| larger photo below. |
Add tortillas to our growing list of things you should not use to smuggle cannabis across the U.S./Mexico border.
U.S. border patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona Wednesday say a 37-year-old Tucson, Arizona man tried hiding about 485 pounds of dirt weed among a shipment of 44 crates of fresh flour tortillas in his white cargo van.
| Washington D.C. |
As promised earlier this fall, Washington D.C. City Council member Tommy Wells officially introduced a marijuana decriminalization measure Tuesday with nine of his thirteen fellow council members cosigning the measures.
| TokeoftheTown.com |
Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi is challenging a proposed medical marijuana ballot initiative in her state’s Supreme Court, arguing the measure would leave the qualifications for medical cannabis patients too broad and would create a free-for-all tantamount to outright legalization. Besides, she says, medical marijuana is federally illegal.
Basically, she’s using the exact same tired arguments that politicians have been using for years even though nearly half of the states in this country have medical marijuana laws and the federal government has (for the most part) allowed them to all continue without interference.
| Miami New Times/Peter Bollinger. |
In the past 12 months, BHO use has exploded across Florida and the rest of the nation. Tens of thousands of people are uploading videos to YouTube, Instagram, and Vine of themselves making and smoking the oil. Rap artists such as B-Real, Action Bronson, Wiz Khalifa, and Juicy J are spreading the BHO gospel, and even stodgy mainstream media outlets such as the Atlantic have published basic guides to “dabbing.”
So it is only fitting that our sister paper, The Miami New Times, dedicated their entire print edition to the craze this week. Click over to read the entire article.
| Wikimedia commons/Mattes. |
For years I was told the stoner lore that marijuana was being kept illegal partly so that police could come up with a way to roadside test stoned drivers. That’s hardly true, and arrest records for DUI-marijuana in all 50 states prove that even without a breathalyzer or even a blood draw cops can bust you high-driving.
But still, there’s researchers out there are trying to find new ways to catch you red-eyed behind the wheel. Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that active THC can be detected in a breath-draw. Good news is that they can’t decide if it can really determine impairment.
| Charlotte Figi and mom Paige. |
As we reported earlier this month, the number of children on the Colorado medical marijuana patient registry — with parental permission — nearly doubled from June to August this year, with sixty kids under the age of eighteen now on the list. This is the highest that figure has ever been, and it’s due in no small part to six-year-old Charlotte Figi, a Colorado Springs girl featured in an August CNN special hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta that explored the world of medical cannabis.
| Flickr.com/sarahkabmg |
The United States is known worldwide for our insatiable drug habit, and for decades we’ve been seen as the ones importing it all from other countries. Whether it was opium and heroin from the East, primo ganja from Jamaica, Mexico or Thailand in the 70s, or cocaine from Colombia still to this day shipping stuff in has always been our style.
We still do most of that, but it seems we’ve managed to start exporting something we’re really good at: cannabis. According to a recent Associated Press story out of Hanoi, Vietnam, Canadian and American ganja isn’t just in demand in Asia – it’s prevalent and carries a hefty price despite heavy penalties for importing drugs in that country.
Move over, four-leaf clover. Ireland may soon have a much more fun plant to pick.
An Irish lawmaker says he plans to introduce legislation to the lower house of the Irish parliament next month that would legalize, regulate and tax both medical and recreational cannabis.
| USC/Retronaut.com |
Retronaut.com is a seriously cool site for fans of quirky, odd historical photos as evidenced by these three strangely hysterical shots of cops and a scraggly little pot plant.
We don’t have much information on these photos, other than they are from the Van Nuys police department from 1951 and somehow wound up as part of the University of Southern California. Apparently someone sent a pot plant to the jail without any explanation and the cops had no idea what to do with it, or themselves.
| Hidden smoke shack in Colorado. |
Many Colorado ski towns are allowing recreational pot sales. But that doesn’t mean public weed smoking is any more legal at resorts than it is elsewhere in Colorado.
Still, the idea that ski areas will crack down on those who light up in plain view definitely stirs emotions, as Arapahoe Basin chief operating officer Alan Henceroth (seen here) discovered when he wrote about it not once but twice this past weekend. Denver Westword has the full story.