The limits of a new Massachusetts decriminalization law are being tested.

Thumbing their noses at the state’s lax new pot law, Bay State stoners are brazenly lighting up in front of cops and then refusing to pay fines - leading some frustrated police chiefs to all but give up the fight.

Local police report widespread defiance of the six-month-old law, and a Herald review shows a vast majority of potheads cited by cops blowing off their $100 fines.

Some egregious examples of tokers flaunting the law include:

In Arlington, a public works employee was cited by the local police chief for smoking a pot pipe as he stood next to his town-issued tractor.

At bustling Park Street Station, a pair of nonchalant lovers out on the town openly lit up a joint and continued toking even after confronted by off-duty Milton Chief Richard Wells.

In East Boston, four teens spotted in a “smoke-filled vehicle” unabashedly told a cop they were “just smoking marijuana.”

A man caught near a Dorchester playground laughed when police said he faced a $100 fine - and then taunted the cops with an expletive-laced tirade.

All told, a staggering 83 percent of 415 tokers cited in Boston since the law took effect in January have refused to pony up the $100, a Herald review shows.

What are some unknown costs of prohibition? A handy info-graphic tells the tale.

Been burning my way through this one. Pretty sick. Not a lot of drug relevance but...

Toije tipped us to this BBC news article on world drug use, presented in graphical form. So many statistics...

A UN agency has published a comprehensive report on the worldwide illicit drugs market, the World Drug Report 2009. The graphs and maps below show the extent of the problem and measures to tackle it.

Some argue that strict controls have created a thriving black market that breeds violence and corruption.

In the report's preface, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa calls for greater investment in drug treatment and crime control. He says legalising drugs would be "an historic mistake" as a free market would spark a drug epidemic. "Societies should not have to choose between protecting public health or public security: they can and should do both."

Cannabis is still the most widely produced and used drug in the world. It is also a drug that is increasing in potency, according to the World Drugs Report. It says that in the last decade, the amount of THC (the main psychoactive substance in cannabis) found in plants from North America grown using the latest techniques has almost doubled.

The World Drugs Report shows consumption of both cannabis and cocaine, at least in the western world, remains steady or is in decline. In the last decade, cocaine use in the USA among 10th and 12th grade high school students fell by 40% and 30%.

Breaking news from Michael A. Glenn, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in this case.

Honolulu, Hawaii - The OKLEVUEHA NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH OF HAWAII filed for an injunction in Federal Court that would allow its members to continue to use Cannabis as a ceremonial sacrament. The Plaintiffs are seeking an Order declaring their consumption, cultivation, possession and distribution of Cannabis to be free from federal penalty.

Currently the Federal Government is prohibited from preventing members of The Oklevueha Native American Church from using the entheogenic cactus Peyote, and The Church is now seeking the same religious freedom for its members' religious use of Cannabis.

Church President and named Plaintiff MICHAEL REX "RAGING BEAR" MOONEY is a Native American Spiritual Leader (commonly known as a Medicine Man). Mr. Mooney and The Church are suing ERIC H. HOLDER, JR. (Attorney General for the United States of America), MICHELE LEONHART (Acting Administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration) and EDWARD H. KUBO, JR., (United States Attorney for the District of Hawaii).

According to the Plaintiffs' attorney, Michael A. Glenn, "the federal government is required (by the American Indian Religious Freedom Act) to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise their religion, including the use and possession of sacred substances, and the freedom to worship through ceremonies and rites."

If you've ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the kitchen is a very forgiving place for addicts and ex-cons. One head-chef I knew said he could come to work "high on acid with a monkey attached to my cock" and it wouldn't matter as long as he had his prep done in time for service. How bad is it really? The Daily Beast has the inside scoop.

What are the odds that your next restaurant meal will be prepared by someone on drugs? Very high. An ex-chef and former addict on why cooks and coke go together like salt and pepper.

Stepping in out of the sun, through the back door that let out into the grimy alley behind the kitchen, Andy snuck in, late, but with an alien grace. Work in the kitchen lost a pace: The tocktocktock of knives on cutting boards, the clatter from the dish machine and rhythmic rasp of the diamond steel as I cleaned up my edge for the night—all of it eased, because Andy was here now and he was fuuucked up, bent out of his head on opium, claiming that he’d eaten it (accidentally) on a salad in the park.

“Who eats salad from a stranger in the park?” we asked.

The answer: Andy did. We tried to send him home. He wouldn’t go, insisting that he was fine to stand his station. For the rest of the night, we’d call an order for a simple salad and would be handed a pepper mill. We’d ask for pate, for rillettes, for a double-garden-on-the-side. We’d get half heads of lettuce dressed in skordalia, white plates doodled with sauce, completely imaginary salads: One plate set with a fork and a squeeze bottle. Andy was inventing Dadaist cuisine on the spot, and for a while we were having so much fun waiting to see what he’d come up with next that we forgot someone needed to back him up and actually do the job.

That task fell to Al, our emergency backup, all-hope-is-lost dishwasher and prep guy. He was a friend, and no matter when we put in the call, Al would show up. He was a regular abuser of strong chemicals—heroin, mostly—but in the psychoactive hierarchy of kitchen work, a high-functioning junkie beats a one-time opium eater.

When Al arrived, Andy was back out in the alley again, having a deep and heated conversation with a chainlink fence.

“What’s up with him?” Al asked.

Al was talking to the dish machine, but at least he was inside.

That was just one night. That was just one story. I was asked once how many kitchens I thought had employees who regularly used drugs. Without even thinking, I blurted out, “Ninety-five percent, easy.” It was like asking me how many kitchens had cooks in them. How many used knives. And while in retrospect (and out of an admission that things might have changed in the restaurant industry since I left the closed society of chefs a few years back, turned traitor, and started writing about kitchens rather than cooking in them), I might’ve tempered my answer somewhat had I taken the time to think before I opened my big, dumb mouth, it is also true that my own personal experience was different, too.

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