While every Colorado town has a story, most are – in some way or another – related to the state’s rich mining history. Not Garden City, however. That town was founded on alcohol. Specifically: booze was outlawed in Greeley, Colorado even after prohibition, so in 1935 town founders created a four block by five block devoted to bars and liquor sales.
In a case of history repeating itself, Greeley has banned recreational pot sales, but not Garden City.
Alaska voters could legalize the cultivation and possession of limited amounts of marijuana by the end of the summer after signatures for ballot initiative cleared the final hurdle last week and gained approved from the state Lieutenant Governor.
Signature gatherers only needed around 30,000 signatures, but ended up getting 36,000 just to be safe.
Thanks to a lot of hard workers hawking petitions in parking lots, not to mention the shifting pop cultural sands, it looks like Florida has a fighting chance for legalizing medical marijuana. Come November, we’ll find out. But as with any political movement, despite best intentions and hopes, it’s money that’s really powering the show. And the funding trail behind the legalization effort leads right back to South Florida.
Broward-Palm Beach New Times has the full story
Marijuana is still very much illegal in Texas, and, whatever Governor Rick Perry says about “decriminalization”, it will remain so for the immediate future. But the tide of public opinion is turning fast, and it’s not so hard to imagine a day when Texas relaxes its weed ban. It almost seems like an inevitability.
That’s what Jerry Grisaffi is banking on. “Once the cities and the government start tasting the tax revenue, all the other BS goes away,” he says, referring to marijuana regulations in every state that’s not Washington or Colorado. Dallas Observer has more.
| Wikimedia Commons |
If, for some reason, you did not believe that there really is a War on Drugs underway in America, two top-ranking U.S. military generals admitted as much earlier this week in testimony before the Congressional House Armed Services Committee in Washington D.C.
Army General Charles Jacoby and Marine General John Kelly sat Tuesday before the pasty white panel of entitled U.S. Congressmen, begging the government’s purse-holders for a few more bucks, and warning that more budget cuts will translate directly into violent drug sales here at home.
| Riff Raff and his Jody Highroller strain. |
When the LA Weekly found out that hip hop rapper/cult personality Riff Raff had his own strain of weed, they were pretty pumped and imagined dancing like a manic octopus, telling hilarious stories about how our father fights polar bears, and being blessed with sartorial inspiration.
So they did what any curious writer should do: they made their way over to a local cannabis club selling the strain at five grams for $55. And then they got high. Read more of their journey into stonedness over at LAWeekly.com
Yet another compassion club in the Phoenix area has been raided by police. This time, it was a place called Delta 9, located in a strip mall at Broadway Road and Hardy Drive in Tempe.
For those who don’t know, the compassion club model has been a method used to provide medical-marijuana users with their medicine. They were more common before dispensaries were allowed to open, the concept being is that a donation — as opposed to a direct purchase — to the club gets a patient the pot. Phoenix New Times has the full story.
| The Mile High City. |
Legal marijuana sales have been going on in Colorado now for just about two months, and so far the sky hasn’t fallen. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Marijuana taxes are pumping money into state coffers and (despite high prices) the shops have all operated without any federal intervention.
Want to know which ones are open and what they are like? Our friends at the Denver Michael Roberts at the Denver Westword has been compiling a list of all 47 recreational dispensaries in the city so far, including links to reviews of most of the shops themselves. Page down for more.
| CBD-rich oil from Colorado’s Kind Love dispensary. |
A bill legalizing just CBD and only for seizure disorders was unanimously sent to the Georgia state House this week, advancing what would arguably be the country’s most restrictive medical cannabis laws to date.
The bill, sponsored by Georgia Republican state Rep. Allen Peake, is aimed at helping the families of children suffering from rare disorders. Peake says he wrote the bill after meeting several sick Georgia children.
| United we stand, divided we fall my arse. |
Medical marijuana supporters in Kentucky are celebrating a small victory this week, as a compassionate medical cannabis bill made it’s way out of a Democrat-controlled Health and Human Services Committee meeting. The bill will now go before the House for consideration.
Sadly, that might be about as far as House Bill 350 will move in the otherwise conservative House and Senate.