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Browsing: Global

Emery Supporter Sent Death Threats To Federal Prosecutors

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By on Global, News

Huffington Post
A fanatical supporter of “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery has been arrested for repeated death threats to Emery’s federal prosecutors

An unhinged Canadian man with a diaper obsession has been charged with sending a series of death threats to federal prosecutors in Seattle just before “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery’s extradition to the United States to face marijuana charges.

Paul George Cartier, 50, has “a history of other threats,” according to the U.S. Secret Service, reports Keegan Hamilton at the Seattle Weekly, including once having mailed a letter to the White House containing white power labeled “anthrax.”
Emery, the B.C.-based marijuana seed millionaire, pleaded guilty in 2008 to exporting cannabis seeds to the U.S. After having been indicted in Seattle, Emery almost worked out a deal under which he could have served his time in a Canadian prison, but when that fell through, the feds were busily working to get the Prince of Pot on the American side of the border.
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DEA Involved In Killings Of Innocent Civilians In Honduras

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By on Global, News

Phantom Report
U.S. DEA agents were involved in the shooting deaths of four innocent people, including two pregnant women, and the injury of at least three others in Honduras last week

Killings Scrutinized in Light of Growing Calls from Latin American Leaders for Alternatives to Drug Criminalization and Prohibition
 
Protesters in Honduras’ Mosquito Coast area have burned down government offices and demanded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration leave the area, after an incident last Friday when DEA agents were involved in a drug interdiction effort with the Honduran national police that left four innocent people dead – two of whom were pregnant – at least three others seriously injured, and two children missing, according to local Honduran authorities.
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Green Autumn: Marching For Marijuana In Brazil

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By on Culture, Global

Paula Rafiza/Canna Cerrado
Marijuana March, Brasília, Brazil, 2011

Editor’s note: Brazilian activist Sergio Vidal, a good friend of Toke of the Town, is the author of Brazil’s very first cannabis grow book. Here, he shares with us the progress being made in his country in marijuana law reform.
Many marijuana marches will occur today, May 5, worldwide. In Brazil, the movement to legalize marijuana just started to gain power in recent years. The first march took place 10 years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
After many years of struggle and diversification of activism, the movement has grown significantly, in spite of repression. Only last year Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) dismissed an action in respect of Marijuana Marches. The judges of the Supreme Court unanimously decided that marches and other demonstrations for change in laws and policies on drugs are absolutely legitimate and constitutional.
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Protesters Decry Dutch Cannabis Ban

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By on Dispensaries, Global, News

Marcel Van Hoorn/AFP
A demonstrator in Maastricht holds a giant cardboard joint protesting the new policy requiring Dutch coffee shops to insitute a “weed pass” system banning foreigners, on May 1, 2012.

Tourists smoked spliffs in the streets of cities in the southern Netherlands and defiant coffee shop owners sold joints to visitors in a protest on the selling of marijuana to foreigners which took effect on Tuesday.

Protesters in Maastricht — near the Belgian border — waved banners with marijuana leaves and slogans such as “Dealers Wanted” and “Stop Discrimination for Belgium,” report Svebor Kranjc and Thomas Escritt of Reuters.
A few hundred demonstrators gathered in the main square, with about 50 of them openly smoking joints alongside a six-foot-long fake spliff.
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Brazil Holds Its First Cannabis Cup

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By on Global, Growing, News

Cadu Oliveira/Hempadão
The prizes Bud de Ouro (Gold Bud) and Flor Absoluta (Absolute Flower) went to an Ice from the Brazilian grower F.B.

The cannabis community is making great strides in the South American nation of Brazil. Now our friends to the south have held their first-ever Cannabis Cup competition.

