After 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked. “In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske told The [...]
California’s current budget gap may be large at $20 billion, but it is not unique, and the outcome will be closely watched. The National Governors Association says the recession will not end in some states until 2012. As California moves closer to a vote on legalizing marijuana, which most states banned in the 1930s, the [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged California, Cannabis, Economy, Hemp, Legalization, Massachusetts, Medical Marijuana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, State Budgets, Virginia, Washington
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Activists estimate that California could earn 1.5 billion dollars in excise taxes, and save another billion dollars currently spent on law enforcement and prisons by legalizing cannabis. They also point to earnings for marijuana-linked businesses. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in California estimated the total economic impact of such a move [...]
Far from being a war between hippies and police, the fight to legalize marijuana in California centers on whether decriminalizing and taxing cannabis can help fill the state’s fiscal hole. Using the drug for medical purposes has been legal for 14 years in the western state. But a new initiative that will appear on the [...]
You will have noticed that this is not, at heart, a drugs story. It’s a money story. More and more young professional Britons are turning to cannabis cultivation as a profit-making venture. They are teachers, lawyers, designers, property developers and plumbers. They should be thriving in the legitimate success of their careers but, somehow, they [...]
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
It’s official. Tax Cannabis 2010, the most far-reaching state effort ever, which would legalize the consumption of cannabis for all adults over 21 — and would finally take the industry that serves those consumers out of a legal gray area — will qualify for the November mid-term ballot later today. The Tax Cannabis campaign gathered [...]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Among the cartels many sources of profit, illegal sales of cannabis account for the majority of their funds at roughly 60 percent, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. While debate over how best to fight the increasingly powerful criminal groups continues to wage within the U.S., many Mexican officials have arrived to the conclusion [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Cannabis, Ciudad Juarez, DEA, Drug Cartels, Drug Policy, El Paso, Law, Mexico, Preventable Deaths, Reform, Texas, War on Drugs
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Seattle’s new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney. City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed. In [...]
Monday, December 28, 2009
Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb. “In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we’ve ever [...]
The current system of placing illegal drugs into one of three classes – A, B or C – depending on their legal status, has long been criticised by medical authorities concerned that it is based on arbitrary considerations rather than evidence-based science. [...] They studied 20 drugs in total, including legal as well as illegal [...]
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