Nathan and Jacob Olivarez, the duo behind Brothers N Arms. Photo courtesy of Nathan and Jacob Olivarez

Nathan Olivarez and his brother Jacob have been playing music together for over 15 years, mostly with a metal band called State of Insomnia. Together, they've released six albums with dozens of songs. But in December, they launched a side project—Brothers N Arms, a band focused on "supporting Trump, second amendment rights, and all that is America."

The brothers had the idea in December, after they attended a Trump rally. "When we heard Trump speak we said, 'Hey, we're going to back this candidate up,'" Nathan, the elder brother, told me. "This thing is going to be a movement. We have to do something."

The band's first single "Trump for America," is a musical collage of patriotic clichés—including a sample of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The song started gaining traction when the Right Side Broadcasting Network, a conservative news site, included the song every time they broadcast a Trump rally. To date, it's been viewed on YouTube over 55,000 times and in addition to airtime on a few conservative radio shows, it will be played at an upcoming Trump event in Bakersfield, the brothers' hometown.

If it seems like the Olivarez brothers have lost all respect for their music by forming their pro-Trump rock band, at least they're not alone. This election season, pro-Trump songs have become a whole niche genre onto itself. There's Toots Sweet's "Make America Great Again," which is reminiscent of "America, Fuck Yeah" from Team America: World Police, but with a pumped-up chorus about building a wall on the border. That's not to be confused with Aeyess's "Make America Great Again," which is mostly an ode to national monuments, or "Pump the Trump,""I Wanna Be Like the Donald," and no one could ignore the "The Official Donald Trump Jam," performed by the preteen group of Freedom Girls.

Watch: VICE interviewed the patriotic preteen girls singing Donald Trump's praises.

YouTube and the internet play a big role in how original campaign songs are getting exposure, but it's far from a modern concept. Songs crooning candidate support date back to at least 1828, when John Quincy Adams used a song called "Little Know Ye Who's Coming" as part of his campaign package. (It didn't work.) One of the most well-known campaign songs in American history is William Henry Harrison's "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," which the presidential hopeful used to rile up support on the campaign trail. (Tippecanoe was Harrison's nickname and John Tyler was his running mate. Listen to a great contemporary version of the song here.) It was so effective that political pundits of the era said it "sang Harrison into the presidency."

There are plenty of other examples: Howard Taft's catchy campaign "Get on a Raft with Taft," Dwight Eisenhower's earworm "I Like Ike," and Richard Nixon's 1960 campaign jingle, "Click with Dick," which included the amazing lyrics: Come on and / Click with Dick / The one that none can lick. (Not so successful come election day, apparently.)

The tradition has continued into contemporary politics, except now, it's political supporters who are making the songs—think "Time for Truth," the rap for Ted Cruz's campaign, or the pro-Bernie Sanders song "El Quemazón" (translation: The Burn) which has over 230,000 views on YouTube.

Nathan told me he never thought about doing a political song before "Trump for America," but after the Trump rally, he "wanted to give what I could to the movement."

Nathan, who is Latino, says he supports Trump on all fronts, especially his tough policies on immigration. "When you come illegally, there's the word—you're 'illegal,'" Nathan said. He has been called a traitor within the Latino community for musically supporting the man who wants to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, but it doesn't seem to phase him. "To me, I don't even know what I'm a traitor of," he told me. "I'm a fifth-generation . I don't even have family in Mexico, not one single relative."

Besides the pushback from Latinos and the occasional criticism ("this is the biggest hunk of crap I've ever heard," said one YouTube commenter) "Trump for America" has surprisingly positive online feedback. "Pro-America propaganda. About damn time," reads one YouTube comment. Another reads: "This song reminds you of a country when the people were true Americans and proud of it!!!"

Nathan says he sometimes gets supportive messages from people in other countries, including Sweden, Austria, Australia, and Canada, saying things like: "I'm not even American and I love this song" or "I wish we had a leader like Trump in my country too."

Related: This Is What Happens When Politicians Steal Music

"Trump for America" was released as a single, but the Olivarez brothers are in the middle of writing and recording an entire Brothers N Arms album, which will feature both pro-Trump and pro-American tunes. As far as immediate gigs go, the Olivarez brothers are waiting for word from the big guy upstairs (Trump, not Jesus).

"I only see myself right now playing at Trump rallies. I'd like to be the headliner to be honest," he said. "I'll tour later when I have more time. Other than that, if Trump asks me to play, I'll go play." His dream gig would be to perform at the Republican National Convention.

I asked him if he's heard anything from Trump or his people, inviting him to play, but he said no. Despite that "Trump for America" has gone viral in conservative circles, the band has yet to get any recognition from The Donald himself. But they have faith that one day, they will.

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Photo via Flickr user The Integer Club

Read: Are Your Porn Habits Racist?

The people of North Carolina have already lost a Springsteen concert over their state's recent anti-LGBT "bathroom" law, and now they're losing their pornography, too. According to Huffington Post, the porn site XHamster has begun blocking IPs in North Carolina from accessing their site and a veritable cornucopia of jerkoff material.

Now when computer users across the state try to head over to the porn site, they'll be met with a black screen instead of the dicks and boobs they wanted. XHamster also plans to replace the black screen soon with a petition to repeal the discriminatory law.

"We have spent the last 50 years fighting for equality for everyone and these laws are discriminatory which XHamster.com does not tolerate," XHamster's spokesman told the Huffington Post in a statement. "We will not standby and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage. We respect all sexualities and embrace them.

"I think that porn has the power to do what Bruce Springsteen can't," the statement continued.

HuffPo adds that XHamster also promotes the less-than-progressive Donald Trump in an advertisement on its site. What a world!

Mary Kelly, 1999. Photo: Kelly Barri courtesy of the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London.

Mary Kelly first came into my consciousness after I stumbled across the transcripts from Nightcleaners, her 1972 film about women forced up take up low-paid cleaning jobs at night so they could look after their families in the basement of the Women's Library. Here was an artist asking important questions about power, sex, love and the validity of women. Just like, for example, when she presented her son's shit-smeared nappy liners as art object in the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1976. The point was an important one: if wine, soup cans, fascist symbols, and a man wrapped in a tent beside a coyote can be art thanks to Andy Warhol, Gilbert and George, and Joseph Beuys, then why not the detritus of the maternal experience?

As a young woman in the 1960s, she traveled to Beirut to teach art, and in the early 1970s joined the Women's Liberation Movement while at art school in London. She fell in love with a fellow student, had a child, and began to use the muck and material of everyday life to create work that interrogated the world around her. The large-scale installation Interim followed in the 1980s, breaking the figure of woman down into a folded leather jackets, text, and etchings; in 2005 her show "Love Songs" brought together artifacts of the women's movement; while in her 2014 show "Dicere Kelly," she turned the satellite transmission of a drone attack in Northern Waziristan and the witness accounts given at a congressional hearing into a story, printed onto compressed washing machine fluff, of a killed grandmother. In every case the concept behind her conceptual art has been unapologetically political and intrinsically personal. She is the godmother of feminist art.

The Evening Standard reviews Mary Kelly's show at the ICA, London in 1976

Now age 70 and still teaching in LA, Kelly is having something of a moment in London. This week, her work will be shown at Tate Britain's new show Art in Britain: 1964-1979, her work can also be seen in the States of Mind exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, in Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham at the Henry Moore Institute, and her Early Work 1973-76 will be shown at at London's Pippy Houldsworth Gallery until June.

I caught up with her to chat about bringing up kids in communes, smearing shit on art gallery walls, and the art scene in London in the 1970s.

VICE: You're all over London at the moment—how does it feel to see that early work on show again?
MK: My early work has always been present. I feel like I never really left it—particularly Post-Partum Document Art and Language. I was carrying out an interrogation. I wanted to deal with the stuff of life; which I felt they weren't doing. I wanted to engage people emotionally and intellectually at the same time.

Follow Nell on Twitter.

Black Lives Matters protesters camp outside Toronto police headquarters. Photo by Jake Kivanc.

Ontario cops were pissed last week when Premier Kathleen Wynne told Black Lives Matter Toronto protesters "we still have systemic racism in our society." So pissed, they reached out to her demanding she clarify whether or not she was saying cops are racist.

In an email obtained by VICE, Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA) President Rob Jamieson told OPP members that the OPPA board of directors was "very clear with both the Premier's Office and representatives from on what action we would take should they not address this matter appropriately."

When reached by VICE, the OPPA said by "action" it meant it was prepared to publicly call out Wynne on her comments. But that's no longer necessary because Wynne has since made it clear (to the cops) she wasn't talking about police when she mentioned "systemic racism."

