A lawmaker from Stockton wants California to take a radical approach to prevent overdose deaths: Give users a clean place and medical supervision to shoot up. Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman has introduced a bill that would allow local health departments such as the OC Health Care Agency to set up "supervised consumption services" in their communities, typically places where people bring in drugs they bought on the streets and safely ride out their high while monitored by nurses. "I know when you first hear about it, it's like, 'What? You're condoning drug use.' No, we're acknowledging people are dying on the streets," Eggman said Tuesday at the Assembly's public safety committee hearing in Sacramento. "In the U.S., we have chosen to treat addiction from a criminal perspective. It's high time we start treating it like a public health issue." [continues 533 words]
A divided D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to ban marijuana clubs, where residents and visitors to the nation's capital might have smoked pot without fear of being arrested. The 7-to-6 vote marked council members' second about-face on the issue in four months and hinted at their unsure footing as they navigate fast-shifting public sentiment about marijuana use. The issue has become the next marijuana-policy frontier in the District and other places where voters have already legalized possession. [continues 698 words]
President Obama's recent speech on the opioid overdose epidemic offers a ray of hope that the country's approach to drugs might one day adopt what has been called the first rule of American business: When all else fails, try doing it right. Noting with considerable understatement that "treatment is underfunded," the president proposed $ 1.1 billion for expanded opioid- addiction treatment. This is a good step in the right direction. But it is still $ 50 billion less than the U. S. will spend this year alone on its current, fatally flawed policy of the war on drugs, and only onethird of what the federal government allocates to lock up drug criminals - whose incarceration accounts for half of the entire Bureau of Prisons budget. [continues 939 words]
Supporters of Legalization Risk Arrest for Lighting Up Outside the White House Attention senior class-trip chaperones, cherry blossom lovers, and anyone else who may wander by the White House on Saturday: Brace yourself for a cloud of marijuana smoke - and, possibly, mass arrests. Organizers of the successful ballot measure that legalized pot last year in the District say they have had enough with President Obama's slog toward loosening marijuana laws. To protest, they are planning what they promise will be the first large-scale display of public pot smoking in the nation's capital, with the intention of getting arrested. [continues 933 words]
As two of our forward-thinking state legislators have noted, it's high time we considered legalizing marijuana in Connecticut. State Rep. Roland Lemar and state Rep. Juan Candelaria, both New Haven-based Democrats, are co-sponsoring a bill that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. Although a Quinnipiac University poll last year found that 63 percent of Connecticut voters support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational purposes, the bill's chance of passage is not deemed likely this time around. This is still, after all, the "Land of Steady Habits." [continues 805 words]
In San Francisco, no game of NIMBY bingo is complete without a complaint of "used needles." In Chronicle columns, letters to the editor, and harrowing tales of urban living, evidence of heroin use ends up everywhere: in children's sandboxes, at Muni stops, and anywhere else people walk. For once, this problem could possibly be understated. As this column has pointed out before, it's a small wonder we aren't all swimming in discarded syringes: San Francisco is experiencing a needle boom. [continues 927 words]
Advocates are happy it was named, but not about the delay in naming it or the people on it. New Jersey's health commissioner recently appointed a panel that will decide whether chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other conditions should be added to the list of a dozen ailments that qualify a patient to buy medical marijuana in the state. Patient advocates have been pressing for nearly four years to have the list expanded, saying it is too restrictive and prevents many severely ill patients from obtaining cannabis. [continues 825 words]
Legalizing Recreational Use of Marijuana Is Likely to Be on November's Ballot Californians Will Have a Lot to Think About As They Sort Through Issues Think of California as a cannabis jungle. A year ago, 20 cannabis-related initiatives were proposed for the November 2016 ballot. Slowly but surely, they've died or been abandoned. Now only four appear to be collecting signatures in time for the Nov. 8 election. But California isn't alone. Voters in 20 states are considering some form of legalization through 66 proposals more than three per state. As expected, California has the most. There's even a possibility that more than one could pass. [continues 786 words]
Thousands of Studies Have Proven That Marijuana Should Remain a Narcotic California Medical Association Is Dead Wrong in Giving Its Blessing to Weed Legalization Be Prepared for More Psychosis, Depression, Violence and Suicides There is money in drugs; the cartels proved that. But drug dealers aren't encumbered with the societal costs, which are nine to 10 times greater than any public revenues they generate. That's been our experience with alcohol and tobacco, and that doesn't count human misery. [continues 630 words]
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Sure, let's just hoist the white flag of surrender in the war against heroin addiction. That's what Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) would effectively do with her bill to legalize "supervised injection facilities" for people to self-administer illegal narcotics under the supervision of medical staff. If it's not the dumbest proposal we've heard to battle drug addiction, it has to rank pretty close to the top of the list. And yet we keep hearing it. [continues 505 words]
