns.

"We as teachers are then blamed when they fail at the end of year."

- Sowetan

KNP ‘might ban booze’

2011-01-15T08:52:00.001-08:00

The Kruger National Park is considering a ban on liquor for day visitors, Beeld newspaper reported on Saturday.

Sanparks chief executive David Mabunda said the international tourist attraction recently received 130 complaints of drunken driving, animal abuse, disturbing the peace and even skinny dipping in a space of just two weeks.

“There is a lack of respect for the park. People ignore rules and regulations and alcohol abuse is a big problem,” said Mabunda.

Although management still needed to make a final decision on the proposal to ban day visitors from taking alcohol into the park, the new rule may be implemented as soon as the Easter Weekend, the report said.

- Sapa

School of HIGHER learning

2011-01-12T23:27:00.001-08:00

PUPILS at Boitumelong High School in Thembisa will attend classes in a yard infested with dagga plants.

Situated in Sedibeng Section, the school's backyard has dagga plants that cover the size of a soccer field.

According to the local councillor the plants have been growing at the school for a long time but they only realised that they were dagga plants in 2008.

When Sowetan visited the school on Sunday we found that some of the plants were about 2m tall. Young men and boys as young as 12 years old were picking the dagga.

We asked people passing by if they were aware that there was dagga at the school and the response was shocking. Everyone knew about the plants. Even a seven-year-old boy said: "I can show you what a dagga plant looks like. People smoke it every day in the yard."

One resident, who lives near the school, said: "In this section most people smoke dagga daily because they get it for free. It is a way of life for some of the youths around here. We are not happy about it but what can we do?"

Another resident said the previous principal allowed them to use the land to grow vegetables but they were later chased away.

"We used to grow vegetables in that space but we were chased away because the profit we made did not go into the school funds."

Sowetan has been writing articles about the dagga plantation for the past three years and there is still no permanent plan to get rid of the plants.

In 2008 and 2009 the Thembisa police uprooted and burnt plants worth more than R4million. Now it looks as if nothing had been done.

Councillor Vincent Hlatshwayo said uprooting the plants was "useless because the plants grew back during rainy seasons".

He said the space was supposed to be a soccer field.

The education department did not respond to questions sent to them on Monday.

- Sowetan

Drug Death winner

2010-12-29T03:44:00.001-08:00

Medicinal Cannabis Growing SativaX GW Pharma BBC

2010-12-28T06:29:00.000-08:00

Drunkest driver in SA arrested

2010-12-24T02:59:00.000-08:00

The man was allegedly 32 times over the legal alcohol limit. His blood had an alcohol content of 1,6g/100ml. The legal limit is 005g/100ml. He was driving a Mercedes-Benz Vito and was arrested near Queenstown in Eastern Cape at about 11pm on Wednesday.

Five boys as well as a woman who were also in the vehicle with 15 sheep, allegedly stolen from nearby farms, were also arrested.

Department of Transport spokesperson Logan Maistry said: "About 4000 drunk drivers have been arrested and 40percent of these were female."

He said about four million vehicles and drivers were stopped and checked.

"More than 30percent of fines issued relate to drivers not being in possession of driving licences or failing to carry licences. More than 1,5 million fines were issued for various traffic offences.

"More than 20000 unroadworthy vehicles, including several buses and taxis, were discontinued from use. Since the 2010 World Cup, an average of 2000 motorists have been arrested every month for driving while under the influence of liquor," Maistry said.

lTransport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele conveyed his condolences to the families of 16 people killed in a road crash involving a minibus and midi-bus on the N2 near Mtubatuba in KwaZulu-Natal.

Ndebele called on more South Africans to enlist as Voluntary Traffic Observers to win the battle against road deaths.

- Sowetan

1,500 drunk drivers arrested

2010-12-23T22:18:00.000-08:00

About 1 500 drunk drivers have been arrested country-wide since the beginning of December, the national transport department said on Thursday.

"From 1 to 21 December 1.1 million vehicles and drivers were checked, [and] 1,500 drunk drivers arrested with 40% of these being female," [Pappa wag nie vir julle dronkgat vrouens nie] department spokesperson Logan Maistry said in a statement.

Since October 1 more than 1.5 million fines had been issued for various traffic offences.

About a third of them related to drivers not carrying their driving licences.

More than 20,00 unroadworthy vehicles, including several buses and taxis, were taken off the road over the same period and more than 4,000 drunk drivers arrested.

Over 860 people had died in road accidents since the start of the festive season.

- SAPA

Pappa wag vir julle mansmense dronkgatte

2010-12-22T02:24:00.000-08:00

‘Rape in jail’ ad too shocking for some

The Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative has slammed an advertising campaign seeking to deter drunken-driving by warning male drivers they face the prospect of being raped in prison if arrested.

“What is distressing is the near acceptance of sexual violence in prison and the fact that men are raped in prison. It is (now being) used to keep the public in fear of drinking and driving,” said Lukas Muntingh, project co-ordinator of the initiative.

He said if the ad had been targeted at women, it would have led to an “outcry”.

“But male rape for most people is an uncomfortable topic and one way of dealing with it is through humour,” said Muntingh, who added that the subtext of the ad was that “prisons were unsafe”.

“It is about exploiting sexual violence,” he said.

But the controversial ad, the brainchild of Brandhouse Beverages, has been endorsed by the Road Traffic Management Organisation and the National Transport Department, among others.

It is part of the company’s Drive Dry campaign... - IOL

Prison staff ‘biggest killers’

Prison officials are the biggest killers of prisoners, according to a Judicial Inspectorate of Correctional Services report by Inspecting Judge Deon van Zyl.

Judge Van Zyl said the incidence of inmate murder by prison officials was even more frequent than murders committed by other inmates and raised “serious concerns”.

“Officials appear to have been involved in acts of violence against inmates who are alleged to have assaulted an official or other inmates . These actions often constitute a form of revenge in response to an attack on an official,” he said, citing ineffective disciplinary measures at the disposal of correctional officials.

- IOL

80% of WC inmates awaiting trial

About three out of four inmates at critically overcrowded prisons in the Western Cape are awaiting trial.

This indicates that far too many people are being arrested on “insufficiently justifiable grounds”, says judicial inspector of correctional services Judge Deon van Zyl in his annual report .

Of 19 critically overcrowded prisons in South Africa, five are in the Western Cape.

Critically overcrowded prisons are classified as those with an occupancy of more than 200 percent...

- IOL

THC Reduces Aggressive Behavior In Schizophrenics: Study

2010-12-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

The administration of oral synthetic THC is associated with improved symptoms of psychosis in patients with refractory schizophrenia, according to the findings of four case reports published in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Investigators at the Rockland Psychiatric Center in Orangeburg, New York, the Columbia University Medical Center, and the New York University School of Medicine assessed the efficacy of oral THC (Dronabinol) on eight patients with refractory psychosis, reports the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). The subjects in the trial had a history of symptomatic improvement when using cannabis and had been unresponsive to conventional medical treatments.

Researchers reported significant improvement in four of the eight patients after oral THC treatment. In particular, cannabinoid administration resulted in a significant reduction in subjects' aggressive tendencies, authors reported.

No patients in the study experienced any significant side effects from THC.

"It appears that a predisposed subset of patients with schizophrenia may actually improve with cannabinoid stimulation," investigators concluded.

The team had previously reported positive results with oral cannabinoid therapy in four of six patients with chronic refractory schizophrenia.

In March, investigators at Edmundston Regional Hospital in New Brunswick, Canada reported that male patients diagnosed with schizophrenia obtained subjective benefits from inhaling cannabis.

Survey data published in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing in 2008 also reported that schizophrenic patients obtained subjective relief from cannabis, finding that subjects consumed marijuana to reduce anxiety, mitigate traumatic childhood memories, enhance cognition, and "improve their mental state."

- TOT

Portugal's Drug Experience: New Study Confirms Decriminalization Was a Success

2010-12-07T08:09:00.000-08:00

From the perspective of drug warriors, the criminal laws against drug possession are all that protect Americans from a deluge of drugs, an orgy of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine use that would kill children, destroy productivity and basically leave America a smoking hulk of wasteland populated by brain-dead zombies.

For example, one opponent of marijuana decriminalization wrote in a 2009 forum in the New York Times that the policy would lead to "hundreds of billions of dollars in new medical-care costs, traffic and other accident costs, reduced worker productivity and lower educational achievements." (More on Time.com: Is Drug Use Really on the Rise?)

But new research on Portugal's drug policy suggests that this isn't necessarily so. Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in 2001. The outcome, after nearly a decade, according to a study published in the November issue of the British Journal of Criminology: less teen drug use, fewer HIV infections, fewer AIDS cases and more drugs seized by law enforcement. Adult drug use rates did slightly increase — but this increase was not greater than that seen in nearby countries that did not change their drug policies. The use of drugs by injection declined.

Of course, there's no way of knowing which, if any, of these changes were caused by the change in policy — without a control group, this kind of research cannot determine cause and and effect. But Portugal started with one of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe — far lower than American rates — and remains below the EU average. For example, 19% of 15-to-16-year-olds in Europe in general have tried marijuana at least once, compared with 13% of Portuguese people that age. The figure for U.S. high school sophomores is 32%. (Related Links: Why Drinking Like a Guy is Worse for Women)

"The most important direct effect was a reduction in the use of criminal justice resources targeted at vulnerable drug users," says Alex Stevens, professor of criminal justice at the U.K.'s University of Kent, who co-authored the study. "Before, a large number of people were being arrested and punished for drug use alone. They saved themselves a lot of money and stopped inflicting so much harm on people through the criminal justice system. There were other trends since drugs were decriminalized in 2001, but they are less easy to attribute directly to decriminalization."

Under Portugal's decriminalization policy, users are not arrested but referred by the police to a "dissuasion" commission. The commission is made up of three people, typically an attorney, a social worker and a medical professional. It determines whether the person is addicted — if so, they can be referred to treatment or given specific penalties like being banned from a particular neighborhood or losing a driver's license. Treatment is not forced, however, and those who are not addicted are often not sanctioned in any way. Only about 5% to 6% of users are brought before such commissions a second time in the same year. (More on Time.com: Addiction Files: Recovering From Drug Addiction, Without Abstinence)

Stevens says the positive changes in HIV/AIDS rates and a decline in opioid-related deaths are probably more linked with an expansion of treatment than with decriminalization alone. The number of users in treatment increased by 41% — going from 23,654 to 38,532 between 1998 and 2008. "Releasing funds from [enforcement] allows you to spend more on treatment," says Stevens.

The changes in teen drug use were complex: throughout Europe, teen drug use rose sharply during the period in which Portugal decriminalized and then fell — the same trend was seen in Portugal but the fall was steeper.

Mark Kleiman, director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA and author of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, is skeptical that Portugal's policy holds any lessons for the U.S. other than that the "U.S. and UN look silly for getting hysterical," about Portugal's move. "The bottom line [is that] no clear disaster resulted from decriminalization." (More on Time.com: Addiction Files: Recovering From Drug Addiction, Without Abstinence)

Stevens concurs. "The main claim we make is that decriminalization did not lead to the kinds of disaster that were anticipated by opponents," he says.
In the debate over California's marijuana legalization initiative, little attention was paid to the fact that Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill decriminalizing the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana — a relaxation of state drug law that would have been much more controversial had the state not faced the possibility that voters would support full legalization of sales as well as possession. Eleven other states have also decriminalized — though this does not always prevent the arrest of users for possession. (More on Time.com: Is Marijuana Addictive? It Depends How You Define Addiction)

With 1.5 million Americans being arrested each year for simple drug possession — 40% of them for marijuana — Portugal's experience raises the question of whether arresting users is a cost-effective use of taxpayer money. Billions of dollars are spent each year on enforcement of drug possession laws and that enforcement is notoriously racially biased — if ceasing to arrest users for possession has essentially no effect, is this really a good way to spend scarce money?

Read more: TIME

Legalise dagga – dr Ben Dlamini

2010-12-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

MBABANE – The contentious issue of the legalisation of dagga faces its first real test as a case seeking it to be legalised and be traded has been taken to the High Court.

Former Director of the Swaziland Examinations Council Dr Ben Dlamini wants the High Court to help him get an order that will make government not only legalise cannabis but also allow him to operate a cannabis processing factory in the country.

He wants to set up a national cannabis processing and marketing company, with all growers in the country supplying his factory. He says his factory will then solicit orders from local and international pharmacies. He also states that he would involve international research institutions to conduct research on processed and raw cannabis. Dagga is also referred to as cannabis.

Dlamini has cited as respondents, the Attorney General (AG), Minister of Health, Commissioners of Police and that of Correctional Services, as well as the Director of Public Prosecutions. He has also requested that they add the Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry. The respondents are yet to file their responding papers.

Dlamini wants the AG to amend all laws that criminalise cannabis, but only render illegal the extracts of the plant that contains tetrahydrocarbinol, which is the active ingredient that makes a user high.

Dlamini, who holds a Doctorate in Education, Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Chemistry, argues that cannabis is not a drug and is not addictive. He also claims it is not intoxicating nor is it poisonous. He referred to a number of researches done in the United States of America and in Asia. "This necessitated experiments that were conducted with subjects who smoked cannabis for a given time under controlled conditions, A cannabis smoker will not be bothered, while a cigarette smoker will not allow that to happen," reads his affidavit.

He also claims that cannabis influences a person to sleep, but is never intoxicated and ‘unable to know what he is doing.’ He further argues that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco. Dlamini alleges that the substance has been used in Africa and Asia since time immemorial. "It is smoked, it is eaten and it is used as an antidote for cases of poisoning. The question of the risk element attached to the use of cannabis will continue to be a matter for the experts, but irrespective of the answer, there exists no just reason to punish cannabis users or those who grow it," he states in his affidavit.

Dlamini is challenging Section 151 (1) of the Opium and Habit Forming Drugs Act of 1922. The section stipulates that, "In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, habit forming drug or drugs means and includes the following as herein defined – cannabis, dagga, instangu, Indian hemp, under whatever name it may be described, known, sold, supplied or otherwise referred to or dealt with, whether the whole or any portion of the plant and all extracts, tinctures or preparations or admixtures thereon."

He argues that the statement ‘all extracts, tinctures or preparations or admixtures,’ does not apply to what is happening in the country.

"This is what is done to cannabis in Asia and certainly when the law is amended, these extracts should be proscribed such concentrating THC to form Hashish," read his papers.

He has given the respondents until December 17, 2010 to file responding papers. The matter is still pending before the High Court.

...wants 10-year exclusive licence

MBABANE – Dr Ben Dlamini has called upon the Minister for Commerce, Industry and Trade to grant him a 10-year exclusive licence to grow dagga.

This is one of the orders he is seeking from the High Court, where he wants to be allowed to establish a factory processing and selling dagga. He argues that dagga has not only been wrongly defined as a drug and also wrongly proscribed so under legislation regulations.

‘No one has died of dagga in 5 000yrs’

MBABANE –Dr Ben Dlamini has alleged that in 5 000 years, no one has died of cannabis anywh-ere in the world.

He makes this allegation in a section of his court papers where he argues that cannabis is not a drug and neither is it an intoxicant.

"According to the Oxford pocket dictionary, to intoxicate is to make drunk, excite, elate, beyond self control. Unlike alcohol, cannabis users do not lose self control, massive amounts just send them to sleep. Intoxicants are potentially toxic, that is poisonous, with a certain overodse level often dependent on the individual. There has never been a single death directly linked to cannabis use in 5 000 years of history with hundreds of millions of users in the world. There is no toxi amount of cannabis. No animal has died of an overdose of cannabis," he alleges.

- Times of Swaziland

Cannabis To Control Alcohol Abuse

2010-11-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

A new research effort has a provocative outcome as University of California-Berkeley researchers suggest substituting cannabis for treatment of heavy alcohol abuse.

Research published in BioMed Central’s open access Harm Reduction Journal features a poll of 350 cannabis users, finding that 40 percent used cannabis to control their alcohol cravings, 66 percent as a replacement for prescription drugs and 26 percent for other, more potent illegal drugs.

Amanda Reiman carried out the study at the UC-Berkeley Patient’s Group, a medical cannabis dispensary.

She said, “Substituting cannabis for alcohol has been described as a radical alcohol treatment protocol. This approach could be used to address heavy alcohol use in the British Isles – people might substitute cannabis, a potentially safer drug than alcohol with less negative side effects, if it were socially acceptable and available.”

Reiman found that 65 percent of people reported using cannabis as a substitute because it has fewer adverse side effects than alcohol, illicit or prescription drugs, 34 percent because it has less withdrawal potential and 57.4 percent because cannabis provides better symptom management.

Reiman believes this discovery brings up two important points.

“First, self-determination, the right of an individual to decide which treatment or substance is most effective and least harmful for them. Secondly, the recognition that substitution might be a viable alternative to abstinence for those who can’t or won’t completely stop using psychoactive substances.”

Speaking about legalization of cannabis, Reiman added, “The economic hardship of the Great Depression helped bring about the end of alcohol prohibition. Now, as we are again faced with economic struggles, the U.S. is looking to marijuana as a potential revenue generator.

“Public support is rising for the legalization of recreational use and remains high for the use of marijuana as a medicine. The hope is that this interest will translate into increased research support and the removal of current barriers to conducting such research, such as the Schedule I/Class B status of marijuana.”

- PsychCentral

Sea squirts and you

2010-11-17T02:01:00.000-08:00

Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack'

2010-11-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the UK by a considerable margin, beating heroin and crack cocaine into second and third place, according to an authoritative study published today which will reopen calls for the drugs classification system to be scrapped and a concerted campaign launched against drink.

Led by the sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, the study says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, alongside heroin and crack cocaine.

Today's paper, published by the respected Lancet medical journal, will be seen as a challenge to the government to take on the fraught issue of the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs, which proved politically damaging to Labour.