"Each and every day police officers across Ontario do everything they can to keep us safe... Their contribution to building safer, strong communities can be seen across our province and I am proud to stand with them," reads a quote from Wynne, included in Jamieson's email.

According to the email, Wynne sent a response to the OPPA, Police Association of Ontario, the Toronto Police Association, and the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. In it, she explains that by "systemic racism," she was talking about the prevalence of visible-minority children represented in the child welfare system and lagging graduation rates and higher incarceration rates amongst black and aboriginal youth.

"These are issues across society and across society we need to do more to address them," Wynne said. She did not, however, make reference to what BLMTO members argue is institutional racism in law enforcement, including a lack of transparency in the way the province's Special Investigations Unit investigates police who fatally shoot civilians. BLMTO camped outside Toronto police headquarters for two weeks in protest of such policies and the deaths of black men like Andrew Loku at the hands of cops.

The premier's office directed VICE to comments Wynne made during a media availability last week, in which she said, "I'm not saying anything about the particular police service in Toronto or anywhere else. I am saying that across society, we have to recognize that there are challenges that we have in terms of racism."

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Service Association, told VICE Wynne's comments don't really clear anything up.

"What about policing? Does she have legitimate concerns, does she have any concerns about systemic racism in policing?," he said, pointing out BLMTO isn't protesting over graduation rates or child welfare.

"I think it's a lame explanation for her comments."

McCormack said Toronto police are "100 percent" open to having a dialogue about race-related concerns as long as they're "based on facts and evidence."

But asked if the cops have had a meeting with BLMTO, McCormack laughed and said "no."

"So far I haven't seen anything that indicates they want to have a meaningful discussion around this. It just seems those who shout the loudest, their points are more valid. I'm really not interested in taking part in a discussion around that but I'm definitely interested in taking part in discussions that are factually and evidence-based," he said.

"When people are shouting rhetoric about people being murdered by the police, tortured, and beaten every day, I don't see how that's a debate.... Are those legitimate concerns? I would say no," he said.

With respect to issues such as carding, where you're far more likely to be arbitrarily stopped by police if you're black, McCormack conceded street checks were overused when they were being used to evaluate a cop's performance. He said they can be a "valuable tool" for investigative purposes when done lawfully, but that there is no hard data available to back up that claim.

McCormack also said "crime isn't relevant to population stats" when looking at issues like the overrepresentation of black people in the criminal justice system.

"We go where there's at-risk neighbourhoods, we go where there's calls for service, we go where there's street crime, where there's violent crime, so to say... we don't have a proportion-to-census, it's just never gonna happen that way."

McCormack said he's also skeptical about Toronto city council's recent motion asking for a review of SIU procedures with "an anti-black racism lens" saying the concept is too subjective.

Sandy Hudson, co-founder of BLMTO, told VICE Wynne's comments aren't surprising but demonstrate why the group wants all meetings about systemic racism to take place in public.

"What happens in private is politicians are able to backtrack on things they say," she said, noting it's "weird" of Wynne to criticize incarceration without conceding to systemic racism in policing.

"Not acknowledging that, that's like willful blindness at this point."

As for McCormack's characterization of the movement as being too loud and rhetoric-filled, Hudson said people have been pointing out these issues for years to no avail.

"To say we need to behave in order to be heard is absolutely ludicrous."

The OPPA told VICE it is "satisfied" with Wynne's response

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo by River Donaghey

Read: Meet the Only Doctor in the World Legally Allowed to Use LSD to Treat Patients

Lately, the scientific community has begun to rediscover LSD's benefit as a therapeutic device—or as a way to kick your smoking habit and pass the time in prison, if you're looking for that. And a study released on Monday took a big step towards actually understanding the drug by, for the first time ever, imaging brain activity of people on LSD, Reuters reports.

The study expanded on the ways psychedelics can be used to treat depression and addiction, but it also revealed evidence of something anyone who has fried balls and stared fixedly at colorful lights for hours already knew: that dropping acid gives you the mind of an infant.

"In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained," the study's lead researcher, Robin Carhart-Harris, said. "This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."

"For the first time, we can really see what's happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD had such a profound impact on self-awareness," said another researcher, David Nutt. "This could have great implications for psychiatry."

Read more about the new research and acid's baby-brain effects over on Motherboard.

No Wheeler in the morning for you. Photo via Twitter.

A Winnipeg radio host has been suspended after his show posted two YouTube music videos that critics argue reinforce harmful stereotypes about Indigenous people and are sexist.

Dave Wheeler, of 92 CITI FM's Wheeler in the Morning, was suspended Monday after animated videos featuring the songs "North End Boy" and "Transcona Girls" sparked outrage online. The videos have since been taken down.

"North End Boy" is set to the tune of John Denver's "Thank God I'm A Country Boy." Lyrics include, "Well there's holes in the wall and blood stained red / I try to fall asleep but I got no bed / I go outside try not to end up dead / Thank God I'm a North-End boy." The song also discusses the joys of getting drunk and high without having to work "'cause I collect EI" and repeats the line "Life ain't nothing but bitches and money / Thank god I'm a North End boy."

Meanwhile, "Transcona Girls," a play off the Beach Boys' "California Girls," talks about North End daughters who "really like to stab you and steal your bike," and who've been "passed around this great big town and they just don't seem to care."

Both songs were created two years ago, but were brought to the public's attention when the animated videos were posted online this week.

In light of the controversy, Wheeler issued an apology on Facebook, saying his jokes "were insensitive and went too far."

But local Indigenous activist Sadie-Phoenix Lavoie, 22, of the Sagkeeng First Nation, who has planned a protest outside the radio station for Tuesday, said the suspension and apology is just a public relations move. She's calling for Wheeler to be fired and for higher-ups at the station to take responsibility for approving the videos in the first place.

She told VICE there is a large Indigenous populations in North End area of the city, and many people there live in poverty. The song is "basically laughing at them for being in that situation."

As for "Transcona Girls," she said the slut-shaming lyrics are "really triggering."

Winnipeg's Red River is notorious for being a dumping grounds for missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

Last year, Maclean's declared Winnipeg the most racist city in Canada. In an effort to address the issue, Mayor Brian Bowman has declared 2016 the Year of Reconciliation.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Ryerson University's Student Learning Centre. Photo by author.

A Toronto men's rights group at Ryerson University is suing the student union for allegedly discriminating against the group's right to free speech.

Canadians are pretty weird. Photos via screenshot

Let's be real for a second: the world of entertainment is now locked in an unstoppable and infinite 20-year feedback loop. I don't remember asking for this, but given the opportunity I'm almost always happy to turn off my brain like I just got home from school and fill up on childhood nostalgia. Dunkaroos and Bagel Bites optional.

Since her early teen chart-topping days, she has done philanthropy work for AIDS foundations and appeared on Hockey Wives Season 2. Wikipedia page highlight: a 2009 Drake song references her mom. She also has serious Instagram game.

Devon Sawa, Vancouver
Famous for: Casper, Now and Then, SLC Punk

Oh man, Devon Sawa. He was right up there with Jonathan Taylor Thomas in those garbage Tiger Beat centrefolds I assume most of us used for makeout practice. He first made us jealous of Christina Ricci in Casper and then made dropping acid seem like the biggest deal ever in SLC Punk.

It seems Sawa has taken his progressive Vancouver roots with him to Hollywood, where he recently starred in an SLC Punk sequel. His Twitter bio links to a charity fighting animal cruelty, and just last week he got in a public spat about this existence of climate change that ended with Scott Baio and Matt Hughes blocking him. He is voting for Bernie Sanders.

Stéphane Moraille, Montreal
Famous for: singing Bran Van 3000's "Drinking in LA"

How this song made it to the pantheon of timeless Canadiana is still a mystery to most of us. What's not a mystery is vocalist Stéphane Moraille's post-Bran Van 3000 career as a Montreal lawyer and her recent run for the NDP in a Bourassa byelection.

Sharon and Marc Costanzo, Toronto
Famous for: Len's "Steal My Sunshine"

Were they brother and sister? Were they a couple? I guess these two weren't the only people in music to capitalize on such an awkward ambiguity. Brother Marc went on to become an A&R rep for EMI that signed Deryck Whibley of Sum 41. Then Len put out a new album in 2012 called It's Easy if You Try.

