* Phylos Bioscience is attempting to map the genetic data for every marijuana strain in the world

* The team has so far sequenced over a thousand different kinds, which they plot on the interactive 'Galaxy'

* Genetic report reveals a strain's closest relatives, clonal relationships, its uniqueness, origin, and more

* The researchers say this could one day help scientists to achieve 'unthinkable' strains of marijuana

Scientists may soon be able to achieve 'unthinkable' strains of marijuana thanks to new efforts in DNA sequencing.

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A California company is selling a MARIJUANA monthly subscription box packed with curated cannabis products

* San Diego-based Club M requires a California medical marijuana license to join and delivers boxes each month for $97

* The packages include marijuana, edibles, vapes, and other 'gear' for using

* Each box is worth about $200 and can be purchased without a subscription, except for the new limited-edition boxes for $1,000 each

There seems to be a subscription box service for everything these days, from cosmetics to snacks to alcohol -- so really, it was only a matter of time for the medical marijuana community got in on the monthly shipment craze.

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Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs also suggests supervised injecting rooms to combat rising number of drug deaths

Heroin on prescription and supervised injecting rooms are among a range of measures that the government's drug advisers have suggested to reverse the UK's soaring numbers of drug deaths.

Responding to a sharp rise in the number of heroin-related deaths in recent years, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said maintenance of drug treatment programmes was essential to prevent further increases.

[continues 465 words]

THE narcotics trade provides the financial basis for almost every other form of organised criminality in this country and abroad. The scale is staggering: the global drugs market is worth UKP375 billion every year, and an estimated UKP7 billion a year in Britain alone. Britain spends a further UKP7 billion policing the drugs problem - and that's without the associated costs of imprisonment and public health and everything else.

It might not seem visible to the majority of ordinary, law abiding citizens, yet drugs and the gangsters who deal in them blight our towns and cities and dominate our criminal system. More than half the inmates in British prisons are there for drug-related offences.

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THE most sinister thing I have heard all year was this week's revelation that British government doctors secretly sought to drug troublesome teenagers in the 1960s and we have only just found out. One of the pills they wanted to use was called Haloperidol. Its side effects include incurable lifelong twitching, delirium and rigid muscles.

This plan was stopped, but another worrying substance, Beclamide, was given to boys at a Yorkshire 'Approved School' (a state-inspected home for troubled teens). Neither the boys nor their parents were told of this experiment.

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LONDON - While Amazon and the British government are looking into how to use drones to deliver parcels to customers, criminals are already exploiting the technology to send drugs to accomplices in prison.

Police on Monday said they recovered two drones carrying mobile phones and drugs near London's Pentonville prison and have set up a special task force - Operation Airborne - to catch offenders trying to get contraband into the jail.

In the early hours of Aug. 17, police saw a man acting suspiciously near the prison. He ran away, dropping two bags containing drugs and mobile phones and managed to evade arrest, according to a police statement.

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Music festival Secret Garden Party allowed people carrying illegal narcotics to test the quality and strength of the drugs over the weekend.

The pioneering scheme had the support of local police, and was run by the drugs charity The Loop. Thought to be the first of its kind in the UK, the project appears to have been a success.

Festival-goers were able to have their stash tested without handing over the rest. It was reported that over 200 people had their drugs tested. Finding over 80 suspect substances, over a quarter was disposed of after testing. The Transform Drugs Policy Foundation, who assisted in the scheme, claimed that it was an attempt to "undo the damage the War on Drugs had done."

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The progress towards a peace deal between the Colombian government and the Farc guerrillas is greatly to be welcomed (Editorial, 21 July). The terms are inevitably controversial and many who have suffered at the Farc's hands will find it hard to see them pass directly into politics. But that is the price of peace. The cocaine trade has fuelled this conflict over the last 35 years or so. You are absolutely right to propose that governments which wish to support peace in Colombia should consider backing President Juan Manuel Santos's efforts to reform the UN system of drugs prohibition and open the door to experiments in regulated markets in drugs like cocaine, just as is already happening with cannabis.

Keith Morris

British ambassador to Colombia 1990-94

[end]

Amputee's Plea to Legalise Medical Marijuana

A WAR hero who lost both legs in an Afghan bomb blast is forced to break the law to get cannabis to ease his pain.

Lance Corporal Callum Brown is now leading calls to legalise the drug for medical use. He wants to see cannabis made available to patients like him who suffer agonising pain 24 hours a day.

Callum, 28, also shattered his pelvis in the huge explosion after he stepped on a boobytrap bomb while on patrol in Helmand five years ago. Speaking exclusively to the Record, he said: "As well as my other injuries, I have no skin on my backside it's just thin scar tissue so the nerve damage and the phantom pains are the main reason for smoking.

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THE 'WAR on drugs" has failed in terms of public health and drug use should be decriminalised, two leading organisations have said.

The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) said the personal possession and use of all illegal drugs should no longer be considered a criminal offence.

While the bodies still support criminal charges for people who deal drugs, they said users should instead be referred for treatment and help.

The recommendation is made in a new UK-wide report, Taking a New Line on Drugs, which has the backing of several charities and law enforcement officials.

[continues 109 words]

Britain's two leading public health bodies, representing thousands of doctors and other professionals, are making an unprecedented call for the personal possession and use of drugs to be decriminalised.

The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Faculty of Public Health say the war on drugs has done more harm than good. They believe drug misuse should be a health issue and not a matter for the courts and prisons.

