Heroin, LSD, Marijuana, MDMA: what do they have in common? Chemically, not much. But Richard Nixon’s 1970 Controlled Substances Act designated all of them “as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” otherwise known as Schedule I substances. Americans have since accepted the various medical uses of marijuana, yet […]
Tag: drug policy
The Politics of Cannabis in Thailand
Walking down the streets of Khao San Road, Patong Beach, Pattaya walking street, or any other central tourist destination in Thailand, it’s easy to see one product for sale everywhere: cannabis. But how did a country that strictly criminalized cannabis come to where it is now? The answer lies in the post-pandemic economy and political […]
Overdose Prevention Centers: Injecting the Drug Overdose Epidemic with New Solutions
For the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the defining health crisis of our lives. Government agencies rushed to implement effective public health guidelines, the scientific community rallied together to develop a novel vaccine in record time, and the public (for the most part) tolerated intense regimens of masking, quarantining, and testing in […]
Stop Treating Marijuana Use Like Doping
In June last year, sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson won the women’s 100-meter race at the U.S. track and field finals, earning a trip to the Olympics as a gold medal favorite. That is, until her Olympic dream crumbled: Richardson tested positive for marijuana, a Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) according to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the […]
Supervised Injection Sites Save Lives. Let’s Talk About It.
Our discourse on drug policy and addiction is often relegated to hyperbolized images of wayward teens, often racialized and targeted pictures of poor communities of color, dark alleys of anomy, shame, and fear, and the ever-present “Just Say No” platitude. At the heart of the discourse is the increasingly controversial subject of the creation of […]