When your father is a former Major General with the Kuwait army, you might think that growing a few dozen pot plants on your roof would go unnoticed.
You would be wrong, however. According to the Arab Times, a Kuwaiti man was arrested for marijuana cultivation after neighbors narc’d on the rooftop garden that had been fenced in with tall corrugated plastic sheeting.
| James Berglie/End The Lie |
| Sen. Patrick Leahy: “One option would be to amend the Federal Controlled Substances Act to allow possession of up to one ounce of marijuana” |
A man who was says he was forced to eat pot by Phoenix police officers has reached a deal with the city.
If the City Council votes to approve the payout tonight, Edgar Castro will be receiving a $100,000 settlement. He’d initially filed a claim for $3.5 million. Phoenix New Times has the story…
A new study on marijuana use and attitudes toward legalization was released earlier this week — just in time for 4/20. During the first week of March, the Marist Poll conducted the Weed & the American Family survey, funded by Yahoo News and focusing on the impact of marijuana use on relationships and the family.
The survey found that more than half of the adults in America have tried marijuana at least once in their lives. Nearly 55 million people in this country currently use marijuana; 35 million consume monthly, 20 million consume yearly, and 78 million have tried it but aren’t using it right now. That adds up to 22 percent of Americans using marijuana, and 63 percent of those using marijuana regularly. Of the respondents who are users, 54 percent are parents and 30 percent are parents with children younger than 18.
For most users, it’s a social activity; 88 percent of the respondents say they consume with their close friends. The survey also determined that there are almost as many marijuana users in the U.S. as there are cigarette smokers.
Weed geeks love to test the same strain at different dispensaries. The Grow-Off is a type of Pepsi challenge whose results show which shops specialize in flavor, potency and yield — and which shops to avoid altogether. Last summer, when it was announced that over forty of Colorado’s commercial cannabis growers would be pitted against each other using the same mystery genetics, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to know more — who would win, or what the special strain was.
It took more than half a year, but the results are finally in: The secret mandatory ingredient was Race Fuel OG (also known as Race Fuel), a mix of High Octane OG and Face Off OG, two OG-heavy strains with names that leave little to the imagination. The Herbal Cure in Denver took home first for flavor and potency, while mountain-based High Country Healing saw the most yield.
As difficult as the scoring probably was, I would have paid a lot of money to be a judge on that panel. Luckily, some of the participating dispensaries are now selling their cuts of Race Fuel to the public. A quick whiff of the strain’s diesel and OG scents, which are like a combination of citrus cleaner and gasoline, will make tokers realize just how fortunate they are.
“Some people are very lucky — everything they touch works for them,” laments Steve Horwitz, owner of Ganja Gourmet. “But for whatever reason, ever since I opened this business I’ve had a black cloud around me. Pretty much nothing has worked the way it should have or could have.”
Horwitz, a seasoned salesman in his fifties with a hearty Long Island accent and a gold chain around his neck, doesn’t take no for an answer, though; he just shifts his approach and tries again. Over the past eight years — the period during which the marijuana industry exploded in Denver — he’s changed his business model four times. He opened Ganja Gourmet at 1810 South Broadway in late 2009 as a medical marijuana restaurant (and one of the first spots William Breathes reviewed), turned it into a takeout joint in 2010, transformed it into a medical dispensary in 2011, then changed it into a medical/recreational store in 2015. Now, to keep up with the times, Horwitz is gearing up to stamp his candy logo on wholesale edibles and partner with a smoke room once social consumption is allowed.
Dear Stoner: I’m about to get on a flight, and I hear that TSA has changed its rules about allowing you to carry on marijuana. What’s up with that?
Flying High
Dear Flying High: You heard wrong, sadly. In an April 5 article on MassRoots, Tom Angell reported this: “It’s official: The federal government doesn’t care if you bring medical marijuana on airplanes.” Angell had noticed that the “What can I bring?” page on TSA’s website had changed the red “No” next to checked and carry-on baggage for medical marijuana to a green “Yes.” He quickly took a screen shot of the page and wrote an article, and just as quickly, TSA’s Twitter replied with this: “@cannaadvisors: We’re sorry for any confusion. A mistake was made in the database of our new ‘What can I bring?’ tool.” TSA’s web page also changed the “Yes” back to “No” under medical marijuana. Tom Angell’s credit, he updated the article as TSA corrected itself. But confusion remains.
Denver has come a step closer to allowing late-night dispensaries.
Under state law, dispensaries can stay open until midnight, as they do in Edgewater and Glendale. For the last several months, Denver City Council’s special marijuana committee has discussed extending those hours. At a meeting on April 3, councilmembers settled on 10 p.m. as a closing time, which mirrors Aurora rules, and moved the proposal to the full council.
On March 30, Representative Jared Polis reintroduced the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act, as colleagues introduced four other measures in the U.S. House of Representatives that would protect states with legal marijuana from threatened action by the Trump administration.
Under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice followed the 2013 Cole Memo, which essentially protected states with legalized medical or recreational marijuana from federal interference. When Polis originally introduced the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act in 2015, it did not pass — perhaps in part because states with legal marijuana did not feel threatened.
Would you like fries with that?
Tumbleweed Express is set to open in Parachute in March, and it’s going to have something that no other dispensary in the state does: a drive-thru.
On February 18, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent reported that the Parachute Board of Trustees had approved Tumbleweed’s business license and the idea had cleared the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. The dispensary is taking over a building that was once a car wash. This allows cars to drive through a completely covered area, as opposed to a typical fast-food drive-thru.