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Norway Greens Call for State Marijuana Production

The Norwegian Green Party is calling for "state-controlled production and sale of cannabis," as well as the decriminalization of possession for all drugs. The call comes as the party releases its platform ahead of elections set for September.

Aker River, Oslo (wikimedia.org)
Norway's Greens are not a major political force in the Scandinavian country. While they have won some local elections, they hold no seats in parliament and have never gathered more than 0.5% of the popular vote in parliamentary elections. They have, however, been on the upswing since elections in 2011, when they won 17 local council seats and 1.3% of the popular vote. 

"Current policies are clearly not working," the party's spokesperson Hanna Marcussen, told Aftenposten newspaper. "Today marijuana is sold openly along the Aker River in Oslo without anyone managing to restrict access. It is time that someone takes on this difficult debate."

Marcussen also said the Greens do not view hard drug users as criminals and that decriminalizing drug possession would improve public health.

"We want to decriminalize the use of heavier drugs. This is a health problem," Marcussen said. "Compared with other countries, we have a particularly high number of fatal overdoses due to hard drugs."

The proposals resemble those of Copenhagen mayor Frank Jensen, who has long pushed for state-run cannabis production, and they come just a day after Uruguay's lower chamber of parliament approved a bill that would make the South American nation the first country in the world to legalize marijuana markets, also with state controls. That measure still awaits a vote in the country's upper chamber.

Oslo
Norway
Permission to Reprint: This article is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license.
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Norway Cannabis

Norway would need to develop an outdoor strain . A spike in electricity use would be counter- productive except for the electric company . Solar ? Not enough sun . LED ? That would work indoors . Just let folk`s grow their own indoors and educate them on costs and sustainability . Aquaculture ? Maybe they would just rather import ? 

major N.Z. development

No story on New Zealand's new Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority? This is probably the most interesting development I've learned of in policy regarding bioaffecting substances (not just psychoactives, even though this one seems to be limited to them) in a very long time. Ronald Siegel seemed to have predicted it. Official acknowledgment that psychoactive pleasure is a worthy goal of technology is a major accomplishment. Otherwise it might've been pursued only in a very hypocritic way as some sort of "treatment", either of some defect of thinking or affect, or of "drug abuse" itself.
borden's picture

Thanks for the reminder,

Thanks for the reminder, Robert. You prompted me to write to Phil and encourage him to cover this. We did hear about it, but time is always too short.

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