| TokeoftheTown.com |
Vermont joins 16 other states today that have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Gov. Peter Shumlin signed H.200 yesterday afternoon, making possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and five grams of hash a civil penalty on part with a traffic ticket for those 21 and up. The maximum fine would be set at $200 for a first offense, $300 for a second offense and $500 for third and subsequent offenses.
Despite the attempts of Colorado lawmakers to put marijuana-centered magazines behind the counter at booksellers and convenience stores like pornography, pot publications won’t have to be hidden from view.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers ruled that the provision of Colorado’s new recreational marijuana laws regulating how marijuana magazines are sold is unconstitutional and said he won’t go to court to defend it.
The Sierra Blanca border patrol checkpoint is, at this point, the stuff of legend: If you’re a musician and you pass through there, you’re going to get popped for pot possession. You just are. Snoop Dogg, Fiona Apple, Willie Nelson — all of them drove on Interstate 10, found themselves in that tiny West Texas border town and paid what we can safely dub the Dankness Tax: search, seizure, arrest, brief imprisonment, unflattering stripe-clad portrait.
But as the ACLU recently discovered, the war on pot doesn’t limit itself to Sierra Blanca. It’s more like the entire state of Texas. According to a new national report they’ve just released, Texas is near the top of the list on the numbers of people arrested for pot possession and the amount of money taxpayers spend to keep them locked up. Dallas Observer has the rest.
| TokeoftheTown.com |
California legislators failed to pass a bill regulating the state’s medical marijuana industry last week, leaving things the limbo they’ve pretty much been in since then 1990s with no state oversight into the industry.
The General Assembly had debated a bill introduced by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano from San Francisco that would have given state the ability to regulate the industry through the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
| Miami. |
Miami has a serious pot problem.
According to a study released yesterday by the ACLU, Miami-Dade is one of the most aggressive and racially biased counties in the country when it comes to marijuana arrests. Not only did Miami have the ninth most marijuana arrests of any American city in 2010, but 57 percent of those arrests targeted African-Americans. That means Miami’s black residents are 5.4 times as likely to be arrested for weed possession than whites.
Miami New Times has the details on the city with the fifth-worst racial disparity in marijuana arrests in the nation.
The New York General Assembly yesterday approved a bill allowing medical marijuana use in the Empire State.
Assembly Bill 6357 was voted in with a 95-38 vote. The discussion now moves over to the state Senate in the next few weeks, which takes up the nearly identical Senate Bill 4406. If approved, the bill would allow for qualifying patients to receive a doctor’s recommendation to use cannabis. Patients would be allowed to possess up to 2.5 ounces purchased at one of several state-regulated medical marijuana dispensaries.
| Usain Bolt. |
The race is on to see which celebrity or famous athlete can make the biggest pot-related headline, and Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet, has sprinted to the head of the pack.
Anti-cannabis groups are up in arms about a new ad campaign by American clothing manufacturer, The Pothead Diaries. Bolt, the reigning Olympic champion in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay kicked up dust with pot critics when he posted pictures to his Instrgram account showing him flaunting the controversial duds.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, agents who were part of a 45-foot response boat that was on routine patrol last night spotted the sailboat as it attempted to enter the harbor. ” As the crew approached the sailboat, the pilot reportedly veered to the right and ran the sailboat onto the beach,” the Coast Guard’s press release states. “Two people reportedly jumped from the sailboat and ran away. Coast Guard crewmembers docked their boat and made their way to the beached vessel where they reportedly discovered approximately 80 to 90 bales of marijuana.”
The O.C. Weekly has the rest.
| Ritalin, still more deadly than cannabis. |
Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital recently conducted a study to determine the correlation between the rise in the number of adults on prescription drugs, and the number of children who accidentally ingest them. Shocking nobody, the team found that as the sheer number of drug prescriptions goes up, so does the number of kids being poisoned by them.