All images via the author

I've never been one for talking to myself, and by turn, interacting with Apple's virtual personal assistant program has always been something I avoid. The few interactions I had with her were limited to the times when I was drunk and fumbling with my phone, and the dreaded black screen and morphing rainbow line at the bottom of my iPhone appeared, as white letters asked: "What can I help you with?" You have nothing for me, Siri. I hit the sleep button as fast as I could.

Concept art for Hello Games's forthcoming 'No Man's Sky'

This article originally appeared in Volume 23, Issue 2 of VICE UK's magazine.

Video games have used the vastness of outer space as a setting for action and adventure since day one—originally, because the black void was an easy background for the interactive action. When MIT students Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen set out to realize a gaming use for Digital Equipment Corp's PDP-1 computer in 1962, they produced Spacewar!, where two spaceships exchanged missiles while combating the gravitational pull of a star. Since then we've played Space Invaders (1978), R-Type (1987), Super Metroid (1994), the Mass Effect series (2007 onwards), and many more.

One of the most influential games to have ever placed the player inside a spacecraft is 1984's Elite, developed by David Braben and Ian Bell. It invited gamers to seek their fortune in the vacuum, far away from Earth, mining asteroids for minerals and undertaking military missions to earn credits. With no real narrative to proceedings beyond the one your actions alone could craft, its universe having been created using procedural generation (where algorithms—sexy math, basically—take over the world building using limited developer direction), the game's ambition was incredible. Its legacy can be felt in every open-ended, free-roaming video game to have come out since, right up to the high-definition violence of Grand Theft Auto V.

'Elite: Dangerous,' 'Horizons' launch trailer

Despite its revered status today, Elite was an entirely alien proposition in the 1980s, and struggled to find support amongst games publishers. "Games were really regimented, back then," Braben says. "The playtime was a small, single-digit number of minutes, and if you could last for five minutes, you were doing incredibly well. And that was based around the ethos of the arcade, which was driven by the coin drop. Success was measured by how many coins you were getting in per hour."

In 2011, Braben confirmed that a fourth Elite series entry was being worked on at his studio, the Cambridge-based Frontier Developments. In November 2012, crowd-funding site Kickstarter carried a new campaign: pledge your money, £1.25m of it in total, and you can play Elite: Dangerous. The game easily met, and surpassed, its target, and had sold over half a million copies by the summer of 2015, even before making the leap to console platforms.

Elite: Dangerous is one of the biggest indie games of all time, both in terms of its commercial success and the endless possibilities open to the player—like its 1984 forefather, it doesn't shackle you to a to-do list, and the universe is again as close to bottomless as its parent technology can allow. Like the first Elite, Dangerous uses procedural generation in producing its array of constellations, but everything is grounded by what we know, for real, about the heavens above.

Concept art from Frontier Developments' 'Elite Dangerous'

"The term 'procedural generation' is so misused now, that I've been wary of using it," Braben explains. "In Elite: Dangerous there are some 160,000 worlds, which we've manually typed in. All of the exo-planets we know about are in the game. This is as real as you can get it—everything you can see in the night sky, every single star, is real. If you look from Earth in Elite: Dangerous, the night sky matches ours. Procedural generation really just means you're using a clever piece of code."

Elite: Dangerous is an indie game, with no massive publisher taking a substantial cut of the profits. But it's an indie game with a team of, says Braben, "250-odd" people behind it. "We are independent, and we truly believe in what we're doing," he confirms, "but we are a big company." The same can't be said for Guildford's Hello Games, makers of another great space adventure, No Man's Sky.

Hello Games's team doesn't stretch to the hundreds, instead comprising just ten full-time employees, give or take the occasional fluctuation, headed by managing director Sean Murray. Debuting at December 2013's VGX Awards, No Man's Sky captured imaginations from the git-go. Its retina-popping visuals didn't look a thing like the grim greys of most contemporary sci-fi games. Murray had sent the VGX footage to Sony ahead of its public airing, and the company was instantly on board—No Man's Sky was locked in as a PlayStation console exclusive in a heartbeat.

No Man's Sky, like Elite: Dangerous, uses procedural generation to produce its mind-boggling number of planets, each with their own eco systems, each part of wider system. It can't promise an infinite amount of environments ripe for investigation, but the mathematics behind the game can realize planets enough for gameplay lasting 500 billion years, assuming the player spends a single second on each world. To place that within some context, the universe as we know it is "only" 13.82 billion years old, which makes No Man's Sky perhaps the biggest video game ever made. No small feat for a studio that can buy a round on a Friday night out for less than the cost of a premium-priced boxed video game.

'No Man's Sky,' "I've Seen Things" trailer

"That's actually why we do all the procedural stuff," explains Murray. "We can't possibly make this game with this small team. We might not even be able to make it with a really large team. But even though so much is procedurally generated, the game drips with our artist Grant Duncan's personality. When I stand on a planet, and look at a lot of the imagery—the ships flying overhead, and the style of those ships, and the planets on the horizon—I know the arguments that Grant and I have had to reach those decisions.

"Elite was procedurally generated, and so were lots of games at the time, like Star Control and Freelancer. It's almost like we've gone back to those games. We're trying to explore ideas about openness, and vastness, and freedom. We're more about feelings of real exploration."

This is an edited excerpt from Indie Games: The Complete Introduction to Indie Gaming, by Mike Diver (MOM Books, out now, hardback, £17.99). No Man's Sky is released for PS4 and PC on June 21, 2016. Elite: Dangerous is available now for PC, Mac, and Xbox One, with a PS4 version due in the future.

Rose Lewenstein and RussellBender. Photo by Jake Lewis

Imagine a parallel universe, where our data is valued and used as currency—it's not that hard is it? Now imagine that that fictional space has a different set of rules whereby everyone has an equal opportunity to make money from their personal data. Welcome to the world of Darknet—a new play opening this week at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

The play follows a whole host of characters; from techies living in Silicon Valley to a drug addict in London, from an ethical hacker to a Romanian webcam girl. Through their eyes, the script aims to look at the troubled space between transparency and privacy and dives deep into the deep web to ask thought-provoking questions about our current relationship with the internet and what it may come to be in the future. I met up with playwright Rose Lewenstein and director Russell Bender at the Southwark Playhouse to discuss how they brought a play about technology to life.

Can you explain what you mean by using data as currency?
Russell Bender: What we have now is a situation where we give away data for free and, in return for that, we get free services. What Rose has come up with is a twist on that: The characters in the play are sharing their data with a company called Octopus Inc.—the Google or Facebook of their day. That data gets valued and it's traded in a marketplace, so you get actual money back.

Technology and data is an unusual subject for a play—how did you make sure the subject was relatable and stimulating for an audience?
RB: One of the funny things about working on this play is that you start off with everyone in the room assuming that it's about technology, but the more that you work on it, you realize it's actually more about social inequality and class.

Rose Lewenstein: It's definitely a play about humans and not the Internet.

RB: The play gives the sense of a world, where the richer you are, the more powerful you are and the less information you need to give away. The companies and governments at the top have access to the most information and the people at the bottom have access to the least, and so it's sort of creating a power system in that society.

RL: I think, in some ways, the play mirrors our own inequalities—where the class gap is just getting wider and wider right now—but on a data level.

I realized that if I wrote something closer to reality, then it would go out of date in the next hour. I think that, sometimes, it's easier to evaluate a situation if it's pushed into a slightly heightened place. —Rose Lewenstein

How did you go about researching the play?
RB: I come from a very technical background. I have a degree in physics, and do quite a lot of freelance software development work. I read a lot of geek news websites, so I noticed a rise in stories about computer hacking and an imminent cyber Pearl Harbor. I was collecting these stories and thought we should do something on the subject.

RL: I'm not a techie at all. We met a lot of tech journalists, ethical hackers, people from Government Communications headquarters, security experts, and computer scientists at Cambridge. We started working on Darknet around the time of the Snowden leaks and Ross Ulbricht's arrest. So I was thinking about these opposing worlds of mass surveillance and total anonymity, and about where we, as a society, want to be on that spectrum.

Did you think about writing those specific events into the play?
RL: I realized that if I wrote something so close to reality, then it would go out of date in the next hour. I felt that I needed to set this in a slightly different sphere so we can look at it and compare to what's happening now. I think that, sometimes, it's easier to evaluate a situation if it's pushed into a slightly heightened place.

What was the journey from script to stage like?
RB: We wanted the experience to feel a little like going online—to create visuals and a stage that reflected the subject matter, rather than just a series of arbitrary pretty images. We started to play with ideas—what does an online conversation look like? Or, how could you stage a hacking attack?

