In November 2002, Cannabis Culture publisher Marc Emery completed his second run for Mayor of Vancouver, Canada’s West Coast cannabis capital. The renowned pot seed merchant placed fifth on the crowded ballot, participating in all major debates and campaigning under the banner of the Vancouver Marijuana Party.

The United States leads the world in rates of experimenting with marijuana and cocaine despite strict drug laws, World Health Organization researchers said on Tuesday. Countries with looser drug laws have lower rates of abuse, the researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

“I was always viewed as a drama queen, like I couldn’t handle pain. It’s just a headache, that’s what a lot of people thought,” says Wiseman, a substitute teacher from Los Lunas. “Then I had a brain hemorrhage. That was a whole different kind of pain, but I handled it. I don’t think I ever cried when the aneurysm burst. But a cluster headache can have me rolling on the floor in tears.”

If you think burning incense is just for certain religions or old hippies, it might be time to take a new look. Myriad religious traditions have held to the notion that burning frankincense incense (made out of resin from the Boswellia plant) is good for the soul and now a new study says it apparently is good for the brain.

“WONDERFUL” is how interim Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama described his recent visit to Vanuatu. Although he had transitted through Vanuatu twice before, this was his first visit there. He was in Vanuatu to attend the 17th Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders Summit last week.

At the end of March, a Brazilian appeals court in São Paulo declared that possession of drugs for personal use is not a criminal offense. Several lower courts had previously ruled in the same way, but the ruling from the São Paulo Justice Court’s 6th Criminal Chamber marked the first time an appeals court there had found Brazil’s drug law unconstitutional as it pertains to simple drug possession.

This year and the next, the United Nations will evaluate the War on Drugs. Since its official start in 1998 we have been bombed with official statistics on drug use, drug addiction, drug trafficking, street prices, courtcases and all the like. But what does this information tell us? Drugs are bad, drugs are expensive, drugs are addictive, drugs equal crime.

A 17-year-old French girl comes to Amsterdam on a class field trip. Along with some of her classmates she goes into a so-called smart shop, where she buys and later consumes some psilocybin mushrooms. Next thing we know, she jumps to her death from a bridge. The autopsy shows she had made a suicide attempt before.