Put yourself in this situation: you’ve just driven across state lines while running from the police when your car skids out and rolls several times into a ditch. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you land upright?
“Oh damn, I’m screwed,” seems most likely.
But one Ohio man clearly thinks differently. He lit up his bong and toked a few while waiting for cops to drag him from the car.
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The city of Seattle has sent letters to about 330 medical marijuana shops telling them that they have to get licensed by the state or face penalties if they don’t shut down. The rub? There is no state license for them to obtain.
According to Seattle PI, the City of Seattle has rules that force any marijuana business with more than 45 plants or 72 ounces of herb on hand to get a license. Seattle has suspended the rule for the most part, but the letters seem to indicate a shift is coming.
A federal judge will hear arguments from several high-profiled doctors in California next week on why the government should consider dropping their failed war on cannabis.
Their main point: scientific evidence shows that marijuana is not the harmful drug the feds say it is and cannabis has no place on the list of Schedule I substances like heroin and LSD.
During the upcoming midterm elections, Hispanic voters are likely to be key in many races across the country — but could they slow the move toward broader marijuana legalization? That possibility is among the takeaways from a Pew Research Center study looking at Latino voting trends. PRC found that Hispanics are less likely than white or black voters to favor such policies.
The report, entitled “Latino Voters and the 2014 Midterm Elections,” notes that proposals to legalize marijuana for recreational use are on ballots in Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia, with medical-marijuana measures up for voting in Florida and Guam. Such votes are important, say cannabis-reform advocates such as the Marijuana Majority’s Tom Angell, because positive results are likely to lead to a tipping point that would cause the federal government to alter pot policies for the country as a whole.
For much of the past year, it seemed almost inevitable that medical marijuana would become legal in Florida. Polls showed that more than 80 percent of Floridians would support a constitutional amendment that’s on the ballot this November legalizing medicinal weed.
So it was something of a shocker last week when a Tampa Bay Times poll indicated that medical marijuana will fail to get the 60 percent of the vote required to get on the ballot. It had previously polled at more than 9-to-1. Yesterday, Ben Pollara, campaign manager for United for Care, the main organization fighting for legalization, insisted that “we’re still winning” and said internal polls still indicated the amendment would get more than the 60 percent needed to pass.
Marijuana has unfortunately become a life sentence to too many Americans, who are now rotting away in jail over a plant. Among those are the DeLisi brothers, arrested in 1980 after creating one of the largest marijuana smuggling operations in the country. Our colleagues at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times take a look at the DeLisis as well as numerous other Americans locked up for life for ganja in their cover story this week:
“Reformers say the long sentences handed out to relatively harmless pot dealers during the War on Drugs should be revisited. In the 1980s, when crack cocaine ravaged the nation, lawmakers introduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and tough prosecutors tacked on conspiracy charges that could add decades of prison time. Now, however, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and polls indicate that 80 percent of Floridians will follow suit by voting for a constitutional amendment in the November 4 election. Why are taxpayers still footing the multimillion-dollar bill to incarcerate guys peddling a substance we’ve come to think of as medicine?”
Do yourself a favor and head over to the New Times for the whole story.
When he was running for office last year, candidate Bill de Blasio warned of the “disastrous consequences” low-level marijuana arrests have for both the individuals caught with a small amount of pot, and their families. “These arrests limit one’s ability to qualify for student financial aid, and undermine one’s ability to stable housing and good jobs,” the public advocate’s campaign literature read. Even more troubling, it noted, was the fact that studies showed “a clear racial bais” in such arrests. As mayor, de Blasio swore he would order the NYPD to stop such arrests, but he hasn’t. Low-level pot arrests are actually on the rise in de Blasio’s New York.
Village Voice has the full story.
Last time we checked, cannabis was still a Schedule I narcotic in Minnesota. Why? Because, according to the statute, it has, like heroin, “A high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”
At least the last of those two is false. Minnesota is in the midst of establishing a medical cannabis program and 21 other states, plus D.C., have their own on the books. Other states, like Utah, allow for the use of CBD-rich oil to treat certain ailments.
Las Vegas city leaders could give the final nod for medical pot dispensaries to begin operating in the city by next week, though at least one councilmember says they should wait for further guidance from the state.
“We want the general public to be able to tell a marijuana cookie from a Chips Ahoy cookie just by looking at it.”
That’s the intent behind the edible work group currently hashing out recommendations for future edible packaging. And one recommendation submitted yesterday would solve that problem by eliminating pot cookies entirely from the landscape. Eleven recommendations were submitted yesterday by members of the edibles work group regarding how to regulate recreational cannabis edibles in the future.
By far the most extreme recommendation came from Jeff Lawrence of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, who suggested that Colorado completely ban all production of any retail cannabis products except for simple lozenges or hard candies — and, oddly, tinctures, which “users can add to their products at home” to create their own (unpackaged, unmarked, unregulated) edibles.