In an epically misguided Sunday sermon for the op-ed page of the Christian Post, Professor Michael Brown puts his dynamic range of ignorance about cannabis on display, summed up simply in the title of his piece, “What are they smoking in Colorado?”
More specifically, Brown targets Colorado Governor, John Hickenlooper, by asking…again…”What in the world is he smoking?” Completely ignoring the will of the voters in Colorado, who overwhelmingly supported Amendment 64, Brown goes right after the governor, attacking him for taking the estimated multimillion dollar revenues that legal weed is expected to deliver, and putting it back into the community.
Browsing: Say what?
The days when you had to actually smoke marijuana to get dosed with THC ended long ago with the discovery that the chemical can be melted into butter and baked into brownies. Ganjapreneurs in Colorado are taking things to a completely different level. In Denver, you can get high via balms, massage oil, under-the-tongue tinctures, and, yes, soft drinks and candy.
This was news to police in Corinth, Texas, who were surprised to discover that, in addition to a half pound of marijuana, Marisol Noriega, 20, was arrested with THC-infused gummies and sodas. An alleged accomplice, 23-year-old David Ramos, was arrested on Wednesday.
Read more at the Dallas Observer.
A medical marijuana dispensary in the Denver area doesn’t have any more impact on its neighborhood than does a coffee shop or a drugstore, according to a recent study released by the University of Colorado Denver. Not only that, but residents don’t perceive a dispensary as an undesirable use of a storefront.
These findings counter the constant negative messages coming from law enforcement and anti-cannabis crusaders. And apparently, even the researchers were shocked by the results.
Doubts about whether demand for recreational marijuana would cover the cost of the program put in place to regulate its sale appear to have been unfounded, at least during its early stages.
Evidence comes via Governor John Hickenlooper, who’s come up with a plan to spend recreational-pot tax revenues: $4.5 million this fiscal year and a heaping $99 million the next. But proponents of the amendment that made such sales possible are aghast at his proposal, which they call anti-pot and pro-booze.
| Dr. Steven Jenison. |
Minnesota may be closer to legalizing medical marijuana than anyone realizes. At a press conference earlier this year, Gov. Mark Dayton reiterated his opposition to medical marijuana and argued that “objective information” was needed in the debate, seeming to slam the door shut.
But a couple weeks later, some legislators and public health advocates met privately with Dr. Steven Jenison, the first director of New Mexico’s medical marijuana program, to talk about the potential challenges of implementing a similar program in Minnesota. Seriously.
The Minneapolis City Pages did the digging and has the complete story.
In a move chided by most medical marijuana patients and just about every medical marijuana collective owner in the state, the Washington state House last night approved a bill that would eliminate medical pot shops as they currently exist and force patients into a heavily-taxed recreational system.
House Bill 2149 passed by a vote of 67 to 29 last night, has been billed as a way to help keep federal agents out of Washington as well as a way to help funnel more tax revenue through the recreational system. The measure also decreases the total amount of plants patients can grow at home from 15 down to six and drops possession limits from 24 ounces to three.
Kern County, which stretches from the California Coast Ranges, east over the Sierra Nevada mountain range and into the Mojave Desert, has been a key battleground in the war on medical marijuana over the past two years in Southern California.
In June of 2012, a 69% majority of voters approved Measure G, which enacted a de facto ban on all storefront dispensaries in the county, as a reaction to a rapid addition of pot shops in the relatively small high desert towns. Bakersfield, the county seat, was exempt as it had its own regulations in place, but the rest of the county saw restrictions so tight, that all existing weed shops found themselves out of compliance almost overnight.
Local cannabis advocates have spent the past year and a half arguing against Measure G, calling it a farce and political stunt, to no avail. Their latest attempt, however, used an idea you almost have to be baked to come up with – and it worked.
| Carly Melin. |
Just about everyone who’s met privately with Minnesota’s top cops to talk medical marijuana has walked away from negotiations using the same two words — brick wall.
“They had blanket opposition to marijuana reform,” State Rep. Carly Melin (DFL) told us last month while we were researching a story about the upcoming legislation. “There were no provisions in the bill they could support and they weren’t willing to work with us at all.”
Minneapolis City Pages has the details.
You probably haven’t heard of Chris Mapp, a South Texas boat salesman and one of the six also-rans challenging John Cornyn in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, and here’s hoping you never have occasion to hear of him again after March 4.
In addition to advocating for the right to shooting human beings found crossing the Texas/Mexico border without warning or provocation, this personal-liberties warrior is completely against your personal right to consume cannabis: “As this society degrades, I hope they can learn to speak a second language and that language had better be Chinese because if marijuana is your biggest issue then you are screwed and it pains me that you would take your country with you. your views will get this country in a place that liberty will become but a memory.”
Yes, Mapp truly believes smoking cannabis will lead to China taking over the world. Dallas Observer has the rest of this.
| Jenny Kush. |
| Not actual cake, though still awesome. |
Despite what reports out of Spain may want you to believe, a student who has fallen into a coma after eating a pot brownie did not do so because of the pot in said brownie.
Reports say that a student ate a birthday cake baked with a little extra love inside and quickly became seriously ill. Nine other people went to the hospital as well. All of that is very strange and scary, no doubt. But as anyone with any clue about cannabis can tell you: it wasn’t the pot’s fault.