National Post

Lottery winner puts $1-million toward effort to legalize marijuana
Bob Erb has been playing the lottery since he was a young pothead in the 1970s, smoking 15 joints a day. Today, Mr. Erb is still crushing 15 joints a day — except now he’s smoking them as a multi-millionaire. The 60-year-old Terrace, B.C., farmer and grandfather won a $25-million jackpot last November and promptly began doling money out to friends, family, charity and hard luck cases. Perhaps the biggest recipient, however, has been a cause very close to his heart: the legalization of marijuana. Mr. Erb has dropped $1-million for the effort, and is probably now the biggest financial backer of 420 Day, the annual pot-fuelled haze of a protest this Saturday. He spoke with the Post’s Sarah Boesveld Thursday about his high life and plans for bringing pot legalization to national attention. (BCLC)

British grandmother to be executed by firing squad for smuggling cocaine after Bali court rejects appeal
An Indonesian court upheld the death sentence against a British woman convicted of smuggling $2.5 million worth of cocaine into the resort island of Bali, a court official said Monday.

The Bali High Court rejected an appeal from Lindsay June Sandiford, 56, who was convicted in January by a district court and sentenced to face a firing squad, said court spokesman Makkasau. 

Sandiford was arrested last May when 3.8 kilograms of cocaine was discovered stuffed inside the lining of her luggage at Bali’s airport. During the trial, she said she was forced to carry the drugs by a gang that threatened to hurt her children. (Sonny Tumbelaka / AFP / Getty Images files)

npostlife:

Chemical seduction: How ‘love drugs’ may one day help couples save failing relationships
And so he ran a study: Over a three-week period, 40 Australian couples took a hit of oxytocin (or a placebo) through a nasal spray before starting couples’ therapy.

The results aren’t yet published, but the data show that with the help of oxytocin, that repetitive loop breaks — couples recall memories with more emotion and detail, they appear more open to the other person’s perspective, the fractured bond begins to rebuild, Dr. Guastella said.

“If we can make it so that an ‘a-ha’ moment occurs, it’s going to save a lot of heartbreak, a lot of hostility between couples.”

It’s a seductive idea — that somewhere in the near future failing marriages and partnerships can be rescued by manipulating our brains to keep us from falling out of love. (Mike Faille/National Post)

Cartel kingpin who could ‘eat Al Capone alive’ named Chicago’s first Public Enemy No. 1 since Prohibition
Authorities in Chicago are naming a drug kingpin in Mexico as the city’s Public Enemy No. 1 – a label first given to gangster Al Capone and one that hasn’t been used since Prohibition.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is being singled out for his role as leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which supplies the bulk of narcotics sold in the city, according to the Chicago Crime Commission and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Not since the Chicago Crime Commission’s first Public Enemy No. 1 has any criminal deserved this title more than Joaquin Guzman,” J.R. Davis, president of 94-year-old Chicago Crime Commission, said in remarks prepared for an announcement later Thursday. (Damian Dovarganes / The Associated Press Files)

npostlife:

How scary is a world where antibiotics no longer work?
A top U.K. doctor explains the ‘apocalypse’ of drug-resistant bacteria we could be facing in years ahead.
[What does antibiotic resistant bacteria look like? Like this. Photo credit: Handout/Canadian Press]

Wood & Antweiler: Canada should follow America’s lead in liberalizing marijuana laws
As of November, any Canadian caught with as few as six cannabis plants faces a mandatory six-month minimum prison term. Ironically, the new rules came into effect at the same time that Washington state and Colorado voted to tax and regulate the recreational use of marijuana by adults.

The results of the legalization measures in those states came as a surprise to many Canadians, including, presumably, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. When asked about the four former Vancouver mayors who publicly support the regulation and taxation of marijuana in Canada, he argued “it would inhibit our trade generally because they’re certainly not going to make that move in the United States.”

That may have been true in the past, but Canada has fallen way behind the U.S. when it comes to progressive drug policy. In addition to the two states that legalized the adult use of marijuana, three more legalized it for medical uses. A total of 18 states now allow medical marijuana, and 12 have decriminalized possession of the drug. Meanwhile, Canadian policy is moving in the opposite direction. (Brennan Linsley/The Associated Press)

Court forces Ontario prep school to reconsider diploma denial after student caught smoking marijuana
A student at a private prep school caught smoking marijuana on the night before the final day of high school — and denied his diploma as punishment — has forced the school to reconsider after taking his plight to court.

