News

Jamaican health minister supports medical cannabis use

By William Breathes on November 27, 2013 Global, Legalize It, Medical, News

While he hasn’t come around completely on recreational cannabis use, Dr. Fenton Ferguson, Jamaican Minister of Health, says medical cannabis should be legalized in his country.
“Jamaica can’t lock off itself from the rest of the world or the research findings that are available, that is pointing to a significant number of elicits that medical marijuana is responding to, so I want that to be very, very clear, that when it comes to medical marijuana, I am fully on board,” he tells the Jamaica Observer.

Nearly 1,000 apply for recreational marijuana licenses in Washington state

By William Breathes on November 27, 2013 News

The Washington State Liquor Control Board yesterday announced the 929 applications to the state recreational marijuana program so far.
Included in that total are 444 grow operation applications, 327 cannabis processing licenses which include edibles manufacturers and 158 retail applications. In all, the state will license 334 marijuana stores, though they do not have a limit on growers or processing the state is putting a cap on the total amount of cannabis that can be produced overall.

Judge orders LA medical marijuana store not to open

By William Breathes on November 27, 2013 Follow that story, News

The ongoing effort by the city of Los Angeles to shut down a Westside medical marijuana dispensary before it even opens is pretty much a done deal. The L.A. City Attorney’s office today boasted that a local Superior Court judge slapped a Mar Vista weed store with a temporary restraining order barring it from throwing its doors open.
This, apparently, is what you get when you try to sell medical bud in the age of L.A.’s new dispensary law. LA Weekly has the full story.

Colorado ski group downplaying legal cannabis sales for ski tourists

By William Breathes on November 26, 2013 News, Stoned Sports

Hidden smoke shack in Colorado.

It is safe to say that two of the most popular past times in Colorado are pot and skiing. But Colorado ski industry leaders say they would rather not see the two industries combine, at least not in terms of marketing.
In fact, they worry that the pro-pot push in Colorado means that families will be teaching their kids to pizza and French-fry in other states where pot remains illegal, taking their much-loved $3 billion in annual tourist dollars with them.

Second single mother sentenced to death for 40 pounds of pot in Malaysia

By William Breathes on November 26, 2013 Global, News, Say what?

A Thai woman caught with nearly 40 pounds of pot in a bus station in Sungai Petani last February will be hung for her “crime” according to Malaysian English-language news site, The Star.
Thitapah Charoenchuea, a 26-year-old single mother of a ten-year-old daughter, has maintained that she is was framed and that this was someone else’s drug deal gone wrong. She says that a man she only knew as “Ali” approached her before she boarded a bus after a brief stop on a bus from Changlun to Kuala Lumpur and asked Thitapah to take care of his bags and he would meet her in Kuala Lumpur.

Emergency room doc verbally bitch slaps anit-medical marijuana Arizona newspaper

By William Breathes on November 26, 2013 Medical, News, Say what?

The Arizona Republic published a TKO of its editorial board this weekend, after the writers declared that the state’s voter-approved medical-marijuana program was “one of the biggest cons around.”
Dr. Gina Mecagni, a local emergency physician, simply annihilated the Republic’s assertion that most medical-pot patients probably are fakers, echoing arguments we’ve also made here at Toke of the Town. Check out Dr. Mecagni’s response over at the Phoenix New Times.

Denver moving forward with marijuana use ban on private property

By William Breathes on November 26, 2013 Follow that story, News

Denver City Council has taken the first step towards banning cannabis use on your property if it can be viewed from the street. That pretty much eliminates all toking in front yards and on balconies within the city limits.
As one Denverite so eloquently said at the meeting: “I would rather see police going after serious drug problems than playing security patrol for the Stepford wives.”

Billionaire Peter Lewis, marijuana policy financier, dead at 80

By William Breathes on November 25, 2013 News

Peter Lewis, the 80-year-old billionaire founder of Progressive Insurance and major donor to marijuana-related causes, died over the weekend of natural causes.
It was with Lewis’s help that bills passed in Washington for recreational marijuana use and Massachusetts for medical use last year. According to Forbes, Lewis dropped nearly $3 million in 2012 for freeing the weed in one way or another.

Stoned North Texas ghost hunters burn down 1800s Louisiana plantation house?

By William Breathes on November 25, 2013 News, Say what?

Corey Ann.

Here’s a strange one from our friends at the Dallas Observer. Legend has it that the slaves who once labored in the fields of the LeBeau Plantation never entirely left. Cruelly mistreated, some to their death, their restless spirits wandered through their master’s sprawling mansion, taking revenge upon its occupants. One by one, the LeBeau family was driven mad, two of them hanging themselves in the upper rooms. Decades later, a little girl was mysteriously thrown to her death from a fourth-floor window.
Police say it was those stories that inspired Fort Worth’s Dusten Davnport, 31, to visit the house Thursday nights with a group of friends, get stoned then burn it down. Click over to the Dallas Observer for the details.

Dutch weigh closing Amsterdam coffee shops near schools, but only during school hours

By William Breathes on November 22, 2013 Culture, Global, News

Wikimedia commons/Public domain image.

The mayor of Amsterdam is pushing for laws that would close cannabis-friendly coffee shops within 250 meters of schools, but only for part of the day. After about 6 p.m. as well as all weekend long and on holidays, the shops can open back up to tokers and space-cake eaters alike.
In the states, heads would roll over shops being within 250 feet of a school or even 1,000 feet of a school. Actually, that’s not true. The feds simply send out $.49 letters to everyone within 1,000 feet of schools and shut them down without really lifting a finger.

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