The week in review

NORML has a couple of interesting health articles up this week. They find that natural cannabis is superior to the artificially derived Marinol for a number of reasons including that Marinol is more psychoactive. They also have research showing naturally derived THC selectively inhibits tumor growth better than the synthetic alternatives.

Not really surprising. It's sort of like the difference between real cheese and those orange individually wrapped slices of cheese-food they sell in the grocery store, except that the pharmas charge a lot more money for the fake stuff.

From Drug Sense, the latest in dunderheaded tactics in the new war on meth, arresting convenience store owners for selling charcoal, tin foil and two bottles of cold medicine. Especially galling here is they targeted a bunch of Indians who barely speak English.

Drug War Chronicle reports Colombian President Uribe had a flash of inspiration and now wants to buy the coca crop from the peasants instead of trying to eradicate it. How it's supposed to work is unclear. They're supposed to promise not to grow it again, but there doesn't seem to be any provision for developing markets for alternate crops in the scheme. It does beat the hell out of herbicide bombing though.

And editor Phil Smith also passes this disturbing story on the latest victim in the war on marijuana.

A suspected drug dealer working for federal agents lured Donovan Brooks from New Jersey to a West Palm Beach motel parking lot to buy $80,000 of marijuana Friday morning.

There, agents and police officers approached Donovan and another man, ordered both to the ground, and then shot and killed Brooks.

Brooks was murdered by a local cop who was part of some kind of regional task force working alongside the DEA and and U.S. Immigration. No details have been forthcoming but it doesn't sound any different than a gangland killing to me.