Category Archives: US marijuana policy

GDPO launches new website and publications

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The Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO) at Swansea University, UK, is pleased to announce the launch of its new website. Engaging in a range of ‘impact’ oriented activities, the recently established Observatory operates with the goal of promoting evidence and human rights based drug policy through the comprehensive and rigorous reporting, monitoring and analysis of policy developments at national and international levels. The new website provides a platform from which to disseminate a range of research outputs to broad and diverse audiences with the aim of helping to improve the sophistication and horizons of the current policy debate among the media and elite opinion formers as well as within scholarly, law enforcement and policymaking communities.

The website includes project pages on the topics of drugs in West Africa and regulated markets for the recreational use of cannabis within the USA.  Containing GDPO publications, as well as related blogs, audio files (which are also embedded within reports and briefs) and interactive maps where appropriate, these pages move away from the traditional snapshot approach towards the analysis of specific issue areas. Rather they are designed to provide users with a range of accessible resources that, as a topic selected for GDPO reporting, monitoring and analysis, develops over time.  The core of the West Africa project page is the policy brief ‘Telling the story of drugs in West Africa: The newest front in a losing war?.  A draft of this briefing was presented at a co-hosted GDPO – International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) event, ‘The securitisation of drugs in West Africa’, in London in October.    

Our detailed policy report on the cannabis policy in the US project page, ‘Legally regulated cannabis markets in the US: Implications and possibilities’, will soon be supplemented by a shorter policy brief, Voter demographics and campaign messaging: Lessons from Colorado, Washington and Oregon. Forthcoming project pages include the ‘narco-diplomacy’ of the Russian Federation and the privatisation of the drug war in Latin America.

The website will also be the repository for an additional publication stream, the GDPO Situation Analysis (SA) series.  Comprising documents of around 1,000 words, this aims to provide the diversity of stakeholders within the drug policy arena with concise, cutting edge analysis of key topics, enabling informed engagement with pertinent developments and debates.  Presented in a focused and standardized format, the GDPO-SA flag risks, opportunities and future trends in crucial issue areas, delivering readers actionable information and evidence based insight. Our first GDPO-SA focuses upon Afghanistan’s Bumper Opium Harvest, with others on drugs and cyber-crime and the khat regulation debate in the UK to follow shortly.

As well as containing a directory of our technical advisors and partner organizations, who both play a crucial role in peer reviewing Observatory publications, the website provides information on forthcoming drug policy related academic conferences and events and details of the GDPO Post Graduate Network.   The Network aims to bring together post graduate students and early years researchers in order to share ideas, discuss articles and provide support to any PG students working on drug policy or related issues.  The group will have a virtual presence on our website as well as meeting face-to-face when possible.

Please take a few minutes to visit the website and see what we’ve been working on over the past few months.  Remember, you can also follow GDPO on Twitter @GDPO_Swan and ‘like’ us on facebook where we will let you know about any new reports, briefs, blogs, GDPO-SA’s and related audio material.

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The Beginning of the End for the Pot Prohibition

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The beginning of the end for the ‘war on weed’ in the US?

A new survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports in August 2013 shows that 82% of Americans think the US is losing the war on drugs. Only 4% of respondents believe the US is winning this war. This survey comes at a sensitive time for US commitment to the ‘war on drugs’ or the ‘war on weed’ at least.

In November 2012 two US states – Washington and Colorado – voted to tax and regulate recreational adult use of cannabis. Earlier this year Pew Research found a majority of the public – 52% – think the drug should be legal. The same poll also found that almost three quarters of Americans – 72% – think that efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more than they are worth.

Now it seems that even the federal government is having doubts about the benefits of criminalising pot smokers. In August US Attorney General Eric Holder announced that low level, nonviolent drug offenders with no history of ties to gangs or organised crime shouldn’t be charged with offences that carry mandatory minimum sentences.

Also in August CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta (reportedly Obama’s choice for US Surgeon General, though Gupta turned the post down) made a documentary about the medical benefits of marijuana. Gupta argued that the DEA’s insistence that cannabis has “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse” has little scientific basis and that the American public has been “systematically misled” about cannabis and apologized for his role in this. The White House has refused to comment on Gupta’s documentary and in fact since Obama took office raids on medical marijuana dispensaries have increased.

On 29th of August 2013 the Department of Justice released a memorandum to US attorneys and law enforcement officials noting that whilst they should continue to enforce the federal government’s prohibition on marijuana the main focus in those states that allow some form of cannabis use – either for recreational purposes such as Washington and Colorado – or for medical use should be on eight key areas:

• Preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors;
• Preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels;
• Preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
• Preventing state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other illegal activity;
• Preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use;
• Preventing the growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on public lands; and
• Preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property

This guidance is an attempt to resolve the tensions between state laws and federal law with regards to cannabis. The commitment to maintaining the prohibition on pot is essential – not least because they are signed up to international treaties such as the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs – however Obama has been open about his own weed smoking as a college student and must find it hard to ignore the shifting public opinion especially when more people voted to tax and regulate pot in Colorado than voted for him.

So the big question many drug law reformers in the US are asking is, ‘Is this the beginning of the end for pot prohibition?’

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