Leading at the ballot box from Alaska to Washington, D.C., Americans are charting a path to a saner national drug policy The conservative wave of 2014 featured an unlikely, progressive undercurrent: In two states, plus the nation’s capital, Americans voted convincingly to pull the plug on marijuana prohibition. Even more striking were the results in…
No pressure, Colorado and Washington, but the world is scrutinizing your every move. That was the take-home message of an event today at the Brookings Institution, discussing the international impact of the move toward marijuana legalization at the state-level in the U.S. Laws passed in Colorado and Washington, with other states presumably to come, create…
A new report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice adds to the growing body of evidence that legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana does not lead to any number of doomsday scenarios envisioned by legalization opponents. Looking specifically at California, where full marijuana decriminalization went into effect on Jan. 1, 2011, the report finds that…
A 2012 Duke University study made international headlines when it purported to find a link between heavy marijuana use and IQ decline among teenagers. Other researchers questioned the findings almost immediately: Columbia University’s Carl Hart noted the very small sample of heavy users (38) in the study, leading him to question how generalizable the results…
The effects of chronic marijuana use on the brain may depend on age of first use and duration of use, according to researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas. In a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers for the first time comprehensively…
In the video embedded below, comic Sarah Silverman joined YouTube sensation Hannah Hart of “My Drunk Kitchen” fame for a special edition of the show in which Silverman and Hart got stoned instead of drinking, then went on to show how to make a vegetable pot pie. “Sarah Silverman and Hannah Hart,” said Hart early…
Last month, a Michigan Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of a man charged with cultivating marijuana for medical purposes. During the original trial, the prosecutor used her closing arguments to viciously criticize Michigan’s medical marijuana program. The prosecutor’s closing argument was clearly and thoroughly improper. The prosecutor embarks on a political commentary, and a…
A new paper issued by the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) advises against the imposition of per se impairment levels for THC. Per se DUI laws, which exist nationwide for alcohol and are imposed for THC and/or the carboxy THC metabolite in more than a dozen states, criminally prohibit the operation of…
The news: Four months after the sale of recreational marijuana began in Washington state, something remarkable has happened: Legal sales will likely bring in about $60 million more in revenue over the next five years than originally projected. The Associated Press reports that predictions released by the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council show that Washington’s…
Authorities in the Netherlands are warning Amsterdam tourists about heroin masquerading as cocaine, which has already killed several people and sent a number of others to the hospital. The campaign is striking because you’d never see one like it in the U.S.: “You will not be arrested for using drugs in Amsterdam,” the fliers promise. Instead, they give…
