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Marijuana is much safer than alcohol or tobacco, according to a new study Marijuana is roughly 114 times less deadly than alcohol, according to recent findings published in the journal Scientific Reports. Of the seven drugs included in the study, alcohol was the deadliest at an individual level, followed by heroin, cocaine, tobacco, ecstasy, methamphetamines, and marijuana. Previous studies consistently ranked marijuana as the safest recreational drug, but it was not known that the discrepancy was this large. The researchers determined the mortality risk by comparing a lethal dose of each substance with the amount typically used. Not only was...

Journalist Michael Hastings, who was killed in a fiery Los Angeles crash in June, died of "traumatic injuries" as a result of the accident and had traces of drugs in his system, Los Angeles coroner's officials said Tuesday. Hastings, 33, died June 18 in a single-vehicle accident. His car burst into flames and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Coroner's officials said Hastings had traces of amphetamine in his system, consistent with possible intake of methamphetamine many hours before death, as well as marijuana. Neither were considered a factor in the crash, according to toxicology reports.

The family of journalist Michael Hastings was trying to get him into drug rehab at the time he died in a fiery Los Angeles car wreck, according to a coroner’s report released today.

President Obama on Tuesday said the U.S. needs to create a “regulatory structure” for the domestic use of drones — one day after a small, unmanned quad copter was discovered on the South Lawn of the White House. “There are incredibly useful functions that these drones can play in terms of farmers who are managing crops and conservationists who want to take stock of wildlife,” Obama told CNN. He noted that companies like Amazon are experimenting with using drones to deliver packages. “But we don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all for it,” he added. The president...

A drone carrying methamphetamine crashed in Mexico near the San Ysidro Port of Entry on Tuesday night. The unmanned aircraft hauling more than 6 pounds of crystal meth in six packages fell from the sky into the parking lot of a supermarket in Tijuana just before 10 p.m., according to Vicente Calderon, a Tijuana-based freelance journalist for NBC 7.

When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses. But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists who are turning their kitchens and basements into “Breaking Bad”-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.

Fuselier continued into Trempealeau County at speeds that reached 80 mph until officers lost him on Gilmeister Road and found his car in a ditch, the complaint stated. Authorities from both counties followed footprints into a wooded area for more than one mile and across a creek before a deputy found Fuselier on the ground unable to get up because his prosthetic leg was stuck in a fence, according to the complaint. Police found meth and a pipe in his car.

A false accusation of rape allegedly caused a Barrow man to beat his cousin to death in a Fairbanks hotel room Wednesday morning, according to Alaska State Troopers. Abraham S. Stine, 39, was charged Thursday with one count of second-degree murder for beating Wesley Lord, 37, to death at the Extended Stay Hotel on Old Airport Way. His girlfriend, Dominique Natalie Vasquez, 31, also of Barrow, was charged with one count of second-degree murder for her actions during the incident. According to charging documents, Vasquez had been smoking methamphetamine and drinking alcohol with Lord and two other men — one...

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more perfect caricature of America's wildest, bawdiest and most unintelligible impulses than Florida Man. As the Internet's most notorious citizen, Florida Man isn't a single person, let alone a single resident of Florida. He's an amalgamation of the characters who populate the ridiculous news stories that often trickle out of the Sunshine State. Florida Man is a raunchier version of the Onion's mild-mannered Area Man, a caricature, with a wink and a nod, to our fellow Americans. Florida Man is best known for his outlandish conduct, which ranges from the bizarre (carrying a meth...

BEIJING — At the end of a lonely alley, the building had three rooms, no number and just one entrance. Only after midnight would the lights come on, and they’d stay on until dawn.The work inside was smelly and dangerous. Three powerful fans whirred through the night. The floor was stacked with charcoal briquettes to absorb the odor.But the men inside were settling down for a late-night snack — they hadn’t even put on their gas masks yet — when police came through the iron door.The bust that ensued would give "Breaking Bad" a run for its mythic blue meth.

The North Korean Walter Whites funnelling crystal meth into China Pyongyang actively produced and trafficked drugs for years, say experts, but there has been a shift towards tolerating smaller scale, privatised operations Tania Branigan in Beijing Friday 28 November 2014 11.15 GMT Just call him North Korea’s Walter White: a struggling professor who turned to making methamphetamine, or crystal meth, to supplement his modest income - and who is likely to have found ready conspirators in gangs from across the border in China. Defectors and North Koreans working illicitly abroad say a large-scale drug trade has flooded north-east China with...