Nutt was sacked last year by the home secretary at the time, Alan Johnson, for challenging ministers' refusal to take the advice of the official Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which he chaired. The committee wanted cannabis to remain a class C drug and for ecstasy to be downgraded from class A, arguing that these were less harmful than other drugs. Nutt claimed scientific evidence was overruled for political reasons.

The new paper updates a study carried out by Nutt and others in 2007, which was also published by the Lancet and triggered debate for suggesting that legally available alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than cannabis and LSD.

Alcohol, in that paper, ranked fifth most dangerous overall. The 2007 paper also called for an overhaul of the drug classification system, but critics disputed the criteria used to rank the drugs and the absence of differential weighting.

Today's study offers a more complex analysis that seeks to address the 2007 criticisms. It examines nine categories of harm that drugs can do to the individual "from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships" and seven types of harm to others. The maximum possible harm score was 100 and the minimum zero.

Overall, alcohol scored 72 – against 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. The most dangerous drugs to their individual users were ranked as heroin, crack and then crystal meth. The most harmful to others were alcohol, heroin and crack in that order.

Nutt told the Guardian the drug classification system needed radical change. "The Misuse of Drugs Act is past its sell-by date and needs to be redone," he said. "We need to rethink how we deal with drugs in the light of these new findings."

For overall harm, the other drugs examined ranked as follows: crystal meth (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20), GHB (18), benzodiazepines (15), ketamine (15), methadone (13), butane (10), qat (9), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine (6) and magic mushrooms (5).

The authors write: "Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm. They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harm is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

Nutt told the Lancet a new classification system "would depend on what set of harms 'to self or others' you are trying to reduce". He added: "But if you take overall harm, then alcohol, heroin and crack are clearly more harmful than all others, so perhaps drugs with a score of 40 or more could be class A; 39 to 20 class B; 19-10 class C and 10 or under class D." This would result in tobacco being labelled a class B drug alongside cocaine. Cannabis would also just make class B, rather than class C. Ecstasy and LSD would end up in the lowest drug category, D.

He was not suggesting classification was unnecessary: "We do need a classification system – we do need to regulate the ones that are very harmful to individuals like heroin and crack cocaine." But he thought the UK could learn from the Portuguese and Dutch: "They have innovative policies which could reduce criminalisation." Representatives of both countries will be at a summit in London today, called drug science and drug policy: building a consensus, where the study will be presented.

UK reformers will be hoping the coalition government will take a more evidence-based approach to classification and tackling drugs than Labour did. The Liberal Democrats supported Nutt over his sacking, while Conservative leader David Cameron, who got into trouble at Eton, aged 15, for smoking cannabis, acknowledged the Misuse of Drugs Act was not working during his time as an MP on the Home Affairs select committee.

Nutt called for far more effort to be put into reducing harm caused by alcohol, pointing out that its economic costs, as well as the costs to society of addiction and broken families, are very high. Taxation on alcohol is "completely inappropriate", he said – with strong cider, for instance, taxed at a fifth of the rate of wine – and action should particularly target the low cost and promotion of alcohol such as Bacardi breezers to young people.

Don Shenker, the chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said : "What this study and new classification shows is that successive governments have mistakenly focused attention on illicit drugs, whereas the pervading harms from alcohol should have given a far higher priority. Drug misusers are still ten times more likely to receive support for their addiction than alcohol misusers, costing the taxpayer billions in repeat hospital admissions and alcohol related crime. Alcohol misuse has been exacerbated in recent years as government failed to accept the link between cheap prices, higher consumption and resultant harms to individuals and society."

"[The] government should now urgently ensure alcohol is made less affordable and invest in prevention and treatment services to deal with the rise in alcohol dependency that has occurred."

The Home Office said last night: "We have not read the report. This government has just completed an alcohol consultation and will publish a drugs strategy in the coming months."

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "In England, most people drink once a week or less. If you're a women and stick to two to three units a day or a man and drink up to three or four units, you are unlikely to damage your health. The government is determined to prevent alcohol abuse without disadvantaging those who drink sensibly."Two experts from the Amsterdam National Institute for Public Health and the Environment and the Amsterdam Institute for Addiction Research point out in a Lancet commentary the study does not look at multiple drug use, which can make some drugs much more dangerous – such as cocaine or cannabis together with alcohol – but they acknowledge the topic was outside its scope.

They add that because the pattern of recreational drug use changes, the study should be repeated every five or 10 years.

- guardian

Innocent drivers test positive for drugs

2010-11-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

Nearly four per cent of people who test positive for drug driving in Victoria and have their licences temporarily suspended are innocent, it emerged today.

Victoria Police today admitted that wrong results were part of the testing process but said it would not change its procedures.

Under the current system, drivers' saliva is tested for cannabis, ecstasy or amphetamines at the roadside and banned for up to 12 hours if they return a positive result.

But penalties or permanent bans are not issued until the sample is tested at a drug laboratory, which police say is 100 per cent accurate.

The new statistics emerged after it was revealed today that Geelong man Rory Lalor recently recorded a false positive test and was banned from the behind the wheel for four hours.

Mr Lalor paid $115 for an independent test that showed his system was free from illegal drugs, but Victoria Police said yesterday he would never have been fined or banned from driving permanently because his saliva swab was found negative by its laboratory.

Inspector Martin Boorman said today that false positives could be returned if equipment was faulty, if a test was not conducted correctly or if the sample itself was problematic but did not elaborate on the last point.

He said they were an unfortunate part of the procedure and that 62 of 1618 drug-driving tests sent to the laboratory, or 3.8 per cent, between 2004 and 2009 had been found to be false.

But he said Victoria Police would not be changing its methods.

"I apologise for the inconvenience of these people, but I make no apologies for what we're doing," he said.

Inspector Boorman said police had detected 1556 drug drivers that were potentially a danger to themselves and others on the road.

- The Age

I get money through selling dagga – local grower

2010-10-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

MBABANE- A local man, who grows cannabis (dagga) is wondering why other countries, where the plant is legal, are assisting Swaziland to eradicate it.

The man, who will not be named, says the fact that the United States aids the Swazi police force in their eradication of local crops is ludicrous.

"Why is it that they can come here and destroy peoples’ livelihoods when you can buy marijuana from a vending machine in California?" he asked.

"In fact, in the US State of California, the legalisation of possession and the sale of marijuana have qualified for the November ballot. If accepted, this law will make it legal to posses 28.5 grams of marijuana and to grow limited amounts of it for personal use. In Canada, the British Columbia Marijuana party’s platform calls for the law on marijuana prohibition to be repealed, and in Amsterdam, it is legal to purchase marijuana from a coffee shop," he explained.

"People in Swaziland do not realise how much money can be made," said the grower, who acknowledged that high quality dagga could be sold for over E2000 a kilogramme.

"Europe and the US grow it, why not here? I do not really care if they legalise it because my money comes in regardless, but what are they afraid of?" he wondered.

"It is illegal to grow dagga in Swaziland, yet a lot of people are doing it," said Sigwe Member of Parliament, Sivumelwano Nxumalo.

"Some people have talked about legalising it, but it has never been seriously taken up. I think we need to have a real discussion on its benefits and side effects."

According to another government official, who did not want to be identified, the legalisation of dagga should be seriously considered, as its taxation could provide an alternative source of revenue for the government.

"Right now, government revenue is seriously declining," he said. "And we all know that marijuana is being grown here, so why not tax it to create an alternative source of revenue? It was discussed at a meeting last year, though it was initially laughed at. It just won’t happen under the current leadership."

According to Superintendent Albert N. Mkhatshwa, international liaison in charge of drugs, there is no possibility of dagga being legalised in the near future. "It is not possible, especially since we are fighting this crime with other African countries where it is illegal," he said. "I do not think it should be debated, it would really complicate our jobs, as dagga leads people to commit many crimes."

Swaziland’s dagga is world renowned for its quality, yet the possibility of its legalisation has yet to be explored in the Kingdom.

Known locally as ‘dagga’, marijuana is a widely grown cash crop in Swaziland. Its product is consumed locally and exported to countries such as South Africa as well as Europe, which makes the Kingdom one of the largest marijuana-growing areas in the Southern African region. This year, the Royal Swaziland Police eradicated between 80 and 165 hectares of dagga per month.

"But we can benefit from these natural seeds," says an individual who has grown dagga for years, who refuses to be named due to the nature of his business. "Governments around the world allow the growing of marijuana, yet Swaziland continues to destroy the crops of rural people who are only trying to send their children to school."

- Times of Swaziland

The promise of legalisation

2010-10-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

Anti-drug policies in the U.S. have failed, and the marijuana trade is largely in the hands of organized crime. It's time for a saner policy of legalisation and regulation.

People on both sides of the marijuana legalisation debate have strong feelings about Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that promises to regulate, control and tax cannabis. But science and empirical research have been given short shrift in the discussion. That's unfortunate, because the U.S. government has actually funded excellent research on the subject, and it suggests that several widely held assumptions about cannabis legalisation actually may be inaccurate. When the total body of knowledge is considered, it's hard to conclude that we should stick with the current system.

One important question is whether laws criminalizing marijuana have effectively reduced supply and use. It would appear from available data that they have not. Despite billions spent on anti-cannabis law enforcement and a 30% increase in the number of arrests in California since 2005, marijuana remains the most frequently used illegal drug. Nationally, an estimated $10 billion is spent each year enforcing marijuana laws, yet an ongoing study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse has concluded that over the last 30 years, the drug has remained "almost universally available to American 12th-graders," with 80% to 90% saying the drug is "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain.

On the health side of the equation, scientific consensus is that while cannabis may pose some health risks, they are less serious than those posed by alcohol and tobacco. The approach taken to regulating these other harmful substances, however, hasn't been to criminalize them but to regulate their distribution, to impose taxes on their purchase and to educate the public about their risks. These measures have been shown to be effective, as in the case of cigarette consumption, which has dropped dramatically.

On the other hand, cannabis prohibition has not achieved its stated objectives. As detailed in a report published last week by my organization, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, research funded by the U.S. government clearly demonstrates that even as federal funding for anti-drug efforts has increased by more than an inflation-adjusted 600% over the last several decades, marijuana's potency has increased by 145% since 1990, and its price has declined 58%.

In this context, supporting Proposition 19 seems like a reasonable position, and recent polls have suggested that almost half of decided voters support the ballot initiative. However, there has emerged a strong assumption in the debate that, though legalisation will save police time and raise tax revenue, this will come at the cost of increasing rates of cannabis use.

This notion is based on a widely cited Rand Corp. report, which used a theoretical model to conclude that rates of cannabis use will increase if cannabis is legalized. Though the authors of this report cautioned readers that there were "many limitations to our estimate's precision and completeness" and that "uncertainties are so large that altering just a few key assumptions or parameter values can dramatically change the results," few seem to have read past the headline that legalisation is likely to increase cannabis use.

This may be the case, but it's not a certainty. In the Netherlands, where marijuana has been sold in licensed "coffee shops" since the 1970s, about 20% of the adult population has used the drug at some time in their lives. In the United States, where it is largely illegal, 42% of the adult population has used marijuana.

Neither Rand's theoretical model nor other commentaries have considered the potential benefits of the broad range of regulatory tools that could be utilized if the marijuana market were legal. The state could then license vendors, impose purchasing and sales restrictions and require warning labels. Although these methods have been scientifically proven effective in reducing tobacco and alcohol use internationally, it is noteworthy that successful government lobbying by the tobacco and alcohol industries has slowly eroded many of these regulatory mechanisms in the United States.

A bill has been introduced in the California Legislature to create a uniform statewide regulatory system under the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control if Proposition 19 passes. Such a system would allow, finally, for an evidence-based discussion of how to optimize cannabis regulatory regimes so that the benefits of regulation (including such things as tax revenue and reduced drug market violence) can be maximized while rates of cannabis use and related harms can be minimized.

Up to now, the fact that cannabis is illegal has meant that the unregulated market has been largely controlled by organized-crime groups, and the trade has sparked considerable violence, both in the United States and in Mexico. Given the widespread availability and use of cannabis despite aggressive criminal justice measures, there is no doubt that a saner system can be created if marijuana is strictly regulated rather than left in the hands of organized crime.

Evan Wood, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, is the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.

- LAtimes

Cannabis should be sold in shops alongside beer and cigarettes, doctors' journal says

2010-10-15T02:29:00.000-07:00

An editorial in the British Medical Journal suggested that the sale of cannabis should be licensed like cigarettes because banning it had not worked. Photo: PA

An editorial in the British Medical Journal suggested that the sale of cannabis should be licensed like alcohol because banning it had not worked.

Banning cannabis had increased drug-related violence because enforcement made “the illicit market a richer prize for criminal groups to fight over”.

An 18-fold increase in the anti-drugs budget in the US to $18billion between 1981 and 2002 had failed to stem the market for the drug.

In fact cannabis related drugs arrests in the US increased from 350,000 in 1990 to more than 800,000 a year by 2006, with seizures quintupling to 1.1million kilogrammes.

The editorial, written by Professor Robin Room of Melbourne University, said: “In some places, state controlled instruments - such as licensing regimes, inspectors, and sales outlets run by the Government - are still in place for alcohol and these could be extended to cover cannabis.”

Prof Room suggested that state-run off licences from Canada and some Nordic countries could provide “workable and well controlled retail outlets for cannabis”.

Prof Room suggested the current ban on cannabis could come to alcohol prohibition, which was adopted by 11 countries between 1914 and 1920.

Eventually it was replaced with “restrictive regulatory regimes, which restrained alcohol consumption and problems related to alcohol until these constraints were eroded by the neo-liberal free market ideologies of recent decades”.

The editorial concluded: “The challenge for researchers and policy analysts now is to flesh out the details of effective regulatory regimes, as was done at the brink of repeal of US alcohol prohibition.”

Campaigners criticised the editorial. Mary Brett, a retired biology teacher, said: “The whole truth about the damaging effects of cannabis, especially to our children with their still-developing brains, has never been properly publicised.

“The message received by children were it to be legalised would be, ‘It can't be too bad or the Government wouldn't have done this’.

“I know - I taught biology to teenage boys for 30 years. So usage will inevitably go up - it always does when laws are relaxed.

“Why add to the misery caused by our existing two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco?”

Earlier this year, Fiona Godlee, an editor of the Journal, which is run by the British Medical Association, endorsed an article by Steve Rolles, head of research at Transform, the drugs foundation, which called for an end to the war on drugs and its replacement by a legal system of regulation.

Dr Godlee said: “Rolles calls on us to envisage an alternative to the hopelessly failed war on drugs. He says, and I agree, that we must regulate drug use, not criminalise it.”

- Telegraph

The Vienna Declaration

2010-09-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Vienna Declaration

The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in
overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.

In response to the health and social harms of illegal drugs, a large international drug prohibition regime has been developed under the umbrella of the United Nations.¹ Decades of research provide a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the global “War on Drugs” and, in the wake of the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, the international scientific community calls for an acknowledgement of the limits and harms of drug prohibition, and for drug policy reform to remove barriers to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care.

The evidence that law enforcement has failed to prevent the availability of illegal drugs, in communities where there is demand, is now unambiguous.^{2, 3}Over the last several decades, national and international drug surveillance systems have demonstrated a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity—despite massive investments in drug law enforcement.^3,4

Furthermore, there is no evidence that increasing the ferocity of law enforcement meaningfully reduces the prevalence of drug use.⁵ The data also clearly demonstrate that the number of countries in which people inject illegal drugs is growing, with women and children becoming increasingly affected.⁶ Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV.^{7, 8} In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, HIV prevalence can be as high as 70% among people who inject drugs, and in some areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are among this group.⁸

In the context of overwhelming evidence that drug law enforcement has failed to achieve its stated objectives, it is important that its harmful consequences be acknowledged and addressed. These consequences include but are not limited to:

HIV epidemics fuelled by the criminalisation of people who use illicit drugs and by prohibitions on the provision of sterile needles and opioid substitution treatment.^{9, 10}
HIV outbreaks among incarcerated and institutionalised drug users as a result of punitive laws and policies and a lack of HIV prevention services in these settings.^11-13
The undermining of public health systems when law enforcement drives drug users away from prevention and care services and into environments where the risk of infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis C & B, and tuberculosis) and other harms is increased.^14-16
A crisis in criminal justice systems as a result of record incarceration rates in a number of nations.^{17, 18} This has negatively affected the social functioning of entire communities. While racial disparities in incarceration rates for drug offences are evident in countries all over the world, the impact has been particularly severe in the US, where approximately one in nine African-American males in the age group 20 to 34 is incarcerated on any given day, primarily as a result of drug law enforcement.¹⁹
Stigma towards people who use illicit drugs, which reinforces the political popularity of criminalising drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts.^{20, 21}
Severe human rights violations, including torture, forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, and execution of drug offenders in a number of countries.^{22, 23}
A massive illicit market worth an estimated annual value of US$320 billion.⁴ These profits remain entirely outside the control of government. They fuel crime, violence and corruption in countless urban communities and have destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan.⁴
Billions of tax dollars wasted on a “War on Drugs” approach to drug control that does not achieve its stated objectives and, instead, directly or indirectly contributes to the above harms.²⁴

Unfortunately, evidence of the failure of drug prohibition to achieve its stated goals, as well as the severe negative consequences of these policies, is often denied by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.²⁵This has created confusion among the public and has cost countless lives. Governments and international organisations have ethical and legal obligations to respond to this crisis and must seek to enact alternative evidence-based strategies that can effectively reduce the harms of drugs without creating harms of their own. We, the undersigned, call on governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, to:

Undertake a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies.
Implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the individual and community harms stemming from illicit drug use.
Decriminalise drug users, scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options and abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.²⁶
Unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the implementation of the comprehensive package of HIV interventions spelled out in the WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS Target Setting Guide.²⁷
Meaningfully involve members of the affected community in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives.

Basing drug policies on scientific evidence will not eliminate drug use or the problems stemming from drug injecting. However, reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfil human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.

