Were Danielle Cordova, Matt Ackerman and Paul Mannaioni responsible for a hash-oil explosion that seriously burned all three of them? Or were they merely bystanders who were too badly hurt to escape along with several others seen fleeing from the fiery scene?
The Denver District Attorney’s Office has charged the trio in the blast. But in an arrest affidavit, Cordova repeatedly insists the person actually responsible got away — and she doesn’t know who he is. Denver Westword has more.
| Boston Public Library Flickr edited by Toke of the Town. |
As we reported back in June, Maryland state Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican, is spearheading a move that would block the decriminalization of limited amounts of marijuana in Washington D.C.
But many, including D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray see it as a shot to D.C.’s home rule and Democrat-controlled city council. Now Gray is urging all D.C. residents to boycott Maryland’s beaches and resort towns.
When attempting to smuggle marijuana across town in your damned underwear, it is probably in your best interest to avoid packing a semi-automatic heater as well as making the choice to not wear weed-related apparel.
This is apparently a common sense lesson in cannabis that one South Carolina man just had to learn the hard way. According to the Rock Hill Police Department, 26-year-old Kim Leonard Grafton Jr. was busted earlier this week after officers discovered over forty baggies of marijuana stuffed in his underpants after a traffic stop.
Last week, Gov. Mark Dayton named 16 people to a task force that’s responsible for evaluating the state’s medical cannabis program. The list is a mixed bag, including eight healthcare providers and four members of the public — but also four opponents from the law enforcement community.
None of them have been content to sit on the sidelines. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, for instance, once wrote an op-ed calling cannabis “the most dangerous illegal drug in our nation,” and reaffirmed that position last November, mocking the use of the term “medical.”
Update, July 11 at 2:49 p.m.: We spoke with representatives from the Bakersfield PD who tell us they did not make a mistake. Seriously. The Sergeant we spoke with said that they valued the haul based on a price per-gram. Yes, they value all 3,067,192 grams at roughly $24 a pop. He said they don’t go by the bulk price, only the street price, and according to their research, they think $24 a gram is reasonable.
But the reality is that by doing that, they’ve completely blown any credibility they had left. Nobody is selling 3 million grams of pot by the gram. Nobody. Try as you may to sell even an ounce at that rate, and you’d go crazy. That’s why people (the majority) buy in bulk. Also, nobody in California is paying $25 a gram on the street. Nobody. These cops are just plain clueless about the things they are supposed to know about. A more reasonable figure would be $7.6 million, or just over $1,000 a pound. Even if it was top shelf, it wouldn’t get more than $3,500 a pound — meaning it would be worth $23.67 million at most.
| A DEA raid in Denver. |
Back in January, Marijuana Policy Project spokesman and Amendment 64 advocate Mason Tvert applauded comments by President Barack Obama in which he suggested that marijuana is not as risky as alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
Nonetheless, the new National Drug Control Strategy document for 2014 (see it below) reflects little or no softening of the feds’ approach to pot. And that leaves Tvert feeling frustrated.
| Daniel Soligny. |
Daniel Soligny had a good life, except for the whole health insurance thing. He didn’t have the most glamorous job, sure, but spending 14 hours a day on rollerblades at Sonic Beach Miami Gardens kept him active, and his girl, Jacqueline, was always by his side. Although he was 20 and she a young-looking 35, the couple was a psychic match — enjoying weekend outings to South Beach and goofing off.
Then he found out he had tumors on his testicles. Chemo? Nope. Cannabis? Yes. Read more over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.
If it wasn’t for cannabis, Danny Belcher wouldn’t sleep. He’s spent more of his life now away from Vietnam as he ever did there but the memories still cause him to have nightmares. It’s illegal in Kentucky, but Belcher doesn’t care. He’s going to use it. He just doesn’t want to be afraid of being a criminal anymore.
“I realize it’s just a nightmare,” he told a joint committee on Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection yesterday according to the the Courrier-Journal. “I will light that pipe up. I’ll be a criminal. I’ll go back to sleep.”
| Serve and protect? Really? |
A Minnesota SWAT team on a brainwashed mission to rid the world of yet another non-violent drug user has tipped the scales of injustice and inhumanity by brutally killing a family’s pets while executing a no-knock search warrant on their St. Paul residence.
The twisted, domestic infantry marched up to the home belonging to Larry Lee Arman and his girlfriend Camille Perry early Wednesday morning and used brute force to bust down the front door while the family slept inside. “I was laying right here, and I really thought I was being murdered,” Larry Lee Arman told KMSP Fox 9. “I don’t want to say by who. I thought it was like, the government.”
Sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder can begin obtaining medical marijuana legally under Arizona law as soon as January.
Will Humble, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, announced the decision today in his blog. PTSD patients and medical-cannabis advocates have been expecting a decision since last month, when state Administrative Law Judge Thomas Shedden ruled that PTSD should be deemed a qualifying ailment.