| FireweedFarm.com |
Fireweed Farms became the first recreational marijuana grow in Washington to auction off their harvest last week, pulling in about $600,000 for around 300 pounds of herb.
Bud was sold by the gram in several lots, mostly by strain with about 40 people on hand. Herb was on display in plastic baggies, but consumption was not allowed.
We told you last week about Tannie “T-Man” Burke. He says that he’s used to being hassled by cops even though he’s never been convicted of a crime. He’s been arrested twice and detained several other times, he believes, simply because he’s a young black man.
“I feel they stop me because they see a black man walking down the street,” he tells Jim Defede. “I don’t know what to say about it. I just feel bad about it. That’s it.”
But his arrest on August 27 seemed particularly cruel and strange. Burke is blind, and after police arrested him on suspicion of marijuana possession they put him in the back of a cop car. They never took him in to be booked, he says, and then dropped him at night in a desolate area nearly a mile from his home and didn’t offer help getting home. Miami New Times has the local angle.
This week’s asshole prohibitionist award goes to Kent County (Michigan) Prosecutor William Forsyth, who single-handedly has challenged the will of voters in Grand Rapids after they decided in 2012 to decriminalize up to 2.5 ounces of pot.
He’s failed so far, but now the case is in the hands of the state Court of Appeals.
Forsyth first challenged the law in 2013, saying voters have no right to pass a measure that makes city laws conflict with state laws. But his challenge was shut down when a county circuit court judge said voters did have the authority.
| Legalize it. |
Voters in Washington D.C. may have approved the legalization of limited amounts of pot for adults 21 and up earlier this month, but the U.S. Congress will have the final say. According to D.C. law, any new legislation Congress can either approve or reject new legislation in within 60 days.
The bill would also become law if no action is taken in that time – and that’s exactly what some lawmakers want to see happen.
Medical marijuana patients in Maryland will soon be able to finally actually access medical marijuana as the state approved medical cannabis rules Thursday.
But it has taken the state forever – and left patients languishing – to get this far. And patients will still have to wait until 2016 to access any buds.
| Cosmonaut. |
We told you earlier this year about Vermont teaming with the RAND Corporation to study what the legalization of limited amounts of cannabis for adult use would look like.
The study is now complete – it’s apparently as thick as a phone book — but won’t be released until January. But the public is getting hints as to what it contains.
| Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe. |
Getting arrested for marijuana can ruin your life in Arkansas. Unless you are the governor’s son, that is.
Outgoing Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe announced yesterday that he plans to pardon his son’s 2003 felony marijuana charges. Kyle Beebe was convicted of marijuana possession with intent to deliver. Mike Beebe has pardoned nearly 700 nonviolent offenders in during his tenure in office and says his son deserves the same second chance as all the other people he’s let off.
By allowing Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C. voters to legalize limited amounts of cannabis for personal use, the United States has violated United Nations conventions. That’s the gripe from the head of the U.N. director of the Office on Drugs and Crime, Yury Fedotov, who says he plans to take official actions.
“I don’t see how (the new laws) can be compatible with existing conventions,” Fedotov told reporters this week.
Inmates of a Lebanese prison camp might be having vegetables for dinner later this week, but the hash potatoes they hoped to get their hands are now in the possession of authorities. A report from Al Arabiya News indicates that a load of potatoes delivered to the Tyre prison in Lebanon was discovered to contain hashish. Hash browns anyone?
| The person pictured above is not the teen discussed in this article, though we assume he would be pleased with the verdict. |
A West Palm Beach teenager’s conviction for possessing a half gram of weed was reversed because the cop who arrested him says he stopped the kid for truancy — but the kid wasn’t actually skipping school at the time, making the initial stop unlawful and the evidence obtained inadmissible.
According to a ruling by the appeals court issued on November 5, the kid, a 15-year-old referred to only as “J.R.” in court documents because he’s a minor, had his rights violated when the unnamed police officer stopped and searched him. The cop claims he saw J.R. leave a designated school bus stop before the bus arrived and believed the kid was skipping class, so he decided to see what the youngster was up to.