economist

By. The Economist

 

IN 1971 a group of teenagers in San Rafael, north of San Francisco, started meeting after school, at 4:20PM, to get high. The habit spread, and 420 became code for fun time among potheads worldwide. Ever since, California has remained in the vanguard of global cannabis culture. Oaksterdam University in Oakland is today unique in the world as a sort of Aristotelian lyceum for the study of all aspects—horticultural, scientific, historical—of the weed.

 

Legally, California has also been a pioneer, at least within America. In 1996 it was the first state to allow marijuana to be grown and consumed for medicinal purposes. Since then, 13 states and the District of Columbia have followed, and others are considering it. But this year California may set a more fundamental, and global, precedent. It may become the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise, regulate and tax the consumption, production and distribution of marijuana.

The Economist print edition

RICHARD LEE, a marijuana entrepreneur, has in recent years turned part of Oakland into the cannabis capital of California and perhaps the world. Among his businesses is Oaksterdam University (a play on Amsterdam, where he got the idea), which teaches students all aspects of the weed, from the horticultural to the medical and legal, and has since spawned copycats elsewhere.

But this year Mr Lee wants to do more. He has sponsored a voter initiative, which has just been cleared for the November ballot, for the legalisation of marijuana in California. Adults would be allowed to own up to an ounce (28.5 grams) at a time for recreational use and could grow some in their homes. The state, its cities and its counties would be able to regulate and tax it.

From Economist.com

Politicians need to tell the truth about drugs, not sack those who are brave enough to do so

IT WAS unwise of Richard Nixon to describe the worldwide prohibition of narcotics as a “war on drugs”. But the ban, which marked a gloomy 40th anniversary this year, has been very much like a war in one sense: the first casualty has been the truth. The latest victim is David Nutt, an eminent psychopharmacologist who was sacked from his role as chair of Britain’s drugs advisory panel on October 30th after a bust-up with the home secretary (see article). Dr Nutt was held to have overstepped the line between advising and interfering when he repeated his view that cannabis and ecstasy were less harmful than the government claims.

From The Economist print edition

An outspoken scientist is dumped, leaving the government in a mess

“THE Nutty Professor”, as David Nutt is known in the Sun and other newspapers, has never been far from controversy. As chairman of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Dr Nutt, who heads Bristol University’s psychopharmacology unit, issued reports on narcotics and recommended where each should be placed on Britain’s three-point scale of harmfulness. Such is the seething state of the drugs debate that more or less anything he said was guaranteed to enrage somebody.