Brian Hutchinson: ‘Vansterdam’ can learn from U.S. legalized marijuana experiment
So long, Vansterdam. Thanks to surprising initiatives taken south of the border, this city’s dubious reputation as North America’s marijuana capital is coming to an end. On Tuesday, voters in Colorado and Washington State embraced measures to allow any individual aged 21 and up to possess marijuana, as much as one ounce. That’s quite a lot, really; enough to make about 28 joints.

In B.C., five former attorneys-general have called for marijuana legalization. So have some mayors. But they have also chosen to ignore or downplay potential health risks associated with pot. They haven’t acknowledged every reasonably likely outcome.

But here’s a great opportunity: Our neighbours are about to experience legal, recreational marijuana use. We should watch their bold social experiment unfold, and take lessons from it before doing anything else. (Rick Wilking/Reuters files)

Tax whiz kid by day, drug lord by night: The double-life of ‘mega-trafficker’ jailed after three-month probe
After completing a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in taxation at prestigious universities, Brian Shin landed a coveted job as a tax consultant with Deloitte & Touche, a global professional services giant. He quit that coveted job, however, when he realized it meant a steep pay cut from his other — secret — line of work.

“He quickly appreciated that he could make far greater income by continuing his marijuana wholesaling enterprise, and he did not have to be bothered with all of those tax obligations he had learned about at graduate school,” said Ontario Superior Court Justice John R. McIsaac.

Shin then began a perplexing double life: by day energetic entrepreneur, accumulating peerless letters of reference, and by night as a career “mega-trafficker” and underworld banker.

“I love my job,” Shin recently enthused, “I make a lot of people happy.”

Ecstasy can be ‘safe’ if taken in its purest form, B.C. health chief says
B.C.’s top health official says taking pure ecstasy can be “safe” when consumed responsibly by adults, despite warnings by police in Alberta and British Columbia about the dangers of the street drug after a rash of deaths.

Dr. Perry Kendall asserts the risks of MDMA — the pure substance originally synonymous with ecstasy — are overblown, and that its lethal dangers only arise when the man-made chemical is polluted by money-hungry gangs who cook it up.

That’s why the chief provincial health officer is advocating MDMA be legalized and sold through licensed, government-run stores where the product is strictly regulated from assembly line to check-out. (Photo: Nick Procaylo/Postmedia News)

Highly addictive drug blamed for cannibal attack in Miami a growing threat
The new synthetic drug being blamed for a horrific attack in Miami in which a naked man chewed the face off of a victim in broad daylight has become popular in parts of the Maritimes and has health officials warning of the drug’s violent consequences.

U.S health authorities say bath salts popularity was noted by doctors to rise significantly throughout late 2010 and into 2011.

“Bath salts” — as the drug is known by on the streets — are much more dangerous than than the impression that their innocuous-sounding name leaves. Made with the active agent of either Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDVP), mephedrone or methylone, it can result in an aggressive, chaotic response in the user, combined with intense hallucinations and extreme euphoria. It has been compared to a mix of cocaine and amphetamine.

Greg Purvis, director of Addiction Services for the Pictou, Colchester East Hants and Cumberland county health authorities in northern Nova Scotia, called the drug the most dangerous new product he’s seen in his career.

“I’ve been working in addictions for 19 years … and this is the first drug which really has me concerned.” (AP Photo/The Miami Herald)

Police looking for more witnesses in naked man’s face-eating attack
Authorities in Miami looked for more witnesses after a naked man who refused to stop chewing on the face of another naked man on a busy highway ramp, despite being shot by police, was finally shot to death.

Detective William Moreno said police want to understand what led to the grisly scene in which a witness said the man — identified by authorities as Rudy Eugene, 31 — growled when a police officer told him to stop his attack.

The victim, who has not been identified, is hospitalized in critical condition. Local reports said most of the man’s face was gone — his nose bitten, his eyes gouged, his skin ripped away. (Screenshot/AP Photo/The Miami Herald)