If South Africa’s argument in court is that marijuana causes harm, it deserves to lose. The real question it should ask is whether criminal prohibition is the effective way forward.
In an era when opinion often trumps evidence in public health issues, it’s time to support and invest in evidence-based medicine to protect the public from dangerous, poorly informed beliefs.
The federal government outlaws marijuana, but many states are legalizing it. Coupled with the growing number of cannabis-related patents, the potential for court battles is dizzying.
Scientists have never found a medicine to help crack users who want to decrease their consumption. Canadian researchers think cannabis might be the answer.
Just as Fitzgerald’s career was taking off, jazz was under attack for its purported connection to drug culture. If she wanted to become a mainstream superstar, she needed to make a choice.
In 2016 three Australian states and the Commonwealth passed laws to legalise the growing of medicinal cannabis. It was an extraordinary result for a campaign that struggled for decades to gain traction.
We have a reliable and easy-to-use test to measure blood alcohol concentration. But right now we don’t have a fast, reliable test to gauge whether someone is too doped up to drive.
The Australian government will now accept licence applications for groups wanting to grow cannabis for scientific and medical purposes. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about this complex plant.
Nine states are deciding whether to legalize marijuana. Yet the drug’s prohibition at the federal level has created an unstable financial environment for producers and retailers.