From heroin-stuff navels to cans of jalapenos stuff with ganja, it’s been a weird month at the Arizona-Mexico border for would-be smugglers. Our friends at the Phoenix New Timeshave put together the top five strange interactions with border patrol in May along with a poll to figure out which was the most oddball attempt.
Head over to the Valley Fever blog to cast your vote.
Update – 5/31/2013 9:20 a.m.:The Phoenix woman accused of attempting to smuggle 12 pounds of pot into America on a bus from Mexico has been set free after a judge ruled she had nothing to do with the cannabis.
Video footage showing Yanira Maldonado getting on a bus in Mexico with a small purse and two bottles of water was all it took to end the week-long ordeal that had the Mormon mother of seven facing jail time in Mexico for allegedly smuggling drugs.
An amended version of a bill that would end Louisiana’s draconian three-strikes law for some marijuana crimes has finally made its way through the house.
But it could be a tight squeeze to get the bill through. The Louisiana Senate adjourns next week, leaving little time to have the bill heard, debated and voted on before the politicians leave Baton Rouge for the year.
The New York General Assembly yesterday approved a bill that would reduce he penalties for public display of small amounts of marijuana.
Assembly Bill 6716, introduced by Brooklyn Assemblymember Karim Camara, would make public display of marijuana a ticketable offense instead of one that mandates jail time. The law somewhat aligns public display laws with private possession laws passed in 1977 that decriminalized up to 25 grams of marijuana.
| Don’t pass your joints to Lil’ Scrappy. |
Lil Scrappy can’t handle his weed. At least, that’s what he wants everyone to believe. The Atlanta-based rapper and reality TV personality announced this week that he’s entering rehab for marijuana use and that it’s not a publicity stunt.
But from the outside one could easily see it as gaming the media, especially with the threat of jail time for marijuana and firearm possession charges hanging over his head.
Lil’ Scrappy was arrested in 2008 in Atlanta for felony gun and marijuana charges, and given three years probation since it was a first-time offense. But the rapper apparently didn’t think probation was serious enough to try and pass his piss tests, failing one test then refusing to take another back in March. (Editor’s note: Come on, Scrappy. You’re a well-paid rapper, dude. Pay someone for their clean piss!)
| Robert Platshorn in the 1970s. |
Our favorite reformed pot smuggler and marijuana legalization activist, Bobby Platshorn, is at it again, with an ingenious scheme to bring the good word on maryjane to the attention of legislators and the general public. And once again he’s drawing on support from an unexpected quarter of the population — America’s senior citizens.
If all goes well –and it’s looking “better than fine,” Platshorn says — on Monday, June 17 two busloads of seniors from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and carloads of sympathizers from as far off as Ohio and Colorado, will descend on the nation’s capital to educate U.S. representatives on the medical benefits of weed and the need for drug law reform.
Broward-Palm Beach New Times has the local angle.
| YouTube.com |
Jerry Duval has been through a lot in his 53 years. A farmer in Michigan, he’s seen his share of tough time economically. He’s also been through juvenile diabetes, kidney and pancreas transplants, and now suffers from coronary artery disease, glaucoma and neuropathy. But through medical cannabis, he’s found not only a way to improve his quality of life, but the quality of the lives of others by growing medical cannabis.
That is until federal agents raided his farm, found him guilty of manufacturing marijuana and “maintaining a drug premises” and sentenced him to ten years in prison in April 2012. Now Duval, and three other Michigan growers in similar situations, are left with no few options but to surrender and face their sentences.
Yesterday, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper made his mark on six marijuana bills, pushing retail sale of recreational pot closer to becoming a reality and putting at least a temporary end to quandaries that occupied the legislature throughout much of the just-concluded session.
“Clearly, we are charting new territory,” Hickenlooper said at the event. “Other states haven’t been through this process in the same way we have. Recreational marijuana is really a completely new entity.” Denver Westword. has the local angle.
A new study out this week claims that marijuana edible ingestion cases among kids has skyrocketed in recent years in Colorado, implying that such problems are just the tip of what is to come with legalization.
Does it reek of pot paranoia? Yes.
| Lloyd Casey. |
When Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signs a hemp-farming registry bill later this morning, no one will be happier than Lloyd Casey. The 86-year-old former state senator, who now lives in Ohio, first introduced a hemp-legalization bill in the mid-1990s, but was rebuffed not once but twice by powerful interests, including a DEA agent who still rankles him nearly twenty years later.
“I said, ‘Goddamn it, I’m going to live long enough to make this happen, and I’d love to rub your face in it,'” he recalls — and he’s scheduled to be on hand to witness today’s signing. Denver Westword has his story.