The California Supreme Court today struck down the state's limits on how much medical marijuana a patient can possess, concluding that the restrictions imposed by the Legislature were an unconstitutional amendment of a 1996 voter-approved initiative.

The decision means that patients and caregivers with a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana can now possess as much as is "reasonably related to the patient's current medical needs," a standard that the court established in a 1997 decision.

"I'm very pleased. They gave us exactly what we wanted," said Gerald F. Uelmen, a law professor at Santa Clara University who argued the case for Patrick K. Kelly, a medical marijuana patient from Lakewood who was convicted of possession and cultivation. "This makes it very clear that all of the rights of patients under the Compassionate Use Act are fully preserved."

NMS Labs is the only known commercial laboratory to offer a chemical test that can detect Salvinorin A & B (the active drug and metabolite of the hallucinogenic herb Salvia divinorum) in a person's blood, plasma, or urine. This test uses the most advanced laboratory technology (LC tandem mass spectrometry), ensuring the results are highly specific and legally defensible. NMS Labs had previously performed testing of plant material to identify Salvia -- an herb common to southern Mexico, Central America and South America.

NMS Labs National Director of Forensic Services, Dr. Barry Logan commented, "As more states have worked to regulate the use and possession of Salvia, NMS Labs saw the opportunity to assist with the enforcement of these laws. We are well positioned to do so as a forensic toxicology lab with close to 40 years experience working with the law enforcement community."

Commonly, Salvia divinorum is consumed by chewing fresh leaves or by drinking its extracted juices. The dried plant leaves can also be smoked as a joint, consumed in water pipes, or vaporized and inhaled. Although Salvia divinorum is not a drug regulated by the Federal Controlled Substances Act, several US states have passed legislation to regulate its use. As of last month, several countries and 17 U.S. states had scheduled or otherwise regulated the sale or distribution of Salvia, including CA, DE, FL, IL, KS, LA, ME, MS, MO, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, SD, TN, VA. Legislation is pending in several other states.

These tests were developed and are performed according to accreditation standards set by the American Board of Forensic Toxicology (ABFT) and the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors -- Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD-LAB).

Dr. Logan further explained, "We [NMS Labs] are proud to serve as an integral part of the criminal justice community by providing the most comprehensive testing available and outstanding expert services for trials and litigation. Through our innovative test development, NMS Labs has shown itself to be passionate about public safety and providing science in the service of justice."

Thanks Jonathan!

Despite the Obama administration's tacit support of more liberal state medical marijuana laws, the federal government still discourages research into the medicinal uses of smoked marijuana. That may be one reason that -- even though some patients swear by it -- there is no good scientific evidence that legalizing marijuana's use provides any benefits over current therapies.

Lyle E. Craker, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Massachusetts, has been trying to get permission from federal authorities for nearly nine years to grow a supply of the plant that he could study and provide to researchers for clinical trials.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration -- more concerned about abuse than potential benefits -- has refused, even after the agency's own administrative law judge ruled in 2007 that Dr. Craker's application should be approved, and even after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March ended the Bush administration's policy of raiding dispensers of medical marijuana that comply with state laws.

"All I want to be able to do is grow it so that it can be tested," Dr. Craker said in comments echoed by other researchers.

Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review.

An upper house of Parliament commission 19 January voted 8-0 in favour of fining anyone caught smoking cannabis. The lower house appears has already moved in this direction, so an ad hoc committee will now write a revision to the statutes, which will include setting the amount of the fine. The move was made after it the Swiss rejected outright decriminalization in a November 2008 vote which would have called for government control of cannabis cultivation and sales.

Parliament made it clear that it wants to change the current legal status, which calls for criminal proceedings to be open against cannabis smokers.

Thanks sd&m!

Meow Meow (mephedrone) is easily, and legally, bought over the internet where it is often advertised as plant feed. When taken as a tablet, or snorted as a powder, it gives a similar high to Ecstasy and abuse has taken off in the UK over the past couple of years.

The drug is likely to be one of the first items on the agenda for Professor Les Iversen, the Government's new drugs czar. Other "legal highs" such as BZP (a derivative of a worming agent) and GBL (paint stripper) have now been reclassified as Class C drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but mephedrone -- and a similar drug, salvia or "herbal ecstasy" (the leaves of the Mexican plant Salvia divinorum) -- are now under review...

Users of Meow Meow report an amphetamine-type euphoria that comes with mental and physical stimulation, talkativeness and feelings of empathy. Physical changes include dilated pupils, increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, flushing and goose bumps... most don't report any significant hallucinations.

The effects start to become noticeable within half an hour of taking a tablet or within a couple of minutes of snorting the drug and last for anything up to four hours (less if snorted).

The downside includes a strong desire to take more, rapid changes in body temperature (sweating or chills), paranoia, palpitations, panic attacks and muscle spasms. A hangover the next morning tends not to be too much of a problem and it is not known whether Meow Meow is addictive -- although a number of cases have started to trickle through into NHS drug treatment centres.

Thanks Jonathan!

Rudgley, born in Hampshire in 1961, had previously published 'The Alchemy of Culture: Intoxicants in Society' and 'The Encyclopaedia of Psychoactive Substances' before compiling this anthology. His goal is to dispel the belief that "it all started in the Sixties." What Rudgley manages to do is portray a multiplicity of relationships that point toward a recurrent social phenomena; one which entails negative, objective and positive approaches to drugs...

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.