Black Cops Say Legalize Marijuana

2010-08-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Experts turn against war on drugs

2010-07-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

Advocates of drug law reform had reason to celebrate today after public statements by senior figures in the medical and legal community suggested the argument was turning in their favour.

The chair of the Bar Council argued in his most recent report that decriminalising drug use would have substantial public benefits, while the editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the UK's most well-respected medical publication, came out publicly in support of drug law reform.

The twin developments come at an exciting time for those calling for a more liberal drug policy. Both deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and prime minister David Cameron are on record questioning the effectiveness of Britain's drug laws. Activists hope reform might be in the pipeline.

In his most recent report the chair of the Bar Council, Nicholas Green QC, argued that decriminalising drugs did not lead to greater use and would have the effect of cutting crime.

"A growing body of comparative evidence suggests that decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health," he said.

"All this can be achieved without any overall increase in drug usage. If this is so, then it would be rational to follow suit. And this will save money and mean that there is less pressure on the justice system.

"A rational approach is not usually the response of large parts of the media when it comes to issues relating to criminal justice," he continued.

"This is something the Bar Council can address. We are apolitical; we act for the prosecution and the defence and most of the judiciary are former members. We can speak out in favour of an approach which urges policies which work and not those which simply play to the gallery."

The comments came at the same time as a special edition of the BMJ in which the editor, Fiona Godlee, endorses an article by Steve Rolles of Transform, a group which lobbies for reform of the UK's drugs laws.

"In a beautifully argued essay Stephen Rolles calls on us to envisage an alternative to the hopelessly failed war on drugs," she writes.

"He says, and I agree, that we must regulate drug use, not criminalise it."

Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, said: "The war on drugs is in deep crisis. These comments show that support for drug policy reform is becoming more and more mainstream, and fundamental change is now inevitable.

"With a prime minster and deputy prime minister both longstanding supporters of alternatives to the war on drugs, at the very least the government must initiate an impact assessment comparing prohibition with decriminalisation and strict legal regulation."

In 2007, Mr Clegg - then Lib Dem home affairs spokesman - said the "so-called war on drugs is failing" following a critical RSA report into drug prohibition.

David Cameron voted in favour of recommendation 24 in the home affairs committee's inquiry into drug misuse in 2002, which read: "We recommend that the government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways-including the possibility of legalisation and regulation-to tackle the global drugs dilemma."

Activists may be disappointed if they expect a sea-change in policy on the back of the coalition government's legislative agenda, however.

While Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron have previously expressed a sympathetic view of the arguments calling for drug law reform, neither will be keen to trigger the media attack which would result from a move to liberalise drug laws.

Recent comments from home secretary Theresa May to the home affairs committee suggest the government is moving in precisely the opposite direction, and is ready to pass legislation allowing for temporary bans to be imposed on legal highs while the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) establishes their legal status.

- politics.co.uk

Ganja growers: If you can't beat 'em, tax 'em

2010-05-29T02:11:00.000-07:00

Local governments in California and other Western states have tried to clamp down on medical marijuana, but Oakland has taken a different approach.

If you can't beat 'em, tax 'em.

After becoming the first US city to impose a special tax on medical marijuana dispensaries, Oakland soon could become the first to sanction and tax commercial pot growing operations. Selling and growing marijuana remain illegal under federal law.

Two City Council members are preparing legislation, expected to be introduced next month, that would allow at least three industrial-scale growing operations.

One of the authors, Councilman Larry Reid, said the proposal is more of an effort to bring in money than an endorsement of legalising marijuana use - although the council has unanimously supported that, too.

The city is facing a $42-million (about R321.6-million) budget shortfall. The tax voters approved last summer on the four medical marijuana clubs allowed under Oakland law is expected to contribute $1-million to its coffers in the first year, Reid said. A tax on growers' sales to the clubs could bring in substantially more, he said.

"Looking at the economic analysis, we will generate a considerable amount of additional revenues, and that will certainly help us weather the hard economic times that all urban areas are having to deal with," Reid said.

How much money is at stake isn't clear because the tax rate and the number of facilities the law would allow haven't been decided. A report prepared for AgraMed Incorporated, one of the companies planning to seek a grower's license, said its proposed 100 000-square-foot (9 290-square-meter) project near the Oakland Coliseum would produce more than $2-million in city taxes each year.

Given their likely locations in empty warehouses in industrial neighbourhoods, the marijuana nurseries under consideration would have more in common with factories than rural pot farms.

Dhar Mann, the founder of an Oakland hydroponics equipment store called iGrow, and Derek Peterson, a former stock broker who now sells luxury trailers outfitted for growing pot as a co-founder of GrowOp Enterprises, have hired an architect to draft plans for two warehouses where marijuana would be grown and processed year-round.

Their vision includes using lights, trays and other equipment manufactured by iGrow and creating an online system that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries to see what pot strains are in stock, place orders and track deliveries.

"We are emulating the wine industry, but instead of 'from grape to bottle,' it's 'from plant to pipe,"' Mann said.

"Or seed to sack," offered Peterson.

The pair say they intend to operate the pot-growing business they have dubbed GROPECH - Grass Roots of Oakland Philanthropic and Economic Coalition for Humanity - as a not-for-profit. They anticipate gross sales reaching $70-million a year. After paying their expenses, they'd funnel the money to local charities and non-profits through a competitive grant process.

The discussion in Oakland comes amid a statewide campaign to make California the first state to legalise the recreational use of marijuana and to authorise cities to sell and tax sales to adults. Another Oakland pot entrepreneur, Richard Lee, is sponsoring a ballot measure voters will consider in November.

Lee, who owns two of Oakland's four dispensaries as well as Oaksterdam University, a trade school for the medical marijuana industry, hopes to secure one of the cultivation permits, but he thinks the city should opt for having more, smaller sites instead of a handful of large ones.

"We need to legalise and tax and regulate the production side as well as the retail side," Lee said. "It's a natural step."

Other supporters say licensed growers would create hundreds of well-paying jobs. The local branch of the United Food and Commercial Workers union already has signed up about 100 medical marijuana workers, and the growers are expected to have union shops as well, said Dan Rush, special operations director of UFCW Local 5.

"I think Oakland's intention is to make Oakland the leader and the trendsetter in how this industry can be effective in all of California," Rush said.

Allowing medical marijuana to be grown openly also could give patients a better idea of where their pot is coming from. Now, many growers hide their identities to avoid federal prosecution.

Oakland has already developed a reputation as one of the nation's most pot-friendly cities. Legislation on the city's books includes a declaration of a public health emergency after federal crackdowns on marijuana clubs and a ballot measure instructing police to make marijuana their lowest enforcement priority.

Self-described "guru of ganja" Ed Rosenthal, a popular writer of pot-growing how-to books, lived in Oakland for 25 years before moving recently to a more affluent borough nearby. He credits the city's positive attitude toward marijuana to a critical mass of activists who have flocked there since the 1970s.

"The whole population of Oakland is just very progressive," Rosenthal said. "It's the radicals who couldn't afford Berkeley or San Francisco who all moved to Oakland."

- Sapa-AP

Moms enlisted to help legalise dope

2010-05-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

Denver - Moms got tougher drunk-driving laws on the books and were directly responsible for passing and then repealing alcohol Prohibition.

Now marijuana activists are trying to enlist the nation's mothers in legalisation efforts with a sales pitch that pot is safer than booze.

The nation's largest marijuana legalisation lobby recently started a women's group. The Moms4Marijuana website draws thousands. And just in time for Mother's Day, a pot legalisation group in Denver has created a pink-carnation web card asking moms to support legalisation.

These marijuana moms argue that pot is no worse than alcohol, that teens shouldn't face jail time for experimenting with it and that marijuana can even help new mothers treat postpartum depression.

"I know so many mothers who support this but aren't willing to come out and say it," said Sabrina Fendrick, head of the Women's Alliance at the Washington-based National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

Marijuana activists say they need more moms to publicly back pot use if they are to succeed with public officials.

"The mother is the first teacher, who you turn to for direction in life," said Serra Frank, a 27-year-old mother of two, who founded Moms4Marijuana in 2005. It has no formal membership, but Frank says its website has had more than 12 000 visitors.

Pot activists say both genders sometimes find it easier to attend protests or lobby lawmakers about pot than to tell their mothers they smoke weed. So legalisation groups hope that if moms, arguably the nation's most powerful lobby, get on board with making pot legal, laws will change in a hurry.

"All the things moms get behind, people listen," said Diane Irwin, 48, a medical marijuana grower who also is a mother of two.

There's still a marijuana gender gap. According to an Associated Press-CNBC poll released last month, women opposed legalisation in greater numbers than men. Just under half - 48 percent - of male poll respondents opposed legalisation to 63 percent of women.

"We have enough problems with alcohol. I feel if we legalised it, it would make people say it's okay," said 37-year-old mother Amanda Leonard, one of the poll respondents

Trying to soften moms up a bit, Denver-based Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, or SAFER, is asking members to "come out" about their pot use this Mother's Day and argue that pot is safer than booze. The group says it has about 20 000 members nationwide.

SAFER's online Mother's Day card has a typical start - "Thank you for raising me to be thoughtful and compassionate" - then transitions to: "I want to share some news that might surprise you, but should not upset you: I believe marijuana should be legal."

For $10 (about 70), card senders can add a book for their moms titled "Marijuana is Safer." The book, published last year, argues that marijuana is healthier than booze. SAFER says several thousand copies have been sold, and group members handed out free copies as Mother's Day gifts to Colorado's 37 female lawmakers last week.

There's no good national count of how many mothers use pot, but anecdotal evidence suggests plenty do. Moms from Florida to Washington are facing criminal charges for using marijuana or supplying it to their children.

In February, 51-year-old Alaska mom Jane C. Cain was arrested along with her 29-year-old son for allegedly growing pot in the house. Cain says she initially feared reprisals from neighbours and didn't answer the door.

"But it turned out people were just coming by to bring homemade food, casseroles and cakes and such," Cain said with a laugh. Her case is still pending, but Cain says that even conservative neighbours say she's not wrong to use marijuana for her frequent migraines, though medical marijuana isn't legal in Alaska.

"Now I go wherever I want and hold my head up high," Cain said. "Five or 10 years from now, people who oppose marijuana will be considered old-fashioned. It's a benign substance, so why shouldn't we have it?"

Irwin, the Colorado medical pot grower, said mothers who use marijuana face a stigma men don't. Irwin says she secretly used marijuana while pregnant to fight morning sickness and after giving birth to battle postpartum depression. Since she started growing pot, Irwin said she's run into many moms who admit to using the drug. She argues that even children could benefit from marijuana use, though Irwin never gave either of her kids pot nor smoked it in front of them.

In fact, she remembers flushing her son's pot down the toilet when he was a teen. But last year, after her now-grown son started a Denver marijuana dispensary, Irwin sold her hair salon, bought a greenhouse and started raising pot for him.

"I look at the kids now who are so medicated, on Ritalin and all the rest, and I'm wondering why we don't explore what's natural, and that's marijuana," said Irwin, who is moving to Denver to work full-time at her older son's dispensary.

- Sapa-AP

Swazi dagga a threat to 2010 World Cup

2010-03-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

MBABANE –Swaziland has been cited as one of two countries that grow dagga for the Southern African market.

The other country linked to the dagga growing is ironically another kingdom, Lesotho. The shocking revelation was made by the South African Ceantral Drug Authority National Co-ordinator Johan Kruger.

Speaking to South African media, Kruger said; “Swaziland and Lesotho are the countries that grow cannabis for South Africa. The region has actually been dubbed a net exporter of cannabis to other countries and there is also a danger that the 2010 World Cup will worsen drug trafficking”, said Kruger

Police PRO Vusi Masuku confirmed that they cannot rule out that possibility.
“We have had instances where the army has captured people smuggling dagga out of the country to neighboring South Africa,” said Masuku.

“Locals and other nationals have also been arrested for trying to smuggle large quantities of dagga. The anti-drug unit has been engaged in a vigorous campaign that is aimed at eradicating dagga. The unit has conducted raids often in a number of forests across the regions and found dagga plants which they subsequently destroyed,” added Masuku.
South African Deputy Chairman of the Central Drug Authority David Bayever said, “Cannabis use was three times the global average in South Africa. Drugs and substance abuse problems were the underlying causes of ills such as HIV/AIDS, violence and crime. Our youth are going to be on holiday and they are going to be targeted. During the tournament law enforcement and customs officials will be under pressure due to massive tourist inflows. We need to handle substance abuse”.

In the past couple of months, local police have confirmed to have destroyed large hectares of dagga worth millions of Emalangeni in street value.

“The latest dagga destroyed was worth a street value of E7.2million which was found in Ndzingeni, Mabhindzi and Mgungundlovu. In previous years we have worked hand-in-hand with our South African counterparts in destroying various large fields of dagga using helicopters and spraying chemicals,” said Masuku.

With South Africa hosting the biggest sporting event globally in three months time, the country is on high alert where drug trafficking and any other criminal offences that are bound to paint a negative image are concerned.

- Times of Swaziland

New Study Confirms Cannabis as an Effective Painkiller

2010-03-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

A new California state-sponsored study has found that medical cannabis can reduce pain for patients suffering from HIV/Aids, multiple sclerosis, and cancer.

“This study confirms all of the anecdotal evidence that those of us who have been in the midst of this epidemic for many decades now," San Francisco Democratic State Senator Mark Leno told Capital Public Radio, "how lives have been saved and pain has been eased as a result of medical marijuana.”

Researchers at The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC-San Diego say the experiments, which involved two-hundred people participating in five different test groups, show that cannabis was just as good or better than traditional pain medications.

A news release from The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research says the group "was created in 2000 (through the passage of SB847) to conduct clinical and pre-clinical trials of cannabinoids, including smoked marijuana, to provide evidence, one way or the other, to answer the question 'Does marijuana have therapeutic value?'"

“We focused on illnesses where current medical treatment does not provide adequate relief or coverage of symptoms,” said Dr. Igor Grant, CMCR director and Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the UCSD School of Medicine. “These findings provide a strong, science-based context in which policy makers and the public can begin discussing the place of cannabis in medical care.”

“These scientists created an unparalleled program of systematic research, focused on science-based answers rather than political or social beliefs,” Senator John Vasconcellos said in the release. Vasconcellos was the original author of The Medical Marijuana Research Act of 1999 (SB847), which led to the creation of the CMCR.

The study (PDF) was presented to the California legislature and public on February 17, 2010.

Scare mongor Bayever at it again

2010-03-04T21:40:00.000-08:00

South Africa is in danger of becoming a major hub for drug trafficking, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Thursday.

West African syndicates had recently become major drug traffickers after Central American cartels began using them due to difficulty with their traditional routes, the office's Jonathan Lucas said at the release of the International Narcotics Control Board's annual report.

"Increased surveillance on traditional routes had made them become unprofitable."
He said if these new routes through West Africa were successfully dealt with by authorities, Central American cartels would again look for other alternatives.

"When they are diverted, will they come to South Africa? Maybe."
There was also a danger the 2010 World Cup would worsen drug trafficking.
During the tournament law enforcement and customs officials would be under pressure due to massive tourist inflows.

"We are aware it is going to be a big problem for us," said Central Drug Authority deputy chairman David Bayever.

He described trafficking cartels as "well-researched guys that know where the loopholes are".
Despite these threats SA's drug problem remained primarily a domestic one, with alcohol and dagga use being well above global averages.

"Cannabis use was three times the global average in South Africa and its alcohol consumption put it in the top 10 of countries."

{it's alcohol consumption put it in the top 10 countries... ehm SA's alcohol
consupmtion has INCREASED 10 FOLD since Bayever has been head of the CDA,
likewise our "above the global average" cannabis consumption: IE what you - YES
YOU DAVID BAYEVER are doing IS NOT WORKING!!!!!!}

Bayever said drugs and substance abuse problems were the underlying causes of such ills as HIV and Aids, violence and crime.

"It is not the result of these problems, but the cause of them. In order to deal with these problems we need to handle substance abuse."

Most of South Africa's cannabis was grown in Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa, said the office's national co-ordinator Johan Kruger. The region was actually a net exporter of cannabis to other countries.

Bayever said an additional problem would be the extension of school holidays during the World Cup. In addition to being at risk for substance abuse, children may also be lured into prostitution.

"Our youth are going to be on holiday and they are going to be targeted to become prostitutes," said Bayever. - Sapa

BREAKING NEWS–CA Supreme Court Strikes Down Medical Marijuana Limits

2010-01-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Unanimously the California Supreme Court struck down a law that looked to impose limits on the amount of weed a medical patient can legally possess! As a result of the voter-approved Proposition 215, passed in 1996, patients with a doctor’s recommendation were allowed to possess an unspecified amount of marijuana.

In 2003, there was this Legislation created to give law enforcement a guideline on when to make marijuana possession busts. The Legislature decided that patients could have up to 8 ounces of dried marijuana and grow as many as six mature or 12 immature plants. The law did allow, however, a patient to have more if a doctor stated that amount was insufficient and individual cities had the power to allow patients to grow and possess more marijuana, but not less.

This morning the California Supreme Court ruled that state lawmakers were wrong to change provisions of the voter-approved Proposition 215. The high court says only voters can change amendments that they’ve added to California’s constitution through the initiative process.

“The California Supreme Court did the right thing by abolishing limits on medical marijuana possession and cultivation,” said Joe Elford, the top lawyer for the marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. “At the same time, the Court may have left too much discretion to law enforcement in deciding what are reasonable amounts of medicine for patients to possess and cultivate.”

The Supreme Court’s decision this morning was the result of Patrick Kelly’s bust. Kelly, from So Cal, was a qualified medical marijuana patient who was arrested back in October of 2005 for 12 ounces of weed and seven plants when a “confidential informant” snitched on him. CA’s Second Appellate District Court overturned Kelly’s conviction saying that legislatively-imposed limits for possession and cultivation of medical herb are an unconstitutional restriction to a voter approved initiative. Today’s decision upholds that ruling agreeing with Kelly’s attorney and the State Attorney General that medical marijuana limits should be abolished as unconstitutional.

