Search Results: raids (329)

A little known aspect of busts.
Here’s your weekly dose of cannabis news from the newsletter WeedWeek.
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.

That could end with legalization.

The following is excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek. Get your free and confidential subscription at WeedWeek.net.

California companies tell Inc. that a growing number of raids on businesses in California owe to asset forfeiture laws which allow authorities to seize cash and other valuables even if criminal charges aren’t filed.

An American citizen who was invasively searched at the Texas/Mexico border in 2012 will receive a $475,000 settlement but not an admission of guilt from the U.S. Border and Customs Protection agency. She previously received $1.1M from an El Paso, Texas, hospital that conducted secondary searches.

Devontre Thomas, the Oregon teen who faces a federal misdemeanor charge for possessing “about a gram” of marijuana, allegedly had it at his boarding school which is run by the federal Bureau of Indian Education. He faces up to a year in prison.

A judge in a trafficking case has ordered Yahoo to disclose how it handles deleted emails. The evidence includes emails that, according to Yahoo’s policy should not be accessible.

Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte defended war on drugs which includes offering money to those who kill drug dealers.

Masamitsu Yamamoto, a Japanese man with liver cancer died at 58 while on trial for MED possession.

A lot of cannabis is found on federal land. The mail is a popular way to send weed and other drugs.

An Alabama prison guard was charged with using a Bible to smuggle opioids into a prison.

TV personality Montel Williams was briefly detained in Germany for MED.

At 99.9 % THC, crystalline is the strongest hash in the world. It sells for $200 a gram in southern California dispensaries.

Humboldt County, Calif. will start stamping product originating in the famed growing region. John Malkovich will star as the head of a crime family in the Netflix series “ Humboldt,” inspired by Emily Brady’s book “ Humboldt: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier.”

Hip hop star Lil’ Wayne stormed off stage 10 minutes into his set at a High Times event in southern California. High Times said it was “baffled” and “awaiting an explanation.”

Yahoo meets Jeremy Plumb, Portland’s “wizard of weed.” The Oregon State Fair will give out blue ribbons for top pot plants. A Portland director made the first professional cannabis drink commercial/video. It features a cute song.

Billionaire Richard Branson said he has smoked pot with his son and recommended that other parents do the same. Cannabis Now interviews impresario Dr. Dina, who’s not a real doctor.

Cannabis absinthe exists, but doesn’t contain THC.

The Cannabist says little gifts of weed are not a substitute for tipping.

In The Onion, Joe Biden said it breaks his heart that so many hard working Americans can only afford “shitty ditch weed.”

Here’s the WeedWeek list of pot journalists on Twitter. Send recommendations for upcoming lists (opponents, executives, activists etc.) to [email protected]. Self-nominations welcome.

The days of jackbooted feds raiding legit medical marijuana operations are mostly a thing of the past under the omnibus federal spending bill signed by President Obama this week. An amendment slipped into the bill denies funding for federal anti-pot raids of legit marijuana businesses in states where cannabis has been legalized for medical or recreational purposes. That would include nearly 32 states and the District of Columbia.
The addition to the $1.1 trillion spending bill, hammered out by the House and approved by the Senate last week, was written in part by a Southern California congressman.

Colorado Rep. Cory Gardner.


Last week, we shared news about the U.S. House voting to defund DEA medical marijuana raids in states where the substance is legal. But that doesn’t mean the count was unanimous — even from pot-friendly Colorado.
Indeed, three of Colorado’s seven representatives voted against the defunding amendment, including U.S. senatorial candidate Cory Gardner — and a representative for NORML, among the nation’s most prominent marijuana-advocacy organizations, confirms that it hopes to target officials like him for anti-pot votes.


Last month’s Spice bust in Loveland, Colorado, in which a business owner and two employees were arrested for peddling a substance colloquially known as synthetic marijuana (even though it has little in common with cannabis), got plenty of attention. But the operation pales in comparison to a nationwide series of raids and arrests conducted by assorted federal, state and local agencies as coordinated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado.

Miami-Dade Police conducted three raids of three separate grow houses in the Redland on Tuesday and hauled off about $1 million worth of marijuana in the process.


Local 10 reports that 800 pounds of pot was rounded up at a grow house on Southwest 200th Street and 174th Avenue alone. The narcotic bureau broke down a gate to find a house with two rooms turned into a hydroponics lab. 30 plants were found in one room. 25 in the other. The owner of that home managed to escape before police arrived, and they’re still searching for suspects.
Read the full story over at the Miami New Times

Last week, the DEA and the IRS, aided by local officers, conducted raids on multiple marijuana businesses in Denver and Boulder.
While the feds haven’t shared many details of these actions, info has surfaced about a potential link to Juan Guardarrama, aka “Tony Montana, a Miami con who, until recently, held a Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division license. Nonetheless, Colorado NORML thinks the timing of the raids is suspect. Denver Westword has the followup coverage.

Several news sources have posted over the last few days about how the recent federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington were especially surprising since Washington voters approved the possession and sales of limited amounts of cannabis back in November.
Several media outlets have conflated the two, when they aren’t the same thing. In fact, Washington has yet to open any recreational dispensaries. Any dispensary that is open now is following the exact same rules they had to follow before I-502 and recreational sales haven’t even begun yet.

Update – 2:55 p.m. 7/25/2013: According to the Associated Press, four dispensaries were targeted in raids yesterday, despite claims by one Washington attorney that as many as 18 were on the chopping block.
So far, Seattle Cross, Tacoma Cross, Key Peninsula Cross and Bayside Collective (formerly Lacey Cross) are the four dispensaries identified. All four were also parts of raids in 2011. The feds haven’t officially commented on it, but employees at Bayside Collective say agents told them that the raids were part of a two-year investigation.

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