Willie Nelson has long been an outspoken activist, so it was no big surprise that soon after his recent arrest for marijuana possession the country music legend and pot aficionado was calling for a national movement to end the U.S. government’s destructive crusade against cannabis.

"There's the Tea Party," Nelson wrote in an email. “How about the Teapot Party? Our motto: We lean a little to the left.”

And the platform? "Tax it, regulate it and legalize it," of course. After all, "Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved."

More than 44,0000 people have since joined the Nelson-inspired Teapot Party on Facebook. And supporters are hosting their first in-person events later this month, with the goal of fielding a slate of pro-pot candidates nationwide.

criminaljustice.change.org
old zack

The greatest endorsement for drugs is, well, how often celebrities, the people who pretty much have it all, do them. So here's a great collection of all the greatest times a celebrity has been caught high on camera: from cocaine to "salvia", from Lohan to Moss.

ranker.com

Every major music festival in the country could be shut down by law enforcement whose motive is not to make Americans safer through the protection of their rights, but the profit that police can make by taking property from citizens.

The seizure of the 352-acre Camp Zoe property in Southeast Missouri has so far garnered substantial attention both in America and internationally. That’s because this is no ordinary seizure; without (so far) being charged with a crime, the property owner, musician Jimmy Tebeau, is having his land taken from him in a process that strips him of his rights under both the US and Missouri constitutions.

cannabisculture.com

More than 2,000 plants were seized and 5 people arrested

The Civil Guard have discovered two marijuana plantations growing on land in Ondara and Benidorm, after a month-long investigation which led to five arrests on Tuesday.

typicallyspanish.com

Store suspected of overselling to customers, which make up overwhelming majority of the 500 patients allowed to use cannabis by Health Ministry.

Police detained three people associated with a cannabis distribution outlet in Tel Aviv for questioning Wednesday, on suspicion of selling more than the prescribed amount of drugs to customers.

The store is operated by the Tikun Olam non-profit organization, the Health Ministry's official grower and supplier of medical marijuana. The overwhelming majority - 85 percent - of the 500 patients permitted by the Health Ministry to use cannabis are clients of this store, located on Tel Aviv's Ibn Gvirol Street.

haaretz.com
jpost.com

I have just been reading the Coalition Government’s new Drugs Strategy. It is described by the Home Secretary as fundamentally different to what has gone before; it is not. To the extent that it is different, it is potentially harmful because it retreats from the principle of harm reduction, which has been one of the main reasons for the reduction in acquisitive crime in recent years.

However, prohibition has failed to protect us. Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harms to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit. We spend billions of pounds without preventing the wide availability of drugs. It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists.

transform-drugs.blogspot.com
drugwarrant.com
granthamjournal.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk 2
independent.co.uk
midhurstandpetworth.co.uk
stuff.co.nz

Over the last few years, a new trend has emerged. There is emerging evidence that young people are taking new legal chemicals instead of or as well as other drugs. Most of these substances have never been tested for use by humans. The immediate risks they pose or the long term damage they are doing, are often not immediately apparent as their harms are unknown.

* If the problem is “young people”, why not restrict it like alcohol?
* Even if legal highs were trialled like pharmaceuticals, they’d still never be approved for consumption because they’re largely recreational

This Government is committed to an evidence-based approach. High quality scientific advice in this complex field is therefore of the utmost importance. This is why we value the work and independent advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which has experts from fields that include science, medicine, law enforcement and social policy. We are committed to both maintaining this expertise and ensuring the ACMD’s membership has the flexibility to respond to the accelerating pace of challenges. The proper consideration of that advice is at the heart of enabling us to deliver this strategy, including the reforms required to tackle the problem of emerging new psychoactive substances (‘legal highs’).

synchronium.net

4:20 statt Spice

A pleasant surprise from last month’s elections was a big “no” vote in California on a ballot measure that would have created the first jurisdiction in the world to fully legalize marijuana.

The state most identified with “recreational” drugs sent a strong signal to all the nation’s politicians that – maybe, just maybe – pot isn’t heading toward social, and ultimately legal, acceptance.

Ah, if it were that simple.

The pro-pot lobby isn’t taking “no” for an answer. The legal buying and selling of marijuana, like alcohol or tobacco, is only a matter of when, not if, say backers.

csmonitor.com