RL: It's also about pushing the boundaries a little so that, visually, it's on the brink of something absurd. Because I'm trying to mimic the way that we view the internet. The internet, as a whole, has a kind of personality. Even memes and emoticons—they have a certain humor and an identity of their own. I wanted to bring all that in the play.

What are the more challenging aspects of taking a script from paper to the stage?
RB: To some extent, it's choosing which ideas to really push forward with. Rose has given us this brilliant, incredibly complicated script with about 40 characters and a dozen of locations. Some of them are very focal and some are just a voice on the Internet. We are not The National Theatre—we have seven actors to deliver this with. We have also only had four weeks to put Darknet together. These are all really good constraints but we needed to be careful with what we put our energy on.

RL: You can imagine what a mindfuck it was for me to write it.

Rose, why did you feel the need to create so many characters?
RL: I didn't want to censor myself, I wanted to do something that I hadn't seen or I hadn't read before. It was a scary process because it was like nothing I had done before so I couldn't follow what I had learnt about the craft of theater, which is about getting a group of characters, taking them on a journey and wrapping it all up at the end. I'm not interested in writing only that kind of play.

Actresses Rosie Thomson and Ella McLoughlin during rehearsals for 'Darknet' at Southwark Playhouse. Photo by Diarmaid Browne

Right now, in Britain, there is a lot of talk regarding the new surveillance bill. Has that influenced the play?
RL: It has, because it's about mass surveillance. But the Snoopers' Charter is surveillance from the government's end, while the play is looking at it from a more corporate angle—it's about corporate data collection. It's not about people spying on your emails as such, but all your data being shared and amalgamated, and used for profit.

How do you feel about the Snoopers' Charter?
RL: I would veer towards valuing our privacy over so-called security and transparency—partly because the kinds of people who are plotting terrorist attacks at a very sophisticated level are not going to be chatting about it on Facebook Messenger.

RB: It's also about what kind of example we want to set as a country. We are one of the first countries in the world to legislate on this. As a democracy, do we want to be saying it's okay to mass surveillance?

Reading up on the play it kind of reminded me of George Orwell's '1984'.
RB: Yes, but in Darknet the government is almost conspicuously absent. There's a sense of the authorities in general being able to have a very high level of access, but it's never spelt out. More importantly, that's not really the focus of the play; it's more of a background theme.

RL: I think that governments are being increasingly corrupted by corporations—that everything is becoming privatized. It feels like corporations are in charge these days, anyway.

Finally, what are you hoping audiences will take away?
RL: I want to move people to evaluate their relationship with their data and think about the choices they're making—whether they're consenting to giving away personal information. I want to inspire people to inform and educate themselves on these things. But I also want them to have a good time; I think it should be fun.

Darknet is on at the Southwark Playhouse from April 18 until May 7, 2016. Previews start on April 14. A series of post show talks will also run. Details can be found here.

Image by Frances Smith

Author Rachel M. Harper once likened the relationship between pain and art to childbirth. "We don't want to suffer in order to bring us into the world," she writes, "but we are damn happy to be alive." In regards to hip-hop, it's hard to disagree. Scarface mined depression and schizophrenic symptoms for the Geto Boys' career-affirming "Mind Playing Tricks on Me." Me Against the World came after Tupac was shot multiple times and waiting on a prison sentence. And Future said the "best thing I ever did was fall out of love"—five projects and a "March Madness" later, it looks like he was right.

Although some of the most transcendent rap openly embraces the blues, sometimes depression and hip-hop can seem at odds. A big part of this divide comes from the fact that hip-hop is a genre that's competitive and fueled by machismo. Combined with the brutal capitalism of the music business, hip-hop can be an environment where clinical depression or other mental health issues are brushed off as weaknesses. And you can't have any weaknesses when you're calling yourself a boss or a don.

This isn't to say that hip-hop is the only culture guilty of not properly addressing mental health. But it's worth noting that its lineage as a black art form makes it an extension of the African American community, where depression and mental health are often stigmatized to dangerous results. Researchers have found suicide rates have doubled between 1993 and 2012 amongst black boys. Even some prominent rappers have taken their own lives, like Brooklyn MC Capital STEEZ, who did so back in 2012 at the age of 19. His death put a spotlight on mental health in hip-hop and advanced an important dialogue. But it's not surprising that some rappers have responded disrespectfully to the tragedy. New York rapper Troy Ave recently made a track saying that the deceased artist is "burning in hell" for killing himself, further proving that there's still a lot of maturing that needs to happen around mental health in rap music. We spoke to a few hip-hop artists to get their perspectives on depression, suicide, and the music they've dedicated their lives to.

Fat Tony
Age: 28
Hometown: Houston, Texas

The artists who do speak about get highlighted: Artists like Scarface or Earl or Future or Biggie. A lot of the vulnerable aspects of their music is what makes them praised so much. But I think as a whole, depression really isn't spoken about too openly in rap music—but it's also not spoken about too openly in the black community period. Mental health in general is kind of shied away from.

By the end of '13, I lived in Brooklyn—in Williamsburg—and I moved there because the label that put out my last album, Smart Ass Black Boy, had its office in that area. I was getting bummed out on the lifestyle of just going to bars all the time, and my roommate at the time and I were just having some arguments. I just felt like I wasn't in a good point in my life. There were some problems with release: The company that put out the record made a huge mistake and didn't have the record available digitally for the first five days of the record's release... I had tons of fans messaging me and being like, "Yo, your album is out today, why can't I buy it on iTunes? Why is it not out on Spotify? Why is Amazon saying I can only order the CD?" It comes back to me, and I end up owing money back to the label for sales that didn't happen, and it's just a big mess.

I ended up moving back to Houston because I wanted to be around people who weren't talking about music all the time. My whole disappointment with my musical career bled over into my personal life. I had friends who told me, "You don't seem the same, you're not as outgoing." At the time, I just felt like being alone.

I was pretty down for most of 2014 until last summer. Granted, it wasn't like I announced I was sad and depressed or whatever; I can see it now that I'm out of it. What I really think it was is that I got burnt out in Brooklyn, so I left and went to Houston. I got burnt out in Houston and then I left again, and when I went to Cali, I was just in a much calmer place. I wasn't around people who I grew up with for the most part. It was just me in a new place, and I just got time to really think. And once I got time to sit with myself, I could work those problems out.

Archie Green
Age: 30
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio

Depression in African American culture is not really talked about enough, especially in African American male culture. It's because the African American male is portrayed as very alpha-male, and is a sign of weakness. A lot of rappers or MCs don't really speak on depression because they feel like it's emasculating.

I feel like, for me, it was most therapeutic when I wrote about it. It's not saying that praying through it or meditating through it wouldn't help at all, but at the same time, as an artist, it's kind of our duty to be on the transparent side. To really tell our story, you have to tell everything.

I was officially diagnosed with depression within the last year or so. For me, it stemmed from a bad life experience: Three years ago, after I just moved back to Cleveland from New York, I got a DUI. So, for a year, my license was suspended. The only thing the judge granted me as far as driving privileges was to-and-from work and to-and-from church. A lot of it was self-imposed isolation; I felt like I didn't want to be a burden to friends, who basically any time I wanted to go out with them, someone would have to come pick me up. After a while, I just started accepting that as this is how my life is, at least for now. And it got lonely. There were some dark days, days where I wasn't necessarily feeling suicidal, but I would question God, "Why are you putting me through this?"

A fraternity brother reached out to me, and he recommended that I talk to someone about it. Up to that point, I never really thought about going to therapy or talking about what was going on with my head. But I started getting to a point where I wanted to know. I'm so thankful and grateful that I started seeing a therapist, because it's healthy. Even if you don't feel like you're going through depression, I would recommend it. Especially if you're a creative, it's good to talk it out.

YC the Cynic
Age: 25
Hometown: Bronx, NY

I think depression is pushed to the background and hidden in hip-hop, just like it is in the black community. Like Mos Def says: What happens with hip-hop is whatever happens with us. We don't ever suggest therapy to our family. We don't ever think of depression as a mental illness. Usually it's like, "Hey, why are you sad for? We don't got time for that."

With me, it's a little different, because I couldn't identify it if I was. That's just always the type of person that I've been: If I'm sad or I just don't want to do anything, I just think I'm sad and don't want to do anything. But I definitely know people who have been . It's really difficult to navigate with those people.

Maybe a lot of artists do suffer from depression, but they're not the ones who're going to be outright and say, "I think I'm depressed right now."

L'Orange
Age: 27
Hometown: Wilmington, North Carolina

I do think is stigmatized more in hip-hop than other genres. It definitely has to do with a culture of traditional masculinity. It's a genre that's birthed from independence, and a lot of times when people are talking about independence, they're talking expression and competition. Depression, especially among people who don't understand it, can be seen as a weakness.

I feel like when I'm most creative is when I'm most comfortable with myself, and when I'm most most comfortable—unfortunately and realistically—is when I am depressed. I think it's such a complicated issue because you have a group of people who believe that their art can only come from their depression, that you become less of an artist when you negotiate with yourself to try to be happy and functional.

When we're talking about being depressed as a person—being chemically unbalanced—we're talking about a constant struggle. It's something that you make bargains with yourself about. You make a choice to move on; nothing comes easy when you're having to negotiate with these darker points of view.

Little Pain
Age: 23
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Growing up on Dipset and their early stuff, they always talked about depression—even Jim Jones. I feel like depression has always been something that's been in hip-hop; different artists go about discussing it in different ways. You have artists like the Geto Boys and Scarface who always spoke on depression. Another artist is obviously Tupac. In every other song, he's talking about his death.

The other day I was in my room chilling, and I heard some dude screaming at some lady, "Man, cheer up! Cheer up! You know how many people in the hood that's depressed? We don't go around killing ourselves. That's some white people shit." I feel like that's the general idea of depression. In the black community, it's like talking about it out in public is taboo.

A couple of years ago, I did an interview with Noisey, and a week later, a writer wrote an article saying I was making a mockery of depression. One of the examples he made was Capital STEEZ's suicide and how people really go through these things, and it's not right to make a mockery of it. My thing is... how people decide how to express how they feel is on them. When you think about it, it's all the same thing, whether you go about it through a Beanie Sigel way, the Kid Cudi way, or how I'm doing it. However you get your out is how you deal with it.

Sammus
Age: 30
Hometown: Ithaca, NY

Just by virtue of the art form, it has the potential to be a little bit more intense just because it's about lyricism and hits you in a different way than a song that's sung. People are really, really focused with the words and the experience you're trying to create with the words, so it can feel like you're having a conversation with a person.

To be perfectly honest, I feel like I don't even really know how hip-hop addresses depression or mental health issues. I was thinking about it today, and I know Big Sean has a line about how the bigger he gets the more he has to see shrinks. I remember thinking that was an interesting thing, and I appreciated his openness.

Issues related to self-medicating is often kind of overlooked and used as a way to talk about how rap isn't about anything. But if you're thinking about mental health, a lot of these songs are talking about, I can't cope with the world I'm currently in. I often hear that rhetoric even in discussions around legalization of certain drugs or how self-medication is often a part of being black in this country. It's highly stressful. It's an important part of the discussion, and I just wish it wasn't always framed as rappers not talking about shit, because you can definitely find some powerful words or messages in the stuff people are saying about their drug use.

In the song "1080p," I talked about how I had suicidal ideation and self-medicated with prescriptions and pills. I think there's different levels because a lot of people who speak to me. They speak to me from the perspective of having dealt with these issues their whole lives. For me, it was more like specific events in my life triggered these reactions. There are bad days, and there are good days, and I feel like through therapy and through even releasing my own music, I have started to heal in a lot of different ways.

Dyme-A-Duzin
Age: 23
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY

Nowadays in hip-hop, there's a lot of popular music that is all about intoxication and just really getting lit and getting fucked up and forgetting about . So we gotta put layers over that depression, so it doesn't get talked about in music. Just turn up and forget about that shit.

"That Chicken" really takes the perspective of a young person in the hood or anywhere dealing with depression from the life that he or she lives or the obstacles faced. It's kind of the perspective of a person who's like, Damn, I feel like I got nobody in this shit, but I gotta do what I gotta do to continue living. I'm trying to think deeper into the perspective of the real side of people and not the façade they put on.

The black community and hip-hop community in general has always been a toughen up type of culture. Like the Troy Ave situation with Capital STEEZ, it just goes to show the older school mentality of New York artists and people... But I don't feel like those people are gonna matter in the long run. I feel like there's a growing consciousness spreading and newer generations are gonna be exposed to it.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

A protest in London in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Photo by Jake Lewis

Back in 2014, during the height of protests over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the spread of the Black Lives Matter movement throughout the US, I was at a gathering of 300 campaigners and activists in London. We had been following closely the nights of civil disobedience that had birthed a new era of black struggle. Reverend Osagyefo Sekou addressed this conference from Ferguson via video-link. As a clergymen involved in civil rights campaigning, Rev. Sekou can't help but remind you of the mid-20th century preachers and men of God who lead the fight against segregation and racial hatred in America.

Until recently, leadership within black social movements has been associated with these male leaders of African-American churches. But Black Lives Matter may have moved us away from that narrow view.

"This moment is black, young, women-led, and queer. As Tef Poe says, this isn't your mama or daddy's civil rights movement. It just looks different." Rev. Sekou used these words to address the question of women's role in the Ferguson protests. He is a 45-year-old pastor from St. Louis, Missouri—not the sort of person who immediately springs to mind when most imagine an advocate for queer and trans people. That might be because he is a Christian, but it's also simply because he is black.

Despite evidence like the 2012 special Gallop report which found people of color in the US were more likely than their white counterparts to identify as LGBT, blackness remains associated with prejudice towards those with marginalized gender and sexual identities. Often we are taught to assume that white communities are just more progressive than any other when it comes to such matters.

So, Rev. Sekou was dispelling myths of exceptional hostility towards queer people from communities of color and at the same time trying to convey that voices like his were no longer the only ones prioritized in anti-racist movements.

As Black people who identify as queer will be the first to say, homophobia and transphobia do exist in our communities. It is doubly painful when racism within the wider LGBT population has left you alienated and questions still remain as to whether you will be accepted amongst other people of color. Having grown up in a religious household (within a much wider religious community) where there seemed to be no room to breathe when it came to my gender or sexuality, these concerns played on my own mind regularly. Mostly this was because relatable queer and trans people of color, who looked liked me and experienced struggles similar to those I did, weren't available.

Wail on the left with some Caravan for Justice activists. Photo author's own

So last October when I traveled with a group of anti-racist activists from Britain, including the family members of people who had died in police custody here, the opportunity to meet those young, black women and queer leaders in the movement would prove transformative. What I already knew intellectually about the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality would finally be affirmed in meeting some of the most powerful people I have had the pleasure to know.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors is one of three women who started the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and began a movement around it at a moment of crisis in the US. She has spoken publicly about her early experiences of leaving home at 16 as a young queer woman. Meeting her in Oakland as she explained the significance of Oscar Grant Plaza—why it had been named after the young man who's life was taken by a police officer in the early hours of New Year's Day 2009—it was clear to see that as someone with such dedication to uplifting the struggles of marginalized people, her own identity had to be central to that effort. It is no accident that Khan-Cullors and her co-founders are queer and working class, as well as black. These experiences led directly to finding value in their own lives, as well as call for the lives of their community as a whole to have value, too.

With the rest of the Caravan for Justice I traveled between communities all over California, holding rallies and speaking about the loss of life caused by police and state violence that was commonly experienced in our two countries. All the while I saw Khan-Cullors work as a visibly queer woman, unafraid of highlighting that part of her identity, within all of these communities of color. Some were religious, others included elders. But at no point did I see anything but care and respect between all those involved. There was an understanding that fundamentally we were all committed to protecting one another's lives.

A United Friends and Family Campaign banner on the Caravan for Justice tour. Photo author's own

As we made our way to Orange County, Patrisse's partner joined the trip. Janaya Khan co-founded Black Lives Matter Toronto and had been working in both Canada and the US as part of the movement. Just like Patrisse, Janaya was unashamedly queer, trans, and using gender-neutral pronouns. We shared similar backgrounds, family situations, and despite our size differences, we looked similar enough to be confused for siblings. Khan has also worked hard at being an incredibly gifted orator, with a unique ability to light a fire under audiences, spurring them into action. It was getting to know Khan in particular that highlighted, and allowed me to accept in a very personal way, that it was possible to be black, trans, and fearless. Unknowingly they even spurred me into beginning to come out as a non-binary trans person myself.

Resistance to the existence of people with marginalized gender and sexual identities can be found in communities of color, just as it can be found in white communities. Yet the biggest movement for racial justice in a generation sees queer people at its very forefront. "Pink-washing" whiteness by pretending other racial groups aren't capable of addressing issues like homophobia and transphobia is no longer a tenable narrative. As much as Black Lives Matter is doing great work to end racism, it is also leading force in making queerness visible and defendable.

