Search Results: alapoet/ (11)


I’ve loved the culture of cannabis for a long time now. Not long after I first started smoking weed back in 1977, I started collecting rolling paper packs, and kept adding to the collection for roughly the first decade of my stonerdom.
Wonder of wonders, it turns out the collection survived for 25 years and, thanks to my sister Lynda to mailing it from Alabama, it now returns to the light of day. It was very much like opening a time capsule to again see these little relics of a bygone era.
Upon viewing the collection of 50-plus varieties of rolling papers — many of which are no longer available, or at least no longer being manufactured — I thought about how the tides of social change, i.e. weed culture, rolled across America in the late 70s, only to be turned back in the early 80s during the “Just Say No” Reagan years.

I haven’t had this much fun since Mom brought home a Variety Pack of cereal when I was a kid. Both times, I was packin’ bowls like there’s no tomorrow. (Photo by Steve Elliott)

While visiting friendly Dockside Cooperative in the Seattle suburb of Fremont (“the Center of the Universe”), I noticed one welcome innovation that budtender Aaron told me is very helpful in allowing patients to find the strains that work best for them: sampler packs.
Dockside has sampler packs of both sativa strains and indicas, as well as 50/50 packs with four strains of each. Seen in the photo above is a Sativa Sampler Pack I got at Dockside today.

Photo: Hawkins County Sheriff’s Department
Gary Wayne Parker of Surgoinsville, Tennessee killed his friend after a drunken argument over marijuana growing methods.

​A Tennessee man was shot dead early Friday morning during an alcohol-fueled argument over marijuana-growing techniques.

About 2:45 a.m. on Friday, deputies were called to a shooting complaint at the residence of Gary Wayne Parker, 55, in Surgoinsville, Tennessee. They found Randy J. Armstrong, 53, also of Surgoinsville, on the floor with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, reports Jeff Bobo of the Kingsport Times-News.
Armstrong was transported to Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, where he later died.

Photo: Reality Catcher
Michael Lapihuska (left) being interviewed by Toke of the Town editor Steve Elliott, Birmingham, Alabama, October 9, 2010

​A former Alabama resident who was busted for pot while back home for the holidays last December — and who is a legal medical marijuana patient in California — will finally be able to return home after signing a plea deal Monday for 13 months’ unsupervised probation.

“I really don’t even feel like it’s over yet,” said Michael Lapihuska, who was arrested in Anniston, Alabama in December 2009 for the medical marijuana authorized by his doctor. “I don’t — maybe after I get back to California,” he said, reports Laura Camper at The Anniston Star.
Monday’s plea deal lowered the felony marijuana charge to a misdemeanor, and allowed Lapihuska to plead guilty to that count and an original misdemeanor possession charge, reports the Mobile Press Register.

Photo: Steve Elliott/Reality Catcher
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson at Portland Hempstalk 2010 in September

​Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a likely 2012 Republican presidential candidate, is already known as a supporter of cannabis legalization, and has said he smoked pot during his youth. “I never exhaled,” he joked recently. But now Johnson has admitted publicly for the first time that he smoked marijuana more recently — from 2005 to 2008 — for medicinal purposes.

“It’s not anything I volunteer, but you’re the only person that actually asked about it,” Johnson told reporter John McCormack of The Weekly Standard. “But for luck, I guess, I wasn’t arrested,” said Johnson, who was Governor of New Mexico from 1994 to 2002.
Although marijuana was illegal for medical or any other purposes in New Mexico until 2007, Johnson said he needed cannabis after a 2005 paragliding accident in Hawaii. His sails got snared in a tree, and Johnson fell about 50 feet to the ground, he said, suffering multiple bone fractures.
“In my human experience, it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt,” Johnson said.
“Rather than using painkillers, which I have used on occasion before, I did smoke pot,” Johnson said, “as a result of having broken my back, blowing out both of my knees, breaking ribs, really taking about three years to recover.”

Photo: Steve Elliott/Reality Catcher
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson at Portland Hempstalk 2010 in September

​​Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson could bring the issue of marijuana legalization into the 2012 Republican presidential primary if he decides to run.

“The issue of marijuana legalization is already an attention-getter,” Johnson told Marc Caputo of the St. Petersburg Times after a visit to Florida last week to test the political waters. “And you can’t shy away from it. I have to defend it. I have to defend the position.”
According to Johnson, marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, and arresting and locking up pot smokers costs too much, both in terms of civil liberties and for the taxpayers.

Photo: alapoet
Seattleites protest marijuana laws in the annual Marijuana March, May 2008.

​As promised, Seattle’s new city attorney is dismissing marijuana possession cases.

By the end of January, more than 25 people charged with possession could be off the hook, reports Linda Brill at KING 5 News.
Even if you are arrested for marijuana in Seattle, it’s more than likely you won’t be prosecuted.
During his campaign for city attorney, Pete Holmes promised he would dismiss marijuana possession cases brought by his predecessor, former City Attorney Pete Carr. Despite an initiative passed by Seattle voters a few years ago, Carr’s office had continued to vigorously prosecute many cannabis cases.

Photo: alapoet
Signage at the Seattle Marijuana March, Washington. A solid majority of Washingtonians support legalization, according to a new poll.

​A solid majority, 56 percent, of Washingtonians believe legalizing marijuana is a “good idea,” according to a new poll.
The poll of 500 adults in the state, conducted for Seattle TV station KING 5 by SurveyUSA, asked respondents: “State lawmakers are considering making marijuana possession legal. Do you think legalizing marijuana is a good idea? Or a bad idea?”
Thirty-six percent of respondents described legalizing pot as a “bad idea,” while eight percent weren’t sure. The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percent.
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