PROHIBITION FAILS AGAIN

File image of various ecstasy pills

A man has died and six others have been hospitalised after suffering medical episodes at yesterday's Dreamstate music festival in Sydney. Drug overdoses are suspected but no official diagnosis has emerged so-far. Some online chatter suggests the problem was high-dose MDMA pills containing another chemical. News reports do not mention that any drug-testing services were available at the event. By contrast, three testing stations are being provided at today's Laneways festival as recommended by the NSW Government's drugs summit last year. Premier Chris Minns has expressed opposition to drug testing because it "sends the wrong message". I guess people dying needlessly must be "the right message". As usual, no news reports mention the ultimate cause of this carnage: the failed ideology of prohibition.

More free anti-Dutton memes and videos

Please share. 

 Gawd, Jacinta Price blew this one in her haste to deny Trump policies (after saying the LNP would 'Make Australia Great Again'). As a matter of interest, when was Australia 'Great'? The Guardian unearthed the photo from her social media. Oops. I've done a short video on this for TikTok here.

And Youtube here. Please share!

 

 

 

After Israel lied that the medics and firies were advancing with all lights off, drawing their fire, video emerged showing all lights on and flashing. Some of the 15 dead had hands and feet tied. Looks like another war crime to me.

Amid news of a major astroturf effort from Big Gas... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-04/coalition-pollster-working-with-australians-for-natural-gas/105129478

Could Peter Dutton really be an alien? You decide! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDN1LtkK3fs 

 

A short (26-sec) vid mocking Trump, Gina and her house servant Peter Dutton with original music soundtrack (Revised version with new punchline)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSzZrcaVaMM

Here's the TikTok version (Revised with new punchline):

https://www.tiktok.com/@cloudslave/video/7489603212593368336

 

Here's an anti-nuclear GIF 

And here's the TikTok version with soundtrack:

https://www.tiktok.com/@cloudslave/video/7486613735889521921

 

 

 

 

This one during the East Coast floods from ex-cyclone Alfred

The 'back-track' meme subverts the LNP's election slogan, "Get Australia back on track". Which is not even original, copied from New Zealand.

But wait, there's more!

Free anti-Dutton memes

Herewith is a collection of anti-Peter Dutton memes designed to reveal the real man, not the nice cuddly bloke he is portraying on social media. How he actually votes reveals his true, elitist nature. He's not on your side! These memes rely on simple facts rather than descending to mockery. Please spread them to help counter the billionaire-funded populist campaigns of the LNP and the toxic Advance Australia. Right-click or CTRL-click a meme to see a sub-menu with 'copy' or 'save' image. If this does not work, take a cropped screenshot and save it somewhere handy. Then post it in your feeds and ask others to share!

Browse and share these anti-Peter Dutton memes:

Liberals settle on the lies they will offer as an election campaign

The Liberal-National coalition seem to have settled on the spinstorm of mistruths they will rely on to elect Peter Dutton in April or May this year.

It's a cleverly constructed barrage of shallow populism that relies on their target voters being ignorant or forgetful of recent history. It pretends that the Big Money party cares about the average worker, when in fact its voting record consistently favours the very rich at the expense of the rest of us.

One core lie is that the last seven quarters of per-capita ("household") recession is a record, all of course all Labor's fault. The term 'household recession' which they have adopted is meaningless, because every recession is a household recession. The correct term is 'per-capita recession', ie where economic growth is less than population growth, which in turn is driven by migration, which Dutton wanted to cut. It means the economy per person is going backwards.

This lie ignores that we had a per-capita recession for almost the entire term of the last LNP government, pre-covid. That's why interest rates were near zero for years, an attempt by the Reserve Bank to stimulate the economy. During this time the national deficit also increased each year, despite Tony Abbott's election lie about Labor's 'debt and deficit crisis'.

Peter Dutton is claiming that Labor's strengthening of public service capabilities and numbers by about 30,000 is driving inflation, interest rates and increasing taxes.

Taxes first: Albanese last year changed LNP laws to deliver tax cuts to every worker, so that's one clear lie. 

The LNP spin also ignores a large corresponding reduction in spending on "consultants" like PwC and the big four accounting firms. They conveniently forget the PwC scandal whereby the LNP brought them in to help increase the tax take from multinational corporations, only to see them use that inside knowledge to sell strategies to the very same corporations aimed at avoiding higher taxes. Result: The government remains short of money, is in higher debt and regular workers continue to pay the lion's share of tax.

