Police databases, key to Trump’s opioid crackdown, push addicts into black market

"Civil rights advocates and medical groups are arguing the databases should be used to identify problem patients and get them into treatment. The American Medical Association calls for the databases to be placed under health departments rather than the police agencies and disciplinary boards that control most of them."

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Oklahoma Passes Most Progressive Medical Marijuana Initiative Since California’s Prop 215

"Oklahomans for Health, the folks behind the initiative ought to be feeling pretty good right about now. They have successfully passed a very enlightened medical marijuana law in the face of opposition from the state's Republican and religious establishment."

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Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition software to police

"The employees call out two specific businesses that Amazon should end: the sale of facial recognition software to law enforcement (marketed as Amazon Web Services Rekognition), and the sale of AWS cloud services to Palantir (a data analytics firm that provides 'mission critical' software to ICE)."

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Liberty Dollar relaunches as silver-backed cryptocurrency

"The original Liberty Dollars were promoted by the issuer to be used in commercial transactions as an alternative to federal currency, including Federal Reserve notes. Liberty Dollars eventually drew the attention of federal authorities, who filed criminal counterfeiting charges against Bernard von NotHaus."

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Feds ran a money-laundering operation for over a year in $20M darknet sweep

"The core of the operation was an online money-laundering business seized by agents from Homeland Security Investigations and operated as a sting for over a year. By offering cash for bitcoin, HSI agents were able to identify specific drug dealers, ultimately tracing more than $20 million in drug-linked cryptocurrency transactions."

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Psychedelic Drugs May Help the Brain Repair Itself, Study Finds

"Most of the psychedelics tested, the researchers found, promoted the growth of new dendrites from a neuron cell, which help transmit information from other neurons to the cell, as well as increased the density of small protrusions on these dendrites, known as dendritic spines. They also jumpstarted the growth of new connections, or synapses, between individual neurons."

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