The crack epidemic is one of the most serious phenomena at the interface between public health and security. What makes it particularly bad is the recognized difficulty of overcoming addiction. Well, the Federal University of São Paulo conducted a research with 50 crack addicts who underwent an experimental treatment of harm reduction.Under the guidance of the psychiatrist Dartiu Xavier, the group was treated with marijuana. Of that total, 68% switched from crack to marijuana. At the end of three years, all of those who made the switch did not use any kinds of drugs anymore (neither crack nor marijuana). Note down there: all of them.

I imagined that with the dissemination of these results by Gilberto Dimenstein, in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo on May 24, there would be considerable interest about the study. Nothing. The answer to the most impressive result of overcoming addiction to crack cocaine in Brazil was the silence. The medicinal use of marijuana has been allowed in dozens of countries including the USA. Around here, the subject remains banned by irrationality. It is clear that marijuana use can produce harmful effects. We know that abuse can lead the user to problems with concentration and memory and in some people, use is correlated to the precipitation of schizophrenic outbreaks. But to criminalize drug use and experiments designed to prevent medical use goes a distance that tends to be covered by intolerance and obscurantism.

To read the full text in Portuguese, click here.

by Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch

The American Medical Association (AMA) is the most important, the biggest and, also, the most conservative among the entities that gather medical doctors from the United States.
Twice before, the AMA had already reccomended the sanitary authorities and the Congress not to exclude ‘marijuana’ from Schedule I, meaninf, keep it prohibited, just like cocaine and heroin.

Click here to read the full post, in Portuguese, on Walter Mairovitch’s “Sem Fronteiras”.

People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said Monday in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.

In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said that it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources and that prosecuting patients and distributors who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard. read more