Mexican meth increasingly supplanting at-home labs By JIM SALTER - Associated Press 11/08/2014 5:41 PM | Updated: 11/08/2014 5:41 PM ST. LOUIS — The nation's Heartland is ridding itself of the scourge of homemade methamphetamine, with lab seizures down by nearly half in many high-meth states. Any celebration is muted: Meth use remains high, but people are increasingly turning to cheaper, imported Mexican meth rather than making their own.

One Laurel County suspect is creating a lot of buzz on social media. The Laurel County Sheriff's Department arrested two people, they say, were in possession of crystal meth on Tuesday. 37-year-old Deborah Asher, of Somerset, was arrested and charged with trafficking in a controlled substance, first degree and possession of methamphetamine. 57-year-old Richard Rice, of East Bernstadt, was also arrested and faces the same charges. Deputies say they conducted a drug investigation on Dolly Miller Road that led to the arrests. The Sheriff's Department shared the arrest on their Facebook page and the post has garnered more than 150...

The drummer of hard rock group AC/DC, Phil Rudd, has had a charge of attempted to arrange a murder dropped in New Zealand. Mr. Rudd’s lawyer said the charge was dropped because of lack of evidence. Australian Mr. Rudd will still face charges—announced on Thursday—of possessing drugs and of making threats to kill. […] Mr. Rudd’s lawyer, Paul Mabey, said the “charge alleging an attempt to procure murder should never have been laid”. […] He described the drug charges as “minor” offenses and said the musician would defend the charge of making threats to kill, which carries a maximum sentence...

FULL TITLE: 'Religious zealot' Christian student 'decapitated 19-year-old friend because he thought he practiced witchcraft' A deeply Christian college student in Oklahoma allegedly nearly decapitated the son of a state trooper with a sword because the victim practiced witchcraft, police say. Isaiah Marin of Stillwater was charged Thursday with first-degree murder in the attack that killed 19-year-old Jacob Andrew Crockett a day earlier. The two had been playing cards with a third pal, Marin's brother, when Marin removed the 'large black sword' from its sheath and began swinging it around, court records obtained by MailOnline show. Scroll down for video

Nearly two dozen suspects have been arrested in recent months, and 500 pounds of methamphetamine siezed, as a result of a Contra Costa County takedown of members of the Sinoloa drug cartel in Mexico, authorities announced Monday.

Just when you thought the blood-drunk ISIS couldn't possibly become more repellant or damaging to this world, now 'The Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria is producing its own meth (and ecstasy) in recently-captured pharmaceutical plants in order to earn hard-currency from exports, ala North Korea...  If it wasn't worrisome enough that ISIS had taken oil fields and captured piles of gold from a Mosul bank, consider that now they're adding lucrative drug manufacture/export- making the group more economically-independent by the day. Human trafficking, sales of sex-slaves, pirating online and off all continue to widen ISIS's base of revenue and...

A Georgia woman was mistakenly jailed for one month after cops confused her SpaghettiOs for meth. Ashley Gabrielle Huff was first detained on July 2 after officers in Gainesville found a spoon with a dried substance baked onto it inside her car during a routine traffic stop. The 23-year-old, from Commerce, claimed it was residue from the canned pasta that she liked to eat in the vehicle. Police, however, believed it to be methamphetamine. Huff, who had no criminal history, was sent to Hall County Jail for two days so cops could conduct crime lab tests on the mysterious texture.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - For the second time in three months, police have arrested a former Metro school teacher for making meth inside her west Nashville home. The condemned home on Illinois Avenue is owned by former Metro school teacher Monica Adkins. Around 11:15 p.m. Monday someone called 911 to report a fire at the residence.

Given the link between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and birth defects, should expectant mothers who drink be arrested for assault? If not, it is hard to see why Mallory Loyola is in jail. Loyola, who was arrested last week after giving birth to a baby girl who tested positive for amphetamine, is the first woman to be charged under a new Tennessee law that criminalizes drug consumption by pregnant women. The law, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, is really about punishing what its chief sponsor described as "the worst of the worst": women who not only use arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants...