Search Results: year in review (351)

Photo: JP Laffont

Do Americans live in a barbaric nation?


The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal from convicted Mississippi marijuana dealer Lorenzo Tarver.

Tarver was sentenced in 2006 in Leflore County, Mississippi, to 60 years for possession of more than 81 pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute, according to AP.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals upheld his conviction in 2009.

Being a cannabis critic isn’t all joints and blow jobs. Some of these strains are hard to understand, especially for an outsider to the industry. Amendment 64 passed five years ago, in November 2012, and Denver now houses over 200 retail pot shops and MMJ dispensaries, with hundreds more around Colorado. How could one person possibly profile everything they stock?

He’s 50 and a father of seven.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.
Bernard Noble, a Louisiana man serving 13 years for possessing two joints had his sentence reduced to eight years. He may be out in two.

In Michigan, MED patient fees fund marijuana enforcement including raid equipment.

Outgoing Vermont governor Peter Shumlin (D) offered to pardon anyone convicted for possessing up to an ounce. He supported an unsuccessful effort to legalize REC through the state legislature.

In Rolling Stone, the activist and rapper Killer Mike writes on how to bring more African-Americans into the industry. For more, see my story in California Sunday.

The NFL may be warming to MED. Switzerland too may be loosening up.

Ozy talks to a combat veteran who now grows cannabis. A dispensary in Massachusetts is giving away free seeds.

Joe Dolce’s new book “ Brave New Weed” gets a fond review by Matt Taibbi in the New York Times.

Boulder Weekly published a piece called “ Marijuana and the Thinking Teenager.

Canadian dispensary chain Cannabis Culture opened an illegal store in Montreal and gave away “ free nugs” to an approving crowd.

The L.A. Times went to the Emerald Cup in Sonoma County. It contrasts the revelers against, “a panel of entirely sober government officials [who]discussed the ramifications of marijuana legalization, California’s complex and evolving regulatory structure, and tried to answer questions about the future of the cannabis industry that seem, at this point, unanswerable.” The piece has many more great descriptions. Read the whole thing.

Some parents are upset that Amazon is sells children’s pot-leaf leggings. (I recently saw a pair, for adults, on sale in Aspen for $75.)

Now there’s CBD-infused water.

Social network MassRoots acquired online ordering platform Whaxy.

Mic put out an update on the state of cannabis investing.

The activists put up a long fight.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Michigan almost certainly won’t vote on REC this year. The state’s Senate advanced regulation for MED dispensaries.

Both MED initiatives that will appear on the Arkansas ballot “ are simply recreational marijuana masquerading as medicine,” according to Jerry Cox, executive director of the conservative Christian group Family Council. If both initiatives pass, the one with more votes prevails.

 

Brandon Marshall

 

Update, June 14, 2016: We’re back, and we hope we’ll see you again.

Since 2009, Toke of the Town has brought you the biggest marijuana news and loudest pot views from across the country — and around the world. Along the way, we’ve covered the huge progress many states have made towards legalization and wondered why others are so far behind. The country still has a long way to go, but things are looking up — and we have our fingers crossed that 2015 will be another big year for legalization.
But Toke won’t be around to see it — at least, not in its present form. This is Toke of the Town’s final day of publication.
Don’t worry: We’re not quitting the movement. We’re just returning the focus of our marijuana coverage to our local Voice Media Group papers. You can still read William Breathes’ weekly pot reviews and Ask a Stoner column at Westword.com, where they started, and you can continue to follow him on Twitter and Facebook. And you can keep following Toke on Facebook and Twitter, too, for the latest marijuana news from all our papers.
Many thanks for reading and supporting us for the past five years! We couldn’t have covered the marijuana community without such a strong one reading us.
And all our archives will remain online, because we wouldn’t want you to lose access to our serious reporting on issues of medicine and our lighthearted coverage of stoner movies.
Light one up for us, won’t you?

Richard DeLisi, sentenced to three consecutive 30-year terms, or 90 years, for a marijuana importation conviction in 1989, will remain incarcerated. Judge Michael E. Raiden denied a motion requesting a review of his sentence last week. DeLisi has spent the past 26 years behind bars for a nonviolent offense that has a normal guideline sentence range of 12 to 17 years.


The concept behind The User’s Guide to Colorado Marijuana Law, a guidebook penned by Robert M. Linz, the associate director and head of public services at the University of Colorado School of Law, is a solid one. But the paperback format almost certainly ensures that this resource won’t be relevant forever.
Linz has arranged his book into two major categories: “Part One: Personal Use of Marijuana,” and “Part Two: Commercial Use of Marijuana.” The guide lays out information in a simple Q&A format. For example, the opening section contains questions such as “How old do I need to be to legally consume marijuana?” and “How much marijuana may I possess?” — the types of inquiries that dispensary owners are probably tired of answering. Linz cites appropriate legislation in his answers for readers and consumers.


Established in 1910, the University of Mississippi boasts an enrollment of well over 16,000 students. The Rebels from “Ole Miss”, as it is commonly referred to, have not brought back a national championship since their football team did it back in 1962.
What the campus is more famous for, in counter-culture circles anyway, is the fact that the government has been growing weed there for “research purposes” for decades.
But with more and more private and foreign labs returning study after study outlining the vast medicinal benefits to the cannabis plant, the feds are looking to crank up their own production in hopes of giving their own researchers a chance at being relevant in the discussion of cannabis use.

The ringleader of a huge, Southern California medical marijuana distribution network has won a whopping 94-month reduction in his punishment, according to federal court records reviewed by our friends at the OC Weekly.
In July 2013, U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna sentenced John Melvin Walker to a term of 262 months in prison, but this week amended the punishment to a term of 168 months for the conspiracy and efforts to evade federal tax obligations.

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