President Barrack Obama thinks Colorado and Washington are blazing a trail with marijuana legalization the rest of the nation should consider, telling the New Yorker that racial disparity in marijuana arrests need to end.
“It’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished,” Obama told the New Yorker.
Despite the state being home to the great Willie Nelson, Texas and marijuana don’t go hand-in-hand. You’re looking at a misdemeanor for carrying anything under two ounces with up to 180 days in jail and $2,000 in fines. Cultivation is based on weight, and cops love to weigh everything attached to a plant – easily putting you at the four-ounce felony threshold and getting you anywhere from 180 days to five years mandatory prison time.
Yee-haw, indeed. Texas, your laws are absurd.
Angelica Leicht with the Houston Press knows this, and lists off ten reasons why the Lone Star State needs to legalize the herb.
Earlier this week we told you about Washington D.C. council and their push to decriminalize cannabis in our nation’s capitol. They might want to set their sights a little higher.
According to a Washington Post poll, 63 percent of D.C. residents want to legalize marijuana for adults. It didn’t matter what age, race or ethnicity either. Everyone wants it. Even half of those who opposed legalizing it think that something needs to be done about the current laws.
Marijuana legalization is one step closer to finding a place on the 2014 Missouri state ballot.
Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander released thirteen petitions Wednesday asking whether Missouri should legalize sale and consumption of the drug, including for medical purposes, expunge marijuana-related offenses from the records of convicted criminals, and authorize the government to tax and regulate the marketplace. Read all thirteen petition titles over at The Riverfront Times.
| Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada. |
Medical cannabis users have a friend in a high place (though he doesn’t get high). Senate majority leader Harry Reid said yesterday that the federal government should reexamine their stance against medical marijuana.
“If you’d asked me this question a dozen years ago, it would have been easy to answer – I would have said no, because (marijuana) leads to other stuff,” the Senate majority leader told the Las Vegas Sun yesterday. “But I can’t say that anymore.”
CNN’s Randi Kaye appears to have really enjoyed the week she spent covering recreational marijuana sales in Colorado. Especially hilarious: A giggly, occasionally incoherent Kaye looking absolutely shit-hammered during a conversation with host Anderson Cooper thanks to time she spent in a limousine with folks who “whipped out” something really big — a joint as big as a cannon, she said.
Ready, aim, fire! See the video over at The Latest Word.
| Henry Rollins. |
Henry Rollins doesn’t smoke pot, but he doesn’t give a damn if you decide it’s right for you. That’s the way the entire country should approach pot legalization, according to the spoken-word poet and founder of hardcore punk band Black Flag:
“I think smoking pot is a monumental waste of time, so I don’t do it. However, I am not at all interested in keeping you from it. If America can regulate, tax and sell alcohol and tobacco – two wildly addictive and potentially harmful substances – you would think legalizing marijuana shouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle.”
Read more in Rollins’ weekly column for the LA Weekly’s music blog, “West Coast Sound”.
The Ninth District Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that California state law does not protect the state’s medical marijuana shops from the feds. The court made the ruling yesterday in dismissing three lawsuits trying to stop federal prosecution of three California collectives.
Specifically, the dispensaries had argued that federal law enforcement were violating equal protection clauses in the U.S. Constitution.
Around this time last year, we began hearing reports that cars with Colorado license plates were being profiled by law enforcers in other states looking to make marijuana busts.
But are similar assumptions being made about Coloradans even after they reach their out-of-state destinations?
That’s the claim of one man, who says hotel personnel in Kansas accused him of smoking weed in his room just because of where he lives. Denver Westword has the full story.
| New Hampshire state house. |
Adults in New Hampshire are one step closer to being able to use, purchase and cultivate limited amounts of cannabis after the state house yesterday gave preliminary approved to a legalization proposal.
House Bill 492, modeled after Colorado’s marijuan laws, would legalize up to an ounce of pot for personal possession for adults 21 and up. It would also legalize personal cultvaiton of up to six plants as well as establish a system for allowing sales of recreational cannabis through licensed, taxed storefronts.