Last Saturday, April 28, the 1st Copa Canábia Rio 420 (Cannabis Cup Rio 420), was held with 12 marijuana samples — each with eight grams — from different parts of Brazil, and one strain from Argentina.
Sergio Vidal, a leading Brazilian cannabis activist, author of the first Brazilian cannabis growing guide and a good friend of Toke of the Town, was lucky enough to serve as a judge at the Copa Canábia Rio 420, and he reports the Argentinian strain was no joke.
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Dutch Court Upholds Ban On Foreigners Buying Marijuana

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By on Culture, Global, Legislation

Radio Netherlands Worldwide
The “Wietpas” (Weed Pass) will exclude foreigners from the Dutch coffee shops where cannabis is sold

A Dutch court on Friday upheld a new law banning foreigners from buying marijuana in coffee shops in the Netherlands, possibly ending decades of “weed tourism” for which Amsterdam and other cities have become world-famous.

A Dutch judge in the Hague ruled that the new law is legal. The move to ban foreigners from buying cannabis is being fought in the city of Amsterdam, where the coffee shops are a major tourist draw and where many shops owners have vowed to ignore the law once it comes into effect.
The conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning back the clock to a darker time in Dutch history — a time when the cannabis trade was underground and people had to depend on the black market for marijuana. According to expert observers, the ripples could reverberate internationally.
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Marijuana, Swingers, and the Far Right

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By on Global, News

Peter Reynolds Watch

By Kevin John Braid
Special to Toke of the Town
The murky world of far-Right politics has never been associated with marijuana legalization.  That is, until recently, in the UK, where a small political party, CLEAR, campaigning for cannabis law reform in Britain, has been marred with controversy by its leader, Peter Reynolds. Reynolds is a self-confessed Tory (that’s like a US Republican) and former member of the UK Freedom Party, a breakaway party from the far right British National Party (BNP).
It all started back in early 2011 when the members of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA), a longstanding pressure group in the UK campaigning to end prohibition of marijuana in Britain, voted to register as an official political party, who then subsequently elected Peter Reynolds as the party leader. Boasting a seemingly impressive C.V., Reynolds came into the UK cannabis scene promising to clean up the image and make great progress with politicians to get a change of law brought about in Britain.
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Who’s In Charge At UK Cannabis Law Reform Group CLEAR?

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By on Culture, Global, News

The World Through My Specs
Peter Reynolds of CLEAR is engaged in a tug-of-war with ex-members of the organization’s Executive Committee

By Denzil White
Special to Toke of the Town
In suit and tie, Peter Reynolds looks more like an extra from the set of Mad Men than like the hairy-headed hippie stereotype of a cannabis activist. He’s definitely not hairy-headed, but when he promised to clean up the image of cannabis campaigning in the UK, few people expected the makeover to result in a beauty only skin deep.
Claiming a background in advertising and public relations, Peter Reynolds won leadership of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance, a small, single-issue political party, then set about changing the name of the party to CLEAR (Cannabis Law Reform) and brought on help to spruce up the party’s website and logo.
Reynolds wrote at the time, “We will build a new and effective brand and campaign. We are reasonable, responsible, respectable members of society from all walks of life and professions.” 
Things were looking good; MPs hit Reynolds’ “Friend” button on Facebook and the CLEAR “Comment Warriors” plagued the popular press with pro-cannabis comments on any article reporting a factory raid or medicinal marijuana critique.
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Huge Victory For Canada’s Medical Marijuana Patients: Edibles, Topicals, Cannabis Tea Now Allowed

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By on Global, Medical, News

Darren Stone/The Victoria Times Colonist
Owen Smith (center) was the head baker for the Cannabis Buyers’ Club of Canada. He will still have to stand trial on charges of possession for the purpose of trafficking and unlawful possession of marijuana.

In a huge victory for Canada’s medical marijuana patients, people authorized to use medicinal cannabis can use it in infused edibles and drink it in tea — not just smoke the dried flowers — the B.C. Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

Justice Robert Johnston said the restriction to dried cannabis only in Health Canada’s Medical Access Regulations is unconstitutional, violating Section 7 of the Charter of Rights, reports Louise Dickinson at The Victoria Times Colonist.
“The remedy for this breach is to remove the word ‘dried’ where it appears in the Marijuana Medical Access Regulations and I so order,” Justice Johnston said.
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