If a referendum was held on legalising cannabis for personal use, would you support it? You'd have to be off your scone. The New Zealand Drug Foundation (NZDF) has been crowing about the results of its self-selecting poll, indicating broad public support for decriminalising cannabis for personal use. Rebecca Reider made history over the weekend by bringing the first legal raw cannabis flower into New Zealand, campaigners say.

The NZDF has steadily become a strident proponent for law reform, to the point that they now sound more like glorified pushers, campaigning for "the removal of criminal penalties for drug use, possession and social supply."

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The Aug. 16 editorial "Don't reclassify marijuana yet - research it" would have benefited from more research itself. The Drug Enforcement Administration's refusal to reschedule cannabis has nothing to do with health, for if it cared about safety, it would need look no further than itself. You're more likely to be shot by a DEA agent than you are to die from an overdose of pot because the latter has never happened. The burden of proof has unjustly fallen on legalization advocates; initially convicted by racism and xenophobia, cannabis has been proclaimed guilty until proved innocent.

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MANILA - Even amid the slaughter of President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, the killings of Renato and Jaypee Bertes stand out.

The Bertes men, father and son, shared a tiny, concrete room with six other people in a metropolitan Manila slum, working odd jobs when they could find them. Both smoked shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine that has become a scourge in the Philippines. Sometimes Jaypee Bertes sold it in small amounts, relatives said.

So it was unsurprising when the police raided their room last month.

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(The following are excerpts from the "Position Paper on Extra-Judicial Killings As Means in the 'War on Drugs'" by the Center for Governance, Leadership and Development of the Department of Political Science of the University of San Carlos)

While the campaign against illegal drugs is a fight we all share, the relentless killings of persons allegedly linked to the illegal drug trade has raised an important question that every Filipino, regardless of social status, education, political beliefs, or religious affiliation, ought to confront: Are we doing this right?

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My generation has a lot to answer for. Recreational drugs, for example or as former Wellington coroner Garry Evans preferred to call them, "wreckreational drugs".

Mine was the generation that rebelled against the values of its parents.

We were smug and spoilt, with plenty of time on our hands to reflect on how wrong our elders were about everything.

We rejected their dreary, conformist moral values.

"If it feels good, do it" became the catch-cry of a generation.

And it did feel good for a while. But then the casualties began to pile up.

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Thailand is on the wrong track in its efforts to address drug problems and it is time to treat drug abuse as a health issue rather than a crime, says Justice Minister Paiboon Koomchaya.

Speaking at the "Thailand's Drug Policy Revisited" forum held by the Thailand Institute of Justice, Gen Paiboon said the high number of drug offenders and widespread drug abuse in communities shows the drug policy is failing.

"It has been wrong all these years. If not, why do 70% of drug offenders remain in prison? Why does the problem persist despite thousands of deaths? And why do people still complain about drugs in their community? They're telling us there's something wrong," he said.

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Both National and Labour have distanced themselves from a survey reported in the Herald that a majority of New Zealanders want the laws relating to cannabis to change.

The Prime Minister explained that supporting a change in our drug laws would send the wrong message to our youth.

Key is correct to be concerned.

Cannabis is increasing in potency.

It can cause psychosis in some people and be a gateway drug in some instances.

If a person becomes addicted, it has the capacity to diminish their life over the long term. Although cannabis does not cause as much damage as legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco or illegal drugs like methamphetamine, it still comes with clear risks.

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Marijuana is just one of many issues in which the government is so far behind the people, it's beyond funny.

The Drug Enforcement Administration proved this again just last week when it announced that after weeks of reviewing a petition to reclassify marijuana so it's no longer a Schedule 1 drug, along with heroin, Quaaludes and various psychedelics. Some who follow this issue were optimistic that the DEA might might actually reverse its long-held ironclad Reefer Madness policy. Perhaps the DEA would would reclassify marijuana as a Schedule 2 drug - along with cocaine and methamphetamine - or even lower.

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Roadside drug tests can be a good tool for police to determine whether someone has broken law and potentially poses a threat to others, but they can also get you locked up for eating a glazed donut.

A Florida man is suing the Orlando Police Department after he was arrested on officers' mistaken claims that he was in possession of crystal methamphetamine. During a traffic stop, the officers noticed a few whitish flakes on the floorboard of Daniel Rushing's car and alleged that they were crystal meth. "I recognized through my 11 years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic," one of the officers wrote in a report. In fact, it was just some crumbs from the glaze of a Krispy Kreme doughnut Mr. Rushing had consumed.

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BANGKOK In a backroom heavy with sawdust, Mr Akkarin Puri, 33, carefully examines the veneer of a half-finished guitar.

There was a time when the craftsman's attention was more focused on inhaling the vapours from a pill of yaba - a methamphetamine - heated over a flame.

In fact, by the age of 21, his drug habit had landed him in juvenile detention at least six times and a military lock-up for 18 months.

