The United Nations comprising of all the nations of the world is supposed to be the world's most powerful organization aimed at protecting the interests of humans and the planet on a global scale. But then a body that comprises of governments that exist purely for the benefit of big business and economic wealth will only be an aggregation of these vested interests and operate along the same lines as the individual entity nations that it is made of. With the US being the largest financial contributor and with significant contributions from European nations like the UK, France, Germany and Russia and Asian countries like China, Japan and India, is it any surprise that the UN is basically a toothless organization which directly or indirectly protects big businesses like banking, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, mining, construction, military and other global industrial entities at the cost of the poorest nations, communities and people? If you think I am exaggerating please take a closer look at the state of the planet today and where we are heading. To say that we are in the middle of the sixth extinction known to man, an extinction for which man is the primary cause, where 1/8th of all species on earth have already become extinct, where more plants have become extinct than animals, birds, insects and reptiles put together, where there is an increasing likelihood that life surviving beyond 2050 may be only a fraction of what exists today, then the role of the UN as a platform for destructive forces rather than protective forces becomes evident. There are many goals that the UN has laid down including the Sustainable Development Goals which all nations are meant to adhere to if life on earth is to be sustainable. But the way the UN is structured is that a few elite countries, the ones who pay the salaries of the UN staff, can override anything that say 90% of the member nations think should be done. So the UN is economic elitism at its global best or more accurately worst.
Let us talk cannabis since this is the focus of my attention here. The US, in order to protect the selfish interests of its paper, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, military, alcohol and tobacco industries, decided to prohibit cannabis, against all reason and logic in the 1930s. You could say that this was basically the forces building up in Europe over the previous 400 years coming to a boil in North America as a result of a worldwide plunder of natural resources and communities to enable today's economic giants to reach where they have. Not satisfied with its national prohibition and to give a big boost for the international aspirations of these industries, the US managed to put enough pressure on the UN to impose world wide prohibition on cannabis, the revered plant of the natives of North and South America, Oceania, Asia and Africa. So the plant that was used by millions of people world wide for thousands of years, especially the poorest, the ones who were most ill, the elderly and the wise communities that lived sustainable lives close to nature, was made illegal because none of these people had the voice or the money that the US, Europe and their newly rich industries had. That enabled the US to push through a number of key international laws aimed at prohibiting cannabis namely the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs; the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. According to one report - 'The UN Drug Conventions were negotiated in the 1940s and 1950s, in a very different atmosphere. The WHO Expert Committee never reviewed cannabis as a substance, which they normally do before substances are classified under the Conventions. There is growing concern about the position of cannabis in the Single Convention as conflicts are increasing between national legislations, the UN Drug Conventions and UN Human Rights Conventions.'
After decades of devastation brought about by the rampant spread and usage of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, prescription drugs and its abuse, synthetic cannabinoids, opioids, alcohol, tobacco, after decades of wars fueled by military industries, after decades of environmental destruction by petrochemical companies, after trillions spent on law enforcement to imprison poor farmers, minorities and destroy vast amounts of the cannabis plant, after a massive black market world wide that deals in synthetic drugs and illegal cannabis to fuel large scale criminal activities, after priming media and the public with false information and painting cannabis as the most evil plant in the world, the US and European countries started counting their own costs and started changing their approach to the plant. They have now set up systems to provide cannabis for their own people in the name of medical cannabis while still continuing to maintain their stance internationally opposing the plant.
With world wide communication, the vast number of research and medical studies speaking about cannabis's medicinal, industrial, economic, business, recreational, environmental and agricultural benefits as well as studies on its historical and traditional usage started emerging. The US alone legalized cannabis in its individual states to treat more than 35 health conditions. Finally the WHO, the health arm of the UN, published reports that the plant was not as harmful as thought and that it may actually have 'some' medicinal properties. The WHO recommended that cannabis be moved out of the UN schedule 4 of the Single Convention Treaty. The UN constituted an expert committee comprising of medical experts to review the situation in the end of 2018. The Committee also reported in early 2019 that cannabis should not be in the Schedule 4 list of harmful banned substances which it is currently placed in. If the committee report is implemented and cannabis is removed from the Schedule 4 list, every single nation in the world can legalize the plant, that is the impact that the report can have. All the harms that came about through cannabis prohibition can be reduced and eventually maybe prevented bringing relief to billions of people world wide especially the poorest living in the world's most economically backward countries.
So what happened next? Was cannabis de-scheduled at the UN? You got to be kidding if you think that the love for money is less than the love for the planet. The UN Expert Committee that made the recommendations is only an advisory committee to the Convention of Narcotic Drugs nations numbering about 53 countries. It is up to these nations to vote for cannabis legalization and only when there is a positive vote in favor can the plant be legalized. So did all the nations get together and vote? No it did not even reach that point. The elitist nations that hold the UN by its testicles (apologies for giving this body a male anatomy) namely the US, Germany, Russia and Japan (you may have heard these names before, yes they are the belligerent warriors of world war infamy who nearly destroyed the planet twice some decades ago in an attempt to loot it of its resources by force and who continue to pursue the same aims the world over today) said in March 2019 that they needed time to study the expert committee report and gauge its implications. This would be extremely hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. The US has legalized recreational cannabis in 15 states and medical cannabis in more than 30 states. Germany has the highest number of medical cannabis patients in Europe and is Europe's biggest importer of cannabis. Russia still nurses dreams of being the world's sheriff based on its military while Russian drug cartels operate freely around the world smuggling and distributing cannabis and more dangerous drugs illegally. Japan's leaders live in virtual reality trying to technically outdo the US for its PTSD caused by the nuclear bombing from World War 2. Unfortunately these four countries possess enough clout (read as economic power aka plundered money from the earth) to convince the UN leadership that the review of cannabis's ban should be postponed to 2020.
In March 2020 when the recommendations came up for review, what were the results? As expected member nations said that they are not yet ready to consider the recommendations as they needed more time to build a consensus. Going in for a vote now would be an uphill task as about one third of nations were still fiercely opposed to cannabis. The EU, Canada, Jamaica, Switzerland, Uruguay, Mexico and South Africa appeared to be strongly for the recommendations while countries like Russia, Singapore, Japan, China, Nigeria, Egypt, Indonesia appeared to be strongly against the recommendations. The original villains who played the central role in world wide prohibition of cannabis, the US and the UK, did what they do best. They sat on the fence saying they will go along with wider consensus while going about internally with their agendas of securing world domination through economic and military subterfuge. So the next date for review was December 2020.
Let us talk cannabis since this is the focus of my attention here. The US, in order to protect the selfish interests of its paper, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, military, alcohol and tobacco industries, decided to prohibit cannabis, against all reason and logic in the 1930s. You could say that this was basically the forces building up in Europe over the previous 400 years coming to a boil in North America as a result of a worldwide plunder of natural resources and communities to enable today's economic giants to reach where they have. Not satisfied with its national prohibition and to give a big boost for the international aspirations of these industries, the US managed to put enough pressure on the UN to impose world wide prohibition on cannabis, the revered plant of the natives of North and South America, Oceania, Asia and Africa. So the plant that was used by millions of people world wide for thousands of years, especially the poorest, the ones who were most ill, the elderly and the wise communities that lived sustainable lives close to nature, was made illegal because none of these people had the voice or the money that the US, Europe and their newly rich industries had. That enabled the US to push through a number of key international laws aimed at prohibiting cannabis namely the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs; the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. According to one report - 'The UN Drug Conventions were negotiated in the 1940s and 1950s, in a very different atmosphere. The WHO Expert Committee never reviewed cannabis as a substance, which they normally do before substances are classified under the Conventions. There is growing concern about the position of cannabis in the Single Convention as conflicts are increasing between national legislations, the UN Drug Conventions and UN Human Rights Conventions.'
After decades of devastation brought about by the rampant spread and usage of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, prescription drugs and its abuse, synthetic cannabinoids, opioids, alcohol, tobacco, after decades of wars fueled by military industries, after decades of environmental destruction by petrochemical companies, after trillions spent on law enforcement to imprison poor farmers, minorities and destroy vast amounts of the cannabis plant, after a massive black market world wide that deals in synthetic drugs and illegal cannabis to fuel large scale criminal activities, after priming media and the public with false information and painting cannabis as the most evil plant in the world, the US and European countries started counting their own costs and started changing their approach to the plant. They have now set up systems to provide cannabis for their own people in the name of medical cannabis while still continuing to maintain their stance internationally opposing the plant.
With world wide communication, the vast number of research and medical studies speaking about cannabis's medicinal, industrial, economic, business, recreational, environmental and agricultural benefits as well as studies on its historical and traditional usage started emerging. The US alone legalized cannabis in its individual states to treat more than 35 health conditions. Finally the WHO, the health arm of the UN, published reports that the plant was not as harmful as thought and that it may actually have 'some' medicinal properties. The WHO recommended that cannabis be moved out of the UN schedule 4 of the Single Convention Treaty. The UN constituted an expert committee comprising of medical experts to review the situation in the end of 2018. The Committee also reported in early 2019 that cannabis should not be in the Schedule 4 list of harmful banned substances which it is currently placed in. If the committee report is implemented and cannabis is removed from the Schedule 4 list, every single nation in the world can legalize the plant, that is the impact that the report can have. All the harms that came about through cannabis prohibition can be reduced and eventually maybe prevented bringing relief to billions of people world wide especially the poorest living in the world's most economically backward countries.
So what happened next? Was cannabis de-scheduled at the UN? You got to be kidding if you think that the love for money is less than the love for the planet. The UN Expert Committee that made the recommendations is only an advisory committee to the Convention of Narcotic Drugs nations numbering about 53 countries. It is up to these nations to vote for cannabis legalization and only when there is a positive vote in favor can the plant be legalized. So did all the nations get together and vote? No it did not even reach that point. The elitist nations that hold the UN by its testicles (apologies for giving this body a male anatomy) namely the US, Germany, Russia and Japan (you may have heard these names before, yes they are the belligerent warriors of world war infamy who nearly destroyed the planet twice some decades ago in an attempt to loot it of its resources by force and who continue to pursue the same aims the world over today) said in March 2019 that they needed time to study the expert committee report and gauge its implications. This would be extremely hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. The US has legalized recreational cannabis in 15 states and medical cannabis in more than 30 states. Germany has the highest number of medical cannabis patients in Europe and is Europe's biggest importer of cannabis. Russia still nurses dreams of being the world's sheriff based on its military while Russian drug cartels operate freely around the world smuggling and distributing cannabis and more dangerous drugs illegally. Japan's leaders live in virtual reality trying to technically outdo the US for its PTSD caused by the nuclear bombing from World War 2. Unfortunately these four countries possess enough clout (read as economic power aka plundered money from the earth) to convince the UN leadership that the review of cannabis's ban should be postponed to 2020.
In March 2020 when the recommendations came up for review, what were the results? As expected member nations said that they are not yet ready to consider the recommendations as they needed more time to build a consensus. Going in for a vote now would be an uphill task as about one third of nations were still fiercely opposed to cannabis. The EU, Canada, Jamaica, Switzerland, Uruguay, Mexico and South Africa appeared to be strongly for the recommendations while countries like Russia, Singapore, Japan, China, Nigeria, Egypt, Indonesia appeared to be strongly against the recommendations. The original villains who played the central role in world wide prohibition of cannabis, the US and the UK, did what they do best. They sat on the fence saying they will go along with wider consensus while going about internally with their agendas of securing world domination through economic and military subterfuge. So the next date for review was December 2020.
The timing of the Covid pandemic which arrived between March and December 2020 is almost too much of a coincidence for me. Petrochemical, pharmaceutical and medical industries besides the autocratic governments that I listed above, gained immensely from the pandemic. It was almost as if the forces aligned against cannabis had decided that something big enough was needed to distract the world, stall cannabis legalization and further strengthen these institutions from the threat of legalized cannabis.
If that was the intent, it failed, but just about. The UN met in December 2020 and voted narrowly to remove cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention Treaty. It however did not completely remove cannabis from international control, as it continues to exist in the least restrictive Schedule I, while THC remains more tightly controlled, in Schedule III I think. This by itself is a landmark moment in cannabis legalization, where the world recognizes that it is nowhere near as dangerous as it has been made out to be all these years.
Does this solve the legal issues that surround cannabis and its users? Unfortunately not yet. The US which went about arm twisting many countries of the world, including India, to prohibit cannabis, is not likely to now go about advocating cannabis legalization with the zeal with which it pursued prohibition. Nor is every individual nation that cited the Single Convention for its anti-cannabis drug laws going to proactively modify the laws to remove cannabis from its current highest restrictions and punishment. The reason in both cases is the same and that is that the very same forces behind the US that brought about cannabis prohibition i.e. the pharmaceutical, petrochemical, medical, alcohol and tobacco industries are now even more bigger and powerful than they were ever before. They will do all they can to prevent the UN decision from being publicized and acted upon nationally and internationally. The continued destruction of the plant and the punishment and imprisonment of its users, especially the persons who need it the most, the poorest, elderly, sick, marginalized, etc as well as the global crisis to health and environment that these industries pose are all of least importance for them as the maximization of profits at any cost is the aim. It will be up to the people as always, to make the change. How quickly that happens will depend on how quickly we become aware and how effectively we act. Wherever cannabis legalization has happened it was through grassroots level activism against all opposing forces, especially the governments backing these opposing forces.
I found almost no coverage in any of the mainstream media regarding the historic December 2020 UN vote on descheduing cannabis. It was only through the dedicated US cannabis publications such as MJBizDaily, MarijuanaMoment, etc that I came to know about this. The majority of the world remains oblivious to it. They continue embracing the forces that push life to extinction even as more and more people fall prey to the death and destruction that these forces release. At the time of writing this, the global elite were fighting over whose pharmaceutical vaccine is better and who should get how much. There was least concern for the majority of the countries of the world who would never see the so-called vaccine like they never see most western medicine. Every single human being can benefit from the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anxiolytic and other healing properties of the cannabis plant. If the UN understood this and promoted the plant, it would go a long way in providing some assurance to the most needy. But this sort of thinking is beyond the elite-centric approach of the UN that laps up everything that the richest people of the world have to sell.
If that was the intent, it failed, but just about. The UN met in December 2020 and voted narrowly to remove cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention Treaty. It however did not completely remove cannabis from international control, as it continues to exist in the least restrictive Schedule I, while THC remains more tightly controlled, in Schedule III I think. This by itself is a landmark moment in cannabis legalization, where the world recognizes that it is nowhere near as dangerous as it has been made out to be all these years.
Does this solve the legal issues that surround cannabis and its users? Unfortunately not yet. The US which went about arm twisting many countries of the world, including India, to prohibit cannabis, is not likely to now go about advocating cannabis legalization with the zeal with which it pursued prohibition. Nor is every individual nation that cited the Single Convention for its anti-cannabis drug laws going to proactively modify the laws to remove cannabis from its current highest restrictions and punishment. The reason in both cases is the same and that is that the very same forces behind the US that brought about cannabis prohibition i.e. the pharmaceutical, petrochemical, medical, alcohol and tobacco industries are now even more bigger and powerful than they were ever before. They will do all they can to prevent the UN decision from being publicized and acted upon nationally and internationally. The continued destruction of the plant and the punishment and imprisonment of its users, especially the persons who need it the most, the poorest, elderly, sick, marginalized, etc as well as the global crisis to health and environment that these industries pose are all of least importance for them as the maximization of profits at any cost is the aim. It will be up to the people as always, to make the change. How quickly that happens will depend on how quickly we become aware and how effectively we act. Wherever cannabis legalization has happened it was through grassroots level activism against all opposing forces, especially the governments backing these opposing forces.
I found almost no coverage in any of the mainstream media regarding the historic December 2020 UN vote on descheduing cannabis. It was only through the dedicated US cannabis publications such as MJBizDaily, MarijuanaMoment, etc that I came to know about this. The majority of the world remains oblivious to it. They continue embracing the forces that push life to extinction even as more and more people fall prey to the death and destruction that these forces release. At the time of writing this, the global elite were fighting over whose pharmaceutical vaccine is better and who should get how much. There was least concern for the majority of the countries of the world who would never see the so-called vaccine like they never see most western medicine. Every single human being can benefit from the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anxiolytic and other healing properties of the cannabis plant. If the UN understood this and promoted the plant, it would go a long way in providing some assurance to the most needy. But this sort of thinking is beyond the elite-centric approach of the UN that laps up everything that the richest people of the world have to sell.
So that is where we stand with regard to the UN and cannabis. I would call it a case study in the inability of humans to evolve sustainably and a great example of why we humans and the planet we inhabit are fast hurtling to the next phase of evolution without much hope of saving not just ourselves as a species but unfortunately billions of other species as well for no fault of their own. It is a great example of how a small percentage of humans obsessed with economic wealth and illusory supremacy have decided to fry everybody including themselves having lost their connection with the natural earth that sustains them. Meanwhile the 28 million year old cannabis plant that played a large part in the evolution of life on earth, with many species having developed receptor systems in their bodies to synergise with the plant, one of the earth's most potent and wonderful plants, faces daily death and extermination. Its extinction signals the extinction of man.
Listed below are articles taken from various media related to the above subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of your truly at the time of reading the article.
So we contaminate our environment, food and water with dangerous man-made chemicals in the pursuit of quick money. These chemicals cause cancers in our bodies. To treat these cancers we make dangerous synthetic drugs, in the pursuit of quick money, that not only fail to treat the cancers, but also result in a collapse of most other body systems. This leads to a weakening and collapse of humans on increasingly larger scales as time goes by. But we do nothing to stop the contamination and weakening of our bodies that evolved over hundreds of millions of years and the contamination of our environment, food and water. Instead we continue searching for more powerful man made chemicals, to make more money faster, in the name of medicine for our environment, bodies and minds believing that we are masters of nature or, if not that, smarter than nature, whom we can fool like our gullible fellow men...but nature is not looking to make more money faster..she only deals in life and death...
'Unfortunately for all of us, opportunities for this sort of thing to happen are legion. A few years ago a team of Food and Drug Administration scientists discovered that when malathion and certain other organic phosphates are administered simultaneously a massive poisoning results - up to 50 times as severe as would be predicted on the basis of adding the toxicities of the two. In other words, 1/100 of the lethal dose of each compound may be fatal when the two are combined.
The discovery led to the testing of other combinations. It is now known that many pairs of organic phosphate insecticides are highly dangerous, the toxicity being stepped up or 'potentiated' through the combined action. Potentiation seems to take place when one compound destroys the liver enzyme responsible for detoxifying the other. The two need not be given simultaneously. The hazard exists not only for the man who must spray this week with one insecticide and the next week with another; it exists also for the consumer of sprayed products. The common salad bowl may easily present a combination of organic phosphate insecticides. Residues well within the legally permissible limits may interact.'
- Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Thus, through the circumstances of their lives, and the nature of our own wants, all these have been our allies in keeping the balance of nature tilted in our favor. Yet we have turned our artillery against our friends. The terrible danger is that we have grossly underestimated their value in keeping at bay a dark tide of enemies that, without their help, can overrun us.
The prospect of a general and permanent lowering of environmental resistance becomes grimly and increasingly real with each passing year as the number, variety, and destructiveness of insecticides grows. With the passing of time we may expect progressively more serious outbreaks of insects, both disease-carrying and crop-destroying species, in excess of anything we have ever known.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no 'high-minded orientation', no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Where pesticides are involved, the chemicals that figure most prominently in the case histories are DDT, lindane, benzene hexachloride, the nitrophenols, the common moth crystal paradichlorobenzene, chlordane, and, of course, the solvents in which they are carried. As this physician emphasizes, pure exposure to a single chemical is the exception, rather than the rule. The commercial product usually contains combinations of several chemicals, suspended in a petroleum distillate plus some dispersing agent. The aromatic cyclic and unsaturated hydrocarbons of the vehicle may themselves be a factor in the damage done [to] the blood-forming organs. From the practical rather than the medical standpoint this distinction is of little importance, however, because these petroleum solvents are an inseparable part of most common spraying practices.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when it is in full possesion of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, 'The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'As ground and surface waters are contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals, there is danger that not only poisonous but also cancer-producing substances are being introduced into public water supplies. Dr. W. C. Hueper of the National Cancer Institute has warned that 'the danger of cancer hazards from the consumption of contaminated drinking water will grow considerably within the foreseeable future.' And indeed a study made in Holland in the early 1950s provides support for the view that polluted waterways may carry a cancer hazard. Cities recieving their drinking water from rivers had a higher death rate from cancer than did those whose water came from sources presumably less susceptible to pollution such as wells.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Unfortunately for all of us, opportunities for this sort of thing to happen are legion. A few years ago a team of Food and Drug Administration scientists discovered that when malathion and certain other organic phosphates are administered simultaneously a massive poisoning results - up to 50 times as severe as would be predicted on the basis of adding the toxicities of the two. In other words, 1/100 of the lethal dose of each compound may be fatal when the two are combined.
The discovery led to the testing of other combinations. It is now known that many pairs of organic phosphate insecticides are highly dangerous, the toxicity being stepped up or 'potentiated' through the combined action. Potentiation seems to take place when one compound destroys the liver enzyme responsible for detoxifying the other. The two need not be given simultaneously. The hazard exists not only for the man who must spray this week with one insecticide and the next week with another; it exists also for the consumer of sprayed products. The common salad bowl may easily present a combination of organic phosphate insecticides. Residues well within the legally permissible limits may interact.'
- Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Thus, through the circumstances of their lives, and the nature of our own wants, all these have been our allies in keeping the balance of nature tilted in our favor. Yet we have turned our artillery against our friends. The terrible danger is that we have grossly underestimated their value in keeping at bay a dark tide of enemies that, without their help, can overrun us.
The prospect of a general and permanent lowering of environmental resistance becomes grimly and increasingly real with each passing year as the number, variety, and destructiveness of insecticides grows. With the passing of time we may expect progressively more serious outbreaks of insects, both disease-carrying and crop-destroying species, in excess of anything we have ever known.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no 'high-minded orientation', no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Where pesticides are involved, the chemicals that figure most prominently in the case histories are DDT, lindane, benzene hexachloride, the nitrophenols, the common moth crystal paradichlorobenzene, chlordane, and, of course, the solvents in which they are carried. As this physician emphasizes, pure exposure to a single chemical is the exception, rather than the rule. The commercial product usually contains combinations of several chemicals, suspended in a petroleum distillate plus some dispersing agent. The aromatic cyclic and unsaturated hydrocarbons of the vehicle may themselves be a factor in the damage done [to] the blood-forming organs. From the practical rather than the medical standpoint this distinction is of little importance, however, because these petroleum solvents are an inseparable part of most common spraying practices.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when it is in full possesion of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, 'The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'As ground and surface waters are contaminated with pesticides and other chemicals, there is danger that not only poisonous but also cancer-producing substances are being introduced into public water supplies. Dr. W. C. Hueper of the National Cancer Institute has warned that 'the danger of cancer hazards from the consumption of contaminated drinking water will grow considerably within the foreseeable future.' And indeed a study made in Holland in the early 1950s provides support for the view that polluted waterways may carry a cancer hazard. Cities recieving their drinking water from rivers had a higher death rate from cancer than did those whose water came from sources presumably less susceptible to pollution such as wells.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'In each of these situations one turns away to ponder the question: Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided - who has the right to decide - for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it during a period of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and imperative.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The fisheries of fresh and salt water are a resource of great importance, involving the interests and the welfare of a very large number of people. That they are now seriously threatened by the chemicals entering our waters can no longer be doubted. If we could divert to constructive research even a small fraction of the money spent each year on the development of even more toxic sprays, we could find ways to use less dangerous materials and to keep poisons out of our waterways. When will the public become sufficiently aware of the facts to demand such action? - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'This system, however - deliberately poisoning our food, then policing the result - is too reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's White Knight who thought of 'a plan to dye one's whiskers green, and always use so large a fan that they could not be seen.' The ultimate answer is to use less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly reduced.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'We know that even single exposures to these chemicals, if the amount is large enough, can precipitate acute poisoning. But this is not the major problem. The sudden illness or death of farmers, spraymen, pilots, and others exposed to appreciable quantities of pesticides are tragic and should not occur. For the population as a whole, we must be more concerned with the delayed effects of absorbing small amounts of pesticides that invisibly contaminate our world.
Responsible public health officials have pointed out that the biological effects of chemicals are cumulative over long periods of time, and that the hazard to the individual may depend on the sum of the exposures recieved throughout his lifetime. For these very reasons the danger is easily ignored. It is human nature to shrug off what may seem to us a vague threat of future disaster. 'Men are naturally most impressed by disease which have obvious manifestations.' says a wise physician, Dr. Rene Dubos, 'yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The major features of cellular organization, including, for instance, mitosis, must be much older than 500 million years old - more nearly 1000 million,' wrote Geroge Gaylord Simpson and his colleagues Pittendrigh and Tiffany in their broadly encompassing book entitled Life. 'In this sense the world of life, which is surely fragile and complex, is incredibly durable through time - more durable than mountains. This durability is wholly dependent on the almost incredible accuracy with which the inherited information is copied from generation to generation.'
But in all the thousand million years envisioned by these authors no threat has struck so directly and so forcefully at that 'incredible accuracy' as the mid-20th century threat of man-made radiation and man-made and man-disseminated chemicals. Sir Macfarlane Burnet, a distinguished Australian physician and a Nobel Prize winner, considers it 'one of the most significant medical features' of our time that, 'as a by-product of more and more powerful therapeutic procedures and the production of chemical substances outside of biological experiences, the normal protective barriers that kept mutagenic agents from the internal organs have been more and more frequently penetrated.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'A bizarre happening in the United States during the prohibition era around 1930 was an omen of things to come. It was caused not by an insecticide but by a substance belonging chemically to the same group as the organic phosphate insecticides. During the period some medicinal substances were being pressed into service as substitutes for liquor, being exempted from the prohibition law. One of these was Jamaica ginger. But the United States Pharmacopeia product was expensive, and bootleggers conceived the idea of making a substitute Jamaica ginger. They succeeded so well that their spurious product responded to the appropriate chemical tests and decieved the government chemists. To give their false ginger the necessary tang they had introduced a chemical known as triorthocresyl phosphate. This chemical, like parathion and its relatives, destroys the protective enzyme cholinesterase. As a consequence of drinking the bootleggers' product some 15,000 people developed a permanently crippling type of paralysis of the leg muscles, a condition called 'ginger paralysis'. The paralysis was accompanied by destruction of the nerve sheaths and by degeneration of the cells of the anterior horns of the spinal cord.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The fisheries of fresh and salt water are a resource of great importance, involving the interests and the welfare of a very large number of people. That they are now seriously threatened by the chemicals entering our waters can no longer be doubted. If we could divert to constructive research even a small fraction of the money spent each year on the development of even more toxic sprays, we could find ways to use less dangerous materials and to keep poisons out of our waterways. When will the public become sufficiently aware of the facts to demand such action? - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'This system, however - deliberately poisoning our food, then policing the result - is too reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's White Knight who thought of 'a plan to dye one's whiskers green, and always use so large a fan that they could not be seen.' The ultimate answer is to use less toxic chemicals so that the public hazard from their misuse is greatly reduced.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'We know that even single exposures to these chemicals, if the amount is large enough, can precipitate acute poisoning. But this is not the major problem. The sudden illness or death of farmers, spraymen, pilots, and others exposed to appreciable quantities of pesticides are tragic and should not occur. For the population as a whole, we must be more concerned with the delayed effects of absorbing small amounts of pesticides that invisibly contaminate our world.
Responsible public health officials have pointed out that the biological effects of chemicals are cumulative over long periods of time, and that the hazard to the individual may depend on the sum of the exposures recieved throughout his lifetime. For these very reasons the danger is easily ignored. It is human nature to shrug off what may seem to us a vague threat of future disaster. 'Men are naturally most impressed by disease which have obvious manifestations.' says a wise physician, Dr. Rene Dubos, 'yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'The major features of cellular organization, including, for instance, mitosis, must be much older than 500 million years old - more nearly 1000 million,' wrote Geroge Gaylord Simpson and his colleagues Pittendrigh and Tiffany in their broadly encompassing book entitled Life. 'In this sense the world of life, which is surely fragile and complex, is incredibly durable through time - more durable than mountains. This durability is wholly dependent on the almost incredible accuracy with which the inherited information is copied from generation to generation.'
But in all the thousand million years envisioned by these authors no threat has struck so directly and so forcefully at that 'incredible accuracy' as the mid-20th century threat of man-made radiation and man-made and man-disseminated chemicals. Sir Macfarlane Burnet, a distinguished Australian physician and a Nobel Prize winner, considers it 'one of the most significant medical features' of our time that, 'as a by-product of more and more powerful therapeutic procedures and the production of chemical substances outside of biological experiences, the normal protective barriers that kept mutagenic agents from the internal organs have been more and more frequently penetrated.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'A bizarre happening in the United States during the prohibition era around 1930 was an omen of things to come. It was caused not by an insecticide but by a substance belonging chemically to the same group as the organic phosphate insecticides. During the period some medicinal substances were being pressed into service as substitutes for liquor, being exempted from the prohibition law. One of these was Jamaica ginger. But the United States Pharmacopeia product was expensive, and bootleggers conceived the idea of making a substitute Jamaica ginger. They succeeded so well that their spurious product responded to the appropriate chemical tests and decieved the government chemists. To give their false ginger the necessary tang they had introduced a chemical known as triorthocresyl phosphate. This chemical, like parathion and its relatives, destroys the protective enzyme cholinesterase. As a consequence of drinking the bootleggers' product some 15,000 people developed a permanently crippling type of paralysis of the leg muscles, a condition called 'ginger paralysis'. The paralysis was accompanied by destruction of the nerve sheaths and by degeneration of the cells of the anterior horns of the spinal cord.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'According to the survey, 81 percent of respondents believe that tobacco
cigarettes are "very harmful." Fifty-one percent of respondents
similarly view alcohol as "very harmful." By contrast, only 26 percent
of those surveyed ranked marijuana as "very harmful." '
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/poll-americans-view-cigarettes-and-alcohol-as-more-harmful-than-cannabis
'According to the agency's filing in the Federal Register, it "intends to promulgate regulations" to evaluate several dozen applications before it from private entities that wish to cultivate cannabis for FDA-approved research. However, this is not the first time the agency has made such a promise. In 2016, the DEA similarly announced the adoption of new rules to expand to supply of research-grade cannabis, but failed to take any further action.'
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/dea-promises-progress-on-federal-cultivation-applications-but-provides-no-timetable-for-action
'"Unregulated illicit market cannabis products, like products in an unregulated marketplace, are of variable quality and may put some consumers at risk," Armentano said. "These incidents linked to the use of unregulated, illicit market vapor cartridges reinforce the need for greater market regulation, standardization, and oversight — principles which NORML has consistently called for in the cannabis space. Consumers must also be aware that not all products are created equal; quality control testing is critical and only exists in the legally regulated marketplace."'
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/hospitalizations-linked-to-use-of-unregulated-vapor-cartridges
'Government wants to have concept plans for the development of the hemp and dagga sector in place by October, especially considering the potential the industry could hold for job creation, says Busani Ngcaweni, the head of policy and research in the presidency.'
https://city-press.news24.com/Business/new-dawn-for-weed-in-sa-20190823
'Overall, this study finds that the adoption and diffusion of [Medical Marijuana Laws]MMLs is mainly determined by the opinions of citizens rather than the political ideology of elected officials or the government’s fiscal health conditions.'
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01442872.2019.1656805
'The Bill would provide for the regulation of the handling of medicinal cannabis in Barbados; the establishment of a Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Board and a Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Appeals Tribunal; as well as the issuing of licences for the handling of the commodity.'
https://barbadostoday.bb/2019/08/31/benefits-of-a-local-medicinal-cannabis-industry/
'“We have already made provisions for them to have access to land as well so that 60 acres of land being made available in Barbados to the Rastafarian community is the first step towards ensuring that they will not be left out of this.”
https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/caribbean-breaking-news-featured/barbados-government-promises-rastafarians-60-acres-of-land-to-grow-marijuana/
'The cannabis sold in Luxembourg will be of high quality and the THC content will be strictly regulated. Cannabis consumption will not be allowed in public places such as on the streets or in bars.
It is important to note that cannabis will be strictly intended for Luxembourg residents only - cross-border workers and drug tourists will not be able to buy the drug in Luxembourg.'
https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1397181.html
'Fifty years ago, cannabis was known as the drug most emblematic of counterculture. Today, many people promote it as a fount of treatments for almost any ailment imaginable. This immense about-turn is reflected in changes in legal regimes: medicinal use of cannabis is now permitted in many countries, and some also allow the drug to be used recreationally. The times, they have a-changed.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02523-6
'Cannabidiol (CBD) is an illegal drug with no redeeming value. It is also a useful prescription medicine for epilepsy, with considerable potential for treating numerous other conditions. And it is a natural dietary supplement or ‘nutraceutical’ with countless evangelists in the health and wellness community. Although contradictory, all three statements are true from different perspectives, and clinical researchers are frustrated.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02524-5
'The technological provenance of cannabinoids might not matter as much to the pharmaceutical sector, where consumers tend to be less averse to genetic engineering. But according to Ethan Russo, director of research and development at the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute in Prague, biochemically derived cannabinoids, even when mixed and matched into therapeutic formulations, will probably never equal the botanical synergy of the hundreds of molecules that are found in cannabis.
The existence of this ‘entourage’ effect is not universally accepted. But to Russo, “The plant is nature’s design for this panoply of chemicals”.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02525-4
'There is little industry-wide consensus on cultivation best practice. Some outdoor growers might divert streams to water crops, whereas others pursue dry farming, which uses no irrigation. Indoors, growers sometimes choose cooler, light-emitting diode (LED) lights to substantially decrease water use. Meanwhile, others simply expand small, energy-intense facilities into larger operations. “There is a wide range of energy efficiency,” Smith says. “Outdoor crops planted from seeds might have a zero footprint, while old-style indoor cultivation can be 500 times more energy intensive.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02526-3
'For years, the popular image of cannabis growers has been scruffy hippies getting high on their own supply in a disorganized underground economy, rather than shiny white industrial agriculture facilities. Even larger-scale operations involved minimal quality control or lacked formal record keeping.
But as legal medical — and increasingly, recreational — cannabis becomes more widespread, the cannabis industry is becoming more professional. By adopting the methods and rigour of plant science and analytical chemistry, it is ensuring that it can produce safe, consistent and high-quality products for a fast-growing and lucrative market.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02527-2
'“These data reveal a predominant use of prefilled THC cartridges sold through informal and unregulated markets, although the origin of these products further back in the production and distribution chain is unknown,” the report states.
The report goes on to say that it’s unclear if the cause of the illness is THC or “a substance associated with prefilled THC cartridges, such as a cutting agent or adulterant.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/cdc-reports-majority-of-patients-sickened-in-vape-epidemic-used-marijuana-vaporizer-devices-many-from-illicit-market
'Under the new law, which takes effect on January 30, 2020, adults may possess up to 50 grams of cannabis and cultivate up to four plants per household without penalty. Public cannabis consumption, or use within close proximity to children, will remain prohibited. Under the territory's existing law, low-level marijuana offenses are punishable by civil fines.'
https://norml.org/news/2019/09/26/australia-capital-territory-becomes-first-jurisdiction-to-legalize-marijuana-for-personal-use
'The stereotypical image of a cannabis smoker is someone who sprawls on the sofa for hours surrounded by a haze of smoke and half-eaten snacks. The scene is played up for laughs in films, but social psychologist Angela Bryan thought it could be cause for concern. After all, cannabis is known to increase appetite and aid relaxation, which might put people at risk of health conditions such as obesity, says Bryan, who is at the University of Colorado Boulder.
But digging into health trends revealed the opposite. Nationwide US studies report that, compared to non-users, cannabis users actually have a lower prevalence of obesity.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02529-0
'For many adults, researchers say, moderate use is probably fine. “I compare it to alcohol,” says Earl Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge. “Too much or the wrong situation can be bad, but in other situations it can be beneficial. I think we’re going to find the same thing with cannabis.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02530-7
'A few things that do not work well should be phased out, including the excessively detailed labelling of cannabis products, a cap on the THC percentage that is permitted in such products and overzealous drug-awareness campaigns and messaging. These measures have had the opposite of 0their intended effects. The priority should be to facilitate research, which will help to inform education and policy agendas as the cannabis industry takes root.
Incremental progress is being made in pursuing policies that support crucial medical research that might unearth discoveries that could benefit millions of people and protect public health, in both the United States and abroad. Here’s to a dab of optimism about what the future could hold.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02531-6
'It is increasingly likely that the U.S. hemp industry will see more acreage planted this year than in 1943, the peak of cultivation during World War II.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/a-year-into-a-resurrected-hemp-market-how-are-states-handling-it/
'And no matter the outcome, the study will do little to curb people selling CBD products. If the pudding does do something, CBD oil brands will have a paper to add to their marketing arsenal. If the special puddling doesn’t do anything for people with chronic pain, it will be easy to ignore; manufacturers can easily word claims about products’ benefits vaguely enough to avoid out-and-out false advertising. But more importantly, once something is in the public imagination as being useful, it’s hard to oust it. CBD has benefited from early studies that suggest legitimate uses from pain management to anxiety to insomnia. It doesn’t matter much that these are typically small, and often in rodents. There’s also the simple fact that it comes from marijuana; that it would do something positive seems logical, in the same way that buying face creams boasting antioxidants seems logical, even though they may only wind up being present in trace amounts. One only really has to note that a product has CBD in order to sell it. '
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/unfortunately-the-cbd-horse-is-pretty-definitively-out-of-the-barn-so-to-speak.html
'With 332% growth year-on-year and $52 million in sales, cannabidiol (CBD) has taken the top spot as the best-selling herbal supplement in the natural channel, according to the 2018 HerbalGram Herb Market Report by the American Botanical Council.'
https://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Article/2019/09/23/CBD-supplement-sales-rocket-to-take-top-spot-in-the-US-natural-channel
'In addition to the continued and “dramatic” capital inflow into the cannabis industry, Kagia noted a “dramatic reassessment of cannabis's place in society and the escalation of the legalization debate in capitals and local communities across the country.” Although legislative roadblocks still hobble some states, such as New York and New Jersey, from moving ahead with legalization, public support and pressure notwithstanding, right now, the issue has assumed great importance in the political landscape. Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate “has affirmed support for some measure of federal cannabis policy reform, adding to the likelihood of a substantial policy debate during the 2020 election cycle," added Kagia. With a majority of Americans supporting legalization, according to the latest Gallup poll, and “support among younger voters being dramatically higher than that of older voters, the trend toward a more accepting view of cannabis will be generational.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisdorbian/2019/09/24/new-cannabis-report-predicts-legal-sales-to-reach-nearly-30-billion-by-2025/
'CannaSafe also tested 10 of the unregulated cartridges for pesticides. All 10 tested positive.
The products all contained myclobutanil, a fungicide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when burned.'
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-marijuana-vapes-tainted-hydrogen-cyanide-n1059356
'After discussing the data limitations of the study, the authors concluded that “it indeed seems to be the case that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana results in fewer marijuana related arrests and court cases” and that while law enforcement sources voiced various concerns, several “indicated that methamphetamine and heroin were much larger problems for their agencies than was marijuana.”
The team “saw no evidence that marijuana legalization had an impact on indicators in border states,” adding that they “found no indications of increases in arrests related to transportation/trafficking offenses.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/study-funded-by-feds-debunks-myths-about-marijuana-legalizations-alleged-harms/
'Our findings demonstrate that THC produced robust antinociception equivalent to the whole extract in models of thermal and inflammatory nociception. Thus, other cannabinoid constituents including terpenes do not add to the analgesic actions of cannabis beyond that of isolated THC. This analgesia across several pain models suggest a range of clinical applications for THC.'
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/can.2018.0054
'Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens is the nation’s first harm reduction-based drug education curriculum for high school teachers. The free curriculum consists of 15 lessons that can be completed in a 45- to 50-minute class period.
Each lesson is designed to engage students through interactive activities such as discussions and role-playing. The curriculum is aligned with National Health Education Standards as well as Common Core State Standards so it can be easily integrated into Health classes. '
http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/safety-first-real-drug-education-teens
'Highlights from laboratory studies and clinical trials.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02532-5
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/poll-americans-view-cigarettes-and-alcohol-as-more-harmful-than-cannabis
'According to the agency's filing in the Federal Register, it "intends to promulgate regulations" to evaluate several dozen applications before it from private entities that wish to cultivate cannabis for FDA-approved research. However, this is not the first time the agency has made such a promise. In 2016, the DEA similarly announced the adoption of new rules to expand to supply of research-grade cannabis, but failed to take any further action.'
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/dea-promises-progress-on-federal-cultivation-applications-but-provides-no-timetable-for-action
'"Unregulated illicit market cannabis products, like products in an unregulated marketplace, are of variable quality and may put some consumers at risk," Armentano said. "These incidents linked to the use of unregulated, illicit market vapor cartridges reinforce the need for greater market regulation, standardization, and oversight — principles which NORML has consistently called for in the cannabis space. Consumers must also be aware that not all products are created equal; quality control testing is critical and only exists in the legally regulated marketplace."'
https://norml.org/news/2019/08/29/hospitalizations-linked-to-use-of-unregulated-vapor-cartridges
- 'Passage of the 2018 Farm Bill sparked both sharp nationwide increases in licensing and explosive sales growth for 2019.
- The issuance of U.S. hemp-cultivation licenses saw a year-over-year, nationwide increase of 364% (from 3,546 in 2018 to 16,462 in 2019).
- Small family farms’ entry to the space drove licensing booms in some states, while other states saw the arrival of Big Agriculture interests in their markets.
- In 2019, Tennessee led the trend with 3,200 new licenses, marking more than a 13x increase over its 226 in 2018. Conversely, Montana’s comparatively low 277 licenses in 2019 represent nearly 40,000 acres, averaging a Big Ag-style footprint of more than 144 acres apiece.
- Traditional hemp states Colorado, Kentucky, and Oregon continue to lead in cultivation as the nation overall shows a projected 225,000 acres harvested in 2019, more than a 180% increase beyond 78,176 in 2018.'
'Government wants to have concept plans for the development of the hemp and dagga sector in place by October, especially considering the potential the industry could hold for job creation, says Busani Ngcaweni, the head of policy and research in the presidency.'
https://city-press.news24.com/Business/new-dawn-for-weed-in-sa-20190823
'Overall, this study finds that the adoption and diffusion of [Medical Marijuana Laws]MMLs is mainly determined by the opinions of citizens rather than the political ideology of elected officials or the government’s fiscal health conditions.'
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01442872.2019.1656805
'The Bill would provide for the regulation of the handling of medicinal cannabis in Barbados; the establishment of a Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Board and a Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Appeals Tribunal; as well as the issuing of licences for the handling of the commodity.'
https://barbadostoday.bb/2019/08/31/benefits-of-a-local-medicinal-cannabis-industry/
'“We have already made provisions for them to have access to land as well so that 60 acres of land being made available in Barbados to the Rastafarian community is the first step towards ensuring that they will not be left out of this.”
https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/caribbean-breaking-news-featured/barbados-government-promises-rastafarians-60-acres-of-land-to-grow-marijuana/
'The cannabis sold in Luxembourg will be of high quality and the THC content will be strictly regulated. Cannabis consumption will not be allowed in public places such as on the streets or in bars.
It is important to note that cannabis will be strictly intended for Luxembourg residents only - cross-border workers and drug tourists will not be able to buy the drug in Luxembourg.'
https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1397181.html
'Fifty years ago, cannabis was known as the drug most emblematic of counterculture. Today, many people promote it as a fount of treatments for almost any ailment imaginable. This immense about-turn is reflected in changes in legal regimes: medicinal use of cannabis is now permitted in many countries, and some also allow the drug to be used recreationally. The times, they have a-changed.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02523-6
'Cannabidiol (CBD) is an illegal drug with no redeeming value. It is also a useful prescription medicine for epilepsy, with considerable potential for treating numerous other conditions. And it is a natural dietary supplement or ‘nutraceutical’ with countless evangelists in the health and wellness community. Although contradictory, all three statements are true from different perspectives, and clinical researchers are frustrated.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02524-5
'The technological provenance of cannabinoids might not matter as much to the pharmaceutical sector, where consumers tend to be less averse to genetic engineering. But according to Ethan Russo, director of research and development at the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute in Prague, biochemically derived cannabinoids, even when mixed and matched into therapeutic formulations, will probably never equal the botanical synergy of the hundreds of molecules that are found in cannabis.
The existence of this ‘entourage’ effect is not universally accepted. But to Russo, “The plant is nature’s design for this panoply of chemicals”.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02525-4
'There is little industry-wide consensus on cultivation best practice. Some outdoor growers might divert streams to water crops, whereas others pursue dry farming, which uses no irrigation. Indoors, growers sometimes choose cooler, light-emitting diode (LED) lights to substantially decrease water use. Meanwhile, others simply expand small, energy-intense facilities into larger operations. “There is a wide range of energy efficiency,” Smith says. “Outdoor crops planted from seeds might have a zero footprint, while old-style indoor cultivation can be 500 times more energy intensive.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02526-3
'For years, the popular image of cannabis growers has been scruffy hippies getting high on their own supply in a disorganized underground economy, rather than shiny white industrial agriculture facilities. Even larger-scale operations involved minimal quality control or lacked formal record keeping.
But as legal medical — and increasingly, recreational — cannabis becomes more widespread, the cannabis industry is becoming more professional. By adopting the methods and rigour of plant science and analytical chemistry, it is ensuring that it can produce safe, consistent and high-quality products for a fast-growing and lucrative market.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02527-2
'“These data reveal a predominant use of prefilled THC cartridges sold through informal and unregulated markets, although the origin of these products further back in the production and distribution chain is unknown,” the report states.
The report goes on to say that it’s unclear if the cause of the illness is THC or “a substance associated with prefilled THC cartridges, such as a cutting agent or adulterant.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/cdc-reports-majority-of-patients-sickened-in-vape-epidemic-used-marijuana-vaporizer-devices-many-from-illicit-market
'Under the new law, which takes effect on January 30, 2020, adults may possess up to 50 grams of cannabis and cultivate up to four plants per household without penalty. Public cannabis consumption, or use within close proximity to children, will remain prohibited. Under the territory's existing law, low-level marijuana offenses are punishable by civil fines.'
https://norml.org/news/2019/09/26/australia-capital-territory-becomes-first-jurisdiction-to-legalize-marijuana-for-personal-use
'The stereotypical image of a cannabis smoker is someone who sprawls on the sofa for hours surrounded by a haze of smoke and half-eaten snacks. The scene is played up for laughs in films, but social psychologist Angela Bryan thought it could be cause for concern. After all, cannabis is known to increase appetite and aid relaxation, which might put people at risk of health conditions such as obesity, says Bryan, who is at the University of Colorado Boulder.
But digging into health trends revealed the opposite. Nationwide US studies report that, compared to non-users, cannabis users actually have a lower prevalence of obesity.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02529-0
'For many adults, researchers say, moderate use is probably fine. “I compare it to alcohol,” says Earl Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge. “Too much or the wrong situation can be bad, but in other situations it can be beneficial. I think we’re going to find the same thing with cannabis.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02530-7
'A few things that do not work well should be phased out, including the excessively detailed labelling of cannabis products, a cap on the THC percentage that is permitted in such products and overzealous drug-awareness campaigns and messaging. These measures have had the opposite of 0their intended effects. The priority should be to facilitate research, which will help to inform education and policy agendas as the cannabis industry takes root.
Incremental progress is being made in pursuing policies that support crucial medical research that might unearth discoveries that could benefit millions of people and protect public health, in both the United States and abroad. Here’s to a dab of optimism about what the future could hold.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02531-6
'It is increasingly likely that the U.S. hemp industry will see more acreage planted this year than in 1943, the peak of cultivation during World War II.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/marijuana-insights/a-year-into-a-resurrected-hemp-market-how-are-states-handling-it/
'And no matter the outcome, the study will do little to curb people selling CBD products. If the pudding does do something, CBD oil brands will have a paper to add to their marketing arsenal. If the special puddling doesn’t do anything for people with chronic pain, it will be easy to ignore; manufacturers can easily word claims about products’ benefits vaguely enough to avoid out-and-out false advertising. But more importantly, once something is in the public imagination as being useful, it’s hard to oust it. CBD has benefited from early studies that suggest legitimate uses from pain management to anxiety to insomnia. It doesn’t matter much that these are typically small, and often in rodents. There’s also the simple fact that it comes from marijuana; that it would do something positive seems logical, in the same way that buying face creams boasting antioxidants seems logical, even though they may only wind up being present in trace amounts. One only really has to note that a product has CBD in order to sell it. '
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/unfortunately-the-cbd-horse-is-pretty-definitively-out-of-the-barn-so-to-speak.html
'With 332% growth year-on-year and $52 million in sales, cannabidiol (CBD) has taken the top spot as the best-selling herbal supplement in the natural channel, according to the 2018 HerbalGram Herb Market Report by the American Botanical Council.'
https://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Article/2019/09/23/CBD-supplement-sales-rocket-to-take-top-spot-in-the-US-natural-channel
'In addition to the continued and “dramatic” capital inflow into the cannabis industry, Kagia noted a “dramatic reassessment of cannabis's place in society and the escalation of the legalization debate in capitals and local communities across the country.” Although legislative roadblocks still hobble some states, such as New York and New Jersey, from moving ahead with legalization, public support and pressure notwithstanding, right now, the issue has assumed great importance in the political landscape. Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate “has affirmed support for some measure of federal cannabis policy reform, adding to the likelihood of a substantial policy debate during the 2020 election cycle," added Kagia. With a majority of Americans supporting legalization, according to the latest Gallup poll, and “support among younger voters being dramatically higher than that of older voters, the trend toward a more accepting view of cannabis will be generational.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisdorbian/2019/09/24/new-cannabis-report-predicts-legal-sales-to-reach-nearly-30-billion-by-2025/
'CannaSafe also tested 10 of the unregulated cartridges for pesticides. All 10 tested positive.
The products all contained myclobutanil, a fungicide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when burned.'
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/tests-show-bootleg-marijuana-vapes-tainted-hydrogen-cyanide-n1059356
'After discussing the data limitations of the study, the authors concluded that “it indeed seems to be the case that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana results in fewer marijuana related arrests and court cases” and that while law enforcement sources voiced various concerns, several “indicated that methamphetamine and heroin were much larger problems for their agencies than was marijuana.”
The team “saw no evidence that marijuana legalization had an impact on indicators in border states,” adding that they “found no indications of increases in arrests related to transportation/trafficking offenses.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/study-funded-by-feds-debunks-myths-about-marijuana-legalizations-alleged-harms/
'Our findings demonstrate that THC produced robust antinociception equivalent to the whole extract in models of thermal and inflammatory nociception. Thus, other cannabinoid constituents including terpenes do not add to the analgesic actions of cannabis beyond that of isolated THC. This analgesia across several pain models suggest a range of clinical applications for THC.'
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/can.2018.0054
'Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens is the nation’s first harm reduction-based drug education curriculum for high school teachers. The free curriculum consists of 15 lessons that can be completed in a 45- to 50-minute class period.
Each lesson is designed to engage students through interactive activities such as discussions and role-playing. The curriculum is aligned with National Health Education Standards as well as Common Core State Standards so it can be easily integrated into Health classes. '
http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/safety-first-real-drug-education-teens
'Highlights from laboratory studies and clinical trials.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02532-5
'The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don't wake up one morning and decide to become a drug addict. It takes at least three months' shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don't really know wht junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it is no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The question, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict's special need. You don't decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you're an addict.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity. I have learned a great deal from using junk: I have seen life measured out in eyedroppers of morphine solution. I experienced the agonizing deprivation of junk sickness, and the pleasure of relief when junk-thirsty cells drank from the needle. Perhaps all pleasure is relief. I have learned the cellular stoicism that junk teaches the user. I have seen a cell full of sick junkies silent and immobile in separate misery. They knew the pointlessness of complaining or moving. They knew that basically no one can help anyone else. There is no key, no secret someone else has that he can give you.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.' - Prologue, Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact. most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash house meal.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953 - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The cure at Lexington is not designed to keep the addicts comfortable. It starts at one-quarter of a grain of M[orphine] three times a day and lasts eight days-the preparation now used is a synthetic morphine called dolophine. After eight days, you get a send-off shot and go over in "population." There you recieve barbiturates for three nights and that is the end of medication.
For a man with a heavy habit, this is a very rough schedule. I was lucky, in that I came in sick, so the amount given in the cure was sufficient to fix me. The sicker you are and the longer you have been without junk, the smaller the amount necessary to fix you.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'About this time an anti-narcotics drive hit the town. The chief of police said, "This drive is going to continue as long as there is a single violator left in the city." The State legislators drew up a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. They did not specify where or when or what they meant by drug addict.
The cops began stopping addicts on the street and examining arms for needle marks. If they found marks, they pressured the addict to sign a statement admitting his condition so he could be charged under the "drug addicts law." The addicts were promised a suspended sentence if they would plead guilty and get the new law started. Addicts ransacked their persons looking for places to shoot in outside the arm area. If the law could find no marks on a man they usually let him go. If they found marks they would hold him for seventy-two hours and try to make him sign a statement.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'There was a raw ache in my lungs. People vary in the way junk sickness affects them. Some suffer mostly from vomitting and diarrhea. The asthmatic type, with narrow and deep chest, is liable to violent fits of sneezing, watering at eyes and nose, in some cases spasms of the bronchial tubes that shut off the breathing. In my case, the worst thing is lowering of blood pressure with consequent loss of body fluid, and extreme weakness, as in shock. It is a feeling as if the life energy has been shut off so that all the cells in the body are suffocating. As I lay there on the bench, I felt like as if I was subsiding into a pile of bones.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The doctor asked a few questions and looked at my arms. Another doctor with a long nose and hairy arms walked up to put in his two cents.
"After all, doctor," he said to his colleague, "there is the moral question. This man should have thought of all this before he started using narcotics."
"Yes, there is the moral question, but there is also a physical question. This man is sick." He turned to a nurse and ordered half a grain of morphine.
