Two Los Angeles police officers spoke out March 17 against a medical cannabis law for Hawaii in testimony before a Hawaii Medical Marijuana Summit held in Wailuku, Maui. "It's so bad in LA," said Sgt. Eric Bixler of the LAPD Narcotics Division. He said law enforcement officials there deal daily with what he called the effects of California's Proposition 215, including people driving while smoking, and teens buying cannabis at medicinal dispensaries to resell on the street.
Trevor Douglas, 25, of Avon, Colo., was convicted of cannabis possession March 9, despite his claims that the plant is a crucial part of his spiritual practice and deserves First Amendment protection. Douglas told the court he uses cannabis as a religious sacrament, similar to the use of bread and wine in Catholic Holy Communion.
Alaska State Troopers are investigating a 15-plant cannabis grow discovered off Tower Circle in Seward on March 20. The local 
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Not all countries conform to the Single Convention’s “schedules,” and some now have today adopted very tolerant enforcement policies—although (contrary to popular belief) cannabis is technically illegal even in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, cannabis is a Schedule 2 drug and opiates are Schedule 1, in a reversal of the UN (and US) policy. Under the “Dutch model,” cannabis is decriminalized, and the fines that are technically on the books for possession are generally not enforced. Other European countries that have decriminalized include Spain, Italy and Belgium—although the enforcement policy in these countries is nowhere near as liberal as in the Netherlands. Italy especially has been cracking down in recent years.
Planning a vacation? Get the straight dope on your cannabis destination!
Although levels of tolerance for cannabis vary widely worldwide, nearly every nation on earth is a party to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which establishes uniform “schedules” for controlled substances—with our favorite herb in the most restrictive schedule. Nations may establish their own enforcement policies, in consultation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Over the past generation, an informal alliance of activists, cultivators, entrepreneurs and medical professionals have struggled to redefine how the United States views the cannabis plant. Victories at state and municipal levels have created a new field of medicinal treatment for a wide variety of ailments in California and other mostly western states. Medical marijuana marks the starkest point in the divide between an industrial model of healthcare and a millennia-long tradition of herbal self-treatment—because nowhere else has the federal government been so intransigent.
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