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By Steve Elliott in
Legislation, News
Thursday, Jul. 29 2010 @ 2:24PM
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| Photo: KOZE950.com |
| Could marijuana legalization be in Washington state's future? The office of Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday that it's a "legitimate idea." |
When Gov. Gregoire opened an online suggestion box on ways to fix the state's budget, she may not have expected pot legalization to come in at first place. But it has been in the lead for more than a week now, and the governor's office even has a somewhat positive response.
"It's a legitimate idea," said Gregoire spokeswoman Karina Shagren, who said the Governor is reading the list herself, as is Marty Brown, the director of the governor's budget office. "But we'd like to see how the federal government would respond."
With marijuana legalization apparently so popular among Washington's (and America's) voters, the idea is being considered right along with the roughly 1,750 others that have been submitted so far.
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By Steve Elliott in
Legislation, News
Thursday, Jul. 29 2010 @ 12:58PM
The state cannot take children away from a mother simply because she tests positive for marijuana use, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday.
According to the decision, reversing a Marion County juvenile court ruling, the children can't be taken away without evidence showing the mother's cannabis use endangers the kids, reports Helen Jung at The Oregonian.
The juvenile court had earlier ruled that the state Department of Human Services had jurisdiction over the two children, a 19-month-old and a 6-month-old. The state had argued that the simple fact fact that the mother used marijuana "presented a reasonable likelihood of harm to her two children."
But the appeals court reasonably agreed with the mother's argument that the state had failed to provide any evidence connecting her marijuana use with risk to the children.
The children and the mother are identified only by their initials in the case to protect their anonymity.
By Steve Elliott in
News
Thursday, Jul. 29 2010 @ 11:06AM
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| Photo: Let's Talk Style |
But prosecutors declined to charge the deputy after she was arrested earlier this month for hand-delivering the cannabis inside the Cook County Criminal Courts Building, reports Matthew Walberg at the Chicago Tribune.
Wait, what?
"We are still at a loss as to why this particular case did not get charged," said Joe Ways, head of the sheriff's Office of Professional Review, which investigates employee misconduct.
The state attorney's office said the case fell apart because incompetent sheriff's investigators did not follow specific instructions to ensure they had the evidence needed to show the deputy knew she was delivering drugs to inmate Brian Goolsby, 28.
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| Photo: Cruise Law News |
| Bermuda is not a good place to vacation, if you like marijuana. |
Hey, Bermuda? Get a fucking clue. If you really want to be a vacation paradise, you need to let people smoke weed. Arresting tourists is bad for business, morons.
George Koumoulis, 37, of Abingdon, Maryland, was removed from the Norwegian Dawn on July 22 after police found just over seven grams of cannabis in his cabin, reports Nadia Arandjelovic at Bermuda newspaper The Royal Gazette.
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| Photo: Andrew Bako/NBC |
| Eric Roberts, now playing the part of a marijuana addict. Hey Eric, any chance of you just shutting the hell up and going home? |
"Eric quit drugs and alcohol in 1995," Eliza told E!. "He has no interest in anything, other than marijuana."
According to Eliza, Eric had previously tried prescription pills to treat anxiety, but they didn't agree with him, so he turned to cannabis for a cure.
To the rest of us, that may sound damn close to "no problem," but that's not the way Eric sees it.
"He uses marijuana as a medication," Eliza said. "He has a prescription. However, a dependency is a dependency and he doesn't want to be dependent on it anymore."
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| Photo: Showtime |
| "Weeds" star Mary Louise Parker: Cultural bellwether? |
Almost two-thirds of Americans -- even those who are against it -- now believe that marijuana will be legalized within the next 10 years.
A "plurality" in polling terms simply means that more people are in favor of pot legalization than are opposed to it.
That's quite an improvement from a year ago, when a similar Rasmussen poll found 41 percent supporting legalization and 49 percent opposed, reports policy analyst Jon Walker at FireDogLake.
"It is possible that Prop 19, by bringing the debate to the forefront, is starting to noticeably move national opinions by forcing people to take some time to actually think about the issue," Walker said.
By Steve Elliott in
Legislation, News
Tuesday, Jul. 27 2010 @ 12:10PM
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| Graphic: SF Appeal |
| Prop 19 is ahead by 16 points! Is it November yet? |
The new PPP poll (PDF) shows the largest margin of support yet seen from recent polling on Prop 19, reports policy analyst Jon Walker at FireDogLake.
Interestingly, the poll found Prop 19 support among African Americans to be very high, possibly influenced by the California NAACP's recent endorsement of the legalization measure.
African Americans are the strongest supporters of Prop 19, with 68 percent in favor and 32 percent against, followed by whites who support it 53 percent to 37 percent.
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| Photo: WSB TV |
| Gordon Clement, 80, had this painting for five years before he discovered four pounds of marijuana inside the frame. See photo of the cannabis after the fold. |
Gordon Clement, 80, of Cherokee County, Ga., said he found four pounds of cannabis stashed inside the frame of the painting he now owns, reports WSB TV.
Rather than being cool about it, just smoking the damn stuff and enjoying the painting like he should, Clement opted to take the whiney approach.
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| Photo: SuperiorPics.com |
| Bret Michaels may need to up his meditation time after his marijuana stash got seized from two tour buses last week. |
After a DeKalb County Sheriff's deputy pulled over the two buses just after 11:30 pm for what Chief Deputy Jay Oberholtzer claimed was a "lighting violation" of some sort on one of the vehicles, police K9 units turned up stashes of marijuana and other unspecified drugs onboard, reports Aaron Organ of The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.
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| Photo: ThePirata.com |
Oh, and dude was in a car he'd just stolen, too.
Alexander Lemke, 20, of Palm Harbor, Fla., must have had a king-hell case of the munchies.
The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office claims Lemke broke into a neighbor's home at about 1:25 a.m. on Friday and left in their 2005 Toyota Solara, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