As the wagon jolted along on the way back to the precinct, I felt the morphine spread through all my cells. My stomach moved and rumbled. A shot when you are very sick always starts the stomach moving. Normal strength came back to all my muscles. I was hungry and sleepy.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When a junkie off junk gets drunk to a certain point, his thoughts turn to junk.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I knew that I did not want to go on taking junk. If I could have made a single decision, I would have decided no more junk ever. But when it came to the process of quitting, I did not have the drive. It gave me a terrible feeling of helplessness to watch myself break every schedule I set up as though I did not have control over my actions.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Ike took a very severe view of my drinking. "You're drinking, Bill. You're drinking and getting crazy. You look terrible. You look terrible in your face. Better you should go back to stuff than drink like this." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Ike came back from the bathroom with the works and began cooking up a shot. He kept talking. "You're drinking and you're getting crazy. I hate to see you get off this stuff and on something worse. I know so many that quit the junk. A lot of them can't make it with Lupita. Fifteen pesos for a paper and it takes three to fix you. Right away they start in drinking and they don't last more than two or three years." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Safe in Mexico, I watched the anti-junk campaign. I read about child addicts and Senators demanding the death penalty for dope peddlers. It didn't sound right to me. Who wants kids fr customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning. Parents find out the kid is on junk and go to the law. I figured that either Stateside peddlers have gone simple-minded or the whole child-addict set-up is a propaganda routine to stir up anti-junk sentiment and pass some new laws.
Refugee hipsters trickled into Mexico. "Six months for needle marks under the vag-addict law in California." "Eight years for a dropper in Washington." "Two to ten for selling in New York."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junkies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junkie quit junk of his own will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before. Like a man who has been away a long time, you see things different when you return from junk.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Withdrawal symptoms are allergic symptoms: sneezing, coughing, running at the eyes and nose, vomiting, diarrhea, hive-like conditions of the skin. Severe withdrawal symptoms are shock symptoms: lowered blood pressure, loss of body fluid and shrinking of the organism as in the death process, weakness, involuntary orgasms, death through collapse of the circulatory system. If an addict dies from junk withdrawal, he dies of allergic shock.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'It would seem that junk is the only habit-forming drug. Cats cannot be addicted to morphine, as they react to an injection of morphine with acute delirium. Cats have a relatively small quantity of histamine in the blood stream. It would seem that histamine is the defense against morphine, and that cats, lacking this defense, cannot tolerate morphine. Perhaps the mechanism of withdrawal is this: Histamine is produced by the body as a defense against morphine during the period of addiction. When the drug is withdrawn, the body continues to produce histamine.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 1 -'"All drugs are more or less similar and all are habit forming." This myth lumps cocaine, marijuana and junk together. Marijuana is not at all habit forming and its action is almost the direct opposite from junk action. There is no habit to cocaine. You can develop a tremendous craving for cocaine, but you won't be sick if you can't get it. When you have a junk habit, on the other hand, you live in a state of chronic poisoning for which junk itself is the specific antidote. If you don't get the antidote at eight-hour intervals, and enough of it, you develop symptoms of allergic poisoning: yawning, sneezing, watering of the eyes and nose, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, hot and cold flushes, loss of appetite, insomnia, restlessness and weakness, in some cases circulatory collapse and death from allergic shock....When I say "habit-forming drug" I mean a drug that alters the endocrinal balance of the body in such a way that the body requires that drug in order to function. So far as I know, junk is the only habit forming drug according to this definition.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 7 - '"There is a clear line between addict and peddler. The authorities pity the addict and are out only to get the peddler."
I have never seen an addict who did not sell, or a street peddler who did not use. There is no line at all. The authorities make no distinction, and the penalty for selling and possession are about the same.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 8 - '"Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers."
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Any anti-narcotic legislation is considered a good thing by the public. For this reason the field of narcotic legislation has become a testing ground for a type of law new to this country but familiar in police states. In the states of Louisiana and Kentucky it is a crime punishable by imprisonment (La., two to five years; Ky., one year) to be an addict. This is police-state legislation penalizing a condition or state of being. In the Louisiana law, no time or place is specified, nor is the term "addict" defined.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
I have never seen an addict who did not sell, or a street peddler who did not use. There is no line at all. The authorities make no distinction, and the penalty for selling and possession are about the same.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 8 - '"Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers."
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Any anti-narcotic legislation is considered a good thing by the public. For this reason the field of narcotic legislation has become a testing ground for a type of law new to this country but familiar in police states. In the states of Louisiana and Kentucky it is a crime punishable by imprisonment (La., two to five years; Ky., one year) to be an addict. This is police-state legislation penalizing a condition or state of being. In the Louisiana law, no time or place is specified, nor is the term "addict" defined.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Collection and conservation of germplasm of indigenous populations of Central and South Asian landraces in their centers of diversity is urgently needed. The germplasm base outside their centers of diversity has become genetically contaminated by widespread crossbreeding. In the context of climate change and unpredictable future needs, in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity is much preferable for crop plants and their wild relatives, but given the precarious continued existence of unaltered aboriginal wild populations of Cannabis in Asia, preservation in seed banks is an immediate priority. Hopefully the unambiguous names provided may help prevent extinction of these taxa.'
https://phytokeys.pensoft.net/article/46700/
'Almost 500 participants said they endorse using marijuana one hour before, or up to four hours after, exercising. And based on data from the questionnaire, those who did use cannabis in that timeframe worked out longer than consumers who didn’t pair the activities. Specifically, those who engaged in co-use worked out an average of 43 minutes longer for aerobic exercise and 30 minutes longer for anaerobic exercise.
What’s behind the trend?'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/study-finds-marijuana-motivates-people-to-exercise-smashing-lazy-stoner-stereotype/
'The Bay Mills Indian Community in the Upper Peninsula is the first tribal community in Michigan to legalize marijuana for adult use.
“Our tribal government does not necessarily promote the use of marijuana, but we believe that criminalizing it is bad policy,” said Tribal Chairman Bryan Newland in a statement. “Our new tribal law ensures that people on our lands are no longer at risk of prosecution for actions that are lawful everywhere else in Michigan.”
There are 12 federally recognized tribes in Michigan. As sovereign governments, Native American tribes have the right to set their own laws on marijuana, according to the National Congress of American Indians.'
https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/04/first-native-american-community-in-michigan-legalizes-marijuana.html
'The data tracks arrests, not individuals, so there’s no mechanism for winnowing out repeat offenders. Nor does it include arrests for the sale or production of marijuana. But the numbers still illustrate how marijuana enforcement continues to make up a big part of many police agencies’ caseloads.
The findings reflect, in part, a few simple realities: The federal government incentivizes aggressive drug enforcement via funding for drug task forces and generous forfeiture rules that allow agencies to keep cash and other valuables they find in the course of a drug bust. And because marijuana is bulky and pungent relative to other drugs, it’s often easy for police to root out.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/04/15/where-war-weed-still-rages/
Happy Ganja Day to the lovers, friends and supporters of the divine herb. As we celebrate this day, let us not forget the millions who are imprisoned or face criminal action because of their association with the herb and its current worldwide illegal status. Let us not forget the millions who continue to suffer from physical and mental conditions and their lack of access to the medicinal properties of the plant. Let us not forget the millions who are addicted to heroin, methamphetamine, prescription drugs, alcohol, tobacco, novel psychoactive substances, synthetic cannabinoids and other dangerous substances without access to the natural, recreational herb. Let us hope that the opponents of the herb find reason and understanding in the coming days. Let us also look forward to the fast approaching inevitable day when the herb is finally free once again and available to every living being worldwide as it was always meant to be. April 20, 2020
'The study, published in the journal Justice Quarterly and funded by the federal National Institute of Justice, found that violent and property crimes rates were not affected in a statistically significant way in the years after Colorado and Washington State became the first in the nation to legalize marijuana for adult use.
“Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington,” the paper concluded. “We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-legalization-doesnt-cause-increased-crime-federally-funded-study-finds/
'The response was stepped up when official figures confirmed 1187 people in Scotland died from drugs in a year, putting the country among the worst in the developed world.
The NHS and Glasgow City Council have called for safe consumption rooms in the city. The facilities would be supervised, with experts saying it will also help reduce the risk of infection.'
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-set-back-decriminalisation-drugs-20533500
'“I believe that it is important for me to be clear from the outset that the UK government has no plans to change the law to allow the establishment of such facilities in the UK,” he said in a letter to the Holyrood public health minister, Joe FitzPatrick, according to the Scotsman. “There are, however, many areas where we can work productively together.”'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/07/britains-minister-responsible-for-drug-policy-replaced-victoria-atkins
'A searing, on-the-ground look at President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly campaign against suspected drug dealers and users in the Philippines, “On the President’s Orders” is told with unprecedented access to the police themselves. It offers a gripping, visually stunning window into the war on drugs — those carrying it out, and those most impacted by it.'
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/on-the-presidents-orders/
'To date, 34 states and the District of Columbia have adopted medical cannabis laws, or MCLs, which legalize either home cultivation or dispensary-based sales of cannabis for qualifying medical conditions.
The researchers want to determine if MCLs alter the health behaviors of people living with chronic pain and whether they substitute or reduce traditional pain treatments while using medical cannabis.
The research project is funded by a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.'
https://news.uga.edu/researchers-to-study-medical-cannabis-and-chronic-pain/
'May was the top month for medical coverage for cannabis since the current regulatory framework was implemented in early 2017.
During that month, statutory health insurers covered 10.6 million euros of medical cannabis, surpassing the 10 million euro mark for the first time. The number fell to 9.5 million euros in June.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/analysis-german-sales-of-insured-medical-cannabis-soar-in-second-quarter/
'The social equity program in California is designed to help people or communities disproportionately impacted by cannabis criminalization by providing funding for assistance and services to local equity applicants and licensees.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/california-awards-cities-10-million-in-social-equity-marijuana-grants/
'That means a gram of cannabis purchased in the illicit market was 45% cheaper on average than marijuana bought in the regulated market.
It shows Canada’s illicit market is staying competitive with the regulated market on price.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/price-gap-grows-in-canada-between-legal-illicit-cannabis/
'It has also been submitted that while enacting the NDPS Act, the government failed to consider the medicinal benefits of the drug, including its effect as an analgesic, its role in fighting cancer, reducing nausea, and increasing appetite in HIV patients.'
https://swarajyamag.com/insta/delhi-high-court-seeks-centres-take-on-use-of-cannabis-after-a-petition-challenges-ndps-act
'They are the latest generation of bioplastics, which are plastic materials produced from renewable sources such as agricultural by-products, straw, wood chips, sawdust and recycled food waste -- and now hemp.
Hemp seems to satisfy some plant-based plastics researchers looking for alternatives to plastic waste that has filled landfills and oceans.'
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/02/24/Products-made-from-hemp-based-plastics-enter-consumer-market/8661582241399/
'While the numbers of planted acres and participants in the U.S. industrial hemp industry increased rapidly under the pilot programs, and hemp can now be grown legally in nearly every State, the long-term trends for U.S. industrial hemp are uncertain. The long-term economic viability of indus-trial hemp in the United States will be affected by:•competition from conventional field crops and marijuana (in States where it is legal) for acreage, •well-established foreign competitors for hemp product markets, •the ability to decrease production and pricing uncertainty through transparency and risk management, and,• continued market development'
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/95930/eib-217.pdf
'Federal agriculture officials will delay the requirement that all THC testing on hemp crops must be performed at laboratories registered with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
And food and drug regulators say it’s a “fool’s errand” to get people to stop taking over-the-counter CBD'
https://hempindustrydaily.com/usda-drops-dea-testing-requirement-while-fda-acknowledges-demand-for-cbd/
- 'Since 2011, interceptions of cannabis along U.S. borders have fallen 89%, reflecting the convergence of changing social, economic, and legal developments.
- The southern border continues to account for almost all the interceptions (99%), though it has also seen the steepest decline (90%) of them since 2011.
- The decrease in southern interceptions is likely attributable to a range of factors: falling demand for illicit cannabis in states with legal medical and adult use programs, less appeal for traditionally lower-quality cannabis from Mexico or other southern countries than for domestically cultivated products, and increased border enforcement efforts raising the risk of interdiction.
- Conversely, interceptions at the norther border increased 113% between 2018 and 2019, reflecting Canada’s nationwide adult-use legalization in 2018 and the appeal of its reputed high-quality cannabis.
- The data suggest that legalization is having a major disruptive effect on international cannabis smuggling operations aimed at the U.S., and underscores American consumer preference for regulated cannabis products where available and competitively priced'
'Researchers interested in the history of marijuana and medicine will appreciate learning about the Tod Mikuriya Papers (1933–2015), a newly-available archival collection here at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Tod Mikuriya (1933–2007) was a psychiatrist and medical marijuana activist. In addition to his work in addiction medicine and biofeedback, he is well-known for compiling Marijuana: Medical Papers, 1839–1972, a master bibliography of historical resources on marijuana, and for campaigning for California Proposition 215 (Prop 215) which legalized medical marijuana in the state in 1996. Dr. Mikuriya conducted research on marijuana use and founded the California Cannabis Research Medical Group, a non-profit educational organization.'
https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2020/02/25/tod-mikuriya-papers-now-available-for-research/
https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/nba-insider-tom-haberstroh/marijuana-and-nba-erasing-stigma-and-healing-league
'Cannabis use is increasing among those ages 65 and older, according to data published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers affiliated with the New York School of Medicine assessed trends in self-reported cannabis use among seniors. They reported that 4.2 percent of seniors acknowledged engaging in past-year cannabis consumption in 2018, up from 2.4 percent in 2015 and 0.4 percent in 2006.
The study's findings are consistent with those of prior papers similarly reporting an uptick in marijuana use among older Americans. According to a 2019 study published in the journal Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine, marijuana use among seniors is associated with self-reported improvements in pain management, day-to-day functioning, and in their overall health and quality of life'
https://norml.org/news/2020/02/27/seniors-more-frequently-turning-to-cannabis
'Investigators with the Yale School of Medicine and the Medical College of Wisconsin assessed hospitalization rates among SCD patients with and without a history of cannabis use.
They reported that SCD patients who used cannabis daily had "1.8 fewer annual [hospital] admissions and 1.2 fewer emergency room (ER) visits" as compared to non-users.
Authors concluded, "We show that people with SCD with more severe pain crisis are more likely to use daily cannabis, yet have lower rates of hospital admission and ER use as compared with others with similar disease severity and pain impact."'
https://norml.org/news/2020/02/27/study-sickle-cell-disease-patients-who-use-cannabis-less-likely-to-require-hospitalization
'During a presentation Thursday for the International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) 2019 annual report, President Cornelis P. de Joncheere discussed the developments taking place with regard to cannabis and synthetic drugs.
“We have some fundamental issues around the conventions that state parties will need to start looking at,” he said, adding, “We have to recognize that the conventions were drawn up 50 and 60 years ago.”
Joncheere said 2021 is “an appropriate time to look at whether those are still fit for purpose, or whether we need new alternative instruments and approaches to deal with these problems.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/in-major-shift-un-drug-chief-questions-whether-control-treaties-involving-cannabis-are-out-of-date/
Giving pharmaceutical industries control over the crop and seeds looks like a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. This is a big threat to the natural indigenous varieties that currently exist in Lebanon. How much the small farmer will benefit is anybody's guess.
'In July 2018, a draft bill was introduced to parliament which legalizes the cultivation of marijuana for medical and industrial purposes. The bill has now finally been approved by parliament on February 26th.
The long-awaited first step in the legalization of the drug has finally been taken. However, the bill is extremely strict on how it regulates the growth and cultivation of marijuana crops.
Private pharmaceutical companies would provide the seeds and seedlings to farmers in the Bekaa and, during the harvest, they would inspect the crops to make sure that nothing had been diverted.'
https://www.the961.com/news/lebanon-just-legalized-the-growth-of-marijuana
Pharmaceuticalizing the plant...
'CBD is currently listed as a Schedule 4 substance in Australia and therefore available only with a prescription.
Under the proposed change, CBD would become a Schedule 3 substance, meaning no prescription would be required as long as the following conditions apply:
- The cannabidiol is plant-derived or, if it’s synthetic, is subject to certain conditions.
- The maximum recommended daily dose is 60 milligrams or less.
- The product is in packs containing not more than a 30-day supply.
- Cannabidiol comprises 98% or more of the total cannabinoid content of the preparation.
- Any cannabinoids, other than CBD, must be only those naturally found in cannabis and comprise 2% or less of the total cannabinoid content of the preparation
- The product is for adults 18 and older.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/australia-moves-toward-over-the-counter-cbd-sales/
'As the coronavirus spread across the globe, lawmakers had to cancel further action in late March, missing an April 30 deadline Mexico’s supreme court set. Now, lawmakers have to pass a legalization bill during their next scheduled legislative session, which runs from Sept. 1 to Dec. 15.
If approved, Mexico would be the world’s most populous country – population 130 million – with legalized cannabis regardless of THC content, meaning both marijuana and hemp.'
https://hempindustrydaily.com/mexico-moves-toward-legal-hemp-marijuana-despite-latest-delay/
The cannabis death count..
https://twitter.com/JohnFetterman/status/1253277973635117056
So governments, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry cut off the supply of natural intoxicants like cannabis, opium, coca and palm toddy. They create refined and much more potent extracts from these natural materials. They control the supply and stock of these chemical drugs. They use the doctor-pharmacist route to administer these drugs to the public legally and the peddler-narcotics agent-rehabilitation center route to administer these drugs illegally. The individual is not allowed to grow or procure these intoxicants from nature. He must rely on the system to get his intoxicant and pay the maximum price for it. To realize more and more profits the system creates more and more potent chemical intoxicants moving further and further away from natural territory into synthetic chemically constructed territory. As the toxicity and addictive power of these drugs increase, the public gets addicted to an even greater extent and pays even more for any available intoxicant. Profits rise and fuel the growth of the system tremendously. The individual pays for the system, pays for the synthetic drug, pays for the treatment which is further synthetic drugs and eventually pays with his life for the synthetic intoxicant. Legalize all natural drugs - opium, coca, cannabis and toddy to name a few. Most importantly, legalize cannabis, the universal drug of the world...
'Understand that the question as to whether your government or another manages to seize Wei-hai-wei, Port Arthur, or Cuba does not affect you, or rather that every such seizure made by your government injures you by inevitably bringing in its train all sorts of pressure by your government to force you to take part in the robbery and violence by which alone such seizures are made, or can be retained when made. Understand that your life can in no way be bettered by Alsace becoming German or French and Ireland or Poland being free or enslaved - whoever holds them. You are free to live where you will, even if you be an Alsatian, an Irishman, or a Pole. Understand too, that by stirring up patriotism you will only make the case worse, for the subjection in which your people are kept has resulted simply from the struggle between patriotisms, and every manifestation of patriotism in one nation provokes a corresponding reaction in another. Understand that salvation from your woes is only possible when you free yourself from the obsolete idea of patriotism and from obedience to governments that is based upon it, and when you boldly enter the region of that higher idea, the brotherly union of the peoples, which has long since come to life and from all sides is calling you to itself.
If people would but understand that they are not the sons of some fatherland or other, nor of governments, but are sons of God and can therefore neither be slaves nor enemies one to another - those insane, unnecessary, worn-out, pernicious organizations called governments would cease, and with them all the sufferings, violations, humiliations, and crimes which they occasion.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'There is only one kind of help possible - the abolition of that terrible cone of violence which enables the person or persons who succeed in seizing the apex to have power over all the rest, and to hold that power the more firmly the more cruel and inhuman they are, as we see, by the cases of the Napoleons, Nicholas I, Bismarck, Chamberlain, Rhodes, and our Russian Dictators who rule the people in the Tsar's name.
There is only one way to destroy the binding together of this cone - it is by shaking off the hypnotism of patriotism.
Understand that you yourselves cause all the evils from which you suffer, by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of Parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!
Whoever you may be - Frenchman, Russian, Pole, Englishman, Irishman, or Bohemian - understand that all your real human interests, whatever they may be - agricultural, industrial, commercial, artistic, or scientific - as well as your pleasures and joys, in no way run counter to the interests of other peoples or States, and that you are united with the folk of other lands by mutual co-operation, by interchange of services, by the joy of wide brotherly intercourse, and by the interchange not merely of goods but also of thoughts and feelings.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The abolition of governments will merely rid us of an unnecessary organization for the commission of violence and for its justification.
'But there will then be no laws, no property, no courts of justice, no police, no popular education', say people who intentionally confuse the use of violence by governments with various social activities.
The abolition of the organization of government formed to do violence does not at all involve the abolition of what is reasonable and good, and therefore not based on violence, in laws or law courts, or in property, or in police regulations, or in financial arrangements, or in popular education. On the contrary, the absence of the brutal power of government which is needed only for its own support, will facilitate a more just and reasonable social organization, needing no violence. Courts of justice, and public affairs, and popular education, will all exist to the extent to which they are really needed by the people, but in a form which will not involve the evils contained in the present form of government. Only that will be destroyed which was evil and hindered the free expression of the people's will.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'And therefore the maintenance and defence of any nationality - Russian, German, French, or Anglo-Saxon, provoking the corresponding maintenance and defence not only of Hungarian, Polish, and Irish nationalities, but also of Basque, Provencal, Mordva, Tchouvash, and many other nationalities - serves not to harmonize and unite men but to estrange and divide them more and more from one another.
So that not the imaginary but the real patriotism which we all know, by which most people today are swayed and from which humanity suffers so severely, is not the wish for spiritual benefits for one's own people (it is impossible to desire spiritual benefits for one's own people only), but is a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or State above all other people and States, and a consequent wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got - things which are obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power or other peoples or States.
It would therefore seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'If only free men would not rely on what has no power and is never free, that is, external force, but would trust in what is always powerful and free, that is, the truth and its expression!
If only men would boldly and clearly express the truth already manifest to them (of the brotherhood of all nations and the crime of exclusive devotion to one's own) that defunct, false, public opinion on which rests the power of governments and all the evil they produce, would slough off by itself like a dead skin and reveal that new, living, public opinion which now only awaits the shedding of the old husk that has confined it, in order to announce its demands clearly and powerfully and establish new forms of existence in conformity with the conscience of mankind.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Men have only to understand that what is given out to them as public opinion and is maintained by such complicated, strenuous, and artificial means, is not public opinion but a dead relic of what was once public opinion; they have only, above all, to believe in themselves - in the fact that what they are conscious of in the depths of their souls and what craves expression in each of them and remains unexpressed only because it runs counter to existing social opinion, is that force which transforms that world and to express which is man's vocation - they have only to believe that the truth lies not in what is said by the people around them, but in what is said by their conscience, that is, by God, - and the false and artificially maintained public opinion will instantly vanish and a true public opinion establish itself.
If only people would say what they think and refrain from saying what they do not think, all the superstitions bred by patriotism would fall away at once with all the evil feelings and acts of violence that are based upon them. The hatred and enmity of one country for another that is fanned by the governments would cease, and so would the glorification of warlike exploits, that is, of murder; and above all there would be an end of respect and subservience towards those in power and of the surrender to them of men's labour - for these things have no foundation but patriotism.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'But yet in these apparently unimportant actions - in our indicating to the extent of our powers the unreasonableness of what we clearly see to be irrational and refraining from taking part in it - lies our great and irresistible power: the power which constitutes that unconquerable force which makes up real genuine public opinion - that opinion which with its own advance moves all humanity. Governments know this. They tremble before that force and strive in every possible way to counteract and overcome it.
They know that strength lies not in force but in the action of the mind and in the clear expression. And they fear that expression of independent thought more than an army. So they establish censorship, bribe newspapers, and seize control of the Churches and schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world eludes them. It is not in a book or a newspaper: it cannot be trapped but is always free, for it lies in the depth's of man's consciousness. This most powerful, elusive, and free force shows itself in a man's soul when he is alone and reflects on the phenomena of the world and then involuntarily expresses his thoughts to his wife, his brother, his friend, and to all whom he accounts it a sin to conceal what he considers to be the truth. No milliards of rubles, or millions of troops, or any institutions, or wars, or revolutions, can or will produce what a free man can produce by the simple expression of what he considers right, independently of what exists and what is impressed upon him.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'No feats of heroism are needed to bring about the greatest and most important changes in the life of humanity; neither the arming of millions of men, nor the construction of new railways and machines, nor the organization of exhibitions or trade unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor dynamite outrages, nor the perfection of aerial navigation, and so forth. All that is necessary is a change of public opinion.
And for that change no effort of thought is demanded, no refutation of any existing thing, and no planning of anything new and extraordinary. All that is necessary is to cease acquiescing in the public opinion of the past, now false and already defunct and only artificially induced by governments. It is only necessary for each individual to say what he really thinks and feels or at least refrain from saying what he does not think.
If only men - even a few - would do that, the out-worn public opinion would at once and of itself fall away and a new, real, and vital opinion would manifest itself. And with this change of public opinion all that inner fabric of men's lives which oppresses and torments them would change of its own accord. One is ashamed to say how little is needed to deliver all men from the calamities which now oppress them. It is only necessary to give up lying! Only let men reject the lie which is imposed upon them; only let them stop saying what they neither think nor feel, and at once such a change of the whole structure of our life will be accomplished as the revolutionaries would not achieve in centuries even if all the power were in their hands.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The working people are too much taken up with the task of earning a living for themselves and their families to be able to interest themselves in the political questions that figure as the chief motives of patriotism. The question of Russia's influence in the East, the unification of Germany, the return of France's lost provinces, of the cession of this or that part of one State to another, and so on, does not interest them - not only because they hardly ever know the conditions under which these questions arise, but because the interests of their life are quite apart from national and political interests.
To a man of the people it is always a matter of complete indifference where a frontier is drawn, to whom Constantinople may belong, whether Saxony or Brunswick shall, or shall not, be a member of the German Union, whether Australia or Matabeleland shall belong to England - or even to what government he has to pay his taxes and into which army he must send his sons. The important thing for him is to know how much tax he will have to pay, whether the army service will be a long one, whether he will have to pay for the land over many years, and whether he will get much for his work - all questions quite apart from national and political interests. That is why - despite the intensive efforts made by governments to instill a patriotism into people that is not innate in them, and to suppress the ideas of socialism that are developing in them - socialism is penetrating more and more into the masses of the people, while patriotism, with which they are so carefully inoculated by the government, not only fails to spread, but is disappearing more and more and is only maintained by the upper classes to whom it is profitable.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The sight of these two men, so different from one another - the well-fed elegant Frenchman, in a top-hat and a long overcoat that was then very fashionable, radiant with freshness and self-confidence, with his white hand, unused to work, energetically showing how the Germans must be squeezed; and the shaggy figure of Prokofy, shriveled up by constant labour, always tired but always at work despite his enormous rupture, with fingers swollen by toil, with wisps of hay in his hair, with slack home-made breeches and down-trodden bark shoes, striding along with an enormous fork of hay on his shoulder, with that step, not lazy but economical in movement, with which a working man always moves - the strong contrast presented by those two men made much clear to me then, and now, after the Toulon-Paris festivities, vividly occurs. One of them personified all those who, fed by the people's toil, afterwards use those same people for cannon-fodder, while the other personified that very cannon-fodder which feeds and protects the others who afterwards so dispose of it.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Hence, when such patriotic demonstration as the Toulon festivities take place, people's will are bound in advance, though apparently only for the distant future, and they are pledged to the accustomed iniquities that are always the result of patriotism. And everyone who realized the significance of those festivities cannot but protest against their tacit implication. Thus when those gentlemen, the journalists, assert that every Russian sympathizes with what took place at Kronstadt and Toulon and Paris and that this alliance for life and death is confrmed by the will of the whole people, and when the Russian Minister of Education assures the French ministers that all under his command (the children, scholars, and writers of Russia) share his feelings and when the commander of the Russian squadron assures the French that all Russia will be grateful for the reception given them, and when the chief priests answer for their flocks with the assurance that the prayers of the French for the welfare of the Imperial Family are joyfully echoed in the hearts of the Tsar-loving Russian people, and when the Russian ambassador in Paris, who is regarded as the representative of the Russian people, declares, after a dish of ortolans a la soubise et logopedes glacees and with a glass of Grand Moet champagne in his hand, that all Russian hearts beat in unison with his own, which is brimming over with sudden and exceptional love for la bella France - then we who are free from that insanity consider it our sacred duty, not only for ourselves but also for tens of millions of Russians, to protest most emphatically against such a statement, and to affirm that our hearts do not beat in unison with those of these gentlemen - the journalists, ministers of education, commanders of squadrons, chief priests, and ambassadors - but on the contrary are filled with indignation and disgust at the pernicious falsehood and wrong which they, consciously or unconsciously, are spreading around by their words and deeds. Let them drink Moet as much as they please, let them write articles and make speeches, but let them do so for themselves alone. We who regard ourselves as Christians cannot allow ourselves to be bound by what these gentlemen are saying and writing.
We cannot allow it because we know what lies hidden under all these drunken ecstasies, speeches, and embraces, which do not look like a confirmation of peace as they assure us, but rather like the orgies and drunkenness criminals indulge in when preparing to co-operate in crime.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'People may not bethink themselves, might not confess their faith in the Gospel, till the delusion of violence had reached its utmost limits as it has done in our day, but such faith has now become inevitable. Men can no longer fail to bethink themselves and confess their belief in the Gospel, when each of them is called upon not to pour oblations to pagan gods, as was the case of old, but to take part in the most horrible and cruel homicides after a preliminary announcement of the possibility and necessity of patricide. General conscription is the last stone laid on a wall with a crooked base, and will cause the collapse of the whole edifice of social violence which rests on shaky foundations.
And that edifice is collapsing not because the economic weight laid upon it by armaments is too great to be borne; not because the expected wars are too awful; and not because the calamities chanted by Ravachol are so dreadful. It is collapsing because the demand presented to men as the crown of the social structure - military conscription - is so contrary to the Christian teaching which has entered into men's consciousness, that they cannot fail to understand from these demands the whole falsity of the social structure in which they have lived and the full truth of the teaching which for nineteen hundred years has been rejected.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'What would be more insensate and painful than the position in which the European peoples now live, spending a great part of their wealth on preparations to annihilate their neighbours and from whom nothing divides them and with whom they live in close spiritual intercourse? What could be more terrible than that which always awaits European nations, when at any moment in an unlucky hour some madman calling himself a potentate may say something displeasing to another such madman? What could be more terrible than all these newly devised and still to be devised means of destruction: cannon, shells, bombs, rockets with smokeless powder, torpedoes and other instruments of death? Yet everybody acquiesces in this state of affairs. Tomorrow a war may begin, and men driven like cattle to the slaughter, will go where they are sent and perish unprotestingly, and destroy other men without even asking themselves why they do it. And not only will they feel no remorse about it, they will even swagger and be proud of the geegaws they are allowed to wear for their skill in killing people, and they will exalt those unhappy or wicked men who placed them in such a position, and erect monuments to them.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Divide up what you possess with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not steal, do not cause suffering, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, was said not only nineteen hundred years ago but five thousand years ago. And there can be no doubt of the truth of this law, and but for hypocrisy it would be impossible for men - even if they themselves did not conform to it - to fail to recognize at least its necessity, and that he who does not do these things is doing wrong.
But you say that there is a public welfare for the sake of which these rules may and should be infringed: for the public good it is permissible to kill, torture, and rob. You say, as Caiaphas did, that it is better for one man to perish than the whole nation, and you sign the death sentence of a first, a second, and a third man, load your rifles against this man who is to perish for the public welfare, put him in prison, and take his possessions. You say that you do these cruel things because as a member of society and of the State you feel that it is your duty to serve them: as a landowner, judge, emperor, or military man to conform to their laws. But besides belonging to a certain State and having duties arising from that position, you belong also to eternity and to God and have duties arising from that.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'By whatever names we dignify ourselves, in whatever apparel we attire ourselves, by whatever and before whatever priest we may be smeared with oil, however many millions we possess, however many special guards are stationed along our route, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called miscreant-revolutionaries and anarchists we may execute, whatever exploits we may ourselves perform, whatever States we may found, whatever fortresses and towers we may erect - from the Tower of Babel to that of Eiffel - we are always all of us confronted by two inevitable conditions of life which destroy its whole meaning. There is first of all death, which may at any moment overtake any of us, and there is the transitoriness of all that we do and that is so quickly destroyed leaving no trace. Whatever we may do - found kingdoms, build palaces and monuments, compose poems and romances - everything is transitory, and soon passes leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal physical existence, subject to unavoidable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.
Whoever you may be who read these lines, consider your position and your duties - not the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, or soldiers, temporarily attributed to you by men, nor those imaginary duties imposed on you by that position - but your real position in eternity as a creature who by Someone's will has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of nonexistence, to which by the same will you may at any moment be recalled. Think of your duties - not your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, minister, official to the State - but those real duties which follow from your real position as a being called to life and endowed with reason and love.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Men of our time, availing themselves of the order of things maintained by violence, and at the same time protesting that they love their neigbours very much, and who do not notice that they are doing evil to their neighbours all the time, are like a man who, after a life of robbery, when at last caught with lifted knife in the act of striking a victim who is frantically crying for help, should declare that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant to the man he had robbed and was just about to kill. As that robber and murderer could not deny what was evident to everyone, so it would seem impossible for men of our time, living on the sufferings of the oppressed classes, to persuade themselves and others that they desire the welfare of those whom they unceasingly plunder, and that they do not know how the advantages they enjoy are obtained.
We cannot now assert that we do not know of those hundred thousand men in Russia alone who are always confined in prisons and convict settlements fr the security of our tranquility and property, and that we do not know of those trials in which we ourselves take part, and which at our instigation condemn men who have made attempts to our property or security prisons, exile, or convict settlements where men no worse than those who sentence them, perish pr become corrupt. Nor can we pretend that all that we have obtained and is maintained for us by murders and violence. We cannot pretend that we do not see the constable who with a loaded revolver walks in front of our windows defending us while we eat our appetizing dinner or see a new play at the theatre, or that we do not know of those soldiers who set off so promptly with rifles and live cartridges to where our property is in danger of being infringed.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'A single execution carried out dispassionately by prosperous and educated men with the approval and participation of Christian minister and presented as something necessary and even just, perverts and brutalizes men more than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion. An execution such as Zukhovsky proposed to arrange, which was to arouse in men a sentiment of religious emotion, would have the most depraving influence imaginable.
Every war, even the briefest, with the expenditure usual to war, the destruction of crops, the plundering, the licensed debauchery and murders, the sophisticated excuses as to its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification of military exploits, patriotism and devotion to the flag, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more to deprave people in a single year than millions of robberies, arsons, and murders committed in hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Let all the external improvements that religious and scientific people dream of be accomplished; let all men accept Christianity and all the improvements the Bellamys and Richets desire be accomplished with all possible additions and corrections, but if at the same time the hypocrisy remains that now exists, if people do not profess the truth they know but continue to feign belief in what they do not themselves believe and veneration for what they do not respect, the condition of people will not only merely remain what it is but will become worse and worse. The better men are materially provided for, the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers and periodicals they have the more means there will be of spreading contradictory lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently unhappy will men become, as indeed occurs now.
Let all those external alterations be realized and the position of humanity will not be bettered. But let each man according to the strength that is in him profess the truth he knows and practises in his own life - or at least cease to excuse the falsehood he supports by representing it as truth - and at once, in this very year 1893, such changes would be accomplished towards man's liberation and the establishment of truth on earth, as we dare not hope for in hundreds of years.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'In general, hypocrisy having entered into the flesh and blood of all classes in our time has reached such proportions that nothing of that kind any longer arouses indignation. Not for nothing was "hypocrisy" derived from "acting". And anyone can act, that is, play a part. Such facts as that the representatives of Christ, at divine service, bless ranks of murderers holding loaded rifles in readiness to shoot their fellow men, that ministers of all the Christian sects take part in executions as inevitably as the executioners, by their presence acknowledging murder to be compatible with Christianity (a clergyman officiated in America at the first experiment of murder by electricity), no longer occasion surprise to anyone.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The ruling classes, having no longer any reasonable justification for the advantageous position they hold, are obliged, in order to keep these positions, to repress their higher rational capacities and their love for their fellow-men, and to hypnotize themselves into the belief that their exceptional positions are necessary. And the lower classes, crushed by toil and intentionally stupefied, live in a continual condition of hypnotization, deliberately and incessantly induced by people of the upper classes.
Only in this way can one explain the amazing contradiction that fills our life, and of which a striking example was presented by those kindly and mild acquaintances whom I met on the 9th of September, who with quiet minds were going to commit the most cruel, senseless, and vile crimes. Had conscience not been stifled in some way in those men, not one of them could have done a one-hundredth part of what they were preparing to do, and very likely will do.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'In just the same way the judges who wrongfully awarded the wood to the landowner, did so only because they considered themselves to be not ordinary men like everybody else and therefore bound to be guided in everything by truth alone, but, under the intoxication of power, imagined themselves to be guardians of official justice and incapable of error. And while under the intoxicating influence of servility they imagined themselves to be men bound to execute certain rules written down in a certain book, called laws. And all the participants in the affair - from the highest representative of authority who signed the report, the marshal of nobility who presided at the recruiting sessions, and the priest who deluded the conscripts, to the lowest soldier now preparing to shoot his fellow-men - under the influence of power or servility considered themselves to be, and represented themselves to others as being, not what they really are but something quite different. They all did what they did, and prepare to do what they still have to do, only because they seem to themselves and to others to be not what they are in reality - men faced with the question whether they ought or ought not to take part in wicked actions which their conscience condemns - but different, conventional characters: one an anointed Tsar, a special being destined to watch over the welfare of a hundred million people; another the representative of the nobility; another a priest who has received special grace by his ordination; another a soldier bound by his oath unreflectingly to do all that he is commanded to do. All these people could only, and can only, act as they do under the influence of intoxication by power or servility, resulting from their imagined positions.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'But not only do all men involved in the State organization throw the responsibility for their acts on one another - the soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who occupies the post of Governor, and the Governor on the gentleman or son of an official who holds the post of minister, and the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the position of the Tsar, and the Tsar again on all those officials, nobles, merchants, and peasants - not only do people free themselves in this way from the sense of responsibility for their actions, but they also lose their moral consciousness of responsibility because, being involved in a State organization, they so unceasingly, strenuously, and persistently assure themselves and one another that they are not all equal, but different among themselves "as one star differeth from another", that they begin to really believe this. Thus some are persuaded that they are not simple people like other folk but are special beings who ought to be specially honoured. And it is instilled into others by all possible means that they are inferior creatures, and should therefore uncomplainingly submit to what those above them dictate.
This inequality, this exaltation of some and degradation of others, is the chief cause of men's capacity to ignore the irrationality and cruelty and wickedness of the existing order, as well as the deception practised by some and suffered by others.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'But is it possible that people of the upper classes support this order of things only because it is advantageous for them? They cannot but see that this order of things is in itself irrational, no longer corresponds to men's consciousness or even to public opinion, and is full of danger. People of the governing classes - the honest, good, clever people among them - cannot fail to suffer from those inner contradictions and to see the dangers they are exposed to. And is it possible that all of the millions of people of the lower order can with tranquil minds perform all the evidently evil actions - tortures and murders - they are compelled to do, merely because they fear punishment? It cannot be so, and neither the one nor the other could fail to see the unreasonableness of their conduct if the complexity of the state-structure did not conceal from them the irrationality and unnaturalness of what they are doing.
The irrationality is concealed by the fact that when any such action is committed there are so many instigators, accomplices, and abettors, that not one of those concerned in the affair feels himself morally responsible.
Murderers oblige all those who witness murder to strike at the body of the man who has been killed, so that the responsibility may rest on as large a number of people as possible. That same principle, in a more definitely organized form, is applied to the penetration of those crimes without the constant commission of which no governmental organization could exist. Rulers always try to draw as many citizens as possible into as much participation as possible in the crimes they commit and that are necessary for them.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'A judge, a policeman, a governor, or an officer, can keep his position just the same under Boulanger, Pugachev, Catherine, or a republic. But should the existing order which secures him his advantageous position collapse, he would certainly lose that position. And so these people are none of them alarmed as to who will be at the head of the organization of violence - they can adapt themselves to anyone. They only fear the abolition of the organization itself, and that is the reason - though sometimes an unconscious one - why they maintain it.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Often when I see not only the levies of recruits, the military exercises and the manoeuvres, but also the policemen with loaded revolvers and the sentries with rifles and fixed bayonets, when for whole days at a time I hear (as I do in the Khamovniki where I live) the whistling and rattle of bullets as they hit the target; and when I see in the city (where any attempt at violence in self-defence is suppressed, where the sale of drugs and ammunition is prohibited, and where rapid driving and treatment by an unlicenced doctor is forbidden) thousands of disciplined men trained to murder and subject to one man's will, I ask myself: How can people who value their safety quietly allow and put up with this? Apart from its harmfulness and immorality, nothing can be more dangerous. What are men - I do not speak of Christians, ministers of religion, humanitarians, and moralists, but simply men who value their own lives, safety, and welfare - what are they thinking about? For this organization will act in the same way in whomsoever's hands it may be. Today, let us say, the power is in the hands of a tolerable ruler, but tomorrow it may be seized by a Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pugachev, a Napoleon I or a Napoleon III. And the man in whose hands the power lies may be tolerable today but tomorrow may become a beast or he may be succeeded by a mad or crazy heir - like the King of Bavaria, or our Paul I.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'All the injustice and cruelties customary in present-day life have become habitual only because there are men always ready to carry out these injustices and cruelties. If it were not for them there would not only be no one to wreak violence on those immense masses of oppressed people, but those who issued the orders would never venture to do so, and would not even dare to dream of the sentences they now confidently pass.
Were it not for these men ready to torture or kill anyone they are commanded to, no one would dare to claim what is confidently claimed by all the non-working landowners, namely that land surrounded by men who are suffering for lack of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, or that stores of grain collected by trickery ought to be preserved untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger, because the merchant wants to make a profit. But for the existence of these people, ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill anyone they are told to, it could never enter the head of a landowner to deprive the peasants of a wood they had grown, or of the officials to consider it proper to receive salaries taken from the famishing people for oppressing them, not to mention executing, imprisoning, or evicting people for exposing falsehood and preaching the truth. In fact all this is demanded and done only because the authorities are all fully convinced that they have always at hand servile people ready to carry out all their demands by means of tortures and killings.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Both those in authority and their subordinates, though they explain the motives of their conduct differently, agree that they act as they do because the existing order is just the order that must and should exist at the present time, and that to support it is therefore each man's sacred duty.
On this acceptance of the necessity and therefore the immutability of the existing order rests also the argument by which those who take part in governmental violence always justify themselves. They say that as the existing order is immutable, the refusal of some one individual to fulfill the duties laid upon him has no real influence on things, but only means that his place will be taken by someone else who may do worse than he; that is, exercise more cruelty and do more harm to the victims.
It is this conviction that the existing order is a necessary and therefore immutable order, to support which is the sacred duty of every man, that makes it possible for good men, of high principles in private life, to take part with more or less untroubled conscience in affairs such as that committed in Orel, and that which the men in the Tula train were going to perpetrate.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannon, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-house and palaces, is really terrible. But neither the fortresses nor the cannon nor the rifles will attack anyone of themselves, the prisons will not of themselves lock anyone up, the gallows will not of themselves hang anyone, nor will the churches delude anyone or the custom-houses hold anyone back, and the palaces and factories do not build themselves or maintain themselves. All this is done by people. And if they once understand that there is no necessity for all these things, these things will disappear.
And men already begin to understand. If they do not all understand, the leaders among them do - those whom the rest will follow. And what the leaders have once understood they cannot possibly cease to understand. And what the leaders have understood the rest of mankind not only can, but inevitably must, understand too.
So that the prediction that a time will come when men will be taught of God, will cease to learn war any more, and will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks (which translated into our own tongue means that all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces, and churches, will remain empty, and that all the gallows, guns and cannon will remain unused), is no longer a dream but a definite new form of life, to which humanity is approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'This is what ought to happen wherever violence is used. The officer feels dull. He has nothing to do. He has been put, poor fellow, in a position in which he has to give orders. He is shut off from all rational human existence. He can only look on and give orders, give orders and look on, though nobody needs either his orders or his attention. All our unfortunate rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors, generals, officers, archbishops, bishops, priests, and even rich men, already find themselves partly, and soon will find themselves completely, in that position. They can do nothing but give orders, and so they make a fuss and send their subordinates about, as that officer sent the gendarme, to interfere with people. And as the people they interfere with ask them not to interfere, they imagine themselves to be quite indispensable men.
But a time is approaching and draws near when it will become perfectly evident to everyone that these people are of no use at all but are merely a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say amiably and quietly, like the man in the peasant's coat: "Don't interfere with us, please!" And then all these emissaries, and those who send them, will have to follow the good advice, that is, cease to ride about with an arm akimbo hindering people, and get off their horses, doff their uniforms, listen to what is being said, and join with others in real human work.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'When all this becomes quite evident to everybody it will be natural for men to ask themselves: "Why should we feed and maintain all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of various chambers and ministries, since nothing comes of their meetings and talks? Would it not be better, as some humorist has said, to make an India-rubber queen?
And what do we want armies for with their general, and their bands, and cavalry, and drums? What are they wanted for when there is no war and no one wants to conquer anybody? And even if there were a war, other nations would not let us profit by it, and the army will not fire on its own people.
And what are the judges and lawyers for, who in civil cases decide nothing according to justice, and in criminal affairs themselves recognize the uselessness of punishments?
And what are the tax-gatherers for, who exact taxes reluctantly while what is really needed is easily collected without them?
And what is the use of the clergy, who have long since ceased to believe in what they have to preach?
And what use is capital in private hands, if it can be useful only after becoming public property?"
And once they ask themselves these questions, men cannot fail to conclude that they ought not to support all these institutions which have become useless.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'When whole nations have sometimes submitted to a new religious creed, and become Christians or Mohammedans, these conversions have been accomplished not because men wielding power rendered them compulsory by violence (on the contrary, violence has more often acted in the contrary direction) but because public opinion made such a change inevitable. Nations forced by violence to accept the faith of their conquerors have always remained antagonistic to it.
And it is the same with savage elements existing in our society. Neither the increase or decrease of the severity of the punishments, nor modifications of the prison system, nor increase of the police, either diminish or increase the quantity of crime. Changes occur only in consequence of changes in the moral standard of society. No severities have eradicated duelling and blood-fueds in certain countries. No matter how many Circassians were executed for robbery, they continued to rob out of bravado because no maiden would marry a young man who had not shown his daring by stealing a horse or at least a sheep. If men cease to fight duels and the Circassians cease to rob, it is not from fear of punishment (indeed that makes the bravado more attractive), but through a change in public opinion. And it is the same with all other crimes. Violence can never destroy what is sanctioned by public opinion. On the contrary, public opinion need only be directly opposed to violence to neutralize its whole effect, as has been shown by all martyrdoms both past and present.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'And therefore the transformation of human life (through which those in power will renounce power and there will be none anxious to seize it) will not come about solely by all men consciously and separately assimilating a Christian conception of life, but will come when a Christian public opinion so definite and comprehensive as to reach everybody has arisen and subdued the whole inert mass which is not able to attain the truth by its own intuition and is therefore always swayed by public opinion.
Such public opinion does not need hundreds and thousands of years for its formation and growth, for it possesses an infectious quality of acting on people and attracting collective masses with great rapidity.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Quite independently of any man's opinion as to whether chicks are mature enough for him to drive the mother-hen away from the nest and let them come out of their shells, the question will be indisputably settled by the birds themselves when, unable any longer to find room enough in the shells, they begin to peck with their beaks and come out of their own accord.
It is the same in regard to whether the time has or has not come to do away with governmental authority and substitute a new type of society. If, through the growth of a higher consciousness, men no longer comply with the demands of the State, if they no longer find sufficient room in it and at the same time no longer need its protection, then the question whether they have matured sufficiently to discard the State form of life is decided from quite a different side - just as in the case of chicks that break out of their shells into which no power on earth can make them return - by the men themselves who have outgrown the State and whom no power on earth can replace in it.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'The socialists, communists, and anarchists, with their bombs, riots, and revolutions, are not nearly so much dreaded by governments as the scattered individuals in various countries all justifying their refusals on the ground of one and the same familiar doctrine. Every government knows how and with what to defend itself against revolutionaries, and has the means of doing so, and therefore does not dread these external foes. But what are governments to do against these people who show the uselessness, superfluity, and harmfulness of all governments, and instead of contending with them merely show that they do not need them, that they can get along without them and are therefore unwilling to take part in them?'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'A Christian is independent of human authority because he only acknowledges the authority of God, whose law revealed by Christ he recognizes in himself and voluntarily obeys.
And this liberation is gained not by means of struggle, not by the destruction of existing forms, but only by a change in the understanding of life. A Christian recognizes the law of love revealed to him by his teacher, as perfectly sufficient for all human relations, and therefore regards all use of violence as unnecessary and wrong. He also, with his different conception of life, regards those deprivations, sufferings, or threats of deprivation and suffering, by which a man with the social conception of life is reduced to the necessity of obedience, merely as inevitable conditions of existence (like sickness, hunger, and all sorts of calamities), which he patiently endures without forcible resistance, but not as anything that can serve as a guide to his actions. The only guide for a Christian's actions is to be found in the divine principle that dwells within him, which cannot be checked or governed by anything else.'
- Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Rather than calling for cannabis to be rescheduled and decriminalized,
the Biden campaign should pledge to de-schedule and legalize the plant.
Only by removing marijuana from the CSA [Controlled Substances Act] in a
manner similar to alcohol (which is unscheduled under federal law) can
the government amend federal marijuana policy in a manner that comports
with state laws, public opinion, scientific consensus, and the plant’s
rapidly evolving cultural status. And only via legalization can state
and local regulators impose necessary controls, oversight, and best
practices to the marijuana market.
This why candidate Biden should join with many of his Democratic colleagues – such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) — in support of HR 3884/S 2227: The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act. The Act, which passed the House Judiciary Committee late last fall, removes cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act so that states, not the federal government, possess the flexibility and authority to regulate cannabis within their borders as best they see fit — without the threat of undue federal interference.'
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/506721-bidens-marijuana-plan-is-out-of-step-with-public-opinion
'Nearly three in four licensed health care professionals in Washington state endorse the use of medical cannabis as a substitute for opioids in patients with chronic pain, according to survey data published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.
Researchers with the University of Washington School of Nursing surveyed a random sampling of actively licensed health care professionals legally permitted to provide medical cannabis authorizations in the state of Washington.
Of eligible respondents, 72 percent agreed with the statement, “Medical marijuana should be used to reduce the use of opioids for non-cancer pain.” Several studies [links] report that pain patients enrolled in state-sponsored cannabis access programs reduce or eliminate their use of opioid pain relievers over time.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/15/survey-majority-of-health-care-professionals-endorse-cannabis-use-instead-of-opioids-in-chronic-pain-patients/
'The oral administration of cannabis-based products is associated with improvements in autistic patients with self-injurious behaviors and co-morbid epilepsy, according to data published in the journal Seminars in Pediatric Neurology.
A pair of investigators affiliated with the Tufts University School of Medicine described their clinical experience working with children and young adults with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) who had consumed either cannabis or hemp-based products. Among subjects with ASD-associated aggression, 60 percent reported improvements following treatment. Among subjects diagnosed with both ASD and epilepsy, 91 percent reported some improvement in seizure control.'
https://norml.org/news/2020/07/16/study-cannabis-based-products-may-ease-symptoms-in-autistic-patients
'For the first time in the survey’s history, more Australians support the legalisation of cannabis (41%) than oppose it (37%). This is almost double the level of support in 2007 (21%).
This is significant, because while there has been overwhelming community support for removing criminal penalties for cannabis possession (sometimes referred to as “decriminalisation”), this has not been the case with legalisation.'
https://theconversation.com/more-australians-back-legalising-cannabis-and-57-support-pill-testing-national-survey-shows-142720
'The process is part of an experiment in the Netherlands to legalize for the first time – though it’s limited in scope and time – the production of marijuana destined to be sold in coffee shops.
Only applicants that demonstrate the capability to cultivate at a large scale – a minimum of 6,500 kilograms (14,330 pounds) per year – will be considered.
But the government’s newly released FAQ specifies that the winners won’t necessarily have to grow that amount.
Up to 10 growers will be selected to supply roughly 80 coffee shops in 10 municipalities during a period of at least four years.
The government estimates a minimum production of 65,000 kilograms per year will be needed, considering that each of the 80 coffee shops has an average turnover of about 1 kilogram per day – 20% of which is hashish.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/netherlands-clarifies-process-for-applications-to-grow-legal-adult-use-cannabis/
'“The evidence described in the present systematic review indicates that CBD is a promising adjunct therapy for the treatment of cocaine dependence due to its effect on cocaine consumption, brain reward, anxiety, related contextual memories, neuroadaptations and hepatic protection as well as its anticonvulsant effect and safety,” the study authors concluded.
“The clinical administration of CBD leads to a reduction in the self-administration of cocaine and, consequently, the amount of the drug consumed. Moreover, the reward induced by cocaine is blunted by CBD treatment.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/cbd-is-a-promising-therapy-in-treating-cocaine-misuse-meta-study-finds/
'Drug overdose deaths involving selected drug categories are identified by specific multiple cause-of-death codes. Drug categories presented include: heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics, including morphine and codeine, and semisynthetic opioids, including drugs such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and oxymorphone (T40.2); methadone, a synthetic opioid (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone, including drugs such as fentanyl and tramadol (T40.4); cocaine (T40.5); and psychostimulants with abuse potential, which includes methamphetamine (T43.6). Opioid overdose deaths are identified by the presence of any of the following MCOD codes: opium (T40.0); heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics (T40.2); methadone (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone (T40.4); or other and unspecified narcotics (T40.6).'
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
'Current users and PU [past users] took MC [Medical Cannabis] to address pain (65.30%), spasms (63.30%), sleeplessness (32.70%), and anxiety (24.00%), and 63.30% reported it offered “great relief” from symptoms. Participants reported that MC is more effective and carries fewer side effects than prescription medications.
Conclusions
Medicinal cannabis is an effective and well-tolerated treatment for a number of SCI[Spinal Cord injury]-related symptoms.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41394-019-0208-6
'With revenue of $10.6 billion-$13 billion in 2019, sales of legal adult-use and medical marijuana in the United States topped spending on sleep aids, hard seltzer and toothpaste combined.
Total marijuana sales now exceed the National Basketball Association’s annual U.S. revenue and, by 2024, could surpass Americans’ annual spending on craft beer.
The data – published in the 2020 edition of the Marijuana Business Factbook – underscores the fact that the U.S. cannabis industry is already a major economic force, even though it has yet to reach its full potential.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/chart-retail-cannabis-sales-surpass-nba-revenue-approach-prescription-pain-meds/
'Results
Cannabis use was consistently two to three times higher among those with high anxiety compared to those with some or no anxiety and was higher in states with RML [Recreational Marijuana Legalization] compared to MML [Medical Marijuana Legalization] or no MML/RML. Cannabis use has increased over time among those with and without anxiety overall, in MML states, and in states without MML/RML; with a faster increase in cannabis use among those with high anxiety compared to lower anxiety in states with MML.
