Category Archives: Cannabis

Amsterdam looks to bar foreign visitors from buying cannabis

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Mayor cites survey of tourists in Singel area as she looks to clean up overcrowded red-light district

The mayor of Amsterdam has sought to win political backing for her cleanup of the overcrowded red-light district by revealing that a third of foreign tourists and nearly half of Britons would be less likely to visit the city again if they were barred from buying cannabis in the coffee shops.

Femke Halsema, who is understood to want to reduce the number of outlets selling cannabis, attached the survey results to a letter to councillors announcing her intention to examine how they may reduce the attraction of drug use to tourists.

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New Zealand’s euthanasia and cannabis referendums will rightly give power to the people | Bryce Edwards

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Some politicians may fret about the consequence of a public vote on these two issues, but with an increasing suspicion of elites, it’s the best way forward

New Zealanders will take part in a world-leading double referendum next year when they vote in the country’s general election. In addition to electing a new government, one referendum question will ask about the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use, and the other will ask whether euthanasia should be legalised in certain circumstances.

It’s going to be messy, emotional, and polarised. There’s already a lot of anxiety and negativity about the referendums across the political spectrum. Much of this is influenced by the ongoing fallout from the Brexit referendum, as well as a general fear of conservative populism.

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Risks of cannabis use for mental health treatment outweigh benefits

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New study shows evidence of positive outcomes is scarce while symptoms can be exacerbated

The use of cannabis medicines to treat people with depression, anxiety, psychosis or other mental health issues cannot be justified because there is little evidence that they work or are safe, according to a major new study.

A review of evidence from trials conducted over nearly 40 years, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry,concludes that the risks outweigh the benefits. And yet, say the authors, they are being given to people with mental health problems in Australia, the US and Canada, and demand is likely to grow.

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Pot and pans? Italian TV chef on cannabis charge was ‘researching new flavours’

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Police find cannabis-flavoured wine, olives, coffee and tuna at home of Sicilian celebrity chef Carmelo Chiaramonte

A well-known Sicilian chef arrested with drugs at his home justified their presence by saying he was looking for “new flavours” for contemporary cuisine, Italian media have reported.

Officers say they found a pair of two-metre tall marijuana plants and 500 grams of Indian hemp at chef Carmelo Chiaramonte’s home in Trecastagni, a village at the foot of Mount Etna.

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Luxembourg to be first European country to legalise cannabis

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Health minister confirms plans and calls on neighbouring countries to relax their laws

Luxembourg has called on its EU neighbours to relax their drug laws as its health minister confirmed plans to become the first European country to legalise cannabis production and consumption.

“This drug policy we had over the last 50 years did not work,” Etienne Schneider told Politico. “Forbidding everything made it just more interesting to young people … I’m hoping all of us will get a more open-minded attitude toward drugs.”

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Copenhagen police crack down on drunk and stoned scootering

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Twenty-eight arrested for riding electric scooters after using alcohol or cannabis

Police in Copenhagen have arrested 28 people for riding electric scooters under the influence of cannabis and alcohol.

During the weekend 24 people were caught riding the scooters drunk and four were stoned, the force announced on Twitter, after police began a crackdown in the Danish capital on misuse of the scooters introduced to the city earlier this year.

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‘There’s no opposition now’: how a quiet Canada town became a world leader in growing weed

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In an abandoned chocolate factory in Ontario, Canopy Growth is nurturing global ambitions. But could it thrive in Britain?

The musky aroma hits you from the car park at the headquarters of Canopy Growth, the world’s largest cannabis company.

Inside this nondescript warehouse – an abandoned Hershey’s chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, Canada – awaits the stuff of a stoner’s wildest dreams. Myriad rooms teem with row upon row of bushy marijuana plants at various stages of maturity, under intense lamplight, swaying in the breeze of dozens of fans.

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Home Office payout for trafficked man detained in mistaken identity mix-up

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Vietnamese national was illegally detained for five months after Home Office refused to accept he was not someone else

The Home Office will pay £45,000 in compensation to a trafficking victim for illegally detaining him in an immigration removal centre for more than five months after it mistook him for another man who had been deported from the UK in 2011.

The victim – known as NN – was unlawfully detained in Morton Hall immigration removal centre last year after the Home Office refused to accept he was not another Vietnamese national, referred to in court as T. The Home Office only agreed to carry out fingerprint tests after NN’s lawyers threatened legal action.

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Illegal drug classifications are based on politics not science – report

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Global Commission on Drug Policy calls for a reclassification of drugs including cocaine, heroin and cannabis

Illegal drugs including cocaine, heroin and cannabis should be reclassified to reflect a scientific assessment of harm, according to a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

The commission, which includes 14 former heads of states from countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Portugal and New Zealand, said the international classification system underpinning drug control is “biased and inconsistent”.

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Earliest known signs of cannabis smoking unearthed in China

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Incense burners found at 2,500-year-old cemetery suggest intentional use of to get high

Scorched wooden incense burners unearthed at an ancient burial ground in the mountains of western China contain the oldest clear evidence of cannabis smoking yet found, archaeologists say.

Residues of high potency cannabis found in the burners, and on charred pebbles placed inside them, suggest that funeral rites at the 2,500-year-old Jirzankal cemetery in the Pamir mountains may have been rather hazy affairs.

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Canada’s legal weed struggles to light up as smokers stick to black market

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Six months after legalisation, licensed producers are unable to keep up with the demand or quality of neighborhood dealers

When Melissa, a resident of Halifax, Nova Scotia, went to one of Canada’s first government cannabis stores, she wasn’t impressed. “You can’t look at what they have. You can’t smell the product,” she said. “It’s too expensive.”

And so she, like tens of thousand of other Canadians, went back to their old habits: buying from neighbourhood dealers.

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