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Oaksterdam University Being Raided By Federal Agents

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on April 2, 2012 Culture, Growing, News

Proud storm troopers: Cocky federal agents outside Oaksterdam University on Monday morning

“Confirmed RAID currently happening at Oaksterdam University – DEA and IRS. Please come show support, bring signs, get the word out. 1600 Broadway and 1776 Broadway Oakland!” – Sacramento Americans for Safe Access (Facebook status update, 8:20 a.m.)

Oakland’s Oaksterdam University, famed as the first and probably biggest institution of cannabis education, was taken over by federal agents on Monday morning.

Toke of the Town was able to confirm reports Monday morning that owner Richard Lee had at first been detained in his apartment by federal agents. He was reportedly released around 10 a.m.

Officers wearing U.S. Marshals, Internal Revenue Service and Drug Enforcement Administration jackets swarmed over the Oakland medical marijuana teaching facility at the corner of 16th Street and Broadway before 8 p.m. Monday morning, reports NBC Bay Area. Yellow “crime scene” tape was keeping everyone away.

It’s A Wild Day In Weed News! Here’s The Roundup

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on April 1, 2012 Culture

Old Hippies Cookbook

“Fifteen minutes before the homeroom bell, I spy a long-haired student being dropped off by his long-haired father in a Prius in front of the school with a public radio playing and a Greenpeace sticker on the bumper.”

By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent

Jazz Musician’ Son Brings Brownie To Fourth Grade Class!

Panic broke out this morning at Redwood Elementary School when a local jazz guitarist’s son smuggled in through the opened doors of the grammar school a “red” sequestered Tupperware-covered container of evenly-cut Betty Crocker’s “More Fudge Than Fun Brownies,” for Pebbles Shapiro-Naguchi’s birthday party. There’ll be no birthday celebration in Room 102 this afternoon because of the quick judgment of a teacher who thinks profiling is more than tracing a child’s silhouette.

This fast-acting teacher intercepted the suspicious treats once the child was caught off-guard opening his desk. Fearing the inevitable — that the child was part of a drug ring intended to imprison our innocent youth from their eight to nine hours of day of playing ‘World Demands To Die Warfare,’ videogames, the untested, sugar-laced, possible store-bought opiates were removed.

Worth Repeating: Marijuana Prohibition and Sexual Politics

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 30, 2012 Culture

Wow, the Devil seems a little darker of complexion than than innocently pure white lady.

Worth Repeating

By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

Users report that marijuana has a relaxing aphrodisiac effect, and its use increases sexual pleasure. The black jazz “reefer music” of the 1930s was in large part inspired by marijuana.

Marijuana and jazz music go together like a melody and lyrics.

This cultural mix of marijuana, white people liking jazz music and sex all conflicted with the morality of prohibitionists in the 1930s.

How did “male vs. male” sexual competition unconsciously drive marijuana prohibition 75 years ago, leading to the present failed war on marijuana?

This is a historical (circa 1937) psychological deconstruction of the unconscious sexual rationales behind making cannabis — rebranded as evil “marijuana” — illegal.

Crowd Marches To Bloomberg’s House To Protest Pot War

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 29, 2012 Culture, News

Drug Policy Alliance – New York Office

Knock knock, Mayor Bloomberg — we want change! Illegal searches and bogus misdemeanor arrests for marijuana must stop.

Community Members March to Mayor Bloomberg’s House to Protest Out of Control Marijuana Arrest Crusade in NYC

Under Bloomberg, More Than 400,000 People Arrested on Low-Level Marijuana Charges in NYC, at a Cost of More Than $600 Million; Most Are Black and Latino, Despite Whites Using Marijuana at Higher Rates

Illegal Searches and Bogus Misdemeanor Arrests Continue, Despite Order by Commissioner Kelly to Halt Unlawful Police Practices

Marijuana Arrests Are #1 Offense in NYC and Make up 15% of all Arrests

On Thursday, community members and New Yorkers for Health & Safety marched to Mayor Bloomberg’s house to demand an end to illegal, racially biased and costly marijuana arrests. While Bloomberg proposes cuts to New York City public libraries, firehouses, and after-school programs, he’s spending at least $75 million a year for these arrests.

In 2011, there were 50,684 marijuana possession arrests, the top arrest in New York City and second highest number of marijuana arrests in City history, despite a directive issued to police officers by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last year, ordering them to end such arrests.

Don’t Miss The Hash Bash! Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 7

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 29, 2012 Culture, Products

Marc Ryan/The Midwest Cultivator

Above, happy revelers at Hash Bash 2010. This year, 6,000 people are expected to attend the 41st annual smoke-in.