This also ignores that the LNP had deliberately hollowed-out and de-skilled the public service, resulting in huge problems such as a backlog of a million unprocessed immigration visas, a mess that Labor is sorting out, and a similar backlog in claims by defence personnel

Now for interest rates. Dutton and shadow finance minister Jane Hume blame Labor for extended high interest rates, because Labor's cost of living relief is apparently fuelling inflation. Never mind that studies show that measures like energy price relief for every household went into paying energy bills, savings or paying down debt, none of which is inflationary and so has not affected interest rates. Never mind Labor's two surplus budgets, which were used to pay down Liberal debt.

The LNP are clear however that they intend to cut taxes and government spending, including cost-of-living relief. So-far the only tax cuts announced are for bosses to enjoy tax-free long lunches, presumably while the workers toil away in the factory or office. Liberal ideology says  this will "unleash" the economy and make us all "prosperous". It's almost as if businesses are like savage dogs straining at the leash of taxes and regulation. They don't explain how cuts can fix external pressures like Putin's energy price hikes, spiralling insurance costs driven by climate change or shipping obstructions caused by Houthis attacking cargo ships in the Suez canal. The LNP never suggest that business owners might simply pocket the extra money, buy a second yacht or invest it in unproductive property speculation.

A big and rising cost for voters is insurance premiums. Claims in Australia due to extreme weather have tripled in the past three years and premiums are becoming unaffordable for many, if indeed their homes are insurable at all. Extreme weather is a long-predicted effect of climate change. The unprecedented LA wildfires have destroyed to date over 12,000 buidings and killed more than 24 people. Insurance costs from this event alone are predicted to drive global rises in insurance premiums.

Some of the 12,000+ buildings destroyed in LA

The Liberals ignore this and in fact want to make the climate worse by opposing clean renewable energy in favour of fossil fuels. They plead their fissile fantasy of cheap, clean nuclear energy but this joke policy has been well exposed elsewhere. Never mind that it would be entirely taxpayer-funded, a strange contadiction in the LNP's low-tax private-enterprise ideology.

Dutton and useful idiot Angus Taylor have both lied that their fissile fantasy would reduce energy bills by 44%, citing the freebie Frontier Economics analysis they commissioned. The report says nothing of the sort, but hey, credulous voters won't check and Murdoch media will megaphone the lies, which is what the LNP is counting on. 

Dutton also lies that Ontario's energy bills are far lower than Australia's because of the state's nuclear plants. But he does not mention that the state subsidises these bills by $8bn per year and that building them sent the state generator bankrupt. 

Meanwhile Labor's Anthony Albanese seems stuck in an old TV-era pattern of what Crikey has called 'deliverism', endlessly banging on about good policies they have delivered. His own delivery sounds like the 1975 Treasurer's report at the Dubbo RSL AGM, so it does not cut through in this digital era of personality and populism.

I know it's old-fashioned to care about truth and reality but the rubber has to hit the road at some point.

ACT decriminalises, will we see ramped-up drug policing?

Great to see the ACT decriminalising drugs. Amusing to see butt-hurt conservatives, welded to prohibition myths from last century, bleating "It sends the wrong message" and ensuring they will never be elected. 

Alarm must be spreading through police drug squads as they see their dream wicket of easy busts, helicopter joyrides and regular promotion under threat. I predict they will follow the example of some US states after legalisation and ramp up actions like roadside drug tests and sniffer dog patrols so they can lie: "See, usage has gone through the roof. We told you so!". That of course will be amplified by the Murdoch press.

This follows the discovery of a new unknown drug, sold as ketamine, by the ACT's pill testing centre – another measure slammed by conservative fossils for "sending the wrong message". Because good information and facts are left-wing, you know.  Far better to ride high on the fictions and lies of the likes of Donald Trump, Alex 'Sandy Hook' Jones and Sky News. Reality is very inconvenient.

NSW doubles down on tired Drug War rhetoric, street murders

Welcome to NSW, the family-friendly state

The NSW Libs today, backed by Labor, doubled down with tired old rhetoric that decriminalisation of possession of small amounts of drugs would 'send the wrong message'. Of course they can 'send any message' they like so it's utter BS.This comes after them sitting on the findings of the Ice Inquiry for over two years. Decriminalisation was a key recommendation. Refusing to decriminalise 'illicit drugs' of course keeps them illicit, a perfect circular logic. 

