Movers and shakers behind “medical” marijuana use the term “compassion” as a marketing scheme.  To avoid FDA scrutiny, they devised a scam, recorded on videotapes, to bring about full legalization.  Perhaps they’re pushing new “medicinal” uses for hallucinogenic drugs  for similar reasons.

Ethan Nadelmann, formerly executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, explained the underlying plan on Reddit.   “Michael Pollan’s forthcoming book on psychedelics and medicine will take media interest to yet another level. The more people know about this, the faster psychedelics will be legally accepted as medicines.”  Nadelmann engages his followers with wishful thinking.  In a TED talk, he said: “Our desire to alter our consciousness may be as fundamental as our desire for food, companionship, and sex.”

When Pollan has spoken to the press, he mentions psychedelics as “palliative” care in people facing the end of life.  It sounds familiar, because the pot lobbyists initially promoted medical marijuana for end-of-life care.  In reality, it’s mostly young men with pain who use “medical” marijuana, not the cancer and AIDs patients for whom it was intended.  More recently pot advocates promote it to treat psychiatric disorders.

For complete article

FOODIES, DON’T BE FOOLED IF MICHAEL POLLAN WRITES ABOUT PSYCHEDELICS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0gz8xvRZaY1Znh6cUhIcTByMFU/view?usp=sharing

Foreword

INCB notes that, in the outcome document, Member States underscored the role of the three international drug control treaties as the basis for international cooperation, ensuring the availability of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances for medical and scientific purposes, preventing illicit drug crop cultivation and production and addressing drug trafficking and abuse. Governments have demonstrated that they intend to fulfil their joint commitments to cooperate on demand and supply reduction as well as on preventing diversion. At the special session of the General Assembly, the international community reaffirmed the pivotal role of the conventions and reiterated its commitment to their implementation. However, some actors will continue to talk about a need to “modernize” the treaties and their provisions; INCB is of the view that the international drug control system continues to provide a modern and flexible structure that can meet the world’s drug control needs of today and tomorrow.

In that context, INCB calls upon all stakeholders to place science and evidence-based approaches at the centre of drug control discussions. INCB sees its treaty-mandated role in determining the extent to which implementation at the national level is within the flexibility allowed for by the conventions. As we have often pointed out, the conventions provide for a certain flexibility at the national level, particularly with respect to determining appropriate sanctions, including non- punitive or non-custodial measures, for minor offences, for example for possession of drugs for personal use. However, flexibility has limits; it does not extend to regulating the use of drugs for non- medical purposes. States parties are now challenged to examine how to respond to the developments in some countries that are in contravention of the treaties by permitting and regulating the nonmedical use of drugs. A special topic in chapter II of the present report explores the possible effects of legislation in several jurisdictions that permits the non-medical use of cannabis.

The success of future international cooperation on drug control will depend on the ability of States parties to recognize that the treaties emphasize, first and foremost, the health needs and human rights of individuals. As a treaty-monitoring body, INCB assumes that the States parties themselves understand that it is their treaty obligation to prevent and treat drug abuse and reduce its negative consequences, based on the principles and provisions of the conventions and political declarations. Protecting the health and welfare of humankind remains the ultimate goal of the international drug control system; all drug-related policies and programmes that address current challenges in a balanced manner, in conformity with the treaties and with respect for human rights, will continue to be acknowledged and supported by INCB.

For complete Document http://www.incb.org/incb/en/news/AR2016/annual_report_2016.html

Pamela McColl, Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia.  This letter, “Prohibition Works,” was first published in The Province, June 28, 2017.

In 1978, 10.7 per cent of U.S. high school students smoked cannabis every day. Survey data shows that marijuana use peaked in 1979 and was followed by a period of dramatic decline until 1992, when the rate of high school students who smoked pot daily dropped below two per cent.

Between 1979 and 1991, a huge prevention campaign in North America coincided with the dramatic decrease in drug use. Parents, teachers, police, youth leaders, social workers, churches and the children themselves all got involved. It worked. Users fell from 23 million to 14 million, cannabis and cocaine use halved and daily pot use dropped by 75 per cent.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that prohibition works either doesn’t know, or doesn’t remember, the rise and fall of drug use in the 1980s, and what it took to turn kids off the use of drugs.

Editor’s Note: Another success story was getting rid of Quaaludes, a scourge on American youth at the same time. By 1984, the DEA successfully stopped the worldwide production of Quaaludes.

June 2017 – Big Dutch banks, brewers and housing corporations have cannabis cafe interests, Society June 28, 2017

The four biggest Dutch banks — Rabobank, ING, ABN Amro and the Volksbank (formerly SNS) — have lent cannabis cafe owners some €1.1bn using 170 coffee shops as security, the Financieele Dagblad said on Wednesday.

The figures come from a major research project carried out by the FD and investigative journalism website Investico which looked at the connections between Dutch firms, entrepreneurs and the public sector, and the cannabis industry.

The research also shows that brewers such as Heineken and AB InBev have also lent money to people active in the sector while 46 of the country’s 570 coffee shops are located in property run by a housing cooperation.

The findings are particularly significant given that earlier research suggests around 25% of coffee shops have links to organised crime, the paper said. No risk Criminologist Vyrille Fijnaut told the paper that the findings are not a great surprise. ‘In terms of paying off a loan or paying rent, coffee shops are not a financial risk,’ Fijnaut said. Twelve people on the Quote 500 rich list have investments in 19 coffee shops and even the tax office has accepted two coffee shops as security for a loan, the paper said.

‘This shows the duplicity of Dutch drugs policy and Dutch society,’ Professor Pieter Tops told the paper. Market ‘People will say the market is without morals and coffee shops are legal,’ he said. ‘But a lot of money is being invested in a world where it is known that there are connections with criminal organisations. People are investing — legally — in a world that is illegal and earning money.’

Although coffee shops are licensed and the police turn a blind eye to the possession of small amounts of cannabis, how the drug gets to the coffee shop remains a controversial subject and growing the plant is still illegal. The FD estimates coffee shop turnover to total some €1bn a year.

Licences In 2010, the government and Dutch banking association VNG was forced to intervene after coffee shop owners — who run local authority licenced businesses — complained they were finding it hard to get a bank.

Nevertheless, the big banks told the FD that they are less willing or not at all willing to lend money to coffee shops. Housing corporations including Ymrere and De Key also told the paper they no longer rent property to be used as a cannabis cafe. Most — 86%- of the loans in the FD research come from prior to 2010, the paper said.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: Big Dutch banks, brewers and housing corporations have cannabis cafe interests http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/06/big-dutch-banks-brewers-and-housing-corporations-have-cannabis-cafe-interests/