Conclusions
Cannabis use is increasing among American adults overall, yet is disproportionately common among Americans with anxiety especially among those residing in states where cannabis has been legalized.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871620303288
'The purpose of this systematic review was to explore available peer-reviewed evidence related to the use of cannabis as a potential alternative to opioids in the treatment of chronic pain. The Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice model was used to review 32 peer-reviewed articles published between 2008 and 2018. Findings suggest cannabis as a promising alternative to opioids and supports the medical use of cannabis as a safer first-line pharmacological treatment for chronic pain compared to opioids. The use of cannabis as a safer alternative to opioids can promote social change directly and indirectly across a variety of social and economic dimensions due to increased access to medication at reduced cost, elimination of opioid-related death due to overdose, diminished individual and social harms related to cannabis. A medical alternative to opioids may also lead to a reduction of the inequitable incarceration of cannabis users across demographic categories of ethnicity and race.'
https://search.proquest.com/openview/a69d6774a45ea04c630c10a84ea2cc8e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
'“It’s a lot safer than alcohol. It’s safer than narcotics. It ought to be used more widely and we can’t even study it that easily because of the way it’s regulated,” he said. “You know what, I called the DEA—they said, ‘we don’t want this to be illegal. Your government ought to change that. But we got to enforce the law.’ I call the FDA that regulates the drugs, they say, ‘we think it ought to be used, but until the DEA says it’s allowed, we can’t let people prescribe it everywhere.”
While Oz didn’t disclose specifics about his conversations, such as who he spoke to or when the phone calls happened, it is the case that federal marijuana reform outside of Congress falls largely within the jurisdictions of both agencies. And DEA has denied multiple rescheduling requests, justifying the inaction by stating that FDA has determined that cannabis doesn’t have proven medical value and carries a risk of abuse.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dr-oz-claims-dea-and-fda-blame-each-other-for-keeping-marijuana-illegal/
'Israel had no large imports before 2020, but in only six months the country became the largest importer in the world, underscoring how quickly things change in this nascent international industry.
Israeli producers have long eyed the export market, but the government has been slow to successfully facilitate exports, despite many attempts.
Several government decisions supposedly approving exports have been widely celebrated over the past couple of years, but so far no meaningful exports from Israel have occurred.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/israel-passes-germany-as-worlds-largest-importer-of-medical-cannabis-flower/
'Fifty years ago, these men who are now feared in Kathmandu’s restaurants would be welcomed at Freak Street in shops called ‘Your Old & Favorite Hashish Centre.’ In the 1960s and early 70s, cheap and potent marijuana drew thousands of hippies to Kathmandu where they could readily buy one-kilogram boxes of the downer at a pittance.
In 1976, mostly under pressure from the American government which was worried about its young citizens becoming dope addicts, Nepal banned the use and sale of marijuana. The decision had far-reaching implications: the hippies left, tourism was hit, the government lost tax revenue, farmers lost a lucrative cash crop, and the trade in hash went underground, criminalising a legitimate livelihood.
In fact it is said that one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Maoist revolution in 1996 was that the government’s ban on the production of cannabis was so stringent that it angered the Kham Magars who cultivated it as a major cash crop.'
http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/marijuana-high-time-to-lift-ban,2548
'“Marijuana is less habit forming than opiates and carries virtually no risk of fatal overdose, thus it has been wrongly classified,” says Rajiv Kafle, a prominent legalisation activist. “Moreover, when the drug was banned it was done without proper scientific research. Studies have shown that the chemical cannabidiol found in marijuana has beneficial medical properties.”
Activists also say that marijuana can help control crime and wean the dependency on other hard drugs. The most vivid proof of that is KC, who did heroin for 22 years. He says marijuana coul be added to harm reduction in drug rehab in Nepal if it was available legally.
“Take it from me, marijuana was my saviour. It made my pain bearable and took away my addiction to heroin. Believe me, many heroin addicts like me would give up heroin,” says KC. Activists say that legalising marijuana will help patients to get high quality cannabis for their conditions, and by regulating the drug, the government can keep a tab on the criminality associated with it.'
https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/undo-hash-ban,3657
'Among the rural folk of the western hills of Bajura, Bajhang, Rolpa, Rukum and Darchula, hemp collection is an important pastime. Shepherds spin the fibre into thread while grazing their sheep and cattle.
Cannabis plants grow to a height of 20 ft. After harvesting them, villagers shred the leaves and soak the stems in water for up to 20 days. When they are tender the bark is separated from the rest of the plant, smoked above a fire and boiled in ash water. Thin strips are then removed from the bark by hand.
"The older generation used to have holes in their thumbnails through which they passed the strips of fibre and wove them to make thread," says Prem Dahal, proprietor of Hemp House. Dahal has been in the hemp business for over 19 years and is one of few who still use Nepali hemp for his products, even after the emergence of Chinese hemp in the market'
http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=879#.XxU3JxJS_IV
'Thamel trader Prem Dahal is acknowledged by his peers as the pioneer of the hemp trade. He was inspired to take it up 28 years ago after travelling with shepherds in western Nepal and finding that their hardy mattresses were woven from cannabis fibre.
“Hemp fabric is stronger, more absorbent and has better insulation against heat and cold than cotton,” Dahal explains. “Hemp is environmentally friendly.”
Given that half the pesticide sprayed worldwide is in cotton plantations, hemp is a nature-friendly alternative fabric. The plant also prevents soil erosion on mountain slopes because of its thick deep root system, and the fabric can be made into at least 100 types of products. '
https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/clothed-in-cannabis/
'Kathmandu had become a haven for anti-war ‘peaceniks’, draft dodgers, and Vietnam veterans. White House recordings from the early 1970s reveal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warning Nixon: “They come from Nepal to demonstrate against you because up there they can get free pot … or at least it is legal.”
Banning cannabis drove the cultivation and use of this important cash crop underground and into the hands of organised criminals with police and political protection. Nepal’s subsistence farmers were pushed deeper into poverty, and may even have sparked the Maoist revolution in later years.
Campaigners in Kathmandu now see no reason why Nepal should keep the ban when the Americans who forced it on Nepal have legalised it in 25 states for medical and commercial purposes.'
https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-grass-is-greener-in-nepal/
'The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) said that its recommendation is motivated by an interest in reducing overdose deaths and promoting treatment. This announcement comes two years after the organization created a commission tasked with studying decriminalization, the results of which were released in a new report.
“Canada continues to grapple with the fentanyl crisis and a poisoned drug supply that has devastated our communities and taken thousands of lives,” CACP President Adam Palmer said in a press release. “We recommend that enforcement for possession give way to an integrated health-focussed approach that requires partnerships between police, healthcare and all levels of government.“'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/top-canadian-police-association-says-its-time-to-decriminalize-all-drugs/
'The main concern for the authorities in a number of countries has been the emergence of new synthetic opioid receptor agonists (NPS with opioid effects), often fentanyl analogues, in recent years. Although fewer in number than other NPS categories, they have proved to be particularly potent and harmful, leading to increasing numbers of overdose deaths, in particular in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and other regions.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
This why candidate Biden should join with many of his Democratic colleagues – such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) — in support of HR 3884/S 2227: The Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement Act. The Act, which passed the House Judiciary Committee late last fall, removes cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act so that states, not the federal government, possess the flexibility and authority to regulate cannabis within their borders as best they see fit — without the threat of undue federal interference.'
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/506721-bidens-marijuana-plan-is-out-of-step-with-public-opinion
'Nearly three in four licensed health care professionals in Washington state endorse the use of medical cannabis as a substitute for opioids in patients with chronic pain, according to survey data published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.
Researchers with the University of Washington School of Nursing surveyed a random sampling of actively licensed health care professionals legally permitted to provide medical cannabis authorizations in the state of Washington.
Of eligible respondents, 72 percent agreed with the statement, “Medical marijuana should be used to reduce the use of opioids for non-cancer pain.” Several studies [links] report that pain patients enrolled in state-sponsored cannabis access programs reduce or eliminate their use of opioid pain relievers over time.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/07/15/survey-majority-of-health-care-professionals-endorse-cannabis-use-instead-of-opioids-in-chronic-pain-patients/
'The oral administration of cannabis-based products is associated with improvements in autistic patients with self-injurious behaviors and co-morbid epilepsy, according to data published in the journal Seminars in Pediatric Neurology.
A pair of investigators affiliated with the Tufts University School of Medicine described their clinical experience working with children and young adults with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) who had consumed either cannabis or hemp-based products. Among subjects with ASD-associated aggression, 60 percent reported improvements following treatment. Among subjects diagnosed with both ASD and epilepsy, 91 percent reported some improvement in seizure control.'
https://norml.org/news/2020/07/16/study-cannabis-based-products-may-ease-symptoms-in-autistic-patients
'For the first time in the survey’s history, more Australians support the legalisation of cannabis (41%) than oppose it (37%). This is almost double the level of support in 2007 (21%).
This is significant, because while there has been overwhelming community support for removing criminal penalties for cannabis possession (sometimes referred to as “decriminalisation”), this has not been the case with legalisation.'
https://theconversation.com/more-australians-back-legalising-cannabis-and-57-support-pill-testing-national-survey-shows-142720
'The process is part of an experiment in the Netherlands to legalize for the first time – though it’s limited in scope and time – the production of marijuana destined to be sold in coffee shops.
Only applicants that demonstrate the capability to cultivate at a large scale – a minimum of 6,500 kilograms (14,330 pounds) per year – will be considered.
But the government’s newly released FAQ specifies that the winners won’t necessarily have to grow that amount.
Up to 10 growers will be selected to supply roughly 80 coffee shops in 10 municipalities during a period of at least four years.
The government estimates a minimum production of 65,000 kilograms per year will be needed, considering that each of the 80 coffee shops has an average turnover of about 1 kilogram per day – 20% of which is hashish.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/netherlands-clarifies-process-for-applications-to-grow-legal-adult-use-cannabis/
'“The evidence described in the present systematic review indicates that CBD is a promising adjunct therapy for the treatment of cocaine dependence due to its effect on cocaine consumption, brain reward, anxiety, related contextual memories, neuroadaptations and hepatic protection as well as its anticonvulsant effect and safety,” the study authors concluded.
“The clinical administration of CBD leads to a reduction in the self-administration of cocaine and, consequently, the amount of the drug consumed. Moreover, the reward induced by cocaine is blunted by CBD treatment.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/cbd-is-a-promising-therapy-in-treating-cocaine-misuse-meta-study-finds/
'Drug overdose deaths involving selected drug categories are identified by specific multiple cause-of-death codes. Drug categories presented include: heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics, including morphine and codeine, and semisynthetic opioids, including drugs such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and oxymorphone (T40.2); methadone, a synthetic opioid (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone, including drugs such as fentanyl and tramadol (T40.4); cocaine (T40.5); and psychostimulants with abuse potential, which includes methamphetamine (T43.6). Opioid overdose deaths are identified by the presence of any of the following MCOD codes: opium (T40.0); heroin (T40.1); natural opioid analgesics (T40.2); methadone (T40.3); synthetic opioid analgesics other than methadone (T40.4); or other and unspecified narcotics (T40.6).'
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm
'Current users and PU [past users] took MC [Medical Cannabis] to address pain (65.30%), spasms (63.30%), sleeplessness (32.70%), and anxiety (24.00%), and 63.30% reported it offered “great relief” from symptoms. Participants reported that MC is more effective and carries fewer side effects than prescription medications.
Conclusions
Medicinal cannabis is an effective and well-tolerated treatment for a number of SCI[Spinal Cord injury]-related symptoms.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41394-019-0208-6
'With revenue of $10.6 billion-$13 billion in 2019, sales of legal adult-use and medical marijuana in the United States topped spending on sleep aids, hard seltzer and toothpaste combined.
Total marijuana sales now exceed the National Basketball Association’s annual U.S. revenue and, by 2024, could surpass Americans’ annual spending on craft beer.
The data – published in the 2020 edition of the Marijuana Business Factbook – underscores the fact that the U.S. cannabis industry is already a major economic force, even though it has yet to reach its full potential.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/chart-retail-cannabis-sales-surpass-nba-revenue-approach-prescription-pain-meds/
'Results
Cannabis use was consistently two to three times higher among those with high anxiety compared to those with some or no anxiety and was higher in states with RML [Recreational Marijuana Legalization] compared to MML [Medical Marijuana Legalization] or no MML/RML. Cannabis use has increased over time among those with and without anxiety overall, in MML states, and in states without MML/RML; with a faster increase in cannabis use among those with high anxiety compared to lower anxiety in states with MML.
Conclusions
Cannabis use is increasing among American adults overall, yet is disproportionately common among Americans with anxiety especially among those residing in states where cannabis has been legalized.'
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871620303288
'The purpose of this systematic review was to explore available peer-reviewed evidence related to the use of cannabis as a potential alternative to opioids in the treatment of chronic pain. The Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice model was used to review 32 peer-reviewed articles published between 2008 and 2018. Findings suggest cannabis as a promising alternative to opioids and supports the medical use of cannabis as a safer first-line pharmacological treatment for chronic pain compared to opioids. The use of cannabis as a safer alternative to opioids can promote social change directly and indirectly across a variety of social and economic dimensions due to increased access to medication at reduced cost, elimination of opioid-related death due to overdose, diminished individual and social harms related to cannabis. A medical alternative to opioids may also lead to a reduction of the inequitable incarceration of cannabis users across demographic categories of ethnicity and race.'
https://search.proquest.com/openview/a69d6774a45ea04c630c10a84ea2cc8e/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
'“It’s a lot safer than alcohol. It’s safer than narcotics. It ought to be used more widely and we can’t even study it that easily because of the way it’s regulated,” he said. “You know what, I called the DEA—they said, ‘we don’t want this to be illegal. Your government ought to change that. But we got to enforce the law.’ I call the FDA that regulates the drugs, they say, ‘we think it ought to be used, but until the DEA says it’s allowed, we can’t let people prescribe it everywhere.”
While Oz didn’t disclose specifics about his conversations, such as who he spoke to or when the phone calls happened, it is the case that federal marijuana reform outside of Congress falls largely within the jurisdictions of both agencies. And DEA has denied multiple rescheduling requests, justifying the inaction by stating that FDA has determined that cannabis doesn’t have proven medical value and carries a risk of abuse.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/dr-oz-claims-dea-and-fda-blame-each-other-for-keeping-marijuana-illegal/
- 'Racial disparities in legal prosecutions and through inequity in wealth serve as barriers to many Black and Brown entrepreneurs.
- Between 2010-2018, despite comparable usage rates Black people were 3.64 times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. (ACLU)
- In 2015, more than 643,000 people were arrested for cannabis violations; 89% were charged only with possession (Cage-Free Cannabis).
- Over the past decade, 15.7 million people have been arrested for marijuana offenses.
- In some states, cannabis arrests preclude participation in the legal industry.
- In 2016, the average wealth of White families was more than $700,000 higher than that of Black or Hispanic families. (Urban Institute).
- In 2017, 81% of business owners/founders in the cannabis industry were White; approximately 4% were Black, and fewer than 6% were Hispanic/Latino. (MJBiz Daily)'
'Israel had no large imports before 2020, but in only six months the country became the largest importer in the world, underscoring how quickly things change in this nascent international industry.
Israeli producers have long eyed the export market, but the government has been slow to successfully facilitate exports, despite many attempts.
Several government decisions supposedly approving exports have been widely celebrated over the past couple of years, but so far no meaningful exports from Israel have occurred.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/israel-passes-germany-as-worlds-largest-importer-of-medical-cannabis-flower/
'Fifty years ago, these men who are now feared in Kathmandu’s restaurants would be welcomed at Freak Street in shops called ‘Your Old & Favorite Hashish Centre.’ In the 1960s and early 70s, cheap and potent marijuana drew thousands of hippies to Kathmandu where they could readily buy one-kilogram boxes of the downer at a pittance.
In 1976, mostly under pressure from the American government which was worried about its young citizens becoming dope addicts, Nepal banned the use and sale of marijuana. The decision had far-reaching implications: the hippies left, tourism was hit, the government lost tax revenue, farmers lost a lucrative cash crop, and the trade in hash went underground, criminalising a legitimate livelihood.
In fact it is said that one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Maoist revolution in 1996 was that the government’s ban on the production of cannabis was so stringent that it angered the Kham Magars who cultivated it as a major cash crop.'
http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/marijuana-high-time-to-lift-ban,2548
'“Marijuana is less habit forming than opiates and carries virtually no risk of fatal overdose, thus it has been wrongly classified,” says Rajiv Kafle, a prominent legalisation activist. “Moreover, when the drug was banned it was done without proper scientific research. Studies have shown that the chemical cannabidiol found in marijuana has beneficial medical properties.”
Activists also say that marijuana can help control crime and wean the dependency on other hard drugs. The most vivid proof of that is KC, who did heroin for 22 years. He says marijuana coul be added to harm reduction in drug rehab in Nepal if it was available legally.
“Take it from me, marijuana was my saviour. It made my pain bearable and took away my addiction to heroin. Believe me, many heroin addicts like me would give up heroin,” says KC. Activists say that legalising marijuana will help patients to get high quality cannabis for their conditions, and by regulating the drug, the government can keep a tab on the criminality associated with it.'
https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/undo-hash-ban,3657
'Among the rural folk of the western hills of Bajura, Bajhang, Rolpa, Rukum and Darchula, hemp collection is an important pastime. Shepherds spin the fibre into thread while grazing their sheep and cattle.
Cannabis plants grow to a height of 20 ft. After harvesting them, villagers shred the leaves and soak the stems in water for up to 20 days. When they are tender the bark is separated from the rest of the plant, smoked above a fire and boiled in ash water. Thin strips are then removed from the bark by hand.
"The older generation used to have holes in their thumbnails through which they passed the strips of fibre and wove them to make thread," says Prem Dahal, proprietor of Hemp House. Dahal has been in the hemp business for over 19 years and is one of few who still use Nepali hemp for his products, even after the emergence of Chinese hemp in the market'
http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=879#.XxU3JxJS_IV
'Thamel trader Prem Dahal is acknowledged by his peers as the pioneer of the hemp trade. He was inspired to take it up 28 years ago after travelling with shepherds in western Nepal and finding that their hardy mattresses were woven from cannabis fibre.
“Hemp fabric is stronger, more absorbent and has better insulation against heat and cold than cotton,” Dahal explains. “Hemp is environmentally friendly.”
Given that half the pesticide sprayed worldwide is in cotton plantations, hemp is a nature-friendly alternative fabric. The plant also prevents soil erosion on mountain slopes because of its thick deep root system, and the fabric can be made into at least 100 types of products. '
https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/clothed-in-cannabis/
'Kathmandu had become a haven for anti-war ‘peaceniks’, draft dodgers, and Vietnam veterans. White House recordings from the early 1970s reveal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warning Nixon: “They come from Nepal to demonstrate against you because up there they can get free pot … or at least it is legal.”
Banning cannabis drove the cultivation and use of this important cash crop underground and into the hands of organised criminals with police and political protection. Nepal’s subsistence farmers were pushed deeper into poverty, and may even have sparked the Maoist revolution in later years.
Campaigners in Kathmandu now see no reason why Nepal should keep the ban when the Americans who forced it on Nepal have legalised it in 25 states for medical and commercial purposes.'
https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/the-grass-is-greener-in-nepal/
'The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) said that its recommendation is motivated by an interest in reducing overdose deaths and promoting treatment. This announcement comes two years after the organization created a commission tasked with studying decriminalization, the results of which were released in a new report.
“Canada continues to grapple with the fentanyl crisis and a poisoned drug supply that has devastated our communities and taken thousands of lives,” CACP President Adam Palmer said in a press release. “We recommend that enforcement for possession give way to an integrated health-focussed approach that requires partnerships between police, healthcare and all levels of government.“'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/top-canadian-police-association-says-its-time-to-decriminalize-all-drugs/
'The main concern for the authorities in a number of countries has been the emergence of new synthetic opioid receptor agonists (NPS with opioid effects), often fentanyl analogues, in recent years. Although fewer in number than other NPS categories, they have proved to be particularly potent and harmful, leading to increasing numbers of overdose deaths, in particular in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and other regions.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Republics abound in young citizens who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modification of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'What the tender, poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolution of public bodies; then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place in turn to new prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture, and of aspiration.'- Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and it hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption; it must be executed by a practical lie, namely by force. This undertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'Hence the less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe; which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of Nature, to reach unto the coronation of her king. To educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him, no vantage point, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking, no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book - for he is the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of men unto him needs not husband and educate a few to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not think that all things are lapsing into confusion if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tributes to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbour, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. The fact that a new thought and hope have dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That secret which you should fain keep - as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the doorstep to tell you the same.' - Man the Reformer, Emerson, The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'What the tender, poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolution of public bodies; then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place in turn to new prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture, and of aspiration.'- Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbour and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and it hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption; it must be executed by a practical lie, namely by force. This undertaking for another is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views; but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'Hence the less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe; which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of Nature, to reach unto the coronation of her king. To educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy - he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him, no vantage point, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking, no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book - for he is the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of men unto him needs not husband and educate a few to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not think that all things are lapsing into confusion if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science can be answered.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tributes to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable and a good neighbour, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State.' - Politics, Emerson The Basic Writings of America's Sage
'It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon of reform has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every inhabitant of every city. The fact that a new thought and hope have dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That secret which you should fain keep - as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one standing on the doorstep to tell you the same.' - Man the Reformer, Emerson, The Basic Writings of America's Sage
Abusive governments seem to display behavioral traits similar to abusive individuals, possibly because the head(s) or leader(s) of such governments are such individuals. We observe a pattern of alternating abuse and the application of what seems like a balm to soothe the pain. This balm is often an eyewash (handwash?) and to a certain extent also serves to hypnotize the victim into thinking that the abuser means well. Mostly applied in alternating fashion, the balm is also sometimes applied as a distraction to one part of the victim while the abuse happens on another part. The mind of the victim, increasingly confused and submissive, focuses on the region where the balm is applied and shuts out the region where the abuse is taking place as a defense mechanism. With abuse and balm, applied over long periods of time in increasing fashion and in alternating turns, where the abuse is always much, much greater than the balm applied, the body and the mind of the victim, whether it be an individual or a nation, gradually weakens, becoming increasingly submissive and obedient to the will of the abuser till a point is reached where the abuser has complete control and the victim will do anything thinking that it is what is good...Apr 6, 2020, 5:16 PM
At a certain point of time, when the world's super rich and the regressive governments they fund, find their vast amounts of illusory wealth rapidly diminishing, panic will set in among them. Then cures will be touted and administered with amazing speed and energy. The hype and hysteria surrounding the increasing spread of disease will change direction and will become then the hype and hysteria of the wonderful cure that has been created. Once the dust clears, it will be evident who profited the most from this entire exercise. Perhaps even the source and the causes of the entire event will become clear as well for those who seek it. Some big industries may fall though it looks unlikely. Other new ones may emerge. The composition of the super rich may change as predators move in to seize the opportunity and eat up the weak among them. But the size of the super rich and the percentage of wealth they horde, like the size of the sun, is unlikely to change. The rest of the living beings will continue rising and falling like the super heated corona of the sun, collateral damage. When that point in time is reached, whether it be in weeks or in months or years, is something to look out for, for those keen on observing such phenomena...Apr 1, 2020, 4:41 PM
'A majority of Americans say that adult-use marijuana legalization has been a success in those states that have implemented it, according to nationwide polling compiled by YouGov.com.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said that statewide laws allowing recreational marijuana use have been either fully or mostly successful. Nineteen percent of respondents said that the laws have been largely unsuccessful. Twenty-six percent voiced no opinion. '
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/poll-majority-of-americans-say-adult-use-legalization-policies-have-been-a-success
'Cannabis exposure does not negatively impact the lungs in a manner consistent with tobacco, nor is it similarly linked to elevated rates of either COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or lung cancer, according a literature review published in the journal Addiction.
A team of New Zealand researchers reviewed clinical trial data assessing the impact of cannabis smoke exposure on the lungs. They report that "the effects of smoking cannabis on the lungs are distinct from tobacco."
Specifically, they write: "[I]t has been pragmatic to assume that cannabis and tobacco would have similar respiratory effects. ... The research that has been done, however, offers a different story. The most common serious respiratory consequences from smoking tobacco are Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and lung cancer. Epidemiological evidence that smoking cannabis causes either of these is scant."'
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/review-cannabis-smoke-exposure-is-distinct-from-tobacco-not-associated-with-copd-or-lung-cancer
'The purpose of this Notice is to inform potential applications to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute on Aging (NIA) of special interest in grant applications to conduct rigorous research on cannabis and potentially addictive, psychoactive prescription drug use (specifically opioids and benzodiazepine) in older adults. This program will focus on two distinct older adult populations (over the age of 50): (1) individuals with earlier use onset of cannabis and the specified drug classes who are now entering older age, or (2) individuals who initiate use of cannabis and the specified drug classes after the age of 50. Insights gained from this initiative have the potential to inform the public and health care systems regarding use of cannabis and prescription opioids and benzodiazepines in older populations.'
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-DA-20-014.html
'The hemp industry scored a victory on Tuesday after the Senate passed a coronavirus relief bill that, for the first time, will allow farmers to access a certain federal loan program amid the pandemic.
Farmers have historically been left out of disaster relief legislation through the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) because they’re eligible for separate programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But those programs are designated for natural disasters, and so industry advocates have been pushing Congress to allow farmers to be eligible for SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/hemp-industry-secures-federal-coronavirus-relief-for-farmers-in-senate-passed-bill/
So we contaminate our environment, food and water with dangerous man-made chemicals in the pursuit of quick money. These chemicals cause cancers in our bodies. To treat these cancers we make dangerous synthetic drugs, in the pursuit of quick money, that not only fail to treat the cancers, but also result in a collapse of most other body systems. This leads to a weakening and collapse of humans on increasingly larger scales as time goes by. But we do nothing to stop the contamination and weakening of our bodies that evolved over hundreds of millions of years and the contamination of our environment, food and water. Instead we continue searching for more powerful man made chemicals, to make more money faster, in the name of medicine for our environment, bodies and minds believing that we are masters of nature or, if not that, smarter than nature, whom we can fool like our gullible fellow men...but nature is not looking to make more money faster..she only deals in life and death...
The bully, believing that he has cornered his victim, moves in for the kill. So caught up is he in the moment of his apparent triumph over the hapless prey, that he forgets he is surrounded by a larger community watching every move played out in the drama of life. Or maybe he thinks that they have been sufficiently distracted by the side show he constructed. But it only takes one false move, maybe the last one in a series of moves, to make the true nature of the bully completely clear to the majority. Then the insecurities that fueled his lopsided physical and psychological growth, making him choose the path of the monster, instead of the path of the wise man, finally become reality. The table is turned and the bully finds himself cornered this time...
'In 2013, the Government of Uruguay approved legislation (Law No. 19.172) regulating the cultivation, production, dispensing and use of cannabis for different purposes, including non-medical use. In accordance with the legislation, Uruguayan citizens or foreigners with permanent residence aged 18 and older can obtain cannabis for non-medical purposes by registering with the national Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis and by choosing one of three options: (a) purchase in authorized pharmacies; (b) membership of a club; or (c) domestic cultivation. The quantity of cannabis permitted per person, obtained through any of the three mechanisms, cannot exceed 480 g per year. Initially, the Government of Uruguay set THC content at 2 per cent and CBD content at 6–7 per cent. In 2017, the Government introduced two new varieties, with a maximum THC content of 9 per cent and CBD content of no less than 3 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Moreover, many of the studies have overlooked the proliferation of fentanyl as a driver of opioid overdose mortality in the United States, which may negate any potential effect of medical cannabis on overdose deaths. It can only be concluded that additional research might help to identify a range of alternative non-opioid medications and non-pharmacological treatments that could be effective in pain management. The issue of whether increased accessibility of cannabis could reduce the medical and non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids and their negative impact remains inconclusive.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Out of the nearly 9,000 respondents, 5 per cent reported ever using cannabis and had used opioids in the past year, among whom 43 per cent had used opioids daily and 23 per cent had used cannabis in the past 30 days. Although the results are based on a small number of respondents, of the 450 who reported ever using cannabis and past-year opioid use, 41 per cent reported a decrease or cessation of opioid use as a result of cannabis use, 46 per cent reported no change in opioid use and 8 per cent reported an increase in opioid use' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'With regard to cannabis products substituting for opioids as pain relief medication, it is considered that the analgesic effects of cannabis are not sufficiently powerful to palliate acute pain or to manage chronic pain. For example, only in very specific cases have preparations containing THC, such as dronabinol and nabiximols, been shown to be effective in the management of neuropathic pain in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. A long-term longitudinal study among people who were prescribed opioids showed greater pain severity and pain interference (pain effects on sleep, working ability, daily living, social interactions, lower pain self-efficacy and higher levels of generalized anxiety disorder) among the 24 per cent who also used cannabis daily or less frequently than among those who did not use cannabis. Moreover, individuals who used cannabis on a near-daily basis were less likely to discontinue opioid use than participants who abstained from cannabis use' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A study on the impact of cannabis legalization on alcohol sales in Colorado, Oregon and Washington, the three states with the longest history of legal nonmedical use of cannabis, showed that there was no evidence that legalization had had any impact on the sale of spirits or on total alcohol sales, which are generally considered a good proxy for alcohol consumption in the United States. The study showed that the per capita sale of spirits had increased by 3.6 per cent in Oregon, 5.4 per cent in Washington and 7.6 per cent in Colorado in 2018, after the measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were implemented in those states. Consistent with national trends, per capita sales of beer had declined by 3.6 per cent in Colorado, 2.3 per cent in Washington and 3.6 per cent in Oregon. The sale of wine increased by 0.7 per cent in Oregon, declined by 3.1 per cent in Washington and increased by 3.2 per cent in Colorado. Overall, per capita sales of alcoholic beverages were fairly stable, as they increased by 1.7 per cent in Colorado, declined by 0.2 per cent in Washington and declined by 0.5 per cent in Oregon' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'More than half of the studies, however, have shown that cannabis and alcohol are substitutes, meaning that the increased use of one substance reduces the use of the other. Other researchers have also suggested that cannabis, especially cannabis for medical use, may serve as a substitute for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, including prescription drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In Washington, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol is considered the number one contributing factor in fatal crashes and is involved in nearly half of all traffic fatalities. However, in that state, reporting on such cases does not differentiate between cannabis and other drugs. The number of reported cases of driving under the influence of drugs has increased by more than 60 per cent in Washington since 2014. Although not so recent, data on drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for alcohol or drugs in Washington during the period 2008–2016 show that 44 per cent tested positive for two or more substances. Of those substances, the most common one was alcohol, followed by THC, while alcohol and THC formed the most common polydrug combination involved in fatal crashes during that period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Starting in 2014, data on traffic fatalities in Colorado showed a marked increase in the number of traffic deaths in which the driver tested positive for cannabis use. Over the period 2009–2013, there were 53 traffic deaths on average per year in which the driver tested positive for cannabis, a figure that increased to an average of 110 such deaths in the period 2014–2018, and the proportion of fatalities with drivers testing positive for cannabis doubled over the period 2009–2018. However, toxicology analysis has shown that car crashes in which the driver was found to be under the influence of cannabis frequently involved other drugs, in particular alcohol' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A contentious issue between people who are for and against the legalization of cannabis remains whether it has had an impact on driving under the influence of cannabis and caused fatal car crashes. The evidence remains inconclusive, as within the United States there have been no differences in cannabis- or alcohol-related traffic fatalities between states that have and have not legalized the non-medical use of cannabis. As different research contributions have also shown, it is difficult to quantify the effects of cannabis on road accidents, as cannabis is often used in combination with alcohol, which increases the challenge of determining the influence of cannabis itself on road traffic accidents. Moreover, studies on THC levels and degrees of impairment have found that the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related; peak impairment does not occur when THC concentration in the blood is at or near peak levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In Washington state, the past-month use of cannabis among high-school students of different grades has generally remained stable, although it increases by grade, with the highest past-month prevalence found among twelfth grade students, as in Colorado. The perception of risk relating to cannabis use among high-school students has also declined since the nonmedical use of cannabis was legalized, with nearly three quarters of twelfth grade students seeing no or low risk in trying cannabis a few times and less than half perceiving no or low risk in the regular use of cannabis in 2018. Similarly, some 38 per cent of twelfth grade students considered that it was fairly easy to get cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While the daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students in Colorado has declined, the prevalence of occasional users, that is, those who report having used cannabis one or two times in the past month, has increased since legalization. Nevertheless, 4.7 per cent of high-school students reported using cannabis daily or nearly daily (20 or more times in the past 30 days) in 2017. Moreover, although the share of high-school students smoking cannabis declined from 92 per cent in 2015 to 84 per cent in 2017, there was an increase in the share of those who reported using edibles with high THC content (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 36 per cent in 2017) or “dabbing” cannabis extracts and concentrates (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 34 per cent in 2017) in the past month.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'One concern about legalizing the non-medical use of cannabis for adults (21 years and older) is that its use could also increase access to cannabis and its use among adolescents. Based on national data, cannabis use among high-school students remained stable overall, whereas the risk perception of the occasional use of cannabis declined in the United States over the period 2012–2018. In Colorado, although there has been a decline in daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students, they are now consuming and exposed to cannabis products with far higher THC content than was available or used earlier. In 2017, about 20 per cent of high-school students in Colorado reported non-medical use of cannabis in the past month; that rate is comparable to the national average among high-school students.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Colorado and Washington were the first two states in the United States to legalize the production of cannabis for non-medical use, in 2012. However, prior to legalization, those states and others, such as California, had various regimes in place that permitted or tolerated the production and sale of cannabis for medical use, which allowed people with a range of conditions that were not well-defined to gain access to cannabis. The states of Colorado and Washington, for which more long-term trend data are available, are interesting case studies for examining the public health and public safety outcomes that have emerged in the years since the production of cannabis for non-medical use was legalized.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In addition to Vermont, Illinois is another state in which measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were passed through the state legislature rather than through voters’ initiatives, as was the case in the other states that have legalized the nonmedical use of cannabis. In May 2019, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, which was signed by the state Governor in June. The sale of cannabis for non-medical use began on 1 January 2020. Under the law, adults aged 21 and older are allowed to purchase and possess up to 30 g of cannabis flower, edibles with a maximum of 500 mg of THC, or 5 g of cannabis concentrates. Non-residents of Illinois will be allowed to purchase half of those amounts. As in some other states, individual cities, villages and municipalities have the option to decide whether to allow the non-medical use of cannabis in their jurisdictions by passing ordinances. Nonetheless, local governments may neither prohibit home cultivation of cannabis nor “unreasonably prohibit” its non-medical use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the United States, a total of 33 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, had approved or had in place a comprehensive programme for medical cannabis by the end of 2019. As at December 2019, 11 state-level jurisdictions in the United States, plus the District of Columbia, allowed the nonmedical use of cannabis, and most also allowed commercial production by for-profit industry. It is worth noting that all the states that have legalized the non-medical use of cannabis previously had measures in place permitting the medical use of cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although the Cannabis Act introduced a variety of classes of cannabis licences, including for smaller producers, the federal Government requires that a potential supplier have a production facility in place, meaning that the supplier will have already made a substantial investment prior to applying for a licence. Some have speculated that this has contributed to deterring small entrepreneurs from applying for licences and may have favoured the emergence of a market dominated or even monopolized by a relatively small number of large, multi-billion-dollar businesses. There have also been reports of the alcohol, tobacco and finance industries investing in companies involved in nonmedical cannabis production. For instance, according to media sources, in October 2017 Constellation Brands, a major international producer of wine, beer and spirits, invested $4 billion to acquire a 9.9 per cent stake in Canopy Growth, the leading Canadian producer, to develop cannabis-based beverages. By the end of December 2019, Constellation owned a 35 per cent stake in Canopy. In December 2018, the tobacco company Altria made a $1.8 million investment in Cronos Group, a cannabis production company, giving Altria a 45 per cent interest in Cronos. Earlier in the year, Molson Coors Brewing, another multinational alcohol company, signed a joint venture with Quebec-based HEXO to develop and market cannabis-infused beverages. Market analysts have predicted that the alcohol industry will also invest in companies that plan to produce beverages that combine cannabis and beer and, in particular, they predicted that by the end of 2019 two of the largest cannabis companies in the world would be owned by two of the largest alcohol and tobacco companies' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The sale of non-medical cannabis through legal sources represents only a portion of the cannabis market, as it appears that a substantial proportion of users still rely on illegal sources to obtain cannabis (42 per cent in 2019). Moreover, cannabis prices on the illegal market have remained considerably lower (and have been declining) compared with the prices on the legal market. In the second quarter of 2019, based on 236 submissions, the average price per gram of cannabis on the legal market was Can$10.65, compared with Can$5.93 per gram on the illegal market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'By the end of July 2019, about 400 retail outlets had been opened across Canada. The opening of retail outlets has been slower in some places than in others. Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, with a population of 14 million, began with a retail system in which licences were issued to operators by way of a lottery. At the end of July 2019, the province thus had only 24 outlets, fewer than 2 outlets per 1 million population, whereas Newfoundland and Labrador had the same number of outlets per 500,000 population. The province of Alberta permitted the opening of the largest number of retail outlets, with 176 private retail outlets for a population of 4 million.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In most provinces, the retail licensing regime is similar to that regulating the sale of liquor, and cannabis is sold through licensed retailers (private sector), provincial retail stores (public sector) and online. Many provinces have adopted a hybrid model that allows either public or private physical retail outlets together with online retail controlled by regulatory authorities, or a combination of all three. With the exception of the Nunavut territory, all the provinces and territories allow retail sales of cannabis products online. British Columbia and Yukon are the only province and territory that allow all three modes, while Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan have allowed private bricks-and-mortar retail stores.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'According to the new cannabis regulations, the federal Government of Canada is responsible for setting the requirements for those who grow and produce cannabis, including the types of cannabis products available for sale. For example, the regulations were amended in October 2019 to allow the production and sale of edible cannabis, cannabis extracts and topicals, and the sale of those products began gradually from December 2019. The provincial and territorial governments, for their part, are Responsible for developing, implementing, maintaining and enforcing systems to oversee the distribution and sale of cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While most cannabis users had used more than one product, over three quarters of users purchased and consumed dried cannabis flower or leaf for smoking. Although the sale of edibles and extracts started only at the end of 2019, a substantial share of cannabis users reported using edible cannabis products (26 per cent), cannabis oil or vape pens (19 per cent), hashish (16 per cent) and solid cannabis concentrates (14 per cent) during the same year.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In 2019, young people aged 15–24 were more likely than those in older age groups to obtain cannabis from illegal sources, whereas a larger share of older cannabis users relied solely on legal sources; 41 per cent of cannabis users aged 65 or older reported using only legal sources to obtain cannabis, compared with roughly one quarter of the other age groups.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The transition from the illegal market to legal sources of cannabis has been a gradual one. The proportion of cannabis users sourcing their products from the legal market increased from around 25 per cent in the second and third quarters of 2018 to about 50 per cent one year later, and in 2019 nearly 30 per cent relied solely on the legal market for their cannabis (compared with 10 per cent in 2018). Many users relied on multiple sources to obtain their cannabis, with about 40 per cent of cannabis users still getting their product from illegal sources.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Along with the increase in prevalence, the frequency of cannabis use also increased marginally. At the beginning of 2018, some 5 per cent of the population aged 15 and older were daily users of cannabis products; by the third quarter of 2019, this proportion had increased to 6 per cent. Increases in the proportion of daily users of cannabis were observed mainly among males, young people aged 18–24 and those aged 65 and older. Daily or near-daily use of cannabis is more frequent in younger users than in older ones. Nearly 8 per cent of people aged 15–24 and 9 per cent of those aged 25–44 were daily or near-daily users of cannabis, compared with 4 per cent of people aged 45–64 and nearly 3 per cent of those aged 65 and older. Men were twice as likely as women to be daily or near-daily cannabis users. A commonly observed pattern of use is that regular and frequent users of cannabis, such as daily or near-daily users, represent a small proportion of all cannabis users, but they account for the bulk of cannabis products consumed. It is estimated that in 2018, for example, around half a million people in Canada consumed some 810 tons of cannabis, of which half (426 tons) were consumed by daily or near-daily users and another 355 tons by those who reportedly used cannabis at least once a week.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'At the baseline, in the first quarter of 2018, nearly 14 per cent of Canadians (12.2 per cent of women and 15.8 per cent of men) reported that they had used cannabis, including cannabis products for medical purposes, in the past three months. The highest prevalence rates were reported among those aged 25–34 (26 per cent) and 15–24 (23 per cent). By the beginning of 2019, the prevalence of use in the past three months had increased to 17.5 per cent, and it remained close to that level until the third quarter of 2019 (17.1 per cent). While the prevalence of cannabis use in the past three months rose in most age groups in 2019, the most marked increase was observed in the oldest age group (65 and older), for which the prevalence nearly doubled in comparison with 2018. There also seems to be a larger proportion of new users among older adults than in other age groups: while 10 per cent of new cannabis users were aged 25–44 in the second and third quarters of 2019, more than one quarter were aged 65 and older.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'To monitor the outcome of the new cannabis regulations, the Government of Canada has invested in a formal system that may eventually help to evaluate their impact and support the further development of policies and programmes. One of the main measures taken to that end is a cannabis survey that established a baseline in 2018 and is repeated every quarter in order to provide objective information on trends in the use of cannabis products, both medical and non-medical, as well as on how the legal cannabis market has evolved over time.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The objectives of the current cannabis legislation in Canada are to keep cannabis away from young people (under 18 years of age), to prevent criminals from profiting from the distribution and sale of cannabis and to safeguard public health and safety by allowing adults (aged 18 and older) legal access to cannabis. Under the constitutional division of powers in Canada, the federal Government and provincial governments have different responsibilities. As the provinces historically developed their own systems to regulate the sale of alcohol, a similar approach has been applied to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis products.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In general, the drugs are delivered by public or private postal services, presumably without their knowledge, although the drugs may also be hidden in locations that are secretly communicated to the buyer. Parcels are often sent to anonymous post office boxes, including automated lockers for self-service collection. In jurisdictions with strong secrecy-of-correspondence laws, which typically apply to letters, drugs are often dispatched in letters. In some countries, drugs purchased on the darknet are thus preferably posted in letters to destinations within the poster’s own country. This has also prompted some darknet vendors to transport letters containing drugs across the border into neighbouring countries in order to post them within the client’s destination country and avoid detection.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The main characteristic and comparative advantage of darknet markets is their perceived anonymity, in particular the physical anonymity of those who do business on such markets. Purchasing drugs on those markets does not necessarily require physical contact, which reduces the inhibitions of some customers who might otherwise be reticent to interact personally with drug dealers. In addition, the customer does not have to go to dangerous places to buy drugs. Darknet trafficking also overcomes the challenge of sellers and buyers having to be in the same location; thus, organizations that traffic drugs over the darknet do not need to have the critical mass of customers necessary to sustain a local market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
Fundamental to programming is the avoidance of hard coding values that are likely to change, that need translation and that need to be used in different functions based on varying conditions. This is to avoid duplication, ambiguity and re-programming. These values are kept in configuration files that are accessed and amended as needed. This is even more true for medicines that need to be controlled based on nature of harm and use. The idea of globally agreed lists of medicines with harmful substances requiring tight control is good provided laws regarding these are universal, fair and consistent at regional, country or state levels. A key operational issue is that even these global lists are not updated fast enough considering the latest scientific knowledge and that new harmful synthetic substances are rapidly churned out of pharmacy labs. Worse, natural cannabis, peyote, psilcybin, etc. proven over thousands of years to be much more safer in their natural form than the recently created synthetic drugs, continue to remain in these global lists, significantly hampering their objective and efficiency, diverting precious resources and greatly damaging global public health. The Indian NDPS Act is like one of the worst examples of programming with a list of substances hard coded into it and a bunch of rules copy pasted around it, existing over and above the IPC. 20kgs of hashish or 500g of THC will get you the death sentence. Fentanyls, the leading cause of global drug overdose deaths, synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones, etc. are not even on the list...
Jul 21, 2020, 4:09 PM
Cannabis legalization in India is to the world what cannabis legalization in California was to the US...India needs to wake up to it's cannabis heritage and destiny...
Jul 20, 2020, 4:56 PM
'An analysis of NPS reported to UNODC suggests increasing diversification in the NPS market until 2015, followed by a trend towards stabilization in the number of new substances arriving on the market in individual countries, at an overall rate of more than 500 NPS per year, with 528 synthetic NPS and 13 plant-based NPS reported in 2018. While there was a decrease in the number of new synthetic cannabinoids arriving on markets worldwide over the 2014–2018 period, the number of NPS with stimulant effects increased, and the number of newly emerging NPS with opioid effects rose sharply, from 7 substances in 2014 to 48 in 2018. That increase represents a rise from 2 per cent of all NPS in 2014 to 9 per cent in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In March 2019, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs decided to schedule four substances (all fentanyl analogues) under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol and a further five substances under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, thus raising the total number of psychoactive substances under international control to 282 as at the end of 2019. By comparison, the number of NPS identified by authorities worldwide and reported to UNODC is already more than three times that figure, having reached a total of 950 in December 2019, up from 892 in December 2018 and 166 in 2009.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Where data are available, they show a steady decline in the use of NPS in Europe, but such substances have established themselves in some marginalized groups in society, such as the homeless or people in prison, among whom the smoking of synthetic cannabinoids has been identified as a problem. In Europe, the use of NPS in prisons was reported by 22 countries, with synthetic cannabinoids identified as posing the main challenge and health risks (16 countries), whereas the use of synthetic cathinones in prisons was reported by 10 countries, NPS with opioid effects by six, and new benzodiazepines by four countries. In Latvia, the use of synthetic opioids in prisons has also been linked to an increase in overdose cases and in injecting drugs and sharing needles among prisoners who use drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Data on the United States also indicate a marked decline in the use of NPS. In particular, the prevalence of synthetic cannabinoid use among twelfth-grade students fell from 11.4 per cent in 2011 to 3.3 per cent in 2019. Similarly, the use of ketamine fell from 1.7 to 0.7 per cent over the same period, and the use of “bath salts” (synthetic cathinones) dropped from 1.3 per cent in 2012 to 0.6 per cent in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. This happened in the context of a deterioration in the reputation of many of those substances among young people, in parallel to several waves of controls of synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones at the national level during the 2010–2012 period and later at the global level, as well as the control of ketamine at the national level in 1999. Over the 2000–2019 period, the annual prevalence of ketamine non-medical use among twelfth-grade high-school students fell drastically, from 2.5 per cent to 0.7 per cent' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'After marked increases over the 2009-2012 period, the overall quantities of synthetic NPS seized have shown a downward trend since 2012, most notably when they fell from 44 tons in 2017 to 10 tons in 2018. This may partly reflect the fact that some of the most widely used and most harmful NPS have been put under national and international control in recent years and therefore, according to the current definition, no longer belong to the NPS category. Moreover, a number of countries in North America, Europe and Oceania, where major markets for NPS are located, have introduced various controls on NPS trade in recent years. In parallel, China, which is frequently mentioned as the main country of origin or departure for various synthetic NPS (with 27 per cent of all such mentions over the 2014–2018 period, ahead of India with 10 per cent), has introduced controls in various waves on the manufacture of and trade in such substances. This and other developments appear to have had an impact on the proliferation of NPS at the global level, reducing the quantities of those substances on key markets.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The bulk of tramadol seized in the period 2014– 2018 was seized in West and Central Africa (notably in Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and the Niger), followed by North Africa (notably Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan) and the Near and Middle East (notably Jordan and the United Arab Emirates). In some instances, countries in Western and Central Europe (notably Malta and Greece) have been used as transit countries for tramadol destined for North Africa (Egypt and Libya), although some of the tramadol seized in Europe (in particular Sweden) was also intended for the local market. For the first time ever, significant seizures of tramadol were reported in South Asia (India) in 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of the global total that year, which reflects the fact tramadol was put under the control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of India in April 2018.
As the full-scale scheduling of tramadol in India took place in 2018,218 and India had been the main source for (illegal) tramadol shipments, the decline in seizures outside India in 2018 may have been the result of a disrupted market. By contrast, and probably as a result of the control in India, seizures of tramadol in that country increased greatly in 2018, and thus in South Asia as a whole (more than 1,000-fold compared with a year earlier).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The 2019 drug use survey in India estimated that nearly 1 per cent of the population aged 10–75 had misused pharmaceutical opioids in the past year and that an estimated 0.2 per cent of the population (2.5 million people) were suffering from drug use disorders related to pharmaceutical opioids. Although the breakdown by type of pharmaceutical opioids misused in India is not available, buprenorphine, morphine, pentazocine and tramadol are the most common opioids misused in the country.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of tramadol among other pharmaceutical drugs is reported by several countries in South Asia: Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In 2017, 130,316 capsules containing tramadol and marketed under the trade name “Spasmo Proxyvon Plus (‘SP+’)” were seized in Bhutan. In Sri Lanka, about 0.2 per cent of the population aged 14 and older are estimated to have misused pharmaceutical drugs in the past year. Among them, the non-medical use of tramadol is the most common, although misuse of morphine, diazepam, flunitrazepam and pregabalin have also been reported in the country. The misuse of more than one pharmaceutical drug (including tramadol) is also a common pattern among heroin users who may use them to potentiate the effects of heroin or compensate for its low level of availability. Recent seizures of tramadol suggest the existence of a market for the drug: in April and September 2018, 200,000 and 1.5 million tablets of tramadol were respectively seized by customs in Sri Lanka.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The trafficking and availability of tramadol for its non-medical use is a public health concern, but limited distribution of tramadol for medical use would also pose a public health concern, in particular in Africa, where there is a chronic shortage of pain medications. There are no data on the availability and use of tramadol for medical purposes, but data on internationally controlled substances clearly highlight the gaps in the accessibility of pain medications. The general lack of access to opioid-related pain medications under international control is a specific problem for developing countries, which is even more pronounced in countries in West and Central Africa than in other parts of the world.
Against this background of a de facto non-availability of internationally controlled opioids for pain medication for large sections of the population in West and Central Africa, tramadol – even though it is under national control in some West African countries – is in fact a widely available opioid in those countries, used for both medical purposes (including outside prescription) and for non-medical purposes' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the Sudan, while population-based estimates of the extent of substance use are not available, research suggests that the drug scene has rapidly changed, especially with the increasing non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs among young people, including tramadol, benzodiazepines, cough syrups and antihistamines, trihexyphenidyl, anticonvulsants and neuropathic pain agents such as pregabalin and gabapentin.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In North Africa, tramadol is reported as the main opioid used non-medically in Egypt, where scientific literature about tramadol misuse is more available than elsewhere in the subregion. An estimated 3 per cent of the adult population misused tramadol in 2016, the latest year for which data are available, while 2.2 per cent were diagnosed with tramadol dependence. In drug treatment, tramadol was also the main drug, accounting for 68 per cent of all people treated for drug use disorders in 2017. A cross-sectional study conducted over the period 2012–2013 among 1,135 undergraduate college students in Egypt showed that 20.2 per cent of male and 2.4 per cent of female students had misused tramadol at least once during their lifetime, resulting in an overall lifetime prevalence of 12.3 per cent The average age of initiation of non-medical use of tramadol was around 17 years. Polydrug use was also quite common, with the majority of respondents (85 per cent) reporting use of either tobacco, alcohol or cannabis with tramadol. Among those who had misused tramadol, 30 per cent were assessed to be tramadol dependent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of tramadol is of particular concern among young people in many countries in that subregion. For example, a cross-sectional study among 300 young people in western Ghana found that while the majority (85 per cent) of respondents knew someone who misused tramadol, more than half of the young people interviewed had used tramadol themselves for non-medical purposes, and one third of the users reported misusing 9–10 doses of tramadol per day. Another qualitative study from Ghana reported curiosity, peer pressure and iatrogenic addiction as the three main factors for initiation and continuing non-medical use of tramadol, while perceived euphoria, attentiveness, relief from pain, physical energy and aphrodisiac effects were mentioned as some of the reasons for continuing non-medical use of tramadol.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The drug use survey in Nigeria reveals tramadol to be a more accessible opioid than heroin, although it is still relatively costly if used frequently. While use of tramadol appears to cost about one third the price of heroin ($3.60 versus $10 per day of use in the past 30 days), in a country where the minimum wage of a full-time worker is around $57 per month, regular tramadol use still poses a considerable financial burden on users and their families. There is no information on the prevalence of drug use in other West African countries, but treatment data reveal tramadol to be the main drug of concern for people with drug use disorders. Tramadol ranks highly among the substances for which people were treated in West Africa in the period 2014–2017. This was particularly the case in Benin, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'At the global level, Germany was the second largest consumer of opioid pain relievers, with an estimated 28,862 S-DDD per million population per day for medical use in 2017, followed by Austria, Belgium and Switzerland. In Germany, the number of pharmaceutical opioids overall and the number of people receiving opioid treatment have increased over the past few decades; in most instances, prescriptions were given for non-chronic cancer pain. A review of scientific literature from Germany published between 1985 and 2016 showed that out of the 12 studies reviewed, 6 studies reported a prevalence for patients with medical use of any opioid for long-term treatment of non-cancer chronic pain ranging from 0.54 to 5.7 per cent, while four studies reported a prevalence for patients with medical use of opioids at 0.057 to 1.39 per cent of the population' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The clandestine manufacture of fentanyls within North America is thus not really a new phenomenon and has the potential to increase in importance following the recent control of fentanyls substances in China. Moreover, the clandestine manufacture of fentanyl has already spread beyond North America to neighbouring subregions, as a clandestine fentanyl laboratory was dismantled in the city of Santiago, Dominican Republic, in 2017. At the same time, there is a risk that other countries with a large and thriving pharmaceutical sector may become involved in the clandestine manufacture of fentanyls. In 2018, for example, authorities of India reported two relatively large seizures of fentanyl destined for North America. Furthermore, according to United States authorities, in September 2018, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence of India, in cooperation with DEA of the United States Department of Justice, dismantled the first known illicit fentanyl laboratory in India and seized approximately 11 kg of fentanyl' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'According to United States authorities, most of the fentanyls destined for the North American market have been manufactured in China in recent years, from where they were either shipped directly to the United States, mostly through postal services, or were first shipped to Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Canada and then smuggled into the United States. However, after the introduction by China in May 2019 of drug controls based on generic legislation with regard to the fentanyls, which effectively brought more than 1,400 known fentanyl analogues under national control in China, early signs suggest that fewer fentanyls were smuggled from China to North America. At the same time, attempts to manufacture fentanyl and its analogues inside North America are increasing, notably in Mexico, by means of a method using precursor chemicals smuggled into the subregion from East Asia and South Asia.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The current crisis of fentanyls appears to be more supply-driven than earlier waves of increases in the use of pharmaceutical opioids or heroin. Fentanyls are being used as an adulterant of heroin, are used to make falsified pharmaceutical opioids, such as falsified oxycodone and hydrocodone – and even falsified benzodiazepines – which are sold to a large and unsuspecting population of users of opioids and other drugs; users are not seeking fentanyl as such.
