Over the last few years, as mainstream concern with the war on drugs and mass incarceration has grown, a relatively straightforward narrative has taken hold: White people, engaged in a backlash against the advances of the civil-rights era, imposed the carceral state on black people. That’s the story told by Michelle Alexander in her seminal book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, as well as by any number of other academics and public intellectuals.

Don't hesitate to medicate," call the spruikers in their white coats on Hollywood Boulevard and Venice Beach, California, where doctors licensed to prescribe medical marijuana do a brisk trade. Walk-ins merely have to turn up and describe some vague pain or high level of stress to bag their weed.

The rest of the world seems to be trying to ignore it, but slowly and surely the United States of America, until recently leading the charge in the war on drugs, is legalising marijuana possession. Twenty states, from Alaska to Vermont, have already decriminalised adult cultivation and use of cannabis.

The writer said that David Cameron's friends have likely refrained from speaking to Lord Ashcroft because they want peerages

(AP)– Maya Donnelly awoke to what sounded like thunder in the early morning hours, but dismissed it as a typical monsoon storm and went back to sleep.

Later that morning, she looked in the carport at her home in Nogales, near the U.S.-Mexico border, and saw pieces of wood on the ground. She found a bulky bundle wrapped in black plastic.

Inside was roughly 26 pounds of marijuana — a package that authorities say was worth $10,000 and likely was dropped there accidentally by a drug smuggler’s aircraft.

“It’s all right on top of our dog’s house,” Donnelly said of the Sept. 8 incident, which was first reported by the Nogales International newspaper. “It just made a perfectly round hole through our carport.”

The morning of September 8 started with a bang — literally — for an Arizona family living in Nogales, a border town along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Nogales International. In the wee hours of the morning, Bill and Maya Donnelly were startled awake by a loud crashing sound. Thinking it was a storm, the family went back to sleep. But when they investigated later in the morning, what they found shocked them: a 24-pound bundle of marijuana — likely dropped from a passing plane — had crashed through the roof of the family’s garage and destroyed the family dog’s, Hulk’s, doghouse.

ABOUT 2300 marijuana plants worth millions of dollars have been uprooted in Kadavu this year.

Crime Prevention and Community Policing co-ordinator Inspector Anare Masitabua highlighted this during the Kadavu Provincial Council meeting held at Studio 6 Apartments in Suva.

And council chairman Ratu Seci Nawalowalo said most young people were involved in marijuana cultivation mainly because of the fact "that it is easy money".

Ratu Seci believes while marijuana cannot be completely eradicated, he is happy that they have seen a decrease in its cultivation on the island.

"All we can do is offer them advice not to do this, not to do that but the onus is on them.

Nearly 50 years ago, in the summer of 1966, Santa Barbara Municipal Court Judge Frank P. Kearney offered 21-year-old Nancy Hernandez of West Virginia an Orwellian choice.

Arrested on a misdemeanour charge, Hernandez had two options: either a six-month jail term, or probation and permanent reproductive sterilization.

Doctors have projected Tom Clint will only live another four months.

A dentist visit in 1994 revealed leukoplakia in the Ashtabula man's mouth, which later progressed into stage 3 oral, nasal and skin cancers. In February, doctors said the only way to save his life was to remove his tongue, but he chose against a life in which he couldn't talk, and hasn't seen an oncologist since.

The 57-year-old upholsterer said he's counting on the natural qualities of marijuana to halt, or even reverse, the spread of cancer through his body. 

"I've decided I've got the rest of my life to live," Clint said. "I've held (cancer) back all these years and I believe it's because I've smoked marijuana.

The "Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol" sounds like an interesting statewide ballot initiative, but it really is false advertising.

Avoid it at all costs.

Supporters kicked off the smokescreen Tuesday at the Statehouse, making a case for following the Colorado model of legalizing marijuana for recreational use. The hook is that Massachusetts would be able to "regulate" marijuana by licensing businesses to sell it, mandating an ID for adult-only buyers, and taxing the heck out of the drug to raise revenues for the public treasury.

Well, that's not "regulation" -- and certainly it's not how the state regulates the alcohol industry.