Mike Gray's superb book Drug Crazy: How We Got into this Mess & How We Can Get Out is now available for free online. Mike is best known as screenwriter of the classic film The China Syndrome, though Drug Crazy has become a classic in its own right. It's the first book I recommend to folks who are new to drug policy reform, but it's also a fascinating read even if you've been following these issues for a long time.

I've you haven't read it yet, this is the perfect opportunity.

Of all the flak that's been stirred up by the recent death of M.J.,the king of pop,the scariest is the dea's searching for doctors that prescribed various pain medications.As a person taking large dos

Today I am ashamed to call myself an American.

Remember two years ago when some scientists announced that marijuana causes psychosis and the press, along with the entire nation of Great Britain, went borderline psycho just from thinking about it?

Well, Paul Armentano at NORML reports that a new study has proven that the whole thing was just a bunch of crazy talk:

“[T]he expected rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia and psychoses did not occur over a 10 year period. This study does not therefore support the specific causal link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders. … This concurs with other reports indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence.”

In non-sciency terms, this means that when rates of marijuana use go up, rates of mental illness do not. Therefore, we can conclude that marijuana apparently doesn't cause anyone to develop psychosis who otherwise wouldn’t have.

It's really a shame that this now-debunked junk science about marijuana and psychosis led the British government to increase penalties for marijuana. But, as we know all too well, fits of ignorance and distortion are causally linked to an increased risk of bad drug legislation.