Meanwhile Sydney's Postcode Wars will continue, underpinned by rivers of drug money enabling public executioners to be paid six-figure sums as shown in the recent Four Corners episode. That program, however, joined a conspiracy of media silence by never once mentioning Prohibition, the framework that enables these criminal gangs. That, apparently, is the 'right message'. https://www.abc.net.au/.../the-postcode-wars.../14051188

Big Pharma shells out to block cannabis legalisation

It's always been interesting to see who spends money to fight legalisation - big pharma, the alcohol industry and police and jail unions - all keen on scaring the public to increase their budgets and profits.
Here's the latest in the saga, as Arizona takes the plunge.

"For big pharma, however, an expanding amount of data explains their fears. Opiate overdoses dropped by roughly 25% in states that have legalized medical marijuana"

The company that produces Fentanyl, 100 times stronger than morphine, is paying big bucks to stall cannabis legalisation.

It's interesting to see the copy used in the anti-cannabis ads. They remind me of ads opposing marriage equality they showed on Gruen. We truly live in a post-truth world.

One ad says: "Colorado schools were promised millions in new revenues when the state approved recreational pot use", says the voiceover in one ad. Instead, schoolchildren were plagued by “marijuana edibles that look like candy."

While the candy-like edibles were definitely a regulatory oversight (now rectified I believe), the ads ignore real benefits like this:

"In Colorado alone, marijuana sales reached $996m in 2015 and raked in $135m in tax revenue. Towns have earmarked the money for road improvements, recreation centers and scholarships for low-income students."

NSW population study of medicinal cannabis challenges the official program

Further to my previous post, which questioned the approach to medicinal cannabis research being taken by the NSW government, the ABC reported today on a Sydney University study in which parents of epileptic children who are being treated with the illegal substance are being asked to tell their stories.

I had been wondering why the academic conducting the government research, Professor Jennifer Martin from Newcastle University, had published the opinion piece (linked above) years before her research was complete. The piece talked up the risks of the drug and argued for the Big Pharma approach of finding selected molecules from cannabis and offering them as a (presumably) patented medicine. Academics usually go public only when research is complete and has been peer-reviewed.

When I heard today's news a penny dropped. Perhaps the Sydney University study, looking at actual users of the whole oil, might threaten the direction the NSW government and Professor Martin have taken?

Ms Martin claimed:

There seems to be a sudden rush to make it available, as if the world was going to run out, or the evidence to use it was new and overwhelmingly good. Sadly, none of this is a reality. There is no new evidence.

If that's what the professor and her colleagues think, perhaps they are concerned that more such evidence will emerge from the Sydney University study, and that could disrupt and discredit their own line of research?

Such internecine rivalry is not unknown in academia. This might explain the unusual opinion piece with its several questionable arguments - an attempt to sway public opinion to the conservative, Big Pharma prohibitionist side.

Given the wealth of anecdotal evidence about the efficacy of medicinal cannabis, the parents of afflicted children may not agree with Professor Martin and her view that "we already have safe and effective therapies available" and there is no need to hurry with legalisation.

One mother who used cannabis oil to treat her child for severe epilepsy, quoted in the ABC story, reports:

Within a week the seizures had gone from 20 or 30 big ones a day and 100 little ones, to probably four in a week - it was amazing.

Perhaps that mother is lying, but what on earth would she gain from that? She's risking a lot outing herself as a buyer of an illegal substance. If she's not lying, Professor Jennifer Martin's assertions seem both highly contestable and distinctly lacking empathy.

And of course Professor Martin seems to fall into the old prohibitionist fallacy: that cannabis should remain illegal because there is no evidence of its medical benefits, while on the other hand there is little evidence because the substance is illegal and unbiased research on it has been actively suppressed.

Professor Martin falsely conflates medical cannabis - which, properly produced, has little or no psychoactive effect and is usually taken as oil - with smoking marijuana recreationally. Even the picture with her article shows chopped green cannabis, ready to smoke, next to a baby monitor. Scary perhaps but quite misleading.

NSW is legalising medical cannabis - so why is it devolving into a Big Pharma spinfest?

Something very strange is happening in NSW. To the surprise of many, Liberal Premier Mike Baird last year announced he would legalise medical cannabis. He cited the plight of Lucy Haslam from Tamworth whose son had an incurable fatal condition and who received palliation from cannabis oil where normal treatments had failed. Her sterling activism had apparently shifted the mountain, although her son has sadly since passed away.

