The following is an excerpt from "Dying to Get High" by Wendy Chapkis and Richard J. Webb (NYU Press, 2008). (c) 2008 NYU Press. Reproduced by permission of the publisher. For many modern critics, the concept of "medical marijuana" is a contradiction in terms. Medicine is standardized, synthetic, and pure; marijuana involves the unrefined and promiscuous coupling of more than four hundred ...

By Martin Hickman | Global food shortages, soaring prices and alarm over the environment. But every day, Britain throws away 220,000 loaves of bread, 1.6m bananas, 550,000 chickens, 5.1m potatoes, 660,000 eggs, 1.2m sausages and 1.3m yoghurts. A new study has exposed the staggering amount of food thrown away every day by the British public, calculating that the annual total of ...

By Alan Travis | The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, will today stress the dangers of more potent strains of cannabis as she is expected to defy medical opinion by announcing that the drug will be upgraded from class C to class B. Smith is expected to justify her decision by highlighting the strength of "skunk" strains of herbal cannabis ...

By Raphael G. Satter | Graffiti impresario Banksy and airbrush-wielding guerrilla artists blanketed the walls of an abandoned London tunnel with offbeat murals as part of a three-day stencil-art street party this weekend.Banksy marshaled more than three dozen international artists for what he's calling the "Cans Festival" — and is encouraging visitors to contribute their own graffiti starting Saturday. "I'm hoping we ...

By Alan Travis - The Guardian | Police will not adopt a tougher approach to cases of simple possession of cannabis when ministers upgrade the legal status of the drug to class B, the Guardian can disclose. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) confirmed last night that the current policy of "confiscate and warn" would ...

By James Hall and Richard Fletcher | About 100 leading household brands, including PG Tips, Coca-Cola and Aquafresh, are at the centre of an investigation into allegations of price-fixing, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. They are included on a hit list of grocery products and toiletries drawn up by investigators from the Office of Fair Trading, which runs to five ...

Drug War Chronicle | With the Democratic Party presidential contenders offering little more than tepid reforms on the margin of drug policy and the Republican nominee largely promising more of the same old drug war (look for an article next week on major party contender crime and drug policies), people seeking radical reforms in US drug policy are ...

By Justin Hartfield Jeffery A. Miron finds that by decriminalizing cannabis, the federal government would generate $2.4 billion in federal tax revenue annually, and that an additional $7.7 billion would be saved as the cost of incarceration, policing, and processing offenders. Now, that's too much money to for the human brain to fully conceptualize, given the air ...

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri Author Charles Barber discusses Americans' unrealistic notions about happiness. We've medicalized a lot of life issues that aren't mental illnesses. While we've now become accustomed to the barrage of prescription drug commercials on prime-time TV, it's jarring to learn that this advertising is legal only in the United States and New Zealand. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't just target Americans directly, but also ...

Downing Street today signalled that Gordon Brown remains determined to tighten the law on cannabis, despite reports that the official advisory body is set to recommend against re-classification. The Prime Minister's spokesman sought to play down a BBC report that the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had concluded that there was no need to re-classify cannabis again ...

As I am wont to babel about the economy: here it goes again. President’s Bush’s economic stimulus package, which pledges to give the average tax payer a $600 rebate check sometime later this year, isn’t going to offset the negative impact produced by the net decline of 85,000 jobs in the first two months of 2008. The unemployment rate is a lagging indicator of ...

Salvia divinorum is being targeted by U.S. lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana, media reported Wednesday. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously. Salvia divinorum is not one of the several varieties of common ornamental garden plants known as salvia. Called nicknames like Sally-D, Magic Mint and Diviner's Sage, salvia is a hallucinogen ...

By BETH HALE Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison. Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back ...

Revisions to the state's Sunshine Law won't be considered until the state Legislature convenes this month, but Tennesseans can look forward to more immediate help regarding the state's open records. A new ombudsman office has been created.Under the Public Records Act, all state, county and municipal records are to be available for inspection by any Tennessee citizen unless specifically exempted. Last year, the Legislature approved Gov. Phil Bredesen's recommendation to ...

A senior British police chief has come under attack for claiming the illicit drug ecstasy is safer to take than aspirin. North Wales police chief constable Richard Brunstrom has sparked outrage by making the controversial claim and calling for the legalisation of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, within a decade. Brunstrom says he believes ecstasy is a "remarkably safe substance" and that people who raise concerns about the dangers of taking ...