Next year New Zealand will hold public referenda to decide whether to legalise assisted suicide and recreational marijuana. Separately, parliament is considering a bill that would decriminalise abortion. Simultaneously tackling all three could “foster an already growing culture war in New Zealand,” said Bryce Edwards, a political commentator and lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington. Read more
The first two states to legalize recreational marijuana are starting to grapple with teenagers’ growing use of highly potent pot, even as both boost the industry and reap huge tax windfalls from its sales. Though the legal purchase age is 21 in Colorado and Washington, parents, educators and physicians say youths are easily getting hold Read more
The 5-year experiment that is Colorado’s pioneering legalization of recreational marijuana now has enough data for more than conjecture to debate its success. The state’s first dispensaries began legal recreational sales on January 1, 2014. In 2014, combined recreational and medical sales totaled $683.5 million, and are expected to top $1.5 billion in 2018. Over Read more
Marijuana will become legal in Canada in October, but using it will remain a sin, Canada’s bishops say. It “violates the virtue of temperance” and should be avoided unless being used for medicinal purposes. “The virtue … ‘disposes us to avoid every kind of excess: the abuse of food, alcohol, tobacco or medicine,’” Frank Leo, Read more
In April a church for marijuana lovers opened in Denver. Dubbed the “International Church of Cannabis,” the group says it will ultimately serve as a “spiritual home to adults who seek to become the best version of themselves by way of the cannabis flower — a sacrament regarded as a gift from the universal creative Read more
In a strange twist to last week’s big meth bust in Northland one commentator ruminated on that popular theme, the decriminalisation of all good-times drugs. I call them good-times drugs because people use them to make their lives seem more exciting and themselves more interesting – a compelling reason why they should stay banned. We shouldn’t encourage delusion. Read more
Sister Kate calls herself an “accidental nun.” At age 16, she tried marijuana for the first time inside a friend’s car during a cold Wisconsin winter. But that was when she was a “good mid-western Catholic girl,” and the drug did nothing for her. Years later, after her first marriage had come and gone, after she Read more
A religious order flew a paedophile out of Australia and he worked as a headmaster in another country, while wanted by police, a royal commission has heard. Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse is holding hearings in Canberra. It has heard about failures by the Marist Brothers to act on repeated Read more
The Czech Republic’s 2010 decision to lower drug possession from a criminal to misdemeanor offense has turned the country into a mecca for drug users. The change has spawned a profitable sub-economy, but also come at a high social cost. The problem has its roots in a rectangular tent made of black plastic that looks Read more
Anyone who believes Timothy Cardinal Dolan has a chance of becoming the next pope is smoking funny cigarettes — so says Dolan. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday, Dolan was asked about rumors that he would be named the first American pope when the College of Cardinals convenes next month to select Pope Benedict’s successor. “I’d Read more