This seemed strange because Mike Baird appears to be in lockstep with Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, and the police always oppose any moves to legalise cannabis because they garner huge budgets from prohibition. And Big Pharma always opposes it because anyone can grow it and it might threaten sales of their own drugs. In fact that's happening - the use of pharmaceutical painkillers is dropping rapidly in US states which have legalised medical cannabis.

But wait. People in the know tell me that actual cannabis oil will not be legalised - the research ball has been thrown to the pharmaceutical industry to extract relevant molecules from cannabis and produce medicines accordingly.

Large, long term study shows no health harms from cannabis

I've always said we needed large population studies to properly assess the long-term effects of smoking cannabis. It's too easy to skew small reductive studies, as we have repeatedly seen.

This one is a huge study of 408 males tracked from adolescence into their mid-30s and it found no difference between heavy early-onset smokers and low/non-users:

Findings from latent class growth curve analysis identified 4 distinct subgroups of marijuana users: early onset chronic users, late increasing users, adolescence-limited users, and low/nonusers. Results indicated that the 4 marijuana use trajectory groups were not significantly different in terms of their physical and mental health problems assessed in the mid-30s.

Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to be getting much of a run in the media.

The War on Drugs is unjust nonsense.

Andrew Colvin self-promotes at expense of executed men

AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin thinks the
futile War on Drugs is more important than young lives.

It’s disgusting – these senior police protecting their own pointless jobs by pleading Drug War platitudes. In refusing to apologise for the Indonesian executions of two Australians, AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin deflected a question raised by Senator Xenophon – why couldn’t the Bali Nine have been arrested on their return to Australia and these executions prevented?

The AFP, it seems, had alerted Indonesian police to the arrival of the Bali 9 drug smugglers despite knowing the death penalty could be enforced.

Colvin's excuses contained a list of drug war clichés. It ignored that most heroin casualties occur BECAUSE it is illegal, and ignored the success of supervised injecting centres in preventing overdoses and deaths – a far cheaper option than the ever more privatised drug enforcement and jail industry that Colvin eagerly supports.
 
Typically, Andrew Colvin used the same dodgy stats that Indonesia's President Widodo used to whip up horror at "the scourge of drugs" - "Families and communities destroyed by drugs" - "4,000 deaths from heroin (and other opioids)" over four years - and they've taken enough heroin off the streets for "eight hits for every man, woman and CHILD in Australia", because heroin dealers run around randomly injecting chilren, right? Never mind that taking that heroin off the streets neatly keeps the price up so criminals are eternally attracted to the trade and the cops keep their budgets, promotions and jobs etc etc.

He didn't even come up with a new cliché.

Indonesia's death penalty based on ludicrous evidence

With the 'Bali Two' facing likely execution in Indonesia, a politically threatened government is quoting "50 deaths per day because of drugs" to justify their populist decision to execute all convicted drug dealers including the Australians.

But the "50 deaths per day" is a rubbery extrapolation based, it seems, on only three (3) reports by other people that someone they knew "died because of drugs". This is not evidence in any accepted sense of the word.

Yes we know that drugs can be problematic for a very small minority of users but you will always find that these unfortunate people have other serious problems in their lives, so it's a bit facile to simply blame the drugs. It's also facile to think that prohibition stops the problems - in fact it causes most of them, as per the below billboard erected by former US drug police who have the courage to tell the truth.

The rich, ugly faces of prohibition again rear their lying heads

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson teamed up with Mel and Betty Sembler on Fred Thompson's
disastrous 2008 presidential campaign, too. Photo via Flickr user freddthompson

As usual when a serious pot law reform emerges, the lid is lifted off a vile, self-interested hypocritical pit of prohibitionists. Cops, the jail industry, the casino industry and people with drug-testing companies spew any lie they can think of to fool the people into voting their way. The most recent example is in Florida and this excellent piece in VICE lifts the lid off the rotten cauldron.

...the Drug Free America Foundation is a legal entity that has existed since the 1970s under the old name STRAIGHT Inc. Under the previous brand, the foundation operated as a drug rehab center that was embroiled in multiple scandals for allegedly torturing children who had been admitted for experimenting with pot.

...When cops bust a marijuana dealing operation, they employ something called asset forfeiture to seize property and auction it off. The process has generated over $1 billion for law enforcement divisions around the country since 2002

Just so you know what's really behind the anti-pot propaganda.

