Posts Tagged ‘prohibition’

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored. A soldier guards marijuana that is being incinerated in Tijuana,...

April 11th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

Time for Change

In 1998 the UN declared: “a drug-free world, we can do it!” In reality, we cannot. The War on Drugs has failed. According to all available indices, it is no longer defendable. Vast expenditure on drug law enforcement has resulted in increasing levels of overall drug-use and lowered drug prices....

April 11th, 2011 | Drug Policy | Read More

Hackerville: How a Remote Town in Romania Has Become Cybercrime Central

Three hours outside Bucharest, Romanian National Road 7 begins a gentle ascent into the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. Meadowlands give way to crumbling houses with chickens in the front yard, laundry flapping on clotheslines. But you know you’ve arrived in the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea when...

February 14th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

Can Dope give us Hope?

The ban on hallucinogens is holding back vital research into their medical benefits, says Jake Wallis Simons. Last week, the news took on a decidedly trippy tinge. First, Professor David Nutt, sacked as an adviser to the Labour government for criticising its policy on drugs, sparked controversy...

December 14th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

‘Tame’ bears guard Canadian marijuana farm

Police raiding a marijuana farm in western Canada were astonished to find black bears apparently guarding it. However initial alarm wore off when officers realised the 10 or so bears did not behave aggressively and were in fact docile and tame. Police believe dog food was used to attract the animals...

August 25th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Jobs, Taxes and Crime: Keys to California’s Pot Vote

Getty Images Inside City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Jim Wilcox explained his plan for a commercial marijuana farm. “My idea was a Silicon Valley of cannabis,” he told the city council recently. “An office park for pot.” The council has approved the creation, licensing...

July 28th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

(A Brief History and) Motivation of an Entheogenic Chemist

Abstract: Casey Hardison was arrested spring 2004 for the production of psychedelic-type drugs, i.e., LSD, 2C- B and DMT. In the three years since, not one person from ‘authority’ had bothered to ask him what motivated him to synthesise psychedelic drugs. It was as if the a priori assumption that...

July 5th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

“WATSON: THE NEEDLE!”

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND COCAINE By Mike Jay – http://mikejay.net/ Cocaine was the great pharmaceutical success story of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In a few short years, it went from a minor item in specialist catalogues to a major seller in a huge range of preparations in high-street...

July 1st, 2010 | Arts | Read More

International drug crime measures ‘lead to executions’

Enforcement by Britain, the UN and the EU backs up regimes that ignore human rights, says report. The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions...

June 30th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke extradition entangles local and international law

US request gives Jamaica’s prime minister chance to reclaim control of Tivoli and other lawless Kingston communities. From The Guardian by Maxine Williams Since August 2009, the extradition request for one man has spiralled Jamaica into a nightmare which has claimed dozens of lives, injured just...

June 3rd, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More