It seems that some local distributors are not able to distinguish between heroin, fentanyl and fentanyl laced heroin, nor between diverted pharmaceutical opioids and falsified opioids containing fentanyl. A general problem with fentanyls is dosing by nonprofessional “pharmacists”, where small mistakes can lead to lethal results. Furthermore, as the overdose death data suggest, even people using cocaine and psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine, are also exposed – probably unintentionally – to fentanyls or other potent synthetic opioids mixed with those substances' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'There is a great incentive for trafficking organizations to expand the fentanyl market: the large associated revenues. Compared with heroin, the production costs of single-dose fentanyls are substantially lower. For instance, it may cost between $1,400 and $3,500 to synthesize 1 kg of fentanyl, which could bring a return of between $1 million and $1.5 million from street sales. For comparison, 1 kg of heroin purchased from Colombia may cost $5,000 to $7,000,99 around $53,000 at the wholesale level in the United States and around $400,000 at the retail level in the United States. With fentanyls, the logistics for supply are also more flexible because fentanyls can be manufactured anywhere and are not subject to the climatic conditions or the vulnerable conditions required for the largescale cultivation of opium poppy.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'All factors driving fentanyl use converged from 2013 onwards in the United States and Canada, which may explain the unprecedented spread of the fentanyls in those markets: factors such as the diffusion of simpler, more effective methods of manufacture of synthetic opioids and their analogues (primarily fentanyls), assisted by the availability on the Internet of instructions for their manufacture; a shift from preparation by a limited number of skilled chemists to preparation by basic “cooks” who could simply follow the posted instructions; the discovery of ever more fentanyl analogues; a lack of effective control of precursors and oversight of the industry; expanding distribution networks that reduced the risk of detection through the use of postal services and the Internet; and increased licit trade including e-commerce.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In 2018, approximately 10.3 million people (3.7 per cent of the population aged 12 years or older) had misused opioids in the past year in the United States. Most of them, 9.9 million (3.6 per cent of the population aged 12 years and older), reported non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, while almost 800,000 reported past-year use of heroin (comprising just 8 per cent of the total population who reported past-year misuse of opioids).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Overall, in 2018 overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioids, comprising mainly fentanyls, accounted for nearly half of the total overdose deaths in the United States. Among the reasons for the high number of overdose deaths attributed to fentanyls are their often small lethal doses relative to other opioids: fentanyl, for example, is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, and carfentanil may be as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine for an average user. A lethal dose of carfentanil for a human can be as low as 20 micrograms.
The rapid expansion of fentanyl use in the United States is also visible in the data on seizures and the drug samples analysed, with a considerable increase since 2014 in the number of samples identified as fentanyl. In 2018, fentanyl accounted for 45 per cent of the pharmaceutical opioids that were identified in different samples, while oxycodone accounted for 14 per cent' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The rate of prescription of opioids in the United States fell to 51.4 prescriptions per 100 persons (a total of more than 168 million opioid prescriptions) in 2018 from a peak of 81.3 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons (or 255 million opioid prescriptions) in 2012. The opioid prescription rate in the southern United States remains high, however, with most states in the region reporting opioid prescription rates of 64 or more per 100 persons in 2018. A number of factors at work, including advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, physicians’ prescription practices, dispensing and medical culture and patient expectations have, since the new millennium, resulted in high prescription rates and dosages of opioids given for an extended duration of care, primarily for the management of acute to chronic non-cancer pain. These practices have also enabled the diversion and misuse of pharmaceutical opioids, together with a greater risk of opioid use disorders among those with a legitimate prescription.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although geographically disconnected, the areas that were initially affected by the opioid crisis in Canada and the United States have experienced remarkably similar market dynamics, which can be broadly described in the following sequential steps: (a) High rates of prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioids leading to diversion and an increase in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, opioid use disorders and an increase in opioid overdose deaths (b) Regulations introduced to reduce diversion and non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids (e.g., tamper-proof formulations to prevent injecting) (d) Fentanyl (illicitly manufactured in clandestine laboratories) and its analogues emerge as adulterants in heroin and stimulants (cocaine and methamphetamine) and are sold as falsified pharmaceutical opioids, resulting in massive increases in deaths attributed to fentanyls (e) Fentanyls emerge as the dominant opioid in opioid overdose deaths, as well as contributing to overdose deaths attributed to other drugs (g) Fentanyl-related deaths are the main contributor to total opioid overdose deaths;' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The scientific literature has attempted to understand the reasons for the sudden rise of fentanyls in preexisting opioid markets. It seems that an interplay between a number of external factors and local market dynamics played a role in the spread of the opioid crisis in North America. Some of the factors that have led to the rise and continued presence of fentanyls include: (a) the diffusion of simpler and more effective methods of manufacture of synthetic opioids and their analogues (primarily fentanyls); (b) a lack of effective control of precursors and oversight of the manufacture industry; (c) expanding distribution networks; (d) reduced smuggling risks because of new methods of trafficking within the expanded licit trade; and (e) pre-existing market conditions (demand for opioids and potential supply shocks)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'From what is known, it is possible to identify common threats and different dynamics in the two opioid crises, in Africa and in North America: • The ease of manufacturing, easy accessibility and low-cost production make the illicit markets for tramadol and fentanyls substantially more profitable for traffickers than are other opioids such as heroin. • The large-scale manufacture of tramadol and fentanyls for the illicit market started in a context of an absence of international regulations on tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. • The interchangeability (or substitution) of fentanyl and tramadol within the pharmaceutical and illicit drug markets makes it more difficult to address their misuse. Their non-medical use is also seen in the context of self-medication, and thus carries less stigma or is countered by lesser legal sanctions than is the case with other controlled drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In West, Central and North Africa and the Middle East, tramadol – a pharmaceutical opioid not under international control – has emerged as a major opioid of concern. The drug, in addition to being diverted from the legal market, is mainly trafficked into those subregions in dosages higher than what is prescribed for pain management, with an increasing number of people with tramadol use disorder entering treatment.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids is not a new phenomenon. It has been observed for decades as part of the polydrug use pattern among high-risk or regular opioid users. What characterizes the most recent opioid crisis is the emergence of non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids as the main phenomenon, leading to alarming rates of dependence and overdose deaths at the national level. The subregions most affected by this crisis are North America and West, Central and North Africa, where different opioids and different dynamics are driving the threat. In North America, the introduction of fentanyl and its analogues (fentanyls) in the drug market has resulted in a syndemic of use of opioids characterized by an unprecedented increase in opioid overdose deaths' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Most of the clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia has traditionally been in the Islamic Republic of Iran, being manufactured both for the local market and for export to countries in East and South-East Asia (including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand) as well as for export to Central Asia and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan) and to Europe (including Bulgaria, France, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom). However, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the main source of the methamphetamine found in other countries in the Near and Middle East/SouthWest Asia (with the exception of Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic). The main source countries for other countries in this subregion seem to continue to be countries in East and South-East Asia. The extent of clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in the Islamic Republic of Iran actually appears to be declining, while manufacturing is rapidly increasing in neighbouring Afghanistan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'An analysis of the Hydra market, based on webscraping techniques, conducted in February 2019, revealed a total of 13,935 drug listings on the platform in one day, dominated by synthetic cathinones (39 per cent of all listings, notably alpha-PVP and mephedrone), cannabis, mostly marijuana (16 per cent) and hashish (14 per cent), traditional ATS, mostly amphetamine (10 per cent) and methamphetamine (1 per cent), cocaine (4 per cent), psychedelics (3 per cent), dissociatives (2 per cent) and opioids (2 per cent). The analysis also indicated that, partly due to the increasing availability of drugs through the darknet, two thirds of the Russian population were now able to buy drugs instantly. The importance of trafficking ATS through the darknet and/or through web shops is also indirectly reflected in the high proportion of ATS being shipped to end users and local retail traffickers by mail: 80 per cent in 2018 – a higher proportion than for most other drug categories in the Russian Federation' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In this context, INCB raised concerns over large-scale exports of pseudoephedrine preparations from Jordan to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. While the officially reported estimate of pseudoephedrine used in Iraq in 2018 was approximately 10 tons, notified shipments of pseudoephedrine preparations sent through the Pre-Export Notification Online system were three times that amount. Those shipments took place even though the national authorities objected.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The emergence of methamphetamine use in Iraq was reported in 2012, when, on the basis of data from medical and psychiatric hospitals, outpatient clients, health centres, surveys of medial patients and prisoners and law enforcement reports, the primary drugs of concern in Iraq were found to be “captagon”, crystalline methamphetamine and tramadol. A study conducted in 2015 reported that drug users in Iraq thought that cannabis was “very difficult” to obtain while “captagon” and methamphetamine were “very easy” to obtain. Both official and media sources report a recent rapid increase in methamphetamine use in Iraq. Initially, law enforcement sources in Iraq suggested that methamphetamine was mainly smuggled into the country from the neighbouring Islamic Republic of Iran, across the long shared border, being smuggled to Basra in the south in particular. However, there have been reports of the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine inside Iraq. In November 2016, for example, the Iraqi National Security Agency discovered methamphetamine laboratories in Basra and in the south-eastern province of Maysan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Much of the methamphetamine production in these subregions was originally intended for exports to the rapidly growing markets of East and South-East Asia, but domestic markets also appear to have started to emerge in the Near and Middle East/ South-West Asia in recent years. Of 15 reporting countries in these subregions, 12 countries reported the use of methamphetamine by 2018 (or the latest year for which data are available). In the absence of scientific data for the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, qualitative information on trends in methamphetamine use reported by national authorities to UNODC give an indication of the threat experienced by the region. National authorities have reported a clear upward trend in methamphetamine use in those subregions. Methamphetamine appears to have emerged in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia as the main ATS used in the Islamic Republic of Iran (2009– 2018) as well as in Iraq (2016 and 2017), Lebanon (2014–2017), Bahrein (2016), Afghanistan (2015 and 2016), Israel (2014 and 2015) and Kuwait (2003, 2009, 2013' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the past few years, the manufacture and use of methamphetamine have emerged in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, subregions that until recently were dominated by use of “captagon”. Methamphetamine manufacture and consumption used to be largely unknown in those subregions. Initially reported by only one country in the subregion (Israel), the number of countries reporting seizures of methamphetamine has increased in subsequent years. Overall, eight countries in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia reported seizures of methamphetamine in the period 2000–2009, rising to 14 countries in the period 2010–2018. The bulk of the methamphetamine seized, however, continued to be seized by the Islamic Republic of Iran.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the context of the long-term dynamics of the global drug market, there are many different changes that have affected selected geographical areas. Within the past two decades some regions have seen a gradual transformation of their drug markets: methamphetamine has become the predominant drug in South-East Asia, amphetamine (“captagon’’) in the Middle East, North America has been confronted with the opioid crisis, Africa has seen an expansion of its domestic heroin market, and countries in North and West Africa are now facing a tramadol crisis. More recently, two subregions, the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia and the Russian Federation/ Central Asia, appear to have been affected by rapid changes in their drug markets, with new drugs taking a substantial share of the drug market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'England and Wales and Australia are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have competed for their share of the stimulant market over the past 20 years. Germany and the United States are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have together led the changes in the stimulant market
Within the stimulant markets, there are also examples of substitution effects in the “ecstasy” market. In England and Wales, for example, trend data on the use of “ecstasy”, mephedrone and NPS in the period 2005–2019 suggest that first mephedrone and later NPS filled the market space left by the decreasing supply of “ecstasy”, mainly due to a supply shortage, until 2012. Once “ecstasy” started to regain its previous share, the other substances declined sharply' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although in Europe opioids continue to be the predominant main drug for which people seek drug treatment, cocaine has become more common in Spain and methamphetamine remains the main drug of concern in Czechia. Within the amphetamines group, different patterns have developed in different subregions. For example, amphetamine continues to be the primary ATS of concern in Europe and in the Middle East, while methamphetamine has emerged as the primary ATS of concern in East and South-East Asia and in North America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While the main drug treatment interventions in Asia and Europe continue to be linked primarily to opiates, in Africa to cannabis, and in South America to cocaine, in North America there has been a shift over the past decade from the predominance of cocaine to an increasing importance of opioids. Marked shifts in the main drug for which patients receive drug treatment can also been observed at the subregional level. In a number of countries in East and South-East Asia, for example, methamphetamine has emerged as the predominant drug; in the Near and Middle East, “captagon” tablets (amphetamine), and along the eastern coast of Africa, heroin, have emerged as the predominant drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Increases in drug use have at times also been supply driven, as users react to growing supply and the attendant falling prices by increasing their consumption of those drugs. This was the case with cocaine in recent years, among other drugs. Some of the recent changes in drug markets, such as the opioid crisis in North America and the rapid emergence of a synthetic drug market in the Russian Federation and Central Asia, can also be defined as supply driven phenomena. The expansion of the synthetic drugs market in the Russian Federation seems to be mainly linked to the Hydra darknet platform. While there may now be an established user-based demand for synthetic drugs, the initial trigger was new suppliers. The rise of fentanyl in North America was not defined by a new demand either but was the result of opportunities seized by drug suppliers to reduce costs and thus increase profit margins.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
At a certain point of time, when the world's super rich and the regressive governments they fund, find their vast amounts of illusory wealth rapidly diminishing, panic will set in among them. Then cures will be touted and administered with amazing speed and energy. The hype and hysteria surrounding the increasing spread of disease will change direction and will become then the hype and hysteria of the wonderful cure that has been created. Once the dust clears, it will be evident who profited the most from this entire exercise. Perhaps even the source and the causes of the entire event will become clear as well for those who seek it. Some big industries may fall though it looks unlikely. Other new ones may emerge. The composition of the super rich may change as predators move in to seize the opportunity and eat up the weak among them. But the size of the super rich and the percentage of wealth they horde, like the size of the sun, is unlikely to change. The rest of the living beings will continue rising and falling like the super heated corona of the sun, collateral damage. When that point in time is reached, whether it be in weeks or in months or years, is something to look out for, for those keen on observing such phenomena...Apr 1, 2020, 4:41 PM
'A majority of Americans say that adult-use marijuana legalization has been a success in those states that have implemented it, according to nationwide polling compiled by YouGov.com.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said that statewide laws allowing recreational marijuana use have been either fully or mostly successful. Nineteen percent of respondents said that the laws have been largely unsuccessful. Twenty-six percent voiced no opinion. '
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/poll-majority-of-americans-say-adult-use-legalization-policies-have-been-a-success
'Cannabis exposure does not negatively impact the lungs in a manner consistent with tobacco, nor is it similarly linked to elevated rates of either COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or lung cancer, according a literature review published in the journal Addiction.
A team of New Zealand researchers reviewed clinical trial data assessing the impact of cannabis smoke exposure on the lungs. They report that "the effects of smoking cannabis on the lungs are distinct from tobacco."
Specifically, they write: "[I]t has been pragmatic to assume that cannabis and tobacco would have similar respiratory effects. ... The research that has been done, however, offers a different story. The most common serious respiratory consequences from smoking tobacco are Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and lung cancer. Epidemiological evidence that smoking cannabis causes either of these is scant."'
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/review-cannabis-smoke-exposure-is-distinct-from-tobacco-not-associated-with-copd-or-lung-cancer
'The purpose of this Notice is to inform potential applications to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute on Aging (NIA) of special interest in grant applications to conduct rigorous research on cannabis and potentially addictive, psychoactive prescription drug use (specifically opioids and benzodiazepine) in older adults. This program will focus on two distinct older adult populations (over the age of 50): (1) individuals with earlier use onset of cannabis and the specified drug classes who are now entering older age, or (2) individuals who initiate use of cannabis and the specified drug classes after the age of 50. Insights gained from this initiative have the potential to inform the public and health care systems regarding use of cannabis and prescription opioids and benzodiazepines in older populations.'
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-DA-20-014.html
'The hemp industry scored a victory on Tuesday after the Senate passed a coronavirus relief bill that, for the first time, will allow farmers to access a certain federal loan program amid the pandemic.
Farmers have historically been left out of disaster relief legislation through the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) because they’re eligible for separate programs under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But those programs are designated for natural disasters, and so industry advocates have been pushing Congress to allow farmers to be eligible for SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/hemp-industry-secures-federal-coronavirus-relief-for-farmers-in-senate-passed-bill/
So we contaminate our environment, food and water with dangerous man-made chemicals in the pursuit of quick money. These chemicals cause cancers in our bodies. To treat these cancers we make dangerous synthetic drugs, in the pursuit of quick money, that not only fail to treat the cancers, but also result in a collapse of most other body systems. This leads to a weakening and collapse of humans on increasingly larger scales as time goes by. But we do nothing to stop the contamination and weakening of our bodies that evolved over hundreds of millions of years and the contamination of our environment, food and water. Instead we continue searching for more powerful man made chemicals, to make more money faster, in the name of medicine for our environment, bodies and minds believing that we are masters of nature or, if not that, smarter than nature, whom we can fool like our gullible fellow men...but nature is not looking to make more money faster..she only deals in life and death...
The bully, believing that he has cornered his victim, moves in for the kill. So caught up is he in the moment of his apparent triumph over the hapless prey, that he forgets he is surrounded by a larger community watching every move played out in the drama of life. Or maybe he thinks that they have been sufficiently distracted by the side show he constructed. But it only takes one false move, maybe the last one in a series of moves, to make the true nature of the bully completely clear to the majority. Then the insecurities that fueled his lopsided physical and psychological growth, making him choose the path of the monster, instead of the path of the wise man, finally become reality. The table is turned and the bully finds himself cornered this time...
'In 2013, the Government of Uruguay approved legislation (Law No. 19.172) regulating the cultivation, production, dispensing and use of cannabis for different purposes, including non-medical use. In accordance with the legislation, Uruguayan citizens or foreigners with permanent residence aged 18 and older can obtain cannabis for non-medical purposes by registering with the national Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis and by choosing one of three options: (a) purchase in authorized pharmacies; (b) membership of a club; or (c) domestic cultivation. The quantity of cannabis permitted per person, obtained through any of the three mechanisms, cannot exceed 480 g per year. Initially, the Government of Uruguay set THC content at 2 per cent and CBD content at 6–7 per cent. In 2017, the Government introduced two new varieties, with a maximum THC content of 9 per cent and CBD content of no less than 3 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Moreover, many of the studies have overlooked the proliferation of fentanyl as a driver of opioid overdose mortality in the United States, which may negate any potential effect of medical cannabis on overdose deaths. It can only be concluded that additional research might help to identify a range of alternative non-opioid medications and non-pharmacological treatments that could be effective in pain management. The issue of whether increased accessibility of cannabis could reduce the medical and non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids and their negative impact remains inconclusive.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Out of the nearly 9,000 respondents, 5 per cent reported ever using cannabis and had used opioids in the past year, among whom 43 per cent had used opioids daily and 23 per cent had used cannabis in the past 30 days. Although the results are based on a small number of respondents, of the 450 who reported ever using cannabis and past-year opioid use, 41 per cent reported a decrease or cessation of opioid use as a result of cannabis use, 46 per cent reported no change in opioid use and 8 per cent reported an increase in opioid use' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'With regard to cannabis products substituting for opioids as pain relief medication, it is considered that the analgesic effects of cannabis are not sufficiently powerful to palliate acute pain or to manage chronic pain. For example, only in very specific cases have preparations containing THC, such as dronabinol and nabiximols, been shown to be effective in the management of neuropathic pain in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. A long-term longitudinal study among people who were prescribed opioids showed greater pain severity and pain interference (pain effects on sleep, working ability, daily living, social interactions, lower pain self-efficacy and higher levels of generalized anxiety disorder) among the 24 per cent who also used cannabis daily or less frequently than among those who did not use cannabis. Moreover, individuals who used cannabis on a near-daily basis were less likely to discontinue opioid use than participants who abstained from cannabis use' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A study on the impact of cannabis legalization on alcohol sales in Colorado, Oregon and Washington, the three states with the longest history of legal nonmedical use of cannabis, showed that there was no evidence that legalization had had any impact on the sale of spirits or on total alcohol sales, which are generally considered a good proxy for alcohol consumption in the United States. The study showed that the per capita sale of spirits had increased by 3.6 per cent in Oregon, 5.4 per cent in Washington and 7.6 per cent in Colorado in 2018, after the measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were implemented in those states. Consistent with national trends, per capita sales of beer had declined by 3.6 per cent in Colorado, 2.3 per cent in Washington and 3.6 per cent in Oregon. The sale of wine increased by 0.7 per cent in Oregon, declined by 3.1 per cent in Washington and increased by 3.2 per cent in Colorado. Overall, per capita sales of alcoholic beverages were fairly stable, as they increased by 1.7 per cent in Colorado, declined by 0.2 per cent in Washington and declined by 0.5 per cent in Oregon' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'More than half of the studies, however, have shown that cannabis and alcohol are substitutes, meaning that the increased use of one substance reduces the use of the other. Other researchers have also suggested that cannabis, especially cannabis for medical use, may serve as a substitute for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, including prescription drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In Washington, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol is considered the number one contributing factor in fatal crashes and is involved in nearly half of all traffic fatalities. However, in that state, reporting on such cases does not differentiate between cannabis and other drugs. The number of reported cases of driving under the influence of drugs has increased by more than 60 per cent in Washington since 2014. Although not so recent, data on drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for alcohol or drugs in Washington during the period 2008–2016 show that 44 per cent tested positive for two or more substances. Of those substances, the most common one was alcohol, followed by THC, while alcohol and THC formed the most common polydrug combination involved in fatal crashes during that period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Starting in 2014, data on traffic fatalities in Colorado showed a marked increase in the number of traffic deaths in which the driver tested positive for cannabis use. Over the period 2009–2013, there were 53 traffic deaths on average per year in which the driver tested positive for cannabis, a figure that increased to an average of 110 such deaths in the period 2014–2018, and the proportion of fatalities with drivers testing positive for cannabis doubled over the period 2009–2018. However, toxicology analysis has shown that car crashes in which the driver was found to be under the influence of cannabis frequently involved other drugs, in particular alcohol' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A contentious issue between people who are for and against the legalization of cannabis remains whether it has had an impact on driving under the influence of cannabis and caused fatal car crashes. The evidence remains inconclusive, as within the United States there have been no differences in cannabis- or alcohol-related traffic fatalities between states that have and have not legalized the non-medical use of cannabis. As different research contributions have also shown, it is difficult to quantify the effects of cannabis on road accidents, as cannabis is often used in combination with alcohol, which increases the challenge of determining the influence of cannabis itself on road traffic accidents. Moreover, studies on THC levels and degrees of impairment have found that the level of THC in the blood and the degree of impairment do not appear to be closely related; peak impairment does not occur when THC concentration in the blood is at or near peak levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In Washington state, the past-month use of cannabis among high-school students of different grades has generally remained stable, although it increases by grade, with the highest past-month prevalence found among twelfth grade students, as in Colorado. The perception of risk relating to cannabis use among high-school students has also declined since the nonmedical use of cannabis was legalized, with nearly three quarters of twelfth grade students seeing no or low risk in trying cannabis a few times and less than half perceiving no or low risk in the regular use of cannabis in 2018. Similarly, some 38 per cent of twelfth grade students considered that it was fairly easy to get cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While the daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students in Colorado has declined, the prevalence of occasional users, that is, those who report having used cannabis one or two times in the past month, has increased since legalization. Nevertheless, 4.7 per cent of high-school students reported using cannabis daily or nearly daily (20 or more times in the past 30 days) in 2017. Moreover, although the share of high-school students smoking cannabis declined from 92 per cent in 2015 to 84 per cent in 2017, there was an increase in the share of those who reported using edibles with high THC content (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 36 per cent in 2017) or “dabbing” cannabis extracts and concentrates (from 28 per cent in 2015 to 34 per cent in 2017) in the past month.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'One concern about legalizing the non-medical use of cannabis for adults (21 years and older) is that its use could also increase access to cannabis and its use among adolescents. Based on national data, cannabis use among high-school students remained stable overall, whereas the risk perception of the occasional use of cannabis declined in the United States over the period 2012–2018. In Colorado, although there has been a decline in daily or near-daily use of cannabis among high-school students, they are now consuming and exposed to cannabis products with far higher THC content than was available or used earlier. In 2017, about 20 per cent of high-school students in Colorado reported non-medical use of cannabis in the past month; that rate is comparable to the national average among high-school students.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Colorado and Washington were the first two states in the United States to legalize the production of cannabis for non-medical use, in 2012. However, prior to legalization, those states and others, such as California, had various regimes in place that permitted or tolerated the production and sale of cannabis for medical use, which allowed people with a range of conditions that were not well-defined to gain access to cannabis. The states of Colorado and Washington, for which more long-term trend data are available, are interesting case studies for examining the public health and public safety outcomes that have emerged in the years since the production of cannabis for non-medical use was legalized.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In addition to Vermont, Illinois is another state in which measures allowing the non-medical use of cannabis were passed through the state legislature rather than through voters’ initiatives, as was the case in the other states that have legalized the nonmedical use of cannabis. In May 2019, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, which was signed by the state Governor in June. The sale of cannabis for non-medical use began on 1 January 2020. Under the law, adults aged 21 and older are allowed to purchase and possess up to 30 g of cannabis flower, edibles with a maximum of 500 mg of THC, or 5 g of cannabis concentrates. Non-residents of Illinois will be allowed to purchase half of those amounts. As in some other states, individual cities, villages and municipalities have the option to decide whether to allow the non-medical use of cannabis in their jurisdictions by passing ordinances. Nonetheless, local governments may neither prohibit home cultivation of cannabis nor “unreasonably prohibit” its non-medical use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the United States, a total of 33 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, had approved or had in place a comprehensive programme for medical cannabis by the end of 2019. As at December 2019, 11 state-level jurisdictions in the United States, plus the District of Columbia, allowed the nonmedical use of cannabis, and most also allowed commercial production by for-profit industry. It is worth noting that all the states that have legalized the non-medical use of cannabis previously had measures in place permitting the medical use of cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although the Cannabis Act introduced a variety of classes of cannabis licences, including for smaller producers, the federal Government requires that a potential supplier have a production facility in place, meaning that the supplier will have already made a substantial investment prior to applying for a licence. Some have speculated that this has contributed to deterring small entrepreneurs from applying for licences and may have favoured the emergence of a market dominated or even monopolized by a relatively small number of large, multi-billion-dollar businesses. There have also been reports of the alcohol, tobacco and finance industries investing in companies involved in nonmedical cannabis production. For instance, according to media sources, in October 2017 Constellation Brands, a major international producer of wine, beer and spirits, invested $4 billion to acquire a 9.9 per cent stake in Canopy Growth, the leading Canadian producer, to develop cannabis-based beverages. By the end of December 2019, Constellation owned a 35 per cent stake in Canopy. In December 2018, the tobacco company Altria made a $1.8 million investment in Cronos Group, a cannabis production company, giving Altria a 45 per cent interest in Cronos. Earlier in the year, Molson Coors Brewing, another multinational alcohol company, signed a joint venture with Quebec-based HEXO to develop and market cannabis-infused beverages. Market analysts have predicted that the alcohol industry will also invest in companies that plan to produce beverages that combine cannabis and beer and, in particular, they predicted that by the end of 2019 two of the largest cannabis companies in the world would be owned by two of the largest alcohol and tobacco companies' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The sale of non-medical cannabis through legal sources represents only a portion of the cannabis market, as it appears that a substantial proportion of users still rely on illegal sources to obtain cannabis (42 per cent in 2019). Moreover, cannabis prices on the illegal market have remained considerably lower (and have been declining) compared with the prices on the legal market. In the second quarter of 2019, based on 236 submissions, the average price per gram of cannabis on the legal market was Can$10.65, compared with Can$5.93 per gram on the illegal market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'By the end of July 2019, about 400 retail outlets had been opened across Canada. The opening of retail outlets has been slower in some places than in others. Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, with a population of 14 million, began with a retail system in which licences were issued to operators by way of a lottery. At the end of July 2019, the province thus had only 24 outlets, fewer than 2 outlets per 1 million population, whereas Newfoundland and Labrador had the same number of outlets per 500,000 population. The province of Alberta permitted the opening of the largest number of retail outlets, with 176 private retail outlets for a population of 4 million.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In most provinces, the retail licensing regime is similar to that regulating the sale of liquor, and cannabis is sold through licensed retailers (private sector), provincial retail stores (public sector) and online. Many provinces have adopted a hybrid model that allows either public or private physical retail outlets together with online retail controlled by regulatory authorities, or a combination of all three. With the exception of the Nunavut territory, all the provinces and territories allow retail sales of cannabis products online. British Columbia and Yukon are the only province and territory that allow all three modes, while Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan have allowed private bricks-and-mortar retail stores.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'According to the new cannabis regulations, the federal Government of Canada is responsible for setting the requirements for those who grow and produce cannabis, including the types of cannabis products available for sale. For example, the regulations were amended in October 2019 to allow the production and sale of edible cannabis, cannabis extracts and topicals, and the sale of those products began gradually from December 2019. The provincial and territorial governments, for their part, are Responsible for developing, implementing, maintaining and enforcing systems to oversee the distribution and sale of cannabis.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While most cannabis users had used more than one product, over three quarters of users purchased and consumed dried cannabis flower or leaf for smoking. Although the sale of edibles and extracts started only at the end of 2019, a substantial share of cannabis users reported using edible cannabis products (26 per cent), cannabis oil or vape pens (19 per cent), hashish (16 per cent) and solid cannabis concentrates (14 per cent) during the same year.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In 2019, young people aged 15–24 were more likely than those in older age groups to obtain cannabis from illegal sources, whereas a larger share of older cannabis users relied solely on legal sources; 41 per cent of cannabis users aged 65 or older reported using only legal sources to obtain cannabis, compared with roughly one quarter of the other age groups.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The transition from the illegal market to legal sources of cannabis has been a gradual one. The proportion of cannabis users sourcing their products from the legal market increased from around 25 per cent in the second and third quarters of 2018 to about 50 per cent one year later, and in 2019 nearly 30 per cent relied solely on the legal market for their cannabis (compared with 10 per cent in 2018). Many users relied on multiple sources to obtain their cannabis, with about 40 per cent of cannabis users still getting their product from illegal sources.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Along with the increase in prevalence, the frequency of cannabis use also increased marginally. At the beginning of 2018, some 5 per cent of the population aged 15 and older were daily users of cannabis products; by the third quarter of 2019, this proportion had increased to 6 per cent. Increases in the proportion of daily users of cannabis were observed mainly among males, young people aged 18–24 and those aged 65 and older. Daily or near-daily use of cannabis is more frequent in younger users than in older ones. Nearly 8 per cent of people aged 15–24 and 9 per cent of those aged 25–44 were daily or near-daily users of cannabis, compared with 4 per cent of people aged 45–64 and nearly 3 per cent of those aged 65 and older. Men were twice as likely as women to be daily or near-daily cannabis users. A commonly observed pattern of use is that regular and frequent users of cannabis, such as daily or near-daily users, represent a small proportion of all cannabis users, but they account for the bulk of cannabis products consumed. It is estimated that in 2018, for example, around half a million people in Canada consumed some 810 tons of cannabis, of which half (426 tons) were consumed by daily or near-daily users and another 355 tons by those who reportedly used cannabis at least once a week.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'At the baseline, in the first quarter of 2018, nearly 14 per cent of Canadians (12.2 per cent of women and 15.8 per cent of men) reported that they had used cannabis, including cannabis products for medical purposes, in the past three months. The highest prevalence rates were reported among those aged 25–34 (26 per cent) and 15–24 (23 per cent). By the beginning of 2019, the prevalence of use in the past three months had increased to 17.5 per cent, and it remained close to that level until the third quarter of 2019 (17.1 per cent). While the prevalence of cannabis use in the past three months rose in most age groups in 2019, the most marked increase was observed in the oldest age group (65 and older), for which the prevalence nearly doubled in comparison with 2018. There also seems to be a larger proportion of new users among older adults than in other age groups: while 10 per cent of new cannabis users were aged 25–44 in the second and third quarters of 2019, more than one quarter were aged 65 and older.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'To monitor the outcome of the new cannabis regulations, the Government of Canada has invested in a formal system that may eventually help to evaluate their impact and support the further development of policies and programmes. One of the main measures taken to that end is a cannabis survey that established a baseline in 2018 and is repeated every quarter in order to provide objective information on trends in the use of cannabis products, both medical and non-medical, as well as on how the legal cannabis market has evolved over time.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The objectives of the current cannabis legislation in Canada are to keep cannabis away from young people (under 18 years of age), to prevent criminals from profiting from the distribution and sale of cannabis and to safeguard public health and safety by allowing adults (aged 18 and older) legal access to cannabis. Under the constitutional division of powers in Canada, the federal Government and provincial governments have different responsibilities. As the provinces historically developed their own systems to regulate the sale of alcohol, a similar approach has been applied to regulate the non-medical use of cannabis products.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In general, the drugs are delivered by public or private postal services, presumably without their knowledge, although the drugs may also be hidden in locations that are secretly communicated to the buyer. Parcels are often sent to anonymous post office boxes, including automated lockers for self-service collection. In jurisdictions with strong secrecy-of-correspondence laws, which typically apply to letters, drugs are often dispatched in letters. In some countries, drugs purchased on the darknet are thus preferably posted in letters to destinations within the poster’s own country. This has also prompted some darknet vendors to transport letters containing drugs across the border into neighbouring countries in order to post them within the client’s destination country and avoid detection.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The main characteristic and comparative advantage of darknet markets is their perceived anonymity, in particular the physical anonymity of those who do business on such markets. Purchasing drugs on those markets does not necessarily require physical contact, which reduces the inhibitions of some customers who might otherwise be reticent to interact personally with drug dealers. In addition, the customer does not have to go to dangerous places to buy drugs. Darknet trafficking also overcomes the challenge of sellers and buyers having to be in the same location; thus, organizations that traffic drugs over the darknet do not need to have the critical mass of customers necessary to sustain a local market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
Fundamental to programming is the avoidance of hard coding values that are likely to change, that need translation and that need to be used in different functions based on varying conditions. This is to avoid duplication, ambiguity and re-programming. These values are kept in configuration files that are accessed and amended as needed. This is even more true for medicines that need to be controlled based on nature of harm and use. The idea of globally agreed lists of medicines with harmful substances requiring tight control is good provided laws regarding these are universal, fair and consistent at regional, country or state levels. A key operational issue is that even these global lists are not updated fast enough considering the latest scientific knowledge and that new harmful synthetic substances are rapidly churned out of pharmacy labs. Worse, natural cannabis, peyote, psilcybin, etc. proven over thousands of years to be much more safer in their natural form than the recently created synthetic drugs, continue to remain in these global lists, significantly hampering their objective and efficiency, diverting precious resources and greatly damaging global public health. The Indian NDPS Act is like one of the worst examples of programming with a list of substances hard coded into it and a bunch of rules copy pasted around it, existing over and above the IPC. 20kgs of hashish or 500g of THC will get you the death sentence. Fentanyls, the leading cause of global drug overdose deaths, synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones, etc. are not even on the list...
Jul 21, 2020, 4:09 PM
Cannabis legalization in India is to the world what cannabis legalization in California was to the US...India needs to wake up to it's cannabis heritage and destiny...
Jul 20, 2020, 4:56 PM
'An analysis of NPS reported to UNODC suggests increasing diversification in the NPS market until 2015, followed by a trend towards stabilization in the number of new substances arriving on the market in individual countries, at an overall rate of more than 500 NPS per year, with 528 synthetic NPS and 13 plant-based NPS reported in 2018. While there was a decrease in the number of new synthetic cannabinoids arriving on markets worldwide over the 2014–2018 period, the number of NPS with stimulant effects increased, and the number of newly emerging NPS with opioid effects rose sharply, from 7 substances in 2014 to 48 in 2018. That increase represents a rise from 2 per cent of all NPS in 2014 to 9 per cent in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In March 2019, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs decided to schedule four substances (all fentanyl analogues) under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol and a further five substances under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, thus raising the total number of psychoactive substances under international control to 282 as at the end of 2019. By comparison, the number of NPS identified by authorities worldwide and reported to UNODC is already more than three times that figure, having reached a total of 950 in December 2019, up from 892 in December 2018 and 166 in 2009.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Where data are available, they show a steady decline in the use of NPS in Europe, but such substances have established themselves in some marginalized groups in society, such as the homeless or people in prison, among whom the smoking of synthetic cannabinoids has been identified as a problem. In Europe, the use of NPS in prisons was reported by 22 countries, with synthetic cannabinoids identified as posing the main challenge and health risks (16 countries), whereas the use of synthetic cathinones in prisons was reported by 10 countries, NPS with opioid effects by six, and new benzodiazepines by four countries. In Latvia, the use of synthetic opioids in prisons has also been linked to an increase in overdose cases and in injecting drugs and sharing needles among prisoners who use drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Data on the United States also indicate a marked decline in the use of NPS. In particular, the prevalence of synthetic cannabinoid use among twelfth-grade students fell from 11.4 per cent in 2011 to 3.3 per cent in 2019. Similarly, the use of ketamine fell from 1.7 to 0.7 per cent over the same period, and the use of “bath salts” (synthetic cathinones) dropped from 1.3 per cent in 2012 to 0.6 per cent in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. This happened in the context of a deterioration in the reputation of many of those substances among young people, in parallel to several waves of controls of synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cathinones at the national level during the 2010–2012 period and later at the global level, as well as the control of ketamine at the national level in 1999. Over the 2000–2019 period, the annual prevalence of ketamine non-medical use among twelfth-grade high-school students fell drastically, from 2.5 per cent to 0.7 per cent' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'After marked increases over the 2009-2012 period, the overall quantities of synthetic NPS seized have shown a downward trend since 2012, most notably when they fell from 44 tons in 2017 to 10 tons in 2018. This may partly reflect the fact that some of the most widely used and most harmful NPS have been put under national and international control in recent years and therefore, according to the current definition, no longer belong to the NPS category. Moreover, a number of countries in North America, Europe and Oceania, where major markets for NPS are located, have introduced various controls on NPS trade in recent years. In parallel, China, which is frequently mentioned as the main country of origin or departure for various synthetic NPS (with 27 per cent of all such mentions over the 2014–2018 period, ahead of India with 10 per cent), has introduced controls in various waves on the manufacture of and trade in such substances. This and other developments appear to have had an impact on the proliferation of NPS at the global level, reducing the quantities of those substances on key markets.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The bulk of tramadol seized in the period 2014– 2018 was seized in West and Central Africa (notably in Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and the Niger), followed by North Africa (notably Egypt, Morocco and the Sudan) and the Near and Middle East (notably Jordan and the United Arab Emirates). In some instances, countries in Western and Central Europe (notably Malta and Greece) have been used as transit countries for tramadol destined for North Africa (Egypt and Libya), although some of the tramadol seized in Europe (in particular Sweden) was also intended for the local market. For the first time ever, significant seizures of tramadol were reported in South Asia (India) in 2018, accounting for 21 per cent of the global total that year, which reflects the fact tramadol was put under the control of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act of India in April 2018.
As the full-scale scheduling of tramadol in India took place in 2018,218 and India had been the main source for (illegal) tramadol shipments, the decline in seizures outside India in 2018 may have been the result of a disrupted market. By contrast, and probably as a result of the control in India, seizures of tramadol in that country increased greatly in 2018, and thus in South Asia as a whole (more than 1,000-fold compared with a year earlier).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The 2019 drug use survey in India estimated that nearly 1 per cent of the population aged 10–75 had misused pharmaceutical opioids in the past year and that an estimated 0.2 per cent of the population (2.5 million people) were suffering from drug use disorders related to pharmaceutical opioids. Although the breakdown by type of pharmaceutical opioids misused in India is not available, buprenorphine, morphine, pentazocine and tramadol are the most common opioids misused in the country.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of tramadol among other pharmaceutical drugs is reported by several countries in South Asia: Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In 2017, 130,316 capsules containing tramadol and marketed under the trade name “Spasmo Proxyvon Plus (‘SP+’)” were seized in Bhutan. In Sri Lanka, about 0.2 per cent of the population aged 14 and older are estimated to have misused pharmaceutical drugs in the past year. Among them, the non-medical use of tramadol is the most common, although misuse of morphine, diazepam, flunitrazepam and pregabalin have also been reported in the country. The misuse of more than one pharmaceutical drug (including tramadol) is also a common pattern among heroin users who may use them to potentiate the effects of heroin or compensate for its low level of availability. Recent seizures of tramadol suggest the existence of a market for the drug: in April and September 2018, 200,000 and 1.5 million tablets of tramadol were respectively seized by customs in Sri Lanka.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The trafficking and availability of tramadol for its non-medical use is a public health concern, but limited distribution of tramadol for medical use would also pose a public health concern, in particular in Africa, where there is a chronic shortage of pain medications. There are no data on the availability and use of tramadol for medical purposes, but data on internationally controlled substances clearly highlight the gaps in the accessibility of pain medications. The general lack of access to opioid-related pain medications under international control is a specific problem for developing countries, which is even more pronounced in countries in West and Central Africa than in other parts of the world.
Against this background of a de facto non-availability of internationally controlled opioids for pain medication for large sections of the population in West and Central Africa, tramadol – even though it is under national control in some West African countries – is in fact a widely available opioid in those countries, used for both medical purposes (including outside prescription) and for non-medical purposes' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the Sudan, while population-based estimates of the extent of substance use are not available, research suggests that the drug scene has rapidly changed, especially with the increasing non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs among young people, including tramadol, benzodiazepines, cough syrups and antihistamines, trihexyphenidyl, anticonvulsants and neuropathic pain agents such as pregabalin and gabapentin.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In North Africa, tramadol is reported as the main opioid used non-medically in Egypt, where scientific literature about tramadol misuse is more available than elsewhere in the subregion. An estimated 3 per cent of the adult population misused tramadol in 2016, the latest year for which data are available, while 2.2 per cent were diagnosed with tramadol dependence. In drug treatment, tramadol was also the main drug, accounting for 68 per cent of all people treated for drug use disorders in 2017. A cross-sectional study conducted over the period 2012–2013 among 1,135 undergraduate college students in Egypt showed that 20.2 per cent of male and 2.4 per cent of female students had misused tramadol at least once during their lifetime, resulting in an overall lifetime prevalence of 12.3 per cent The average age of initiation of non-medical use of tramadol was around 17 years. Polydrug use was also quite common, with the majority of respondents (85 per cent) reporting use of either tobacco, alcohol or cannabis with tramadol. Among those who had misused tramadol, 30 per cent were assessed to be tramadol dependent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of tramadol is of particular concern among young people in many countries in that subregion. For example, a cross-sectional study among 300 young people in western Ghana found that while the majority (85 per cent) of respondents knew someone who misused tramadol, more than half of the young people interviewed had used tramadol themselves for non-medical purposes, and one third of the users reported misusing 9–10 doses of tramadol per day. Another qualitative study from Ghana reported curiosity, peer pressure and iatrogenic addiction as the three main factors for initiation and continuing non-medical use of tramadol, while perceived euphoria, attentiveness, relief from pain, physical energy and aphrodisiac effects were mentioned as some of the reasons for continuing non-medical use of tramadol.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The drug use survey in Nigeria reveals tramadol to be a more accessible opioid than heroin, although it is still relatively costly if used frequently. While use of tramadol appears to cost about one third the price of heroin ($3.60 versus $10 per day of use in the past 30 days), in a country where the minimum wage of a full-time worker is around $57 per month, regular tramadol use still poses a considerable financial burden on users and their families. There is no information on the prevalence of drug use in other West African countries, but treatment data reveal tramadol to be the main drug of concern for people with drug use disorders. Tramadol ranks highly among the substances for which people were treated in West Africa in the period 2014–2017. This was particularly the case in Benin, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'At the global level, Germany was the second largest consumer of opioid pain relievers, with an estimated 28,862 S-DDD per million population per day for medical use in 2017, followed by Austria, Belgium and Switzerland. In Germany, the number of pharmaceutical opioids overall and the number of people receiving opioid treatment have increased over the past few decades; in most instances, prescriptions were given for non-chronic cancer pain. A review of scientific literature from Germany published between 1985 and 2016 showed that out of the 12 studies reviewed, 6 studies reported a prevalence for patients with medical use of any opioid for long-term treatment of non-cancer chronic pain ranging from 0.54 to 5.7 per cent, while four studies reported a prevalence for patients with medical use of opioids at 0.057 to 1.39 per cent of the population' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The clandestine manufacture of fentanyls within North America is thus not really a new phenomenon and has the potential to increase in importance following the recent control of fentanyls substances in China. Moreover, the clandestine manufacture of fentanyl has already spread beyond North America to neighbouring subregions, as a clandestine fentanyl laboratory was dismantled in the city of Santiago, Dominican Republic, in 2017. At the same time, there is a risk that other countries with a large and thriving pharmaceutical sector may become involved in the clandestine manufacture of fentanyls. In 2018, for example, authorities of India reported two relatively large seizures of fentanyl destined for North America. Furthermore, according to United States authorities, in September 2018, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence of India, in cooperation with DEA of the United States Department of Justice, dismantled the first known illicit fentanyl laboratory in India and seized approximately 11 kg of fentanyl' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'According to United States authorities, most of the fentanyls destined for the North American market have been manufactured in China in recent years, from where they were either shipped directly to the United States, mostly through postal services, or were first shipped to Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Canada and then smuggled into the United States. However, after the introduction by China in May 2019 of drug controls based on generic legislation with regard to the fentanyls, which effectively brought more than 1,400 known fentanyl analogues under national control in China, early signs suggest that fewer fentanyls were smuggled from China to North America. At the same time, attempts to manufacture fentanyl and its analogues inside North America are increasing, notably in Mexico, by means of a method using precursor chemicals smuggled into the subregion from East Asia and South Asia.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The current crisis of fentanyls appears to be more supply-driven than earlier waves of increases in the use of pharmaceutical opioids or heroin. Fentanyls are being used as an adulterant of heroin, are used to make falsified pharmaceutical opioids, such as falsified oxycodone and hydrocodone – and even falsified benzodiazepines – which are sold to a large and unsuspecting population of users of opioids and other drugs; users are not seeking fentanyl as such.
It seems that some local distributors are not able to distinguish between heroin, fentanyl and fentanyl laced heroin, nor between diverted pharmaceutical opioids and falsified opioids containing fentanyl. A general problem with fentanyls is dosing by nonprofessional “pharmacists”, where small mistakes can lead to lethal results. Furthermore, as the overdose death data suggest, even people using cocaine and psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine, are also exposed – probably unintentionally – to fentanyls or other potent synthetic opioids mixed with those substances' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'There is a great incentive for trafficking organizations to expand the fentanyl market: the large associated revenues. Compared with heroin, the production costs of single-dose fentanyls are substantially lower. For instance, it may cost between $1,400 and $3,500 to synthesize 1 kg of fentanyl, which could bring a return of between $1 million and $1.5 million from street sales. For comparison, 1 kg of heroin purchased from Colombia may cost $5,000 to $7,000,99 around $53,000 at the wholesale level in the United States and around $400,000 at the retail level in the United States. With fentanyls, the logistics for supply are also more flexible because fentanyls can be manufactured anywhere and are not subject to the climatic conditions or the vulnerable conditions required for the largescale cultivation of opium poppy.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'All factors driving fentanyl use converged from 2013 onwards in the United States and Canada, which may explain the unprecedented spread of the fentanyls in those markets: factors such as the diffusion of simpler, more effective methods of manufacture of synthetic opioids and their analogues (primarily fentanyls), assisted by the availability on the Internet of instructions for their manufacture; a shift from preparation by a limited number of skilled chemists to preparation by basic “cooks” who could simply follow the posted instructions; the discovery of ever more fentanyl analogues; a lack of effective control of precursors and oversight of the industry; expanding distribution networks that reduced the risk of detection through the use of postal services and the Internet; and increased licit trade including e-commerce.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In 2018, approximately 10.3 million people (3.7 per cent of the population aged 12 years or older) had misused opioids in the past year in the United States. Most of them, 9.9 million (3.6 per cent of the population aged 12 years and older), reported non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, while almost 800,000 reported past-year use of heroin (comprising just 8 per cent of the total population who reported past-year misuse of opioids).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Overall, in 2018 overdose deaths attributed to synthetic opioids, comprising mainly fentanyls, accounted for nearly half of the total overdose deaths in the United States. Among the reasons for the high number of overdose deaths attributed to fentanyls are their often small lethal doses relative to other opioids: fentanyl, for example, is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, and carfentanil may be as much as 10,000 times more potent than morphine for an average user. A lethal dose of carfentanil for a human can be as low as 20 micrograms.