Prohibitionists try to demonise Colorado legalisation

Prohibitionist Kevin Sabet continues to throw up a moral panic smokescreen about cannabis legalisation in Colorado on behalf of SAM - Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

Sabet's latest portrays a pandemic of children admitted to hospital after ingesting legal cannabis, and more claims suggesting an epidemic of stoned drivers.

And Maureen Dowd, a New York journalist ingested possibly 16 times the recommended dose of cannabis and overdosed, having a pretty bad time which she described in print. Now, for some reason, she's not so keen on legalisation, even though it's equally possible to overdose under prohibition (in which case there's more reason for your paranoia!).

Indeed it seems that recommended doses are not printed on the labels of the cannabis candies, and it seemed Dowd was not advised and indeed didn't ask how much she should have taken - elementary information you gather before taking a couple of Aspirins.

These are good arguments for better regulation, not prohibition.

Luckily some astute writers have taken apart this latest wave of prohibitionist panic, showing that the problems happen to only a tiny minority of users, crime has gone down and even major pot seizures by Police in neighbouring states have plummeted.

Maureen Dowd's column is critiqued here and Kevin Sabet gets a dose of reality here.

Prohibitionists keep flogging evidence-free fearmongering

The increasing legalisation of cannabis in the US is putting prohibitionists further and further onto 'the back foot' as actual data emerge that contradict their fear memes. A chief among these is their claim that moves towards legalisation would "send the wrong message" and increase use among teens. Evidence that it isn't doing so has not stopped them from making the claim, as you can see at the bottom of this email chain (the email on behalf of prohibitionist Gary Christian). One point made is that, under legalisation, advertising and marketing of cannabis should NOT be allowed.


-----------------------------------------------

(Email from Paul Desseaur)

Here’s a similar article;

http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsarticle.aspx?articleid=1864116

(BTW- Why am I not surprised that Robert DuPont, (who, with his partner Bensinger makes millions per-annum from immunoassay urine screening), is opposed to any legalisation of cannabis use?).http://www.activistpost.com/2013/03/ex-dea-chief-lobbying-holder-to-nullify.html

This one sentence underpins the argument of the AACAP statement you have posted;

<<< Legalization of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes, even if restricted to adults, is likely to be associated with (a) decreased adolescent perceptions of marijuana’s harmful effects, (b) increased marijuana use among parents and caretakers, and (c) increased adolescent access to marijuana, all of which reliably predict increased rates of adolescent marijuana use and associated problems. >>>

Is there any evidentiary basis to these assertions?

The chain of reasoning seems intuitively logical, but what does the published research tell us?

The authors reference two articles to support that sentence, the first is this one;

Legalization of Marijuana: Potential Impact on Youth, Joffe + Yancy, Pediatrics, 2004.

Full text here;

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/6/e632.full.pdf+html

Watch this space - how long before Greg Hunt deletes this damning info on climate change?

Seems the Federal Government hasn't gotten around to pulling a web page that scientifically debunks global warming denier Ian Plimer's misleading nonsense. Crikey writes:

Plimer’s 2011 book —  How to Get Expelled From School (launched by John Howard and mailed by the IPA to hundreds of schools) — listed 101 questions for sceptical students to ask their “warmist” teachers, i.e. those who respect science. The federal Department of Climate Change (abolished by Abbott) prepared a response that thoroughly debunked his claims in words a child can understand. How long before Environment Minister Greg Hunt is instructed to have this demolition of Plimer taken down?

I've downloaded and saved the PDF but it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the truth to be hidden in the interests of Ian Plimer's fans like Gina Rinehart.

At the time of writing, the PDF is still online here.

I've previously blogged about Ian Plimer's unrepentant deceit here.

PS On 13 August 2014 the PDF is still up there on Greg Hunt's website. Perhaps Greg hasn't actually read it?

PPS today (18/8/16) I again checked the link and wouldn't you know it, it's gone! The department of misinformation has finally caught up. I will contact Crikey and let them know.

The US finances Mexico's biggest drug cartel: 100,000 die

This cash allegedly belonging to El Chapo was found in a car.
At the same time, the US was financing and arming his cartel.  

Well the Yanks certainly haven't changed their spots. Their recent much-publicised arrest of drug cartel supremo 'El Chapo' Guzman hides the fact that:

US agencies had armed and financed El Chapo's Sinaloa criminal empire for at least 12 years. That link has been substantiated by DEA and Justice Department court testimonies, and even US agents confirmed the financing had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors. But the American media barely reported how entrenched the American government has become in the Mexican drug trade.

