In a handful of places in Texas — Austin and Midland and San Marcos, for example — getting caught carrying a small amount of marijuana will get you a ticket and a court date but, barring more serious infractions, won’t involve handcuffs.
Dallas has a different approach, even though they could easily take the high road.
“We take you to jail,” Chief David Brown told our sister paper, The Dallas Observer, in a recent interview.
Medical marijuana activists see the state’s new law as only the beginning of broader reform. They’ve vowed to continue fighting at the capitol and extend coverage to thousands more Minnesotans.
Success or failure depends not only on the stamina of such activists, but on the outcome of this fall’s elections, particularly in the race for governor. Of course, a lot can happen in a year. But it’s worth considering where the remaining candidates stand on this single issue to get a better sense of the difficulty of the task ahead.
| Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. |
Medical marijuana’s biggest financial backer, John Morgan, is speaking out against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s stance on medical marijuana. Wasserman Schultz voted against a bill that would prevent the Drug Enforcement Administration from targeting medical marijuana operations in states where it is legal.
Wasserman Schulz released a statement over her vote, saying that she doesn’t believe “it is appropriate to limit the Executive Branch’s ability to enforce current federal law at their discretion.” In her statement, however, she also took the stance that Amendment 2 is written too broadly, using the pill-mill argument some anti-medical weed groups have been using to justify her vote against the bill.
In a perfect example of why it’s best — if you’re looking to run a successful drug empire — to keep the manufacturing and distribution arms of your outfit separate, the Drug Enforcement Administration moved to seize 35 financial accounts, six cars, jewelery, almost $20,000 in cash, seven gold Canadian “Maple Leaf” coins and 18 properties from Lawrence Shahwan of Lewisville, Gas Pipe head shop owner Jerry Shults and others associated with the Texas and New Mexico-based chain.
According to court documents, the seizure comes after a months-long investigation consisting primarily of federal agents going to Gas Pipe shops and purchasing what the documents call “synthetic marijuana,” but is more accurately described as a varying cocktail of hallucinogenic chemicals mixed with a plant base. The substance is packaged as potpourri or incense or something else that shouldn’t be ingested. Before July 2012, synthetic marijuana was legal. That month, President Obama banned it. It’s now just as illegal as actual marijuana. For more, check out the Dallas Observer.
Despite being three states away from Colorado and the fact that legalized recreational sales in Washington haven’t even begun, law enforcement in Tennessee blame those two states (and California) for marijuana found in Tennessee.
Never you mind that Kentucky, long home to some of the most prolific outdoor cannabis growers in the country, shares hundreds of miles of border with Tennessee. This is those dirty, weed-loving Western states’ problem, damnit.
There’s going to be a slew of reports in the next few months about marijuana-related traffic deaths increasing in the United States as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wraps up a three-year study on marijuana and it’s impact on drivers. And, as usual, they are likely going to claim that stoned drivers are a plague on the roads and that there are masses of red-eyed, resin-fingered pot smokers out killing people on the roadway.
An administrative law judge this week ordered the state to allow PTSD sufferers to use medical marijuana, reversing a decision by the state health-services department.
Will Humble, director of the state DHS, wrote about Wednesday’s decision by state Administrative Law Judge Thomas Shedden in his blog last week.
“I have until July 9 to either accept, reject or modify the recommended decision,” Humble wrote. “I’ll be studying the report and will make a decision after analyzing the Decision and Order.”
If you’re anything like us, you’ve got at least a few albums worth of music that is – in some way or another – related to marijuana and/or drug use. Maybe it’s Snoop Dogg, maybe it’s Cypress Hill, or maybe it’s as benign as a Bob Marley album. Not a big deal here in the U.S. where we’ve got the right to have and create such things.
But take that collection over to Kuala Lumpur and you’d be breaking the law.
Tractor trailers are often used to haul hidden stashes of marijuana around the country. It’s not often, though, that you hear about them being used to grow marijuana*.
Cops in Johnson County, Texas say they spent all of last month staking out a property outside of Rio Vista, Texas that was hiding an old 18-wheeler trailer stuffed full of grow lights and 31 plants in various stages of bloom.
A Canadian study shows what most any rational person can tell you: smoking marijuana doesn’t make people go crazy.
But alcohol does.