On Friday, June 27, several Denver police officers entered Maryjane’s 420 Shop and Social Club, at 539 West 43rd Avenue, and issued citations to some of its members. The club has been closed ever since and comments from his spokesperson suggest that Denver Mayor Michael Hancock would like it to stay that way.
The debate over whether or not marijuana social clubs are allowed under Colorado law has been raging since well before limited legal recreational sales launched on January 1.
Two Florida men could be facing a life sentence in Oklahoma for attempting to transport Colorado-and California-made cannabis, hash, edibles and other concentrated forms of herb worth about $250,000.
According to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, Robert Shepard and Andrew Mason were stopped last week outside of Oklahoma City for following another vehicle too closely. That’s a common charge in states neighboring Colorado, where troopers have been profiling certain cars with green-and-white license plates and pulling them over for minor infractions. Narcotics agents say the Florida men were acting nervous during the stop, which prompted agents to call out a drug dog, Xena. (BAD DOG!)
Cops in Grand Rapids, Michigan say a local physician helped a “drug trafficking” ring by writing medical recommendations for cannabis without ever seeing patients or even looking at medical records.
For his part, Dr. Gregory Kuldanek says he was always following state laws.
The charges, made this week in U.S. District Court, allege that Kuldanek and nine other people worked together to grow more than 100 marijuana plants. Kuldanek was also charged with “maintaining a drug-involve premises.” In other words, the DEA is arguing that the doc wrote fake recommendations to members of the pot ring to covering their activities in the state medical marijuana program.
According to the DEA, Kuldanek wrote recommendations for 66 patients and caregivers linked to the organization, often signing over “stacks” of them on the same day. Prosecutors say there’s no way he could have seen all of those patients in that time span.
Arizonans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder now qualify for medical cannabis recommendations in the state, according to a health department ruling Wednesday. This is the first time a condition has been added to the list since voters approved the program in 2010 and is a huge victory for Arizona’s large veteran population.
According Arizona Department of Health Services director Will Humble there is at least one study showing that cannabis can help with PTSD symptoms and that the study, combined with numerous of anecdotal accounts, was enough to sway his decision.
In a move that has state police in an uproar, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court yesterday ruled that the smell of unburned pot in a car isn’t enough of a reason for cops to search it because the state decriminalized small amounts back in 2008. Basically: because some amounts of pot possession aren’t a crime, the cops can’t use the smell of weed to justify their search.
Not only that, but the court pointed out that they made a similar ruling three years ago, deciding that the smell of raw weed wasn’t enough to justify the search of someone on the street. According to the judges: the police should “focus their attention elsewhere.”
| Not the parents grow, though that would be impressive. |
A 9-year-old girl recently walked into a police station in the western Minnesota town of Barnesville and calmly reported her parents for growing marijuana inside their home.
“Her and one of her friends came here and just had these concerns about her parents,” Barnesville Police Chief Dean Ernst tells our sister paper, the Minneapolis City Pages, adding that the friend was about the girl’s age.
| Commons/Postdif. |
| “You know the Bronx is up and I’m Brooklyn down.” -MCA |
Police in New York City just don’t get it. Nobody likes their racially-biased marijuana law enforcement nor is their abuse of a legal loophole to put people in jail for otherwise decriminalized amounts of pot going to be tolerated much longer.
They are hearing that message a little louder this week as the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said they weren’t going to be pursuing low-level possession cases anymore. Police, predictably, are against the move – even though they’ll still be able to arrest people.
Life’s a beach, and then you’re high. This was perhaps the credo of a group of young New York City lifeguards who were busted smoking weed over the Independence Day holiday while they sat in a car during their lunch break.
Reports indicate that six city beach attendants had apparently gone off on a Fourth of July safety meeting when a nosey officer with the New York City Police Department swooped in and caught them giving a demonstration on how to resuscitate a drowning joint – just in case it gets fish lipped, we suppose.
Back in June we told you about Montana used car salesman Steve Zabawa’s quest to rid his state of all forms of cannabis – recreational, medical, legal or illegal. He was so against cannabis that he started gathering signatures for a ballot initiative, I-74, that would ban the use and possession of all federally-controlled, schedule 1 substances including pot. Basically, it would force the state to submit to federal laws.
If pushed through and approved, it would have wiped out state-legal access to the roughly 8,500 Montana medical marijuana patients. But thankfully, Zabawa isn’t very good at selling his initiative. He should probably stick to used cars.
| Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal. |
Georgia Governor Nathan deal isn’t going to sit by and let a CBD-only medical cannabis bill he pushed this past session go to waste. Instead, the Republican says he is going to spearhead the effort to get clinical trial programs started.
Deal met with officials yesterday to kickstart the program.