It took nearly a decade to come up with the funds, but it took just a couple of days for Forest Service crews to remove one and a half tons of garbage from a remote location in the heart of Arizona referred to as the Fossil Springs Wilderness.
Populated by evergreen trees and crystal clear watering holes, and featuring breathtaking vistas at nearly every turn, the area does see its share of hikers. But the “PACK IN, PACK OUT” mentality of most outdoor enthusiasts keeps the area clean, and the habitat as natural as possible.
How then could 1.5 tons of trash sit around out there for nine years? And who the hell left it there?
Author Jack Daniel
| 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.
As Indonesia’s most popular vacation destination, the island of Bali expects to welcome as many as 10 million tourists this year. Being surrounded by crystal clear waters, white sand beaches, and cheap Nepalese hash may sound like paradise…oh, ok, it is paradise.
But if you plan to be among those planning a trip to Bali in 2014, you should beware that the National Narcotics Agency Bali (BNN) – sort of Indonesia’s version of the DEA – has vowed to crack down on narcotics tourism in what they say has already been a busy year of drug busts.
| http://seuss.wikia.com/ |
You might think that drunkenly plowing his car into the Capitol building at 3am, then going on to evade prosecution and finish out his term as a U.S. Congressman, only to become a leading voice opposing marijuana legalization would make Patrick Kennedy the biggest delta-bravo in Project SAM.
Ok, he might still be, but boy does he have some competition from his partner, and co-founder of “Smart Approaches to Marijuana”, Kevin Sabet.
The PhD associate professor has a mind-numbing piece up over at Huffington Post right now, instructing the rest of us on how to talk about pot. It’s a 5-step plan … 7 steps short of the one Patrick Kennedy is somehow above, but would have no problem imposing on you.
| VH HAMMER/FlickrCommons |
Earlier this year, on February 7th, President Barack Obama signed a new farm bill, backed by a rare display of bipartisan politicking. Originally introduced by cannabis-friendly Congressmen Jared Polis (D – CO), Earl Blumenauer (D – OR), and Thomas Massie (R – KY), the bill contained a very special amendment. For the first time in decades, the federal government had made an allowance for the cultivation of hemp. The hemp caveat only applies to states that have passed their own form of hemp legalization, and Massie’s Kentucky is one of those states.
Also from the Commonwealth of Kentucky is Republican Senator Rand Paul, who has made clear his support for hemp cultivation in the state. The senior Senator from Kentucky and possible-Sleestack Mitch McConnell was reported to be instrumental in making sure that the bill that the president signed retained the hemp growing amendment.
Kentucky was poised to re-establish its roots in a hemp trade that flourished in the state until it was banned by the federal government in 1937. Today, however, the state finds itself embroiled in a lawsuit against the federal government, and their first hemp harvest hangs in the balance.
| Creative Commons |
Martin Nickerson Jr. is suing the government.
As a citizen of the state of Washington, he is suing Governor Jay Inslee, as well as Attorney General Bob Ferguson and state tax chief Carol Nelson for what he claims is a wrongful demand to collect taxes from him related to a medical marijuana dispensary he operated years ago.
Nickerson, who is currently facing federal marijuana possession and distribution charges, questions whether it should be legal for the state of Washington to assess taxes on a federally illegal drug, even citing Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Yeah, he went there.
| (U.S. Air Force photo illustration by Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth) |
One of the darkest examples of the consequences of cannabis prohibition is the rise in recent years of synthetic marijuana alternatives, such as the all-too-popular brand K2, or “Spice”.
Although these so-called “synthetic cannabinoids”, intended to simulate the effects of real weed, are already banned in many states, and have been the focus of several high-profile DEA raids of late, the creators of the chemical mixtures simply alter their recipes ever so slightly to sidestep law enforcement and prosecution.
| ChristopherHunt/Flickr |
In 2009, wildlife disease expert Dr. Mourad Gabriel was doing field research high in the Sierra mountain range, not far from Yosemite National Park, when he came upon a dead Pacific fisher. The long, slender, weasel-like rodent did not appear to be the victim of any sort of predator attack, showing no outward signs of distress, damage, or disease. But when Gabriel and his team got the animal back to the lab for further inspection, they found its chest cavity completely full of blood.
Up until that point, the researchers had never seen or heard of anything like it. In late January of this year, one of Gabriel’s family dogs, a black lab by the name of Nyxo, was found dead at the doctor’s home in Arcata, in northern California. When his pet was cut open to determine the cause of its sudden and mysterious death, it too had a chest cavity engulfed in blood. Now as Julie Cart reports for the LA Times, Dr. Gabriel is speaking out.
In October of last year, we reported here at Toke of the Town on a landmark move by the Canadian government to pump over $1.3 billion dollars into a new national medical marijuana program. The approach was aimed at providing the rapidly growing number of medical marijuana patients with access to cannabis produced by massive, state-of-the-art growing and distribution operations.
The new law proposed to outlaw home growing, forcing medical marijuana patients to go to these large-scale pot shops for their weed. But on March 21st of this year, a Federal Court ruling put a halt to that section of the new regulations, and temporarily grandfathered in anyone who was already licensed to grow at home before September 30th, 2013.