Author Steve Elliott ~alapoet~

DEA Returns $62 Cash Seized In Marijuana Grow Room Raid

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on August 2, 2010 Growing, News

Ed W. Boyke, 64, stands with some of the belongings that the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department seized when they raided his home on April 15. Boyke legally grows medical marijuana and police raided his home because they claimed to believe he was violating the law. He had to pay $5,000 to get his own stuff back.

Medical marijuana patient and provider Edwyn W. Boyke hoped he was going to get his guns and grow equipment back when, two days after the Saginaw County Sheriff’s Department returned his TV, he was asked to return to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Saginaw, Michigan.

But when Boyke arrived at the DEA office on Friday afternoon, he said an agent told him the guns and other items, including grow equipment, “would be retained as possible evidence” in an ongoing federal investigation into whether Boyke violated drug laws by growing and possessing harvested marijuana and plants inside his home.

The DEA agent handed Boyke $62 in cash that was taken from Boyke’s wallet during the raid and wished him a good day.

“They called me and said come pick up my stuff, said they had it, they were through with it,” Boyke said. “It sounded like he was going to give me everything,” he said, reports Gus Burns of The Saginaw News.

Boyke, a legal, registered patient who smokes marijuana to ease back pain caused by a pinched nerve, hoped to recover his four guns — three hunting rifles and an antique, inoperable Russian gun — which he said Saginaw deputies seized from his Saginaw Township home while a DEA-secured search warrant was being served on April 15.

R.I.P., Captain Trips: Jerry Garcia Would Have Been 68 Today

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on August 1, 2010 Culture

Captain Trips was a majestic conduit of pure Being when he played the guitar. He wove soaring, wailing sonic explorations of space and time, heartache and joy which took ecstatic Deadheads along for the ride.

Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead could take the ineffable, the wordless and express it with breathtaking eloquence and sensitivity and nuance. When Uncle Jerry plugged in, he didn’t just plug into an amp. He plugged into Godhead itself.

He was born in San Francisco on August 1, 1942. August 9 will mark the 15th anniversary of his death in 1995.

Happy Birthday and Thank You, Jerry!

Gamer Teen Accidentally Leads Cops To Parents’ Pot Farm

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 31, 2010 Growing, News

Photo: Lake County News-Sun

The Millers: They’re in the jailhouse now, all of ’em

Damn kids. Police traced an Illinois teen to his home after he allegedly stole credit cards and used them to play Internet games. When police entered the home, they stumbled upon his parents’ marijuana growing operation and arrested them as well.

Authorities had been investigating multiple fraudulent online orders and downloads resulting from a Lincolnshire, Ill., car burglary in July. In that case, the victim’s credit card was taken from his vehicle, reports Frank Abderholden at the Lake County News-Sun.

Stoner Photo of the Day: Becky Rocks a ‘Tax Pot Now’ Tee

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 30, 2010 Culture, Products

Photo: chron.ron

Becky LeSabre shows us where the money’s at

Toke of the Town‘s Stoner Photo of the Day comes courtesy of veteran photographer chron.ron, whose abundant bud-shooting talents have come to our attention before. Check out his site at www.gen-why.com.

Morocco: Cannabis Farmers Angry Over Police Bribes

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 30, 2010 Global, Growing

Photo: Laurent Laniel

Cannabis has for centuries been grown in northern Morocco’s Rif Mountains.

For centuries, the remote town of Bab Berred has been the heart of Morocco’s cannabis-growing region, where farmers carried on the time-honored tradition of cultivating fine marijuana as their fathers and grandfathers did before them.

Growing marijuana is against the law in Morocco, but police looked the other way as farmers grew their pungent crops in the heart of the Rif Mountains. But now farmers are angry they are being forced to pay bribes to local police to continue growing the herb, reports Aida Alami at GlobalPost.

Truth Comes Out: Adults See Alcohol, Tobacco Riskier Than Pot

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 30, 2010 Culture, News

Graphic: OC NORML

Americans view alcohol and cigarettes as more dangerous than marijuana. Tellingly, even a majority of adults who drink alcohol rate it as riskier than pot. Those who never drink alcohol are more evenly divided.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey released this week found that a scant 17 percent of American adults rate use of marijuana as riskier than drinking alcohol. Fifty percent say alcohol is more dangerous, while 26 percent rate the two as equally risky.

Similarly, 46 percent say smoking cigarettes is more dangerous than smoking pot. Twenty-four percent disagree, saying marijuana is more dangerous than tobacco. One in four, 25 percent, say tobacco and alcohol are equally dangerous.

Opposition To DEA Pot Raids Spreads Across Political Spectrum

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 30, 2010 Medical, News

Photo: Politico

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake on DEA medical marijuana raids: “What part of ‘not a priority’ does Michele Leonhart not understand?”

Two ideologically diverse advocates on Wednesday echoed an earlier call by a coalition of drug-policy reform groups by condemning a series of recent raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana collectives operating legally under state law.

The Tenth Amendment Center, a group that advocates for states’ rights, and Jane Hamsher, the publisher of Firedoglake.com, called on the DEA to respect duly adopted state medical marijuana laws and immediately end those raids.

“The federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers that ‘We The People’ delegated to it in the Constitution,” said Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center. “It is especially egregious when these laws are used to justify raids in states where the use and distribution of cannabis is expressly allowed by law.”

Your Dream Job: Denver Pot Reviewer Gets Paid To Get High

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 30, 2010 Culture, Dispensaries, Medical

WBAL

Marijuana critic William Breathes at work

A Denver man gets paid to smoke cannabis and write about it as one of the first professional medical marijuana critics in the country.

Denver’s Westword alternative newspaper has hired the man, who goes by the name “William Breathes,” to review marijuana dispensaries and the quality of the cannabis they sell, reports WBAL TV.

“He has his journalism degree,” said a Westword editor. “He was a good writer, and he could punctuate and he could spell, which was very different than a lot of people who applied for the job.”

Breathes said he has been smoking marijuana for 15 years to ease chronic stomach pains. Now he smokes pot to pay the mortgage.

WA Governor’s Office Calls Pot Legalization ‘Legitimate Idea’

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 29, 2010 Legislation, News

Photo: KOZE950.com

Could marijuana legalization be in Washington state’s future? The office of Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday that it’s a “legitimate idea.”

Could marijuana legalization be in Washington state’s future? The office of Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday that it’s a “legitimate idea” that will be considered.

When Gov. Gregoire opened an online suggestion box on ways to fix the state’s budget, she may not have expected pot legalization to come in at first place. But it has been in the lead for more than a week now, and the governor’s office even has a somewhat positive response.

“It’s a legitimate idea,” said Gregoire spokeswoman Karina Shagren, who said the Governor is reading the list herself, as is Marty Brown, the director of the governor’s budget office. “But we’d like to see how the federal government would respond.”

With marijuana legalization apparently so popular among Washington’s (and America’s) voters, the idea is being considered right along with the roughly 1,750 others that have been submitted so far.

First Marijuana School To Open In New England

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on July 29, 2010 Growing, Medical

Graphic: NESAHS

The New England School of Alternative Horticultural Studies says it will be the first marijuana training facility in the Northeast.

California and Colorado, move over. Higher learning is coming to the American Northeast.

The New England School of Alternative Horticultural Studies, a Rhode Island-based medical marijuana training center, announced on Thursday the September launch of its basic medical marijuana training class in Warwick, R.I., which it said is the first professional medical marijuana training class in the northeastern United States.

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