I saw first hand that from these campaigners that my life mattered: as black and queer.

Follow Wail Qasim on Twitter.

Someone about to get a shit rating for being a dick. Via Flickr

The stratospheric rise and monopoly of Uber is nothing short of terrifying, mostly because we are at its every whim. It's kind of like that South Park episode where everyone is addicted to shopping at Walmart because it's so cheap, but it ends up sending everyone insane.

Uber isn't perfect, but to be fair neither are we, and we can't seem to stop using it. You mostly want to get one when it's raining, you're bloated from a meal, or you're absolutely shitfaced, or maybe a combination of all three. They rate you, you rate them; it's like Yelp, but it actually affects people's lives and livelihoods.

Now you can check your own rating in the 'About' section of the app, so we got a load of people to do just that and see where they think they went wrong (or right).

JOSH, 26, 4.61 STARS

I think I'm a pretty decent Uber customer. I'm polite, quiet, and usually let the driver keep their own music on. I'm all they could ever ask for, surely? Well, normally I am. Nearly two years ago now, I got in an Uber in the middle of Brockley, heading for Haggerston. So far, so normal. But get this: I was on acid! Yes, that's right, I'd spent the entire day lying in a park tripping balls, utterly convinced that my girlfriend was a small, muddy-faced Viking child. It was one of the best afternoons I've ever had, but all good things come to an end, and after a few joints and a pizza and an episode of The Simpsons, it was time to face reality and hop into the back of a Prius. Everything was going fine until a song I've never heard before or since floated into earshot.

As we cruised down Shoreditch High Street, a voice sang "I'm losing grip on my sanity" over and over and my girlfriend and I became more and more upset and confused and anxious and to try and avoid those feelings taking complete control over me I started babbling about girls in miniskirts being disgraces to their parents, and how nice mochas are, and quietly saying, "oh my, oh my" to myself. The car pulled into the destination. My legs weren't really working. I forgot what the flat I was trying to get into looked like. I wormed out of the car, mumbled a thank you, and forgot to rate the driver.

HANNAH, 24, 4.54 STARS

I am a perfect passenger. I look nice, I smell nice, and I have money to give. Anyone who has me in their vehicle is, frankly, blessed. After the last couple of hours mulling over why I've lost 0.46 of a star, I can only conclude it's because I take a lot of short journeys. I live between seven and ten minutes away from my boyfriend and sometimes you just can't or don't want to walk, you know? Sometimes it's raining and you don't want to look like a little rat. Obviously, I just call the Uber and don't put in the destination until I'm inside the car. I'll sit there, play dumb while the little blue route gets drawn on their GPS and watch as their temples throb with irritation then respond to small talk while they seethe through clenched jaw. I love Uber.

DANIEL, 29, 4.60 STARS

No idea. The only incident I can think of is arguing with a driver about Qatar being a disgrace and not deserving to host anything, let alone the World Cup. He wasn't happy, think he was from there.

ROBERT, 33, 4.63 STARS

I looked just now and I was really expecting a perfect five, so I'm a little upset. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I'm always polite to drivers and if they want to chat I guess I'll chat, it's not a huge problem for me. Maybe it was this one time I was riding with a gay friend of mine and he was going into vivid detail about some pretty adventurous sex he had and I remember the elderly driver tutting quite loudly, so maybe that guy didn't like hearing about adventurous gay sex?

I also think maybe it doesn't help when people I'm with insist on commandeering the aux cord. I think the aux cord thing is awful and it was cruel of Uber to force their drivers to make that part of the service. Being an Uber driver at 2 AM must be infuriating enough without having to listen to terrible music chosen by idiot strangers. Just because you can use the aux cord doesn't mean you should. If your driver is a 64-year-old grandfather he probably doesn't want to be forced to listen to jungle by some coked up 27 year olds, try and be a bit more respectful. I think it's incredibly dehumanizing when people ignore the driver entirely.

ADAM, 33, 4.10 STARS

Pretty sure it's down to this one night I was hanging out at Dinerama (local idiot magnet) with Gus (my burly Spanish friend) and, since he offered, tried smoking some hash for the first time in about ten years. So there we were minding our own business at the local upmarket open-air food bazaar when one of the several artisanal barrel fires flared up and I got hit in the face with a load of smoke. Dazed and dealing with the aftereffects of my ten-year hash hiatus, I stumbled clumsily into someone's bespoke chicken wing dinner—then, two seconds later, I was on the floor, unconscious.

In what felt like an instant, Gus had gathered me up in his sweaty, heavy-set arms and tossed me unceremoniously into the back of an Uber XL.

About half way home I woke up properly and started making a fuss in the back of the car. Everything was spinning, and I was riding the edge of a vomit explosion that would surely coat everything in a fine layer of the hand-crafted duck bao I'd eaten not 15 minutes prior. The driver could tell I was about to blow and so he sped up thinking maybe he could get me home before the inevitable. I held it back against every bodily urge and managed to arrive at my destination—the driver slammed on the brakes, hurried to help me out, and just as he opened the door I vaulted my head out and puked everywhere, narrowly missing his van and his shoes.

He didn't seem too impressed and definitely just wanted the get the hell out of there, so I'm gonna guess he gave a lackluster rating.

JAMIE, 26, 5.0 STARS

After taking two journeys, I have a perfect score. But I don't really need to worry about points being knocked off in future because I am prompt, polite, and never a cunt.

EMMA, 23, 4.33

Listen yeah, I don't mean to undermine the lolz of this article but I actually have some serious beef with this, because I discovered this morning that my Uber rating is 4.33 and I haven't done so much as sneeze in a driver's hair.

Before this "check your worth as a passenger" tool was implemented the Happiest Uber Driver In The World™️ leaked my rating to me and it was 4.9. I remember this because we had a very #humblebrag conversation about how and why we were both 4.9ers. That was a week ago. I've only got one Uber since then and I distinctly remember getting into a conversation about homelessness that was pretty amicable until the driver said something about it being an imprisonable offense. Maybe I got angry and it wasn't well-received. Maybe it was a test and I agreed out of three-beers-deep sleepiness. Maybe it was neither of those things and he was just annoyed by the fact I made him leave Kisstory on for the whole 45-minute journey. Either way, whoever you are, you fucking suck and you can take the 5 stars I gave you and shove them up your ass.

Follow Joe on Twitter.

This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.

"A Drug-Free World—We can do it!"

That's the slogan that was agreed upon and adopted as the United Nations' mandate when this body last convened in a major summit in 1998 to discuss global drug policy. Today, there is little question that global drug control has been misguided, overly punitive and largely ineffective, and has steered national drug policies in disastrous directions.

UN member states will come together again next week, from April 19-21 in New York, for another summit on drug control: UNGASS 2016. The question now is whether the UN can dispense with its old, unrealistic and harmful slogan and adopt a position in line with human rights and science.

The global drug control regime that member states must consider dates from 1961, and its age is showing. The UN drug conventions go out of their way to demonize drugs without reference to science—an approach ripe for abuse in punitive and discriminatory ways.

Marijuana is a prime example. It is described in the conventions as "particularly liable to abuse and to produce ill effect" and without any therapeutic value. That classification is not surprising in view of the ranting at UN meetings in the 1950s by the then-US drug czar, Harry Anslinger, that the "killer weed" marijuana was the "most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind" and its consumption was linked to immorality among "Negroes, Hispanics and jazz musicians."

Though some countries have in recent years stepped away from the UN's classification of marijuana, many retain laws that were influenced by the UN treaties. Across Africa and in much of Asia, in spite of acceptance of many traditional and cultural uses of marijuana, national laws are particularly harsh. In Kenya, for example, the law states that where an accused person can convince the court that the marijuana he or she possesses is for individual use only, the prison sentence can be up to ten years—in all other cases, it's up to 20 years.

Several countries have begun to recognize the misinformed view of the UN on marijuana regulation. Four states in the US and Uruguay have legalized recreational marijuana use by adults, and multiple US states and several countries around the globe have decriminalized possession. Some have changed marijuana policies because of concerns about racial discrimination in the enforcement of drug laws. For example, in the US at the state level, black people are about four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than their white counterparts. At the federal level, Hispanics represent two-thirds of the individuals arrested for marijuana violations. This is despite the fact that blacks, Hispanics and whites all use the drug at similar rates.

Others have implemented policy changes because many assertions—taken as fact—made about marijuana several decades ago are simply inconsistent with evidence from research.

