Category: Media

The win also maybe, possibly, clears the way for people to grow shrooms without concern for legal repercussions, but only for their own personal use (and possibly private sharing with friends). “One of the more innovative aspects of this [initiative] is at the point where the supply equals the demand. [When] the consumer is also the producer—that form of production here is also decriminalized,” said Noah Potter, a lawyer who helped craft the ballot measure’s language.[…]

The movement to “Decriminalize Denver” is the nation’s first public referendum on “magic mushrooms,” after an effort in California failed to reach the ballot last year. Initiative 301 would apply only to Denver, not the entire state of Colorado. It would place into city code the directive that enforcing laws for personal use or possession of psilocybin mushrooms “shall be the lowest law enforcement priority in the City and County of Denver,” though having the mushrooms would still technically be illegal. The mushrooms would not be available in the city’s cannabis dispensaries, and sales would still be classified as a felony. They would remain classified a Schedule I drug under federal law, as is marijuana, with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”[…]

Everyone has an interest in successful legalization
of the cannabis market. If legalization does not go well, no elected official will benefit from a political rival’s embarrassment, because no one will escape blame. It’s time to start collective planning in a big hurry before the wave hits.

It took nearly five decades, but the New York Cannabis Parade has finally gone mainstream. “We have an unprecedented lineup of elected officials this year,” says co-organizer Noah Potter, an attorney specializing in drug policy. “We’ve never had anything comparable.”

The “very bold and forward-thinking” City Councilman Rafael Espinal was the first elected official to participate in the march, and that was just in 2015. In 2018, there are seven politicians taking part; New York governor hopeful Cynthia Nixon has also come out in support for legalization.[…]

As the United State of America approached one hundred years of federal drug control, the Committee on Drug and the Law presents a unique and unprecedented examination of the rationale of U.S. drug control policy, the federal statute that governs psychoactive substance from codeine to LSD, and the collateral effects of drug control policy upon the practice of medicine.

Proponents of the gateway theory try to portray a causal relationship between the use of common recreational substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, and the use of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. To make this point they have to work backwards by finding people who are already hard drug abusers and looking at their substance intake histories.