Congratulations medical marijuana patients of the Great State of California…you can now possess and grow as much weed as you need!

- ohhburn

Live blowjobs (just kidding)

2010-01-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

JOHANNESBURG - The attack on e.tv for screening an interview with two supposed criminals, apparently intent on making a small fortune from tourists around for the football world cup later this year, is an event of bizarre beauty. The South African police have subpoenaed two staffers from e.tv; the apparent link man between e.tv and the supposed criminals has been found dead in Soweto, after an overdose, so the story goes, of heavy duty rat poison. Swallow that; grubby story to follow soon.

Ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, ANC politicians and their sidekicks have descended into a freebooting hysteria, and gushed out hot gobbledegook in industrial quantities. Police minister Nathi Mthethwa accused e.tv of sensationalism and "harbouring" criminals. ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu has been quoted saying that should e.tv not adhere to the ANC's requests, "they [e.tv] cannot be different from these criminals themselves" and would be "hid[ing] behind journalistic ethics and media freedoms".

This is desperate stuff, all right. But the significant degree of public "free speech" debate around this e.tv issue has been half-cocked, and dripping sick with surly and confused emotion. There has been some sense; about the most useful comment has come from Professor Anton Harber, who put it so: "Journalists should examine, expose and explain criminality and highlight threats, such as those made by these criminals. Sometimes this is awkward and embarrassing for the police".

According to Lindiwe Mazibuko, an MP and a member of the official opposition, "there have been the suggestions from some politicians that journalists in the run-up to the World Cup should engage in ‘patriotic' reporting". The really big issue for e.tv is whether or not the supposed criminals are in fact criminals, a subject that has apparently not arisen for public debate.

The bigger picture is huge; let's focus on just one criminal area, illicit drugs. Not being in the mood for some grubby subpoena, let's refer to information in the public domain. According to the most recent United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, South Africa is one of the world's major growers - and, more to the point, exporters - of cannabis ("dagga", "boom", "grass", etc). Cannabis is the world's biggest drug, by weight, and is characterized by a high degree of local and intra regional production and distribution.

Countries producing for export remain limited, and are largely excluded to South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kazakhstan. Cool countries, these. While the availability of cheap and freely-available cannabis will no doubt delight certain attendees of world cup matches, the average South African appears to know as much about the country's leading status as a cannabis exporter as he or she does about what planet mars is made of.

Then there is the status of organised crime. Leaving aside those who review the latest motor vehicle, and newest tourist hotspot, perhaps the most wretched part of working in and around what is loosely known as journalism in South Africa is the near-daily ordeal of dealing with certain people that are all of, or a mixture of, cheap, tasteless, gaudy, gimcrack, bent and twisted. Some of these people are crooks, or, technically, criminals.

Take a smoking gun on one or more of these individuals to the police, or any number of regulatory authorities, and take a bet that the chance of anything materialising runs at about 0.01%. Again, to avoid the goons, just one sample that's in the public domain. Late in 1996, your humble reporter called the Johannesburg bourse, known as the JSE, and complained about securities fraud connected to Randgold & Exploration (R&E), a listed entity, in respect of its acquisition of gold assets in Mali. The JSE laughed it off.

The main character involved was Brett Kebble, later murdered in September 2005. According to summarised forensic reports since published by R&E in the public domain, R&E alone was looted by Kebble and his cronies of R1.9bn in cash, by way of shares stolen from R&E, laundered mainly through JCI (another listed entity), and then sold on the open markets for cash. According to R&E, it was effectively looted of a further R1bn in other ways. To date, not a single direct prosecution has been made. So put that cheap cannabis in your pipe, smoke it, and watch the law enforcement jackboots through the haze, as they rave on with their World Cup spin.

- MoneyWeb

Woman's grassing cops dope thieves

2009-12-07T22:08:00.000-08:00

Three Atteridgeville police reservists were arrested after a woman complained that they had stolen her dagga, police said yesterday.

Inspector Daniel Mavimbela said the 37-year-old woman arrived at the Atteridgeville police station complaining about her missing dagga.

"She alleged that the suspects were police officials of which one of them was known to her and was spotted by a witness taking the dagga from the woman's shack."

Mavimbela said three police reservists were questioned but denied any knowledge of the dagga.

Police officers found 60kg of dagga worth an estimated R60 000 at the home of one reservist.

Two other reservists, a man, 26, and woman, 29, were arrested on charges of defeating the ends of justice, corruption and possession of dagga.

The woman who complained was also charged with dealing in drugs. - Sapa

GDP turns the corner with 0.9% growth

2009-11-29T02:11:00.000-08:00

A long hoped for recovery in manufacturing has helped South Africa emerge from recession. Statistics SA yesterday reported growth of 0.9 percent in the third quarter, after adjustment for inflation.

Stats SA deputy director-general of economic statistics Rashad Cassim said the figure represented a turning point in the economy, after three consecutive quarters of contraction. But he warned it should be treated with caution.

"It is a seasonally adjusted quarterly change of 0.2 percent, which has been annualised (multiplied by four), which exaggerated the trend," he said.

When gross domestic product (GDP) is measured against the same quarter of last year, the economy contracted by 2.1 percent...
- Business Report

R1m dagga bust in the Eastern Cape

2009-11-29T01:49:00.000-08:00

Three men were arrested when police discovered dagga plants worth R1-million in Pola Park near Mthatha, Eastern Cape police said.

The men were arrested on Saturday during an operation in areas around Mthatha which started at 8am until 6.30pm, said spokesman Superintendent Mzukisi Fatyela.

The men aged 21, 30 and 32 would appear in the Mthatha Magistrate's Court on Monday.- Sapa

Matric bust with R1.8m of dagga

2009-11-16T00:41:00.001-08:00

East London - A matriculant and three others were arrested at the weekend for being in possession of dagga worth R1.8m, the Daily Dispatch reported on Monday.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Captain Stephen Marais said the four were arrested on Friday night at a local shop at Chalumna, East London.

The group were in possession of 47 and a half bags of dagga weighing 1.117 tons.

The suspects were aged between 18 and 38.

Marais said the 18-year-old was in Grade 12 and busy writing his matric exams.

The four were expected to appear in the East London Magistrate's Court Monday. - SAPA

SA includes illegal, underground economies in GDP

2009-11-15T07:13:00.000-08:00

Statistics South Africa has decided to include illegal and underground economies, when calculating the countries’ gross domestic product.

Cannabis farming will now form part of the agricultural sector while prostitution falls within the personal services sector.

It is understood the inclusion of illegal economies into GDP is already a global practice.

“Theoretically it is absolutely correct to include as much of the production in the economy as possible when you calculate GDP growth, so theoretically there is nothing wrong with including things like dagga sales in your economic statistics,” says Efficient Group Economist Dawie Roodt.

- Eyewitness News

Wikileaks South African CDA Cannabis position paper

2009-11-05T00:42:00.000-08:00

Herewith the South African Central Drug Authority Cannabis Position Paper. - Wikileaks

Please note those in charge in “the know” – wrote this paper

SAFERCIA is not responsible for the misrepresentation of the Canadian Senate report; or the glaring absence of number of related deaths; No serious consideration of a drug would exclude the number of deaths... or not.... from that drug

It would pertinent to note that the CDA are the people who reported back to the UN for the 2009 World Drug Report:

The only systematic monitoring of drug use in Africa is taking place in South Africa, based on treatment demand. Data for South Africa suggest that treatment demand for cannabis use increased over the first two quarters of 2008.

Including alcohol, cannabis accounted for 23.5% of substance abuse-related treatment demand in South Africa during this period. - UN World Drug Report 2009 Cannabis Market

Excluding alcohol, What is the demand for cannabis substance abuse treatment?

I thought we were talking about systematic monitoring ... considering 51% of the people that die in South Africa do so DRUNK.

Science chief backs cannabis view

2009-11-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

The UK government's chief science adviser has told BBC News that he supports the former chief drugs adviser's scientific view on cannabis.

Professor John Beddington, the UK's chief scientist, would not be drawn on whether the Home Secretary was wrong to sack Professor David Nutt.

David Nutt was chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

He was fired after using a lecture to say cannabis was less harmful than alcohol and tobacco.

Asked whether he agreed with Professor Nutt's view that cannabis was less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol, Professor Beddington replied: "I think the scientific evidence is absolutely clear cut. I would agree with it."

“ This is a single instance where there has been a problem. In my two years in government there has only been an instance with the ACMD ”
Professor John Beddington

Professor Beddington is the man ultimately responsible for scientific advice in government.

He said that he believed that the sacking had occurred because of a breakdown in trust between Professor Nutt and the Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

"I think it's very difficult - when clearly trust had broken down between the Home Secretary and Professor Nutt - to see how that could go on," he told BBC News.

He stressed the importance placed by government on obtaining clear-cut scientific advice from experts.

He added: "I think it's fair to say we need to make a distinction between scientific advice and evidence - which is the role of experts and scientific committees and the role of ministers - which is to make policy."

Inner workings

He said he did not believe that the incident revealed an underlying problem in the way government used scientific advice.

"There has been a lot of concern in the media that this is in some sense an undermining of the way in which government uses scientific advice. Let me put it in context: there are more than 75 scientific advisory committees," he said.

"This is a single instance where there has been a problem. In my two years in government there has only been an instance with the ACMD."

Professor Beddington said that he would urgently consult with other heads of expert committees to see if they had experienced difficulties in their role.

However, some senior scientists who advise government feel that the Nutt affair is reflective of the inner workings of providing scientific advice in Whitehall.

Many of the advisers I spoke to felt that their committees produce reports whose conclusions are inadequately reported because the publicity is tightly controlled by government press officers. These advisers did not want to be quoted.

Scientists are sometimes required to sign confidentiality agreements - a practise said to exist for commercial reasons. But critics claim the agreements can act as a legal gag on scientists who speak out on government initiatives.

"I'm going to be talking to the advisory committees, I'm going to get feedback from the chairmen. There are going to be cases where there has to be non-disclosure," Professor Beddington said.

"I want to know whether those cases are appropriate - if there is commercial confidentiality or there are sensitivities - or whether they are blanket."

He added: "If there was so many problems, we would not get the quality of scientific advice we get." - BBC NEWS

Kid killed for a joint.

2009-11-02T03:32:00.000-08:00

Pretoria police have again been accused of shooting and killing an innocent man, according to a newspaper report.

According to The Sowetan, the family of Kgothatso Ndobe (21) say he had been polishing his shoes when the police arrived and said they wanted to question him and his friend, Xolani Bhoya.

Ndobe apparently panicked and ran away. A trainee officer then shot him in the head.

The trainee officer allegedly fled the scene after he realised what he had done.

Bhoya says the reason Ndobe ran away was because he had been smoking dagga when the police arrived.

Eye-witnesses say a senior officer on scene, Inspector Skosana, refused to call an ambulance or transport Ndobe to hospital.

Later still, officers at the Atteridgeville police station apparently told Bhoya that he could not open a case because the person who was supposed to open it was dead.

The latest shooting comes after Pretoria police shot at the unarmed occupants of a VW Golf last weekend after they mistook the occupants for robbers. A fortnight before that Pretoria police shot and killed Olga Kekana (29) after mistaking her and her companions for hijackers.

- TimesLive

Booze 'more harmful than LSD'

2009-10-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Alcohol and cigarettes were more dangerous than illegal drugs such as cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, the British government's top drugs adviser said yesterday.

Professor David Nutt, of Imperial College London, called for a new system of classifying drugs to enable the public to better understand the relative harm of legal and illegal substances.

Alcohol would rank as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone, he said in a briefing paper for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London.

Tobacco would come ninth and dagga, LSD and ecstasy 11th, 14th and 18th respectively. The ranking is based on physical harm, dependence and social harm.

"No one is suggesting drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree," said Nutt, the chairman of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

"We have to accept young people like to experiment with drugs and other potentially harmful activities, and what we should be doing... is protecting them from harm.

"We therefore have to provide more accurate information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong."

Nutt caused controversy earlier this year by saying that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse riding, a claim he repeated in his paper. - Sapa-AFP

Informer rats out cops

2009-10-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

The South Gauteng High Court on Tuesday heard how senior organised crime officers raided flats around Gauteng for drugs only to sell them to drug lords.

At one point, a man who had collected the drugs to sell for the officers was arrested by another police unit for drug possession, only to be released without any charges a day later.

This was the testimony of Norman Kokoeng, who told the court he was recruited by Senior Superintendent Dumisani Jwara.

"He called to say he was promoted from Vereeniging to a Senior Superintendent in the West Rand and suggested that he should de-register me as an informant in Vereeniging and register me as his informer in the West Rand... and told me not to worry as we will operate like we did in the Vaal," Kokoeng said.

Once this was done, they and other officers continued to raid residential flats in search for drugs.

"We usually found drugs, money and 419 scam documents... Depending on the amount of money, we sometimes took the cash only and left the drugs," he said.

It was after one of the raids that Kokoeng and another man identified only as Kenneth drove to a church in Mohlakeng, Randfontein, where Captain Victor Jwili gave them drugs including crack, cocaine, mandrax and ecstasy.

Jwili continued conducting the church choir while the two left with the drugs.

Kenneth was later arrested for drug possession, but released without charge a day later - leading to charges of defeating the ends of justice against the three senior police officers on trial.

Senior Superintendent Dumisani Jwara, 43, Captain Landro Mokgosani and Captain Victor Jwili, 38, have pleaded not guilty to 13 charges against them, among them drug dealing, fraud and theft. A fourth accused, Captain Sakhepi Caiphus Shange, died in police custody in July.

- SAPA

New medical marijuana policy issued

2009-10-19T01:06:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

California is unique among those for the widespread presence of dispensaries -- businesses that sell marijuana and even advertise their services. Colorado also has several dispensaries, and Rhode Island and New Mexico are in the process of licensing providers, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that promotes the decriminalization of marijuana use.

Attorney General Eric Holder said in March that he wanted federal law enforcement officials to pursue those who violate both federal and state law, but it has not been clear how that goal would be put into practice.

A three-page memo spelling out the policy is expected to be sent Monday to federal prosecutors in the 14 states, and also to top officials at the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The memo, the officials said, emphasizes that prosecutors have wide discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, and says it is not a good use of federal manpower to prosecute those who are without a doubt in compliance with state law.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the legal guidance before it is issued.

"This is a major step forward," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality."

At the same time, the officials said, the government will still prosecute those who use medical marijuana as a cover for other illegal activity. The memo particularly warns that some suspects may hide old-fashioned drug dealing or other crimes behind a medical marijuana business.

In particular, the memo urges prosecutors to pursue marijuana cases which involve violence, the illegal use of firearms, selling pot to minors, money laundering or other crimes.

And while the policy memo describes a change in priorities away from prosecuting medical marijuana cases, it does not rule out the possibility that the federal government could still prosecute someone whose activities are allowed under state law.

The memo, officials said, is designed to give a sense of prosecutorial priorities to U.S. Attorneys in the states that allow medical marijuana. It notes that pot sales in the United States are the largest source of money for violent Mexican drug cartels, but adds that federal law enforcement agencies have limited resources.

Medical marijuana advocates have been anxious to see exactly how the administration would implement candidate Barack Obama's repeated promises to change the policy in situations in which state laws allow the use of medical marijuana.

Shortly after Obama took office, DEA agents raided four dispensaries in Los Angeles, prompting confusion about the government's plans.

- Yahoo Finance

Jails do more harm than good

2009-10-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

The government should consider community service for those convicted of non-violent, petty crimes, because most people emerge from jail more damaged than before, Jody Kollapen, former chairperson of the Human Rights Commission, has said.

He was speaking at a public seminar on "Human Rights in African Prisons", at the Centre for the Book last night.

He acknowledged that most South Africans were angry about crime and did not want to be concerned with conditions in prison, but said that doing so was ultimately in everyone's best interests.

Kollapen, who chaired the seminar, said "we should be sending petty offenders to (work at ) hospitals and other organisations where there is a lack of staff and resources".

"These organisations can benefit from people who are doing volunteer work, while the taxpayers do not have to pay their board and lodging," he said.

"It is in our best interests as a society that people are rehabilitated."

Kollapen acknowledged the need for prisons, but said they should be reserved for those who were dangerous, those who raped and murdered, and who should spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

"Let's send people to prison who deserve to be in prison."

Dr Jeremy Sarkin, head of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in Cape Town, said one in every 700 people in the world was behind bars.

The world's prison population was more than nine million people.

Never before had there been so many problems in penal systems, or such large numbers of people behind bars.

Sarkin emphasised that African prisons were not the worst in the world. Conditions in Latin America, central and eastern Europe, and central Asia were far worse.

Although prisons in Africa were often considered the worst in the world, many other prison systems were more violent and overcrowded. But this did not mean that African prisons were human rights-friendly, Sarkin said.

"Many prisons are in a dilapidated condition and their practices are at odds with human rights standards," he said.

"Africa is home to 53 countries, roughly 3 000 prisons and approximately one million prisoners.

"Most prisons suffer from massive overcrowding, decaying infrastructure, a lack of medical care and hygiene, corruption and violence."

Gideon Morris, who is the director for the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, said South Africa should also reconsider legislation on minimum sentences.

He said 68 percent of the prison population in South Africa was serving more than five years.

"If you have more people coming into prison than those leaving, your prisons will continue to fill up until at the end of the day they overflow and there is total breakdown of the system.

"In the next few years we are going to have a serious overcrowding crisis."

- Cape Argus

Popcru puffs up a storm

2009-09-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) is not known for doing much that is sensible. These are the guys, after all, to whom the South African National Defence Force unionists look when they seek examples on how to run riot, trash a city centre and snack on the hand that feeds them.

