In a handful of places in Texas — Austin and Midland and San Marcos, for example — getting caught carrying a small amount of marijuana will get you a ticket and a court date but, barring more serious infractions, won’t involve handcuffs.
Dallas has a different approach, even though they could easily take the high road.
“We take you to jail,” Chief David Brown told our sister paper, The Dallas Observer, in a recent interview.
| jlwelsh/FlickrCommons |
| Sign posted at the Ritz Ybor Amphitheater in Tampa, FL |
Matthew Heller is a Florida business owner with a company by the name of HornBlasters. He sells air-horns to folks who feel that their vehicle just needs more horn. He cruises around the Tampa area in a massive blue pickup truck with his company’s name emblazoned on the sides, and his namesake product wired smartly throughout for ultimate horn-honking capabilities.
Mr. Heller likes his horns loud, and his rap music even louder, so one night this past February, he hopped in his big blue truck and made his way over to the local music venue to catch a hip hop concert. Though no doubt confident that the implied threat of an infernal racket of horns going off if any alarm should be sounded would ward off any would-be car thieves, Heller had no idea who might end up snooping around his truck that night.
In a perfect example of why it’s best — if you’re looking to run a successful drug empire — to keep the manufacturing and distribution arms of your outfit separate, the Drug Enforcement Administration moved to seize 35 financial accounts, six cars, jewelery, almost $20,000 in cash, seven gold Canadian “Maple Leaf” coins and 18 properties from Lawrence Shahwan of Lewisville, Gas Pipe head shop owner Jerry Shults and others associated with the Texas and New Mexico-based chain.
According to court documents, the seizure comes after a months-long investigation consisting primarily of federal agents going to Gas Pipe shops and purchasing what the documents call “synthetic marijuana,” but is more accurately described as a varying cocktail of hallucinogenic chemicals mixed with a plant base. The substance is packaged as potpourri or incense or something else that shouldn’t be ingested. Before July 2012, synthetic marijuana was legal. That month, President Obama banned it. It’s now just as illegal as actual marijuana. For more, check out the Dallas Observer.
Despite being three states away from Colorado and the fact that legalized recreational sales in Washington haven’t even begun, law enforcement in Tennessee blame those two states (and California) for marijuana found in Tennessee.
Never you mind that Kentucky, long home to some of the most prolific outdoor cannabis growers in the country, shares hundreds of miles of border with Tennessee. This is those dirty, weed-loving Western states’ problem, damnit.
| AmarandAgasi/FlickrCommons |
Drivers in the state of Washington may have had a strange encounter while stopped at a red light this past weekend. We’ve all probably had the less fortunate approach our idling vehicle and peddle for loose change, or have a guy try to sell a newspaper, or start washing the windshield while we wait. But when is the last time that someone bum-rushed your ride offering to give you $60 to take a brief “survey”?
That is precisely what happened beginning last Friday in Spokane and Yakima counties, and continued throughout the weekend. Government-funded orange-vested survey teams were tasked with bribing Washington motorists to hand over voluntary roadside breath, saliva, and blood samples, in exchange for the prospect of easy money.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve got at least a few albums worth of music that is – in some way or another – related to marijuana and/or drug use. Maybe it’s Snoop Dogg, maybe it’s Cypress Hill, or maybe it’s as benign as a Bob Marley album. Not a big deal here in the U.S. where we’ve got the right to have and create such things.
But take that collection over to Kuala Lumpur and you’d be breaking the law.
Good news for those of you young dudes out there who love dabs and are not trying to get women pregnant: yet another study shows that marijuana use can alter your sperm production negatively.
Or it might not, nobody really knows for sure actually — including the study authors.
| Mark Ramsay from Flickr. Image altered by Toke of the Town. |
South Salem High School in Oregon recently forced one of its seniors to admit to being under the influence of marijuana, but even though he was not, and has since provided school officials with a negative drug test to prove it, the school still refuses to grant him permission to participate in the graduation ceremony.
| Matty’s Flicks from Flickr. |
Marijuana may not be legal in Missouri, but it can still help you find love. The new dating website My420Mate.com launched in April (on 4/20, naturally) to connect marijuana users looking for romance, but who don’t want to have the awkward “Do you smoke?” conversation.
“Some people might think it’s just a dating site for hippies or stoners,” says Jay Lindberg, 30, the St. Louis-based entrepreneur who cofounded the site. “This website is for people from all walks of life, from the medical-marijuana patients to casual smokers to business professionals who may be in the cannabis lifestyle but they keep it out of their professional life.
A default judgment filed in Minnesota’s U.S. District Court on May 28 by Judge Michael Davis allows the federal government to keep a whole bunch of cash originally seized at MSP Airport merely because it smelled like pot.
But the feds don’t keep to keep the $138,121 because it smelled like pot. Instead, the legal rationale hinges on the fact that “Robert L. Casteel and all unknown persons and entities… have failed to file a verified claim to the defendant currency,” the judgement in United States of America v. $138,121.00 in U.S. Currency says.
The Riverfront Times has more.