The rapid expansion of fentanyl use in the United States is also visible in the data on seizures and the drug samples analysed, with a considerable increase since 2014 in the number of samples identified as fentanyl. In 2018, fentanyl accounted for 45 per cent of the pharmaceutical opioids that were identified in different samples, while oxycodone accounted for 14 per cent' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The rate of prescription of opioids in the United States fell to 51.4 prescriptions per 100 persons (a total of more than 168 million opioid prescriptions) in 2018 from a peak of 81.3 opioid prescriptions per 100 persons (or 255 million opioid prescriptions) in 2012. The opioid prescription rate in the southern United States remains high, however, with most states in the region reporting opioid prescription rates of 64 or more per 100 persons in 2018. A number of factors at work, including advertising by the pharmaceutical industry, physicians’ prescription practices, dispensing and medical culture and patient expectations have, since the new millennium, resulted in high prescription rates and dosages of opioids given for an extended duration of care, primarily for the management of acute to chronic non-cancer pain. These practices have also enabled the diversion and misuse of pharmaceutical opioids, together with a greater risk of opioid use disorders among those with a legitimate prescription.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although geographically disconnected, the areas that were initially affected by the opioid crisis in Canada and the United States have experienced remarkably similar market dynamics, which can be broadly described in the following sequential steps: (a) High rates of prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioids leading to diversion and an increase in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, opioid use disorders and an increase in opioid overdose deaths (b) Regulations introduced to reduce diversion and non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids (e.g., tamper-proof formulations to prevent injecting) (d) Fentanyl (illicitly manufactured in clandestine laboratories) and its analogues emerge as adulterants in heroin and stimulants (cocaine and methamphetamine) and are sold as falsified pharmaceutical opioids, resulting in massive increases in deaths attributed to fentanyls (e) Fentanyls emerge as the dominant opioid in opioid overdose deaths, as well as contributing to overdose deaths attributed to other drugs (g) Fentanyl-related deaths are the main contributor to total opioid overdose deaths;' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The scientific literature has attempted to understand the reasons for the sudden rise of fentanyls in preexisting opioid markets. It seems that an interplay between a number of external factors and local market dynamics played a role in the spread of the opioid crisis in North America. Some of the factors that have led to the rise and continued presence of fentanyls include: (a) the diffusion of simpler and more effective methods of manufacture of synthetic opioids and their analogues (primarily fentanyls); (b) a lack of effective control of precursors and oversight of the manufacture industry; (c) expanding distribution networks; (d) reduced smuggling risks because of new methods of trafficking within the expanded licit trade; and (e) pre-existing market conditions (demand for opioids and potential supply shocks)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'From what is known, it is possible to identify common threats and different dynamics in the two opioid crises, in Africa and in North America: • The ease of manufacturing, easy accessibility and low-cost production make the illicit markets for tramadol and fentanyls substantially more profitable for traffickers than are other opioids such as heroin. • The large-scale manufacture of tramadol and fentanyls for the illicit market started in a context of an absence of international regulations on tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. • The interchangeability (or substitution) of fentanyl and tramadol within the pharmaceutical and illicit drug markets makes it more difficult to address their misuse. Their non-medical use is also seen in the context of self-medication, and thus carries less stigma or is countered by lesser legal sanctions than is the case with other controlled drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In West, Central and North Africa and the Middle East, tramadol – a pharmaceutical opioid not under international control – has emerged as a major opioid of concern. The drug, in addition to being diverted from the legal market, is mainly trafficked into those subregions in dosages higher than what is prescribed for pain management, with an increasing number of people with tramadol use disorder entering treatment.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids is not a new phenomenon. It has been observed for decades as part of the polydrug use pattern among high-risk or regular opioid users. What characterizes the most recent opioid crisis is the emergence of non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids as the main phenomenon, leading to alarming rates of dependence and overdose deaths at the national level. The subregions most affected by this crisis are North America and West, Central and North Africa, where different opioids and different dynamics are driving the threat. In North America, the introduction of fentanyl and its analogues (fentanyls) in the drug market has resulted in a syndemic of use of opioids characterized by an unprecedented increase in opioid overdose deaths' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Most of the clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia has traditionally been in the Islamic Republic of Iran, being manufactured both for the local market and for export to countries in East and South-East Asia (including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand) as well as for export to Central Asia and the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan) and to Europe (including Bulgaria, France, the Russian Federation, Turkey and the United Kingdom). However, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the main source of the methamphetamine found in other countries in the Near and Middle East/SouthWest Asia (with the exception of Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic). The main source countries for other countries in this subregion seem to continue to be countries in East and South-East Asia. The extent of clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in the Islamic Republic of Iran actually appears to be declining, while manufacturing is rapidly increasing in neighbouring Afghanistan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'An analysis of the Hydra market, based on webscraping techniques, conducted in February 2019, revealed a total of 13,935 drug listings on the platform in one day, dominated by synthetic cathinones (39 per cent of all listings, notably alpha-PVP and mephedrone), cannabis, mostly marijuana (16 per cent) and hashish (14 per cent), traditional ATS, mostly amphetamine (10 per cent) and methamphetamine (1 per cent), cocaine (4 per cent), psychedelics (3 per cent), dissociatives (2 per cent) and opioids (2 per cent). The analysis also indicated that, partly due to the increasing availability of drugs through the darknet, two thirds of the Russian population were now able to buy drugs instantly. The importance of trafficking ATS through the darknet and/or through web shops is also indirectly reflected in the high proportion of ATS being shipped to end users and local retail traffickers by mail: 80 per cent in 2018 – a higher proportion than for most other drug categories in the Russian Federation' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In this context, INCB raised concerns over large-scale exports of pseudoephedrine preparations from Jordan to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. While the officially reported estimate of pseudoephedrine used in Iraq in 2018 was approximately 10 tons, notified shipments of pseudoephedrine preparations sent through the Pre-Export Notification Online system were three times that amount. Those shipments took place even though the national authorities objected.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The emergence of methamphetamine use in Iraq was reported in 2012, when, on the basis of data from medical and psychiatric hospitals, outpatient clients, health centres, surveys of medial patients and prisoners and law enforcement reports, the primary drugs of concern in Iraq were found to be “captagon”, crystalline methamphetamine and tramadol. A study conducted in 2015 reported that drug users in Iraq thought that cannabis was “very difficult” to obtain while “captagon” and methamphetamine were “very easy” to obtain. Both official and media sources report a recent rapid increase in methamphetamine use in Iraq. Initially, law enforcement sources in Iraq suggested that methamphetamine was mainly smuggled into the country from the neighbouring Islamic Republic of Iran, across the long shared border, being smuggled to Basra in the south in particular. However, there have been reports of the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine inside Iraq. In November 2016, for example, the Iraqi National Security Agency discovered methamphetamine laboratories in Basra and in the south-eastern province of Maysan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Much of the methamphetamine production in these subregions was originally intended for exports to the rapidly growing markets of East and South-East Asia, but domestic markets also appear to have started to emerge in the Near and Middle East/ South-West Asia in recent years. Of 15 reporting countries in these subregions, 12 countries reported the use of methamphetamine by 2018 (or the latest year for which data are available). In the absence of scientific data for the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, qualitative information on trends in methamphetamine use reported by national authorities to UNODC give an indication of the threat experienced by the region. National authorities have reported a clear upward trend in methamphetamine use in those subregions. Methamphetamine appears to have emerged in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia as the main ATS used in the Islamic Republic of Iran (2009– 2018) as well as in Iraq (2016 and 2017), Lebanon (2014–2017), Bahrein (2016), Afghanistan (2015 and 2016), Israel (2014 and 2015) and Kuwait (2003, 2009, 2013' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the past few years, the manufacture and use of methamphetamine have emerged in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, subregions that until recently were dominated by use of “captagon”. Methamphetamine manufacture and consumption used to be largely unknown in those subregions. Initially reported by only one country in the subregion (Israel), the number of countries reporting seizures of methamphetamine has increased in subsequent years. Overall, eight countries in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia reported seizures of methamphetamine in the period 2000–2009, rising to 14 countries in the period 2010–2018. The bulk of the methamphetamine seized, however, continued to be seized by the Islamic Republic of Iran.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the context of the long-term dynamics of the global drug market, there are many different changes that have affected selected geographical areas. Within the past two decades some regions have seen a gradual transformation of their drug markets: methamphetamine has become the predominant drug in South-East Asia, amphetamine (“captagon’’) in the Middle East, North America has been confronted with the opioid crisis, Africa has seen an expansion of its domestic heroin market, and countries in North and West Africa are now facing a tramadol crisis. More recently, two subregions, the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia and the Russian Federation/ Central Asia, appear to have been affected by rapid changes in their drug markets, with new drugs taking a substantial share of the drug market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'England and Wales and Australia are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have competed for their share of the stimulant market over the past 20 years. Germany and the United States are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have together led the changes in the stimulant market
Within the stimulant markets, there are also examples of substitution effects in the “ecstasy” market. In England and Wales, for example, trend data on the use of “ecstasy”, mephedrone and NPS in the period 2005–2019 suggest that first mephedrone and later NPS filled the market space left by the decreasing supply of “ecstasy”, mainly due to a supply shortage, until 2012. Once “ecstasy” started to regain its previous share, the other substances declined sharply' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Although in Europe opioids continue to be the predominant main drug for which people seek drug treatment, cocaine has become more common in Spain and methamphetamine remains the main drug of concern in Czechia. Within the amphetamines group, different patterns have developed in different subregions. For example, amphetamine continues to be the primary ATS of concern in Europe and in the Middle East, while methamphetamine has emerged as the primary ATS of concern in East and South-East Asia and in North America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'While the main drug treatment interventions in Asia and Europe continue to be linked primarily to opiates, in Africa to cannabis, and in South America to cocaine, in North America there has been a shift over the past decade from the predominance of cocaine to an increasing importance of opioids. Marked shifts in the main drug for which patients receive drug treatment can also been observed at the subregional level. In a number of countries in East and South-East Asia, for example, methamphetamine has emerged as the predominant drug; in the Near and Middle East, “captagon” tablets (amphetamine), and along the eastern coast of Africa, heroin, have emerged as the predominant drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Increases in drug use have at times also been supply driven, as users react to growing supply and the attendant falling prices by increasing their consumption of those drugs. This was the case with cocaine in recent years, among other drugs. Some of the recent changes in drug markets, such as the opioid crisis in North America and the rapid emergence of a synthetic drug market in the Russian Federation and Central Asia, can also be defined as supply driven phenomena. The expansion of the synthetic drugs market in the Russian Federation seems to be mainly linked to the Hydra darknet platform. While there may now be an established user-based demand for synthetic drugs, the initial trigger was new suppliers. The rise of fentanyl in North America was not defined by a new demand either but was the result of opportunities seized by drug suppliers to reduce costs and thus increase profit margins.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'That
humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial
Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the
worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the
urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few
minutes, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the
soul. Art and religion, canivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening
to oratory - all these haves served, in H.G. Wells' phrase, as Doors in
the Wall. And for private, for everyday use there have always been
chemical intoxicants. All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the
euphorics that grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries
or can be squeezed from roots - all, without exception have been known
and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial. And to
these natural modifiers of consciousness modern science has added its
quota of synthetics - chloral, for example, and benzedrine, the bromides
and the barbiturates.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor's orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labelled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'And in spite of the evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer, practically everybody regards tobacco smoking as being hardly less normal and natural than eating. From the point of view of the rationalist utilitarian this may seem odd. For the historian, it is exactly what you would expect. A firm conviction of the material reality of Hell never prevented mediaeval Christians from doing what their ambition, lust or covetousness suggested. Lung cancer, traffic accidents and the millions of miserable and misery-creating alcoholics are facts even more certain than was, in Dante's day, the fact of the Inferno. But all such facts are remote and unsubstantial compared with the near, felt fact of a craving, here and now, for release or sedation, for a drink or a smoke.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currenty popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Cannabis meets all these criteria plus it it naturally growing worldwide and has been used for tens of thousands of years...no need for a new drug, we just need to bring it back..reefer madness had clouded even Huxley's mind at the time that this was written...
'What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensible food and fibres. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to the heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of impotence or release from inhibition.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
It is the same with cannabis...
'To most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous. Unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls. crimes of violence and traffic accidents. A man under the influence of mescalin quietly minds his own business. Moreover, the business he minds is an experience of the most enlightening kind, which does not have to be paid for (and this is surely important) by a compensatory hangover. Of the long-range consequences of regular mescalin taking we know very little. The Indians that consume peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the habit. However the available evidence is still scarce or sketchy.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Huxley misses a point or two here..no drug will be universally perfect for all. There will always be a minority (better that than a majority) for whom any drug will be incompatible given different mental and physical constitutions. Also his obsession and faith in the Western system of synthesizing something that can be had in measured doses like pills or alcohol is unnecessary for natural intoxicants where margins are much larger and safer..cannabis is the ideal...peyote and psilocybin too where it is available but not to the extent of cannabis...nature has done the work already, no need for pharmacologists and neurologists to re-invent the wheel...
'Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky-drinking, marijuana- smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Ganja in the Indian sub-continent...
'The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worhip, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohameddan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'In the Western world visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they used to be. There are two principal reasons for this state of affairs - a philosophical reason and a chemical reason. In the currently fashionable picture of the universe there is no place for valid transcendental experience. Consequently those who have had what they regard as valid transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or swindlers. To be a mystic or a visionary is no longer credible.
But it is not only our mental climate that is unfavourable to the visionary and the mystic, it is also our chemical environment - an environment profoundly different from that in which our forefathers passed their lives.'- Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor's orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labelled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'And in spite of the evidence linking cigarettes with lung cancer, practically everybody regards tobacco smoking as being hardly less normal and natural than eating. From the point of view of the rationalist utilitarian this may seem odd. For the historian, it is exactly what you would expect. A firm conviction of the material reality of Hell never prevented mediaeval Christians from doing what their ambition, lust or covetousness suggested. Lung cancer, traffic accidents and the millions of miserable and misery-creating alcoholics are facts even more certain than was, in Dante's day, the fact of the Inferno. But all such facts are remote and unsubstantial compared with the near, felt fact of a craving, here and now, for release or sedation, for a drink or a smoke.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currenty popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Cannabis meets all these criteria plus it it naturally growing worldwide and has been used for tens of thousands of years...no need for a new drug, we just need to bring it back..reefer madness had clouded even Huxley's mind at the time that this was written...
'What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensible food and fibres. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to the heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of impotence or release from inhibition.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
It is the same with cannabis...
'To most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous. Unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls. crimes of violence and traffic accidents. A man under the influence of mescalin quietly minds his own business. Moreover, the business he minds is an experience of the most enlightening kind, which does not have to be paid for (and this is surely important) by a compensatory hangover. Of the long-range consequences of regular mescalin taking we know very little. The Indians that consume peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the habit. However the available evidence is still scarce or sketchy.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Huxley misses a point or two here..no drug will be universally perfect for all. There will always be a minority (better that than a majority) for whom any drug will be incompatible given different mental and physical constitutions. Also his obsession and faith in the Western system of synthesizing something that can be had in measured doses like pills or alcohol is unnecessary for natural intoxicants where margins are much larger and safer..cannabis is the ideal...peyote and psilocybin too where it is available but not to the extent of cannabis...nature has done the work already, no need for pharmacologists and neurologists to re-invent the wheel...
'Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky-drinking, marijuana- smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
Ganja in the Indian sub-continent...
'The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worhip, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohameddan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'In the Western world visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they used to be. There are two principal reasons for this state of affairs - a philosophical reason and a chemical reason. In the currently fashionable picture of the universe there is no place for valid transcendental experience. Consequently those who have had what they regard as valid transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or swindlers. To be a mystic or a visionary is no longer credible.
But it is not only our mental climate that is unfavourable to the visionary and the mystic, it is also our chemical environment - an environment profoundly different from that in which our forefathers passed their lives.'- Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'During a presentation Thursday for the International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) 2019 annual report, President Cornelis P. de Joncheere discussed the developments taking place with regard to cannabis and synthetic drugs.
“We have some fundamental issues around the conventions that state parties will need to start looking at,” he said, adding, “We have to recognize that the conventions were drawn up 50 and 60 years ago.”
Joncheere said 2021 is “an appropriate time to look at whether those are still fit for purpose, or whether we need new alternative instruments and approaches to deal with these problems.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/in-major-shift-un-drug-chief-questions-whether-control-treaties-involving-cannabis-are-out-of-date/
- 'Russia was pleased with the postponement, saying it has not seen any “convincing argument” to support the recommendations, calling cannabis “the most abused drug in the world.”
- Singapore said the recommendations would have “the overall effect of significantly loosening the stringency of international control over cannabis,” leading to a “widening of public access to cannabis” that could “cause serious public health and safety issues.” Moreover, Singapore does not “see any strong evidence to substantiate the recommendations,” nor does it believe any change is needed to allow medical and scientific use. Its representative said “the current international drug control regime already allows more than adequate access to drugs including cannabis for medical and scientific use,” worried that “the public may be misled into thinking cannabis is no longer assessed to be harmful.”
- Japan said “the unity of all member states working against drugs would be the most important thing to keep,” welcoming the postponement.
- China hoped “the WHO will continue to strengthen its research on the dangers and risks of abuse of cannabis.”
The list includes ketamine, morphine, ephedrine, ibuprofen, aspirin, paracetamol, codeine, fentanyl, diazepam....no, cannabis is banned because it is not safe, didn't you know?
See, am okay with keeping all these pharmaceutical medications in the lists, but please can we take out the natural plant cannabis from all the lists it is in? Can anyone see it is the odd one out among all these pharmaceutical preparations or is the whole world blind? If cannabis should be on a list, that list should be a separate one called generic, versatile plant based medicines which also includes other medicinal herbs like basil, ginger, turmeric, etc..probably a list that is out of scope for WHO?
'The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicine. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organization's model list. This includes countries in both the developed and developing world.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines
'CBD has been studied for potential therapeutic benefits. The report found that CBD "could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions," according to the WHO. And there is preliminary evidence that it "may be a useful treatment for a number of other medical conditions," though the evidence is less robust, the report said.'
https://www.livescience.com/61213-marijuana-cannabidiol-world-health-organization.html
Legalize the ganja for recreational use world wide...
'The document was presented during the 62nd session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria, and concludes that, “to reduce the consequences of the drug problem, especially in our most vulnerable populations, countries must adopt policies that take into account the gender perspective and that are based on a public health approach focused on the well-being of the individual and a clear respect for human rights.”'
http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-014%2F19
'The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy introduces a comprehensive catalogue of human rights standards. Grounded in decades of evidence, they are a guide for governments to develop human rights compliant drug policies, covering the spectrum of cultivation to consumption. Harnessing the universal nature of human rights, the document covers a range of policy areas from development to criminal justice to public health.
The guidelines come at an important moment when high-level government representatives are convening at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to shape a new global strategy on drugs. Under the mounting weight of evidence that shows the systemic failures of the dominant punitive paradigm, including widespread human rights violations, governments are facing growing calls to shift course.'
https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2019/human-rights-and-drug-policy.html
'A new report from the United Nations System Coordination Task Team describes punitive drug policies as “ineffective in reducing drug trafficking or in addressing non-medical drug use and supply”. It goes on to say that such approaches “undermine the human rights and well-being of persons who use drugs, as well as of their families and communities.”
The report represents a clear rejection of drug policies based on criminalisation, punishment and harsh enforcement, instead endorsing evidence based policy rooted in public health, sustainable development, and respect for human rights. As such it marks a major shift in collective thinking across the leading United Nations agencies – and a major victory for civil society reform advocates.'
https://transformdrugs.org/un-report-condemns-punitive-drugs-policies/
Decriminalizing could be a good move for other drugs but it is not enough for marijuana. Marijuana has to be legalized not decriminalized. This is so that individuals have access, can grow, share, sell and consume the plant. Otherwise, without access to it, vast numbers of people will be forced to take up the hard drugs, prescription medication, as well as tobacco and alcohol. Crime cartels and unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies will continue to thrive with just decriminalization. Legalize marijuana worldwide for the sake of global health.
'One of the most influential associations within the United Nations (UN) has endorsed the decriminalization of drug possession and use in a policy statement.
The UN Chief Executives Board (CEB), which represents 31 UN agencies including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), adopted a position stipulating that member states should pursue science-based, health-oriented drug policies—namely decriminalization.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-organizations-unite-in-call-for-international-drug-decriminalization/
The World War 2 veterans need more time to think about making the plant legal and globally accessible. In the meantime the people of the US and Germany are embracing it legally and wholeheartedly. Release of millions in prison for plant related activities all over the world can however wait. The global corporations probably need more time to corner the economic pie first before the individual is given back the right to freedom of growing her own plant if at all. Meanwhile there's a whole list of toxic expensive pharmaceutical drugs available for all...
'Several member states requested additional time for considering the recommendations, including Japan, the United States, Germany and Russia, while representatives of Norway and Uruguay emphasized the importance of not delaying the vote without agreeing on a specific future date.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-commission-on-narcotic-drugs-delays-vote-who-cannabis-recommendations/
'The UN Drug Conventions were negotiated in the 1940s and 1950s, in a very different atmosphere. The WHO Expert Committee never reviewed cannabis as a substance, which they normally do before substances are classified under the Conventions. There is growing concern about the position of cannabis in the Single Convention as conflicts are increasing between national legislations, the UN Drug Conventions and UN Human Rights Conventions.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/nsad-2016-0016
WHO batting for ganja...
'As more jurisdictions across the planet are moving to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes, it feels like a sensible move for the world’s leading health authority to publish the truth on the safety of the cannabis plant. And it has done just that… and in a big way. It was just last week that the World Health Organization (WHO) gathered in Switzerland to conduct a first-of-its-kind peer-review of the entire cannabis plant, not just specific compounds. Now, the agency’s Drug and Dependence Committee has published a new report, calling marijuana “a relatively safe drug” that causes no significant health issues, only “euphoria, laughter and talkativeness.”'
https://cannabisnow.com/who-report-marijuana-leads-to-laughter-talkativeness/
'“Complete descheduling of cannabis is more a political matter, not a scientific issue for WHO experts,” Pachta said.
The recommendations are nonbinding and must be voted on by the 53 member countries of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).
The earliest a vote could take place is in March, but a delay in the release of the recommendations may push the consideration to next year.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/positive-step-who-recommendations-cannabis-fall-short/
'The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for whole-plant marijuana, as well as cannabis resin, to be removed from Schedule IV—the most restrictive category of a 1961 drug convention signed by countries from around the world.
The body also wants delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its isomers to be completely removed from a separate 1971 drug treaty and instead added to Schedule I of the 1961 convention, according to a WHO document that has not yet been formally released but was circulated by cannabis reform advocates.
Marijuana and cannabis resin would also remain in Schedule I of the 1961 treaty—they are currently dual-designated in Schedules I and IV, with IV being reserved for those substances that are seen as particularly harmful with limited medical benefits. (That's different from the U.S. federal system, under which Schedule I is where the supposedly most dangerous and restricted drugs—like marijuana, heroin and LSD—are classified.)'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/02/01/world-health-organization-recommends-rescheduling-marijuana-under-international-treaties/#236433ca6bcc
- 'The report recommends several changes to how cannabis is scheduled, which could have significant implications for the cannabis industry:
- The scheduling of cannabis in the international drug control conventions wouldn’t be as restrictive as it is now, because it would be removed from Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention, the category reservd for the most dangerous substances.
- THC in all forms would be removed from the 1971 Convention and placed with cannabis in Schedule I of the 1961 Convention, significantly simplifying cannabis classification.
- Pure CBD and CBD preparations containing no more than 0.2% THC would not be included in any -way in the international drug control conventions.
- Pharmaceutical preparations containing 9-THC, if they follow certain criteria, would be added to Schedule III of the 1961 Convention, recognizing the unlikelihood of abuse.'
'At the CND meeting this week, the WHO could recommend rescheduling or descheduling the following cannabis categories within the UN Drug Control Conventions: Cannabis plant and cannabis resin, Extracts and tinctures of cannabis, Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Isomers of THC.
After a critical review, the WHO announced in June that preparations containing pure CBD should not be controlled under international drug treaties because “to date, there is no evidence of recreational use of CBD or any public health-related problems associated with the use of pure CBD” and it “exhibits no effects indicative of any abuse or dependence potential.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-summit-cannabis-reschedule/
'“Several countries permit the use of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions such as back pain, sleep disorders, depression, post-injury pain, and multiple sclerosis,” the document says. “The evidence presented to the Committee did not indicate that cannabis plant and cannabis resin were liable to produce ill-effects similar to these other substances that are in Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The inclusion of cannabis and cannabis resin in Schedule IV may not appear to be consistent with the criteria for Schedule IV.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-launches-first-ever-full-review-of-marijuanas-status-under-international-law/
'As The Intercept reported last week, the Trump administration assembled a number of hard-line countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, as partners before sending out the action plan to all member states. The Philippines — where President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has drawn international criticism for its extrajudicial killings and brutality — and Myanmar, whose government stands accused of genocide, were both included on the final list. Israel signed on, but its U.N. delegation did not attend, presumably to make it easier for other countries, such as those Arab nations who eschew formal relations with Israel, to appear.'
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/donald-trump-united-nations-drugs/
The failed US War on Drugs trying to make a reappearance in another guise? Looks like one of the Trump administration's approaches is - if you can't do it at home, try to do it outside...
'there is a real risk that a large number of signatories could provide the appearance of widespread agreement on the contents of the so-called “Global Call to Action.” The Trump administration—working with countries like Russia and others that would prefer to pursue draconian, zero-tolerance approaches unencumbered by references to human rights—could then seek to use this “Call to Action” to distort the discussion now underway on a new UN drug declaration in 2019. With that risk in mind, it is crucial to underscore that proper UN documents and regional statements are the products of negotiation and consensus. This so-called “Global Call to Action,” by contrast, flies in the face of regular UN processes, and it cannot and should not be afforded the legitimacy of a consensus-based UN document.'
https://idpc.net/blog/2018/09/trump-to-host-un-meeting-on-drug-policy-veneer-of-consensus-masks-deep-disagreement-on-global-drug-policy
'"This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs," said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a prepared statement."The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/21/health/drug-report-un-failure-intl/index.html
In 2018, the US was the world's largest manufacturer of fentanyl according to the latest report from the International Narcotics Control Board. The pushers are a worldwide network and not restricted to a single country. They fund the richest governments in the world..
Legalize marijuana in Philadelphia, Pennysylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, federal USA, China and worldwide to provide people with a natural recreational alternative to deadly fentanyl.
'Overdoses linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, killed nearly 30,000 people in the United States in 2017. Authorities say most fentanyl sold in the state of Pennsylvania can be traced back to China. We went to Kensington, an area considered a “ground zero” of America’s opioid crisis, in the Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia, to find out how a drug funneled through from China is fueling a health crisis half a world away.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4LJ5YilwE
Legalize the recreational use and home growing of cannabis world wide...NOW...
'During a presentation Thursday for the International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) 2019 annual report, President Cornelis P. de Joncheere discussed the developments taking place with regard to cannabis and synthetic drugs.
“We have some fundamental issues around the conventions that state parties will need to start looking at,” he said, adding, “We have to recognize that the conventions were drawn up 50 and 60 years ago.”
Joncheere said 2021 is “an appropriate time to look at whether those are still fit for purpose, or whether we need new alternative instruments and approaches to deal with these problems.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/in-major-shift-un-drug-chief-questions-whether-control-treaties-involving-cannabis-are-out-of-date/
'The Vienna-based member states’ bodies, the CND, and the convention-mandated International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) have been central in promoting the global narrative of “drugs as threat” which has underpinned “war on drugs” policies around the world. The influence of these multilateral bodies is substantial. The CND is the central drug policy-making body within the UN; UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) is the operational agency implementing the mandated role of the UN Secretary-General; and the INCB the semi-judicial body ensuring countries’ compliance with the conventions. However, UN mandates and responses to organized crime cut across the system, with seventy percent or more of UN departments having some mandate or initiative related to organized crime (see figure 4). Despite this, there is no strategic framework or inter-departmental coordination body on organized crime within the UN system as there is, for example, on terrorism.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'The siloed and uncoordinated responses currently provided only add to the existing challenges. There is no justification in addressing drugs at the CND from a pre-dominant perspective of crime. Only a comprehensive approach to drugs such as that recommended by the “UN System common position on drug-related matters” can address organized crime without further increasing harms. UN member states must consider merging the 1961 and 1971 Conventions complemented by precursor control, and terminating the 1988 “UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances”. This would broaden the mandate of the CCPCJ as the functional commission on crime and provide coherence to the fight against organized crime.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
We talk about ratifying the 1961 and 1970 conventions and the NDPS Act to legalize the cannabis plant. A most simple approach would be if each of us took care to collect the precious seeds of the plant when we have access to it instead of throwing it away. If even 2 per cent of the world's population decided to grow the cannabis plant at home, no force in this world could prevent it from happening...
May 15, 2020, 12:42 PM
In 2018, the US was the world's largest manufacturer of fentanyl according to the latest report from the International Narcotics Control Board. The pushers are a worldwide network and not restricted to a single country. They fund the richest governments in the world..
Legalize marijuana in Philadelphia, Pennysylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, federal USA, China and worldwide to provide people with a natural recreational alternative to deadly fentanyl.
'Overdoses linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, killed nearly 30,000 people in the United States in 2017. Authorities say most fentanyl sold in the state of Pennsylvania can be traced back to China. We went to Kensington, an area considered a “ground zero” of America’s opioid crisis, in the Pennsylvanian city of Philadelphia, to find out how a drug funneled through from China is fueling a health crisis half a world away.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4LJ5YilwE
Legalize the recreational use and home growing of cannabis world wide...NOW...
'During a presentation Thursday for the International Narcotics Control Board’s (INCB) 2019 annual report, President Cornelis P. de Joncheere discussed the developments taking place with regard to cannabis and synthetic drugs.
“We have some fundamental issues around the conventions that state parties will need to start looking at,” he said, adding, “We have to recognize that the conventions were drawn up 50 and 60 years ago.”
Joncheere said 2021 is “an appropriate time to look at whether those are still fit for purpose, or whether we need new alternative instruments and approaches to deal with these problems.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/in-major-shift-un-drug-chief-questions-whether-control-treaties-involving-cannabis-are-out-of-date/
'The Vienna-based member states’ bodies, the CND, and the convention-mandated International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) have been central in promoting the global narrative of “drugs as threat” which has underpinned “war on drugs” policies around the world. The influence of these multilateral bodies is substantial. The CND is the central drug policy-making body within the UN; UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) is the operational agency implementing the mandated role of the UN Secretary-General; and the INCB the semi-judicial body ensuring countries’ compliance with the conventions. However, UN mandates and responses to organized crime cut across the system, with seventy percent or more of UN departments having some mandate or initiative related to organized crime (see figure 4). Despite this, there is no strategic framework or inter-departmental coordination body on organized crime within the UN system as there is, for example, on terrorism.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
'The siloed and uncoordinated responses currently provided only add to the existing challenges. There is no justification in addressing drugs at the CND from a pre-dominant perspective of crime. Only a comprehensive approach to drugs such as that recommended by the “UN System common position on drug-related matters” can address organized crime without further increasing harms. UN member states must consider merging the 1961 and 1971 Conventions complemented by precursor control, and terminating the 1988 “UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances”. This would broaden the mandate of the CCPCJ as the functional commission on crime and provide coherence to the fight against organized crime.'
https://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FINAL-EN_2020report_web.pdf
We talk about ratifying the 1961 and 1970 conventions and the NDPS Act to legalize the cannabis plant. A most simple approach would be if each of us took care to collect the precious seeds of the plant when we have access to it instead of throwing it away. If even 2 per cent of the world's population decided to grow the cannabis plant at home, no force in this world could prevent it from happening...
May 15, 2020, 12:42 PM
Three of the top issues in the world today are runaway climate change, a failed global healthcare system and the increasing threat of global nuclear warfare. The underlying causes respectively are the overdependence on synthetic non-biodegradable petrochemical products; synthetic, costly and harmful pharmaceutical products; and, the conflict arising from protection provided for these industries through arms arsenals and forces. A solution to all three issues is legalization of cannabis. It is a simple, elegant, viable and sustainable solution involving minimal inventions. Biodegradable, natural products to replace petrochemical based non-biodegradable synthetic products will address the petrochemical climate change issue. Homegrowing of cannabis will ensure global, affordable and safe healthcare and address the pharmaceutical issue. The shrinking of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries will reduce the conflict and tensions that arise from sustaining these industries and the need to amass weapons of mass destruction for the same. The solution is simple but it needs an acknowledgement of this truth by all the people of the world and a will to make it happen. The rewards of the solution are a more sustainable, healthy and peaceful planet, not just for us, but for future generations and life on earth...
May 23, 2020, 11:47 AM
I started off seeking to legalize recreational use of cannabis but now I seem to be increasingly thinking as well about the legalization of opium, coca, palm toddy, peyote, psilocybin and all the other natural intoxicants that have been curbed. The principle is the same in all these cases. A natural intoxicant that took care of the majority of the world in a safer way being replaced by man-made intoxicants that are harmful but yielding more revenue for its manufacturers and supporters. Natural intoxicants have stood the test of time and social usage for thousands of years which is why they are so widespread and popular. Any harmful natural intoxicant is sidelined by the evolutionary processes of society seeking to identify and sustain what is safe and beneficial. Plants like dhatura are an example of harmful intoxicants that society has shunned even though it is freely available. The moves in the last 200 years by certain sections of society to curb these time tested natural intoxicants and replace them with the synthetic intoxicants is a false step in the evolutionary path that will not stand the test of time. The sooner we correct this mistake the better it is. Forcing people to intake man made poisons in place of what nature created and balanced out for human and animal consumption will surely result in a heavy price paid for profits made...
May 23, 2020, 11:53 AM
Are governments, doctors and pharmaceutical companies in places seeing maximum Covid fatalities like the peddling addict who flooded the market because he needed more customers to sell his stuff to and to sustain his own habit? The opioid connection in these places is unmistakable. The cause of deaths could be the good old peddler trick of cutting the junk with harmful adulterants to dilute the drug and increase profit margins...
May 23, 2020, 11:57 AM
Scrap the 1961 Single Convention focusing on natural plant medicine, legalize the natural plants and focus on the more harmful synthetic substances. Promoting harmful synthetic medicines causing wide spread abuse and poisoning and keeping universal plant medicine illegal is the biggest joke on world health. The nations who have been dictating what should be legal and illegal medicine and laughing all the way to the bank so far, are reaching only the graveyard on the way back home..unfortunately the world's majority are the unwilling passengers...
'International scheduling of existing medicines puts in conflict two important public health objectives: protecting people from the health harms certain substances may pose and ensuring the adequate availability, accessibility and affordability of medicines that contain those substances. It also engages potentially competing drug control and human rights obligations, at a time when human rights are becoming more and more mainstreamed in international drug policy discussions, and system-wide coherence within the SDG framework is a central concern. The current process for international scheduling of medicines has an important normative deficit in the absence of shared principles of decision making to weigh these interests. It has a related democratic deficit given such decisions can be made by a minority of States creating legal obligations for all States parties. A human rights-based legality, effectiveness and proportionality test can help address these deficits and bring the decision-making process more into line with good governance standards.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171726/
Whichever authoritarian national, state or local government legalizes ganja for recreational use now stands the chance of winning back the favor of the vast numbers of people who suffer from its prohibition. Many of the working classes, farmers, migrants workers, sanyasis, fakirs, the ill, minorities, tribal communities, young and old will be glad if this is done. They may even forget all the pain and trauma that governments have inflicted on the people in the name of the drama called Covid and erect a few statues and temples for the reformer. People may remember for many centuries the names of the great politicians who removed prohibition of ganja and they could find mention (maybe an entire chapter??) in history books. The strongman leader of the authoritarian ruling party across the world's nations, without even having to wear a mask or inject dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, might be viewed as the savior of the human race and the planet and his party could win more elections thus ensuring that they retain power longer. Maybe statues of all the authoritarian leaders together could be erected at the UN headquarters, a la Justice League or Avengers...Surely this is immortal glory worth chasing?
May 30, 2020, 1:20 PM
'The Court of Appeal today said there was no evidence from the authorities to prove that marijuana has medicinal properties to treat patients with cancer.
In the written judgement against a “medical marijuana distributor”, Muhammad Lukman bin Mohamad, who was sentenced to death, the court said manufacturing marijuana and its related substances are subject to the Dangerous Drugs Act (DDA).
"There is no supportive evidence from any medical bodies or the health ministry to confirm his contention that the drug possesses medicinal properties and is, therefore, beneficial to the public,” said Court of Appeal judge Zabariah Mohd Yusof'
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2020/05/22/no-evidence-marijuana-can-help-cancer-patients-says-appeals-court/
Faffing around...
'At the March meeting, several member nations argued they were unprepared to vote because of unresolved issues stemming from the WHO recommendations.
'For that reason, the CND proposed three “topical meetings” between June and September with the goal of addressing “the open questions with regard to the implications and consequences of, as well as the reasoning for the recommendations, and enable an informed decision at the 63rd reconvened session in December 2020.”
Previous meetings in June and September 2019 were held to clarify “medical and scientific questions” with the WHO.
According to the letter currently being circulated among CND members, the new meetings would instead focus “on the exchange of views among member states regarding, implications arising from economic, social, legal, administrative and other factors and the ways of addressing them if any of these recommendations are adopted.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/united-nations-body-preparing-for-december-vote-on-who-cannabis-recommendations/
'By using the mass media as his forum (receiving much support from publisher William Randolph Hearst), Anslinger was the main person behind the creating of an anti-marijuana sentiment during those years. The anti-marijuana propaganda film Reefer Madness from 1936 is a good example of his work.
There were two component in his strategy. First, the message that weed is evil. Second, racism, according to him only latinos and black people were smoking 'marihuana' and made them 'forget their place in society'.
Here below you can read 15 of his most ridiculous quotes about cannabis. You have been warned...'
https://www.cannaconnection.com/blog/7217-harry-j-anslinger-15-ridiculous-quotes-about-marihuana
The story is the same globally..minorities, indigenous people, tribals and the poor are the primary targets of marijuana policing...
'Authors wrote, "In every single state, Black people were more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, and in some states, Black people were up to six, eight, or almost ten times more likely to be arrested. In 31 states, racial disparities were actually larger in 2018 than they were in 2010."
In two states, Montana and Kentucky, African Americans were arrested for marijuana possession violations at more than nine times the rate of Caucasians – the highest disparity in the country. Colorado and Alaska, which legalized adult-use marijuana sales in 2012 and 2014 respectively, possessed the lowest disparity in marijuana possession arrest rates'
https://norml.org/news/2020/04/23/aclu-report-racial-disparities-persist-in-marijuana-possession-arrests
The American strategy of the 60s is now global strategy to suppress dissent. Today, include Covid (pharma drug abuse wearing a virus mask) as a new strategy to disrupt opposition......was it Trump's advisers who came up with the new idea or Xi's or Modi's or Putin's? Heroin can no longer be associated with blacks because everyone now knows how much the whites like the white powder...Marijuana can still be associated with whichever group you are opposed to - blacks, hippies, anti-war activists, minorities, students...hence another reason to keep it illegal. Covid can also be associated with anybody anywhere globally...what a beauty...the public scream "more testing, more testing"...
'"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt these communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did," he concluded, according to Baum.'
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/top-nixon-adviser-reveals-the-racist-reason-he-started-the-war-on-drugs-decades-ago/articleshow/70473035.cms
'Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said at a press conference that he’s “very proud of this state” for going beyond issues such as implicit bias in policing and the “deadly use of force.” California’s leadership helped advance “a conversation about broader criminal justice reform to address the issues of the war on drugs” and “race-based sentencing,” he said.
“That’s why the state was one of the early adopters of a new approach as it relates to cannabis reform. Legalization around adult-use of marijuana,” he said. “It was a civil rights call from our perspective.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/california-governor-says-marijuana-legalization-is-a-civil-rights-matter-amid-mass-protests-over-racial-injustice/
'“People in the high concentration group were much less compromised than we thought they were going to be,” said co-author Kent Hutchison, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at CU Boulder who also studies alcohol addiction. “If we gave people that high a concentration of alcohol it would have been a different story.”
One reason that higher THC blood levels didn’t translate to higher highs could be that the body’s finite number of cannabinoid receptors, which THC molecules bind to, become saturated regardless of whether higher- or lower-THC products are used. Any excess THC in consumers’ blood plasma, in that case, would be metabolized and not contribute to further impairment'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/do-highly-potent-marijuana-concentrates-get-users-more-high-not-exactly-study-finds/
Faffing around...
'Two of the six WHO cannabis scheduling recommendations will be discussed in next week’s meeting:
Recommendation 5.4.
Recommendation 5.5.
The first recommendation, if adopted, would delete cannabis “extracts and tinctures” from Schedule 1 of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs.
Adopting recommendation 5.4 is not intended “to decrease the level of control of any cannabis related substance or narrow the scope of control,” the WHO previously clarified. It’s a change recommended mostly for consistency.
The main reason for the removal of “extracts and tinctures,” according to the WHO clarification, is to provide more certainty about the control “of all illicit products derived from cannabis, as cannabis preparations will be controlled in the same way as cannabis.”
Recommendation 5.5 pertains to CBD.
If the recommendation is adopted, a footnote would be added to the cannabis entry in Schedule 1 of the 1961 treaty to clarify that preparations containing predominantly CBD and up to 0.2% THC are not under international control.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/united-nations-body-to-meet-again-this-month-to-discuss-who-cannabis-recommendations/
'The Library of Congress (LOC) is documenting racist depictions of marijuana in early 20th century news coverage that helped to drive the criminalization of cannabis, highlighting sensationalized articles about the plant that the federal research body says effectively served as “anti-Mexican propaganda.”
As part of the institution’s “Chronicling America” project, which digitizes media from throughout U.S. history, LOC published a timeline last week that gives examples of headlines concerning cannabis from 1897 to 1915.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/library-of-congress-highlights-racist-news-coverage-used-to-justify-criminalizing-marijuana-a-century-ago/
Now you're talking..united you stand, divided you fall...it's the clout of big pharma, petrochemicals, alcohol and tobacco that you're up against...
'Hemp entrepreneurs currently bound by state and national rules are setting their sights higher.
Europe’s dominant hemp industry association unveiled plans this week to form an international hemp association that could advocate for the industry before global authorities such as the World Health Organization and United Nations.'
https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-activists-set-sights-globally-in-new-push-for-collaboration/
The most interesting statistic for me to look back at from this period will be the number of persons who died as a result of inappropriate usage of pharmaceutical drugs ...I'm not expecting to come across it though...
'When the trial’s independent data safety monitoring team saw the number of deaths in the high-dose group rise rapidly, they alerted the researchers and asked for that arm to be stopped. Of 81 patients enrolled at the time, seven in the high-dose group had died, versus four in the low-dose group. By the times the results were published, those numbers had risen to 16 and six, respectively. Two patients from the high-dose group developed dangerous cardiac arrhythmias before death, a known side effect from chloroquine, and warning signs for future heart trouble were more common in the high-dose group. An 11 April preprint about the results was covered by international media outlets, including The New York Times.
On 14 April, Michael James Coudrey, CEO of a U.S. marketing company whose website says he offers “social media and ‘digital information warfare’ services to political candidates,” tweeted accusations that the researchers had overdosed their patients and used them as “guinea pigs” in a study conducted “so irresponsibility I can’t even believe it.” Three days later, Eduardo Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president’s son, tweeted out a similar message, including an article that called the researchers “left-wing medical activists” and included their past social media posts in support of certain political candidates and sporting rainbow flag profile frames as proof. The article framed the study, which was later published in JAMA Network Open, as an attempt to “disparage the drug that the Bolsonaro government approved as effective for treating COVID-19.” Soon, death threats against the researchers and their families started to come in'
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/it-s-nightmare-how-brazilian-scientists-became-ensnared-chloroquine-politics
'Around 269 million people used drugs in 2018, up 30 per cent from 2009, with adolescents and young adults accounting for the largest share of users. More people are using drugs, and there are more drugs, and more types of drugs, than ever. Seizures of amphetamines quadrupled between 2009 and 2018. Even as precursor control improves globally, traffickers and manufacturers are using designer chemicals, devised to circumvent international controls, to synthesize amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy. Production of heroin and cocaine remain among the highest levels recorded in modern times.' - Ghada Waly, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Drug markets are becoming increasingly complex. Plant-based substances such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin have been joined by hundreds of synthetic drugs, many not under international control. There has also been a rapid rise in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs. Roughly 500 NPS are found on the national markets of Member States each year. Currently, most of those are stimulants, followed by synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists and a smaller number of opioids. However, while the overall number of NPS has stabilized, the proportions have changed. Opioid NPS accounted for just 2 per cent of the number of NPS identified in 2014 but by 2018 that figure had risen to 9 per cent. Opioid NPS, many of them fentanyl analogues, have proved both potent and harmful, fuelling overdose deaths in North America and to a lesser extent in other regions. In North America, fentanyls are either used as adulterants in heroin and other drugs (including cocaine and methamphetamine) or used to make falsified pharmaceutical opioids. Some evidence suggests NPS stimulants are also being injected in Europe: a study of residues in discarded syringes in six European cities found that many were tainted with stimulant NPS.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Global seizures of cannabis herb fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2018 – a slump driven by declines in North America, where seizures have fallen by 84 per cent in the last 10 years. By contrast, seizures almost doubled in the rest of the world over the same period. The pattern of seizures suggests policies aimed at liberalizing cannabis markets have played a key role in the decline.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Medicines for pain relief are unequally distributed across regions. More than 90 per cent of all pharmaceutical opioids available for medical consumption were in high-income countries in 2018. Some 50 per cent were in North America, 40 per cent in Europe, and a further 2 per cent in Oceania. Those countries are home to about 12 per cent of the global population. Low- and middleincome countries, which are home to 88 per cent of the global population, are estimated to consume less than 10 per cent of pharmaceutical opioids.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'An estimated 192 million people used cannabis in 2018, making it the most used drug globally. In comparison, 58 million people used opioids in 2018. But that lower number of users belies the harm associated with opioids. This group of substances accounted for 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths related to drug use disorders in 2017 and 50 per cent of the 42 millions years (or 21 million years) lost due to disability or early death, attributed to drug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In West, Central and North Africa, the opioid crisis is fuelled by tramadol; in North America, by fentanyls. Although those subregions have little in common in terms of economics, demographics or general patterns of drug use, both are struggling with an opioid crisis fuelled by substances that are easy to access and cheap to produce.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Ease of manufacturing and low production costs helped to seed both crises, as did the context of an absence of international regulations on tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. Both crises were inflamed by the availability of the substances on pharmaceutical and illicit markets – making it more difficult to detect and prevent their misuse.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Commitments related to drug control fell from 3 per cent of all development assistance pledged by Governments in 2000 to 0.02 per cent in 2017. The amount of money spent on drug control also fell – from 1.9 per cent of all development spending in 2003 to 0.04 per cent in 2017. Without more detailed information, it is difficult to judge to what extent the massive declines reported actually reflect real declines in funds provided for drug control. Falls in spending and budgeting may reflect changes in accounting practices. For example, some Member States may simply use other budget lines to provide development assistance.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Cannabis is the drug that most brings people into contact with the criminal justice system, accounting for more than half of all drug law offences cases, based on reports from a total of 69 countries over 2014–2018 The predominance of cannabis-related cases in the statistics reflects the drug's large global market. ATS were the next biggest drug category (responsible for 19 per cent of cases), followed by cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of suspects were men.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Continued large-scale seizures of cannabis products in the Middle East and North Africa suggest that cannabis resin trafficking to Europe is not being disrupted by the restrictions related to the COVID19 pandemic. There are indications that the lockdown measures in Europe may lead to an increase in demand for cannabis products, which could intensify drug trafficking activities from North Africa to Europe in the future.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In general, trafficking in cannabis may not be affected in the same way as trafficking in heroin or cocaine, given that cannabis production often takes place near consumer markets and traffickers are thus less reliant on long, transregional shipments of large quantities of the drug.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In countries with limited law enforcement capacity, enforcing measures to counter the spread of COVID-19 may divert resources away from counter-narcotics efforts, making drug trafficking and production less risky for organized criminal groups and providing a conducive environment for illicit activities. Moreover, there are indications that drug trafficking groups are adapting their strategies in order to continue their operations and that some have started to exploit the situation so as to enhance their image among the population by providing services, in particular to the vulnerable.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Many countries have reported drug shortages at the retail level, with reports of heroin shortages in Europe, South-West Asia and North America in particular. Drug supply shortages can go together with an overall decrease in consumption (for example, of drugs that are mostly consumed in recreational settings such as bars and clubs) but may also, especially in the case of heroin, lead to the consumption of harmful domestically produced substances, as well as more harmful patterns of drug use by people with drug use disorders. In terms of alternatives, some countries in Europe have warned that heroin users may switch to substances such as fentanyl and its derivatives. An increase in the use of pharmaceutical products such as benzodiazepines and buprenorphine has also been reported, to the extent that their price has doubled in some areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'People with drug use disorders are particularly vulnerable to comorbidities that can lead to a poor outcome if they become infected with COVID-19. The same is true for anyone who uses drugs regularly. People who use opioids have a high risk of comorbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, whereas stimulant users are particularly susceptible to inflammation of and damage to the lung tissue. Users of both drug types may already have a compromised immune system and an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. These underlying conditions can put people who use drugs regularly at a high risk of complications and mortality if they become infected with COVID-19' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'The economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 crisis has the potential to worsen levels of drug production, trafficking and use. The crisis may exacerbate the socioeconomic situation of vulnerable groups, who in turn may increasingly resort to illicit activities as a coping mechanism to compensate for the loss of licit income and employment. Once restrictions related to COVID-19 are lifted, economic shocks may also prompt an increase in drug consumption, as observed in the past. Pairing drug related programmes with the development interventions that Governments are launching to contain the negative socioeconomic consequences of the crisis can help prevent a possible further increase in the number of people with substance use disorders linked to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'2. Scale up scientific evidence-based interventions for the treatment of drug use disorders that take a multifactorial approach, are integrated within the overall health-care delivery system of each country, are affordable, attractive, available and accessible in both urban and rural settings, are an alternative to punishment and/or prison, are available to people in need, are based on principles of human rights and ethics, and address the varied needs of people with drug use disorders. Treatment services for those in rural settings and remote areas could be offered through mobile services as well as through the use of web-based and telecommunication facilities (telemedicine).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'The current public discourse around cannabis tends to conflate the non-medical use of cannabis products containing high levels of THC (vapes and concentrates) with medical use of preparation such as dronabinol and nabiximols containing THC and CBD for treating and managing health conditions, including chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and spasticity symptoms, as well as sleep disturbances associated with fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Personal testimonies on the use of cannabis products to self-medicate and alleviate health conditions cannot be heeded in lieu of rigorous clinical trials on the effectiveness of cannabis products in treating certain health conditions. Moreover, CBD, a cannabinoid that is not a psychoactive agent and is often promoted as a health and wellness product, should not be confused with THC, a very different and psychoactive cannabinoid, or with cannabis per se, which contains many different compounds. Policy, legislation and public debate would do well to address these very different issues with greater clarity.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Another area of concern in the cannabis debate is the growing influence of and investment by large corporations, especially the alcohol and tobacco industry, which is investing in the cannabis industry in North America. Such developments raise some concerns that, as the market for the non-medical use of cannabis is expanding rapidly, revenue and profits are likely to dictate the course of the nonmedical cannabis industry rather than public health considerations. These concerns are especially pertinent for jurisdictions where the non-medical use of cannabis has been legalized' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
Going through the executive summary of the 2020 World Drug Report, I find that there is no change in tune from the world drug control agencies. The report says that abuse of all forms of synthetic drugs are rapidly growing including opioids, amphetamines and benzodiazepines. It also says that Covid 19 is likely to exacerbate drug usage and that novel psychotropic substances synthesized in labs are growing rapidly. It says that national budgets for drug control have been slashed significantly over the last few years. Along with all this it also continues to say that cannabis was the most consumed and largest seized drug in the world. It also shows that the majority of persons in jail are for cannabis. It also seems more focused on curbing cannabis cultivation by poor farmers than focusing on synthetic drugs that kill. It talks about how 80% of the world suffers without access to pain medication and then goes on to say that cannabis needs to be closely monitored and claims of its use are only personal testimonials without clinical trial backing. It also does not miss the opportunity to say that THC is not as benign as CBD even though no statistic of cannabis related deaths exist. It says that adolescent use in places where cannabis has been legalized have not increased, states that alcohol is much more responsible for violence than drugs, but expresses concern about big tobacco and alcohol companies looking to enter cannabis businesses...how typical...