For a change, though, Popcru had it right when it this week pushed for the legalisation of dagga. If the South African Police Service abandoned its futile war against rokers, resources would be freed up to focus on more serious crime, said the union at its annual conference.

While the Christian organisation, Doctors for Life, slammed “Potcrew” as opening the door to hard drug use, the union argued that regulation similar to that on alcohol sales would counteract this. It is certainly true that cannabis is less addictive than nicotine and alcohol, and that moderate use poses a negligible danger to health, according to a research review by the British medical journal, The Lancet, a few years ago.

Popcru’s proposal, which has been a regular feature of its congresses for a few years, does nothing more than mirror trends elsewhere in the world towards the legalisation, or at least the decriminalisation, of dagga use.

In spite of draconian drug laws, the use of marijuana — weed, dope, pot, cannabis, Indian hemp, insangu — call it what you will, has increased steadily in every Western country. In Britain 40% of teenagers, 30% of junior hospital doctors, and 20% of university students use it regularly, although interestingly, following decriminalisation, usage among the young has fallen.

Even the rabidly hardline anti-drug United States, where about a third of the U.S. population is estimated to have tried cannabis, allows its use for medical purposes, mainly to counteract the nausea and vomiting that is caused by chemotherapy.

It is the influence of the U.S. that unfortunately makes it highly unlikely that South Africa will ever legalise dope.

The classification in international treaties of cannabis as a dangerous narcotic is the direct result of U.S. pressure. The U.S. buys into the thin-edge-of-the-wedge argument and the massive resources it throws into the “war against drugs” inclines it towards a punitive response towards any country seen as being soft on drugs.

Nevertheless, in South Africa there are sound arguments in favour of legalisation. The most compelling of these is reality.

Dagga is already the most important cash crop along the eastern seaboard. Nationwide it is estimated that the annual turnover in an informal dagga agriculture is twice that of the legal liquor trade.

Dagga is also the ideal indigenous crop. It flourishes in even the poorest soil and as a multibillion rand industry provides a livelihood to many thousands of rural people.

There is no alternative commercial crop that can come close as a substitute in terms of hardiness and the cash income produced.

Imagine the effect on the fiscus if, instead of fruitless expenditure on trying to destroy an industry which the SA Police Service has conceded to be ineradicable, dagga was legalised, controlled and taxed.

This would also relieve the SAPS of being in the unhappy position of not only having to destroy the livelihoods of the poorest of the poor, but because of the centuries-old role of dagga in African society, encouraging a potentially dangerous contempt of the law.

Dagga smokers are no more offensive than tobacco smokers and generally a hell of a lot more benign in their demeanour than those addicted to alcohol.

Nor is the legendary passivity of the dopehead an undesirable trait in a country that bubbles with potentially explosive levels of aggression.

- The Witness

Dagga should be legalised: Popcru

2009-09-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

Cosatu's congress could end on a high note, with police union Popcru pushing for dagga to be legalised.

The proposal was due to come up for debate today when delegates debate resolutions.

Popcru general secretary Nkosinathi Theledi told The Star that by legalising dagga, the police would be freed to focus on fighting more serious crime.

If adopted, said Theledi, the proposal would be forwarded to the SAPS top brass for consideration.

"Whether we like it or not, dagga is being used and it should rather be legalised.

"We are saying it should be regulated ... the age limit on who is allowed to use it.

"Research even tells us that there are cases where doctors prescribe dagga for patients with particular ailments.

"If it happens, then this will save police resources - instead of chasing after (dagga sellers and producers), they can look at bigger crime," said Theledi.

Theledi, who says he does not smoke dagga, said he was initially opposed to the idea, but had been persuaded otherwise by his union.

While the use of dagga may encourage some users to try harder drugs, Theledi said regulation - such as that on alcohol sales - should be enforced.

Legalisation would also "empower the people who produce it and will add to the economy", according Theledi, stressing it would be up to congress delegates to debate and finalise the issue.

Meanwhile, Cosatu deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali said that, for the first time, the issue of global warming would feature at the congress.

- Cape Argus

Police break Christiaan's neck for cannabis

2009-09-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

A man whose neck was broken during an arrest for possession of dagga in 2006, is suing the government for R7-million in the Cape High Court.

Christiaan Kansanga's case against the Minister of Safety and Security got under way in court this week, with medical professionals giving evidence that severe damage had been done to Kansanga's neck during an arrest on March 6, 2006.

Kasanga's lawyer, Martin Skovgaard-Petersen, said Kasanga had been unable to work since the incident because he had "wobbly legs" and he could only walk for between "300 and 500 metres". He also had a "hanging" right arm, Skovgaard-Petersen said.

Kasanga was 29 at the time of his injury

Kasanga was 29 at the time of his injury.

He said the amount Kasanga was suing for totalled nearly R7-million and included loss of earnings, general damages, as well as future needs which included the costs of assistance, therapy, equipment and any medical treatment he would require as a result of the injury.

In an affidavit made by Kasanga following the arrest, and read out during court proceedings on Thursday, Kasanga alleged that around 9pm on March 6, 2006, he had been walking in Vredendal when a police van had pulled up alongside him.

He said he had walked towards the back of the van when one of the policemen climbed out of the vehicle.

He said he was grabbed by the neck and his head pushed down.

The men stated Kasanga had lost consciousness

One police officer had grabbed him by his right arm, and the other had grabbed his left arm and both officers pushed down together.

Kasanga stated one of the men sat on his buttocks while his face was pushed into the ground.

He then heard a "klap geluid" or clapping sound and felt an intense burning sensation in his neck and felt his lower body was lame.

The two police officers involved, Constable Randal Scheffers and Inspector Jacob Van Nieuwholtz, said in their affidavits they had been on patrol when they spotted Kasanga. They asked him where he was going and he ran away. Their affidavits state they noticed him throwing something away, which they believed was dagga, and gave chase. One of the men grabbed the rucksack on Kasanga's back, causing him to fall forwards.

The men stated Kasanga had lost consciousness and they then loaded him into the police van. When he regained consciousness at the police station, Kasanga told them he had no feeling in his lower limbs and he was transported to hospital.

Renata Wilson, for the Minister of Safety and Security, said it would be the police officers' testimony that Kasanga had fallen when his backpack was grabbed and no pressure had been put on his neck. He had been "wriggling" and attempting to escape when the two men had attempted to bring his hands behind his back to handcuff him and the two officers had no "inkling that a neck had been broken during the arrest".

Wilson said the arrest had been routine, as laid out in the South African Police Service's training manual, and excessive force had not been used.

Medical expert Dr Johan van der Spuy testified that damage at several sites along Kansanga's spine had been noted, most notably damage had been done to the fifth and sixth vertebrae and there was damage and swelling in the soft tissue of the vertebral canal.

Van der Spuy testified that these were the result of a severe flexion force (the force created when pushing the head downwards towards the chest) and a severe extension force (created when pushing the head backwards on the neck to look upwards).

He said significant pressure would have been applied in order to inflict these injuries.

In response to numerous questions from Wilson regarding the likelihood of the injuries resulting from a fall, Van der Spuy said it was "extremely improbable" such an injury could result from a fall on to a flat surface.

Questioned by Wilson as to why no bruising was evident anywhere else on Kasanga's body, Van der Spuy said it was "of no importance whatsoever" that there was no bruising and this could have been the result of the arrest being effected on a patch of grass, which would have provided some form of cushioning.

He also stated a pre-existing narrowing of Kasanga's spinal canal would not have made him more susceptible to a neck injury.

Asked why in all the thousands of arrests made by police officers monthly, only Kasanga's neck was broken, Van der Spuy responded that he could only surmise that in this instance "the mechanics of the arrest" were not standard procedure.

Van der Spuy's claims were backed up by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Jonathan Driver-Jowitt, who stated that the "extensive injuries" would have required "considerable" force to inflict.

He said it was "exceedingly unlikely that this injury would have resulted from a fall on a horizontal surface".

The case will continue on Monday when the defence team will cross-examine Dr Driver-Jowitt.

- Cape Argus

Cannabis a brief history

2009-09-17T04:39:00.001-07:00

David Bayever talks KAK again - by allowing his plan to continue to take 70 lives a day

2009-09-17T03:21:00.000-07:00

The Western Cape has the highest number of dagga smokers in the country and 42 percent of dagga smokers attending treatment centres are under the age of 20.

The Department of Social Development says 39 percent use methamphetamine (tik) and eight percent use heroin, but alcohol is the most frequently abused substance by young and old.

"We have 9.2 percent of our population - twice that in other parts of the world - who use cannabis. It will be a grave mistake to legalise cannabis as elsewhere in the world," Central Drug Authority (CDA) deputy chairman David Bayever said while addressing the standing committee on community development on Wednesday.

"We legalised alcohol and never mind the money made from it - alcohol is our biggest problem. The cost to society is horrific. We cannot make the same mistake twice."

The statistics Bayever used were based on a 2000 to 2008 report the Medical Research Council did for the department.

At 16 percent, the province has the country's highest rate of binge drinking, particularly among young people and in rural areas.

Tik is the primary drug for 35 percent of all users, followed by alcohol and dagga 28 and 14 percent respectively. Thirteen percent used heroine and six percent cocaine... - Cape Times

.......

David Bayever has been in charge of the CDA for the past few years, and yet fails to account for the increase in deaths due to alcohol on his watch. Quick to lay the blame and not to make the same mistake twice??????????

Daily David 70 people die because of alcohol. Daily David you are in charge of a national pile of bodies 70 deep.

As the video below depicts not one death due to cannabis.

I say this clearly so you can understand.

FUCKOFF with your lies and mistruths!

2009-09-15T23:25:00.001-07:00

Book Bomb

2009-08-23T07:12:00.001-07:00

ABOUT THE BOOK: With Marijuana is Safer, nationally recognized marijuana policy experts Steve Fox, Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert have produced the first book in history fully dedicated to examining the relative harms and the illogical legal status of the two most popular recreational substances in the world -- marijuana and alcohol. Through an objective examination of the two drugs and the laws and social practices that steer people toward alcohol, the book poses a simple yet rarely considered question: Why do we punish adults who make the rational, safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol?

Marijuana is Safer has something for everyone. For those unfamiliar with marijuana, it provides an introduction to the plant and its effect on the user, and reveals the truth behind some of the government’s most frequently cited marijuana myths. For current or future professional marijuana advocates and individuals interested in what is likely to become a major political battle in the not-to-distant future, the book explains why the “marijuana is safer than alcohol” message must be a prominent part of the public debate over legalization.

But most importantly, for the millions of Americans who want to help advance the cause of marijuana policy reform -- or simply want to defend their own personal “safer” choice -- the book supplies the talking points and detailed information needed to make persuasive arguments to friends, family, co-workers, and elected officials. Written in a reader-friendly style, but loaded with facts and insightful analysis about the “war on marijuana” and the drive to end it, Marijuana is Safer is the perfect book for anyone who has – or has not – ever wondered, “Why are we driving people to drink?”

Visit the Great Marijuana Book Bomb website to find out more about Marijuana is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink? by Paul Armentano, Steve Fox, and Mason Tvert.

Drunk High Court judge drives through wall

2009-08-02T22:21:00.001-07:00

Two female officers on the scene had called for assistance after the judge became non co-operative.

I wasn't drunk at 'all'

Police are investigating a case of drunken driving...

The wholeshtory

Arrive Alive official drinks 4L beer and drives

2009-08-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

One of the government’s road safety champions is preaching about responsible driving from his office — two weeks after being convicted of drunken driving.

Eastern Cape Department of Transport communications director Ncedo Kumbaca, who is also the spokesman for Arrive Alive in the province, admitted to drinking almost four litres of beer before causing an accident and writing off his car.

He was sentenced to five months in prison or a fine of R5000 — which he chose to pay in instalments — by the East London Magistrate’s Court. He pleaded with the court not to endorse his licence because he needed it to do his job.

On the flip side, driving while drunk makes you more liable to take risks.

The 28-year-old was unimpressed when confronted on Thursday. “That’s not news. There is nothing more to write about in this matter. Leave me alone.”

He was arrested on March 17 2007 after his black Nissan Navara crashed into a Mercedes-Benz in Amalinda Main Road in East London. Tests by a district surgeon showed his blood alcohol level to be 0.26g/ 100ml — well over the legal limit of 0.05g/ 100ml.

Arrive Alive

In a sworn statement to court, he admitted to drinking five 750ml quarts of Amstel Lager before the crash.

Kumbaca, also an ANC Youth League branch chairman in East London, now faces another potential embarrassment.

The Sunday Times has seen documents proving that he distributed league statements and newsletters via his office to recipients on the department’s e-mail list. Public servants may not promote the interests of political parties using state property.

Kumbaca distributed his branch’s newsletter, Lutsha, which encouraged youths to vote for the ANC, on April 16. It was sent to him by Buffalo City municipal spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya, who is treasurer of the same branch.

“Morning chairperson. Here is an electronic version of our newsletter for distribution. Amandla,” Ngwenya wrote. Kumbaca then sent out the newsletter. He has admitted to forwarding the e-mails, but refused to comment further.

Eastern Cape MEC for roads and transport Gloria Barry will be handed a report on the drunken-driving incident tomorrow and will decide whether to take action against Kumbaca. She said an investigation would also be conducted into the e-mail saga.

Ngwenya could not be reached for comment. The Department of Transport’s spokesman, Sam Monareng, referred all questions back to Kumbaca. National Arrive Alive spokesman Thandi Moyo did not respond to questions.

- The Times

Scare - Panic - flailing arms - Alarming stats on drug usage in SA

2009-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

Drug consumption in South Africa is currently twice the world norm and the use of cocaine and dagga has increased by 20 percent in two years, the Central Drugs Authority (CDA) said on Tuesday.

"The drug problem in South Africa remains very serious with drug usage being twice the world norm in most cases - this is only the tip of the iceberg," said Dr David Bayever of the CDA, a government drug control organisation.

In 2006, 2,52 million people used dagga and this increased to 3,2 million in 2008, said Bayever speaking at the release in Pretoria of the United Nations 2009 World Drug Report.

The users of cocaine increased from 240 000 in 2006 to 290 000 in 2008.

However, the use of opiates such as heroin decreased by 20 percent during the same time period.

Accordingly in 1996 one percent of South Africans were in treatment for heroin abuse while in 2008 those in treatment for this addiction increased between eight and 24 percent.

The number of South Africans in treatment for cocaine addiction increased from 1,5 percent in 1996 to 17,5 percent in 2008.

Bayever said that 15 percent of South Africa's population had a drug problem and that the country needed to change its approach to dealing with the issue as social structure continued to change.

There were more single mothers raising children in the country at present than before and child-headed households had doubled between 2002 and 2007.

An increase in child-headed households from 701 000 in 2007 to 5,7 million was expected by 2015.

This would have negative effects on these children in terms of their behaviour and achievement, possibly leading to drug use.

The Fifa World Cup was also likely to bring an increase in demand as well as drug trafficking, while the recession in South Africa may not necessarily affect drug users.

UN regional representatives for Southern Africa from the office on Drugs and Crime, Dr Jonathan Lucas, said tackling organised crime was the key to resolving the continent's drug problem.

He identified west African narcotics cartels as threats as they traffic drugs from Asia, as well as Latin America particularly to Western Europe.

"The challenge for Africa is not to say no to drugs but to say no to organised crime," he said.

The threat drug use posed for the continent was that it promoted poverty, lack of opportunity and despair.

Organised crime, as the root of the drug problem, fuelled corruption, political instability, it emptied Africa of its wealth, impeded development and chased away foreign investment, Lucas said.

Bayever said organised crime played a small part in contributing to worldwide drug use which showed that drugs cultivated in the country were used and consumed in South Africa.

- Pretoria News

NO MENTION OF ALCOHOL AND THE 7000+ LIVES IT CLAIMS ANNUALLY
NO MENTION OF THE GROWING FAS RATE
NO MENTION THAT ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION HAS ALSO DOUBLED

THE CENTRAL DRUG AUTHORITY HAS MISSED OUT ON MENTIONING THE MOST COSTLY DRUG TO OUR SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY.

and when compared to the pile of bodies produced by drugs... to alcohol - what's all this scare about David?

Abused from the womb

2009-06-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Pregnant women who drink alcohol put their unborn children at greater risk than they think.

Sanna Winston (37) had her first glass of wine -- forced down her throat from a rusted enamel cup -- when she was five years old.

"My stepmother used to drink a lot and my dad didn't like that. She started making me drink full cups of wine too. She used to say: 'If you tell your father I have been drinking, I will tell him that you drank as well, and then we will both get a hiding from him.' So I kept quiet."

Today Sanna has four children of her own -- including an eight-year-old daughter, Francisca.

She lives on a wine farm near the Boland town of Wellington. Nearby are verdant vineyards and gunmetal grey mountains. But Sanna lives in utmost poverty. With no income of her own, she has moved in with a much younger farm worker, whom she now somewhat disparagingly calls her "boyfriend".

It's not a happy union. But, as Sanna says: "My kids need a place to stay".

"My boyfriend assaults me and gives me a hiding and then locks me out of the house. My child says: 'He can't hit me because he's not my father.' But the fact is that this young man provides for us, so we have to listen to him."

The one constant in Sanna's tumultuous life has been abuse. Her body is covered with the terrible evidence. Blue-black bruises throb across her face and head; welts from past knife wounds wind like worms in the flesh under her skin.

SlideShow

"All the people here ask me, 'Sanna, why does your face look so bad?' Then I reply: 'I fell.' They just shake their heads. They know I'm lying to them. But I can't make my boyfriend's name bad. He's taking care of me," she says.

A few years ago Sanna's husband died in a pool of blood on the same wine farm where she now lives.

"He died drunk," she whispers.

Sanna's husband, too, mistreated her. But she's always ready with an excuse for the men in her life.

"At least he never lifted his hands to me, gave me a black eye or hit me in the face. All he did was stab me with the messie [small knife] from time to time ..."

