Search Results: rodriguez (16)

The state’s growing regions can be dangerous.

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

Two women were arrested for detaining four brothers on a California pot farm and forcing them to work for six months. In Colorado, 14 Chinese nationals were arrested at an illegal grow. Authorities are investigating whether they were “labor trafficked.”

In SFWeekly, I recommended that the industry adopt an abuse-free product certification to curtail worker exploitation.

“Oink, oink, oink.”


In a prelude to city council chaos in Santa Ana over a ‘Fuck the Police’ hat last week, Mayor Miguel Pulido praised policemen amid jeers during a previous meeting. Santa Ana Police officer John G. Rodriguez received a service award as one of the honorees on September 2 for being on the force 25 years–almost as long as the reign of the Pulidiato itself!
“He’s received two Santa Ana police department service medals of valor for actions during encounters with armed suspects,” the Don Papi said, mentioning the cop’s many credentials. Left out, of course, is the fact that lawsuits filed this year allege officer Rodriguez used excessive and lethal force in shooting Travis Mock, an unarmed man, in the back last year in an incident that also left another man, Jason Hallstrom, dead.

Wikimedia commons/Public domain image.

The mayor of Amsterdam is pushing for laws that would close cannabis-friendly coffee shops within 250 meters of schools, but only for part of the day. After about 6 p.m. as well as all weekend long and on holidays, the shops can open back up to tokers and space-cake eaters alike.
In the states, heads would roll over shops being within 250 feet of a school or even 1,000 feet of a school. Actually, that’s not true. The feds simply send out $.49 letters to everyone within 1,000 feet of schools and shut them down without really lifting a finger.

Hey man, it beats the hell out of Bayer.

One former heart surgeon says that while some people are on a daily dose of aspirin to lower the severity of problems — and the likelihood of strokes — after a heart attack or a first stroke, there’s a better way, reports Sabrina Rodriguez at Fox 40.
Dr. Dave Allen says that marijuana is a better alternative.
“Eating a bud a day will keep the stroke away,” Dr. Allen said. “No other medicine made by man can help in this manner.”

The Weed Blog

​Conference Will Spotlight Devastating Impact of Drug War on Mexico, Latin America and U.S. Latino Communities
 
More than a thousand activists, experts, health professionals, elected officials, students and law enforcement will gather in Los Angeles November 2-5 for the 2011 International Drug Policy Reform Conference.
 
Among a broad range of topics, part of the conference program will focus on the destructive impact of the drug war on Latin American and Latino communities, and the urgent need for a new and more effective approach. Several panels and roundtable discussions – featuring prominent scholars, activists, journalists, human rights defenders, peace movement leaders and current and former officials – will address the failure of current drug policies for Latin Americans and Latinos, and the possibilities for critical reforms in the future.

A&E
A small unit, the Laredo Police Department Narcotics Unit takes on dangerous drug cases usually reserved for federal agencies. They seem not to realize that their entire occupation is a moronic waste of everyone’s time and especially of our precious tax dollars, and that at the end of this stupid Drug War they’ll all be flippin’ burgers at McDonald’s.

​Bordertown: Laredo, a new reality show coming up on A&E, is supposed to be a “real-time report” from one of the most violent fronts in America’s so-called “War On Drugs” (which, like all wars, is actually a war on people).

The 10-part series premieres on A&E this Thursday at 10 p.m., and was produced by Al Roker (yep, that weather guy from the Today show).
The show follows a mostly Latino narcotics unit on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Laredo residents have reportedly already voiced their displeasure with the show, which apparently doesn’t portray their city in a very flattering fashion.

Chris Collins
Official media estimates of the crowd ran as high as 1,500, but according to activist Missy Griggs of Clinton Township, who attended the rally, it may have been closer to 3,000 or even 4,000 people there.

Greg Deruiter/Lansing State Journal
Protesters converged on the Michigan state Capitol on Wednesday because of a recent court decision banning the sale of medical marijuana in dispensaries

​​​About 1,500 supporters filled the Capitol lawn Wednesday afternoon at the state capitol in Lansing, carrying signs reading “Patients Are Not Criminals” and “Weed Deserve Better” in what is being called the largest pro-medical marijuana rally in Michigan.

What Marisa Schultz of The Detroit News called a “spirited gathering” came after an Appeals Court ruling last month that resulted in the closing of many of the state’s estimated 400 to 500 medical marijuana dispensaries.
The ruling banned patient-to-patient marijuana sales for the nearly 100,000 carriers of Michigan medical marijuana cards, effectively limiting the ways in which patients can get medical marijuana and leaving them with few safe options to get their doctor-recommended cannabis, according to supporters.

America’s Most Wanted
Former McAllen, Texas police officer Francisco Meza-Rojas was sentenced to 27 years for dealing drugs.

​A former police officer in McAllen, Texas, was sentenced to serve 324 months in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons as punishment for his involvement in a drug trafficking conspiracy which spanned a period of at least eight years starting in 1996, U.S. Attorney José Angel Moreno announced on Tuesday.

Francisco Meza-Rojas, 45, was identified as a leader of a smuggling organization which operated on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande River between Granjeno and Penitas, a rural area south of Mission, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
Meza-Rojas and an associate, Jose Moncerrat Narvaez, led the part of a larger organization which specialized in the transportation of controlled substances from the edge of the Rio Grande River to locations in the Mission and McAllen areas where they would be held until the owners of the drugs picked them up.
Meza-Rojas used his brothers, as well as other individuals, to act as lookouts during the smuggling operations, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. He would strategically place his workers along the smuggling route to call out the locations and movements of law enforcement vehicles throughout the area, the office said.

Graphic: Women’s Marijuana Movement

​The Women’s Marijuana Movement on Tuesday, October 5, will coordinate news conferences throughout California and across the nation in support of Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative to control and tax marijuana similarly to alcohol, and to highlight the need for marijuana law reform nationwide.

“The Women of these United States are joining together and showing their support of Proposition 19 and the people of California to vote YES and take this historic step towards reforming our nation’s marijuana laws,” Cheyanne Weldon of Texas NORML told Toke of the Town.
“Throughout history, when women have shown their support of prohibition (or lifting of a prohibition), society as a whole has taken notice,” Weldon told us.
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