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Madmen Rule You
Madmen Rule You: the DEA and the legal logic of permanent cannabis prohibition (It’s insane to try to ban a plant) (© Noah Potter, 2012. Originally published at psychedeliclaw.com on April 19, 2012) The author gratefully acknowledges the conceptual clarity provided by Buford Terrell, who, by identifying Grinspoon v DEA and Gonzales v Oregon, made this article possible. […]
Only We Know the Truth About You
After writing the original version of the text later published as Madmen Rule You, the subject matter crystallized further in my mind. Cannabis prohibition is a question of an evidentiary standard. The DEA rejects “anecdotal evidence,” i.e. reports by patients that they experience relief, as evidence that there is a medical use for cannabis. In[…]
The Meaning of the DEA’s Recent Victory in ASA v DEA
Following, after a brief introduction, are two comments on the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last week in the proceeding captioned Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. In its decision the DC Circuit denied a petition by a coalition of drug law reform activists seeking to overturn the DEA’s July 2011[…]
New York City Cannabis Parade and Rally
The New York City Cannabis Parade & Rally (NYCCPR) is among the longest running marijuana legalization events in the world. What began as a “Smoke-In” in Washington Square Park organized by the Yippies in 1973 has evolved into a three-part Event: A Parade down Broadway, a Rally in Union Square Park and a celebratory After Party, all on the first Saturday in May. […]
Save Us from the Doctors
A recent op-ed in the Times Union (Albany) demonstrates the essential logic of the camp arrayed against therapeutic uses of psychedelics: society must be protected from the doctors. Keep control over psychedelics in the hands of the police. The op-ed calls for all reasonable men to oppose the proposed medical marijuana law because of the […]
Pleasure, Pain, Physicians and Police: The Law of Controlled Substances and the Practice of Medicine
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.
