Free Republic

Synthetic cannabis known as "spice" or "black mamba" is a growing problem in UK prisons with serious physical and mental health consequences, the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick has said. Its popularity with inmates has surged because the psychoactive designer drug can be passed off as a tobacco roll-up, has no distinctive smell and it evades current drug testing capabilities in prisons. In a Guardian Films investigation, we spoke to several prisoners, former prisoners and officials and analysed Her Majesty of Prisons Inspectorate (HMIP) reports that revealed it had become a problem in at least 28 prisons in England....

The issue of drug legalization is a complex one. Most Americans do not favor it, yet there is a strong and very vocal lobby in the United States that feels that legalization would be the proper course to take. When this vocal minority raises the issue in any community, citizens look to the police chief to speak to the issue. Police chief are encouraged to borrow from this article as they prepare their speeches. ProponentsÂ’ Arguments Proponents of drug legalization believe that the current policies regarding drugs have been harmful to individuals, families, and society as a whole. They strongly...

May. 3, 2014 @ 7:00 pm Beyond sharing the status of commonwealth, Massachusetts and Kentucky don’t seem to have too much in common. But the commonwealths share a dubious bond that has only recently come out of the shadows: Both are epicenters of the opiate addiction epidemic sweeping the nation. Now Massachusetts and Kentucky are collaborating in efforts to fight back. Elected officials from both states were among the featured speakers at last month’s National Rx Drug Abuse Summit in Atlanta, where public health officials, elected officials, law enforcement agents and drug treatment counselors gathered for a three-day conference to...

How The One Percent Will Legalize Marijuana BY MIKE ADAMS · FRI FEB 21, 2014 The federal government, along with anti-drug groups, would like to paint a portrait for the American public that stoned supporters of the legalized marijuana movement are all saggy-pant thugs and unemployed hippies -- nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is there are some very wealthy and influential people out there are working the system in an effort to legalize the leaf. People with LOTS of money have swooped in like stoner superheroes and written fat checks so that America can finally be...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The green-cross storefronts of medical marijuana dispensaries are common in much of Washington, and the state is plowing ahead with licensing people to grow and sell recreational pot to adults. But a federal trial scheduled to begin in the coming weeks for five people in Spokane suggests not all is OK with weed in the state. Larry Harvey, a 70-year-old medical marijuana patient with no criminal history, three of his relatives and a family friend each face mandatory minimum sentences of at least 10 years in prison after they were caught growing about 70 pot plants...

HP: Many people don’t realize that overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S. I gave a talk about five years ago in Chicago, and I mentioned that we had more overdose deaths than traffic fatalities. My audience literally did not believe me. People were absolutely convinced that I had mis-transcribed the numbers. Every year, America loses a little over 32,000 people in auto crashes, and something like 38,000 from overdose deaths annually. KH: Yeah, it’s remarkable if you compare overdoses to AIDS, which at its peak was taking about the same number of lives. The difference...

Avid marijuana fan Willie Nelson’s 44-year-old daughter Paula was arrested for marijuana possession on 4/20 in Menard, Texas, KXAN Austin reports. Willie, of course, has had numerous run-ins with the law over him having weed and the law being against that. Paula took the arrest as an opportunity to tout marijuana legalization and pimp out her new record on her Facebook page (where she also proudly posted her own mugshot): “I want to make sure that everyone knows i am not bad mouthing the officers involved in my arrest. I know they were just doing their jobs.. And they...

DENVER – A college student eats more than the recommended dose of a marijuana-laced cookie and jumps to his death from a hotel balcony. A husband with no history of violence is accused of shooting his wife in the head, possibly after eating pot-infused candy. The two recent deaths have stoked concerns about Colorado’s recreational marijuana industry and the effects of the drug, especially since cookies, candy and other pot edibles can be exponentially more potent than a joint. “We’re seeing hallucinations, they become sick to their stomachs, they throw up, they become dizzy and very anxious,” said Al Bronstein,...

resident Obama says he opposes marijuana legalization but thinks Colorado and Washington should be able to try it. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who sought to run against Obama in 2012 as a Republican presidential contender, takes the same position. You might call this policy federalism -- but not if you are Barack Obama. According to the president, he has the authority to enforce the federal ban on marijuana even in states that have legalized the drug. But he chooses not to exercise that authority, because he is curious to see how these experiments turn out. In an interview with The...

DEA agent goes to pot, leaves fed agency to join marijuana industry Former DEA Agent Patrick Moen — whose career with the Drug Enforcement Administration went up in smoke when he joined the lucrative legal marijuana industry — isn't likely to spark an exodus from the agency, former colleagues say. Moen, 36, quit his post in Portland late last year and is now working for Seattle-based Privateer Holdings, a private equity firm specializing in acquiring businesses in the burgeoning marijuana industry. The attorney who once spent long days dismantling drug rings throughout the Pacific Northwest will now help the company...