Jul 3, 2020, 4:18 PM
'The past-year use of cannabis is substantially higher than the global average in North America (14.6 per cent), Australia and New Zealand (10.6 per cent) and West and Central Africa (9.3 per cent). In 2009, cannabis use was reported to be stabilizing or declining in countries with established cannabis markets, such as in Western and Central Europe, North America and Australia and New Zealand, but that trend was offset by increasing use in many countries in Africa and Asia. A decade later, cannabis use in Western and Central Europe has remained stable overall and has increased considerably in North America, Africa and Asia.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Cannabis is the most widely used drug among young people. Globally, it is estimated that there were 13 million past-year users of any drug among students aged 15–16 in 2018, with an estimated 11.6 million past-year users of cannabis. This corresponds to an annual prevalence of cannabis use of 4.7 per cent among this age group – a rate that is higher than the rate among the general population aged 15–64 (3.9 per cent). Past-year use of cannabis among young people aged 15–16 is high in Oceania (17.8 per cent), the Americas (12.1 per cent) and Europe (11.7 per cent).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Opioids, which include opiates (heroin and opium) and pharmaceutical and other synthetic opioids, are a major concern in many countries because of the severe health consequences associated with their use. For example, in 2017, the use of opioids accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the 42 million years of “healthy” life lost as a result of disability and premature death (disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs) and 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths attributed to drug use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Although global estimates are not available, the nonmedical use of pharmaceutical opioids is reported in many countries, in particular in countries in West and North Africa and the Near and Middle East (tramadol), and in North America (hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, tramadol and fentanyl).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'With the exception of Nigeria, where 4.6 million people were estimated to have used opioids – mainly tramadol – in 2017, population-level prevalence estimates of the use of opioids are not available for countries in West, Central and North Africa. However, many countries in those subregions report high levels of non-medical use of tramadol. For example, in Egypt, 2.5 per cent of male and 1.4 per cent of female students aged 15–17 had misused tramadol in the past year. Students in that country also reported the use, to a lesser degree, of heroin or opium/morphine in 2016. Furthermore, data on the provision of treatment suggest that the prevalence of the non-medical use of opioids is quite high in Egypt. Tramadol tablets available in some parts of Africa are reportedly intended for the illicit market and may be of a dosage higher than usually prescribed for medical purposes.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The opioid crisis continues in North America, with a new record level in the number of opioid overdose deaths attributed to the use of fentanyl and its analogues. These substances are added to heroin and other drugs as adulterants and are also sold as counterfeit prescription opioids, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone, and even as counterfeit benzodiazepines, to a large unsuspecting population of users of opioids and other drugs. In 2018, in the United States, 10.3 million people or 3.7 per cent of the population aged 12 and older had misused opioids in the past year. Of those people, 9.9 million (3.6 per cent of the population) reported the non-medical use of prescription opioids while nearly 800,000 reported past-year use of heroin.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The number of overdose deaths in the United States reached its peak in 2017 at 70,237 deaths (21.7 deaths per 100,000 population), of which 47,600 (68 per cent: 14.9 deaths per 100,000 population) were attributed to opioids. In 2018, for the first time since 1999, the number of overdose deaths declined over the previous year by 4 per cent to 67,367 deaths (20.7 deaths per 100,000 population). Opioids were responsible for most of those deaths, accounting for 46,802 in total in 2018 (14.6 deaths per 100,000 population), of which 67 per cent were attributed to fentanyls.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'There are also signs of increasing non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids in Western and Central Europe, as reflected in the increasing proportion of treatment admissions for the use of those substances in recent years. In 2017, users of pharmaceutical opioids, including misused methadone, buprenorphine, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, tramadol and oxycodone, accounted for 22 per cent of all clients entering drug treatment in the subregion for opioid use disorders (as their primary drug).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'A major drug use survey carried out recently in India found that in 2018, 2.1 per cent of the population aged 10–75, a total of 23 million people, had used opioids in the past year. Among opioids, heroin is the most prevalent substance, with a past-year prevalence of 1.1 per cent among the population aged 10–75; this is followed by the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, with a past-year prevalence of almost 1 per cent, and by opium at almost 0.5 per cent. In general, the past-year use of opioids is much higher among men (4 per cent of the male population) than women (0.2 per cent of the female population). Moreover, 1.8 per cent of adolescents aged 10–17 are estimated to be past-year opioid users. Of the 23 million past-year opioid users, roughly one third, or 7.7 million people, suffer from opioid use disorders. Compared with earlier estimates from a survey carried out in 2004, overall opioid use in India is estimated to have increased fivefold.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Around 27 million people worldwide, corresponding to 0.5 per cent of the adult population, are estimated to have used amphetamines, including amphetamine, methamphetamine and pharmaceutical stimulants, in the past year. The past-year prevalence of the use of amphetamines is particularly high in North America (2.3 per cent of the population aged 15–64) and Australia and New Zealand (1.3 per cent). The past-year use of amphetamines in Asia, as a percentage of the population, is at a similar level (0.5 per cent) to the global average. Nearly half of the global estimate of past-year users of amphetamines (12.7 million people) reside in Asia, although the region is home to 60 per cent of the global population aged 15–64' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The type and form of amphetamines used vary considerably between regions and subregions. In North America, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants and methamphetamine is most prevalent; in East and South-East Asia and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), it is methamphetamine; and in Western and Central Europe and the Near and Middle East, it is amphetamine. In the latter subregion, amphetamine is commonly known as “captagon”. In many countries in South and Central America, especially those that have reported recent survey data, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants is more common than the use of other amphetamines. The non-medical use of weight loss pills is reportedly more prevalent among women than among men, with pills such as sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate (sold under the brand names Aderan and Ipomex) and phentermine (sold under the brand names Duromine and Suprenza), along with methylphenidate and amphetamine, reported to be the most commonly misused pharmaceutical stimulants in those subregions' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In 2018, methamphetamine use declined among young adults (aged 18–25), but increased significantly among adults aged 26 and older. This excludes institutionalized and homeless populations, however, both of which may be affected by disproportionately higher rates of drug use. In recent years, reported methamphetamine per gram purity levels in the United States have averaged more than 90 per cent, while prices have declined by a further 18 per cent over the past year to $56 per pure gram.48 Although in the United States, methamphetamine has historically been mixed with heroin to create a “speedball”, such combinations are increasingly rare. Recent forensic laboratory reports indicate that, while still comparatively rare, there are combinations of methamphetamine, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues on the United States drug markets.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'European wastewater analysis confirms the patterns of use of amphetamines reported in household survey data, which point to an overall prevalence of amphetamine use in Europe that is higher than that of methamphetamine, as methamphetamine use is predominant in only a few countries. Wastewater analyses, conducted in 140 cities in 33 countries across Europe, suggest that the quantity of amphetamine consumed per capita over the period 2011–2019 was 1.7 times larger in 2019. In most of the cities included in the analysis, amphetamine was the most consumed substance of the amphetamines group in 2019 (or the latest year available)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'More than one third (9.9 million people) of the estimated global number of users of amphetamines are in East and South-East Asia. The increased use of methamphetamine, both in the form of tablets and crystalline methamphetamine, continues to be reported in the subregion. A recent household survey conducted in Indonesia in 2017 reported past-year prevalence of the use of amphetamines at 0.5 per cent, or roughly 1 million past-year users, 850,000 of whom were past-year users of methamphetamine. Similarly, in the Philippines, on the basis of a 2016 household survey, 1.1 per cent of the population aged 10–69, or approximately 850,000 people, were estimated to be past-year users of methamphetamine, while in Thailand 1.3 per cent of the population (653,000 people) aged 12–65 were estimated to be past-year users of methamphetamine tablets, whereas 0.7 per cent of the population (372,000) used crystal methamphetamine in 2019.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In other countries in East and South-East Asia, the number of drug treatment admissions is the only indicator available to provide information on the extent of drug use. With the exception of Viet Nam, all countries in the subregion continued to report methamphetamine as the primary drug of concern in drug treatment admissions in 2018 (or the latest available year). While China does not report data on drug treatment admissions, the majority of registered drug users (nearly 60 per cent) in 2018 comprised users of synthetic drugs (mainly methamphetamine)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Globally, an estimated 19 million people were pastyear users of cocaine in 2018, corresponding to 0.4 per cent of the global population aged 15–64. The main cocaine markets continue to be North America and Western and Central Europe, with a prevalence of use of 2.1 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively, while the highest prevalence of past-year cocaine use is in Australia and New Zealand, at 2.2 per cent of the population aged 15–64. Cocaine use is also higher than the global average in Central America (0.7 per cent) and South America (1.0 per cent).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In South America, 2.8 million people, or almost 1 per cent of the population aged 15–64, were estimated to be past-year cocaine users in 2018. With nearly 1.5 million past-year cocaine and “crack” cocaine users, Brazil is the largest cocaine market in South America. The use of cocaine base paste, which was previously confined to countries where cocaine is manufactured, has spread to many countries in South America. However, such use is difficult to estimate since people who use cocaine base paste are usually from socially marginalized groups that are not well captured by household surveys.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Over the past decade and a half, all regions other than Africa have seen an increasing proportion of drug treatment being provided for cases of cannabis use disorders. In most of the regions, among people entering treatment for cannabis use disorders, nearly half were first-time entrants, with a mean age of 26 years. In Africa, although the proportion of people treated for cannabis as the primary drug of concern has been decreasing, it remains significant (50 per cent in 2018). In West and Central Africa, for instance, between 2014 and 2017 more than 7 out of 10 people in drug treatment underwent treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In Africa, the increasing proportion of people treated for opioid use disorders likely reflects the increasing use of opioids, especially tramadol, in West and Central Africa. In that subregion, opioids (heroin and tramadol) were, after cannabis, the second most common drug type for which people accessed drug treatment services over the period 2014–2017.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The increase in treatment demand related to cannabis use disorders in some regions warrants special attention. There is great variability in the definition and practice of what constitutes treatment of cannabis use disorders. Treatment at present consists of behavioural or psychosocial interventions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (in which irrational, negative thinking styles are challenged and the development of alternative coping skills is promoted) and motivational interviewing (in which a user’s personal motivation to change their own behaviour is facilitated and engaged). These interventions may vary from one-time online contact or screening and brief intervention in an outpatient setting, to a more comprehensive treatment plan including treatment of other comorbidities in an outpatient or inpatient setting. Some of the factors that may influence the number of people in treatment for cannabis use disorders include changes in the number of people who actually need treatment; changes in the treatment referral system; changes in awareness of potential problems associated with cannabis use disorders; and changes in the availability of and access to treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Opioids (predominantly heroin) remain the main drug for which people undergo drug treatment in Europe (in particular Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) and Asia, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of all treatment admissions in 2018. Compared with users of other drugs, those with opioid use disorders entering treatment tend to be older, in their midthirties, and between one quarter and one third of them are first-time entrants. This corresponds to findings published in scientific literature, for instance studies from Europe, which suggest that there is an ageing cohort of opioid users in Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Treatment for the use of amphetamine-type stimulants is more common in Asia (predominantly for the use of methamphetamine) and Oceania (based on data from Australia and New Zealand) than in other regions. As is the case with cannabis users, people who are in treatment for disorders related to the use of amphetamines tend to be younger – in their mid-twenties – than users of opioids in treatment, and the majority of them also tend to be first-time entrants. People receiving treatment for the use of methamphetamine account for more than three quarters of those in treatment in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'It is also important to acknowledge that the nature of treatment interventions differs by drug type. This may have an impact on the provision of and referrals to treatment for the use of different drugs and on retention into treatment, all of which directly influence drug treatment coverage by drug type. For the treatment of disorders related to the use of cannabis and psychostimulants, there are currently no pharmacological interventions available, thus behavioural interventions are the only available and effective treatment, whereas for opioid use disorders, pharmacological treatment – opioid agonist and antagonist treatment – along with psychosocial interventions, are the mainstay. Data show, for example, that the higher the level of provision of opioid substitution treatment, the better the coverage of treatment for opioid use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The health consequences of drug use can include a range of negative outcomes such as drug use disorders, mental health disorders, HIV infection, hepatitis-related liver cancer and cirrhosis, overdose and premature death. The greatest harms to health are those associated with the use of opioids and with injecting drug use, owing to the risk of acquiring HIV or hepatitis C through unsafe injecting practices.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Injecting drug use is a significant public health concern and causes morbidity and mortality owing to the risk of overdose and blood-borne infections (mainly HIV and hepatitis B and C), transmitted through the sharing of contaminated needles and syringes and other drug paraphernalia or risky sexual behaviour in some groups and subsequent severe immunosuppression, cirrhosis, neoplastic disease and inflammation sequelae. Social and physical effects can further aggravate potential underlying mental health conditions.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Owing to the criminalization of drug use, punitive laws, stigma and discrimination against people who use or inject drugs in many parts of the world, conventional survey methods have been found to underestimate the actual population size because of the hidden nature of PWID [persons who inject drugs]; therefore, only indirect methods have been shown to reflect the situation of PWID with greater accuracy. Overall, new or updated estimates of PWID were available for 40 countries in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The prevalence of PWID [persons who inject drugs] aged 15–64 in 2018 continues to be the highest in Eastern Europe (1.26 per cent) and Central Asia and Transcaucasia (0.63 per cent). Those percentages are, respectively, 5.5 and 2.8 times higher than the global average. More than a quarter of all PWID reside in East and South-East Asia, although the prevalence itself is relatively low (0.19 per cent). The three subregions with the largest numbers of PWID (East and South-East Asia, North America and Eastern Europe) together account for over half (58 per cent) of the global number of PWID. It is noteworthy that, as in previous years, while three countries – China, the Russian Federation and the United States – account for just 27 per cent of the global population aged 15–64, they are home to almost half (43 per cent) of all PWID.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Injecting drug use is estimated to account for approximately 10 per cent of HIV infections worldwide and 30 per cent of all HIV cases outside Africa, while in the eastern countries of the WHO European Region more than 80 per cent of all HIV infections occur among PWID [persons who inject drugs]. PWID are estimated to be 22 times more likely than people in the general population to be living with HIV.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The largest number of PWID [persons who inject drugs] living with HIV reside in Eastern Europe, East and South-East Asia and South-West Asia, which together account for 67 per cent of the global total. Although the prevalence of HIV among PWID (9.3 per cent) is below the global average, a fifth of the global number of PWID living with HIV reside in East and South-East Asia. A small number of countries continue to account for a large proportion of the total global number of PWID living with HIV. In 2018, for example, PWID living with HIV in China, Pakistan and the Russian Federation accounted for almost half of the global total (49 per cent), while PWID in those three countries comprise only a third of all PWID worldwide.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'PWID [persons who inject drugs] are a key population affected by hepatitis C. Global estimates suggest that 71 million people worldwide were chronically infected with hepatitis C in 2017 and that 23 per cent of new hepatitis C infections and one in three hepatitis C-related deaths are attributable to injecting drug use. Hepatitis C-related morbidity and mortality continue to rise, mainly as a result of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and death in cases of untreated hepatitis C' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'UNODC, WHO, UNAIDS and the World Bank jointly estimated the prevalence of hepatitis C among PWID [persons who inject drugs] worldwide in 2018 to be 48.5 per cent, or 5.5 million (range: 4 million to 7.8 million) people aged 15–64. This estimate is based on estimates in 108 countries, covering 94 per cent of the estimated global number of PWID.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Although data coverage was low in the Caribbean, the highest prevalence of hepatitis C among PWID [persons who inject drugs] was found in that subregion, at 76 per cent, followed by East and South-East Asia, Western and Central Europe, North America, and Central Asia and Transcaucasia, where it ranged between 61 and 54 per cent. In North Africa, a hepatitis C prevalence of 25 per cent was found among PWID, compared with a combined prevalence in the general population (>15 years) in North Africa and the Middle East estimated at 3.1 per cent. In Central Asia, a hepatitis C prevalence of 54 per cent was found among PWID, compared with a range of 0.5 to 13.1 per cent among the general population' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
The number of deaths, loss of life years through premature death and disability, and comorbidities due to the usage of various drugs should be a clear indicator of which drugs need to be most controlled and which the least. In addition to this, the nature of treatment is also an indicator of severity of drugs involved and drug abuse. It is clearly evident from all reports and statistics that synthetic drugs are responsible for nearly all the deaths, comorbidities and disabilities. It is also evident from the type of treatment recommended for cannabis use disorder, essentially counseling, the seriousness and threat from this disorder. Yet, cannabis users are the most jailed and referred for treatment by the criminal justice system. Drug seizures are largest for cannabis. Drug enforcement focuses most on cannabis. Cannabis users are more than half the drug law prisoners in global jails. Public health policies continue to lump cannabis with these dangerous synthetic drugs, cannabis continues to be ostracized and continues to face the maximum action. Its users, probably the most wise among users of all drugs including pharmaceuticals, alcohol and tobacco, continue to be discriminated against, ostracized and harmed the most by a society that cannot or refuses to recognize the real threats that it faces...
Jul 4, 2020, 4:20 PM
'Given the significant number of people whose property is being seized under civil asset forfeiture programs but who are never charged — and particularly since cannabis has been a major driver for the forfeitures at a time when public support for legalization is at an all-time high — reforming civil asset forfeiture laws and ensuring that those whose property has been seized have proper recourse to recover their assets should be key components. Further, having police department budgets funded by property seized from the public creates perverse incentives for law enforcement agencies in budget-constrained communities to be more aggressive in the practice in order to offset budget cuts. At a minimum, having any seized assets allocated toward community programs (or other general fund allocations outside of law enforcement) can eliminate the expectation that police pay hinges on how many assets that officers seize. Additionally, the federal Equitable Sharing Program should be reformed to eliminate the bypassing of such state level restrictions on spending. Barring such changes, the civil asset forfeiture will continue to present significant opportunities for abuses of police power.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/law-enforcements-ill-gotten-gain-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws-v-cannabis/
'"Rejecting the analysis of career staff, Attorney General Barr ordered the Antitrust Division to issue Second Request subpoenas," Elias said, referencing the division's most comprehensive type of merger probe. "The rationale for doing so centered not on an antitrust analysis, but because he did not like the nature of their underlying business." '
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/elias-testimony-barr-cannabis-trump-automobile-california/index.html
'The Gallup poll, published Tuesday, asked 1,028 Americans in all 50 states and the nation’s capital whether they deemed 21 different behaviors or policies, from using birth control to the death penalty, moral or not. More respondents viewed marijuana use as acceptable than they did abortion, pornography, having children outside of marriage and wearing fur.'
https://www.nj.com/marijuana/2020/06/most-americans-see-smoking-weed-as-morally-acceptable-survey-finds.html
To market a house cleaning product as good, one of the things to ensure is that one's own house is clean. This applies to vaccines as well. You can't stake a strong claim for anti-Covid medicine sitting on top of the global Covid charts. This is not the Olympics. To strengthen your claim, you need to get off the charts. The Chinese have done it fast, in and out in a flash, setting off the global race. France, Germany, Turkey and Iran have done it. Spain, Italy and UK are doing it, replacing their positions with Peru and Chile and staking their claims to the magic vaccine. The US, Brazil, and India, sitting pretty on top, are starting to resemble sitting ducks. Their hydroxychloroquine gambit seems to have failed, a move too fast too soon, even though their leaders continue to promote it by self medicating. They need to slide off the charts, but its not so easy to start going down suddenly when you have upward momentum. Especially with China supplying the test kits, medicines and PPEs to propel the climb with promises of a quick buck. The Chinese appear to have played masterfully, winning both at home, with all dissent quelled, and abroad, selling its Covid products...the old one two, eh Xi? Everybody else is playing catch up now trying to secure vaccine rights. Which pharma promises the biggest cash prize? WHO's refereeing? All have achieved the (primary?) goal of stunning and tightening control over the restless public..for now at least...
Jul 8, 2020, 3:01 PM
'The opiate seized in the largest quantity in 2018 continued to be opium (704 tons), followed by heroin (97 tons) and morphine (43 tons). Expressed in heroin equivalents, however, heroin continued to be seized in larger quantities than opium or morphine. Globally, 47 countries reported opium seizures, 30 countries reported morphine seizures and 103 countries reported heroin seizures in 2018, suggesting that trafficking in heroin continues to be more widespread in geographical terms than trafficking in opium or morphine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantities of opium and morphine seized continued to be concentrated in just a few countries in 2018, with three countries accounting for 98 per cent of the global quantity of opium seized and 97 per cent of the global quantity of morphine seized. By contrast, seizures of heroin continue to be more widespread, with 54 per cent of the global quantity of heroin seized in 2018 accounted for by the three countries with greatest seizures.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most opiates seized are reported in or close to the main opium production areas. Thus Asia, host to more than 90 per cent of global illicit opium production and the world’s largest consumption market for opiates, accounted for almost 80 per cent of all opiates seized worldwide, as expressed in heroin equivalents, in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of opiates continued to be seized in South-West Asia in 2018, accounting for 98 per cent of the global quantity of opium seized, 97 per cent of the global quantity of morphine seized and 38 per cent of the global quantity of heroin seized that year (i.e., equivalent to 70 per cent of all opiates seized globally as expressed in heroin equivalents). Overall, 690 tons of opium, 42 tons of morphine and 37 tons of heroin were seized in South-West Asia in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of both opium and morphine seized were reported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, followed by Afghanistan and Pakistan, while seizures reported by other countries remained comparatively modest. The largest total quantity of heroin seized by a country in 2018 was that seized by the Islamic Republic of Iran (for the first time since 2014), followed by Turkey, the United States, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Belgium.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Almost 70 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine (the two main internationally trafficked opiates) seized in 2018 were intercepted in Asia, mostly in South-West Asia. The two subregions surrounding Afghanistan, South-West Asia and Central Asia, together accounted for more than 56 per cent of the global quantity of heroin and morphine seized
Despite the decline in 2018, the overall trend in seizures of heroin and morphine in that subregion continued to be an upward one over the period 2008–2018. South-West Asia continued to account for the majority of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized globally in 2018 (close to 56 per cent), with the largest quantities seized being reported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, followed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest total quantity of heroin and morphine seized in a region outside Asia is that reported for Europe (22 per cent of the global total in 2018), which is an important market for the consumption of heroin. Heroin and morphine seized in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe continued to account for the bulk (66 per cent) of all such quantities seized in Europe in 2018, with most of the heroin and morphine seized in the region continuing to be reported by Turkey (62 per cent), followed by Western and Central Europe (31 per cent) and Eastern Europe (3 per cent) in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the strongest increase in the quantities of heroin and morphine seized in 2017 was reported in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (the same year as the bumper opium harvest reported in Afghanistan), the strongest increase in 2018 was reported in Western and Central Europe (89 per cent). This suggests that it may take a year from when opium is harvested in Afghanistan until it is manufactured into the heroin that ends up on the streets of Western and Central Europe. There were increases in heroin and morphine seizures in Europe in the countries along the Balkan route in 2018, although most of the increase was due to an increase in the quantities of heroin and morphine seized in Belgium and, to a lesser extent, in France and Italy.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In contrast to Western and Central Europe as a whole, which continues to be supplied mainly by heroin trafficked along the Balkan route by land, trafficking to Belgium in 2018 to a large extent (98 per cent) took the form of maritime shipments departing from the Islamic Republic of Iran or Turkey. Similarly, trafficking to Italy was characterized by maritime shipments in 2018 (61 per cent of the total quantity seized by customs authorities), with the bulk of seizures in 2018 having departed from the Islamic Republic of Iran in containers, followed by shipments by air (37 per cent), often departing from the Middle East (Qatar) or Africa (South Africa), while heroin shipments destined for France typically transited the Netherlands and Belgium in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Heroin trafficking in the Americas remains concentrated in North America. The subregion accounted for 94 per cent of all quantities of heroin and morphine seized in the Americas in 2018, when seizures reported in North America were almost four times as high as a decade earlier. Seizures made in the United States accounted for 87 per cent of all heroin and morphine seized in the Americas in 2018, followed by Mexico (the country where most opium is produced in the region), Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Canada and Guatemala.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The world’s single largest heroin trafficking route continues to be the so-called “Balkan route”, along which opiates from Afghanistan are shipped to Iran (Islamic Republic of), Turkey, the Balkan countries and to various destinations in Western and Central Europe. Not counting seizures made in Afghanistan itself, countries along the Balkan route accounted for 58 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized in 2018. A further 8 per cent of those global seizures were reported by countries in Western and Central Europe, whose markets are supplied to a great degree by heroin and morphine that is trafficked along the Balkan route' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In line with the dominance of the opium production in Afghanistan, quantities of heroin and morphine seized related to Afghan opiate production accounted for some 84 per cent of the global total in 2018, a slight decrease from 88 per cent in 2017, the year of the bumper harvest in the country. Most of the heroin found in Europe, Central Asia/ Transcaucasia and Africa is derived from opium of Afghan origin, accounting for 100 per cent of all mentions in the responses to the annual report questionnaire by countries in Central Asia/Transcaucasia, 96 per cent in Europe and 87 per cent in Africa over the period 2014–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The Islamic Republic of Iran reported that 75 per cent of the morphine and 75 per cent of the heroin seized on its territory in 2018 had been trafficked via Pakistan, while the remainder had been smuggled directly into the country from Afghanistan. Typically, heroin is then smuggled to Turkey (70 per cent of all the heroin seized in the Islamic Republic of Iran in both 2016 and 2017) and from there along the Balkan route to Western and Central Europe, either via the western branch of the route via Bulgaria to various western Balkan countries or, to a lesser extent, via the eastern branch of the route via Bulgaria and then to Romania and Hungary, before reaching the main consumer markets in Western and Central Europe' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The main countries identified in which heroin was trafficked along the southern route to Western and Central Europe over the period 2014– 2018 included India, the Gulf countries (notably Qatar and United Arab Emirates) and a number of Southern and East African countries (notably South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Madagascar). The European countries reporting most trafficking along the southern route over the period 2014–2018 were Belgium (mostly via Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and the United Republic of Tanzania) and Italy (mostly via Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Oman).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The most significant trafficking activities worldwide of opiates not of Afghan origin concern opiates produced in South-East Asia (mostly Myanmar), which are trafficked to other markets in East and SouthEast Asia (mostly China and Thailand) and to Oceania (mostly Australia). Seizures made in those countries accounted for 11 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized (excluding seizures made by Afghanistan) in 2018, down from 15 per cent in 2015. This went in parallel with reported reductions in opium production in Myanmar of 20 per cent over the period 2005–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most heroin (and morphine) trafficking in the Americas continues to take place within North America, i.e., from Mexico to the United States and, to a far lesser extent, from Colombia and from Guatemala (typically via Mexico) to the United States. Based on forensic profiling, United States authorities estimated in 2017 that over 90 per cent of the heroin samples analysed originated in Mexico and 4 per cent in South America, while around 1 per cent originated in South-West Asia. This stands in stark contrast to a decade earlier (2007), when only 25 per cent was sourced from Mexico and 70 per cent was imported from South America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantity of ATS [amphetamine type stimulants] seized at the global level has increased over the past two decades, in particular over the period 2009–2018, when the quantity of ATS seized quadrupled. The increase was primarily due to the increasingly large quantities of methamphetamine being seized, as seizures increased sevenfold over the period 2009–2018. The largest proportional increase (18-fold) was for the group of “other stimulants” (including prescription ATS, a number of cathinones, such as mephedrone or MDPV, which are now under international control, and non-specified ATS). The total quantity of “ecstasy” seized doubled over the period 2009–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In most years since 1998, the ATS [amphetamine type stimulants] seized in the largest quantities was methamphetamine, which in the period 2014–2018 accounted for 71 per cent of the total quantity of ATS seized globally, followed by amphetamine (21 per cent) and “ecstasy” (5 per cent). The rest (3 per cent) of seized ATS included former synthetic new psychoactive substances such as mephedrone, MDPV or methylone (0.4 per cent of the total).
While the number of countries reporting seizures of “ecstasy” declined slightly, from 109 countries in the period 2004–2008 to 100 countries in the period 2014–2018, the number of countries reporting seizures of amphetamine increased from 85 to 97 in that same time. Those reporting seizures of methamphetamine increased by more than 50 per cent, from 69 to 105 countries, which suggests that there has been a significant increase in the geographical spread of methamphetamine trafficking at the global level' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Nonetheless, seizures of methamphetamine remain highly concentrated: the three countries responsible for most of the methamphetamine seized worldwide in 2018 (the United States, Thailand and Mexico) accounted for 80 per cent of the global total, while the three countries reporting the largest quantities of amphetamine (Turkey, Pakistan and the Syrian Arab Republic) and the three countries reporting the most “ecstasy” seized (Turkey, the United States and Australia) accounted for a significantly smaller proportion of the global total (around 50 per cent) in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Different substances are predominant in the seizures of ATS in different regions: methamphetamine is predominant in North America, East and SouthEast Asia, South Asia and Oceania; and amphetamine in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, Europe, Africa and Central America. South America and the Caribbean were the only subregions where the quantities of “ecstasy” seized were predominant among all ATS intercepted in the period 2014–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In contrast to previous decades, when methamphetamine was primarily manufactured from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, nowadays more than half of seized precursor chemicals linked to the manufacture of methamphetamine are P-2-P and/or its precursor chemicals. There is, however, a significant geographical divide. Most methamphetamine production in Asia, Oceania and Africa – and possibly some in Europe – continues to be based primarily on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as the key precursor chemicals, while manufacture of methamphetamine in North America is now primarily based on P-2-P and its precursor chemicals. In some instances, precursor chemicals for the manufacture of P-2-P also seem to have been used in the manufacture of methamphetamine in Western Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the quantities of methamphetamine seized have increased rapidly over the past decade, seizures of internationally controlled chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine have fluctuated over the years and showed a clear increase only in 2018, when methamphetamine precursor seizures almost tripled compared with 2017. The marked increase was the result of record quantities of P-2-P linked to methamphetamine manufacture in North America being seized – an almost ninefold increase – and the global quantities of ephedrine seized increasing almost fivefold. By contrast, the reported number of dismantled laboratories continued to decline, from 10,600 methamphetamine laboratories dismantled in 2010 to close to 3,700 in 2017 and less than 2,100 in 2018. A possible explanation of the phenomenon of an expanding market going hand in hand with fewer and fewer laboratories being dismantled could be a shift towards operating fewer but larger laboratories in parallel with a general shift in production to countries with comparatively limited interdiction capacities.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
''Regarding precursor chemicals, it has to be taken into account that increasing quantities of methamphetamine are now being produced from pre-precursors that are not under international control; for example, substances such as benzaldehyde and nitroethane are used in the clandestine manufacture of P-2-P, in both North America and Europe. Similarly, benzyl chloride and sodium cyanide are used in the clandestine manufacture of phenylacetic acid, which is also used to manufacture P-2-P, the main precursor used in methamphetamine manufacture in North America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The United States reported the dismantling of 1,607 methamphetamine laboratories in 2018, accounting for 78 per cent of all methamphetamine laboratories dismantled worldwide that year. However, the overall output of domestic methamphetamine manufacture in the United States now appears to be considerably smaller than the potential output produced by several of the large, industrial-scale laboratories found in other parts of the world, such as Mexico and East and South-East Asia, in recent years. Over the past few years, the United States has reported that most of the methamphetamine found on its market has been smuggled into the country from abroad, most notably from Mexico. Most of the clandestine production and smuggling seems to be controlled by various Mexican drug cartels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The vast majority of the methamphetamine production facilities dismantled in the United States were “kitchen laboratories” (1,426), which typically produce two ounces or less per production cycle for local demand, although the overall figure also included the dismantling of 11 industrial-scale methamphetamine laboratories in the United States in 2018. Nevertheless, the overall number of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories detected in the United States fell by about 90 per cent over the period 2010–2018 and by 93 per cent since the peak in 2004. According to the United States authorities, the initial decline after 2004 resulted from improved precursor control, notably through the regulation of over-the-counter sales of methamphetamine precursor chemicals such as ephedrine preparations and pseudoephedrine, and ongoing efforts to dismantle laboratories, which acted as a deterrent to domestic methamphetamine manufacture.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'By contrast, the decline in the number of dismantled laboratories after 2010 was no longer in line with the upward trend in a number of other indicators, which had been clearly pointing to an expansion of the methamphetamine market, both in terms of supply (rising seizures, falling purity adjusted prices) and demand (rising prevalence rates, positive tests among the general workforce, treatment admissions and deaths). The purity of methamphetamine rose from 95 per cent in the first quarter of 2012 to 98 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, while the potency of methamphetamine increased from 85 to 97 per cent over the same period. This indicates an improvement in the know-how of organized crime groups manufacturing methamphetamine from various (non-scheduled) P-2-P precursors in neighbouring Mexico, an overall increase in the supply of methamphetamine in the United States and the emergence of a potentially even more problematic substance, showing everhigher levels of purity and potency, thus increasing the risk of overdose.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the annual prevalence of methamphetamine use more than doubled from 0.3 to 0.7 per cent of the population aged 12 and older in the United States over the period 2008–2018, the number of psychostimulants involved in drug poisoning deaths in the United States rose from 1,302 to 12,676 deaths over the same period, equivalent to an almost 10-fold increase. This increase may have been inflated by an increasing number of contaminations of psychostimulants with opioids (such as fentanyl and its analogues); however, psychostimulant-related deaths excluding any involvement of opioids still showed an eightfold increase, from 807 deaths in 2008 to 6,271 deaths in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The decline in the domestic supply of methamphetamine, indicated by the falling number of manufacturing facilities dismantled in the United States, going hand in hand with increasing use and an overall increase in the supply of the drug, can be explained by the increasing importance of rapidly growing illegal methamphetamine imports from clandestine manufacture sites in neighbouring Mexico. According to the United States authorities, the latter phenomenon appears to have resulted from attempts by Mexican organized crime groups to diversify their drug portfolio as they attempted to reduce their dependence on cocaine produced in countries in South America, preferring instead to source the required chemicals from China and produce methamphetamine themselves. Methamphetamine shipments intercepted along the south-western border of the United States increased almost fourfold between 2013 and 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The region with the next largest number of methamphetamine laboratories dismantled was Asia, accounting for 6 per cent of the global total in the period 2014–2018. Most of these facilities were dismantled in China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which together accounted for 94 per cent of all reported laboratories dismantled in Asia, while some clandestine methamphetamine laboratories were also dismantled, in descending order of importance, in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the Republic of Korea, Myanmar and Hong Kong, China. In addition, the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine has been reported in recent years by Afghanistan and Iraq.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Countries identified as significant source countries for methamphetamine shipments in Asia in the period 2014–2018 included Myanmar, followed by China, Thailand, India and Iran (Islamic Republic of). Clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in Asia seems to be still largely based on the use of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine as precursors, although reports from Afghanistan suggest that ephedrine is extracted from ephedra plant material and used as a precursor for methamphetamine.80 The authorities in Myanmar and Thailand have reported the seizure of increasing quantities of sodium cyanide and benzyl cyanide in recent years. These substances can be used for synthesizing P-2-P, which is then used to manufacture either amphetamine or methamphetamine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Similar to the situation in the United States, where the manufacture of methamphetamine declined while increasing in neighbouring Mexico, both China and Iran (Islamic Republic of) reported declining domestic production, reflected in the decreasing numbers of methamphetamine laboratories dismantled in recent years, going hand in hand with the expansion of methamphetamine manufacture in their neighbouring countries. Indeed, by 2018 the Islamic Republic of Iran reported that most of the methamphetamine found on its territory originated in Afghanistan and was trafficked either from there directly or via Pakistan. Similarly, China reported that methamphetamine seized in recent years has originated primarily in Myanmar. In contrast to many other countries, however, the marked declines in the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine in China appear to have more than outweighed any increase in clandestine manufacture and imports from neighbouring countries. This is revealed in the decline in methamphetamine found in the wastewater in cities across China, with wastewater-based estimates suggesting a fall in methamphetamine consumption amounts of 26 per cent over the period 2014 –2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The information available globally on methamphetamine points to a market expansion over the past two decades, in particular since 2009. Qualitative information on methamphetamine trafficking trends reported by Member States, data on drug treatment facilities, prevalence data in countries based on survey data, and prices all suggest that the methamphetamine market has been expanding, particularly in the two subregions where demand for the drug is highest, South-East Asia and North America, while most trafficking in methamphetamine continues to be intraregional.
Methamphetamine continues to be seized mainly in North America and in East and South-East Asia which accounted for, respectively, 50 per cent and 42 per cent of the global quantities of methamphetamine seized in the period 2014–2018, while the quantities of the drug seized in Oceania (4 per cent), the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia (2 per cent), South Asia and Europe (1 per cent each) continued to be far smaller.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of methamphetamine seized in 2018 were the quantities seized in the United States, followed by Thailand and Mexico. Marked increases in the quantities seized from 2017 to 2018 were reported by the United States and Thailand, while the quantities of methamphetamine seized in China declined, in line with reports of wastewater analysis that showed a significant decline in methamphetamine consumption in that country.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In the United States, most methamphetamine is sold as methamphetamine. However, there have also been reports of tablets sold as “ecstasy” that contained methamphetamine instead (notably in Missouri). The sale of methamphetamine in the form of falsified Adderall tablets is a new phenomenon, with laboratories manufacturing such falsified medicaments found in a number of states, in particular Georgia and California. The expansion of methamphetamine trafficking has also gone hand in hand with the increasingly common practice of mixing methamphetamine with fentanyls. This practice has proved to be particularly harmful and has contributed to the rapid rise in methamphetamine-related deaths in recent years.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantities of methamphetamine seized in North America rose sixfold between 2009 and 2018, to 117 tons. North American methamphetamine seizures accounted for more than 99 per cent of all the methamphetamine seized in the Americas in 2018. Methamphetamine seizures in the subregion were dominated by those reported by the United States (71 per cent of the total in 2018), followed by Mexico (29 per cent), while the quantities of methamphetamine seized in Canada (0.4 per cent) remained more limited' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Practically all the major transnational criminal organizations in Mexico seem to be involved in the smuggling of methamphetamine to the United States. They include the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Juárez Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Los Zetas Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Organization. In parallel, outlaw motorcycle gangs continue to be involved in the distribution of methamphetamine within the United States. The increased involvement of Mexican organized crime groups in the trafficking of drugs other than cocaine has contributed to the spread of methamphetamine trafficking from the western United States to the whole country over the past decade, including states in the eastern part of the country that had previously been spared from the large-scale harmful use of methamphetamine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The United States, for example, has been reported by other countries as a country of departure of methamphetamine for Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), Asia (Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China and Mongolia) and Europe (Ireland). Moreover, methamphetamine trafficking has been reported not only from Mexico or from Canada into the United States but also from the United States to those two countries, suggesting a number of two-way trafficking flows across the countries of North America. Methamphetamine trafficked from Canada has been reported in the United States, South America (Chile), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and a few countries in Europe (Iceland and Latvia).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'More recently, methamphetamine shipments have also been intercepted en route from Mexico to the Netherlands for distribution in Europe; moreover, Mexican “methamphetamine cooks”, linked to Mexican organized crime groups, were arrested in Europe, after being detected in large-scale methamphetamine manufacture in Western Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Quantities of methamphetamine seized in East and South-East Asia increased eightfold over the period 2009–2018, to close to 100 tons, and preliminary data for 2019 show further strong increases in the quantities of methamphetamine seized, in particular in South-East Asia, with increases reported in 2019 by, among other countries, Brunei Daraussalam, Cambodia. Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Viet Nam. In most years in the past decade the largest quantities of methamphetamine seized in East and South-East Asia were reported by China. In 2018, by contrast, 66 per cent of all the methamphetamine seized in that subregion was seized in Thailand, followed by Indonesia (8 per cent) and Malaysia (8 per cent) and only then by China (6 per cent), reflecting underlying shifts in the methamphetamine market in South-East Asia, that is, a decline in the methamphetamine market in China in parallel with ongoing increases in the ASEAN countries.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the typical purity of methamphetamine tablets encountered in East and South-East Asia has remained relatively stable in recent years (mostly within a range of 15 to 25 per cent), retail prices of methamphetamine tablets have decreased sharply in several countries in the subregion, which, when combined with the increases in quantities seized, suggests that the supply of methamphetamine may have outstripped demand in East and South-East Asia' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The average purity of crystalline methamphetamine in East and South-East Asia continues to remain very high, again suggesting an abundant supply of the drug. The average purity of samples analysed in China reached 95 per cent in 2018 and other countries in the subregion (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam) reported purity levels of between 70 and 90 per cent. While purity has remained high, retail prices of crystalline methamphetamine have decreased in several countries in the subregion in recent years, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia and Myanmar, pointing to an increase in the availability of crystalline methamphetamine in the subregion. In Indonesia, Thailand and Viet Nam, retail prices of crystalline methamphetamine have actually more than halved over the past decade. At the same time, the average purity of crystalline methamphetamine rose in Thailand from 90 per cent in 2011 to around 95 per cent in 2019, with almost all (99 per cent) of the crystalline methamphetamine samples analysed in 2019 showing purity levels of over 90 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'All in all, tablet and crystalline methamphetamine prices in several countries in the region reached their lowest level over the past decade despite a record number of seizures being made every year during the same period. The decrease in prices also appears to have contributed to an increase in the use of methamphetamine and, subsequently, in more methamphetamine-related treatment demand. Thus, there have been sharp increases in methamphetamine-related treatment admissions reported in recent years by several countries in South-East Asia, including a more than 30-fold increase in the number of treatment admissions for the use of methamphetamine reported by Malaysia over the period 2011–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'This shift from China as the main location of methamphetamine manufacture and trafficking to other countries in East and South-East Asia is also indirectly reflected in trafficking data reported by Australia. China and Hong Kong, China, were the two main embarkation points for methamphetamine trafficked to Australia in 2015, whereas in the fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18 the most important embarkation points were the United States, followed by Thailand and Malaysia. In fact, in 2018, the Australian authorities reported that the importance of China as a source country for methamphetamine had declined while there has been an emerging trend in the growth of quantities of seized methamphetamine originating in South-East Asia, mainly in the Mekong region, including the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Thailand.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most of the methamphetamine available in East and South-East Asia is sourced within the subregion. The dynamics of methamphetamine manufacture and trafficking within that subregion are, however, less well understood than in others as the available indicators show partly contradictory patterns. Although in previous years, China and Myanmar were identified as the most frequently identified countries of “origin”, “departure” and “transit” in East and South-East Asia, manufacture of methamphetamine may now be more widely spread across the subregion, although it is not clear whether frequently mentioned departure countries, such as Malaysia or Thailand, are also the countries of origin or mainly transit countries for methamphetamine manufactured in Myanmar. In fact, Myanmar reported Thailand and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic as main destination countries for methamphetamine shipments in 2018, while Malaysia reported Thailand as the main departure country' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Methamphetamine found in Australia and New Zealand is both locally manufactured and, to a larger extent, imported from North America and Asia. In the fiscal year 2017/18, methamphetamine was mainly smuggled into Australia from the United States, followed by Thailand, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, China (including Hong Kong, China), Mexico, Lebanon, Viet Nam and India. The United States was also the main source country of the methamphetamine found in New Zealand in 2018, followed by Canada and, in SouthEast Asia, by Malaysia and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Of the total number of amphetamine laboratories reported dismantled worldwide in the period 2014–2018 (749 laboratories), more than half were dismantled in Europe (417), most notably in Western and Central Europe (316) and, to a lesser degree, in Eastern Europe (100). Overall, 16 European countries reported the dismantling of clandestine amphetamine laboratories over the period 2014– 2018, in particular the Netherlands. The Netherlands, followed by Poland, Lithuania and Belgium, were the most frequently identified source countries of amphetamine in Europe. Amphetamine from South-Eastern Europe was reported as being mainly sourced from Bulgaria and Turkey. However, it is likely that such statistics are heavily skewed as a number of countries, in particular in the Middle East, where large-scale amphetamine manufacture has been reported, have a very limited capacity to dismantle laboratories and thus are not appropriately represented in these statistics' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The manufacture of counterfeit “captagon” tablets, that is, amphetamine tablets mixed with caffeine, in the Near and Middle East is more widespread than the manufacture of amphetamine in South Asia or in East and South-East Asia. Indications received from other countries in the subregion pointed to the existence of clandestine laboratories manufacturing “captagon” tablets in the period 2014–2018, in particular in the Syrian Arab Republic and Lebanon, intended partly for domestic consumption and partly for the more lucrative markets of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, as well as the Sudan and Libya. In addition, Iran (Islamic Republic of) and Jordan have been identified by other countries in the subregion as possible countries of origin of amphetamine shipments. Jordan reported that all of the amphetamine found on its market originated in either the Syrian Arab Republic or Lebanon.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Although data for 2018 were unavailable for key countries in the Near and Middle East, more than half (54 per cent) of the global quantity of amphetamine seized in the period 2014–2018 was reported in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia. Of the rest, some 24 per cent was seized in Europe (including 14 per cent in Western and Central Europe), 13 per cent in the Americas (including 7 per cent in North America), 6 per cent in Africa (mostly in North Africa) and 1 per cent in Oceania (mostly in Australia). The regional totals for Europe and the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia show larger seizures of amphetamine than of methamphetamine over the period 2014–2018, suggesting that the availability of amphetamine may be still greater than of methamphetamine in those regions' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, the quantities of methamphetamine seized increased markedly in 2018. However, the marked decline in the reported quantities of amphetamine seized in recent years (-37 per cent in 2017 and -80 per cent in 2018) seems to be largely a statistical artefact. Some of this decline may have been related to changes in the categorization of stimulants seized, for example, “prescription stimulants” instead of “amphetamine”. Even more important has been the hiatus in the reporting of seizures to UNODC by some countries known to be affected by major amphetamine trafficking activities. There is plenty of evidence that trafficking in amphetamine, in particular of “captagon” tablets, has also continued in the Near and Middle East in recent years. INCB, for example, in its most recent annual report noted the following: The manufacture and trafficking of counterfeit “captagon” continued to seriously affect the countries of the Middle East, which not only are destination markets for those drugs but are also increasingly becoming a source of counterfeit “captagon”…Political instability and unresolved conflicts, poverty and the lack of economic opportunities in some parts of the subregion have contributed to increased trafficking in…“captagon”' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Instability and conflict in the Middle East contributed to the trafficking in falsified “captagon” in the subregion. A lack of control and monitoring led to an increase in the manufacture of “captagon” tablets in some countries over the period 2014–2018, which turned into an additional source of income for terrorist and insurgency groups in the Middle East. Captagon was originally the trademarked brand name of a medicinal product containing fenetylline, until the substance was placed under international control in 1986. While the diversion of fenetylline from existing stocks might have continued until the end of the 1990s, those stocks, some of which were apparently located in Bulgaria, became depleted. However, the “captagon” name and logo continued to be used even though the composition of the counterfeit tablets had changed, and increasingly, seized “captagon” tablets were found to contain amphetamine, often mixed with caffeine and other substances.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The two countries most frequently reported as countries of origin of amphetamine (mainly “captagon”) seized in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia in the period 2014–2018 were Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic, which together accounted for some 40 per cent of all mentions of countries of origin reported by the authorities in the subregion. Final destinations are mostly countries in the Near and Middle East, most notably Saudi Arabia and various other Gulf countries, in particular the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, using both direct and indirect routes.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Unlike other plant-based drugs, for which cultivation and production is concentrated in only a limited number of countries, cannabis is produced in almost all countries worldwide. The cultivation of cannabis plants was reported by 151 countries in the period 2010–2018 – countries home to 96 per cent of the global population – and was reported through either direct indicators (such as the cultivation or eradication of cannabis plants and the eradication of cannabis-producing sites) or indirect indicators (such as seizures of cannabis plants and the origin of cannabis seizures reported by other Member States).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most countries do not have a comprehensive system in place for monitoring areas under illicit cannabis cultivation. At present, the information available is insufficient to produce scientifically accurate global estimates of the area under illicit cannabis cultivation. In addition, most of the estimates of the areas under illicit cannabis cultivation reported to UNODC do not generally meet scientific standards.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Globally, outdoor cannabis cultivation continues to be more widespread geographically than is indoor cannabis cultivation. Overall, 88 countries reported outdoor cannabis cultivation, law enforcement activities linked to outdoor cannabis cultivation (eradication, seizures of cannabis plants, seizures of cannabis-producing sites) or trends related to outdoor cannabis cultivation over the period 2012–2018, while only 64 countries reported data for those activities as linked to indoor cultivation. Some countries reported both indoor and outdoor cannabis cultivation.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of cannabis herb seized in 2018 were those reported in the Americas (61 per cent of the total), with South America alone accounting for 43 per cent of the global total. Of note is the marked decline in the share of seizures made in North America, which had long been the subregion reporting the largest cannabis herb seizures: on average, 50 per cent of the global total over the period 2008–2018, falling to 17 per cent of the global total in 2018, that is, to less than the total for Africa that year (19 per cent). The next largest regional reported seizure totals in 2018 were those for Asia and Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantity of cannabis herb seized in 2018 declined by 16 per cent compared with a year earlier, falling to 4,303 tons, the lowest level since 1999. As compared with 2010, the quantity seized fell by 34 per cent at the global level, largely due to decreases reported in North America (-84 per cent), with marked declines being reported by Mexico, the United States and Canada. Discussions and policies aimed at liberalizing the cannabis markets, including changes in the drug’s legislation in Canada and some jurisdictions of the United States, legalizing the production, distribution and the recreational use of cannabis, seem to have played a key role in this respect. By contrast, the quantities of cannabis herb seized almost doubled in the rest of the world over the period 2010–2018 (South America: +194 per cent; Oceania: +94 per cent; Europe: +73 per cent; Asia: +71 per cent; Africa: +53 per cent). The global cannabis herb trafficking index, based on qualitative information reported by Member States on trends in cannabis herb trafficking, also increased over the same period, although the trend appeared to be stabilizing in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In 2018, the largest quantities of cannabis herb seized worldwide continued to be those reported by Paraguay, followed by the United States and India. Cannabis herb produced in Paraguay is reported to have been mainly destined for neighbouring Brazil (77 per cent) and Argentina (20 per cent). Over the period 2008–2018, the largest cannabis herb seizures worldwide took place in the United States, followed by Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Nigeria, Morocco, Brazil, India and Egypt' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Trafficking in cannabis resin continues to be far more geographically concentrated than is trafficking in cannabis herb. More than half of all cannabis resin was seized in Western and Central Europe (51 per cent) in 2018, followed by the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia (36 per cent) and North Africa (8 per cent). These three subregions accounted for 95 per cent of all cannabis resin seized worldwide in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
One reason that higher THC blood levels didn’t translate to higher highs could be that the body’s finite number of cannabinoid receptors, which THC molecules bind to, become saturated regardless of whether higher- or lower-THC products are used. Any excess THC in consumers’ blood plasma, in that case, would be metabolized and not contribute to further impairment'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/do-highly-potent-marijuana-concentrates-get-users-more-high-not-exactly-study-finds/
- 'In 2018, more than 660,000 U.S. arrests were made for cannabis-related charges, averaging once per 48 seconds.
- Since California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis in 1996, nearly 17,000,000 people have been arrested on cannabis charges.
- According to the ACLU, blacks in America are nearly 4x likelier than whites to be arrested for cannabis offenses, despite similar rates of use.
- Among states reflecting the most racial disparities (e.g., Kentucky and Montana), blacks were nearly 10x times likelier to be arrested.
- While legalization has fundamentally reduced overall U.S. drug arrests, it has not mitigated racial disparities in policing, as minorities continue to bear the brunt of cannabis-related policing'
Faffing around...
'Two of the six WHO cannabis scheduling recommendations will be discussed in next week’s meeting:
Recommendation 5.4.
Recommendation 5.5.
The first recommendation, if adopted, would delete cannabis “extracts and tinctures” from Schedule 1 of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs.
Adopting recommendation 5.4 is not intended “to decrease the level of control of any cannabis related substance or narrow the scope of control,” the WHO previously clarified. It’s a change recommended mostly for consistency.
The main reason for the removal of “extracts and tinctures,” according to the WHO clarification, is to provide more certainty about the control “of all illicit products derived from cannabis, as cannabis preparations will be controlled in the same way as cannabis.”
Recommendation 5.5 pertains to CBD.
If the recommendation is adopted, a footnote would be added to the cannabis entry in Schedule 1 of the 1961 treaty to clarify that preparations containing predominantly CBD and up to 0.2% THC are not under international control.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/united-nations-body-to-meet-again-this-month-to-discuss-who-cannabis-recommendations/
'The Library of Congress (LOC) is documenting racist depictions of marijuana in early 20th century news coverage that helped to drive the criminalization of cannabis, highlighting sensationalized articles about the plant that the federal research body says effectively served as “anti-Mexican propaganda.”
As part of the institution’s “Chronicling America” project, which digitizes media from throughout U.S. history, LOC published a timeline last week that gives examples of headlines concerning cannabis from 1897 to 1915.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/library-of-congress-highlights-racist-news-coverage-used-to-justify-criminalizing-marijuana-a-century-ago/
Now you're talking..united you stand, divided you fall...it's the clout of big pharma, petrochemicals, alcohol and tobacco that you're up against...
'Hemp entrepreneurs currently bound by state and national rules are setting their sights higher.
Europe’s dominant hemp industry association unveiled plans this week to form an international hemp association that could advocate for the industry before global authorities such as the World Health Organization and United Nations.'
https://hempindustrydaily.com/hemp-activists-set-sights-globally-in-new-push-for-collaboration/
The most interesting statistic for me to look back at from this period will be the number of persons who died as a result of inappropriate usage of pharmaceutical drugs ...I'm not expecting to come across it though...
'When the trial’s independent data safety monitoring team saw the number of deaths in the high-dose group rise rapidly, they alerted the researchers and asked for that arm to be stopped. Of 81 patients enrolled at the time, seven in the high-dose group had died, versus four in the low-dose group. By the times the results were published, those numbers had risen to 16 and six, respectively. Two patients from the high-dose group developed dangerous cardiac arrhythmias before death, a known side effect from chloroquine, and warning signs for future heart trouble were more common in the high-dose group. An 11 April preprint about the results was covered by international media outlets, including The New York Times.
On 14 April, Michael James Coudrey, CEO of a U.S. marketing company whose website says he offers “social media and ‘digital information warfare’ services to political candidates,” tweeted accusations that the researchers had overdosed their patients and used them as “guinea pigs” in a study conducted “so irresponsibility I can’t even believe it.” Three days later, Eduardo Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president’s son, tweeted out a similar message, including an article that called the researchers “left-wing medical activists” and included their past social media posts in support of certain political candidates and sporting rainbow flag profile frames as proof. The article framed the study, which was later published in JAMA Network Open, as an attempt to “disparage the drug that the Bolsonaro government approved as effective for treating COVID-19.” Soon, death threats against the researchers and their families started to come in'
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/it-s-nightmare-how-brazilian-scientists-became-ensnared-chloroquine-politics
'Around 269 million people used drugs in 2018, up 30 per cent from 2009, with adolescents and young adults accounting for the largest share of users. More people are using drugs, and there are more drugs, and more types of drugs, than ever. Seizures of amphetamines quadrupled between 2009 and 2018. Even as precursor control improves globally, traffickers and manufacturers are using designer chemicals, devised to circumvent international controls, to synthesize amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy. Production of heroin and cocaine remain among the highest levels recorded in modern times.' - Ghada Waly, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Drug markets are becoming increasingly complex. Plant-based substances such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin have been joined by hundreds of synthetic drugs, many not under international control. There has also been a rapid rise in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs. Roughly 500 NPS are found on the national markets of Member States each year. Currently, most of those are stimulants, followed by synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists and a smaller number of opioids. However, while the overall number of NPS has stabilized, the proportions have changed. Opioid NPS accounted for just 2 per cent of the number of NPS identified in 2014 but by 2018 that figure had risen to 9 per cent. Opioid NPS, many of them fentanyl analogues, have proved both potent and harmful, fuelling overdose deaths in North America and to a lesser extent in other regions. In North America, fentanyls are either used as adulterants in heroin and other drugs (including cocaine and methamphetamine) or used to make falsified pharmaceutical opioids. Some evidence suggests NPS stimulants are also being injected in Europe: a study of residues in discarded syringes in six European cities found that many were tainted with stimulant NPS.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Global seizures of cannabis herb fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2018 – a slump driven by declines in North America, where seizures have fallen by 84 per cent in the last 10 years. By contrast, seizures almost doubled in the rest of the world over the same period. The pattern of seizures suggests policies aimed at liberalizing cannabis markets have played a key role in the decline.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Medicines for pain relief are unequally distributed across regions. More than 90 per cent of all pharmaceutical opioids available for medical consumption were in high-income countries in 2018. Some 50 per cent were in North America, 40 per cent in Europe, and a further 2 per cent in Oceania. Those countries are home to about 12 per cent of the global population. Low- and middleincome countries, which are home to 88 per cent of the global population, are estimated to consume less than 10 per cent of pharmaceutical opioids.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'An estimated 192 million people used cannabis in 2018, making it the most used drug globally. In comparison, 58 million people used opioids in 2018. But that lower number of users belies the harm associated with opioids. This group of substances accounted for 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths related to drug use disorders in 2017 and 50 per cent of the 42 millions years (or 21 million years) lost due to disability or early death, attributed to drug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In West, Central and North Africa, the opioid crisis is fuelled by tramadol; in North America, by fentanyls. Although those subregions have little in common in terms of economics, demographics or general patterns of drug use, both are struggling with an opioid crisis fuelled by substances that are easy to access and cheap to produce.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Ease of manufacturing and low production costs helped to seed both crises, as did the context of an absence of international regulations on tramadol and many fentanyl analogues or their precursors. Both crises were inflamed by the availability of the substances on pharmaceutical and illicit markets – making it more difficult to detect and prevent their misuse.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Commitments related to drug control fell from 3 per cent of all development assistance pledged by Governments in 2000 to 0.02 per cent in 2017. The amount of money spent on drug control also fell – from 1.9 per cent of all development spending in 2003 to 0.04 per cent in 2017. Without more detailed information, it is difficult to judge to what extent the massive declines reported actually reflect real declines in funds provided for drug control. Falls in spending and budgeting may reflect changes in accounting practices. For example, some Member States may simply use other budget lines to provide development assistance.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Cannabis is the drug that most brings people into contact with the criminal justice system, accounting for more than half of all drug law offences cases, based on reports from a total of 69 countries over 2014–2018 The predominance of cannabis-related cases in the statistics reflects the drug's large global market. ATS were the next biggest drug category (responsible for 19 per cent of cases), followed by cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of suspects were men.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Continued large-scale seizures of cannabis products in the Middle East and North Africa suggest that cannabis resin trafficking to Europe is not being disrupted by the restrictions related to the COVID19 pandemic. There are indications that the lockdown measures in Europe may lead to an increase in demand for cannabis products, which could intensify drug trafficking activities from North Africa to Europe in the future.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In general, trafficking in cannabis may not be affected in the same way as trafficking in heroin or cocaine, given that cannabis production often takes place near consumer markets and traffickers are thus less reliant on long, transregional shipments of large quantities of the drug.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'In countries with limited law enforcement capacity, enforcing measures to counter the spread of COVID-19 may divert resources away from counter-narcotics efforts, making drug trafficking and production less risky for organized criminal groups and providing a conducive environment for illicit activities. Moreover, there are indications that drug trafficking groups are adapting their strategies in order to continue their operations and that some have started to exploit the situation so as to enhance their image among the population by providing services, in particular to the vulnerable.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Many countries have reported drug shortages at the retail level, with reports of heroin shortages in Europe, South-West Asia and North America in particular. Drug supply shortages can go together with an overall decrease in consumption (for example, of drugs that are mostly consumed in recreational settings such as bars and clubs) but may also, especially in the case of heroin, lead to the consumption of harmful domestically produced substances, as well as more harmful patterns of drug use by people with drug use disorders. In terms of alternatives, some countries in Europe have warned that heroin users may switch to substances such as fentanyl and its derivatives. An increase in the use of pharmaceutical products such as benzodiazepines and buprenorphine has also been reported, to the extent that their price has doubled in some areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'People with drug use disorders are particularly vulnerable to comorbidities that can lead to a poor outcome if they become infected with COVID-19. The same is true for anyone who uses drugs regularly. People who use opioids have a high risk of comorbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, whereas stimulant users are particularly susceptible to inflammation of and damage to the lung tissue. Users of both drug types may already have a compromised immune system and an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. These underlying conditions can put people who use drugs regularly at a high risk of complications and mortality if they become infected with COVID-19' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'The economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 crisis has the potential to worsen levels of drug production, trafficking and use. The crisis may exacerbate the socioeconomic situation of vulnerable groups, who in turn may increasingly resort to illicit activities as a coping mechanism to compensate for the loss of licit income and employment. Once restrictions related to COVID-19 are lifted, economic shocks may also prompt an increase in drug consumption, as observed in the past. Pairing drug related programmes with the development interventions that Governments are launching to contain the negative socioeconomic consequences of the crisis can help prevent a possible further increase in the number of people with substance use disorders linked to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'2. Scale up scientific evidence-based interventions for the treatment of drug use disorders that take a multifactorial approach, are integrated within the overall health-care delivery system of each country, are affordable, attractive, available and accessible in both urban and rural settings, are an alternative to punishment and/or prison, are available to people in need, are based on principles of human rights and ethics, and address the varied needs of people with drug use disorders. Treatment services for those in rural settings and remote areas could be offered through mobile services as well as through the use of web-based and telecommunication facilities (telemedicine).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'The current public discourse around cannabis tends to conflate the non-medical use of cannabis products containing high levels of THC (vapes and concentrates) with medical use of preparation such as dronabinol and nabiximols containing THC and CBD for treating and managing health conditions, including chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and spasticity symptoms, as well as sleep disturbances associated with fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Personal testimonies on the use of cannabis products to self-medicate and alleviate health conditions cannot be heeded in lieu of rigorous clinical trials on the effectiveness of cannabis products in treating certain health conditions. Moreover, CBD, a cannabinoid that is not a psychoactive agent and is often promoted as a health and wellness product, should not be confused with THC, a very different and psychoactive cannabinoid, or with cannabis per se, which contains many different compounds. Policy, legislation and public debate would do well to address these very different issues with greater clarity.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
'Another area of concern in the cannabis debate is the growing influence of and investment by large corporations, especially the alcohol and tobacco industry, which is investing in the cannabis industry in North America. Such developments raise some concerns that, as the market for the non-medical use of cannabis is expanding rapidly, revenue and profits are likely to dictate the course of the nonmedical cannabis industry rather than public health considerations. These concerns are especially pertinent for jurisdictions where the non-medical use of cannabis has been legalized' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
Going through the executive summary of the 2020 World Drug Report, I find that there is no change in tune from the world drug control agencies. The report says that abuse of all forms of synthetic drugs are rapidly growing including opioids, amphetamines and benzodiazepines. It also says that Covid 19 is likely to exacerbate drug usage and that novel psychotropic substances synthesized in labs are growing rapidly. It says that national budgets for drug control have been slashed significantly over the last few years. Along with all this it also continues to say that cannabis was the most consumed and largest seized drug in the world. It also shows that the majority of persons in jail are for cannabis. It also seems more focused on curbing cannabis cultivation by poor farmers than focusing on synthetic drugs that kill. It talks about how 80% of the world suffers without access to pain medication and then goes on to say that cannabis needs to be closely monitored and claims of its use are only personal testimonials without clinical trial backing. It also does not miss the opportunity to say that THC is not as benign as CBD even though no statistic of cannabis related deaths exist. It says that adolescent use in places where cannabis has been legalized have not increased, states that alcohol is much more responsible for violence than drugs, but expresses concern about big tobacco and alcohol companies looking to enter cannabis businesses...how typical...
