Browsing: News


The idea of Texas as a marijuana-hating state might not be exactly accurate according to a study this week from Progress Texas that shows 92 percent of 9,000 Texans surveyed want the plant legalized and 93 percent want it decriminalized.
The study coincides with the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws putting up a billboard in the Metroplex advertising for the 2014 Global Marijuana March on May 3 in Fort Worth with the slogan “Isn’t it high time you got involved?”

Greg Skidmore/Flickr.


New Jersey Governor Chris Christie doesn’t even want to try and have an honest discussion about cannabis anymore, even if his constituents demand it. Christie was on local New Jersey radio yesterday for his monthly “Ask the Governor” program when a caller asked Christie about the tax revenue and other benefits (like job creation) that comes with decriminalized cannabis and recreational sales.


A new report published by Minnesota 2020 reiterates what cannabis activists have been saying for years, in some cases decades — that marijuana reform is not merely a matter of medical necessity but of civil rights.
Relying on FBI statistics from 2011, the progressive think tank found that black Minnesotans are 6.4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites. That figure is twice the national average and mostly represents men under the age of 25.


Desmond* has been a weed courier on and off for almost four years. He’s in his mid-twenties now, but he was still in college when he heard about the opportunity through a classmate. He works three days a week, and makes, on average, 15 deliveries a day. If he makes more than 20, he gets a free bag. Usually he’ll give it away or resell it — he used to be a big stoner, but he doesn’t smoke much any more; certain strains make him anxious.
The work helps him pay off his student loans and subsidizes his creative pursuits (he’s in two bands and does photography on his days off). When he’s working, he looks like any one of the hundreds of bike messengers who speed around New York City, clad in shorts, perched on a single-speed bike, with a bag and a couple of delivery tubes slung over one shoulder. And like any other messenger, he can be at your door in 20 minutes or less.
The Village Voice has more.


The Colorado company that invented the formula for MED-a-Mints, a popular cannabis-infused mint candy, has announced that it will sue Denver-based edibles manufacturer Dixie Elixirs for trademark violations. Inventor Gary Gabrel claims that Dixie Elixirs violated the contract between them when it changed the MED-a-Mints packaging, making its own name more prominent and removing the words “cannabis infused.”
The new label is dangerous, he says: “The label says THC infused, 100 milligrams. So you’ve got to have at least some knowledge to recognize that as a cannabis product. A twelve-year-old or a ten-year-old might not know.”

Photo by Brandon Marshall
A photo from our 2014 People of the Cannabis Cup slide show.

Last week, Denver Police Department spokesman Sonny Jackson told us that officers would have a greater presence at the annual 4/20 event at Civic Center Park due both to the still-unsolved shooting that took place at last year’s rally and laws against public consumption of marijuana. However, he pledged that officers would act with “discretion” during enforcement actions.
How’d they do? Well, social media hasn’t exploded with anger at the cops despite what appears to be a larger number of arrests and citations than in recent years: 130 over the course of the weekend.

The ringleader of a huge, Southern California medical marijuana distribution network has won a whopping 94-month reduction in his punishment, according to federal court records reviewed by our friends at the OC Weekly.
In July 2013, U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna sentenced John Melvin Walker to a term of 262 months in prison, but this week amended the punishment to a term of 168 months for the conspiracy and efforts to evade federal tax obligations.


Pueblo, Police Chief Luis must have a lot of time on his hands. This week he publically announced his fears that if his officers ever have to respond to a pot club (they haven’t ever) that they may get a contact high.
“I am concerned that if there are some kind of disturbance inside one of those clubs and our officers get there, they will be entering a structure that will be nothing but laden with [marijuana]smoke,” Pueblo Police Chief Luis Velez told Denver’s KUSA. His biggest worry: that they’ll be too high to drive afterward. Seriously.

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