You can read more about it in this report from The Guardian.

Instead we got triumphal pictures of his arrest and a slew of 'gangster porn' - photos of his mansions, gold-plated guns and stacks of cash.

Back in 2012 they arrested El Chapo's son only it turned out they got a humble used car salesman instead. That didn't stop them parading him in front of a salad bar of weapons and cash (see pic below). If it was the wrong guy, where did the loot come from? This is just one of the more blatant examples of the total bullshit fed to us by War on Drugs propagandists. Meanwhile 100,000 people have been killed in the phoney War, many in horrendously brutal circumstances.
As The Guardian asks, "Why aren't we putting US agencies on trial for financing El Chapo's drug war?"

Oops, wrong guy! But if so, where did all the loot
and weaponry come from for this photo op?

Drug 'crimes' fuelling prison growth

I know prohibition doesn't seem to rate as an issue among Australian human rights campaigners, but if you think incarcerating hundreds of thousands of mainly non-white people for a victimless 'crime' is serious, prohibition should be up there with refugees and Indigenous health etc.

This graph from the Pew Research Centre lays it on the table.

This gobsmacking growth in prisoners is happening in the USA, which is on its straps financially, with States and the taxpayer bearing the massive cost of this misconceived blunder.

In Australia, drugs prohibition has brought about prison trends along the same lines while fuelling the daily shootings in "South-Western Sydney", gang crime and the bikie issue. Yet no-one in the government or the media EVER mentions this major root cause of the problems. Would you see an article about Al Capone that doesn't mention prohibition? Never ever. So why the disjunction here and now?
Every time you hear about a shooting in SW Sydney, think "symptom of drug prohibition".

Read all about it here.

Prohibitionists AGAIN caught out telling porkies

SAM head Kevin Sabet - he doesn't
look stupid, so why is he telling
idiotic porkies?

'It's like saying 10% of people in Australia, Canada and Bolivia scratch their ears before breakfast, therefore 30% of people scratch their ears before breakfast. Duh.'

It must be difficult for prohibitionists now the changing face of history is proving their arguments to be little but hot air and fear mongering. So you can understand why they have to fall back on complete nonsense to keep the uninformed scared. But you'd think they could at least add up, especially if they call their organisation Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).

Close on the heels of their last misleading factoid, SAM's head Kevin Sabet has tweeted that - wait for it - 39% of HS students in Washington state report using marijuana that came from from a "medical" marijuana dispensary [his quote marks].

Shock, horror! See, they told us so - legalise it and a tsunami of pot smoking will destroy society!

Then Russ Belville from the Huffington Post looked at the source figures Sabet had quoted.  They showed only 14.9% of 12th-grade students said their pot usually came from a medical dispensary. The percentage fell for more junior grades, down to 3.8% for 9th graders.

Seems Sabet had simply added up all the percentages, apparently unaware that each one came from a different sample of people so adding them is nonsensical. It's like saying 10% of people in Australia, Canada and Bolivia scratch their ears before breakfast, therefore 30% of people scratch their ears before breakfast. Duh.

Meanwhile teenage cannabis use seems to have stayed pretty level during the rash of legalisation spreading across US states, so the scariest thing about Sabet's paper tiger is that the same smokers are getting their stuff from a legal rather than illegal source.

Embarrassed into a retreat, Sabet then tweeted implying that the students must be faking back pain or cancer, further spreading the egg over his face because the figures deal with cannabis that CAME FROM a dispensary - with no claim that the students had attended the dispensaries. It's all a bit subtle for a fossilised prohibitionist, I guess.

SAM's "smart" approach [my quote marks] apparently involves diverting cannabis users who are caught into treatment (or else get arrested again).

"The proposal is on par with forcing every alcohol user into treatment at their own cost or at a cost to the state," said Marijuana Policy Project communications director Mason Tvert. "In fact, it would be less logical because the science is clear that marijuana is far less toxic, less addictive, and less likely to be associated with acts of violence."

While Sabet denies that, everything I have previously read about SAM points in that direction.

Oh, Sabet also claims that 10% of cannabis users become addicted. No they don't, Kevin. In fact the commonly quoted figure of 9% is another dodgy bit of bad science from the prohibitionists, as the Huff Post again explains.