State Says Prices Are 37% Higher Than Selected Other States. As Pennsylvania moves closer to adopting a medical marijuana program, New Jersey has released a report on its six-year-old program that says its dispensaries charge the highest price for an ounce of marijuana on average, compared with other states with similar programs. The Department of Health report said the five dispensaries operating statewide charge an average of $489 per ounce, about 37 percent more than the average price in Arizona, New Mexico, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. Most of these states have a cost-of-living index of 10 percent or less than New Jersey, said the report, released this month. [continues 530 words]
As Pennsylvania moves closer to adopting a medical marijuana program, New Jersey has released a report on its six-year-old program that says its dispensaries charge the highest price for an ounce of marijuana on average, compared with other states with similar programs. The Department of Health report said the five dispensaries operating statewide charge an average of $489 per ounce, about 37 percent more than the average price in Arizona, New Mexico, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. Most of these states have a cost-of-living index of 10 percent or less than New Jersey, said the report, released this month. [continues 533 words]
Gonzo Nieto and the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy Aim to Change Global Drug Policy "I experienced my own death," said Gonzo Nieto. It was the summer before he was leaving for university. Taking his parents car and picking up a few friends, they went to the local head shop and bought a bong, a torch flame lighter and a bag of Salvia. Salvia Divinorum, is a plant that when smoked leaves a person in a haze of hallucinations. It's often the choice for people experimenting because until recently, it was been legal to buy from head shops. [continues 857 words]
There are increasing signs that 2016 might just be the year the largest state in the nation legalizes recreational marijuana. Polls have shown from 56 percent to 60 percent of California's likely voters in the November presidential contest support legal pot. And due in part to hefty financial backing from a Silicon Valley billionaire, the leading pro-marijuana measure - the Adult Use of Marijuana Act - has gotten off to one of the strongest starts among dozens of proposed initiatives on different topics being pitched for the Nov. 8 ballot. [continues 1501 words]
Anti- Drug Campaign Was Praised by Some, Dismissed by Others Drugs already had a strong grip in Compton High School when Maple Cornwell became assistant principal in 1983. Crack cocaine was just making its debut. Educators had few tools to fight what would quickly turn into an epidemic. Into this void came the voice of Nancy Reagan, with a message for children around the nation: "Just Say No." The campaign against drugs became Reagan's most memorable achievement - - lauded by some for showing the destruction addiction wrought, condemned by others who say it helped lead to mass incarceration and demonized black communities, and shrugged off by many who thought the message was naively simplistic and ineffectual. [continues 844 words]
A Four-Pillar Plan The supervised injection facility for heroin users proposed as part of Ithaca's new municipal drug policy garnered lots of media attention, but not much in the way of praise from local law enforcement leaders. Tompkins County Sheriff Kenneth Lansing said his department was not consulted in the development of the drug plan. "We all know that people that are doing things they shouldn't be doing are paranoid, and I'm just not sure how safe they're going to feel going to a facility that's going to allow them to do this," Lansing said about the injection facility. "There are hurdles with the legality to look at. Nothing against the mayor; I think he's doing a hell of a job, no doubt about it, and the plan has some great ideas. I just can't accept [the injection facility], and I can't support it." [continues 581 words]
On Dec. 5, 2014, San Francisco police were on the corner of Hyde Street and Golden Gate Avenue in the Tenderloin, arresting crack sellers. It was a busy day: Shortly after busting one man for selling a few rocks to an undercover police officer, a cop returned to the scene of the crime to gather data to fill out his report when he witnessed another drug deal in action. The cop busted that seller, who identified himself to police as "a Sureno from the south side," according to court records. Police later found that both sellers had extensive rap sheets for narcotic sales. [continues 953 words]
SACRAMENTO - Devout cannabis advocates and social justice reformers believe this may finally be the year California voters legalize marijuana, and that optimism has led to a mashup of proposed statewide ballot measures - more than 20 filed so far. They vary from a one-sentence constitutional amendment that simply declares California adults are free to "grow, own (and) purchase" marijuana to a 62-page treatise on how to best regulate and tax legal pot. But just one has attracted the deep-pocketed donors and leading advocacy groups to emerge as the clear favorite to make the November ballot - the so-called Adult Use of Marijuana Act. The initiative would allow those age 21 and older to possess and use up to an ounce of marijuana, making California the fifth state in the nation to legalize recreational use. [continues 478 words]
Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick wants the city to be the first in the U.S. to offer a supervised injection facility, where heroin users would be able to shoot up under the care of a nurse. The facility is one piece of a comprehensive new approach he wants Ithaca to take against the scourge of addiction. A comprehensive approach following the four pillars of treatment, harm reduction, public safety and prevention will be announced officially Wednesday, when Myrick and the Municipal Drug Policy Committee unveils "The Ithaca Plan: A Public Health and Safety Approach to Drugs and Drug Policy." [continues 1542 words]
