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District Attorney Kim Ogg and heads of local law enforcement announced Thursday that, starting March 1, all police agencies in Harris County will no longer arrest people caught with four ounces or less of marijuana, and the DA’s office will no longer be prosecuting those cases.

The remarkable move, which Ogg had championed throughout her 2016 campaign, pushes the third largest county in the nation to the forefront of marijuana reform in places where it is still illegal. Harris County will join only the Brooklyn County District Attorney’s Office in New York in choosing to divert misdemeanor marijuana defendants away from jail entirely, saving taxpayers millions of dollars and saving thousands of people the lifelong burden of a criminal record. Here are the details.

It’s looking like the start of a beautiful friendship between the next Harris County sheriff and district attorney — or however else you want to put that in criminal-justice speak.

DA-elect Kim Ogg has pushed decriminalizing misdemeanor amounts of marijuana for the past two years and will finally have the chance to implement it come January 1 — but the proposal likely will come to hold more weight given Ogg is far from the lone reformer trying to change the criminal-justice landscape in Harris County. Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez has publicly pushed for the end to arresting people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, too. And with the two foremost law enforcement officers in the third-largest county in the nation gunning for what is bound to be a sweeping reform, Houston NORML Communications Director Jason Miller says the message this will send across the state and even the country will no doubt be significant.

Here’s what they plan to do.

The state votes in November.

Here’s your daily round up of pot news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) said she’s “open” to REC legalization in Massachusetts.

Pennsylvania is moving aggressively to create rules for its MED industry. Major regulatory changes are coming in L.A.

Portland (Ore.) City Hall is fighting with a pot shop about a license requirement.

In SFWeekly, I said we need more weed reporters. I also spoke to HelloMD about WeedWeek and the cannabis beat.

The service also failed to protect customer information.
Here’s your daily round up of pot news, excerpted from the newsletter WeedWeek.

Irvine, Calif.-based Weedmaps is full of bogus dispensary reviews, according to an investigation by the L.A. Times.

Reporter Paresh Dave looked at nearly 600 businesses reviewed on the site and found that 70% included reviews submitted from a single IP address (i.e. a single computer). A textual analysis found that 62% of reviews on the site are “fake.”

Weedmaps, a Yelp-like service with operations in several states, had stored the IP addresses of anonymous reviewers, in its publicly available code. A Weedmaps executive said the 62% figure is far too high, and emphasized that reviews are only part of the product.

Florida voters failed to get enough “yes” votes for medical cannabis yesterday by about two percentage points. Voters approved the bill overwhelmingly, with 58 percent for the measure and only 42 percent against it. But a 60 percent approval rating was needed to pass Amendment 2.
Amendment 2 supporters were disheartened but promised to run the measure again in the future.

Jurvetson/FlickrCommons


With a constant flow of cannabis-related headlines pouring out of Canada, the United States, and Mexico on a daily basis, it is easy to overlook the fact that public support for legal cannabis use is on the rise on continents all around the globe.
In Australia, marijuana is by far the most popular and widely used drug, with over 1/3rd of all Aussie’s over the age of 22 admitting to having taken a toke or two in their time. But as it becomes increasingly more popular in their home country, those same Aussies have begun to take their stash with them when traveling abroad, and simple pot possession has several of them facing possible death penalties as they sit in Chinese prisons awaiting their fates.

Thai Stick.


“Although my long hair is gone now and my views are more conservative than they once were, there is a part of my past I will not sweep under the rug and disavow. I am old enough and honest enough to remember the Thai sticks that flooded my beachside town each summer–a surfer’s equivalent of the Beaujolais nouveau.
During the 1970s, Thai stick marijuana–so-called because the buds were tightly wrapped around hemp or bamboo sticks before being packed into watertight bundles for the long trans-Pacific trip–was one of the most valuable commodities in the world. At $2,000 per pound, a single load of Thai could and did make many a smuggler a small fortune. To us pot-smoking teenaged surfers, these scammers–the people who fetched these loads from afar–were heroic Robin Hood characters who trafficked only in pot and surfed more world-class waves than anyone else.”
Do yourself a favor, read the rest of Peter Maguire’s amazing tale over at the OC Weekly.

USDOJ


Update – 10:00 a.m. 5/21/2014: FBI Director James Comey has pulled a 180 today, announcing that he is in no way loosening the agency policy on marijuana use. Comey has indicated that his comments were a joke (an unfunny joke that basically stereotypes all young people and computer hackers as pot users). Comey retracted his comments today at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting after being grilled by Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions.
“I am absolutely dead-set against using marijuana,” Comey said today. “I did not say that I am going to change that ban.” Original story below.

Michigan capitol.

Update 11/06/2013: Voters in Lansing, Jackson and Ferndale, Michigan all legalized the possession and use of up to an ounce of cannabis on private property yesterday. Jackson voters passed their measure by more than 800 votes, and roughly 63 percent of Lansing voters approved their measure.
Supporters say the move will force the legislature to approve a similar statewide measure during the upcoming legislative session.

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