Statements made about the addictive potential of marijuana amount to pure hyperbole when considered alongside the evidence. It's true that about 9 percent of marijuana smokers will become addicted at some point in their life, but about 15 percent of alcohol drinkers and a third of tobacco smokers will become addicted over their lifetime. These developments highlight the fact that unless the UN takes a realistic look at its current drug regime, more and more countries will reject its guidance.

The UN should in theory provide a counterweight to the politicization of national drug policy. Instead, it has failed to challenge the ideology and junk science that fuel the demonization of drugs.

Methamphetamine is another example. It is heavily criminalized in most regions of the world. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime regularly bemoans the threat of methamphetamine use and encourages heavy law enforcement responses. But, from a chemical and a user perspective—as I have demonstrated in my own research and previously written—methamphetamine is nearly identical to the medicine Adderall. In fact, both drugs are approved in the US for treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Of course, Adderall is also used to treat narcolepsy and to facilitate wakefulness in soldiers, among many other things. Prohibiting methamphetamine by law inevitably creates a black market in which toxic adulteration of the substance is inevitable, leading to a great deal more danger than is caused by the substance itself.

Opioids are a third example. Over the past decade, the US and Canada have seen a steady increase in opioid-related fatalities. This phenomenon that has drawn attention as it shows up outside the urban environment, including in affluent white suburbs. But here too, the problem reflects a long history of bad decision-making, demonizing opioids and undermining their positive uses.

Lethal overdose on heroin alone is not common. The vast majority of these "overdoses" occur as a result of combiningopioids with another sedative, such as alcohol or benzodiazepines. In other cases, unsuspecting people may ingest street opioids adulterated with other compounds, including fentanyl—an opioid considerably more potent than heroin. Again, black markets formed by punitive drug laws enhance the likelihood of these negative outcomes.

The US can and should learn lots from some European countries where a wider range of services are available for people who become dependent on opioids (who are a small percentage of all opioid users). Part of overdose prevention in Europe is ensuring easy access to therapies using opioid medicines such as methadone and buprenorphine. Methadone therapy has a long record of success, but in the US, it is still highly stigmatized, and many people who need it simply cannot get it. In Switzerland, Germany and a number of other countries, the few people who are not helped by other therapy are even allowed to receive heroin by prescription, safely, in controlled doses of known strength, administered in a health facility. Studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this measure. But most countries are far from that kind of pragmatic policy, and the UN, in the past, has rejected it too.

Globally, it is clear that punitive drug policies have been used to further marginalize marginalized groups. African-Americans, Afro-Brazilians, Roma in parts of Europe and poor Filipinos, among many others, are all arrested and incarcerated for drug law violations at rates disproportionate to their numbers in their respective societies. This shameful use of drug policy should be universally condemned, especially in light of the fact that many of the policies are based on false assumptions about drugs.

The UN's founding principles include human rights, equitable development and human security. But it has sabotaged its ability to adhere to these principles with its tacit acceptance of ineffective and discriminatory drug policies and its rejection of pragmatic, scientifically sound approaches. The UNGASS 2016 drug summit presents an opportunity for this body to do the right thing by adopting a position on drugs that is consistent with evidence, decreases racial discrimination and enhances the humane treatment of people who use drugs.

Dr. Carl L. Hart is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also the author of the book High Price: A neuroscientist's journey of self-discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society Follow him on Twitter.

Joanne Csete is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

Original images via Flickr users Lindsay Fox and Håkan Dahlström

Read: A Mom Is Mad That Her Cigarette-Addicted Son Can't Vape at School

Some parents have filed a lawsuit against a private school after their 14-year-old daughter was expelled for vaping in a campus bathroom with child star Fatima Ptacek, voice of Nickelodeon cartoon character Dora the Explorer, the Associated Press reports.

Ptacek and the expelled teen—only referred to as "MS" in the lawsuit—weren't doing drugs, but were called into the principal's office after being caught vaping "caramel-flavored water" in the bathrooms at a Manhattan private K-12 school called Avenues: The World School back in December. Ptacek was let off with a three-day suspension, while MS was completely booted.

Now the teen's parents—Nadia Leonelli and Fredrick Sunwall—are suing the school, claiming that Ptacek was given special treatment.

"The fact that FP is a known actress for being the voice of Dora Explorer may have played a role in why she was ultimately not expelled even after the school threatened as much, and MS was expelled instead as a scapegoat," the lawsuit claims.

Leonelli and Sundwall don't want to drag Ptacek down for inhaling candy water or whatever. They just want the World School to let their kid back in, and are seeking damages to cover tuition and legal fees, around $40,000 in total. The parents say MS just wanted to look "cool" in front of the 15-year-old Nickelodeon star.

The school declined to comment on the story, and told the AP that disciplinary matters are "private and confidential."

Photo by Jackson Fager

More people are getting stoned without fear of consequence now in the United States than ever before. Prohibition is being rolled back, and people are celebrating by getting high as hell. Some, however, are noticing side effects that aren't generally associated with pot, like runny noses and itchy eyes. According to allergists, these people are discovering that they have an allergy to marijuana.

Pot allergies are likely not uncommon, though the research is too preliminary to know exactly what the numbers are. Up to 20 percent of people have seasonal allergies—meaning they're allergic to plants or pollens. And since marijuana is indeed a weed, complete with pollen, those with seasonal allergies are more likely to be allergic to pot.

"With increasing legality and less reluctance to talk with medical professionals, I think we'll see more people reporting it," William Silvers, a Denver-based allergist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, told VICE. Silvers published an editorial in February pointing to a rise of these cases in his practice and calling for allergists to ask their patients about marijuana use in a "nonjudgmental manner." A 2015 review of the research published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology noted an increase in reports of marijuana allergy as well.

Silvers said most of the patients he's treated for pot allergies are either heavy smokers or people who work in the nascent industry, and so they handle weed on a regular basis. One 28-year-old patient, for instance, developed extreme nasal congestion shortly after becoming a trimmer at a marijuana facility; eventually, he developed a chronic cough and a wheeze, too. Another patient who worked in a growing facility developed a persistent runny nose, itchy eyes, dry cough, and itchy hands with an eczema-like rash, which was worse when he was at work.

While less common, other people show signs of allergies just from regular pot use. When Denver resident Sergei smoked up, his nose would run and his eyes would itch. Assuming those were things everyone experienced when they got high, he put up with it, until an offhand comment to an allergist led to the realization that he was allergic. "I'd never heard of being allergic to pot, so it hadn't even occurred to me," he told VICE. "I just assumed what I was experiencing was normal."

While a snotty nose, itchy or red eyes, and the potential for asthma or breathing issues are often mild at first, they can heighten as the immune system becomes sensitized to the allergen via exposure. "You may be exposed five or ten times before you have any reaction," Silvers said.

Pot legalization has led to the increased use of more potent weed, which could also result in a stronger reaction. So far, Silvers has seen one case of anaphylaxis, a more serious kind of allergic response that can include vomiting, a skin rash, and major breathing problems. There are other documented cases of anaphylaxis, including one involving a police detective handling pot as part of an investigation, and, terrifyingly, one resulting from the intravenous use of marijuana.

Weed allergies can be triggered in many different ways. Some people might only get a reaction from inhaling smoke, while others will have issues from swallowing edibles or handling buds or leaves. In all cases, the remedy is tragically the same: Stay away from it.

A caveat from Silvers: If the reaction, like Sergei's, is mild, doesn't seem to be getting worse, and is mainly just a runny nose or itchy eyes, taking an antihistamine before smoking may help. Trying edibles or a vaporizer instead of smoking could be worth a shot too, he said.

"But if you start to develop asthma, you need to take a hard look at what you're doing," he added. "You at least need to be open about talking with your doctor, and you need to realize you may have to change your behaviors."

Photo of an abandoned morgue via Wikipedia

Read: I Tried a Drug Driving Simulation Suit, But it Wasn't Very Druggy

Authorities in Thailand are trying to curb drunk driving incidents by making offenders hang around dead people, the Associated Press reports.

The grim reminder of mortality is part of the Thai government's attempt to reduce the country's traffic fatality rate, which is the second-highest in the world, according to a 2014 study from the University of Michigan. The idea is that sending repeat traffic offenders and drunk drivers to clean and transport dead bodies at hospital morgues (rather than do community service among the living) might drive home the consequences of driving wasted.

"They should see the actual physical and mental damage," a public health official told the AP, "so that they may understand and attain a good conscience, so that it could be safer on the roads."

The program comes just in time for the boozy celebration of Songkran, during which an estimated 160 people are injured and two people die every hour over the holiday's week-long celebration.

