Search Results: yep (22)

Photo: Courtesy Don Skakie
Don Skakie, Yes End Penalties WA: “Removing marijuana penalties will not conflict with federal law”

​When it comes to cannabis law reform, what’ll it be, Washington? Your choices are YEP and NAW. (The respective acronyms stand for Yes End Penalties and New Approach Washington.)

The new kid on the block, Washington state cannabis reform group Yes End Penalties Washington (YEP WA), will announce a new marijuana legalization drive at 11 a.m. Thursday on the North Steps of the Legislative Building at the State Capitol in Olympia.

Initiative sponsor and Lacey City Councilman Ron Lawson will announce “Initiative to the Legislature 505,” which would remove cannabis-related civil and criminal penalties for adults in Washington state. Supporters of I-505 will speak at the event.
Yes End Penalties WA is inviting news media and interested members of the public to attend and compare YEP to NAW.
“Removing marijuana penalties will not conflict with federal law, avoiding preemption and empowering the people of Washington state to step away from the fear of speaking for cannabis reform and directing their legislators to create fair and evenhanded regulation that benefits the public, rather than special interest groups and based on fact and science, not misinformation or ‘reefer madness’ propaganda,” said YEP’s Don Skakie.

You have the right to remain silent…seriously


With cannabis laws in flux not only from state to state these days, but even from city to city and county to county, it is more important than ever to know your rights should you ever get pulled over by the police.
More often than not, the best advice is to keep your record – and your car – clean as can be, and if you do get rolled, shut the hell up and give as little information as possible.
Here we present two recent examples of exactly how not to deal with the cops when it comes to cars and cannabis.

Adrian Wyllie.


When Adrian Wyllie is elected the next governor of Florida, he’s going to legalize all marijuana and have it regulated like alcohol. That’s just one of a plethora of libertarian ideas from the Libertarian candidate, who is looking to take down establishment candidates Rick Scott and Charlie Crist.
Like any Libertarian, he believes government should mind its own damned business and stop meddling in people’s lives. That includes same-sex marriage, taxes, Medicare, and, yep, weed. But no one knows this. Because he’s not even getting an opportunity to debate it with Scott or Crist directly, which is significant. Because while Wyllie’s chances of actually winning this thing are slim to none, he might just tip the scales one way or the other for those other two guys. More at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

http://seuss.wikia.com/


You might think that drunkenly plowing his car into the Capitol building at 3am, then going on to evade prosecution and finish out his term as a U.S. Congressman, only to become a leading voice opposing marijuana legalization would make Patrick Kennedy the biggest delta-bravo in Project SAM.
Ok, he might still be, but boy does he have some competition from his partner, and co-founder of “Smart Approaches to Marijuana”, Kevin Sabet.
The PhD associate professor has a mind-numbing piece up over at Huffington Post right now, instructing the rest of us on how to talk about pot. It’s a 5-step plan … 7 steps short of the one Patrick Kennedy is somehow above, but would have no problem imposing on you.


We really feel for our fellow writers at our sister paper in Houston, The Houston Press. Not only can they not legally go home and smoke marijuana, they don’t get the pleasure of covering the medical marijuana industry and culture from a first-hand perspective (except for the occasional strain review of lab-make smokable drugs often called “synthetic cannabis).
But they can dream, can’t they? Case and point: Angelica Leicht’s Best Pot-Related Jobs in the Cannabis Industry. Read on for more.


I’ve loved the culture of cannabis for a long time now. Not long after I first started smoking weed back in 1977, I started collecting rolling paper packs, and kept adding to the collection for roughly the first decade of my stonerdom.
Wonder of wonders, it turns out the collection survived for 25 years and, thanks to my sister Lynda to mailing it from Alabama, it now returns to the light of day. It was very much like opening a time capsule to again see these little relics of a bygone era.
Upon viewing the collection of 50-plus varieties of rolling papers — many of which are no longer available, or at least no longer being manufactured — I thought about how the tides of social change, i.e. weed culture, rolled across America in the late 70s, only to be turned back in the early 80s during the “Just Say No” Reagan years.

Dumb As A Blog

​Think American cops are dumb? From time to time, police in other countries step up to the plate and prove that they can make statements every bit as stupid as those from their American brothers in blue.

Case in point: After a “drugs factory” (what the Harborough Mail chose to call a pot patch) was raided, local yokel police passed on this dire admonition to a wide-eyed public:
Police are warning that when cannabis plants reach the final stages of maturity the odour they release has carcinogenic properties … Officers who deal with the plants use ventilation masks and protective suits and people who have plants in their home, especially anyone with young children, may be exposing their family to a health risk.
Yep, and remember you read it here, first, folks: Just smelling one of those horrible cannabis plants can give you cancer!
Of course, that’s complete horse shit, and anybody who’d believe it either hasn’t looked into the subject or is a damn fool… or likely both of the above, in the case of most police officers.

Stephanie Bishop
From left, activists Anthony Martinelli, Cydney Moore, Daniel Erdmann and Steve Phun protest at the Federal Building in Seattle on Wednesday

About 40 medical marijuana patients were stirred into action on Wednesday, protesting at the Federal Building in Seattle after Tuesday’s raids by the federal government on dispensaries across Western Washington.
“I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see over 40 committed activists in the cold and rain in front of the Federal Building today,” said activist Don Skakie of legalization effort Yes End Penalties Washington (YEP WA). “Forty might not seem like much to some, but they represent many who could not, weren’t able or were just plain too scared to show up to defend our rights and tell the Feds to back off.” 
One of those patients, 28-year-old Juliana Plemitscher, who treats her epilepsy with cannabis, said she wouldn’t normally join a public protest against marijuana laws outside the Federal Building, reports Scott Gutierrez at the Seattle P.I.
“It never really occurred to me to get involved in something like this, but when it was Seattle Cross that got shut down — those were good guys,” Plemitscher said. “It makes it kind of personal.”

KOMO News
DEA agent Tuesday morning at Seattle Cannabis Co-op’s location in the Rainier neighborhood

​Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided medical marijuana collectives in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Puyallup, Rochester, and Lacey, Washington, as a coordinated raid swept across the Puget Sound region on Tuesday.

Patient advocates and legal defense groups report that at least nine dispensaries have been raided, according to The Seattle Times. Ben Livingston of the patient advocacy group Cannabis Defense Coalition said he’s spoken with several dispensary owners and defense attorney Aaron Pelley, who confirmed raids were occurring.

“I’m in shock because now I have no pain medicine,” said patient Cameron Christenson outside of Seattle Cannabis Co-op on Rainer Avenue, reports David Rose at Q13 Fox News. “I can think of 100 crack houses in town — why don’t you go raid those?”
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