Since the 1970s, the Dutch have been famous among backpacking tourists, public health officials and drug-use researchers for their unusual national stance toward marijuana. Technically, the drug is illegal in the Netherlands. But the country has an official policy of non-enforcement, and you can buy the stuff — no more than 5 grams at a time — in hundreds of cannabis coffee shops. This approach — somewhere in between all-out prohibition and free-market legalization — is like no other policy in Western Europe, or in the United States for that matter. But research reveals a surprising ... Read More
Fighting Drug War Creates Drug War
April 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It's clear enough that the American appetite for weed, cocaine and meth — but mostly weed — has contributed to evil and lurid gang wars in Mexico. An appetite for heroin in Europe has helped fund the war in Afghanistan, too, and in that sense the old and new continents face the same important question: What might quell the violence? Over the last few weeks, this column has explored various drug policies in Europe and the United States. "War" still summarizes the American approach, in spite of changing rhetoric from the Obama administration. "Harm reduction" roughly summarizes the ... Read More
Where Does Amsterdam’s Marijuana Come From?
April 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Gerd Leers, a conservative Dutch mayor from Maastricht and a respectable member of the Netherlands' Christian Democrats, appeared in a punk video several years ago for a song called "Dope Man." It's a protest song aimed at the Netherlands' liberal drug policy. The Heideroosjes are not some sort of weird Christian band; its song mocks what a lot of Dutch people see as an inconsistent, two-faced attitude toward pot. And it makes an important point. "A coffee shop can sell weed / But where it comes from, don't ask how," sing the Heideroosjes. "It's yours to smoke / But you can't grow ... I ... Read More
Legalizing Pot: Will It End the Mexican Drug Cartels?
April 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Willie Nelson's Texas prosecutor — a 78-year-old fan, who plans to let the country singer off on a marijuana charge as long as he performs a song in court (and pays a fine) — wants to decriminalize pot. Hudspeth County Attorney C.R. "Kit" Bramblett favors a bill before the Texas Legislature that would end jail sentences for minor marijuana possession. "That makes sense to me," he told the Raw Story website last week. Bramblett is otherwise a fairly conservative guy who wouldn't want to legalize heroin or cocaine. But his experience as a prosecutor has convinced him not to seek jail ... Read More
Don’t Legalize Drugs, Decriminalize ’em
March 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When Portugal took a leap into the unknown in 2000 and decriminalized drugs, people howled. Abuse would soar, they said, and the little nation on Europe’s Iberian coast — already a summer dumping ground for drunken Germans and Brits — would become a haven for drug tourism. “I am against liberalization of drugs,” one conservative opposition leader in Portugal told a documentary maker at the time. “Why?” “Because I am against,” he repeated. “I don’t want the state giving signs of weakness [on] drug policy.” But in 2000, the Casal Ventoso slum in Lisbon — ... Read More
Contending With Afghan Heroin (And How Not To)
March 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
One open secret about the war in Afghanistan is that it has led to a flood of pure, cheap heroin in the world’s cities since 2001. “Despite reported decreases in white heroin production in most source countries,” the U.S. Justice Department admitted in 2006, “increased production in Afghanistan has resulted in an overall increase in worldwide white heroin production.” The production of white (or pure) heroin, in other words, had generally receded around the world — but supplies from war-torn Afghanistan more than picked up the slack. Now, according to some estimates, Afghanistan ... Read More
Marijuana, Dark Horse Savior of California Agriculture
October 29, 2010 • By • 15 Comments
This story originally posted on April 1, 2010. With Californians asked to determine whether to legalize marijuana this Tuesday through the Proposition 19 ballot initiative, we offer it again. The three-hour Northern California drive from San Francisco to Nevada County passes through some of the cream of the state’s agriculture industry: dairy, alfalfa, rice, almonds, grapes. On both sides of the freeway stretch enormous crop rows, interrupted only by the state capital of Sacramento and a number of small towns. Last fall, I made the trip north to visit a medical marijuana farm in the ... Read More