A Colorado family experienced a frightening surprise last week when their toddler, for no apparent reason, became groggy and unable to walk. A trip to the local emergency room found the cause: the child had eaten a cookie from the ground outside the family’s apartment. Only this was no ordinary cookie. It had been laced with THC, the mind-altering chemical in marijuana, and wreaked havoc on the two-year old’s system. Thankfully, she’s now recovered. Ironically, the incident happened the day before Colorado’s new law legalizing marijuana for personal use went into effect. Apparently some drug users just couldn’t wait and...

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta admitted earlier this month that he had been wrong in his opposition to medical marijuana during the rollout for his documentary "Weed." Gupta reported on research that demonstrated the proven benefits of marijuana in treating neuropathic pain. Medical marijuana was the only drug that helped a 5-year-old girl with Dravet syndrome live without constant seizures. It calmed the constant hiccuping of a 19-year-old. Israelis use it to treat Parkinson's disease and other ailments. Gupta took on the federal government's classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, which has no accepted medical use but has a...

When confronted with the Republican Party’s poor standing among minority communities, GOP politicians have usually taken one of two approaches: claim these communities constitute “natural conservative constituencies” or advocate a broad change in policy or ideology to attract minority voters. Neither one of these tactics has been effective, for various reasons–chief among those reasons is that the communities under consideration are usually not “natural conservative constituencies.” Take Hispanics, for example. It is often noted by GOP politicians that Hispanic immigrants are hard-working, family-oriented strivers who tend to be religious. That may be true, but polls showed that while Mitt Romney...

El Chapo haunts the streets of Chicago. His ghost hoards cash in Los Angeles stash houses. His shadow darkens underground tunnels between Mexico and the U.S. His spirit drives his clan to bloodshed. The world’s most-wanted kingpin may be dead. But the Sinaloa cartel will thrive until America legalizes drugs. Guatemalan authorities are currently investigating whether Joaquín Guzmán (nicknamed El Chapo) was killed in a gunfight near Mexico’s border in a remote jungle-ranch province known as Peten. El Chapo is an entrepreneurial criminal. ‘Entrepreneurial’ because he takes risks and acclimates to overcome obstacles. ‘Criminal’ because he does not compete on...

Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul ranting, raving and screaming for drug legalization 24 years ago on "The Morton Downey Jr. Show". With special guest appearance by Charles Rangel, as The Voice of Reason. Lunacy on parade (on all sides in this freak show of a debate). Ron Paul on Morton Downey Jr. - 1988

Posted By Newssleuth I think that this old article from 1997 is important enough to post today. . “I am sort of deus ex machina- I am something unnatural,” George Soros says of himself. . Described by the New York Times as “The world’s single largest donor” (Dec. 17,1996), Soros uses his philanthropy to change – or more accurately deconstruct – the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people. While others give to the arts and higher education or to better the quality of the lives of their fellow men, Soros funds campaigns...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Billionaire financier George Soros has contributed $1 million to Proposition 19, a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in California, according to papers filed by the secretary of state's office Tuesday.

The Washington Post reports on the nearly impossible task of stopping billions of dollars in drug money – almost all of it in cash – from moving South across the US border and into Mexico. The drug cartels are collecting an estimated $20-$25 billion a year from their drug sales in the United States and immigration authorities in the US and on the Mexican side of the border are confiscating maybe one percent. “At the Laredo port alone, 22,000 cars cross into Mexico every day, plus 12,000 pedestrians and 6,000 tractor-trailers. They all can't be searched, officials say, and $1...

Unfortunately, Fox Business seems to have edited the exchange considerably to fit in one segment, in doing so leaving out some of the most potentially illuminating elements, such as what happened after Hannity challenged Stossel’s statistics. But Hannity’s main point comes through loud and clear: prohibiting drugs is legitimate because of the harm drugs can make users do to others. I’ve said before that drug policy is low on my political priority list, and for that reason I usually abstain from debates on the subject (though I’m definitely with Ann Coulter when she says it’s not a victimless crime for...

Valuations of illicit activity, whether it's drug sales, street crime or porn distribution, are notoriously fantasy-ridden. After all, it's hard to track cash businesses disinclined to release timely financial results. Yet the media accept such figures as gospel...including this one,and been cited on CNN and NBC. Often it's accompanied by other turbo-charged stats, to the effect that the value of the state crop is $14 billion, part of a nationwide marijuana trade worth more than $100 billion a year (including imports). SNIP ....[A] standard quantification of U.S. domestic cultivation today: 10,000 metric tons, or 22 million pounds. This figure has...