But Sanna's attempts at diluting the horrific truth are futile -- even when she uses alcohol to drown the pain, a survival skill she learned from her stepmother, father, aunts, uncles and all her partners.

"If someone makes me angry or sad, I don't know what to do, so I run to the bottle. I pour a drink and think about my problems … I'm soft and cry easily. Then, with the tears in my eyes, I drink and think," she says.

Nearby, her daughter, Francisca, is talking to friends. Sanna stares at the girl. Tears swell in her eyes.

"I was drinking a lot when I was pregnant with Francisca. So bad that I lay on the ground drunk. Now I can see that her head is damaged." Sanna sobs.

Francisca is suspected of suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, or, more scientifically, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

She struggles at school. She can't seem to get past grade two. She's easily distracted, has a bad memory and is shorter than the other children in her class, even though she's older than them.

Experts say children severely affected by FASD typically have low IQs. Physical aberrations include small heads and eyes that are narrow and set wide apart.

Such children sometimes shake uncontrollably.

"I feel very bad about what I've done to Francisca," Sanna says. "If I didn't drink with her in my stomach, she would have been a normal child today and might have gone far in life."

But, at the time of her pregnancy, Sanna had no idea of what alcohol could do to her baby. For the first few months she didn't even know she was pregnant.

It's a scenario that Sharon Messina of the Women on Farms Project in Stellenbosch knows all too well.

"It's not easy for the women to just forget about the alcohol. They want to stop drinking, but there are no support systems within their families and their communities to encourage rehabilitation. All the structures encourage and approve more drinking, because you are seen as an outsider if you don't participate in the drinking parties," she says.

According to Professor Dennis Viljoen from the Foundation for Alcohol Related Research (Farr) in Cape Town, FASD is the most preventable form of mental retardation worldwide.

"Alcohol disrupts the tissue formation of the foetus, particularly in the brain, to such an extent that you get severe neurological consequences," he says.
South Africa has the highest FASD rate in the world. In Wellington 5% to 8% of all school-going children are affected.

But, says Viljoen, the highest rate of the illness on the globe is in the Northern Cape, in the town of De Aar, where 12% of grade one children suffer from FASD -- almost double that of children infected with HIV in the area.

Viljoen says 60% of women with FASD children have a body mass index of less than 20, which means they're abnormally thin. "If you're a poor, malnourished woman, alcohol will affect your baby far more than if you are a well-nourished, middle-class woman. So poverty underpins this whole situation."

A shebeen on the farm where Sanna lives ensures she and her fellow residents always have easy and relatively cheap access to alcohol.

The establishment is operated by the farm workers themselves and they're all allowed to drink on credit.

Messina's colleague, Leonora Sefoor, says since the so-called "dop system" -- which thrived during the apartheid years and in which some farmers paid their workers with wine -- was outlawed, farm workers across the Western Cape have created their own dop systems.

"Whereas before it was the white farmers that were exploiting the workers by making sure that they were in constant debt to the farmer, it's now the workers who are harming themselves. When workers get paid, they end up paying their alcohol debt and the whole cycle begins again," Sefoor says. Most women on the farms remain "totally ignorant" of the harm of drinking alcohol during pregnancy, she says.

South African law demands that liquor companies must place labels on their products warning consumers of the health problems associated with alcohol consumption. But Viljoen says this measure is largely ineffective.

"Many of the people living in affected communities are illiterate," he says, slamming the labelling of alcohol containers as "an appeasement of government's conscience".

Viljoen applies the same argument to government pamphlets on FASD: "It makes little sense to distribute masses of literature to people who can't read."

The solution to South Africa's FASD crisis, he says, lies in intensive, state-sponsored initiatives in affected areas that "speak directly" to people. This, he says, could be achieved by employing "reformed" individuals who've experienced the illness "first-hand" as mentors to discourage women from drinking while pregnant.

"It lies in increasing employment rates. Education and housing need to be bolstered. Contraception should be offered to all women so that they can plan pregnancies," Viljoen says.

But for Sanna and the other women on her farm, employment and education are mere dreams.

Messina is convinced that until social conditions in FASD-afflicted areas improve and women have less reason to abuse alcohol, the incidence of the illness will only increase.

"Some [of the women] will tell you they have stopped drinking, but this will generally be only for a while. After that initial success the abuse will continue and to get relief they'll start drinking again. It's mostly a vicious circle," Messina says.

Pregnancy dangers
Alcohol
Research shows that the risks of drinking alcohol while pregnant far outweigh prenatal exposure to tobacco and illicit drugs. In fact, alcohol is even more harmful to a pregnancy than marijuana, cocaine or heroin. This is because it is classified as a teratogen, a neurotoxin that can cause developmental disabilities, even severe brain damage, whereas drugs such as cocaine do not.

No amount of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is considered safe. Frequent drinking during pregnancy can cause mental handicaps, birth defects, brain damage, emotional and behavioural problems and defects relating to the heart, face and other organs. It increases the risk of premature birth or miscarriage.

Smoking
Babies born to smoking mothers generally tend to have a lower birth weight and higher rates of illness and respiratory problems. Smoking while pregnant increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome and birth defects to the heart, brain and face.

Caffeine
Experts recommend consuming moderate to low amounts of caffeine while pregnant. Some experts say 300mg of caffeine a day is safe, but others say pregnant women should not consume more than 200mg a day. A 2008 study found that women who consumed more than 200mg of caffeine a day had about twice the risk of miscarriage compared with women who did not consume any. A cup of coffee contains 90mg to 150mg of caffeine, a cup of tea 30mg to 70mg and an average bar of chocolate about 30mg.

Over-the-counter drugs
Drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen, which are safe under normal circumstances, can cause significant harm to a foetus. -- www.merck.com, www.acshealth.org,ww.ucsfhealth.org, www.netdoctor.co.uk, www.prenatal-health.suie101.com, www.thepregnancyzone.com --

- M&G

Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol

2009-06-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

Itsh just a pity the UN & SA can't dishhtinguishhh one from the other...

The only systematic monitoring of drug use in Africa is taking place in South Africa, based on treatment demand. Data for South Africa suggest that treatment demand for cannabis use increased over the first two quarters of 2008.
Including alcohol, cannabis accounted for 23.5% of substance abuse-related treatment demand in South Africa during this period.

- UN World Drug Report 2009 Cannabis Market

Excluding alcohol, What is the demand for cannabis substance abuse treatment?

I thought we were talking about systematic monitoring ...

UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report

2009-06-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

In an about face, the United Nations on Wednesday lavishly praised drug decriminalization in its annual report on the state of global drug policy. In previous years, the UN drug czar had expressed skepticism about Portugal's decriminalization, which removed criminal penalties in 2001 for personal drug possession and emphasized treatment over incarceration. The UN had suggested the policy was in violation of international drug treaties and would encourage "drug tourism."

But in its 2009 World Drug Report, the UN had little but kind words for Portugal's radical (by U.S. standards) approach. "These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users. Among those who would not welcome a summons from a police officer are tourists, and, as a result, Portugal's policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism," reads the report. "It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased."

In its upbeat appraisal of Portugal's policy, the UN finds itself in agreement with Salon's Glenn Greenwald.

The report, released at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., also puts to rest concerns that decriminalization doesn't comply with international treaties, which prevent countries from legalizing drugs.

U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske is scheduled to appear at the announcement of the report. (He has said "legalization" is not "in my vocabulary.")

"The International Narcotics Control Board was initially apprehensive when Portugal changed its law in 2001 (see their annual report for that year), but after a mission to Portugal in 2004, it "noted that the acquisition, possession and abuse of drugs had remained prohibited," and said "the practice of exempting small quantities of drugs from criminal prosecution is consistent with the international drug control treaties," reads a footnote to the report.

The UN report also dives head first into the debate over full drug legalization. Last year's World Drug Report ignored the issue entirely, save for a reference to Chinese opium policy in the 19th Century. This year's report begins with a lengthy rebuttal of arguments in favor of legalization. "Why unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world for the sake of libertarian arguments made by a pro-drug lobby that has the luxury of access to drug treatment?" argues the report.

But the UN also makes a significant concession to backers of legalization, who have long argued that it is prohibition policies that lead to violence and the growth of shadowy, underground networks.

"In the Preface to the report," reads the press release accompanying the report, "[UN Office of Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria] Costa explores the debate over repealing drug controls. He acknowledges that controls have generated an illicit black market of macro-economic proportions that uses violence and corruption."

Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a retired undercover narcotics detective, objected to the report's classification of current policy as "control."

"The world's 'drug czar,' Antonio Maria Costa, would have you believe that the legalization movement is calling for the abolition of drug control," he said. "Quite the contrary, we are demanding that governments replace the failed policy of prohibition with a system that actually regulates and controls drugs, including their purity and prices, as well as who produces them and who they can be sold to. You can't have effective control under prohibition, as we should have learned from our failed experiment with alcohol in the U.S. between 1920 and 1933."

- Huffington Post

THC initiates brain cancer cells to destroy themselves

2009-06-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, causes brain cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy in which cells feed upon themselves, according to a study conducted by Guillermo Velasco and colleagues at Complutense University in Spain.

"These results may help to design new cancer therapies based on the use of medicines containing the active principle of marijuana and/or in the activation of autophagy,"

Top Anti-Drug Researcher Changes His Mind, Says Legalize Cannabis

2009-06-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

One of the world's foremost lung health experts says it's time to legalize cannabis.

Dr. Donald Tashkin, expert on cannabis and lung health, has called for the legalization of cannabis.Dr. Donald Tashkin, expert on cannabis and lung health, has called for the legalization of cannabis.For 30 years, Donald Tashkin has studied the effects of cannabis on lung function. His work has been funded by the vehemently anti-cannabis National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has long sought to demonstrate that cannabis causes lung cancer. After 3 decades of anti-drug research, here's what Tashkin has to say about cannabis laws:

"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says. "But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm." [McClatchy]

We've been told a thousand times that cannabis destroys your lungs, that it's 5 times worse than cigarettes, and on and on. Yet here is Donald Tashkin, literally the top expert in the world when it comes to cannabis and lung health, telling us it's time to legalize cannabis. His views are shaped not by ideology, but rather by the 30 years he spent studying the issue. He didn't expect the science to come out in favor of cannabis, but that's what happened and he's willing to admit it.

Here's the study that really turned things around:

UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy cannabis smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and cannabis smoking, but the results proved otherwise."What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted.

Prejudice against cannabis and smoking in general runs so deep for many people that it just seems inconceivable that cannabis could actually reduce the risk of lung cancer. But that's what the data shows and it not only demolishes a major tenet of popular anti-pot propaganda, but also points towards a potentially groundbreaking opportunity to develop cancer cures through cannabis research.

Over and over again, all the bad things we've been told about cannabis are revealed to be not only false, but often the precise opposite of the truth. So the next time someone tells you that cannabis is worse for your lungs than cigarettes, you might want to mention that the world's leading expert on that subject happens to be a supporter of legalization.

- Article from Stop the Drug War (DRCNet).

The drugs do work – for a lot of people

2009-06-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

One in three adults in the UK have taken them, as have the last three US presidents, so it's time to remove the stigma around drugs, and talk openly towards more effective, safer policy

The Nice People Take Drugs ad campaign for drugs policy reform. Photograph: Release

Nice People Take Drugs – it's not a controversial statement. We all know people who have. The last three US presidents have admitted to it. Much has been suggested about the likely next UK prime minister. Nowadays if a politician admitted to it, the tabloids would struggle to make a story stick let alone generate a scandal. The fact is, a lot of people from all walks of life have at some point taken drugs and it's time we got real about it.

That's why this week we have launched a new campaign called Nice People Take Drugs. Buses will be travelling across London carrying this slogan in an attempt to get people talking about drugs and kickstart a drug policy debate.

Over one third of the adult population of England and Wales has used illegal drugs and almost 10 million people have smoked cannabis. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, one in eight Britons under 35 has taken cocaine. Some will have experimented with drugs with little apparent consequence, some will continue to use them on occasions.

The situation where people have to deny, hide or, if found out, regret their drug taking is simply absurd. The public is tired of the artificial representation of drugs in society, which is not truthful about the fact that all sorts of people use drugs. If we are to have a fair and effective drug policy, it must be premised on this reality.

It is time for the public to challenge the mantra adhered to by politicians and much of the media that society must continue to fight a war on drugs, as if they are an enemy worth fighting and ones that can be defeated. The implication that drugs are evil and that users of them ought to be made to feel ashamed suits this status quo, but in fact does not reflect most people's experience of drugs.

We all know that, for a minority, drugs and alcohol can have disastrous consequences – but ones that are only exacerbated by the current laws and are better addressed with robust and comprehensive public health campaigns.

Aside from the occasional tinkering with the outdated classification system, drugs and drug policy do not get properly discussed and politicians are afraid to debate the possibility of meaningful reform.

The government is reluctant to tackle the subject firstly because of the culture of fear of drugs that is used as justification for the zero-tolerance approach, and also due to politicians' uncertainty about how to make the transition from failed to improved drug policies.

The Nice People Take Drugs campaign is needed so that the public can give politicians the confidence that they need to abandon the ridiculous 'tough on drugs' stance and instead focus on finding real and effective ways to properly control drugs and manage drug use. This would make drugs much less dangerous and, critically, less available to children.

The current system has brought us powerful drugs like crack cocaine, skunk and methamphetamine; it has ravaged countries from Afghanistan to Colombia and has cost billions in a war on people who use drugs. Governments have next to no control over drugs and they are arguably more available and cheaper than ever before. In the UK it is often far easier for a 14-year-old to get cannabis than alcohol.

Breaking the taboo on drugs is the first step to reducing the harm that they can cause. By far the greatest risk to the majority of people who use drugs is criminalisation and stigmatisation. To simply ban substances and arrest those who use them is no more than a complete abdication of policy makers' responsibility to protect the health and well being of its people.

We must start a debate about the kind of drug policy that this country wants to see. The UK does not want drug laws that benefit massive drug cartels and are politically convenient for politicians, but ones that deal effectively and maturely with drugs and make our society a safer place for our children.

• Claudia Rubin is head of policy and communications for drugs charity

- Guardian

Dealers (sic alcohol & drug) give free drugs to kids

2009-06-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

Just as I can imagine SAB or Heineken standing outside schools or rugby matches giving out free booze... I can't imagine any 'dealer' would give away free anything...

yet here the spin is.... and yet again where drugs and alcohol are related soon after mentioning them together, the statistics are then massaged to give the impression that drugs are at fault and not alcohol...

Pretoria - Drug dealers stand at school gates to give drugs free of charge to pupils, a report on child abuse released on Thursday said.

The report, released by Solidarity Help Hand, said that the levels of child abuse in South Africa are increasing rapidly.

The report quoted a case study in the Western Cape, where it was found that 90% of child abused cases reported, drugs and alcohol played a role.

According to the case study, a five year-old child was raped while her mother was drunk.

It also said that young girls were lured into drugs and were later forced to become prostitutes.

According to the study a child is raped in South Africa every three minutes.

A study by the South African Youth Victimisation Survey in 2005 found that only about 11.3% of child rapes were reported to the police, Mariana Kriel, Solidarity Help Hand project director said.

"This means that for every reported case, an additional eight child rapes actually take place."

The report released in Pretoria, indicated that 1 410 children were murdered in 2007/08. Attempted murder of children stood at 13.7% at the same period - an increase of 22% compared to the previous year.

- SAPA

Cocktail of heroin and tik scary - experts

2009-03-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

The number of heroin users in Cape Town is growing steadily and the drug is is also being used with tik in a dangerous new cocktail, according to rehabilitation centres in the city.

The centres said that although tik was seldom used on its own, the use of it with heroin as a secondary drug was scary.

The Western Cape branch of the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (Sanca) said it had noted a rise in the use of heroin.

'These are two of the most addictive drugs'

Grant Jardine, of the Cape Town Drug Counselling Centre, agreed that their figures showed a steady climb.

"It wasn't as dramatic as tik, which shot up suddenly. But it is the one drug that has increased each year."

Tertius Cronjé, of Sanca, said the number of users they saw with heroin-addiction problems had tripled in the past three years.

He said people were mostly using the cheaper, less pure form of the drug.

In line with research from the South African Medical Research Council, Cronjé said most users smoked the drug.

According to the council, the Western Cape is the only province in the country where the majority of users took the drug in this way. In other areas, most users injected the drug.

Cronjé said this could be attributed to the fear of contracting HIV and Aids.

Research showed that the recovery rate for heroin users was dismal. But, he said, the most alarming new development was the use of heroin in conjunction with tik.

He said the combination held devastating effects for the user.

"These are two of the most addictive drugs. Using them in tandem is as bad as addiction gets. It's very difficult to come off; you can't really win here."

It was made worse by the fact that heroin carried a major risk of overdosing, while tik held severely damaging psychological effects.

Jurgens Smit, the director of Western Cape-based Faces and Voices of Recovery South Africa, said the combination of the two drugs was "a disaster".

"We first saw this surfacing around two years ago. But it has been spreading, especially across the Cape Flats."

Smit said early intervention was needed to clamp down on the spiralling drug problem.

"We need to start intervention programmes early, targeting children as young as six years old. Society is responsible for offering young people healthy alternatives," he said.

- Cape Argus

R170m drug bust at OR Tambo Airport

2009-03-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

Law enforcement agencies at OR Tambo International Airport have seized 565kg of CAT, the chemical used to manufacture the popular drug tik (crystal meth).

The consignment, the biggest seized at a South African airport in five years and worth about R170-million, was found on flight EK761 from Pakistan soon after it landed in Joburg at 2pm on Tuesday.

A joint task team of Interpol and the SA Police Service's Transinternational Investigative Unit and Cargo Anti-Smuggling Unit - acting on a tip-off - netted 20 bags of the chemical hidden in an Emirates plane's cargo hold.

'The investigation will be conducted to find out if the crew were involved'

The Cargo Anti-Smuggling Unit's forensics department tested the contents of the consignment found on the passenger and cargo plane, and confirmed that it was the chemical used to produce tik.

Authorities said the investigation was still at a very sensitive stage and they would not speculate whether a drug-smuggling syndicate was involved.

No arrests had been made last night.

"The investigation will be conducted to find out if the crew were involved," Interpol and Crime Intelligence spokesperson Senior Superintendent Tummi Golding, said last night.

Golding said an investigation was under way to establish if there was a link between Tuesday's bust and the one made in Brazil last week, where 57 people, including airport staff, police officials and crew members were arrested.

- Pretoria News

SA distractsh from the shtory by blaming drugsh

2009-02-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

And hundreds of thousands abuse cocaine and tik, says a UN report

SOUTH Africans are the biggest dagga smokers in the world, with at least 2.5-million citizens using the drug.

SAA crew in cocaine bust

Effects of doing tik

Acquitted, but tik mom can’t forgive self

The country also has the most abusers of amphetamine-type stimulants, the most common being tik, with double the percentage of addicts than other countries.

These shocking revelations were made yesterday at the release of the annual report of the international narcotics control board of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime.

And a presentation by the department of social development at the UN launch showed that:

237 000 South Africans are totally dependent on drugs and will feed their addiction at all costs;

1.97-million South Africans are alcoholics; and

alcohol abuse and drug addiction cost the economy R20-billion a year in accidents, injuries, assaults and medical treatment.

These figures, said the deputy chairman of the Central Drug Authority, David Bayever, were based on studies by the Medical Research Council, the SA Red Cross and the police.

“Drug use in South Africa is extremely serious and is twice the world norm,” said Bayever.

He said that 8 percent of the population aged between 12 and 64 was addicted to dagga, as opposed to a 4 percent average in other countries.

Bayever said the dagga-abuse figures were “only the tip of the iceberg”, given that the problem was seriously under-reported.

In addition to the 1.97-million alcoholics in South Africa, about 3.2-million people are “risky drinkers” who consume large amounts of alcohol at weekends.

The cost of heavy drinking included 7,000 lives taken by drunken drivers every year.

The department of social development said that, though 59 percent of people aged between 12 and 64 do not drink, at least 37 percent are “binge drinkers”.

Drug rehabilitation centres struggle to cope with the scourge of abuse. They can accommodate only 17,500 patients a year.

Dr Jonathan Lucas, the southern Africa representative of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, said South Africa did not have the capacity to fight drug trafficking. He said that in addition to West African, mainly Nigerian, drug peddlers, there had been an influx of Asian drugs cartels.

Bayever said drug abuse was prevalent among children under 16. Half of this group had experimented with drugs.

The government report said that 20 percent of dagga smokers were boys under 16 and 7 percent were girls. However, 7 percent of both boys and girls abused heroin, mandrax, cocaine, and tik.

Children who smoked dagga were almost four times more likely to be stabbed at school than those who did not. Those who drank alcohol were twice as likely to be stabbed.

About 40 percent of child dagga smokers reported having had sex, compared with 5 percent of non-smokers. Thirty percent of child drinkers had sex, compared with 3 percent of those who did not drink.

Fact Box

Between 42 and 98 percent of drug patients in the Western Cape are hooked on tik

South Africa, Mauritius and Zambia have highest increase of heroin abuse in Africa

Western Cape has more alcoholics and tik addicts than any other province

Dagga is the most widely used drug in the world; 42 million addicts are in Africa

- The Times

South Africans prefer the Safer Natural Alternative

2009-02-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Cannabis remains the most used drug in South Africa even though amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) like Tik pose the greatest threat, the Central Drug Authority said on Thursday.

"Cannabis abuse in South Africa is twice the global norm," CDA deputy chairman David Bayever told the media, law enforcement and international representatives at a presentation.

While the international norm was four percent, in South Africa it was just over eight percent of the population who used cannabis.

Bayever said cannabis, also known as dagga or Mary Jane, was the most major drug choice among South Africans.

He also said the cannabis produced in South Africa was more potent than that of most other countries. This is because of the high levels of tetrahydrocannabol (THC), which makes the drug more addictive. (Phew some reaching here - would love to see this science - but hey his 5c)

However, Tik and its ATS counterparts remain the biggest threat.

This is because they can be easily produced -- in a basic kitchen for example.

Production is also made easier because the ingredients used - ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine (precursor drugs) - are produced in the country and therefore do not need to be smuggled in, which is also costly.

The Southern African representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Jonathan Lucas said the Tik problem at present had the potential to become even more of a threat.

"You can get more profit out of Tik."

He said regional co-operation was needed to combat the flow of drugs, especially precursor drugs.

"The most important thing is to support the chemical monitoring unit together with the pharmaceutical companies.

"If the countries in Southern Africa do not take the control of chemical precursor as an important issue you're going to have a major problem," said Lucas. - Sapa

Deal with it, don't Botox it - Manuel

2009-02-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

Direct from Cloud CooCoo Land:

Manuel called for action against drug dealers.

"It's chemical warfare launched against our people," he said. "We must act to root it out.

"It's weapons of mass destruction against the children of workers."

He said if people in communities raised the issue with police, and the police did not act, they should appeal to police union Popcru. - SAPA

To Be Noted:

R1.6 Billion Bailout for SAA - The National Drug Carrier...
No mention of Alcohol being a drug;
No mention that the drug alcohol is the leading drug causing mortality and cost to the health system
No mention that by 2010 10% of our population will be born retarded becuase of the drug alcohol
No mention that in the National Drug Master Plan alcohol is not mentioned
No mention Alcohol falls under the department of Trade and Industry and NOT the CDA
No mention that annually our road death figures show that alcohol is the "weapons of mass destruction against the children of workers." of which he speaks
No mention that our National Average rate of consumption has doubled since the department of Trade and Industry took charge of the selling of the drug alcohol.
ehm... no mention POPCRU want dagga regulated...

Fine Trevor, don't botox it - deal with it!

Time to regulate everything equally!

Not to hide in the crevasses of folding fiscal frock, to face all the drugs for the effect they have. The market they occupy. Taxing and controlling it.

Much less painful than funding a national drug carrier

Drugalyser legality questioned

2008-11-30T22:50:00.001-08:00

THE effectiveness and legality of the Drugalyser - launched in the Western Cape last week - has been called into question by a local attorney and the Automobile Association.

Marius de Kock, a local attorney, said the idea that it is within the power of the police to do the testing of drugs "within the law is ludicrous".

"That MEC (Patrick) McKenzie can spend this much money without first talking to the Director of Public Prosecutions is laughable. The police have been coercing people into taking this test. It is an invasion of privacy. The fact is that they know that the test is not admissible, but expressly choose not to tell the public. If the public knew that they could refuse," De Kock said.

A drug driving report put together by the company manufacturing the device showed that a high number of Cape Town motorists pulled over at roadblocks tested positive for drugs. The tests were carried out at roadblocks between April and November.

But Automobile Association (AA) spokesperson Gary Ronald said there was no in-depth research proving that drug driving was a problem like drunk driving.

"It's because it's an illegal activity. With alcohol, we've got a good idea because of data collected over years. To properly test for drugs you need a full toxicology and this could be thousands of rands. And there's also the question of how much drugs are in your system (at the time of the screening). There might be residual, but you're not spaced out. It won't stand in court, but that might come with time," Ronald said.

He said the AA supported the idea, however.

Trimega Diagnostics managing director Avi Lasarow said the Drugalyser was very accurate and the technology was in use in nine countries.

In its drug driving report, Trimega Diagnositics said it was clear from its review of existing legislation "that urgent amendments were required to address roadside testing for drugs (as well as) alcohol".

- Cape Times

Christmas parties and drunken driving

2008-11-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

Christmas parties and drunken drivingDrinking and driving in South Africa is a scourge. With Christmas parties commencing in earnest to celebrate the end of the year, the incidents of drunk drivers on the roads is likely to increase. Many drunk drivers do get home safely. Unfortunately too many are involved in accidents, often serious enough to result in deaths or injuries to themselves and others. The deaths of innocent road users have to be deplored.

Let us look at road fatalities in South Africa. The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) reported in its Road Traffic Report of March 2008 that in the one year from April 2007 to March 2008, 14,627 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in South Africa.

That is an average of 1,220 individuals being killed on our roads each month or 40 every day.

On November 24 2008, reports indicated that 30 civilians were killed in war-torn Iraq, fewer than the average deaths on South African roads. In February 2008, the civilian death toll in Iraq totalled 947, considerably less than the average monthly road death toll in South Africa.

The RTMC has estimated that the average cost per crash is R1.146-million. Motor vehicle accidents in South Africa cost the country — the individuals involved, the government authorities (police, medical workers, emergency services and judicial officials), insurance companies and employers — a whopping R13.27-billion each year.

Not all road accidents are related to consumption of alcohol. However, a significant number of accidents are. Research by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in 2004 indicated that 53.62% of road users (drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists) killed in accidents had a blood alcohol level that exceeded the legal blood alcohol limit. Of the drivers tested in the MRC research 50.88% were over the legal limit.

There is ample evidence that drinking and driving kills, so why is there little action to rid our roads of drunken drivers? Drinking and driving is socially acceptable in South Africa. The media is replete with reports of court cases each day involving prominent South Africans who have been arrested and convicted for driving while under the influence of alcohol: judges, doctors, lawyers, sports personalities, politicians, TV talk show hosts, priests, school teachers, and the list goes on. In such a society very little is likely to be done about drinking and driving. Of course, there are the usual advertisements by the Department of Transport and Arrive Alive each year just before a major public holiday urging people to drive safely and not to drink and drive. The most laughable adverts are those by alcohol manufacturers urging drivers not to drink and drive. This seems to make little difference to road users.

The problem lies with enforcement of the law and stiffer penalties. One often hears of a drunk driver being let off with a fine of a few thousand rand after having been found guilty of drunk driving and culpable homicide – the reckless or negligent taking of another person’s life. A person in similar drunken circumstances who discharges a firearm, killing another, is likely to face a prison sentence. Police officers, prosecutors and judges look upon drunk drivers with sympathy – they remember the days when they perhaps drove whilst under the influence of alcohol. They consider the drunk driver being prosecuted as being foolish for getting caught.

The penalties in the UK for driving or attempting to drive under the influence of alcohol is a fine of up to £5,000 (about R75,000) and/ or imprisonment of up to six months and a mandatory suspension of the driving licence for a period of 12 months. For a second offence the penalty is a prison sentence of up to 12 months and a mandatory suspension of the driving licence for three years. If the driver causes an accident whilst under the influence of alcohol, a prison sentence is likely to be imposed. If the accident results in death, the driver is likely to spend at least 10 years in prison and the driver’s licence will be suspended for a minimum of two years. For driving under the influence of alcohol without an accident, on average courts in the UK impose fines of £3,000 (R45,000) and a three months prison sentence and a suspension of the driver’s licence for 12 months.

Britain’s Chief Medical Officer has called on the government to cut the legal alcohol limit for drivers between the ages of 17 and 20 to zero to reduce the number of youngsters dying in car accidents each week. A similar call has been made regarding newly qualified drivers.

In the UK the government has presented a proposal that will see the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers reduced from 80 milligrams (0.08) to 50 milligrams (0.05) per 100 millilitres of blood. The UK limit is higher than other European Union countries except Ireland (0.08) and Malta (0.09). Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have a legal alcohol limit of 0.0, while Poland, Estonia and Sweden have a limit of 0.02 and Estonia has a limit of 0.04. All the other EU member states have a limit of 0.05, although many have a lower limit for public transport drivers, commercial drivers and new drivers.

A combination of reduction of blood alcohol limit, enforcement of the law and publicity helps to reduce road deaths. In Switzerland the blood alcohol limit was reduced from 0.8 to 0.5 in January 2005 and random breath testing was introduced. Road deaths decreased 20% and research showed that this was attributable to a reduction of 25% in alcohol related deaths in 2005.

A concerted effort has to be made in South Africa to reduce drunk driving and alcohol related deaths on our roads. Employers hosting Christmas parties should ensure their employees have alternative transport available afterwards to take them home safely. Even hosts of private parties should take a more responsible attitude to drunk driving by refusing to allow a guest to drive home while drunk. But that requires the host to remain sober, which is most unlikely.

The responsibility to reduce deaths on our roads lies with everyone, most importantly with those drivers who drink and then risk killing others.

- M&G Thought Leader

Report Urges Regulated Market to Replace Cannabis Prohibition

2008-10-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

More and more studies and reports insist that cannabis prohibition does more harm to cannabis users than the drug itself

A report on cannabis prepared for next year's UN drug policy review will suggest that a "regulated market" would cause less harm than the current international prohibition. The report, which is likely to reopen the debate about cannabis laws, suggests that controls such as taxation, minimum age requirements and labeling could be explored. The Global Cannabis Commission report, which was launched Thursday at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest "challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis". It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the 2009 UN strategic drug policy review.

There are, according to the report, now more than 160 million users of the drug worldwide. "Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco," according to the report. "Historically, there have only been two deaths worldwide attributed to cannabis, whereas alcohol and tobacco together are responsible for an estimated 150,000 deaths per annum in the UK alone."

The report, compiled by a group of scientists, academics and drug policy experts, suggests that much of the harm associated with cannabis use is "the result of prohibition itself, particularly the social harms arising from arrest and imprisonment." Policies that control cannabis, whether draconian or liberal, appear to have little impact on the prevalence of consumption, it concluded.

"In an alternative system of regulated availability, market controls such as taxation, minimum age requirements, labeling and potency limits are available to minimize the harms associated with cannabis use," said the report. It claimed that only through a regulated market could young people be protected from the increasingly potent forms of cannabis, such as skunk. It is intended that the report will form a blueprint for nations seeking to develop a "more rational and effective approach to the control of cannabis". The authors suggest there is evidence that "the current system of cannabis regulation is not working, and ... there needs to be a serious rethink if we are to minimize the harms caused by cannabis use."

Last night, the report was welcomed by drug law reform organizations. "The Beckley foundation are to be congratulated for the clarity of their call for cannabis supply to be brought within government control," said Danny Kushlick of Transform. "We look forward to the same analysis being applied to heroin and cocaine."

The report is being launched at a two-day conference, which will be attended by leading figures in the drugs policy world. The conclusions are unlikely to be embraced by the government or the Conservative party, both of which are opposed to relaxing restrictions on cannabis use.

- Article from Guardian, Thursday October 2nd

Find more information at www.BeckleyFoundation.org

The Beckley Foundation Global Cannabis Commission

The United Nations Strategic Drug Policy Review

In 1998, the international community agreed a 10-year programme of activity for the control of illegal drug use and markets. These agreements were made at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) held in New York in June of that year, and a commitment was made to review progress in 2008. Clearly, the international community will not be able to report unequivocal success in anti-drug programmes at this review (to be held in 2009), as drugs are purer, cheaper, and more widely available than ever before.

The laws themselves are often enforced in an arbitrary fashion, leading to discrimination against oppressed minorities. Nowhere is this more evident than with cannabis, used by a conservatively estimated 160 million people worldwide. There is increasing disagreement between governments on the appropriate policies to adopt. It is therefore essential that the process of review in 2009 be as transparent as possible, and that experts from the field have the maximum opportunity to engage with the government officials and politicians who will ultimately decide on future directions.

The History of Cannabis Use and Prohibition

Cannabis came under the control of the international narcotics treaties as an afterthought, in an era when use of the drug was confined to relatively small groups in a scattering of cultures. In the last half-century, the situation has been transformed. Smoking or other use of cannabis has become a part of youth culture in country after country. To serve this demand, huge international and national illicit markets have arisen. Strenuous efforts to enforce prohibition by policing and by quasi-military operations against illicit growing and sale have largely failed in their principal objective.

Meanwhile, the efforts in themselves create substantial anguish and social harms. In the United States, about three-quarters of a million citizens are arrested every year for cannabis possession, and arrest figures are also high elsewhere.

While rigorous enforcement of the conventions without consideration of alternative paths continues in many countries, elsewhere penalties and enforcement have diminished de-facto or in law. Substantive change is hindered however by a rigid international system of regulation, which is often out of touch with the realities.

The Global Cannabis Commission

The Cannabis Commission is an international group of academics and experts in drug policy analysis, commissioned by the Beckley Foundation to produce a Report on cannabis policy in a global perspective. The Report will be finished by September 2008, in time to be taken into account in the global debate on drug policies in connection with the 2009 UNGASS evaluation. It will provide a comprehensive overview of the evidence that a policymaker at the national or international level will need to know in considering how to move beyond the present stalemate on cannabis policy.

This report will include:

- an opening chapter giving an overview of the global history of cannabis in recent decades, touching on patterns and trends in use and the cultural politics of cannabis, and laying out the plan for the rest of the book;

- an up-to-date review of what is known about the health consequences of cannabis use. This includes harms to physical and mental health, and performance effects, such as on driving. The extent of danger of cannabis is considered in a public health perspective, in a comparative frame with harms from other drugs - tobacco, alcohol, opiates, etc;

- the evidence on the effects of the current system of prohibition and control, including the size and organization of the illicit cannabis market, the costs and effectiveness of efforts to eliminate the market through police and criminal justice systems, and the effects of criminalization on users and their families;

- a review of policy initiatives at national and sub-national levels of reform within the international prohibition system intended to mitigate adverse effects. These include initiatives to decriminalize cannabis possession, to reduce penalties for use or possession, to divert to treatment or other handling, and to license and tolerate use, such as with the Dutch coffee shop system;

- an assessment of the effects of reforms within the system. The available evidence is summarized on the effects of different reforms on amount and patterns of use and harm, and on secondary adverse consequences of arrest and other enforcement;

- a review of the potential means for altering the present international convention status of cannabis, to allow controlled availability for adult use in national or sub-national regulatory regimes. While there are a variety of possible paths available for an individual country or a group of nations, primary attention is given to those most likely to be feasible in terms of norms of international law and of political realities. The chapter includes consideration of concrete provisions in a possible new Convention on cannabis, on the model of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control;

- a final chapter drawing conclusions and making recommendations on possible paths forward, towards more effective and just policies on cannabis, at both national and international levels.