"We have taken the view that it is time for endorsing a different approach," said Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH. "We have gone to our stakeholders and asked the public, and tried to gain some consensus from our community and the public." The RSPH commissioned a poll of more than 2,000 British adults and found 56% agreed drug users in their local area should be referred for treatment, rather than charged with an offence. Fewer than a quarter (23%) disagreed.

[end]

Experts: Jail Bad for Addicts

PERSONAL possession and use of all drugs should be decriminalised, public health experts will say today.

Users need help not punishment, they say, and 56% of adults in a poll of 2,000 agree.

Drug use has fallen in the last decade but related harm including death continues to rise.

Jailing users makes things worse, says a report by the Faculty of Public Health and Royal Society for Public Health.

But both groups insist dealers must still be prosecuted. Shirley Cramer, of RSPH, said: "The war on drugs has failed... It's time for a new approach, where we recognise those who misuse drugs are in need of treatment not criminals in need of punishment." The report was "very much welcomed" by Parliament's Drug Policy Reform group. Prof David Nutt, of Imperial College London, backed it and Prof Peter Anderson, of Newcastle University, said: "It's the way to go." The Home Office said we must "support people dependent on drugs" and also "tackle organised crime behind the drugs trade".

[end]

Ron Hogg Said the War on Drugs Has Failed and the UK's Drug Policy Is 'Unsustainable' As He Called on Colleagues to Back His Views

Cannabis should be made legal and used for medicinal purposes, Durham's Police and Crime Commissioner has said.

In a letter to the country's 40 PCCs, Ron Hogg said the "war on drugs" has failed and the UK's present approach is "unsustainable".

Mr Hogg highlighted the "genuine body of evidence" that cannabis brings pain and symptom relief to sufferers of various conditions.

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The ban on legal highs will not lead to the disappearance of spice and other synthetic cannabis-like drugs because they are so profitable to dealers, a senior government drugs adviser has warned.

Prof Harry Sumnall, a member of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said the economics of producing the substances - often collectively dubbed "spice" - versus that of growing traditional cannabis made them an appealing proposition.

Sumnall said the ingredients were easily available online. "We were making some in the lab the other day. Very, very easy to do, pretty much shake and bake. Really easy to make, highly profitable, these drugs aren't going anywhere."

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Everyone from the chief inspector of prisons to prisoners themselves is now expressing concerns about the impact that new psychoactive substances are having on prisoners, prison officers and the efficacy of the prison system (Prisoners reveal regular 'spice' habit has tripled, 1 June). Current approaches to addressing their use are not working, and the situation is getting worse.

HMP Forest Bank, however, is taking a fresh approach. Using the principles of restorative justice, it is encouraging those prisoners who are using spice and other so-called "legal highs" to face up to the impact of their behaviour on their fellow prisoners and on prison staff.

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Prison should not be regarded as a punishment (Letters, 2 June). It is place of restraint where those who are incorrigibly violent - such as terrorists and incurable psychopaths - must be kept.

Punishment is a consequence of this restraint, but it should not be its aim. Punishment can be achieved by much more effective means, eg ill-gotten gains can be sequestered and subsequent earnings mulcted. The aim must be restitution, reform and rehabilitation, not one-size-fits-all punishment.

Magistrates, who can only award useless short sentences, should have this power removed completely. Crown court judges should have their sentencing audited, and where it has proved ineffective they should be held to account. If all drugs were legally regulated imprisonment would reduce by about 65%.

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This Act Drives Users Back Towards Illegal Drugs and Alcohol, the Most Dangerous Substance of Them All

With the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, ministers last week banned the sale or procurement of any substance that has psychoactive activity, regardless of whether it is harmless or even useful. The sole exceptions are alcohol, nicotine products and caffeine.

The main justification for this draconian piece of legislation is to make it easy for the police and local authorities to close down "head shops", or at least to stop them selling so-called legal highs: drugs such as nitrous oxide; some synthetic cannabinoids, salvia, and some weak stimulants known as bubbles or sparkle. The act is based on the false premise that legal highs are responsible for up to 100 deaths a year, when in fact the true number is fewer than 10. Media hysteria about the use of nitrous oxide by a few footballers and a dislike of young people doing something different from their parents has also played a part.

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THE trumpeted 'ban on legal highs' is a fiction, like the rest of our drug laws. The new Act imposes no penalties at all for possessing these dangerous poisons - except for people who are already in jail.

This is an amazing giveaway of the Government's real drugs policy, which is to look the other way while pretending to be 'tough'.

In fact, simple possession of cannabis, heroin or cocaine is now hardly punished at all, even though it is illegal.

[continues 104 words]

The new law (Legal high ban risks creating fresh crisis, 28 May), which criminalises the selling of so-called legal highs, but crucially does not criminalise the user, is the right thing to do. It came out of an independent study into these substances which I set up when drugs minister.

A wide range of experts produced a unanimous report and that forms the basis of the law. I was clear that so-called legal highs presented more of a danger to users than many long-prohibited drugs, especially cannabis.

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Critics of Law Say Trade Will Simply Shift Underground

Whipped Cream Chargers May Come Under Suspicion

The blanket ban on the trade in legal highs which comes into force today is expected to end their sale through high street "head shops" and UK-based websites almost overnight, police and trading standards officers have said.

But there are fears that the trade in new psychoactive substances (NPS) as they are officially known will move underground to illegal street markets and the darknet, the network of untraceable and hidden websites.

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