The headline of a post published in this space last year posed the question, “Is Pueblo the Drug Bust Capital of Colorado?” And in recent months, law enforcement in the community has answered this question with a resounding “Yes,” particularly when it comes to marijuana crimes with an international flavor. In a series of raids over the past four months, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office, working in conjunction with other agencies, has seized more than 8,000 cannabis plants at allegedly illegal grows associated with foreign nationals. Among those arrested as part of the operations were eight men from Mexico and four from Cuba.
Search Results: mexicans (22)
Josue Rivas / OC Weekly |
“Your pain is our pain.” |
The story of 43 missing Mexican students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero refuses to disappear, as their whereabouts still remain a mystery more than two months after local police clashed with them on September 26. Anger continues to fuel protests in Mexico against the government over corruption, violence and ties to narcos. And on this side of the border, activists are holding their own rallies and bringing attention to the cause.
Voters in Santa Fe and Bernalillo County yesterday approved measures that call for the decriminalization an ounce of weed or less at the state level yesterday. The move didn’t actually change any laws, though. It’s more of a proclamation from voters to elected officials.
Oh, and it doesn’t actually hold the lawmakers to any promises either. Thankfully, there’s enough momentum that New Mexicans can expect several decriminalization and legalization measures to come their way in 2015.
It’s a debate that has raged for years: is the word “marijuana” racist? No, but plenty of people will tell you that it is because it’s rooted in the dark ages of cannabis history when white America began to purposefully associate cannabis with brown-skinned Mexicans as a way of creating more of a racial divide between the two cultures. It’s something we’ve examined in detail for more than two years in our Cannabis Time Capsule blog over at Westword.com. So does “marijuana” have a dubious history as a word? Yeah. But is it racist? No. We’ve moved past all of that and the term — which wasn’t racist then — stuck.
But you’ll still get the cannabis activist holdouts with no sense of humor or history who swear up and down that it’s racist to call cannabis “marijuana” or get offended when you refer to ganja as anything but “cannabis”. Case and point? Whoever runs the @MNCannabis twitter handle. Read more at the Minneapolis City Pages.
The California Highway Patrol playing tough-guy dress up and photo shoot with taxpayer money all to intimidate YOU. |
The American SWAT team has become a domestic extension of the United States military, conducting seek and kill thrill missions that have cost an increasing number of the average citizen in this country both life and limb. Not only are these raucous foot soldiers of the War on Drugs gaining sustutnance from their gnawing wrath against dark skin poverty, but their cutthroat infiltrations are without regard for public safety and ultimately, making enemies of a population they are paid to serve.
This is the consensus of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose recent study, entitled “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” paints a vile portrait of the Land of the Free by revealing how state and local law enforcement agencies are bribed by Uncle Sam to make drug busts in exchange for federal funding – an incentive program that has armed local yokel police departments to the teeth. The ACLU finds this military-grade arsenal is in the hands of lunatics who have accomplished very little but a violent onslaught of no-knock savagery that has invoked fear and panic throughout entire communities.
Over the last six years, more than 80,000 Mexicans have been killed due to excessive drug violence in their country – in part due to the marijuana trade. Legalizing marijuana would help curb that violence and help repair a country that has been torn apart in places by drug cartels and the criminalization of marijuana consumers.
That’s the message from 67 high-profile Mexican businessmen, ministers, artists, attorneys and even a Nobel Prize-winning scientists delivered Wednesday in a paid petition in several newspapers across the country.
Brick weed. |
At least one drug warrior is admitting that marijuana legalization measures in the states are leading to a decline in weed crossing the border from Mexico. An unnamed El Paso undercover narcotics officer tells KHOU in Houston that he’s starting to see more marijuana grown in the U.S. in the border town he patrols.
tokeofthetown.com |
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, a majority of New Mexicans think marijuana should be regulated and taxed, while 57 percent say penalties and a jail time should be reduced for possession of small amounts.
Soldiers For The Cause |
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