Search Results: crime (887)

Strict laws in the city and county of Los Angeles have, over the years, led to the closure of hundreds of illicit marijuana dispensaries, action hailed by some as a way to combat drug-related crime such as robberies and loitering.

But a new study contradicts the argument, sometimes made by law enforcement itself, that weed stores are crime magnets. The research, published in the July issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, took a close look at the city’s closure of hundreds of illicit dispensaries in 2010.

It concluded that crime around pot shops forced to shut down actually increased afterward. “When marijuana dispensaries were shut down, we found the opposite of what we were expecting,” says the paper’s co-author, USC business economics professor Tom Y. Chang. “Crime actually increased in the areas that closed relative to the ones allowed to stay open.”

It also said other drug problems are more pressing.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.
In a report, the DEA said media attention is making it more difficult to prosecute marijuana offenders.
Ferrell Scott, sentenced to life without parole for possession and conspiracy to sell marijuana, was denied clemency by President Obama.

Charles “Eddy” Lepp, “a defiant 64-year-old Vietnam vet and ordained Rastafarian minister” was released after serving eight years in federal prison for growing.

Two pieces in The Guardian examine the human toll of Mexico’s decade-old, U.S. supported drug war

A New York Times photojournalist documented dozens of homicide victims of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. The Duterte administration defended its record to Reuters.

Big deal political thinker Ian Bremmer tweeted that Duterte wants to advise Trump on drug policy.

The activist New Jersey Weedman, who faces cannabis charges, compared himself to a “ prisoner at Guantanamo.

Leafly tells the stories of Sam Caldwell and Moses Baca, “ drug war prisoners 1 & 2,” in 1937. Both were apprehended in Denver. It also cites the work of a “48-year old drug felon and autodidactic cannabis historian who goes by the pen name “Uncle Mike,” maintains a site at UncleMikesResearch.com.

Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, said he tried MED for his back pain. It didn’t help him but he took a strong stand in favor of it for athletes:

“If you’re an NFL player, in particular, and you got lot of pain, I don’t think there’s any question that pot is better for your body than Vicodin,” Kerr, 51, said. “And yet, athletes everywhere are prescribed Vicodin like it’s Vitamin C, like it’s no big deal. And there’s like this perception in our country that over-the-counter drugs are fine but pot is bad. Now, I think that’s changing.”

The comment got attention and he later added to his remarks. Kerr said the NBA should explore MED for pain relief. New York Knicks president and celebrated coach Phil Jackson said he’d also used MED for pain adding, “I don’t think we have been able to stop it in the NBA. I think it still goes on and is still a part of the culture in the NBA. I think it is something that we either have to accommodate or figure out another way to deal with it.”

Forbes has more on the science of athletes and MED.

Vice asked budtenders about their worst customers. They’re not fond of weed snobs and scary types. The Cannabist serves up 10 budtender commandments, including “Thou Shalt Not Be Too High.”

The Pantone Color Institute, picked Greenery as the color of 2017.

The AP visits Malana, India, a Himalayan village that depends on cannabis. Uruguay will host a cannabis museum.

A bestseller in Germany and the U.K. says the Nazis ingested huge amounts of meth, and that Hitler was an opiate addict. “Blitzed,” will be published here in April.

Arrests for possession are ongoing even in legal states.

Here’s your daily round-up of pot-news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Download WeedWeek’s free 2016 election guide here.

A study from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that more people are arrested for pot possession in the U.S. than for all violent crimes combined. See the report here.
Arizona’s REC debate has led to questions about how drug smugglers would adapt. REC supporters say traffickers will lose business. Opponents say they’ll switch to selling heroin and crystal meth.

Back in October, our colleagues at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times published a feature on people doing hard time for marijuana. One of the men profiled in the piece, Richard DeLisi, was sentenced in 1989 to 90 years for marijuana-related crimes, including trafficking and conspiracy to traffic.
Aging and in declining health, the 65-year-old DeLisi’s fate is in the hands of a court hearing that will decide if he will have one of his felony conspiracy charges reduced to a second-degree misdemeanor. Last week, Judge Michael Raiden of the Polk County Courthouse began a 30 day deliberation over a motion filed by DeLisi’s attorney, despite the state’s objections.

San Diego Police Department
Evidence photo from an October 15th raid on Market Greens marijuana dispensary in San Diego, CA


Another week means another horrible round of cannabis-related headlines coming out of sunny San Diego, California. In an attempt to turn America’s Finest City into the nation’s Ground Zero in the War on Weed, San Diego city officials, backed by a militant branch of the DEA and weed-hating local law enforcement, have almost totally shut down any idea of safe access to medical marijuana.
San Diego’s scene has been slashed from over 300 storefront medical marijuana dispensaries in 2011, to less than 40 in operation today – and not one of those 40 is operating with the consent of the city.


Kadesha Roberts was camped out at a friend’s condo in a cookie-cutter, tile-roofed development off McNab Road when the knock came. The short Jamaican woman with spiked hair opened the door to find a UPS man clutching a large package. After identifying herself, she grabbed it. Then all hell broke loose.
Broward deputies bolted toward her. Roberts dropped the package and tried to squeeze inside, but not fast enough. Cops snatched up the box, discovering bales of marijuana wrapped in green cellophane. Roberts was put in cuffs and the evidence shipped off to the county’s crime lab. That was July 2010, and normally the story would have ended there. Roberts would have been popped for trafficking and the UPS box would have been the prime evidence against her.
But the case wasn’t a slam dunk. Several pounds of the marijuana apparently vanished. More on this scandal at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

Here’s your “no shit” statement for the day: Legalizing limited amounts of marijuana in Colorado has not lead to an increase in crime in the Centennial State so far (nor will it ever).
According to data from the Colorado Department of Public Safety, crime has pretty much gone down in the Denver area in the last three months. Is it because everyone is getting stoned? Probably not. But it couldn’t hurt.


No one seriously believes anymore in the Reefer Madness depiction of marijuana use, in which this new-fangled devil weed transforms otherwise upstanding teenagers into murderous sociopaths. Even some otherwise staunch social conservatives (e.g. Texas Gov. Rick Perry) are beginning to embrace some degree of decriminalization as a fair and necessary step toward a fair and rational criminal justice system.
Yet there is a lingering strain of thought that full or partial legalization will inevitably bring a corresponding increase in crime. Not so, says UT Dallas criminology professor Robert Morris, the lead author of a just-published study of crime rates in states that have legalized medical marijuana.

California Governor Jerry Brown, apparently feeling the holiday spirit, spent a good part of Christmas Eve this year flexing an Executive power reserved only for state Governors, and the President of the United States himself – the power to pardon individuals of past crimes. While a pardon does not completely erase a crime from a person’s record, it does re-grant them certain rights, such as voting, serving on a jury, or in some cases even owning a firearm.
Governor Brown handed out a respectable 127 pardons this year, 93 of which pertained to drug-related crimes, many of those weed-related. The most notable from that array of individuals was 65 year old Robert Akers, convicted in 1968 of selling pot.

New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy is an ineffective, wasteful, sinister program, and now there’s data to prove it. New York’s Attorney General released a report on Thursday describing in painful detail just how profound a policy failing NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s pet program is.
Get this: Only one in 50 stop-and-frisk arrests results in convictions for violent crimes. It’s the same figure for weapons possession convictions — that’s 0.1 percent of all stops made.

The Village Voice has the full story.

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