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The restriction of tobacco smoking in the United States, already severe, is likely soon to be taken further and, in the process, to demonstrate that tobacco and cannabis cannot be dealt with differently.
The mass screening of plants in the search for new drugs is vastly expensive and inefficient. It would be cheaper and perhaps more productive to re-examine plant remedies described in ancient and mediaeval texts.
Budgetary and other pressures are changing the character of US universities more quickly than is comfortable, but the process has only just begun. And it is not yet clear where it will end, to judge from a conference last week.