After 41 years of epochal parties at the world famous Hash Bash, Michigan finally has a legalization effort in full swing. Activists are, for the first time since Hash Bash began, collecting signatures to amend Michigan’s Constitution and repeal marijuana prohibition for adults 21 and older.

The Hash Bash rally on the University of Michigan Diag began in 1972, after cultural activist John Sinclair was sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling two joints to an undercover narcotics agent. The Michigan Supreme Court declared the law used to convict Sinclair unconstitutional, and ever since, the annual Hash Bash gathering focuses on the goal of reforming federal, state, and local marijuana laws.

5 Best Cannabis Holiday Destinations…That Aren’t Amsterdam

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 28, 2012 Culture, Global, Products

John Moore

A man smokes a joint at a 4-20 celebration in front of the state capitol building, April 20, 2010, Denver, Colorado

By Artemis Hendy

Special to Toke of the Town

From all over the world, people regularly make hazy pilgrimages to the Mecca of cannabis smoking, Amsterdam. It is not only home to liberal drug laws and a huge selection of cannabis cafes; it is also a stunningly beautiful city with picture perfect canals all over the place, historic churches lurching out of the scenery and quaint buildings on every corner. You can’t help but want to move there.

But chances are you have been there and bought the t-shirt — and now, Amsterdam is threatening to ban foreign “weed tourists,” anyway.

So why not try an alternative cannabis-conscious destination? Such as…

March On Mayor Bloomberg’s House: Protest Marijuana Arrests

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 28, 2012 Culture, Legislation, News

Celebrity Roast

In the last five years under Bloomberg, the NYPD made more marijuana arrests than in the 24 years under Mayors Giuliani, Dinkins and Koch combined

Thursday: Elected Officials, Community Members to March to Mayor Bloomberg’s House to Protest Out-of-Control Marijuana Arrest Crusade in NYC

Under Bloomberg, More Than 400,000 People Arrested on Low-Level Marijuana Charges in NYC, At a Cost of More Than $600 Million; Most Are Young Blacks and Latinos, Despite Whites Using Marijuana at Higher Rates

Illegal Searches and Manufactured Misdemeanor Arrests Continue Despite Order by Commissioner Kelly to Halt These Unlawful Police Practices; Marijuana Arrests Are #1 Offense in NYC and Make Up 15% of All Arrests

Elected officials, community members and New Yorkers for Public Health & Safety will march to Mayor Bloomberg’s house on Thursday, March 29 at high noon, to demand an end to illegal, racially biased and costly marijuana arrests.

Is Jeremy Lin Top Shelf Weed?

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 26, 2012 Culture, Dispensaries, News

Tucson Citizen

Eighteen bucks a gram, $60 an eighth for “Lin Sanity OG” in California

By Bob Starrett

It is March Madness, still, I think. As I understand it, that is a college basketball tournament of some sort. It seems to happen every year. Now I don’t have a bracket and I don’t know anything else about it other than I try to avoid it as best I can.

I had to read three articles before I determined that the Final Four was Kentucky and Louisville, and Kansas and Ohio State, I think it is assumed that all Americans know this. I couldn’t have told you any one of the four without looking it up. So let me write one of the comments here preemptively:

“Starrett is so stoned that he doesn’t even know that the final four were decided on Sunday and he is so baked that he doesn’t even know the teams!” All I can say is no, I am not stoned and yes, I had no idea that the final four teams were decided yesterday and no, I did not know what teams had won until I looked it up today. And finally, I don’t care.

Cannabis Gourmet Cookbook Rises Above The Crowd

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 23, 2012 Culture, Medical, Products

Cannabis Cheri

Cheri Sicard’s “The Cannabis Gourmet Cookbook” has something for everyone’s taste. You can get it for $24.95.

It’s becoming more and more difficult, if you write a cannabis cookbook, to separate your work from an increasingly crowded field. With the burgeoning library of marijuana recipe collections becoming ever more competitive, if you want your pot cookbook to get noticed, you’d better be good.

That hasn’t been a problem for Cheri Sicard, author of The Cannabis Gourmet Cookbook.

A long time before Sicard wrote a book about cooking with marijuana, she was already a cooking expert and author. You see, Sicard has led an interesting life, spending much of her childhood and early adult life traveling the country as a circus performer, magician and mentalist. Along the way, she started writing about travel and food. She was a professional food writer and recipe developer before she became a medical marijuana patient.

We Can Legalize Cannabis Now

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on March 23, 2012 Culture, Legislation

The Silver Tour

Robert Platshorn spreads the truth about cannabis

By Robert Platshorn

The Silver Tour

I realized two years ago that not a single national cannabis legalization organization was reaching out to educate the voting public. A few do valuable lobbying, others provide news and information to those folks who are already supporters, and when invited, organizations like NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) present our case in public debate. All of these functions are important, but leave a tremendous void in ending marijuana prohibition.

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