In the United States, 13 states currently allow citizens to use marijuana for medicinal purposes, but even these limited rights are under threat.

Have you read the headlines? The 'War on Drugs' Is Over!

What happens when you shoot up heroin and decide to do a Letterman interview? Watch the drugged out interview(s) and see him fall off stage while pretending to be a rapper. Joaquin Phoenix has either become a comedian or is Hollywood's newest train wreck.

Drinking and driving, bong hits, Vegas strippers… as American as Thanksgiving dinner!

For being caught with just over a quarter pound of pot, 54-year-old Henry Walter Wooten will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, thanks to a jury in Tyler, Texas. His prosecutor, Smith County Assistant District Attorney Richard Vance, originally sought a sentence of 99 years over the 4.6 ounces of marijuana police found in Wooten's vehicle, according to pu...

The media complain about the explosion of illegal outdoor cultivation in our national parks, but have zero diagnosis about why it's happening. One of the most embarrassingly mindless trends in the mainstream media's marijuana reporting is that of publishing one redundant story after another about the explosion of illegal outdoor cultivation in our national parks, whi...

"Lucky visitors to the upcoming SXSW film festival in Austin this weekend have a chance to see the opening of a new documentary about psychedelic pioneer Dr. Sasha Shulgin titled, Dirty Pictures: “Shulgin’s alchemy has earned him the title “The Godfather of Psychedelics,” and a reputation as one of the great chemists of the 20th century." Tags: LSD Po...

Once again members of the mainstream media are running wild with the notion that marijuana use causes schizophrenia and psychosis. To add insult to injury, this latest dose of reefer rhetoric comes only days after investigators in the United Kingdom reported in the prestigious scientific journal Addiction that the available evidence in support of this theory is “neit...

Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them. Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and tri...

For the first time, U.S. officials plan to embed American intelligence agents in Mexican law enforcement units to help pursue drug cartel leaders and their hit men operating in the most violent city in Mexico, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. The increasingly close partnership between the two countries, born of frustration over the exploding death toll in Ciu...

In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana. Long a fixture among young people, use of the country's most popular illicit drug is now gro...

There’s one thing that Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all agreed on: expanding military aid to Latin America to fight the so-called “Drug War.” A new phase of the Drug War began in 2000 under President Bill Clinton, with $1.3 billion in “emergency” funding to fight cocaine production in Colombia by destroying the raw material for it—coca plants. President ...

Matthew Bristow reports for The Guardian on the cocaine industry in Colombia. Tags: Cocaine Posted by: ampedstatus

In my first “On Marijuana” column, I described the need to refer to law enforcement as the “Arrest and Prosecution Industry.” While I didn’t plan to return to the same subject in my second column, recent events have compelled me to revisit the topic. My last column was theory; this one is practice. Just over a week ago, a man named Chris Bartkowicz in Highlands Ran...

With the results of a medical study summarized by a new report delivered to the California state legislature, the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) claims it has established scientific proof that inhaled cannabis holds medical value at or above the level of conventional prescription medicines used for a variety of ailments. "As a result o...

The results of a series of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials assessing the efficacy of inhaled marijuana consistently show that cannabis holds therapeutic value comparable to conventional medications, according to the findings of a 24-page report issued earlier today to the California state legislature by the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Rese...

Fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes; 13 more have medical marijuana ballot or legislative measures on the horizon. And medical pot has paved the way for all-out legalization; for the first time ever, polls consistently show that a majority of Americans -- albeit a slim one -- believe marijuana should be legalized for adults over 18. Drug ...

In a puzzling and little-reported move Friday, New Mexico's state senate has approved a law allowing residents to take concealed guns into restaurants serving wine and beer in an effort to reduce crime. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. George Munoz, would allow individuals with concealed handgun licenses to take weapons into restaurants serving beer and wine. ...

Over a thousand people took to the streets of Ciudad Juarez on Sunday to protest the city's record-setting crime wave, which civil rights groups say is made worse by the presence of some 6,000 Mexican soldiers. "The army's presence is anti-constitutional and violates citizens' rights. That's why we're asking them to withdraw," National Front Against Repres...

Mexico’s “war on drugs” is an unmitigated social disaster. The drug war began at the end of 2006 with the militarization of wide swaths of the country. Many of these once relatively tranquil areas are now bloody war zones under de facto military control. For all this, there has been no significant reduction in drug trafficking or the power of the drug cartels. On the...

Possibly the most downplayed conflict of today, the forty-year-old Colombian war shows no signs of ceasing. It's fed by a billion dollar drug trade, political division and an international land battle. The conflict is no longer about ideology. Its a battle of powers, a battle for territory. It began as a war between left-wing guerrillas - hoping to establish a commu...

On Thursday, a Denver news station interviewed Chris Bartkowicz about his medical-marijuana operation in the basement of his home. Bartkowicz, confident of his compliance with state laws, boasted of its size and profitability. "I'm definitely living the dream now," he told 9News. The following day, the dream was over. Drug-enforcement agents raided his h...

The fifteen-second ad, asserting that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise 'billions of dollars in national revenue,' was rejected out of hand. Representatives from the CBS Corporation and Neutron Media Screen Marketing have rejected a paid advertisement from the NORML Foundation, the educational arm of the National Organization for t...

20% of women and 10% of men describe themselves as unattractive. 12 years ago, only 1% of all Americans did. Americans spent $10.3 billion on cosmetic surgery in 2008, a 388% increase since 1997. The Miss California pageant paid for Carrie Prejean's breast implants so she could "present herself in the best possible light" in the 2009 Miss USA contest. Af...