There, he tried to rob a fellow addict to fund his next fix and landed himself in jail for another eight years. It was while doing time in a particularly notorious prison, in Pathum Thani province next to Bangkok, that he saw up close one of the gravest consequences of the kingdom's long-running "war on drugs".

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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century.

Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent crimes related to cocaine, methamphetamine or other drugs, although a few were charged with firearms violations related to their drug activities. Almost all are men, though they represent a diverse cross-section of America geographically.

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A growing number of Southern California law enforcement organizations and leaders are voicing objections to a state ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana, saying it would make the state less safe.

"I'm vehemently opposed to it," Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said. "I think that it would be a terrible move for California to make."

San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos said the initiative to legalize marijuana "will do nothing to curb black-market activity in California." He is one of several police officials who is actively opposing the measure, a group that includes the Riverside Sheriffs' Association, the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and the California Police Chiefs Association.

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President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign promise to eradicate the menace of illegal drugs in the country from three to six months may soon be realized at the rate the police are cracking the whip on drug lords and pushers.

As of the latest count, there are already 312 dead, 3,228 arrested, 120,209 who surrendered and 63,972 houses raided. The government is turning the tide on its bloody war against drugs.

"This will be a fight to the death," said PNP chief Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa, who declared total war on drugs. He also warned police officers who are involved in drugs not to push their luck too much or else suffer the same fate as the drug lords.

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The City of Vancouver has long led the way on harm reduction. For more than a decade now, its two supervised-injection sites have made it the only jurisdiction in North America with facilities where addicts can inject drugs under the watchful care of nurses. But the suburbs that surround Vancouver have taken more cautious and conservative approaches to drugs, declining to host safe-consumption sites of their own.

That's finally beginning to change. Fraser Health, the authority responsible for care in communities from Burnaby to Hope in the Fraser Valley, has revealed that it plans to open multiple sites where users can inject heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other drugs.

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At least 25,230 drug pushers and drug dependents have surrendered to police in Metro Manila since the government started its war on drugs, the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) reported yesterday.

NCRPO director Chief Superintendent Oscar Albayalde also noted the significant decrease in street crimes in the metropolis with the implementation of both Oplans Tokhang and Double Barrel. Tokhang involves visiting the homes of suspected drug users and pushers and asking them to change their ways while Double Barrel refers to a two-pronged campaign to arrest drug lords and pushers.

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America's drug policies are largely misguided.

Many people, from common citizens to seasoned politicians, are aware of this, and have sought to change these laws in response to the needless incarceration of indulgers and addicts and, as a consequence, an ever-expanding population of prison inmates - the largest in the world.

However, the ethos of the War on Drugs has, since the early 1970s, remained a powerful motivation for lawmakers and justice officials to maintain the status quo.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as of Jan. 30, 2016, the U.S. prison population was made up in large degree of drug offenders, with 46.6 percent of all inmates having been incarcerated for such offenses. The second-largest group of inmates by offense, classed under "Weapons, Explosives, Arson," made up just 16.9 percent.

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Drug Conviction Quashed

A man who hid drugs in his rectum had his trafficking conviction overturned Wednesday because Sarnia police detained him for 43 hours waiting for him to defecate before taking him to a justice of the peace.

In throwing out the conviction, Ontario's highest court also criticized officers for how they treated Jeffrey Poirier during their "bedpan vigil search."

"I do not accept that the officers were acting in good faith," the Appeal Court ruled. "The manner in which the search was carried out was a flagrant breach of the appellant's rights."

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The spike in Calgary's crime severity index (CSI) can largely be linked to the increase in the city's drug activity and economic slump, according to Calgary police Chief Roger Chaffin, as fentanyl and other opioid use remains high across the province.

On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released a report that showed Calgary's CSI index jumped by 29 per cent, the largest increase in Canada's metropolitan areas. The CSI measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime.

According to Calgary police, there was a spike in methamphetamine, heroin and opiate drugseizures.

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Hallucinogenic African Bark Could Be the Answer to Heroin Addiction, and Addiction in General

Richard Dilley had tried everything by the time he traveled to Mexico and agreed to ingest a drug derived from a hallucinogenic African shrub bark that, he was told, would alter his brain. All for the bargain price of $10,000.

While terrifying in a way, the drug known as ibogaine (or Tabernanthe iboga in its natural state) was, at this point, less of a horror than the drug Dilley had been addicted to since his teen years.

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THE PHILIPPINES may be heading toward another collision course with China-possibly over President Duterte's war on drugs.

Barely a week after the Philippines won a favorable ruling from an international court in its maritime claims over the West Philippine Sea, Mr. Duterte over the weekend said he would confront the Chinese government regarding the country's problem on illegal drugs.

"One day, I will ask China: Why is the situation like this? I won't say why are you sending them, but why is it that most of the guys who come here do drugs, even inside jail?" the President said in a private gathering in Malacanang on Sunday night.

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