Jul 3, 2020, 4:18 PM
'The past-year use of cannabis is substantially higher than the global average in North America (14.6 per cent), Australia and New Zealand (10.6 per cent) and West and Central Africa (9.3 per cent). In 2009, cannabis use was reported to be stabilizing or declining in countries with established cannabis markets, such as in Western and Central Europe, North America and Australia and New Zealand, but that trend was offset by increasing use in many countries in Africa and Asia. A decade later, cannabis use in Western and Central Europe has remained stable overall and has increased considerably in North America, Africa and Asia.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Cannabis is the most widely used drug among young people. Globally, it is estimated that there were 13 million past-year users of any drug among students aged 15–16 in 2018, with an estimated 11.6 million past-year users of cannabis. This corresponds to an annual prevalence of cannabis use of 4.7 per cent among this age group – a rate that is higher than the rate among the general population aged 15–64 (3.9 per cent). Past-year use of cannabis among young people aged 15–16 is high in Oceania (17.8 per cent), the Americas (12.1 per cent) and Europe (11.7 per cent).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Opioids, which include opiates (heroin and opium) and pharmaceutical and other synthetic opioids, are a major concern in many countries because of the severe health consequences associated with their use. For example, in 2017, the use of opioids accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the 42 million years of “healthy” life lost as a result of disability and premature death (disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs) and 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths attributed to drug use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Although global estimates are not available, the nonmedical use of pharmaceutical opioids is reported in many countries, in particular in countries in West and North Africa and the Near and Middle East (tramadol), and in North America (hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, tramadol and fentanyl).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'With the exception of Nigeria, where 4.6 million people were estimated to have used opioids – mainly tramadol – in 2017, population-level prevalence estimates of the use of opioids are not available for countries in West, Central and North Africa. However, many countries in those subregions report high levels of non-medical use of tramadol. For example, in Egypt, 2.5 per cent of male and 1.4 per cent of female students aged 15–17 had misused tramadol in the past year. Students in that country also reported the use, to a lesser degree, of heroin or opium/morphine in 2016. Furthermore, data on the provision of treatment suggest that the prevalence of the non-medical use of opioids is quite high in Egypt. Tramadol tablets available in some parts of Africa are reportedly intended for the illicit market and may be of a dosage higher than usually prescribed for medical purposes.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The opioid crisis continues in North America, with a new record level in the number of opioid overdose deaths attributed to the use of fentanyl and its analogues. These substances are added to heroin and other drugs as adulterants and are also sold as counterfeit prescription opioids, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone, and even as counterfeit benzodiazepines, to a large unsuspecting population of users of opioids and other drugs. In 2018, in the United States, 10.3 million people or 3.7 per cent of the population aged 12 and older had misused opioids in the past year. Of those people, 9.9 million (3.6 per cent of the population) reported the non-medical use of prescription opioids while nearly 800,000 reported past-year use of heroin.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The number of overdose deaths in the United States reached its peak in 2017 at 70,237 deaths (21.7 deaths per 100,000 population), of which 47,600 (68 per cent: 14.9 deaths per 100,000 population) were attributed to opioids. In 2018, for the first time since 1999, the number of overdose deaths declined over the previous year by 4 per cent to 67,367 deaths (20.7 deaths per 100,000 population). Opioids were responsible for most of those deaths, accounting for 46,802 in total in 2018 (14.6 deaths per 100,000 population), of which 67 per cent were attributed to fentanyls.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'There are also signs of increasing non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids in Western and Central Europe, as reflected in the increasing proportion of treatment admissions for the use of those substances in recent years. In 2017, users of pharmaceutical opioids, including misused methadone, buprenorphine, fentanyl, codeine, morphine, tramadol and oxycodone, accounted for 22 per cent of all clients entering drug treatment in the subregion for opioid use disorders (as their primary drug).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'A major drug use survey carried out recently in India found that in 2018, 2.1 per cent of the population aged 10–75, a total of 23 million people, had used opioids in the past year. Among opioids, heroin is the most prevalent substance, with a past-year prevalence of 1.1 per cent among the population aged 10–75; this is followed by the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, with a past-year prevalence of almost 1 per cent, and by opium at almost 0.5 per cent. In general, the past-year use of opioids is much higher among men (4 per cent of the male population) than women (0.2 per cent of the female population). Moreover, 1.8 per cent of adolescents aged 10–17 are estimated to be past-year opioid users. Of the 23 million past-year opioid users, roughly one third, or 7.7 million people, suffer from opioid use disorders. Compared with earlier estimates from a survey carried out in 2004, overall opioid use in India is estimated to have increased fivefold.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Around 27 million people worldwide, corresponding to 0.5 per cent of the adult population, are estimated to have used amphetamines, including amphetamine, methamphetamine and pharmaceutical stimulants, in the past year. The past-year prevalence of the use of amphetamines is particularly high in North America (2.3 per cent of the population aged 15–64) and Australia and New Zealand (1.3 per cent). The past-year use of amphetamines in Asia, as a percentage of the population, is at a similar level (0.5 per cent) to the global average. Nearly half of the global estimate of past-year users of amphetamines (12.7 million people) reside in Asia, although the region is home to 60 per cent of the global population aged 15–64' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The type and form of amphetamines used vary considerably between regions and subregions. In North America, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants and methamphetamine is most prevalent; in East and South-East Asia and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), it is methamphetamine; and in Western and Central Europe and the Near and Middle East, it is amphetamine. In the latter subregion, amphetamine is commonly known as “captagon”. In many countries in South and Central America, especially those that have reported recent survey data, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants is more common than the use of other amphetamines. The non-medical use of weight loss pills is reportedly more prevalent among women than among men, with pills such as sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate (sold under the brand names Aderan and Ipomex) and phentermine (sold under the brand names Duromine and Suprenza), along with methylphenidate and amphetamine, reported to be the most commonly misused pharmaceutical stimulants in those subregions' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In 2018, methamphetamine use declined among young adults (aged 18–25), but increased significantly among adults aged 26 and older. This excludes institutionalized and homeless populations, however, both of which may be affected by disproportionately higher rates of drug use. In recent years, reported methamphetamine per gram purity levels in the United States have averaged more than 90 per cent, while prices have declined by a further 18 per cent over the past year to $56 per pure gram.48 Although in the United States, methamphetamine has historically been mixed with heroin to create a “speedball”, such combinations are increasingly rare. Recent forensic laboratory reports indicate that, while still comparatively rare, there are combinations of methamphetamine, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues on the United States drug markets.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'European wastewater analysis confirms the patterns of use of amphetamines reported in household survey data, which point to an overall prevalence of amphetamine use in Europe that is higher than that of methamphetamine, as methamphetamine use is predominant in only a few countries. Wastewater analyses, conducted in 140 cities in 33 countries across Europe, suggest that the quantity of amphetamine consumed per capita over the period 2011–2019 was 1.7 times larger in 2019. In most of the cities included in the analysis, amphetamine was the most consumed substance of the amphetamines group in 2019 (or the latest year available)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'More than one third (9.9 million people) of the estimated global number of users of amphetamines are in East and South-East Asia. The increased use of methamphetamine, both in the form of tablets and crystalline methamphetamine, continues to be reported in the subregion. A recent household survey conducted in Indonesia in 2017 reported past-year prevalence of the use of amphetamines at 0.5 per cent, or roughly 1 million past-year users, 850,000 of whom were past-year users of methamphetamine. Similarly, in the Philippines, on the basis of a 2016 household survey, 1.1 per cent of the population aged 10–69, or approximately 850,000 people, were estimated to be past-year users of methamphetamine, while in Thailand 1.3 per cent of the population (653,000 people) aged 12–65 were estimated to be past-year users of methamphetamine tablets, whereas 0.7 per cent of the population (372,000) used crystal methamphetamine in 2019.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In other countries in East and South-East Asia, the number of drug treatment admissions is the only indicator available to provide information on the extent of drug use. With the exception of Viet Nam, all countries in the subregion continued to report methamphetamine as the primary drug of concern in drug treatment admissions in 2018 (or the latest available year). While China does not report data on drug treatment admissions, the majority of registered drug users (nearly 60 per cent) in 2018 comprised users of synthetic drugs (mainly methamphetamine)' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Globally, an estimated 19 million people were pastyear users of cocaine in 2018, corresponding to 0.4 per cent of the global population aged 15–64. The main cocaine markets continue to be North America and Western and Central Europe, with a prevalence of use of 2.1 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively, while the highest prevalence of past-year cocaine use is in Australia and New Zealand, at 2.2 per cent of the population aged 15–64. Cocaine use is also higher than the global average in Central America (0.7 per cent) and South America (1.0 per cent).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In South America, 2.8 million people, or almost 1 per cent of the population aged 15–64, were estimated to be past-year cocaine users in 2018. With nearly 1.5 million past-year cocaine and “crack” cocaine users, Brazil is the largest cocaine market in South America. The use of cocaine base paste, which was previously confined to countries where cocaine is manufactured, has spread to many countries in South America. However, such use is difficult to estimate since people who use cocaine base paste are usually from socially marginalized groups that are not well captured by household surveys.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Over the past decade and a half, all regions other than Africa have seen an increasing proportion of drug treatment being provided for cases of cannabis use disorders. In most of the regions, among people entering treatment for cannabis use disorders, nearly half were first-time entrants, with a mean age of 26 years. In Africa, although the proportion of people treated for cannabis as the primary drug of concern has been decreasing, it remains significant (50 per cent in 2018). In West and Central Africa, for instance, between 2014 and 2017 more than 7 out of 10 people in drug treatment underwent treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In Africa, the increasing proportion of people treated for opioid use disorders likely reflects the increasing use of opioids, especially tramadol, in West and Central Africa. In that subregion, opioids (heroin and tramadol) were, after cannabis, the second most common drug type for which people accessed drug treatment services over the period 2014–2017.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The increase in treatment demand related to cannabis use disorders in some regions warrants special attention. There is great variability in the definition and practice of what constitutes treatment of cannabis use disorders. Treatment at present consists of behavioural or psychosocial interventions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (in which irrational, negative thinking styles are challenged and the development of alternative coping skills is promoted) and motivational interviewing (in which a user’s personal motivation to change their own behaviour is facilitated and engaged). These interventions may vary from one-time online contact or screening and brief intervention in an outpatient setting, to a more comprehensive treatment plan including treatment of other comorbidities in an outpatient or inpatient setting. Some of the factors that may influence the number of people in treatment for cannabis use disorders include changes in the number of people who actually need treatment; changes in the treatment referral system; changes in awareness of potential problems associated with cannabis use disorders; and changes in the availability of and access to treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Opioids (predominantly heroin) remain the main drug for which people undergo drug treatment in Europe (in particular Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) and Asia, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of all treatment admissions in 2018. Compared with users of other drugs, those with opioid use disorders entering treatment tend to be older, in their midthirties, and between one quarter and one third of them are first-time entrants. This corresponds to findings published in scientific literature, for instance studies from Europe, which suggest that there is an ageing cohort of opioid users in Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Treatment for the use of amphetamine-type stimulants is more common in Asia (predominantly for the use of methamphetamine) and Oceania (based on data from Australia and New Zealand) than in other regions. As is the case with cannabis users, people who are in treatment for disorders related to the use of amphetamines tend to be younger – in their mid-twenties – than users of opioids in treatment, and the majority of them also tend to be first-time entrants. People receiving treatment for the use of methamphetamine account for more than three quarters of those in treatment in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'It is also important to acknowledge that the nature of treatment interventions differs by drug type. This may have an impact on the provision of and referrals to treatment for the use of different drugs and on retention into treatment, all of which directly influence drug treatment coverage by drug type. For the treatment of disorders related to the use of cannabis and psychostimulants, there are currently no pharmacological interventions available, thus behavioural interventions are the only available and effective treatment, whereas for opioid use disorders, pharmacological treatment – opioid agonist and antagonist treatment – along with psychosocial interventions, are the mainstay. Data show, for example, that the higher the level of provision of opioid substitution treatment, the better the coverage of treatment for opioid use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The health consequences of drug use can include a range of negative outcomes such as drug use disorders, mental health disorders, HIV infection, hepatitis-related liver cancer and cirrhosis, overdose and premature death. The greatest harms to health are those associated with the use of opioids and with injecting drug use, owing to the risk of acquiring HIV or hepatitis C through unsafe injecting practices.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Injecting drug use is a significant public health concern and causes morbidity and mortality owing to the risk of overdose and blood-borne infections (mainly HIV and hepatitis B and C), transmitted through the sharing of contaminated needles and syringes and other drug paraphernalia or risky sexual behaviour in some groups and subsequent severe immunosuppression, cirrhosis, neoplastic disease and inflammation sequelae. Social and physical effects can further aggravate potential underlying mental health conditions.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Owing to the criminalization of drug use, punitive laws, stigma and discrimination against people who use or inject drugs in many parts of the world, conventional survey methods have been found to underestimate the actual population size because of the hidden nature of PWID [persons who inject drugs]; therefore, only indirect methods have been shown to reflect the situation of PWID with greater accuracy. Overall, new or updated estimates of PWID were available for 40 countries in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The prevalence of PWID [persons who inject drugs] aged 15–64 in 2018 continues to be the highest in Eastern Europe (1.26 per cent) and Central Asia and Transcaucasia (0.63 per cent). Those percentages are, respectively, 5.5 and 2.8 times higher than the global average. More than a quarter of all PWID reside in East and South-East Asia, although the prevalence itself is relatively low (0.19 per cent). The three subregions with the largest numbers of PWID (East and South-East Asia, North America and Eastern Europe) together account for over half (58 per cent) of the global number of PWID. It is noteworthy that, as in previous years, while three countries – China, the Russian Federation and the United States – account for just 27 per cent of the global population aged 15–64, they are home to almost half (43 per cent) of all PWID.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Injecting drug use is estimated to account for approximately 10 per cent of HIV infections worldwide and 30 per cent of all HIV cases outside Africa, while in the eastern countries of the WHO European Region more than 80 per cent of all HIV infections occur among PWID [persons who inject drugs]. PWID are estimated to be 22 times more likely than people in the general population to be living with HIV.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'The largest number of PWID [persons who inject drugs] living with HIV reside in Eastern Europe, East and South-East Asia and South-West Asia, which together account for 67 per cent of the global total. Although the prevalence of HIV among PWID (9.3 per cent) is below the global average, a fifth of the global number of PWID living with HIV reside in East and South-East Asia. A small number of countries continue to account for a large proportion of the total global number of PWID living with HIV. In 2018, for example, PWID living with HIV in China, Pakistan and the Russian Federation accounted for almost half of the global total (49 per cent), while PWID in those three countries comprise only a third of all PWID worldwide.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'PWID [persons who inject drugs] are a key population affected by hepatitis C. Global estimates suggest that 71 million people worldwide were chronically infected with hepatitis C in 2017 and that 23 per cent of new hepatitis C infections and one in three hepatitis C-related deaths are attributable to injecting drug use. Hepatitis C-related morbidity and mortality continue to rise, mainly as a result of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and death in cases of untreated hepatitis C' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'UNODC, WHO, UNAIDS and the World Bank jointly estimated the prevalence of hepatitis C among PWID [persons who inject drugs] worldwide in 2018 to be 48.5 per cent, or 5.5 million (range: 4 million to 7.8 million) people aged 15–64. This estimate is based on estimates in 108 countries, covering 94 per cent of the estimated global number of PWID.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'Although data coverage was low in the Caribbean, the highest prevalence of hepatitis C among PWID [persons who inject drugs] was found in that subregion, at 76 per cent, followed by East and South-East Asia, Western and Central Europe, North America, and Central Asia and Transcaucasia, where it ranged between 61 and 54 per cent. In North Africa, a hepatitis C prevalence of 25 per cent was found among PWID, compared with a combined prevalence in the general population (>15 years) in North Africa and the Middle East estimated at 3.1 per cent. In Central Asia, a hepatitis C prevalence of 54 per cent was found among PWID, compared with a range of 0.5 to 13.1 per cent among the general population' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
The number of deaths, loss of life years through premature death and disability, and comorbidities due to the usage of various drugs should be a clear indicator of which drugs need to be most controlled and which the least. In addition to this, the nature of treatment is also an indicator of severity of drugs involved and drug abuse. It is clearly evident from all reports and statistics that synthetic drugs are responsible for nearly all the deaths, comorbidities and disabilities. It is also evident from the type of treatment recommended for cannabis use disorder, essentially counseling, the seriousness and threat from this disorder. Yet, cannabis users are the most jailed and referred for treatment by the criminal justice system. Drug seizures are largest for cannabis. Drug enforcement focuses most on cannabis. Cannabis users are more than half the drug law prisoners in global jails. Public health policies continue to lump cannabis with these dangerous synthetic drugs, cannabis continues to be ostracized and continues to face the maximum action. Its users, probably the most wise among users of all drugs including pharmaceuticals, alcohol and tobacco, continue to be discriminated against, ostracized and harmed the most by a society that cannot or refuses to recognize the real threats that it faces...
Jul 4, 2020, 4:20 PM
'Given the significant number of people whose property is being seized under civil asset forfeiture programs but who are never charged — and particularly since cannabis has been a major driver for the forfeitures at a time when public support for legalization is at an all-time high — reforming civil asset forfeiture laws and ensuring that those whose property has been seized have proper recourse to recover their assets should be key components. Further, having police department budgets funded by property seized from the public creates perverse incentives for law enforcement agencies in budget-constrained communities to be more aggressive in the practice in order to offset budget cuts. At a minimum, having any seized assets allocated toward community programs (or other general fund allocations outside of law enforcement) can eliminate the expectation that police pay hinges on how many assets that officers seize. Additionally, the federal Equitable Sharing Program should be reformed to eliminate the bypassing of such state level restrictions on spending. Barring such changes, the civil asset forfeiture will continue to present significant opportunities for abuses of police power.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/law-enforcements-ill-gotten-gain-civil-asset-forfeiture-laws-v-cannabis/
'"Rejecting the analysis of career staff, Attorney General Barr ordered the Antitrust Division to issue Second Request subpoenas," Elias said, referencing the division's most comprehensive type of merger probe. "The rationale for doing so centered not on an antitrust analysis, but because he did not like the nature of their underlying business." '
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/elias-testimony-barr-cannabis-trump-automobile-california/index.html
'The Gallup poll, published Tuesday, asked 1,028 Americans in all 50 states and the nation’s capital whether they deemed 21 different behaviors or policies, from using birth control to the death penalty, moral or not. More respondents viewed marijuana use as acceptable than they did abortion, pornography, having children outside of marriage and wearing fur.'
https://www.nj.com/marijuana/2020/06/most-americans-see-smoking-weed-as-morally-acceptable-survey-finds.html
To market a house cleaning product as good, one of the things to ensure is that one's own house is clean. This applies to vaccines as well. You can't stake a strong claim for anti-Covid medicine sitting on top of the global Covid charts. This is not the Olympics. To strengthen your claim, you need to get off the charts. The Chinese have done it fast, in and out in a flash, setting off the global race. France, Germany, Turkey and Iran have done it. Spain, Italy and UK are doing it, replacing their positions with Peru and Chile and staking their claims to the magic vaccine. The US, Brazil, and India, sitting pretty on top, are starting to resemble sitting ducks. Their hydroxychloroquine gambit seems to have failed, a move too fast too soon, even though their leaders continue to promote it by self medicating. They need to slide off the charts, but its not so easy to start going down suddenly when you have upward momentum. Especially with China supplying the test kits, medicines and PPEs to propel the climb with promises of a quick buck. The Chinese appear to have played masterfully, winning both at home, with all dissent quelled, and abroad, selling its Covid products...the old one two, eh Xi? Everybody else is playing catch up now trying to secure vaccine rights. Which pharma promises the biggest cash prize? WHO's refereeing? All have achieved the (primary?) goal of stunning and tightening control over the restless public..for now at least...
Jul 8, 2020, 3:01 PM
'The opiate seized in the largest quantity in 2018 continued to be opium (704 tons), followed by heroin (97 tons) and morphine (43 tons). Expressed in heroin equivalents, however, heroin continued to be seized in larger quantities than opium or morphine. Globally, 47 countries reported opium seizures, 30 countries reported morphine seizures and 103 countries reported heroin seizures in 2018, suggesting that trafficking in heroin continues to be more widespread in geographical terms than trafficking in opium or morphine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantities of opium and morphine seized continued to be concentrated in just a few countries in 2018, with three countries accounting for 98 per cent of the global quantity of opium seized and 97 per cent of the global quantity of morphine seized. By contrast, seizures of heroin continue to be more widespread, with 54 per cent of the global quantity of heroin seized in 2018 accounted for by the three countries with greatest seizures.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most opiates seized are reported in or close to the main opium production areas. Thus Asia, host to more than 90 per cent of global illicit opium production and the world’s largest consumption market for opiates, accounted for almost 80 per cent of all opiates seized worldwide, as expressed in heroin equivalents, in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of opiates continued to be seized in South-West Asia in 2018, accounting for 98 per cent of the global quantity of opium seized, 97 per cent of the global quantity of morphine seized and 38 per cent of the global quantity of heroin seized that year (i.e., equivalent to 70 per cent of all opiates seized globally as expressed in heroin equivalents). Overall, 690 tons of opium, 42 tons of morphine and 37 tons of heroin were seized in South-West Asia in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of both opium and morphine seized were reported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, followed by Afghanistan and Pakistan, while seizures reported by other countries remained comparatively modest. The largest total quantity of heroin seized by a country in 2018 was that seized by the Islamic Republic of Iran (for the first time since 2014), followed by Turkey, the United States, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Belgium.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Almost 70 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine (the two main internationally trafficked opiates) seized in 2018 were intercepted in Asia, mostly in South-West Asia. The two subregions surrounding Afghanistan, South-West Asia and Central Asia, together accounted for more than 56 per cent of the global quantity of heroin and morphine seized
Despite the decline in 2018, the overall trend in seizures of heroin and morphine in that subregion continued to be an upward one over the period 2008–2018. South-West Asia continued to account for the majority of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized globally in 2018 (close to 56 per cent), with the largest quantities seized being reported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, followed by Afghanistan and Pakistan.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest total quantity of heroin and morphine seized in a region outside Asia is that reported for Europe (22 per cent of the global total in 2018), which is an important market for the consumption of heroin. Heroin and morphine seized in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe continued to account for the bulk (66 per cent) of all such quantities seized in Europe in 2018, with most of the heroin and morphine seized in the region continuing to be reported by Turkey (62 per cent), followed by Western and Central Europe (31 per cent) and Eastern Europe (3 per cent) in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the strongest increase in the quantities of heroin and morphine seized in 2017 was reported in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (the same year as the bumper opium harvest reported in Afghanistan), the strongest increase in 2018 was reported in Western and Central Europe (89 per cent). This suggests that it may take a year from when opium is harvested in Afghanistan until it is manufactured into the heroin that ends up on the streets of Western and Central Europe. There were increases in heroin and morphine seizures in Europe in the countries along the Balkan route in 2018, although most of the increase was due to an increase in the quantities of heroin and morphine seized in Belgium and, to a lesser extent, in France and Italy.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In contrast to Western and Central Europe as a whole, which continues to be supplied mainly by heroin trafficked along the Balkan route by land, trafficking to Belgium in 2018 to a large extent (98 per cent) took the form of maritime shipments departing from the Islamic Republic of Iran or Turkey. Similarly, trafficking to Italy was characterized by maritime shipments in 2018 (61 per cent of the total quantity seized by customs authorities), with the bulk of seizures in 2018 having departed from the Islamic Republic of Iran in containers, followed by shipments by air (37 per cent), often departing from the Middle East (Qatar) or Africa (South Africa), while heroin shipments destined for France typically transited the Netherlands and Belgium in 2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Heroin trafficking in the Americas remains concentrated in North America. The subregion accounted for 94 per cent of all quantities of heroin and morphine seized in the Americas in 2018, when seizures reported in North America were almost four times as high as a decade earlier. Seizures made in the United States accounted for 87 per cent of all heroin and morphine seized in the Americas in 2018, followed by Mexico (the country where most opium is produced in the region), Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Canada and Guatemala.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The world’s single largest heroin trafficking route continues to be the so-called “Balkan route”, along which opiates from Afghanistan are shipped to Iran (Islamic Republic of), Turkey, the Balkan countries and to various destinations in Western and Central Europe. Not counting seizures made in Afghanistan itself, countries along the Balkan route accounted for 58 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized in 2018. A further 8 per cent of those global seizures were reported by countries in Western and Central Europe, whose markets are supplied to a great degree by heroin and morphine that is trafficked along the Balkan route' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In line with the dominance of the opium production in Afghanistan, quantities of heroin and morphine seized related to Afghan opiate production accounted for some 84 per cent of the global total in 2018, a slight decrease from 88 per cent in 2017, the year of the bumper harvest in the country. Most of the heroin found in Europe, Central Asia/ Transcaucasia and Africa is derived from opium of Afghan origin, accounting for 100 per cent of all mentions in the responses to the annual report questionnaire by countries in Central Asia/Transcaucasia, 96 per cent in Europe and 87 per cent in Africa over the period 2014–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The Islamic Republic of Iran reported that 75 per cent of the morphine and 75 per cent of the heroin seized on its territory in 2018 had been trafficked via Pakistan, while the remainder had been smuggled directly into the country from Afghanistan. Typically, heroin is then smuggled to Turkey (70 per cent of all the heroin seized in the Islamic Republic of Iran in both 2016 and 2017) and from there along the Balkan route to Western and Central Europe, either via the western branch of the route via Bulgaria to various western Balkan countries or, to a lesser extent, via the eastern branch of the route via Bulgaria and then to Romania and Hungary, before reaching the main consumer markets in Western and Central Europe' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The main countries identified in which heroin was trafficked along the southern route to Western and Central Europe over the period 2014– 2018 included India, the Gulf countries (notably Qatar and United Arab Emirates) and a number of Southern and East African countries (notably South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, the United Republic of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Madagascar). The European countries reporting most trafficking along the southern route over the period 2014–2018 were Belgium (mostly via Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and the United Republic of Tanzania) and Italy (mostly via Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Oman).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The most significant trafficking activities worldwide of opiates not of Afghan origin concern opiates produced in South-East Asia (mostly Myanmar), which are trafficked to other markets in East and SouthEast Asia (mostly China and Thailand) and to Oceania (mostly Australia). Seizures made in those countries accounted for 11 per cent of the global quantities of heroin and morphine seized (excluding seizures made by Afghanistan) in 2018, down from 15 per cent in 2015. This went in parallel with reported reductions in opium production in Myanmar of 20 per cent over the period 2005–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most heroin (and morphine) trafficking in the Americas continues to take place within North America, i.e., from Mexico to the United States and, to a far lesser extent, from Colombia and from Guatemala (typically via Mexico) to the United States. Based on forensic profiling, United States authorities estimated in 2017 that over 90 per cent of the heroin samples analysed originated in Mexico and 4 per cent in South America, while around 1 per cent originated in South-West Asia. This stands in stark contrast to a decade earlier (2007), when only 25 per cent was sourced from Mexico and 70 per cent was imported from South America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantity of ATS [amphetamine type stimulants] seized at the global level has increased over the past two decades, in particular over the period 2009–2018, when the quantity of ATS seized quadrupled. The increase was primarily due to the increasingly large quantities of methamphetamine being seized, as seizures increased sevenfold over the period 2009–2018. The largest proportional increase (18-fold) was for the group of “other stimulants” (including prescription ATS, a number of cathinones, such as mephedrone or MDPV, which are now under international control, and non-specified ATS). The total quantity of “ecstasy” seized doubled over the period 2009–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In most years since 1998, the ATS [amphetamine type stimulants] seized in the largest quantities was methamphetamine, which in the period 2014–2018 accounted for 71 per cent of the total quantity of ATS seized globally, followed by amphetamine (21 per cent) and “ecstasy” (5 per cent). The rest (3 per cent) of seized ATS included former synthetic new psychoactive substances such as mephedrone, MDPV or methylone (0.4 per cent of the total).
While the number of countries reporting seizures of “ecstasy” declined slightly, from 109 countries in the period 2004–2008 to 100 countries in the period 2014–2018, the number of countries reporting seizures of amphetamine increased from 85 to 97 in that same time. Those reporting seizures of methamphetamine increased by more than 50 per cent, from 69 to 105 countries, which suggests that there has been a significant increase in the geographical spread of methamphetamine trafficking at the global level' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Nonetheless, seizures of methamphetamine remain highly concentrated: the three countries responsible for most of the methamphetamine seized worldwide in 2018 (the United States, Thailand and Mexico) accounted for 80 per cent of the global total, while the three countries reporting the largest quantities of amphetamine (Turkey, Pakistan and the Syrian Arab Republic) and the three countries reporting the most “ecstasy” seized (Turkey, the United States and Australia) accounted for a significantly smaller proportion of the global total (around 50 per cent) in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Different substances are predominant in the seizures of ATS in different regions: methamphetamine is predominant in North America, East and SouthEast Asia, South Asia and Oceania; and amphetamine in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, Europe, Africa and Central America. South America and the Caribbean were the only subregions where the quantities of “ecstasy” seized were predominant among all ATS intercepted in the period 2014–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In contrast to previous decades, when methamphetamine was primarily manufactured from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, nowadays more than half of seized precursor chemicals linked to the manufacture of methamphetamine are P-2-P and/or its precursor chemicals. There is, however, a significant geographical divide. Most methamphetamine production in Asia, Oceania and Africa – and possibly some in Europe – continues to be based primarily on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as the key precursor chemicals, while manufacture of methamphetamine in North America is now primarily based on P-2-P and its precursor chemicals. In some instances, precursor chemicals for the manufacture of P-2-P also seem to have been used in the manufacture of methamphetamine in Western Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the quantities of methamphetamine seized have increased rapidly over the past decade, seizures of internationally controlled chemicals used in the manufacture of methamphetamine have fluctuated over the years and showed a clear increase only in 2018, when methamphetamine precursor seizures almost tripled compared with 2017. The marked increase was the result of record quantities of P-2-P linked to methamphetamine manufacture in North America being seized – an almost ninefold increase – and the global quantities of ephedrine seized increasing almost fivefold. By contrast, the reported number of dismantled laboratories continued to decline, from 10,600 methamphetamine laboratories dismantled in 2010 to close to 3,700 in 2017 and less than 2,100 in 2018. A possible explanation of the phenomenon of an expanding market going hand in hand with fewer and fewer laboratories being dismantled could be a shift towards operating fewer but larger laboratories in parallel with a general shift in production to countries with comparatively limited interdiction capacities.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
''Regarding precursor chemicals, it has to be taken into account that increasing quantities of methamphetamine are now being produced from pre-precursors that are not under international control; for example, substances such as benzaldehyde and nitroethane are used in the clandestine manufacture of P-2-P, in both North America and Europe. Similarly, benzyl chloride and sodium cyanide are used in the clandestine manufacture of phenylacetic acid, which is also used to manufacture P-2-P, the main precursor used in methamphetamine manufacture in North America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The United States reported the dismantling of 1,607 methamphetamine laboratories in 2018, accounting for 78 per cent of all methamphetamine laboratories dismantled worldwide that year. However, the overall output of domestic methamphetamine manufacture in the United States now appears to be considerably smaller than the potential output produced by several of the large, industrial-scale laboratories found in other parts of the world, such as Mexico and East and South-East Asia, in recent years. Over the past few years, the United States has reported that most of the methamphetamine found on its market has been smuggled into the country from abroad, most notably from Mexico. Most of the clandestine production and smuggling seems to be controlled by various Mexican drug cartels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The vast majority of the methamphetamine production facilities dismantled in the United States were “kitchen laboratories” (1,426), which typically produce two ounces or less per production cycle for local demand, although the overall figure also included the dismantling of 11 industrial-scale methamphetamine laboratories in the United States in 2018. Nevertheless, the overall number of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories detected in the United States fell by about 90 per cent over the period 2010–2018 and by 93 per cent since the peak in 2004. According to the United States authorities, the initial decline after 2004 resulted from improved precursor control, notably through the regulation of over-the-counter sales of methamphetamine precursor chemicals such as ephedrine preparations and pseudoephedrine, and ongoing efforts to dismantle laboratories, which acted as a deterrent to domestic methamphetamine manufacture.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'By contrast, the decline in the number of dismantled laboratories after 2010 was no longer in line with the upward trend in a number of other indicators, which had been clearly pointing to an expansion of the methamphetamine market, both in terms of supply (rising seizures, falling purity adjusted prices) and demand (rising prevalence rates, positive tests among the general workforce, treatment admissions and deaths). The purity of methamphetamine rose from 95 per cent in the first quarter of 2012 to 98 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, while the potency of methamphetamine increased from 85 to 97 per cent over the same period. This indicates an improvement in the know-how of organized crime groups manufacturing methamphetamine from various (non-scheduled) P-2-P precursors in neighbouring Mexico, an overall increase in the supply of methamphetamine in the United States and the emergence of a potentially even more problematic substance, showing everhigher levels of purity and potency, thus increasing the risk of overdose.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the annual prevalence of methamphetamine use more than doubled from 0.3 to 0.7 per cent of the population aged 12 and older in the United States over the period 2008–2018, the number of psychostimulants involved in drug poisoning deaths in the United States rose from 1,302 to 12,676 deaths over the same period, equivalent to an almost 10-fold increase. This increase may have been inflated by an increasing number of contaminations of psychostimulants with opioids (such as fentanyl and its analogues); however, psychostimulant-related deaths excluding any involvement of opioids still showed an eightfold increase, from 807 deaths in 2008 to 6,271 deaths in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The decline in the domestic supply of methamphetamine, indicated by the falling number of manufacturing facilities dismantled in the United States, going hand in hand with increasing use and an overall increase in the supply of the drug, can be explained by the increasing importance of rapidly growing illegal methamphetamine imports from clandestine manufacture sites in neighbouring Mexico. According to the United States authorities, the latter phenomenon appears to have resulted from attempts by Mexican organized crime groups to diversify their drug portfolio as they attempted to reduce their dependence on cocaine produced in countries in South America, preferring instead to source the required chemicals from China and produce methamphetamine themselves. Methamphetamine shipments intercepted along the south-western border of the United States increased almost fourfold between 2013 and 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The region with the next largest number of methamphetamine laboratories dismantled was Asia, accounting for 6 per cent of the global total in the period 2014–2018. Most of these facilities were dismantled in China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which together accounted for 94 per cent of all reported laboratories dismantled in Asia, while some clandestine methamphetamine laboratories were also dismantled, in descending order of importance, in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, the Republic of Korea, Myanmar and Hong Kong, China. In addition, the clandestine manufacture of methamphetamine has been reported in recent years by Afghanistan and Iraq.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Countries identified as significant source countries for methamphetamine shipments in Asia in the period 2014–2018 included Myanmar, followed by China, Thailand, India and Iran (Islamic Republic of). Clandestine methamphetamine manufacture in Asia seems to be still largely based on the use of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine as precursors, although reports from Afghanistan suggest that ephedrine is extracted from ephedra plant material and used as a precursor for methamphetamine.80 The authorities in Myanmar and Thailand have reported the seizure of increasing quantities of sodium cyanide and benzyl cyanide in recent years. These substances can be used for synthesizing P-2-P, which is then used to manufacture either amphetamine or methamphetamine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Similar to the situation in the United States, where the manufacture of methamphetamine declined while increasing in neighbouring Mexico, both China and Iran (Islamic Republic of) reported declining domestic production, reflected in the decreasing numbers of methamphetamine laboratories dismantled in recent years, going hand in hand with the expansion of methamphetamine manufacture in their neighbouring countries. Indeed, by 2018 the Islamic Republic of Iran reported that most of the methamphetamine found on its territory originated in Afghanistan and was trafficked either from there directly or via Pakistan. Similarly, China reported that methamphetamine seized in recent years has originated primarily in Myanmar. In contrast to many other countries, however, the marked declines in the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine in China appear to have more than outweighed any increase in clandestine manufacture and imports from neighbouring countries. This is revealed in the decline in methamphetamine found in the wastewater in cities across China, with wastewater-based estimates suggesting a fall in methamphetamine consumption amounts of 26 per cent over the period 2014 –2018' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The information available globally on methamphetamine points to a market expansion over the past two decades, in particular since 2009. Qualitative information on methamphetamine trafficking trends reported by Member States, data on drug treatment facilities, prevalence data in countries based on survey data, and prices all suggest that the methamphetamine market has been expanding, particularly in the two subregions where demand for the drug is highest, South-East Asia and North America, while most trafficking in methamphetamine continues to be intraregional.
Methamphetamine continues to be seized mainly in North America and in East and South-East Asia which accounted for, respectively, 50 per cent and 42 per cent of the global quantities of methamphetamine seized in the period 2014–2018, while the quantities of the drug seized in Oceania (4 per cent), the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia (2 per cent), South Asia and Europe (1 per cent each) continued to be far smaller.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of methamphetamine seized in 2018 were the quantities seized in the United States, followed by Thailand and Mexico. Marked increases in the quantities seized from 2017 to 2018 were reported by the United States and Thailand, while the quantities of methamphetamine seized in China declined, in line with reports of wastewater analysis that showed a significant decline in methamphetamine consumption in that country.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In the United States, most methamphetamine is sold as methamphetamine. However, there have also been reports of tablets sold as “ecstasy” that contained methamphetamine instead (notably in Missouri). The sale of methamphetamine in the form of falsified Adderall tablets is a new phenomenon, with laboratories manufacturing such falsified medicaments found in a number of states, in particular Georgia and California. The expansion of methamphetamine trafficking has also gone hand in hand with the increasingly common practice of mixing methamphetamine with fentanyls. This practice has proved to be particularly harmful and has contributed to the rapid rise in methamphetamine-related deaths in recent years.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantities of methamphetamine seized in North America rose sixfold between 2009 and 2018, to 117 tons. North American methamphetamine seizures accounted for more than 99 per cent of all the methamphetamine seized in the Americas in 2018. Methamphetamine seizures in the subregion were dominated by those reported by the United States (71 per cent of the total in 2018), followed by Mexico (29 per cent), while the quantities of methamphetamine seized in Canada (0.4 per cent) remained more limited' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Practically all the major transnational criminal organizations in Mexico seem to be involved in the smuggling of methamphetamine to the United States. They include the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Juárez Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Los Zetas Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Organization. In parallel, outlaw motorcycle gangs continue to be involved in the distribution of methamphetamine within the United States. The increased involvement of Mexican organized crime groups in the trafficking of drugs other than cocaine has contributed to the spread of methamphetamine trafficking from the western United States to the whole country over the past decade, including states in the eastern part of the country that had previously been spared from the large-scale harmful use of methamphetamine.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The United States, for example, has been reported by other countries as a country of departure of methamphetamine for Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), Asia (Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China and Mongolia) and Europe (Ireland). Moreover, methamphetamine trafficking has been reported not only from Mexico or from Canada into the United States but also from the United States to those two countries, suggesting a number of two-way trafficking flows across the countries of North America. Methamphetamine trafficked from Canada has been reported in the United States, South America (Chile), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and a few countries in Europe (Iceland and Latvia).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'More recently, methamphetamine shipments have also been intercepted en route from Mexico to the Netherlands for distribution in Europe; moreover, Mexican “methamphetamine cooks”, linked to Mexican organized crime groups, were arrested in Europe, after being detected in large-scale methamphetamine manufacture in Western Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Quantities of methamphetamine seized in East and South-East Asia increased eightfold over the period 2009–2018, to close to 100 tons, and preliminary data for 2019 show further strong increases in the quantities of methamphetamine seized, in particular in South-East Asia, with increases reported in 2019 by, among other countries, Brunei Daraussalam, Cambodia. Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Viet Nam. In most years in the past decade the largest quantities of methamphetamine seized in East and South-East Asia were reported by China. In 2018, by contrast, 66 per cent of all the methamphetamine seized in that subregion was seized in Thailand, followed by Indonesia (8 per cent) and Malaysia (8 per cent) and only then by China (6 per cent), reflecting underlying shifts in the methamphetamine market in South-East Asia, that is, a decline in the methamphetamine market in China in parallel with ongoing increases in the ASEAN countries.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'While the typical purity of methamphetamine tablets encountered in East and South-East Asia has remained relatively stable in recent years (mostly within a range of 15 to 25 per cent), retail prices of methamphetamine tablets have decreased sharply in several countries in the subregion, which, when combined with the increases in quantities seized, suggests that the supply of methamphetamine may have outstripped demand in East and South-East Asia' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The average purity of crystalline methamphetamine in East and South-East Asia continues to remain very high, again suggesting an abundant supply of the drug. The average purity of samples analysed in China reached 95 per cent in 2018 and other countries in the subregion (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam) reported purity levels of between 70 and 90 per cent. While purity has remained high, retail prices of crystalline methamphetamine have decreased in several countries in the subregion in recent years, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia and Myanmar, pointing to an increase in the availability of crystalline methamphetamine in the subregion. In Indonesia, Thailand and Viet Nam, retail prices of crystalline methamphetamine have actually more than halved over the past decade. At the same time, the average purity of crystalline methamphetamine rose in Thailand from 90 per cent in 2011 to around 95 per cent in 2019, with almost all (99 per cent) of the crystalline methamphetamine samples analysed in 2019 showing purity levels of over 90 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'All in all, tablet and crystalline methamphetamine prices in several countries in the region reached their lowest level over the past decade despite a record number of seizures being made every year during the same period. The decrease in prices also appears to have contributed to an increase in the use of methamphetamine and, subsequently, in more methamphetamine-related treatment demand. Thus, there have been sharp increases in methamphetamine-related treatment admissions reported in recent years by several countries in South-East Asia, including a more than 30-fold increase in the number of treatment admissions for the use of methamphetamine reported by Malaysia over the period 2011–2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'This shift from China as the main location of methamphetamine manufacture and trafficking to other countries in East and South-East Asia is also indirectly reflected in trafficking data reported by Australia. China and Hong Kong, China, were the two main embarkation points for methamphetamine trafficked to Australia in 2015, whereas in the fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18 the most important embarkation points were the United States, followed by Thailand and Malaysia. In fact, in 2018, the Australian authorities reported that the importance of China as a source country for methamphetamine had declined while there has been an emerging trend in the growth of quantities of seized methamphetamine originating in South-East Asia, mainly in the Mekong region, including the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Thailand.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most of the methamphetamine available in East and South-East Asia is sourced within the subregion. The dynamics of methamphetamine manufacture and trafficking within that subregion are, however, less well understood than in others as the available indicators show partly contradictory patterns. Although in previous years, China and Myanmar were identified as the most frequently identified countries of “origin”, “departure” and “transit” in East and South-East Asia, manufacture of methamphetamine may now be more widely spread across the subregion, although it is not clear whether frequently mentioned departure countries, such as Malaysia or Thailand, are also the countries of origin or mainly transit countries for methamphetamine manufactured in Myanmar. In fact, Myanmar reported Thailand and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic as main destination countries for methamphetamine shipments in 2018, while Malaysia reported Thailand as the main departure country' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Methamphetamine found in Australia and New Zealand is both locally manufactured and, to a larger extent, imported from North America and Asia. In the fiscal year 2017/18, methamphetamine was mainly smuggled into Australia from the United States, followed by Thailand, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, China (including Hong Kong, China), Mexico, Lebanon, Viet Nam and India. The United States was also the main source country of the methamphetamine found in New Zealand in 2018, followed by Canada and, in SouthEast Asia, by Malaysia and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Of the total number of amphetamine laboratories reported dismantled worldwide in the period 2014–2018 (749 laboratories), more than half were dismantled in Europe (417), most notably in Western and Central Europe (316) and, to a lesser degree, in Eastern Europe (100). Overall, 16 European countries reported the dismantling of clandestine amphetamine laboratories over the period 2014– 2018, in particular the Netherlands. The Netherlands, followed by Poland, Lithuania and Belgium, were the most frequently identified source countries of amphetamine in Europe. Amphetamine from South-Eastern Europe was reported as being mainly sourced from Bulgaria and Turkey. However, it is likely that such statistics are heavily skewed as a number of countries, in particular in the Middle East, where large-scale amphetamine manufacture has been reported, have a very limited capacity to dismantle laboratories and thus are not appropriately represented in these statistics' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The manufacture of counterfeit “captagon” tablets, that is, amphetamine tablets mixed with caffeine, in the Near and Middle East is more widespread than the manufacture of amphetamine in South Asia or in East and South-East Asia. Indications received from other countries in the subregion pointed to the existence of clandestine laboratories manufacturing “captagon” tablets in the period 2014–2018, in particular in the Syrian Arab Republic and Lebanon, intended partly for domestic consumption and partly for the more lucrative markets of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, as well as the Sudan and Libya. In addition, Iran (Islamic Republic of) and Jordan have been identified by other countries in the subregion as possible countries of origin of amphetamine shipments. Jordan reported that all of the amphetamine found on its market originated in either the Syrian Arab Republic or Lebanon.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Although data for 2018 were unavailable for key countries in the Near and Middle East, more than half (54 per cent) of the global quantity of amphetamine seized in the period 2014–2018 was reported in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia. Of the rest, some 24 per cent was seized in Europe (including 14 per cent in Western and Central Europe), 13 per cent in the Americas (including 7 per cent in North America), 6 per cent in Africa (mostly in North Africa) and 1 per cent in Oceania (mostly in Australia). The regional totals for Europe and the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia show larger seizures of amphetamine than of methamphetamine over the period 2014–2018, suggesting that the availability of amphetamine may be still greater than of methamphetamine in those regions' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, the quantities of methamphetamine seized increased markedly in 2018. However, the marked decline in the reported quantities of amphetamine seized in recent years (-37 per cent in 2017 and -80 per cent in 2018) seems to be largely a statistical artefact. Some of this decline may have been related to changes in the categorization of stimulants seized, for example, “prescription stimulants” instead of “amphetamine”. Even more important has been the hiatus in the reporting of seizures to UNODC by some countries known to be affected by major amphetamine trafficking activities. There is plenty of evidence that trafficking in amphetamine, in particular of “captagon” tablets, has also continued in the Near and Middle East in recent years. INCB, for example, in its most recent annual report noted the following: The manufacture and trafficking of counterfeit “captagon” continued to seriously affect the countries of the Middle East, which not only are destination markets for those drugs but are also increasingly becoming a source of counterfeit “captagon”…Political instability and unresolved conflicts, poverty and the lack of economic opportunities in some parts of the subregion have contributed to increased trafficking in…“captagon”' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Instability and conflict in the Middle East contributed to the trafficking in falsified “captagon” in the subregion. A lack of control and monitoring led to an increase in the manufacture of “captagon” tablets in some countries over the period 2014–2018, which turned into an additional source of income for terrorist and insurgency groups in the Middle East. Captagon was originally the trademarked brand name of a medicinal product containing fenetylline, until the substance was placed under international control in 1986. While the diversion of fenetylline from existing stocks might have continued until the end of the 1990s, those stocks, some of which were apparently located in Bulgaria, became depleted. However, the “captagon” name and logo continued to be used even though the composition of the counterfeit tablets had changed, and increasingly, seized “captagon” tablets were found to contain amphetamine, often mixed with caffeine and other substances.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The two countries most frequently reported as countries of origin of amphetamine (mainly “captagon”) seized in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia in the period 2014–2018 were Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic, which together accounted for some 40 per cent of all mentions of countries of origin reported by the authorities in the subregion. Final destinations are mostly countries in the Near and Middle East, most notably Saudi Arabia and various other Gulf countries, in particular the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, using both direct and indirect routes.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Unlike other plant-based drugs, for which cultivation and production is concentrated in only a limited number of countries, cannabis is produced in almost all countries worldwide. The cultivation of cannabis plants was reported by 151 countries in the period 2010–2018 – countries home to 96 per cent of the global population – and was reported through either direct indicators (such as the cultivation or eradication of cannabis plants and the eradication of cannabis-producing sites) or indirect indicators (such as seizures of cannabis plants and the origin of cannabis seizures reported by other Member States).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Most countries do not have a comprehensive system in place for monitoring areas under illicit cannabis cultivation. At present, the information available is insufficient to produce scientifically accurate global estimates of the area under illicit cannabis cultivation. In addition, most of the estimates of the areas under illicit cannabis cultivation reported to UNODC do not generally meet scientific standards.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Globally, outdoor cannabis cultivation continues to be more widespread geographically than is indoor cannabis cultivation. Overall, 88 countries reported outdoor cannabis cultivation, law enforcement activities linked to outdoor cannabis cultivation (eradication, seizures of cannabis plants, seizures of cannabis-producing sites) or trends related to outdoor cannabis cultivation over the period 2012–2018, while only 64 countries reported data for those activities as linked to indoor cultivation. Some countries reported both indoor and outdoor cannabis cultivation.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The largest quantities of cannabis herb seized in 2018 were those reported in the Americas (61 per cent of the total), with South America alone accounting for 43 per cent of the global total. Of note is the marked decline in the share of seizures made in North America, which had long been the subregion reporting the largest cannabis herb seizures: on average, 50 per cent of the global total over the period 2008–2018, falling to 17 per cent of the global total in 2018, that is, to less than the total for Africa that year (19 per cent). The next largest regional reported seizure totals in 2018 were those for Asia and Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'The quantity of cannabis herb seized in 2018 declined by 16 per cent compared with a year earlier, falling to 4,303 tons, the lowest level since 1999. As compared with 2010, the quantity seized fell by 34 per cent at the global level, largely due to decreases reported in North America (-84 per cent), with marked declines being reported by Mexico, the United States and Canada. Discussions and policies aimed at liberalizing the cannabis markets, including changes in the drug’s legislation in Canada and some jurisdictions of the United States, legalizing the production, distribution and the recreational use of cannabis, seem to have played a key role in this respect. By contrast, the quantities of cannabis herb seized almost doubled in the rest of the world over the period 2010–2018 (South America: +194 per cent; Oceania: +94 per cent; Europe: +73 per cent; Asia: +71 per cent; Africa: +53 per cent). The global cannabis herb trafficking index, based on qualitative information reported by Member States on trends in cannabis herb trafficking, also increased over the same period, although the trend appeared to be stabilizing in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'In 2018, the largest quantities of cannabis herb seized worldwide continued to be those reported by Paraguay, followed by the United States and India. Cannabis herb produced in Paraguay is reported to have been mainly destined for neighbouring Brazil (77 per cent) and Argentina (20 per cent). Over the period 2008–2018, the largest cannabis herb seizures worldwide took place in the United States, followed by Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Nigeria, Morocco, Brazil, India and Egypt' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Trafficking in cannabis resin continues to be far more geographically concentrated than is trafficking in cannabis herb. More than half of all cannabis resin was seized in Western and Central Europe (51 per cent) in 2018, followed by the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia (36 per cent) and North Africa (8 per cent). These three subregions accounted for 95 per cent of all cannabis resin seized worldwide in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
'Morocco, with 47,500 ha reported to be under cannabis cultivation in 2018, continues to be the most frequently mentioned source country for cannabis resin worldwide in the annual report questionnaire, being mentioned in more than a fifth of all cases as the main country of origin of cannabis resin seized worldwide over the period 2014–2018; Morocco was followed by Afghanistan, where, a UNODC survey found, in 2010 an area of 9,000–29,000 ha was under cannabis cultivation. Cannabis resin produced in Morocco is mainly destined for other markets in North Africa and markets in Western and Central Europe. Some cannabis resin of Moroccan origin is also trafficked to Eastern Europe and South-Eastern Europe. Most cannabis resin of Moroccan origin destined for Europe is first shipped to Spain, from where it is smuggled to other markets in the region. For many years, including in the period 2014–2018, Spain has been identified by other European countries as the principal country of departure and transit for cannabis resin, followed by the Netherlands.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
Afghanistan and Mexico source the heroin and morphine. Mexico, Thailand, Myanmar and China source the methamphetamine. The Middle East and Eastern Europe sources the amphetamine. The US consumes heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Europe consumes heroin, morphine, methamphetamine and amphetamine. Asia consumes heroin, morphine and methamphetamine. Australia consumes methamphetamine. The Middle East consumes heroin and amphetamine. West Asia consumes heroin and methamphetamine. All countries grow and consume cannabis. Opioids, methamphetamine and amphetamines kill the most in terms of drug deaths, cannabis kills none. Who are the leading opponents to cannabis legalization and leading enforcers of global anti-cannabis policy? The countries involved the most in heroin, morphine, amphetamines and methamphetamines. They put on a mask of concern about harms from drugs, produce, sell and consume the most dangerous synthetic drugs and vehemently oppose cannabis legalization worldwide while clandestinely feeding their habits and protecting their sources. They use arms and armies to protect and promote their synthetic drug habits, and drug money to fund and wage a war on cannabis everywhere, pushing man and planet ever closer to death on massive scales and away from the safe, healing cannabis herb...
Jul 10, 2020, 1:14 PM
'Cannabis has been prohibited in all sports during competition since the World Anti-Doping Agency first assumed the responsibility of establishing and maintaining the list of prohibited substances in sport 15 years ago. In 2018, however, CBD was removed from the Prohibited List, presumably on the basis of mounting scientific evidence that the cannabinoid is safe and well-tolerated in humans, even at very high doses (e.g. 1500 mg·day-1 or as an acute dose of 6000 mg). While several recent reviews have described the impact of cannabis on athlete health and performance, the influence of CBD alone has yet to be addressed.