Condemned prisoner Kenneth Fults. (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)

Kenneth Fults is set to be executed Tuesday night in a Georgia state prison for the 1996 murder of a 19-year-old white woman, Cathy Bounds. A 47-year-old black man with an intellectual disability, Fults pleaded guilty to shooting the woman five times in the head, and was sentenced to death by a jury roughly racially representative of the county where the crime took place. At this point, no one is disputing the man is responsible for the crime. But five of the 12 jurors from Fults's sentencing trial have spoken out about the punishment, in part because another juror has since revealed himself to be a flagrant racist.

In 2005, Thomas Buffington, a white juror who was in his late 60s at the time of sentencing in 1997, made a statement for the record in a signed affidavit.

"I don't know if he ever killed anybody, but that nigger got just what should have happened," he said, adding, "Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's what that nigger deserved."

Despite the heinous nature of Buffington's statement, the US Supreme Court has never heard arguments on racial bias in the jury. (Fults's lawyers filed a fresh request for a direct hearing on Friday that's still pending.) So far, the man's various requests to appeal to the high court have been denied, as was his application for clemency on Monday.

The case brings to mind too many instances where racism—and an unrelenting denial to acknowledge its existence—has impeded justice in the state. Consider the Supreme Court case McCleskey v. Kemp, where a review of over 2,000 murder convictions in Georgia presented overwhelming evidence that black defendants who kill white victims are more likely to receive the death penalty in Georgia than others. The statistical study of 1970s cases found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in 70 percent of cases involving black defendants and white victims, but only 19 percent of cases involving white defendants and black victims.

When asked about these numbers and if they apply to Fults, Scott Ballard, the Spalding County district attorney who believes the execution should proceed, tells VICE, "You haven't demonstrated to me yet that that extra number of black people that got the death penalty didn't deserve it. You're just telling me that, after all has been said and considered, the race of the people who got the death penalty."

Ballard is careful to distance himself from Buffington's racism—"I'm offended by it"—but defends Georgia's application of the death penalty. "I'm not willing to say that Georgia executes people on the basis of racial prejudice," he says. "I'm just not willing to say that."

In 1987, the Supreme Court concluded in McCleskey that systematic discrimination is separate from individual cases of it. The court acknowledged "systematic and substantial disparities" in the punishments imposed and that the "factors of race of the victim and defendant were at work." Despite this, the justices found that the study did not prove that the officials involved in the conviction at hand "acted with discriminatory purpose."

In short, the intrinsic racial bias of a criminal justice system cannot be blamed for an outcome produced within that system. To do so, as then-New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis put it, "to confront the reality of racial influence on death sentences would risk disturbing the system too much."

Such risk aversion doesn't bode well for one's constitutional right to equal protection of the law.

Scott Ballard, the district attorney, makes a similar argument. He calls it "a big leap" to say that Buffington wasn't able to set aside his biases to deliver the verdict, "as all jurors have some form of bias."

Further, Ballard says Buffington's comments don't prove that Georgia is exercising racial prejudice in carrying out the execution. Instead, he argues, Buffington's remarks only prove that he used language "that offends."

Some might argue otherwise.

The same year that McCleskey came before the high court, Timothy Tyrone Foster was tried for the murder in Rome, Georgia and sentenced to death. Foster, a black man, now has a case before the US Supreme Court where justices are considering evidence of prosecutors systematically excluding prospective black jurors. Prosecutors argued to an all-white jury, and Foster's is another capital punishment case involving a white victim.

In clemency arguments made before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles Monday, it was briefly addressed that Johnny Mostiler, who represented Fults in his sentencing trial, was also said to use the racial slur on multiple occasions.

"I don't think that was addressed except that asked was a racist," Ballard tells me. "He said that, in his opinion, he certainly was not." The colleague, former District Attorney William McBroom, apparently "pointed out acts of kindness" he remembered Mostiler offering to people of color as a counterargument.

As far as other questions the Board had about racial matters? "They didn't seem to have too many," Ballard says.

Fults's clemency denial was made public less than five hours after arguments Monday. Georgia's next execution is scheduled for April 27, and will be the fifth this year.

Follow Camille Pendley on Twitter.

Manuel Portillo. Photo by Meredith Hoffman

Manuel Portillo fled El Salvador's gang violence at age 16, traveling to the United States like thousands of other unaccompanied minors to seek asylum. But when the time came for Portillo to argue his asylum case in court a year later, he says he couldn't find a lawyer to represent him pro-bono. He'd heard rumors that immigration officers would deport him if he showed up in court, so out of fear, he simply didn't go.

Instead, he "continued living normally" in Austin, Texas, where his parents had come years earlier to make money to send back to El Salvador. He went to classes for his senior year of high school, worked part-time as a cook in a local restaurant, and played soccer in his free time.

Then, one night this January, while driving home from a friend's house, a police officer pulled him over. Portillo, who is now 18, didn't have a driver's license because he's undocumented, so he was taken to the police station.

"When I saw a judge later, he said I just had to pay a fine because of the license—but then he said I'd have to go into the hands of immigration officers," Portillo told me. Because he'd missed his court date, he was placed in South Texas' Pearsall Detention Center for eight days before officials transferred him to Rio Grande Detention Center on the border with Mexico. There, an officer told him he'd be sent back to El Salvador.

The whole mess could've been solved with legal assistance—but at the time of his court date, Portillo, like nearly half of immigrant youths who enter the country, had no attorney to argue on his behalf. Between 2014 and 2015, 49 percent of minors in immigration court had no legal aid, according to data compiled by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Out of 84,174 juvenile cases filed in that period, a whopping 41,457 of those cases were unrepresented. And since those who have a lawyer are five times more likely to be allowed to stay in the US, access to legal aid can be the difference between safety and deportation.

With the surge of asylum-seekers entering the United States from Central America due to skyrocketing murder rates and gang violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, the government is paying new attention to the issue. In late February, House Democrats proposed the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, a bill that would ensure legal counsel for immigrant youths. (No votes on the bill have taken place yet.)

"We are talking about children running for their lives in many instances," one of the co-sponsors of the bill, Rep. Luis Guitierrez, said in a press release about the bill. "We need to make sure they have access to a lawyer, translator, and a fair chance to navigate the American legal system so that they can get justice if they qualify for asylum and are fighting deportation."

The Department of Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) is also expanding legal services for unaccompanied minors, according to Lou Ruffino, a spokesman for the agency. Ruffino cited the justice AmeriCorps program, which provides funding for attorneys representing unaccompanied minors, and a legal orientation program for guardians of unaccompanied minors. As of March, Ruffino said the agency had already seen an increase in legal representation, with 61 percent youth cases now having attorneys.

"We need to make sure they have access to a lawyer, translator, and a fair chance to navigate the American legal system so that they can get justice." — Rep. Luis Guitierrez

But the 39 percent of youth who still can't access an attorney pay a big price. Karen Lucas, Associate Director for Advocacy with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, emphasized that the "consequences are tremendous" when kids have to defend themselves.

"We see a lot of kids who do not understand the process, and it has a great impact on their ability to access asylum," Lucas told me, citing statistics compiled by AILA that show 89.2 percent of kids deported in the past two years had no attorney.

The most common reason for their deportations, Lucas said, was failure to show up in court—often because they never received notice of the hearing in the mail. Lucas noted "numerous documented cases where kids received inadequate notices of hearings, or information was not updated on a court hotline, or a hearing was scheduled far away from where they lived."

Portillo, who was 17 when he skipped his hearing, was nearly sent back to El Salvador without ever making his case for asylum. But then, just a few days before his scheduled deportation, he got very lucky: A pro-bono attorney stepped in and filed a motion to reopen his case, arguing he lacked due process since he never had legal counsel. A judge granted the motion, and Portillo was released on bond, according to his attorney, Jacqueline Gurany.

"Manuel actually has a very strong asylum claim. He lived with start to recruit boys at age nine or ten in the neighborhood," Gurany told me. "He also had an uncle who had been in a gang and wanted to completely renounce his involvement. Because of that, the uncle was targeted and higher level gang members told Manuel they'd target him too. The members shot and seriously injured the uncle, and when he went to the hospital, they tried to break into the hospital room to finish off the job."

If Gurany hadn't stepped forward, the details of Portillo's story would have never surfaced in immigration court—just as they don't for thousands of young people.

As for Portillo, he's been returned home to his family in Austin, where he's now working with Gurany to prepare his case for asylum. "I'm surprised Jacqueline helped me—and I'm so happy to have the opportunity to be here," he told me, settled in on the living room couch, "and I'll keep fighting to stay."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.