Search Results: las-vegas (9)

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions missed major opportunities this week to rail against legal marijuana, giving marijuana-industry experts some much-craved hope that a crackdown is not imminent.

The cannabis-hating U.S. Attorney General delivered a speech at the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas on Wednesday about crime, drugs, and immigration, but failed to mention the state’s newly launched recreational program.

A little known aspect of busts.
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An investigation in Reason finds “ widespread, unchecked violence against pets during drug raids.” Two Detroit officers it found have killed more than 100 dogs each.

The owner of Med-West, a San Diego extraction company that was raided by local authorities in January is seeking a return of his frozen assets. $324,000 cash was seized during the raid. No criminal charges have been filed.

Police departments are becoming more tolerant of applicants’ past pot smoking.

Las Vegas police said they would still pursue possession arrests, though the district attorney said they wouldn’t be prosecuted.

With Trump’s election, federal inmates incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses fear their window to win clemency is closing. “Some of these people are bad dudes,”  Trump said at an August rally “These are people out walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks.”

CBS tells the story of Harry Anslinger, a leading figure in passing the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which made it illegal.

The New Yorker sent Adrian Chen to the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte is waging a brutal drug war. The article is subtly titled “ When a Populist Demagogue Takes Over.

In California, police are concerned about home grows.

Time Magazine calls hmbldt vape pens one of the 25 best inventions of 2016.
Ozy discovers “ happy pizza” in Cambodia. A Barcelona cannabis club was closed by authorities. There’s a cannabis/comic book convention today in Colorado Springs.

Vice learns how to make “ the most potent weed oil.”

The Washington Post recommends four books to understand the new weed reality. They include Marijuana: A Short History, by John Hudak, Jesse Ventura’s Marijuana Manifesto, Sacred Bliss: A Spiritual History of Cannabis by Mark S. Ferrara and Cooking with Cannabis by Laurie Goldrich.

The New Yorker published a pot-industry cartoon. It isn’t especially funny.

 

Every day in prisons across the country, inmates are scheming to devise innovative, or disgusting, new ways to smuggle in drugs, phones, and other contraband. Every day, surely some of those attempts get busted, but maybe none quite as ridiculous as what happened this past Sunday in Jackson, Michigan.
When it comes to ridiculous prison smuggling attempts, there is some pretty stiff competition.

Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931, with the Sal Sagev Hotel becoming the state’s first legal casino. Fast forward 82 years, and quite a bit has changed, not just in Las Vegas, but across the state.
In the home of Sin City, it’s hard to imagine being the “first” to do anything. But last weekend, Robert Calkin and the California-based Cannabis Career Institute did just that, when they hosted nearly 70 students for Nevada’s first-ever medical marijuana school.

Law Office of Joel M. Mann

Numbers Put The Lie To Claims Washington’s I-502 Won’t Harm Patients

Driving under the influence of marijuana. It’s the new scare tactic used by prohibitionists and drug warriors as an argument against the legalization of cannabis. Unfortunately, it’s also used by some people who are supposed to be on our side as a political wedge issue to gain support for Initiative 502, a Washington legalization measure that includes blood THC limits as per se proof that you’re guilty of DUI.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, despite its opposition as an organization to per se marijuana DUI testing, has endorsed I-502, warts and all. This seeming contradiction — wherein NORML supports per se testing in Washington, after having opposed it in medical marijuana states like Colorado and California — occurs because, NORML says, it’s important to pass an initiative, any initiative, to “send the Feds a message.”
Well, if the message you’re sending them is “open season on medical marijuana patients,” then congratulations; mission accomplished! Otherwise, not so much.

THC Finder

​The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado has endorsed an initiative to legalize marijuana in that state — one which does not establish what some activists call an “illegitimate” DUIC (Driving Under the Influence of Cannabis) law. But the ACLU of Washington state, according to Seattle-based political activist Edward Agazarm, “still out of sync with voters and supporters, stumbles forward with fatally flawed Initiative 502.”

ACLU-WA has formed New Approach Washington (NAW), a political action committee with the stated goal of promoting I-502 to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana. “Unfortunately, many citizen initiatives — though well intentioned — are riddled with errors and mistakes,” Agazarm said in an email to Toke of the Town and other media outlets. “Initiative 502 is a prime example.”
“In what appears to be Washington’s latest initiative blunder, I-502 contains last-minute DUI language that, because of science, has already been rejected by state state Legislatures (Colorado and Oregon) and a state Supreme Court (Michigan),” Agazarm said.

Photo: Leila Avidani/Las Vegas Sun
Marijuana grow house bust in Las Vegas: One of 112 so far this year

​The bad economy in Las Vegas has meant opportunity for some clandestine cannabis cultivators. Las Vegas police have busted 112 marijuana grow houses this year, more than double the number raided in 2007.

With the Las Vegas economy sucking wind, a large and unprecedented number of homes are now empty and are rarely checked by police or the banks that now own them, reports Jackie Valley at the Las Vegas Sun.
Additionally, some financially desperate absentee owners and investors are renting to tenants without conducting background checks, according to Lt. Laz Chavez of the Metro Las Vegas Police Department.
Pot growers are even moving into commercial real estate, where the relaxed or absent background checks give them an “in,” reports Gus Lubin at the Business Insider. For example, police seized around 90 plants in a September raid of a large warehouse that neighboring tenants thought was a bakery. (Insert “getting baked” joke here.)

Photo: The Cannabis Post
Trevon Cole and his fiancé, Sequoia Pearce, in happier days. The unarmed Cole was shot and killed in his bathroom by a narcotics officer during a marijuana raid.

​The Las Vegas police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Trevon Cole during a June drug raid over small-time marijuana sales was “justified,” a coroner’s inquest found Saturday night, despite contradictory findings from the medical examiner.

Cole, 21, and his eight-months-pregnant fiancé, Sequoia Pearce, 20, were at their apartment when police serving a search warrant burst through the door, reports Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org. Cole was shot in the bathroom by Detective Bryan Yant who, in testimony Saturday, said he kicked in the bathroom door and claimed he saw Cole squatting by the toilet, apparently flushing marijuana.
Yant claimed he saw Cole rise to his feet “while moving his hands in a shooting motion” and that he saw something silvery or metallic in Cole’s hand. He then fired once, killing Cole.
“Unfortunately, he made an aggressive act toward me,” claimed Yant under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Chris Owens. “He made me do my job.”
It’s unfortunate that Detective Yant believes “his job” is shooting and killing unarmed marijuana suspects.