To help maximise the impact and awareness of the report, we are proposing to convene a group of International Notables who will endorse the Conclusions and Recommendations, thereby adding gravitas to the Commissioners' findings.

The Cannabis Commission Report is to be published as a book by the Oxford University Press, to ensure that its impact is as widespread as possible. Besides this book, the principal findings of the Report will be collated in a separate document, together with the Conclusions and Recommendations , which will provide an accessible summary from which policymakers may inform themselves.

We believe that this Report with its Conclusions and Recommendations , could serve as a blueprint for the development of future evidence-based drug policies. We therefore hope that its analysis and its findings will reach as large an audience as possible, and that, in due course, a more beneficent cannabis policy may be developed.

This project has been convened by Amanda Neidpath,
Director of the Beckley Foundation

Beckley Foundation Seminar 2008

The Global Cannabis Commission Report Launch & Assessing International Drug Control- Preparations for UNGASS 2008

House of Lords, Westminster Palace, London 2nd & 3rd October, 2008

This seminar will see the launch of the Beckley Foundation's Global Cannabis Commission Report on the first day, and a high-level review of preparations for the UNGASS Review of Global Drug Policy in 2009 on the second. We have confirmed the attendance of a select group of experts, academics and policymakers from around the world, including representatives from the UN, EU and WHO. With such a high-powered array of participants, chairs and speakers, we look forward to a well-informed and productive debate of the current drug policy dilemmas facing policymakers.

The Cannabis Commission Report has been authored by a group of the world's leading drug policy analysts. The seminar's first day will see these authors present their findings to the public, followed by further presentations on, and a wider discussion of the cannabis issue. The second day involves presentations on some of the high-level policy reports that will help inform policymakers in the build up to and during the UNGASS review. This will be followed by a debate on the position Europe should be taking in this UNGASS review.

Attendance at the seminar is by invitation only. If you would like to attend, please contact the Beckley Foundation.

Principles Underlying the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme

That the current global drug control mechanism, (as enshrined in the three United Nations Conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988), is not achieving the core objective of significantly reducing the scale of the market for controlled substances, such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and cannabis.

That the negative side-effects of the implementation of this system may themselves be creating significant social problems.

That reducing the harm faced by the many individuals who use drugs, including the risk of infections, such as Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS, is not a sufficiently high priority in international policies and programmes.

That there is a growing body of evidence regarding which policies and activities are (and are not) effective in reducing drug use and associated health and social problems, and that this evidence is not sufficiently taken into account in current policy discussions, which continue to be dominated by ideological considerations.

That the current dilemmas in international drug policy can only be resolved through an honest review of progress so far, a better understanding of the complex factors that create widespread drug use, and a commitment to pursue policies that are effective.

That analysis of future policy options is unlikely to produce a clear 'correct' policy - what may be appropriate in one setting or culture may be less so in another. In addition, there are likely to be trade-offs between policy objectives (i.e. to reduce overall drug use or to reduce drug-related crime) that may be viewed differently in different countries.

That future policy should be grounded on a scientifically based scale of harm for all social drugs. This should involve a continuous review of scientific and sociological evidence of the biological harm, toxicity, mortality and dependency; the relation to violent behaviour; the relation to crime; the costs to the health services; the general impact on others; and the total economic impact of the use of each individual drug on society.

- Cannabis Culture

Heroin gets cheaper, and is NOT SAFER

2008-10-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

More heroin is being shipped, driven or flown into South Africa, and a senior organised crime researcher has warned that plummeting street prices and an "oversupply" of the potentially lethal narcotic mean more South Africans can now afford a dangerous drug habit.

While tik is favoured among addicts in the Western Cape, a mix of heroin and dagga nicknamed "ungah" is becoming increasingly popular.

"Experts fear that the noxious mix (ungah) may soon overtake the methamphetamine or 'tik' market in South Africa. At less than $4 (about R35.30) a fix, consumers have little problem (feeding) their addiction," said senior Institute for Security Studies (ISS) researcher Annette Hübschle.

'Experts fear the noxious mix may overtake the tik market'

Hübschle, who works with the ISS's Organised Crime and Money Laundering Programme, recently produced a report titled Chasing The Dragon: The Rising Demand For Heroin In Southern Africa.

In her report, Hübschle said that heroin was fast becoming the "drug of choice" for youth and adults in many southern African countries.

She said there had traditionally always been a demand for heroin in South Africa, but that had, in the past decade, spread to other southern African countries including Tanzania and Zanzibar.

While some of the heroin arriving in South Africa was then "transhipped" to the US and Europe, Hübschle said, those markets were "largely saturated" and thus drug cartels have turned their attention to emerging markets in developing countries.

Andreas Plüddemann, a senior scientist with the Medical Research Council's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Unit, said there had been a "notable" increase in heroin use in Mpumalanga.

Plüddemann said another trend has been the sale and increasing use of a cheap form of heroin known as "sugars" in Durban.

According to figures supplied by the South African Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use, 3 058 patients were admitted to 29 rehabilitation centres across the Western Cape during the second half of 2007.

Nearly 13 percent of these patients reported that heroin was their primary substance of abuse. The average age range of those who described heroin as their favoured drug was 23 to 27. In all 21 percent of Western Cape heroin users were female.

- Cape Times

Cops bust selling confiscated drugs

2008-09-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

Three policemen have been arrested in Sunnyside with drugs with a street value of almost a million during a crime intelligence operation.

The policemen, who are all constables, are alleged to be part of a drug syndicate which operates out of OR Tambo International Airport.

Sources close to the investigation have told the Pretoria News that the syndicate is allegedly involved in the theft of narcotics seized during anti-crime operations at the airport.

It is believed that once confiscated, the drugs are then sold to a drug cartel which is involved in the sale of massive amounts of illegal narcotics in Pretoria.

The policemen, who live in Soshanguve, Hammanskraal and Thembisa, were arrested while allegedly selling stolen drugs to undercover operatives from the national crime intelligence's covert collection directorate and the national organised crime unit.

Crime intelligence spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Tummi Golding, confirmed the arrests.

She said intelligence agents were conducting routine operations when they received information about the three policemen who were travelling to Sunnyside with a consignment of narcotics.

"Police officers began following up on the information and spotted the men on the highway. They followed them to Sunnyside, contacting the organised crime unit for support. When they reached Sunnyside, they set up a sting operation and arrested the men when they tried to sell the drugs to undercover operatives," she said.

Golding said a search of the suspects' car, which is believed to have been stolen earlier in the month, led to the discovery of drugs with a street value of R800 000.

"Among the stolen goods was 20kg ephedrine, which is used in the manufacturing of potentially lethal drugs such as speed and Tik.

"Police also seized dozens of boxes of razors and antibiotics which had been seized during earlier raids at the airport .

"The boxes had been used to smuggle drugs into South Africa," she said.

Golding confirmed that the policemen were believed to be involved in the theft and sale of drugs to a narcotics syndicates operating in Pretoria. She said the investigation was looking into allegations that the policemen stole narcotics from the SAPS airport offices after they were seized during anti-crime operations.

Golding said when police raided the suspects' homes they seized even more boxes of razors and antibiotics.

"They were the same boxes which were used to smuggle narcotics into South Africa."

The men are due to appear in court soon on charges of dealing in narcotics and theft.

- Pretoria News

Booze-free pay day may cut crime

2008-08-26T06:20:00.000-07:00

ALCOHOL-free public spaces and businesses not selling alcohol on pay day were suggested as means of reducing crime at a conference yesterday in Midrand.

Researchers, business groups, and the Human Rights Commission came together at the Action for a Safe South Africa conference, facilitated by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa), to analyse reasons why crime had risen despite higher government spending, and to suggest how community groups and individuals could work together to fight back.

In line with the aims of the conference, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research researcher Barbara Holtmann envisaged a future South Africa where communities were safer, where public transport was improved, where children could play safely and where women did not have to feel that night time was a curfew.

To reach this ideal, Holtmann suggested the idea of a booze-free pay day. She said that this, combined with retailers providing substantial discounts on things like basic foods or school shoes around pay day, could help re-channel the approximately R41billion a year that is spent on alcohol and alcohol marketing.

According to Holtmann, about R16 of every R100 that changed hands in South Africa is spent on alcohol.

Research also showed that about 47percent of murder victims tested positive for alcohol at the time of death, as did 66 percent of trauma victims, while 50 percent of rape victims were found to be either drunk or high at the time of the incident.

Questioning the perception that gun ownership could lead to personal safety, she said that about 66 firearms a day were lost or stolen from their owners. Police believed that each lost or stolen firearm was then used to commit at least eight crimes.

Holtmann also questioned the increased use of security companies in neighbourhoods, saying that these may have the e ffect of moving opportuni stic crime to other areas. In other cases, she said, their presence could lead to criminals changing their tactics. For example, when they robbed properties, criminals may be more likely to be armed.

SA Human Rights Commission chairman Jody Kollapen recognised another side effect of crime.

He said people were isolating themselves to the point where even humanitarian instincts, like stopping to help someone in distress, were moderated by a fear of crime.

“That’s not the kind of people we want to be.”

Kollapen said that even though government spending on crime had risen to R68bn at present, up 1500 percent from 1990, “we are no safer”.

South Africa’s dysfunctional past had to be taken into account when seeking solutions to present problems, he said, but it should also be remembered that this country has a history of overcoming formidable obstacles.

A Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation representative, David Bruce, said poverty was one of the main contributing factors of crime.

Releasing a study on the causes of crime, commissioned by the Department of Safety and Security, Bruce said a lack of parenting skills was flagged as a contributing factor to crime.

Another factor contributing to a rise in serious offences was that many South Africans believed crime and violence were normal characteristics of society.

Business Against Crime chairman Siphiwe Nzimande said business was working towards helping make crime “very costly” for perpetrators.

He said businesses could assist police in their investigations by installing CCTV cameras, and also making sure that the images provided were clear and gave a full picture of the criminals in action.

On the subject of stolen vehicles, he said that most cars stolen in South Africa were not exported to neighbouring countries, but were reregistered in South Africa or sold as parts.

He hoped a new polymer microdot car identification system, which insurers were showing interest in, would reduce car theft and the market for stolen parts.

The convention will be open to the public at Vodaworld on Thursday. Desmond Dube, who initiated the Million Man March Against Crime in June, is the master of ceremonies. — Sapa

SAFER than alcohol!

2008-06-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

What does 'Enjoying Heineken Responsibly' really mean?

We think it is important to inform and educate our consumers about all aspects of our products and brands. This website is full of practical information about enjoying Heineken responsibly. We hope you’ll find our advice, answers and guidelines useful. But before you read on, remember:

alcohol is only for adults over the legal drinking age
limit yourself to one, maximum two drinks a day if you’re a woman and two to three drinks a day if you’re a man
never drink before or when driving or when operating machinery
never drink if you’re pregnant
never mix alcohol with medicine

Putting a couple of-age drinking men together, with some clubs sticks and weapons would be fine by the producers of Heineken

Exclusive: breathalyser tests expose

2008-05-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

After a record number of drunk driving arrests during the last long weekend in KwaZulu-Natal, The Independent on Saturday decided to conduct tests on three commercial breathalysers and the official "Drager" unit.

The test results revealed that it took five Black Label beers to get one of our test subjects over the legal limit while the other had still not reached the legal limit after having six Castle Lites.

In light of these tests a Durban district surgeon is concerned that drivers who are incapable of driving are still able to beat the breathalyser at roadblocks.

During the last long weekend 192 drivers were arrested for drinking and driving in KwaZulu-Natal.

A total of 19 taxi drivers with taxi loads of commuters were among those arrested for drunken driving.

Durban Metro Police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Thozamile Tyala said some drivers were more than five times over the limit of 0.05g (0.24 mg/l).

Tyala said it was even more frightening that taxi drivers who were supposed to adhere to the legal limit of 0.02g (0.11 mg/l) had also been well over the limit.

"Similarly, we had some taxi drivers who we caught driving with a full load of passengers. This is indeed sad as these commuters' lives are being put into the hands of these irresponsible drivers."

Durban District Surgeon Dr Mike van Schalkwyk said it was "frightening" that some people were able to consume large amounts of alcohol and still be under the legal limit.

"It is indeed strange but true that some motorists are able to drink a six pack of beers without testing illegal. It is a shocking reality."

- The Independent

Cut cannabis use by selling it at the post office: expert

2008-05-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

CANNABIS would be sold legally in post offices in packets that warn against its effects under a proposal outlined by the head of a Sydney drug and alcohol clinic.

The director of the alcohol and drug service at St Vincent's Hospital, Alex Wodak, said Australia needed to learn from the tobacco industry and the US Prohibition era in coming to terms with his belief that cannabis use would replace cigarette consumption over the next decade. "The general principal is that it's not sustainable that we continue to give criminals and corrupt police a monopoly to sell a drug that is soon going to be consumed by more people than tobacco," he said.

"I don't want to see that [industry] fall into the hands of tobacco companies or rapacious businessmen.

"I'd like to see it fall into the hands of the failed business people Australia seems so good at producing or the Australia Post that seems so successful in driving away customers."

He made the proposal for taxed and legalised cannabis at the Mardi Grass festival in Nimbin on Sunday, but said he would be happy to express his opinion to the Federal Government. A spokesman for the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, said the proposal would not be considered.

Experts in the fields of drug and law enforcement yesterday opposed the suggestion, saying there was insufficient evidence that legalisation would not increase harmful use or lead to other law enforcement issues.

"It's really going beyond the evidence to say regulatory control would effectively reduce adverse effects," said a deputy director of the National Drug Research Institute, Simon Lenton. "We don't know what the effects would be."

Dr Wodak believed his idea could reduce cannabis consumption, based on comparisons between consumption in Amsterdam and San Francisco. He said regulated availability would also reduce people's exposure to other illicit drugs when buying the product. His model would make cannabis advertising illegal, ban political donations from the cannabis industry, and demand proof of age on purchase.

He chose Australia Post for distribution as it could be regulated and had branches across the country. "What I'm talking about is not pro-cannabis … it's about reducing cannabis harm." - Sydney Morning Herald

SAFER CIA

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal

Dagga not linked to middle age mental decline

Report shows fewer traffic fatalities after states pass medical-pot laws

SA is a nation of boozers, addicts

Let’s talk ‘people’ and not ‘addicts’

Drinking is dangerous

‘Cannabis should be legalised in UK’

‘Alcohol abuse costs SA’

WC substance abuse 'fuels mental illness'

Jackson FUCKING IDIOT Mthembu!

Dagga plantation found in Atteridgeville

Time To Decriminalise Drugs? – South African Medical Journal

Teens arrested over dagga plantation

Fair and Free Trade! - Stop the rape of Africa!

Drugs worth R6m found in bus

We'll jail booze kids

"We'll jail booze kids"Pappa wag vir julle jonge dronkgatte!"We will also arrest pupils found in taverns or shebeens during school hours," Shongwe said.

KNP ‘might ban booze’

School of HIGHER learning

Drug Death winner

Medicinal Cannabis Growing SativaX GW Pharma BBC

Drunkest driver in SA arrested

1,500 drunk drivers arrested

Pappa wag vir julle mansmense dronkgatte

THC Reduces Aggressive Behavior In Schizophrenics: Study

Portugal's Drug Experience: New Study Confirms Decriminalization Was a Success

Legalise dagga – dr Ben Dlamini

Cannabis To Control Alcohol Abuse

Sea squirts and you

Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack'

Innocent drivers test positive for drugs

I get money through selling dagga – local grower

The promise of legalisation

Cannabis should be sold in shops alongside beer and cigarettes, doctors' journal says

The Vienna Declaration

The Vienna Declaration

Black Cops Say Legalize Marijuana

Experts turn against war on drugs

Ganja growers: If you can't beat 'em, tax 'em

Moms enlisted to help legalise dope

Swazi dagga a threat to 2010 World Cup

New Study Confirms Cannabis as an Effective Painkiller

Scare mongor Bayever at it again

BREAKING NEWS–CA Supreme Court Strikes Down Medical Marijuana Limits

Live blowjobs (just kidding)

Woman's grassing cops dope thieves

GDP turns the corner with 0.9% growth

R1m dagga bust in the Eastern Cape

Matric bust with R1.8m of dagga

SA includes illegal, underground economies in GDP

Wikileaks South African CDA Cannabis position paper

Science chief backs cannabis view

Kid killed for a joint.

Booze 'more harmful than LSD'

Informer rats out cops

New medical marijuana policy issued

Jails do more harm than good

Popcru puffs up a storm

Dagga should be legalised: Popcru

Police break Christiaan's neck for cannabis

Cannabis a brief history

David Bayever talks KAK again - by allowing his plan to continue to take 70 lives a day

Book Bomb

Drunk High Court judge drives through wall

Arrive Alive official drinks 4L beer and drives

Scare - Panic - flailing arms - Alarming stats on drug usage in SA

Abused from the womb

Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol

UN Backs Drug Decriminalization In World Drug Report

THC initiates brain cancer cells to destroy themselves

Top Anti-Drug Researcher Changes His Mind, Says Legalize Cannabis

The drugs do work – for a lot of people

Dealers (sic alcohol & drug) give free drugs to kids

Cocktail of heroin and tik scary - experts

R170m drug bust at OR Tambo Airport

SA distractsh from the shtory by blaming drugsh

South Africans prefer the Safer Natural Alternative

Deal with it, don't Botox it - Manuel

Drugalyser legality questioned

"We'll jail booze kids"
Pappa wag vir julle jonge dronkgatte!

"We will also arrest pupils found in taverns or shebeens during school hours," Shongwe said.