So, there’s more good news on the marijuana legalization front, and this time, it’s coming to us straight from the Lone Star state.
This week, Texas State Representative Joe Moody introduced a bill that could potentially reduce the current state penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Which, frankly, is needed. Marijuana laws in Texas are pretty darn ridiculous in their current state.
Here’s a lesson for you: if you want to get away with marijuana posesion, be a cop.
A Richmond, California police officer busted with about five pounds of pot he picked up at a UPS store won’t face any charges, even though he failed to follow even the most basic protocol.
K-9 Cop Joe Avila picked up the pot at the UPS store on Nov. 25 and radioed in to dispatch that he was going to file an incident report. He never did that, though. Instead, he took the pot home with him instead of to a station to lock up as evidence. It’s not the first time Avila hasn’t written a report, either. In fact, it’s his complete lack of competency and failure to write reports for more than 36 incidents that led to his bust.
| Ryan Orange/LA Weekly. |
| Seth Rogan. |
Sony assumed North Korea would hate the movie. The question was: What would it do? Pyongyang had just tested its atom bomb and threatened “preemptive nuclear attack.” And the Supreme Leader with his finger on the trigger was barely over 30, with less than two years of experience.
But Kim Jong-un didn’t care about Olympus Has Fallen, even though the violently anti-North Korean 2013 film showed his people strangling women, murdering unarmed men, kidnapping the U.S. president and even executing their fellow citizens. His saber rattlers never mentioned it. That wasn’t worth a fight.
A year later, North Korea had a bigger enemy: Seth Rogen.
The days of jackbooted feds raiding legit medical marijuana operations are mostly a thing of the past under the omnibus federal spending bill signed by President Obama this week. An amendment slipped into the bill denies funding for federal anti-pot raids of legit marijuana businesses in states where cannabis has been legalized for medical or recreational purposes. That would include nearly 32 states and the District of Columbia.
The addition to the $1.1 trillion spending bill, hammered out by the House and approved by the Senate last week, was written in part by a Southern California congressman.
The soldiers of the drug war have crossed the threshold from brainwashed law enforcement tactics into a despicable realm of cold-blooded murder that not even the deranged attitudes of the Old West would dare support. The latest evidence surrounding a case involving a fruitless drug raid speculates that when the Laurens County Sherriff’s Department showed up to the residence of 59-year-old David Hooks earlier this year, their primary objective was to assassinate the man, not to serve a search warrant.
Perhaps it’s not the greatest idea to use a taser on an elderly person during a traffic stop. That’s what a rookie cop in Texas is finding out, anyway. Victoria police officer Nathanial Robinson has been placed on administrative duty for accusations of excessive force stemming from a traffic stop where he tased a 76-year-old man twice as he lay on the ground.
| “Who’s got the lighter?! Let’s spark the fire!” |
There are states with medical and recreational marijuana laws on the books where a person can adhere to all of their specific state laws, pay all applicable local tax and licensing fees, and conduct a safe and honest business in the cannabis industry. But, in many cases, they still cannot get a company credit card with which to conduct the day-to-day merchant services that are essential to any type of business.
So it is pretty interesting to see singer Gwen Stefani, no stranger to some weed, featured in a new MasterCard television ad. It is even more interesting when you hear the song that MasterCard marketing execs chose to represent their multibillion dollar brand.
Last week we told you about Granby, Colorado and their attempt to block a recreational pot shop from opening by gerrymandering their city limits to extend their marijuana ban.
That vote has now taken place, with members approving the “emergency” annexation. But according to the attorney representing the shop, the officials skirted questions about whether their actions were legal, choosing to demonize marijuana instead.
| Merilee Fowler, executive director of MATFORCE, an anti-substance-abuse group fighting marijuana legalization in Arizona. |
The marijuana legalization movement has several foes in Arizona, and Merilee Fowler, executive director of MATFORCE in Yavapai County, is one of the biggies.
Both sides are getting an early start on the campaign to pass or defeat a likely ballot initiative planned to be put before Arizona voters in November of 2016. Judging by the propaganda that Fowler and other prohibitionists like Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk are already pumping out, truth is the first casualty in what looks to be long slog ahead.
Witness the Communist-like propaganda penned by Fowler appearing in various Arizona news outlets last week, including the Arizona Capitol Times.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2014/12/merilee_fowler_and_matforce_are_anti-marijuana_propaganda_tools.php
The Journal of the American Medical Association has published a report penned by three emergency room physicians at the University of Colorado hospital in Aurora about the health-related fallout from marijuana legalization in the state. And while there are some positives to be found in the material, most of the focus is on negative impacts, including an increase in a condition referred to as cyclic vomiting syndrome.