The aim of this narrative review was to explore evidence on the physiological, biochemical, and psychological effects of CBD that may be relevant to sport and/or exercise performance and to identify relevant areas for future research. Given the absence of studies directly investigating CBD and sports performance, this review draws primarily on preclinical studies involving laboratory animals and a limited number of clinical trials involving non-athlete populations.'
https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-020-00251-0
'Harm Reduction International monitored prison decongestion measures adopted around the world between March and June 2020 in response to COVID-19, and found evidence of such schemes in 109 countries. We tracked criteria for eligibility and implementation of the measures. Noting that UN experts recommended countries release "those charged for minor and non-violent drug and other offences" in the context of COVID-19, we further focused on how these measures impact on people in prison for drug offences.
Despite a scarcity of official information, we found that around a fourth of countries implementing decongestion schemes explicitly excluded people incarcerated for drug offences; effectively prioritising -punitive approaches to drug control over the health of the prison population and the individual'
https://www.hri.global/covid-19-prison-diversion-measures
'The study of herbal medicine spans the knowledge of biology, history, source, physical and chemical nature, and mechanism of action, traditional, medicinal and therapeutic use of drug. This article also provide knowledge about macroscopically and microscopically characters of Cannabis sativa with geographical sources. The wellknown cannabinoids are Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Cannabidiol (CBD) and Cannabichromene (CBC) and their pharmacological properties and importance have been extensively studied. Hence, efforts are required to establish and validate evidence regarding safety and practices of Ayurveda medicines.
Conclusion: These studies will help in expanding the current therapeutic potential of C. sativa and it also provide a strong support to its future clinical use as herbal medicines having safe in use with no side effects'
https://www.eurekaselect.com/183226/article
'Results and conclusion: Through a detailed analysis of the available resources about the origins of C. sativa we found that its use by ancient civilizations as a source of food and textile fibers dates back over 10,000 years, while its therapeutic applications have been improved over the centuries, from the ancient East medicine of the 2nd and 1st millennium B.C. to the more recent introduction in the Western world after the 1st century A.D. In the 20th and 21th centuries, Cannabis and its derivatives have been considered as a menace and banned throughout the world, but nowadays they are still the most widely consumed illicit drugs all over the world. Its legalization in some jurisdictions has been accompanied by new lines of research to investigate its possible applications for medical and therapeutic purposes.'
https://www.eurekaselect.com/182145/article
'As a further factor, in most countries the highest prevalence of drug use is found among adolescents and young adults, in particular those aged 18–25. Over the period 2000–2018, the population in that age group grew significantly in developing countries – by 18 per cent, thus raising the overall vulnerability to drug use in those countries. In developed countries, by contrast, the population in that young age group decreased by 10 per cent over the same period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The lack of disaggregated data makes it impossible to obtain a global overview of drug use as distributed between urban and rural areas and to analyse interacting global trends in urbanization and drug markets. From the information available, it seems that drug use is more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas, in both developed and developing countries, with the exception of some major rural drug-producing areas. Urbanization has also been found to be a general risk factor for drug use; for example, data from school surveys in Colombia and Mexico show the prevalence of use of some drugs being up to 60 per cent higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Data on drug law offences including possession and trafficking of drugs in Germany and Austria confirm the same patterns with main cities showing higher per capita offences than the national average (typically around 50 per cent higher in 2018)'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A study conducted in India in the Chandigarh area, that city being the capital of the two neighbouring States of Punjab and Haryana, also suggested there are higher levels of drug use in urban slum areas than in rural areas. If this information were to be validated across all countries, the rapid urbanization of the past decade could be an element that explains, at least partially, the growth in the global drug market. In this context, urbanization becomes a crucial element when considering future dynamics in drug markets, in particular in developing countries, where growth in urbanization is more pronounced than in other countries.'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Data on the annual prevalence of drug use among adults in Australia, the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, show there is much higher drug use in urban areas than in rural areas, with the divide being even more pronounced among frequent users in the United States, where, in 2018, past-month prevalence of drug use was almost 80 per cent higher in large metropolitan areas than in rural areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'This suggests that while people with higher socioeconomic status may have a greater propensity to experiment, it is among the lower socioeconomic classes that the most negative impact of the onset of recreational drug use is found, with a higher proportion of people becoming dependent. This suggests that poverty is associated with drug use disorders. Indeed, poor people living on the margins of society tend to be more vulnerable to slipping from recreational drug use into full-scale drug abuse and drug dependence because treatment facilities for intervening at an early stage in a drug career are often unavailable or unaffordable for such population groups. In this context, drug use itself may exacerbate poverty and marginalization, thus creating the potential for a vicious cycle' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Over the past two decades, drug markets have become increasingly complex in terms of variety and combinations of substances used and trafficked, manufacturing processes and the organizational structure of drug trafficking organizations. There has been a rapid emergence of new substances, as well as new mixes of controlled and non-controlled substances, with an increasing misuse of pharmaceuticals, which poses new challenges for both drug demand and supply control efforts at the national, regional and global levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the late 1990s, some 230 psychoactive substances were under international control, of which a handful dominated the global drug markets, most notably cannabis, cocaine, opium, heroin, amphetamines and “ecstasy”. Two decades later, the situation has changed, as there are now far more substances on the market. A number of synthetic NPS (i.e. psychoactive substances that mimic the properties of substances already under international control) emerged on the drug markets in the past decade, including synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, phenethylamines, piperazines and various fentanyl analogues, resulting in a new wave of scheduling of such substances at the international level, with the total number of substances under international control rising from 234 in 2014 to 282 in 2018. At the same time, the number of NPS rose from 166 substances over the period 2005–2009 to 950 substances by the end of 2019. Worldwide, in recent years authorities have identified more than three times as many NPS as there are psychoactive substances under international control' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Beyond internationally controlled substances, the legal status of many substances in the market differ from country to country, and sometimes within countries. This creates quite complex production and trafficking patterns in which some substances are under national control in some countries but not in others, leaving ample opportunities for producers and traffickers of the substances to select countries depending on the legal status of those substances in the respective jurisdictions, while also quickly adjusting to new controls wherever and whenever they may occur. The multiplicity of substances currently in the market challenges the effectiveness of national and international interventions because the elimination of one substance from the market easily leads to replacement by another.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The situation is particularly complex for the opioids group, as both legally and illegally produced substances satisfy the non-medical demand for opioids. While illegally produced opiates, such as heroin, used to dominate the non-medical demand for opioids, the illicit opioid markets in many countries have become far more diversified over the past two decades, with a number of pharmaceutical opioids that have started to cover a substantial part of the market for opioids for non-medical purposes.
This is creating an additional challenge for drug use prevention because, unlike the traditional hard drugs such as heroin, pharmaceuticals are often not perceived as harmful. In terms of drug control, this requires a careful equilibrium between maximizing accessibility for medical use while minimizing availability for non-medical use. It should be noted that the use of pharmaceuticals for non-medical purposes is not limited to opioids. There is also a substantial market for stimulant pharmaceuticals for non-medical use, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also seen in the manufacturing processes of synthetic drugs. In the past, a limited number of precursor chemicals was used to manufacture synthetic drugs, such as amphetamine (manufactured mostly from P-2-P), methamphetamine (manufactured mostly from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or from P-2-P in North America) and “ecstasy” (mainly manufactured from 3,4-MDP-2-P). This has changed over the past two decades. As the key precursors mentioned above are all under international control, traffickers have been looking for alternatives. Over the years, different strategies have been adopted by traffickers to overcome controls using as alternative precursors substances that were not equally well controlled in all countries, noncontrolled pre-precursors and so-called “designer precursors”, that is, chemicals specifically designed to circumvent existing precursor control systems. Pharmaceutical preparations containing controlled precursor chemicals have also been used to supply precursors because, although controlled, they are exempt from a number of control mechanisms such as the system of pre-export notifications' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also observed in the organizational structure of the actors involved. There has been a general trend over the past two decades towards an increasing fragmentation of the serious and organized crime landscape and the emergence of more groups and looser networks. Organizations based on loose cooperation across criminal networks have proved more resilient to law enforcement interventions than other types, as a network that gets dismantled can, in general, be easily replaced by another. The landscape of the global illicit drug trade has thus become more complex, is rapidly evolving and is facilitated by new technology such as encrypted communications software and the darknet.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The shift away from purely hierarchically organized crime groups, characterized by an extensive division of labour within such organizations, also entails the emergence of new groups engaged in specific activities, covering only limited aspects of drug manufacture and logistics or specific areas such as money-laundering and the investment of drug proceeds. Moreover, a number of new groups have emerged in recent years, bypassing many of the traditional actors, purchasing and selling drugs online through the darknet to end users. They make use of private or public postal services to transport drugs to anonymous post office boxes from which they are collected by the end users. The payment is made in parallel by means of cryptocurrency transactions on the darknet' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The way drug trafficking organizations operate has been influenced by the growth of licit international trade and by the emergence of new ways of transporting goods. Notably, the use of containers has increased, and GPS devices have helped to retrieve the drug cargo within the multitude of containers. In a few cases, organized crime groups have even succeeded in hacking the computers of shipping companies to have containers redirected to locations where the drugs could be more easily removed from the container. In parallel, technological innovation has also enabled drug trafficking groups to acquire semi-submersibles to transport drugs, such as cocaine, from South America to Central and North America and, more recently, even to Europe, without being easily detectable. Moreover, drones are being used by drug trafficking groups to assist them in the shipment of drugs across borders. Another technological advance that has facilitated the connection of criminal groups is the emergence of encrypted messaging applications for mobile telephones, which have helped drug dealers to stay connected while maintaining a high degree of anonymity' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Polydrug use is not a recent trend. It remains a public health concern because the use of multiple drugs potentially increases risks and exacerbates dependence. The management of polydrug use remains a complex and challenging task because treatment is often less successful for individuals who use multiple substances. Moreover, it is difficult to find evidence to address the question about whether the complexity of the drug markets has increased over the past two decades in terms of the number of substances and combinations involved in polydrug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'There is evidence that the number of polydrug users has increased in the United States and in the United Kingdom because in both countries the ratio of the aggregated number of users of individual drugs compared with the total number of drug users has followed an upward trend. It is still difficult, however, to assess the actual impact of this trend in terms of health consequences.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'However, polydrug trafficking is not limited to Europe and can also be found in other regions and subregions, including North America, South America, Asia, Oceania and Africa. For a number of years, for example, polydrug trafficking organizations have been dismantled in the United States. A recent example was the dismantlement in July 2019 of an organization involving more than 50 people selling counterfeit oxycodone pills (containing fentanyl), methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and benzodiazepine pills, as well as various types of weapons.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
The list includes ketamine, morphine, ephedrine, ibuprofen, aspirin, paracetamol, codeine, fentanyl, diazepam....no cannabis is banned because it is not safe, didn't you know?
See, am okay with keeping all these pharmaceutical medications in the lists, but please can we take out the natural plant cannabis from all the lists it is in? Can anyone see it is the odd one out among all these pharmaceutical preparations or is the whole world blind? If it should be on a list, that list should be a separate one called generic, versatile plant based medicines which also includes other medicinal herbs like basil, ginger, turmeric, etc..probably a list out of scope for WHO?
'The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicine. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organization's model list. This includes countries in both the developed and developing world.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines
'At the CND meeting this week, the WHO could recommend rescheduling or descheduling the following cannabis categories within the UN Drug Control Conventions: Cannabis plant and cannabis resin, Extracts and tinctures of cannabis, Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Isomers of THC.
After a critical review, the WHO announced in June that preparations containing pure CBD should not be controlled under international drug treaties because “to date, there is no evidence of recreational use of CBD or any public health-related problems associated with the use of pure CBD” and it “exhibits no effects indicative of any abuse or dependence potential.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-summit-cannabis-reschedule/
International drug treaties essentially shoved down the throats of poorer nations by rich nations who supported global business corporations that saw cannabis as a threat. What needs to be seen is will the WHO, the UN and the rich nations now work to enable the plant's availability for poorer nations or will these entities try and put as many hurdles as possible so that big businesses can thrive on the plant. Global legalization of individual home growing of the plant is the single most important step that the UN and all its member nations need to take in this regard to enable accessibility for the world's population to the plant.
'International drug treaties have long stood in the way of cannabis reform on the national level. But in newly issued recommendations, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it’s time to change course on how the United Nations categorizes cannabis.
It’s the latest sign that the world is warming to the health benefits of a plant that for decades has been dismissed as a dangerous drug. Reform advocates around the globe were quick to cheer the news.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/world-health-organization-calls-for-cannabis-rescheduling
'The report recommends several changes to how cannabis is scheduled, which could have significant implications for the cannabis industry:
'The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for whole-plant marijuana, as well as cannabis resin, to be removed from Schedule IV—the most restrictive category of a 1961 drug convention signed by countries from around the world.
The body also wants delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its isomers to be completely removed from a separate 1971 drug treaty and instead added to Schedule I of the 1961 convention, according to a WHO document that has not yet been formally released but was circulated by cannabis reform advocates.
Marijuana and cannabis resin would also remain in Schedule I of the 1961 treaty—they are currently dual-designated in Schedules I and IV, with IV being reserved for those substances that are seen as particularly harmful with limited medical benefits. (That's different from the U.S. federal system, under which Schedule I is where the supposedly most dangerous and restricted drugs—like marijuana, heroin and LSD—are classified.)'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/02/01/world-health-organization-recommends-rescheduling-marijuana-under-international-treaties/#236433ca6bcc
'“Complete descheduling of cannabis is more a political matter, not a scientific issue for WHO experts,” Pachta said.
The recommendations are nonbinding and must be voted on by the 53 member countries of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).
The earliest a vote could take place is in March, but a delay in the release of the recommendations may push the consideration to next year.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/positive-step-who-recommendations-cannabis-fall-short/
WHO batting for ganja...
'As more jurisdictions across the planet are moving to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes, it feels like a sensible move for the world’s leading health authority to publish the truth on the safety of the cannabis plant. And it has done just that… and in a big way. It was just last week that the World Health Organization (WHO) gathered in Switzerland to conduct a first-of-its-kind peer-review of the entire cannabis plant, not just specific compounds. Now, the agency’s Drug and Dependence Committee has published a new report, calling marijuana “a relatively safe drug” that causes no significant health issues, only “euphoria, laughter and talkativeness.”'
https://cannabisnow.com/who-report-marijuana-leads-to-laughter-talkativeness/
'The UN Drug Conventions were negotiated in the 1940s and 1950s, in a very different atmosphere. The WHO Expert Committee never reviewed cannabis as a substance, which they normally do before substances are classified under the Conventions. There is growing concern about the position of cannabis in the Single Convention as conflicts are increasing between national legislations, the UN Drug Conventions and UN Human Rights Conventions.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/nsad-2016-0016
'On 14 March, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) unanimously endorsed WHO recommendations to place 12 New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) under international control. NPS are synthetic substances that produce similar effects to illegal drugs (like cocaine or ecstasy).'
http://www.who.int/medicines/news/2018/WHOrecommendation-endorsed-by-61stUN-commission-narcotic-drugs/en/
'The comments will be considered as the United States responds to the United Nations World Health Organization. That response will help inform the international group on “whether to recommend that certain international restrictions be placed on these drugs” or whether that should be reclassified under international drug treaties.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/thousands-respond-to-fdas-marijuana-rescheduling-comment-request/
'Altogether, the comments are aimed at informing the United States’s position on drug scheduling requirements under international treaties that prohibit member countries from legalizing cannabis. Marijuana is currently included in the most restrictive category under international treaties, similar to its placement in Schedule I under U.S. law.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/the-fda-just-got-a-truckload-of-marijuana-comments-delivered-to-them/
The rot runs deep but the walls will fall...
'While the critical review of marijuana itself has been postponed, the committee’s recommendations for its international scheduling are still expected to go up for a vote in the CND in March. If the committee does decide to recommend that cannabis be removed from international control, that would have wide-ranging implications for the reform efforts around the world.
In the U.S., the federal government has routinely cited obligations under international treaties to which it is a party as reasons to continue to ban marijuana and its derivatives. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration said in May that CBD doesn’t meet the criteria for federal scheduling at all, but that international treaties obliged it to recommend rescheduling to Schedule V.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-committee-unexpectedly-withholds-marijuana-scheduling-recommendations/
The World War 2 veterans need more time to think about making the plant legal and globally accessible. In the meantime the people of the US and Germany are embracing it legally and wholeheartedly. Release of millions in prison for plant related activities all over the world can however wait. The global corporations probably need more time to corner the economic pie first before the individual is given back the right to freedom of growing her own plant if at all.
'Several member states requested additional time for considering the recommendations, including Japan, the United States, Germany and Russia, while representatives of Norway and Uruguay emphasized the importance of not delaying the vote without agreeing on a specific future date.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-commission-on-narcotic-drugs-delays-vote-who-cannabis-recommendations/
Overzealous bureaucrats standing against positive change come what may and insisting on implementing outdated and backward policies which have been rejected by the creators of the policies themselves. Like soldiers who don't want to leave the battlefield even though the war is over and the death count has been devastating on all sides..
'The INCB’s president, Dr. Viroj Sumyai, noted in the foreword to the report that the conventions allow only for the medical and scientific use of cannabis, noting:
“The legalization of the use of cannabis for nonmedical purposes in some countries represents a challenge to the universal implementation of the treaties, a challenge to public health and well-being, particularly among young people, and a challenge to the parties to the treaties.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/incb-medical-cannabis-violate-treaties/
Decriminalizing could be a good move for other drugs but it is not enough for marijuana. Marijuana has to be legalized not decriminalized. This is so that individuals have access, can grow, share, sell and consume the plant. Otherwise, without access to it, vast numbers of people will be forced to take up the hard drugs, as well as tobacco and alcohol. Crime cartels will continue to thrive with just decriminalization. Legalize marijuana worldwide for the sake of global health.
'One of the most influential associations within the United Nations (UN) has endorsed the decriminalization of drug possession and use in a policy statement.
The UN Chief Executives Board (CEB), which represents 31 UN agencies including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), adopted a position stipulating that member states should pursue science-based, health-oriented drug policies—namely decriminalization.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-organizations-unite-in-call-for-international-drug-decriminalization/
'A new report from the United Nations System Coordination Task Team describes punitive drug policies as “ineffective in reducing drug trafficking or in addressing non-medical drug use and supply”. It goes on to say that such approaches “undermine the human rights and well-being of persons who use drugs, as well as of their families and communities.”
The report represents a clear rejection of drug policies based on criminalisation, punishment and harsh enforcement, instead endorsing evidence based policy rooted in public health, sustainable development, and respect for human rights. As such it marks a major shift in collective thinking across the leading United Nations agencies – and a major victory for civil society reform advocates.'
https://transformdrugs.org/un-report-condemns-punitive-drugs-policies/
Take cannabis out of the banned and controlled substances list in the international drug control conventions i.e. the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended); the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, to solve a significant amount of human rights and drug policy issues worldwide. Most countries with repressive drug laws cite these UN conventions as their justification for cracking down on cannabis, by far the illicit drug consumed by the most number of people globally. Inclusion of the medicinal herb in the UN banned substances list has resulted in worldwide health and human rights issues on an unprecedented scale. If we also count the cost in terms of deaths due to alcohol, tobacco, non-medical prescription drug usage, opiates, opioids, meth-amphetamines, novel psychoactive drugs, synthetic cannabis, etc which could have at least been reduced with the legal availability of recreational cannabis, it is obvious that de-classifying cannabis should be the top priority and number one action required in drug policy and human rights worldwide. Compared to this, everything else is empty talk.
https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/HIV-AIDS/HRDP%20Guidelines%202019_FINAL.PDF
'The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy introduces a comprehensive catalogue of human rights standards. Grounded in decades of evidence, they are a guide for governments to develop human rights compliant drug policies, covering the spectrum of cultivation to consumption. Harnessing the universal nature of human rights, the document covers a range of policy areas from development to criminal justice to public health.
The guidelines come at an important moment when high-level government representatives are convening at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to shape a new global strategy on drugs. Under the mounting weight of evidence that shows the systemic failures of the dominant punitive paradigm, including widespread human rights violations, governments are facing growing calls to shift course.'
https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2019/human-rights-and-drug-policy.html
'@CND_tweets unanimously adopts procedural decision to postpone the consideration of @WHO cannabis-related recommendations, to provide MS with more time to consider the recommendations @UNODC @UN_Vienna #CND2019 #CND62'
https://twitter.com/CND_tweets/status/1107957581673385985
'The document was presented during the 62nd session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria, and concludes that, “to reduce the consequences of the drug problem, especially in our most vulnerable populations, countries must adopt policies that take into account the gender perspective and that are based on a public health approach focused on the well-being of the individual and a clear respect for human rights.”'
http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-014%2F19
'CBD has been studied for potential therapeutic benefits. The report found that CBD "could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions," according to the WHO. And there is preliminary evidence that it "may be a useful treatment for a number of other medical conditions," though the evidence is less robust, the report said.'
https://www.livescience.com/61213-marijuana-cannabidiol-world-health-organization.html
'“Several countries permit the use of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions such as back pain, sleep disorders, depression, post-injury pain, and multiple sclerosis,” the document says. “The evidence presented to the Committee did not indicate that cannabis plant and cannabis resin were liable to produce ill-effects similar to these other substances that are in Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The inclusion of cannabis and cannabis resin in Schedule IV may not appear to be consistent with the criteria for Schedule IV.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-launches-first-ever-full-review-of-marijuanas-status-under-international-law/
'The international policy process does not fare any better, with existing conventions built on a view of illegal drugs that is “increasingly at odds with current knowledge” (p. 218), and to a large extent reflecting a US desire to globalise their own policies. The international war on drugs has “often served as a flexible instrument for forwarding general American policy interests” (p.214); cannabis was included in the 1961 convention under “heavy international pressure” so as to “globalize the [American] Marijuana Tax Act” (p.205); the 1971 convention was established “as a reaction to the rise of youth counterculture of the late 1960s” (p.214); and poor nations are regularly threatened with “serious fiscal and reputational consequences” (p.215) if they fail to comply with US policy requests.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/nsad-2015-0034
The failed US War on Drugs trying to make a reappearance in another guise? Looks like one of the Trump administration's approaches is - if you can't do it at home, try to do it outside...
'there is a real risk that a large number of signatories could provide the appearance of widespread agreement on the contents of the so-called “Global Call to Action.” The Trump administration—working with countries like Russia and others that would prefer to pursue draconian, zero-tolerance approaches unencumbered by references to human rights—could then seek to use this “Call to Action” to distort the discussion now underway on a new UN drug declaration in 2019. With that risk in mind, it is crucial to underscore that proper UN documents and regional statements are the products of negotiation and consensus. This so-called “Global Call to Action,” by contrast, flies in the face of regular UN processes, and it cannot and should not be afforded the legitimacy of a consensus-based UN document.'
https://idpc.net/blog/2018/09/trump-to-host-un-meeting-on-drug-policy-veneer-of-consensus-masks-deep-disagreement-on-global-drug-policy
'As The Intercept reported last week, the Trump administration assembled a number of hard-line countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, as partners before sending out the action plan to all member states. The Philippines — where President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has drawn international criticism for its extrajudicial killings and brutality — and Myanmar, whose government stands accused of genocide, were both included on the final list. Israel signed on, but its U.N. delegation did not attend, presumably to make it easier for other countries, such as those Arab nations who eschew formal relations with Israel, to appear.'
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/donald-trump-united-nations-drugs/
This guy is a typical politician contradicting himself trying to keep his sponsors happy and retain his chair...the WHO should be trying to make genuine efforts to improve worldwide health through global cannabis legalization and access when it holds this position of influence instead of being lackeys to soda companies, pharma companies and corrupt politicians...how about speaking out against illegal and unethical pharmaceutical practices, imprisonment and killing of cannabis users and the global arms trade as real health issues and dangerous addictions of humanity for a change?
'"Of course we believe that people who need it, especially for pain management, should have it. There should be access," he said.'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/just-no-drug-legalisation-chief-105528579.html
'"The problem we see with cannabis is that we have a special situation where not just the plant itself is scheduled but each and every chemical component of the plant that goes under the cannabinoid rubric. You know, in the 1970s, when the Controlled Substance Act was enacted, it could have made sense because at that time we did not know about the existence of cannabinoid receptors, and we did not know that these receptors are responsible for the totality of the effects of THC. But we know that now. Some of the educational efforts that we scientists should put toward to the public and toward lawmakers are to explain that if there is one substance in cannabis that needs to be perused and needs to be considered carefully, that is THC, because that is the one that intoxicates people. And that particular substance (at least in its synthetic form) is in Schedule III. So anything else that does not intoxicate should not be scheduled at all." - Dr Daniele Piomelli (University of California, Irvine), Workshop on Cannabis and the opioid crisis: a multidisciplinary view'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5931647/
'"This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs," said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a prepared statement."The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/21/health/drug-report-un-failure-intl/index.html
'It is time to stop treating marijuana like a deadly drug, when science and public opinion agree that it is relatively safe for adult recreational use. The last thing we need is another expensive and ineffective war on a substance like cannabis—especially when there are far more serious drug problems to tackle.'
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/end-the-war-on-weed/
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https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/cannabis-as-medicine.html
Cannabis for Recreational Purposes
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/cannabis-for-recreational-purposes.html
Cannabis and Research
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/cannabis-and-research.html
The Business of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-business-of-cannabis.html
The Economics of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-economics-of-cannabis.html
The Legality of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-legality-of-cannabis.html
The Politics of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-politics-of-cannabis.html
The Social Usage of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-social-usage-of-cannabis.html
No medicinal value?
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/02/no-medicinal-value.html
Cannabis Patients
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-patients.html
Cannabis and the Elderly
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-elderly.html
Cannabis and Alcohol
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-alcohol.html
Cannabis and Tobacco
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-tobacco.html
Cannabis and Methamphetamine
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-methamphetamine.html
Cannabis and Opioids
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-opioids.html
Cannabis and Harm Reduction
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-harm-reduction.html
Cannabis and Synthetic Cannabinoids
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-synthetic-cannabinoids.html
Cannabis as Universal Medicine
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-as-universal-medicine.html
The Recreational Cannabis Consumer
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-recreational-cannabis-consumer.html
The History of Cannabis
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-history-of-cannabis.html
Cannabis and Social Consumption Areas
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-social-consumption-areas.html
Cannabis and Politicians
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-politicians.html
Cannabis and Scientists
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-scientists.html
Cannabis Events
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-and-public-events.html
Cannabis in the Workplace
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/04/cannabis-in-workplace.html
Cannabis and the US Federal Government
https://ravingkoshy.blogspot.com/2019/05/cannabis-and-us-federal-government.html
Afghanistan and Mexico source the heroin and morphine. Mexico, Thailand, Myanmar and China source the methamphetamine. The Middle East and Eastern Europe sources the amphetamine. The US consumes heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Europe consumes heroin, morphine, methamphetamine and amphetamine. Asia consumes heroin, morphine and methamphetamine. Australia consumes methamphetamine. The Middle East consumes heroin and amphetamine. West Asia consumes heroin and methamphetamine. All countries grow and consume cannabis. Opioids, methamphetamine and amphetamines kill the most in terms of drug deaths, cannabis kills none. Who are the leading opponents to cannabis legalization and leading enforcers of global anti-cannabis policy? The countries involved the most in heroin, morphine, amphetamines and methamphetamines. They put on a mask of concern about harms from drugs, produce, sell and consume the most dangerous synthetic drugs and vehemently oppose cannabis legalization worldwide while clandestinely feeding their habits and protecting their sources. They use arms and armies to protect and promote their synthetic drug habits, and drug money to fund and wage a war on cannabis everywhere, pushing man and planet ever closer to death on massive scales and away from the safe, healing cannabis herb...
Jul 10, 2020, 1:14 PM
'Cannabis has been prohibited in all sports during competition since the World Anti-Doping Agency first assumed the responsibility of establishing and maintaining the list of prohibited substances in sport 15 years ago. In 2018, however, CBD was removed from the Prohibited List, presumably on the basis of mounting scientific evidence that the cannabinoid is safe and well-tolerated in humans, even at very high doses (e.g. 1500 mg·day-1 or as an acute dose of 6000 mg). While several recent reviews have described the impact of cannabis on athlete health and performance, the influence of CBD alone has yet to be addressed.
The aim of this narrative review was to explore evidence on the physiological, biochemical, and psychological effects of CBD that may be relevant to sport and/or exercise performance and to identify relevant areas for future research. Given the absence of studies directly investigating CBD and sports performance, this review draws primarily on preclinical studies involving laboratory animals and a limited number of clinical trials involving non-athlete populations.'
https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-020-00251-0
'Harm Reduction International monitored prison decongestion measures adopted around the world between March and June 2020 in response to COVID-19, and found evidence of such schemes in 109 countries. We tracked criteria for eligibility and implementation of the measures. Noting that UN experts recommended countries release "those charged for minor and non-violent drug and other offences" in the context of COVID-19, we further focused on how these measures impact on people in prison for drug offences.
Despite a scarcity of official information, we found that around a fourth of countries implementing decongestion schemes explicitly excluded people incarcerated for drug offences; effectively prioritising -punitive approaches to drug control over the health of the prison population and the individual'
https://www.hri.global/covid-19-prison-diversion-measures
'The study of herbal medicine spans the knowledge of biology, history, source, physical and chemical nature, and mechanism of action, traditional, medicinal and therapeutic use of drug. This article also provide knowledge about macroscopically and microscopically characters of Cannabis sativa with geographical sources. The wellknown cannabinoids are Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Cannabidiol (CBD) and Cannabichromene (CBC) and their pharmacological properties and importance have been extensively studied. Hence, efforts are required to establish and validate evidence regarding safety and practices of Ayurveda medicines.
Conclusion: These studies will help in expanding the current therapeutic potential of C. sativa and it also provide a strong support to its future clinical use as herbal medicines having safe in use with no side effects'
https://www.eurekaselect.com/183226/article
'Results and conclusion: Through a detailed analysis of the available resources about the origins of C. sativa we found that its use by ancient civilizations as a source of food and textile fibers dates back over 10,000 years, while its therapeutic applications have been improved over the centuries, from the ancient East medicine of the 2nd and 1st millennium B.C. to the more recent introduction in the Western world after the 1st century A.D. In the 20th and 21th centuries, Cannabis and its derivatives have been considered as a menace and banned throughout the world, but nowadays they are still the most widely consumed illicit drugs all over the world. Its legalization in some jurisdictions has been accompanied by new lines of research to investigate its possible applications for medical and therapeutic purposes.'
https://www.eurekaselect.com/182145/article
'As a further factor, in most countries the highest prevalence of drug use is found among adolescents and young adults, in particular those aged 18–25. Over the period 2000–2018, the population in that age group grew significantly in developing countries – by 18 per cent, thus raising the overall vulnerability to drug use in those countries. In developed countries, by contrast, the population in that young age group decreased by 10 per cent over the same period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The lack of disaggregated data makes it impossible to obtain a global overview of drug use as distributed between urban and rural areas and to analyse interacting global trends in urbanization and drug markets. From the information available, it seems that drug use is more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas, in both developed and developing countries, with the exception of some major rural drug-producing areas. Urbanization has also been found to be a general risk factor for drug use; for example, data from school surveys in Colombia and Mexico show the prevalence of use of some drugs being up to 60 per cent higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Data on drug law offences including possession and trafficking of drugs in Germany and Austria confirm the same patterns with main cities showing higher per capita offences than the national average (typically around 50 per cent higher in 2018)'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'A study conducted in India in the Chandigarh area, that city being the capital of the two neighbouring States of Punjab and Haryana, also suggested there are higher levels of drug use in urban slum areas than in rural areas. If this information were to be validated across all countries, the rapid urbanization of the past decade could be an element that explains, at least partially, the growth in the global drug market. In this context, urbanization becomes a crucial element when considering future dynamics in drug markets, in particular in developing countries, where growth in urbanization is more pronounced than in other countries.'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Data on the annual prevalence of drug use among adults in Australia, the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, show there is much higher drug use in urban areas than in rural areas, with the divide being even more pronounced among frequent users in the United States, where, in 2018, past-month prevalence of drug use was almost 80 per cent higher in large metropolitan areas than in rural areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'This suggests that while people with higher socioeconomic status may have a greater propensity to experiment, it is among the lower socioeconomic classes that the most negative impact of the onset of recreational drug use is found, with a higher proportion of people becoming dependent. This suggests that poverty is associated with drug use disorders. Indeed, poor people living on the margins of society tend to be more vulnerable to slipping from recreational drug use into full-scale drug abuse and drug dependence because treatment facilities for intervening at an early stage in a drug career are often unavailable or unaffordable for such population groups. In this context, drug use itself may exacerbate poverty and marginalization, thus creating the potential for a vicious cycle' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Over the past two decades, drug markets have become increasingly complex in terms of variety and combinations of substances used and trafficked, manufacturing processes and the organizational structure of drug trafficking organizations. There has been a rapid emergence of new substances, as well as new mixes of controlled and non-controlled substances, with an increasing misuse of pharmaceuticals, which poses new challenges for both drug demand and supply control efforts at the national, regional and global levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'In the late 1990s, some 230 psychoactive substances were under international control, of which a handful dominated the global drug markets, most notably cannabis, cocaine, opium, heroin, amphetamines and “ecstasy”. Two decades later, the situation has changed, as there are now far more substances on the market. A number of synthetic NPS (i.e. psychoactive substances that mimic the properties of substances already under international control) emerged on the drug markets in the past decade, including synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, phenethylamines, piperazines and various fentanyl analogues, resulting in a new wave of scheduling of such substances at the international level, with the total number of substances under international control rising from 234 in 2014 to 282 in 2018. At the same time, the number of NPS rose from 166 substances over the period 2005–2009 to 950 substances by the end of 2019. Worldwide, in recent years authorities have identified more than three times as many NPS as there are psychoactive substances under international control' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Beyond internationally controlled substances, the legal status of many substances in the market differ from country to country, and sometimes within countries. This creates quite complex production and trafficking patterns in which some substances are under national control in some countries but not in others, leaving ample opportunities for producers and traffickers of the substances to select countries depending on the legal status of those substances in the respective jurisdictions, while also quickly adjusting to new controls wherever and whenever they may occur. The multiplicity of substances currently in the market challenges the effectiveness of national and international interventions because the elimination of one substance from the market easily leads to replacement by another.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The situation is particularly complex for the opioids group, as both legally and illegally produced substances satisfy the non-medical demand for opioids. While illegally produced opiates, such as heroin, used to dominate the non-medical demand for opioids, the illicit opioid markets in many countries have become far more diversified over the past two decades, with a number of pharmaceutical opioids that have started to cover a substantial part of the market for opioids for non-medical purposes.
This is creating an additional challenge for drug use prevention because, unlike the traditional hard drugs such as heroin, pharmaceuticals are often not perceived as harmful. In terms of drug control, this requires a careful equilibrium between maximizing accessibility for medical use while minimizing availability for non-medical use. It should be noted that the use of pharmaceuticals for non-medical purposes is not limited to opioids. There is also a substantial market for stimulant pharmaceuticals for non-medical use, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also seen in the manufacturing processes of synthetic drugs. In the past, a limited number of precursor chemicals was used to manufacture synthetic drugs, such as amphetamine (manufactured mostly from P-2-P), methamphetamine (manufactured mostly from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or from P-2-P in North America) and “ecstasy” (mainly manufactured from 3,4-MDP-2-P). This has changed over the past two decades. As the key precursors mentioned above are all under international control, traffickers have been looking for alternatives. Over the years, different strategies have been adopted by traffickers to overcome controls using as alternative precursors substances that were not equally well controlled in all countries, noncontrolled pre-precursors and so-called “designer precursors”, that is, chemicals specifically designed to circumvent existing precursor control systems. Pharmaceutical preparations containing controlled precursor chemicals have also been used to supply precursors because, although controlled, they are exempt from a number of control mechanisms such as the system of pre-export notifications' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also observed in the organizational structure of the actors involved. There has been a general trend over the past two decades towards an increasing fragmentation of the serious and organized crime landscape and the emergence of more groups and looser networks. Organizations based on loose cooperation across criminal networks have proved more resilient to law enforcement interventions than other types, as a network that gets dismantled can, in general, be easily replaced by another. The landscape of the global illicit drug trade has thus become more complex, is rapidly evolving and is facilitated by new technology such as encrypted communications software and the darknet.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The shift away from purely hierarchically organized crime groups, characterized by an extensive division of labour within such organizations, also entails the emergence of new groups engaged in specific activities, covering only limited aspects of drug manufacture and logistics or specific areas such as money-laundering and the investment of drug proceeds. Moreover, a number of new groups have emerged in recent years, bypassing many of the traditional actors, purchasing and selling drugs online through the darknet to end users. They make use of private or public postal services to transport drugs to anonymous post office boxes from which they are collected by the end users. The payment is made in parallel by means of cryptocurrency transactions on the darknet' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The way drug trafficking organizations operate has been influenced by the growth of licit international trade and by the emergence of new ways of transporting goods. Notably, the use of containers has increased, and GPS devices have helped to retrieve the drug cargo within the multitude of containers. In a few cases, organized crime groups have even succeeded in hacking the computers of shipping companies to have containers redirected to locations where the drugs could be more easily removed from the container. In parallel, technological innovation has also enabled drug trafficking groups to acquire semi-submersibles to transport drugs, such as cocaine, from South America to Central and North America and, more recently, even to Europe, without being easily detectable. Moreover, drones are being used by drug trafficking groups to assist them in the shipment of drugs across borders. Another technological advance that has facilitated the connection of criminal groups is the emergence of encrypted messaging applications for mobile telephones, which have helped drug dealers to stay connected while maintaining a high degree of anonymity' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Polydrug use is not a recent trend. It remains a public health concern because the use of multiple drugs potentially increases risks and exacerbates dependence. The management of polydrug use remains a complex and challenging task because treatment is often less successful for individuals who use multiple substances. Moreover, it is difficult to find evidence to address the question about whether the complexity of the drug markets has increased over the past two decades in terms of the number of substances and combinations involved in polydrug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'There is evidence that the number of polydrug users has increased in the United States and in the United Kingdom because in both countries the ratio of the aggregated number of users of individual drugs compared with the total number of drug users has followed an upward trend. It is still difficult, however, to assess the actual impact of this trend in terms of health consequences.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'However, polydrug trafficking is not limited to Europe and can also be found in other regions and subregions, including North America, South America, Asia, Oceania and Africa. For a number of years, for example, polydrug trafficking organizations have been dismantled in the United States. A recent example was the dismantlement in July 2019 of an organization involving more than 50 people selling counterfeit oxycodone pills (containing fentanyl), methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and benzodiazepine pills, as well as various types of weapons.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020, https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
The list includes ketamine, morphine, ephedrine, ibuprofen, aspirin, paracetamol, codeine, fentanyl, diazepam....no cannabis is banned because it is not safe, didn't you know?
See, am okay with keeping all these pharmaceutical medications in the lists, but please can we take out the natural plant cannabis from all the lists it is in? Can anyone see it is the odd one out among all these pharmaceutical preparations or is the whole world blind? If it should be on a list, that list should be a separate one called generic, versatile plant based medicines which also includes other medicinal herbs like basil, ginger, turmeric, etc..probably a list out of scope for WHO?
'The WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (EML), published by the World Health Organization (WHO), contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system. The list is frequently used by countries to help develop their own local lists of essential medicine. As of 2016, more than 155 countries have created national lists of essential medicines based on the World Health Organization's model list. This includes countries in both the developed and developing world.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_Model_List_of_Essential_Medicines
- ' Russia was pleased with the postponement, saying it has not seen any “convincing argument” to support the recommendations, calling cannabis “the most abused drug in the world.”
- Singapore said the recommendations would have “the overall effect of significantly loosening the stringency of international control over cannabis,” leading to a “widening of public access to cannabis” that could “cause serious public health and safety issues.” Moreover, Singapore does not “see any strong evidence to substantiate the recommendations,” nor does it believe any change is needed to allow medical and scientific use. Its representative said “the current international drug control regime already allows more than adequate access to drugs including cannabis for medical and scientific use,” worried that “the public may be misled into thinking cannabis is no longer assessed to be harmful.”
- Japan said “the unity of all member states working against drugs would be the most important thing to keep,” welcoming the postponement.
- China hoped “the WHO will continue to strengthen its research on the dangers and risks of abuse of cannabis.”'
'At the CND meeting this week, the WHO could recommend rescheduling or descheduling the following cannabis categories within the UN Drug Control Conventions: Cannabis plant and cannabis resin, Extracts and tinctures of cannabis, Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), Isomers of THC.
After a critical review, the WHO announced in June that preparations containing pure CBD should not be controlled under international drug treaties because “to date, there is no evidence of recreational use of CBD or any public health-related problems associated with the use of pure CBD” and it “exhibits no effects indicative of any abuse or dependence potential.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-summit-cannabis-reschedule/
International drug treaties essentially shoved down the throats of poorer nations by rich nations who supported global business corporations that saw cannabis as a threat. What needs to be seen is will the WHO, the UN and the rich nations now work to enable the plant's availability for poorer nations or will these entities try and put as many hurdles as possible so that big businesses can thrive on the plant. Global legalization of individual home growing of the plant is the single most important step that the UN and all its member nations need to take in this regard to enable accessibility for the world's population to the plant.
'International drug treaties have long stood in the way of cannabis reform on the national level. But in newly issued recommendations, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it’s time to change course on how the United Nations categorizes cannabis.
It’s the latest sign that the world is warming to the health benefits of a plant that for decades has been dismissed as a dangerous drug. Reform advocates around the globe were quick to cheer the news.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/world-health-organization-calls-for-cannabis-rescheduling
'The report recommends several changes to how cannabis is scheduled, which could have significant implications for the cannabis industry:
- The scheduling of cannabis in the international drug control conventions wouldn’t be as restrictive as it is now, because it would be removed from Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention, the category reserved for the most dangerous substances.
- THC in all forms would be removed from the 1971 Convention and placed with cannabis in Schedule I of the 1961 Convention, significantly simplifying cannabis classification.
- Pure CBD and CBD preparations containing no more than 0.2% THC would not be included in any way in the international drug control conventions.
- Pharmaceutical preparations containing 9-THC, if they follow certain criteria, would be added to Schedule III of the 1961 Convention, recognizing the unlikelihood of abuse.'
'The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for whole-plant marijuana, as well as cannabis resin, to be removed from Schedule IV—the most restrictive category of a 1961 drug convention signed by countries from around the world.
The body also wants delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its isomers to be completely removed from a separate 1971 drug treaty and instead added to Schedule I of the 1961 convention, according to a WHO document that has not yet been formally released but was circulated by cannabis reform advocates.
Marijuana and cannabis resin would also remain in Schedule I of the 1961 treaty—they are currently dual-designated in Schedules I and IV, with IV being reserved for those substances that are seen as particularly harmful with limited medical benefits. (That's different from the U.S. federal system, under which Schedule I is where the supposedly most dangerous and restricted drugs—like marijuana, heroin and LSD—are classified.)'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/02/01/world-health-organization-recommends-rescheduling-marijuana-under-international-treaties/#236433ca6bcc
'“Complete descheduling of cannabis is more a political matter, not a scientific issue for WHO experts,” Pachta said.
The recommendations are nonbinding and must be voted on by the 53 member countries of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).
The earliest a vote could take place is in March, but a delay in the release of the recommendations may push the consideration to next year.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/positive-step-who-recommendations-cannabis-fall-short/
WHO batting for ganja...
'As more jurisdictions across the planet are moving to legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes, it feels like a sensible move for the world’s leading health authority to publish the truth on the safety of the cannabis plant. And it has done just that… and in a big way. It was just last week that the World Health Organization (WHO) gathered in Switzerland to conduct a first-of-its-kind peer-review of the entire cannabis plant, not just specific compounds. Now, the agency’s Drug and Dependence Committee has published a new report, calling marijuana “a relatively safe drug” that causes no significant health issues, only “euphoria, laughter and talkativeness.”'
https://cannabisnow.com/who-report-marijuana-leads-to-laughter-talkativeness/
'The UN Drug Conventions were negotiated in the 1940s and 1950s, in a very different atmosphere. The WHO Expert Committee never reviewed cannabis as a substance, which they normally do before substances are classified under the Conventions. There is growing concern about the position of cannabis in the Single Convention as conflicts are increasing between national legislations, the UN Drug Conventions and UN Human Rights Conventions.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/nsad-2016-0016
'On 14 March, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) unanimously endorsed WHO recommendations to place 12 New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) under international control. NPS are synthetic substances that produce similar effects to illegal drugs (like cocaine or ecstasy).'
http://www.who.int/medicines/news/2018/WHOrecommendation-endorsed-by-61stUN-commission-narcotic-drugs/en/
'The comments will be considered as the United States responds to the United Nations World Health Organization. That response will help inform the international group on “whether to recommend that certain international restrictions be placed on these drugs” or whether that should be reclassified under international drug treaties.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/thousands-respond-to-fdas-marijuana-rescheduling-comment-request/
'Altogether, the comments are aimed at informing the United States’s position on drug scheduling requirements under international treaties that prohibit member countries from legalizing cannabis. Marijuana is currently included in the most restrictive category under international treaties, similar to its placement in Schedule I under U.S. law.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/the-fda-just-got-a-truckload-of-marijuana-comments-delivered-to-them/
The rot runs deep but the walls will fall...
'While the critical review of marijuana itself has been postponed, the committee’s recommendations for its international scheduling are still expected to go up for a vote in the CND in March. If the committee does decide to recommend that cannabis be removed from international control, that would have wide-ranging implications for the reform efforts around the world.
In the U.S., the federal government has routinely cited obligations under international treaties to which it is a party as reasons to continue to ban marijuana and its derivatives. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration said in May that CBD doesn’t meet the criteria for federal scheduling at all, but that international treaties obliged it to recommend rescheduling to Schedule V.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-committee-unexpectedly-withholds-marijuana-scheduling-recommendations/
The World War 2 veterans need more time to think about making the plant legal and globally accessible. In the meantime the people of the US and Germany are embracing it legally and wholeheartedly. Release of millions in prison for plant related activities all over the world can however wait. The global corporations probably need more time to corner the economic pie first before the individual is given back the right to freedom of growing her own plant if at all.
'Several member states requested additional time for considering the recommendations, including Japan, the United States, Germany and Russia, while representatives of Norway and Uruguay emphasized the importance of not delaying the vote without agreeing on a specific future date.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/un-commission-on-narcotic-drugs-delays-vote-who-cannabis-recommendations/
Overzealous bureaucrats standing against positive change come what may and insisting on implementing outdated and backward policies which have been rejected by the creators of the policies themselves. Like soldiers who don't want to leave the battlefield even though the war is over and the death count has been devastating on all sides..
'The INCB’s president, Dr. Viroj Sumyai, noted in the foreword to the report that the conventions allow only for the medical and scientific use of cannabis, noting:
“The legalization of the use of cannabis for nonmedical purposes in some countries represents a challenge to the universal implementation of the treaties, a challenge to public health and well-being, particularly among young people, and a challenge to the parties to the treaties.”'
https://mjbizdaily.com/incb-medical-cannabis-violate-treaties/
Decriminalizing could be a good move for other drugs but it is not enough for marijuana. Marijuana has to be legalized not decriminalized. This is so that individuals have access, can grow, share, sell and consume the plant. Otherwise, without access to it, vast numbers of people will be forced to take up the hard drugs, as well as tobacco and alcohol. Crime cartels will continue to thrive with just decriminalization. Legalize marijuana worldwide for the sake of global health.
'One of the most influential associations within the United Nations (UN) has endorsed the decriminalization of drug possession and use in a policy statement.
The UN Chief Executives Board (CEB), which represents 31 UN agencies including the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), adopted a position stipulating that member states should pursue science-based, health-oriented drug policies—namely decriminalization.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-organizations-unite-in-call-for-international-drug-decriminalization/
'A new report from the United Nations System Coordination Task Team describes punitive drug policies as “ineffective in reducing drug trafficking or in addressing non-medical drug use and supply”. It goes on to say that such approaches “undermine the human rights and well-being of persons who use drugs, as well as of their families and communities.”
The report represents a clear rejection of drug policies based on criminalisation, punishment and harsh enforcement, instead endorsing evidence based policy rooted in public health, sustainable development, and respect for human rights. As such it marks a major shift in collective thinking across the leading United Nations agencies – and a major victory for civil society reform advocates.'
https://transformdrugs.org/un-report-condemns-punitive-drugs-policies/
Take cannabis out of the banned and controlled substances list in the international drug control conventions i.e. the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended); the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, to solve a significant amount of human rights and drug policy issues worldwide. Most countries with repressive drug laws cite these UN conventions as their justification for cracking down on cannabis, by far the illicit drug consumed by the most number of people globally. Inclusion of the medicinal herb in the UN banned substances list has resulted in worldwide health and human rights issues on an unprecedented scale. If we also count the cost in terms of deaths due to alcohol, tobacco, non-medical prescription drug usage, opiates, opioids, meth-amphetamines, novel psychoactive drugs, synthetic cannabis, etc which could have at least been reduced with the legal availability of recreational cannabis, it is obvious that de-classifying cannabis should be the top priority and number one action required in drug policy and human rights worldwide. Compared to this, everything else is empty talk.
https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/HIV-AIDS/HRDP%20Guidelines%202019_FINAL.PDF
'The International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy introduces a comprehensive catalogue of human rights standards. Grounded in decades of evidence, they are a guide for governments to develop human rights compliant drug policies, covering the spectrum of cultivation to consumption. Harnessing the universal nature of human rights, the document covers a range of policy areas from development to criminal justice to public health.
The guidelines come at an important moment when high-level government representatives are convening at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs to shape a new global strategy on drugs. Under the mounting weight of evidence that shows the systemic failures of the dominant punitive paradigm, including widespread human rights violations, governments are facing growing calls to shift course.'
https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2019/human-rights-and-drug-policy.html
'@CND_tweets unanimously adopts procedural decision to postpone the consideration of @WHO cannabis-related recommendations, to provide MS with more time to consider the recommendations @UNODC @UN_Vienna #CND2019 #CND62'
https://twitter.com/CND_tweets/status/1107957581673385985
'The document was presented during the 62nd session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, Austria, and concludes that, “to reduce the consequences of the drug problem, especially in our most vulnerable populations, countries must adopt policies that take into account the gender perspective and that are based on a public health approach focused on the well-being of the individual and a clear respect for human rights.”'
http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-014%2F19
'CBD has been studied for potential therapeutic benefits. The report found that CBD "could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions," according to the WHO. And there is preliminary evidence that it "may be a useful treatment for a number of other medical conditions," though the evidence is less robust, the report said.'
https://www.livescience.com/61213-marijuana-cannabidiol-world-health-organization.html
'“Several countries permit the use of cannabis for the treatment of medical conditions such as back pain, sleep disorders, depression, post-injury pain, and multiple sclerosis,” the document says. “The evidence presented to the Committee did not indicate that cannabis plant and cannabis resin were liable to produce ill-effects similar to these other substances that are in Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The inclusion of cannabis and cannabis resin in Schedule IV may not appear to be consistent with the criteria for Schedule IV.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/un-launches-first-ever-full-review-of-marijuanas-status-under-international-law/
'The international policy process does not fare any better, with existing conventions built on a view of illegal drugs that is “increasingly at odds with current knowledge” (p. 218), and to a large extent reflecting a US desire to globalise their own policies. The international war on drugs has “often served as a flexible instrument for forwarding general American policy interests” (p.214); cannabis was included in the 1961 convention under “heavy international pressure” so as to “globalize the [American] Marijuana Tax Act” (p.205); the 1971 convention was established “as a reaction to the rise of youth counterculture of the late 1960s” (p.214); and poor nations are regularly threatened with “serious fiscal and reputational consequences” (p.215) if they fail to comply with US policy requests.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/nsad-2015-0034
The failed US War on Drugs trying to make a reappearance in another guise? Looks like one of the Trump administration's approaches is - if you can't do it at home, try to do it outside...
'there is a real risk that a large number of signatories could provide the appearance of widespread agreement on the contents of the so-called “Global Call to Action.” The Trump administration—working with countries like Russia and others that would prefer to pursue draconian, zero-tolerance approaches unencumbered by references to human rights—could then seek to use this “Call to Action” to distort the discussion now underway on a new UN drug declaration in 2019. With that risk in mind, it is crucial to underscore that proper UN documents and regional statements are the products of negotiation and consensus. This so-called “Global Call to Action,” by contrast, flies in the face of regular UN processes, and it cannot and should not be afforded the legitimacy of a consensus-based UN document.'
https://idpc.net/blog/2018/09/trump-to-host-un-meeting-on-drug-policy-veneer-of-consensus-masks-deep-disagreement-on-global-drug-policy
'As The Intercept reported last week, the Trump administration assembled a number of hard-line countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, as partners before sending out the action plan to all member states. The Philippines — where President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has drawn international criticism for its extrajudicial killings and brutality — and Myanmar, whose government stands accused of genocide, were both included on the final list. Israel signed on, but its U.N. delegation did not attend, presumably to make it easier for other countries, such as those Arab nations who eschew formal relations with Israel, to appear.'
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/donald-trump-united-nations-drugs/
This guy is a typical politician contradicting himself trying to keep his sponsors happy and retain his chair...the WHO should be trying to make genuine efforts to improve worldwide health through global cannabis legalization and access when it holds this position of influence instead of being lackeys to soda companies, pharma companies and corrupt politicians...how about speaking out against illegal and unethical pharmaceutical practices, imprisonment and killing of cannabis users and the global arms trade as real health issues and dangerous addictions of humanity for a change?
'"Of course we believe that people who need it, especially for pain management, should have it. There should be access," he said.'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/just-no-drug-legalisation-chief-105528579.html
'"The problem we see with cannabis is that we have a special situation where not just the plant itself is scheduled but each and every chemical component of the plant that goes under the cannabinoid rubric. You know, in the 1970s, when the Controlled Substance Act was enacted, it could have made sense because at that time we did not know about the existence of cannabinoid receptors, and we did not know that these receptors are responsible for the totality of the effects of THC. But we know that now. Some of the educational efforts that we scientists should put toward to the public and toward lawmakers are to explain that if there is one substance in cannabis that needs to be perused and needs to be considered carefully, that is THC, because that is the one that intoxicates people. And that particular substance (at least in its synthetic form) is in Schedule III. So anything else that does not intoxicate should not be scheduled at all." - Dr Daniele Piomelli (University of California, Irvine), Workshop on Cannabis and the opioid crisis: a multidisciplinary view'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5931647/
'"This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs," said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a prepared statement."The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising.'
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/21/health/drug-report-un-failure-intl/index.html
'It is time to stop treating marijuana like a deadly drug, when science and public opinion agree that it is relatively safe for adult recreational use. The last thing we need is another expensive and ineffective war on a substance like cannabis—especially when there are far more serious drug problems to tackle.'
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/end-the-war-on-weed/
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