Legalization

Credit: shutterstock.com/Rice University
A rise in the use of synthetic cannabinoids (syncans) in Houston has prompted law enforcement officials to target sellers and users of the drug. However, taking a public-health-based approach toward curbing the use of syncans, which have caused dangerous and sometimes fatal side effects in extreme cases, may be a more effective use of city resources, according to a new report from a drug policy expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Marketed as "legal weed," syncans are not marijuana, according to the report's author, Katharine Neill, the Baker Institute's Alfred C.

Marijuana has transformed the Denver landscape since it was legalized.

A dried flower bud of the Cannabis plant. Credit: Public Domain
An influential doctors group is beefing up warnings about marijuana's potential harms for teens amid increasingly lax laws and attitudes on pot use.

Many parents use the drug and think it's OK for their kids, but "we would rather not mess around with the developing brain," said Dr. Seth Ammerman.
The advice comes in a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, published Monday in Pediatrics. The group opposes medical and recreational marijuana use for kids.

The draconian Schedule I status of cannabis in federal drug law for the last half century has been of one country’s most harmful deceits. For decades cannabis reformers have sought to have marijuana down scheduled from the totally restrictive Schedule I, to Schedule II. But any simple rescheduling still would leave cannabis an illegal federal drug. Much better, and now on the table, is  de-scheduling, removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act (and the clutches of the DEA).