| Mmm, science. |
Fletcher, North Carolina resident Todd Stimson was arrested earlier this month for growing and selling marijuana. The only thing is, Stimson says he’s done nothing illegal. He’s licensed by the state and has even been paying taxes on his plants since his operation began in 2011 despite North Carolina not having medical marijuana laws.
The hydroponic marijuana-growing community has suspected for a while that they’re being watched, and for good reason. By the DEA’s own account, law enforcement has turned its attention increasingly toward indoor growing operations as a quarter century of an aggressive eradication campaign has forced an increasing number of pot farmers to seek shelter.
The feds’ tactics vary, but their focus falls not infrequently on hydroponic gardening supply stores. Four years ago, a newspaper in Florida discovered that local police were tracking customers of Simply Hydroponics to their homes then, if they detected unusually high power usage or the smell of weed, obtaining a search warrant and conducting raids. And sometimes, they target the gardening suppliers themselves. Dallas Observer has the rest.
Some ganja farmers in Florida are learning what happens when you tell too many people about your cultivation operation today as police continue to clean up a grow house in a Miami suburb.
At least, we assume it was loose-lips because it wasn’t someone ratting out the grower that caused this. It was burglars trying to rob the grow that caused neighbors to call the police and set the whole thing in motion.
Kids meal toy prizes from fast food restaurants sure have gotten cooler since I was a Happy Meal-eating child.
Police in Dundee, Michigan earlier this week arrested a 23-year-old Burger King employee after a family found a packed ganja pipe in their grandson’s kid’s meal. The family from Detroit immediately called the police instead of pulling back through the drive through and demanding they fix their mistake like everyone else does when a restaurant fucks up their take out order.
If your phone has a keylock feature, use it. Not only will it prevent people from stealing your information if you happen to have your phone behind (or absentmindedly leave it somewhere), but it will keep you from pocket-dialing the cops while you talk about ganja with your friends.
Of course, merely talking about marijuana isn’t illegal – but as Florham park, New Jersey police proved last week: that won’t stop them from busting you.
| Photo by Sesmm123. |
Would-be New Hampshire medical marijuana patients have to wait and suffer while their legislators take their sweet time getting the state’s newly-created and recently-approved medical marijuana bills signed into law.
The bill, which creates a state-regulated marijuana dispensary program and allows registered patients to purchase and posses up to two ounces of cannabis, was approved June 26, but has been sitting on the desk of House Speaker Terie Norelli since then – unsigned. Once it makes it to the governor, the new laws go into place.
The Washington State Liquor Control Board, which has been charged with regulating the voter-created recreational marijuana industry, will not be limiting the size of cannabis grow operations, reports Jake Ellison at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
“The board has that ability and has not chosen at this time to set the size,” Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the board told the paper this week.
| North Shore edibles in Colorado. |
According to the Michigan Supreme Court, THC-infused edibles are not considered “usable marijuana” under state medical marijuana laws unless they contain actual plant material.
Because, you know, THC isn’t useful and doesn’t come from the plant or anything like that.
The decision stems from a 2011 traffic stop in which Earl Chambers was pulled over, searched and slapped with intent to deliver charges for the mason jars and plastic baggies full of herb he had on him as well as for the brownies. Not only was he charged for the dry weight of the dry herb, he was charged with the full weight of the brownies themselves.
A few weeks ago, we told you about the strange case of Ray McFeters, a 73-year-old veteran living near Lake Mille Lacs, Minnesota who could face up to 12 years in prison for his 25 to 30 bowls-a-day marijuana habit. But don’t think that McFeters’s pending legal quandary curbed his pot use. “I love pot,” he says. “Pot saved my life. I’ll never stop smoking pot.”
The Minneapolis City Pages has the rest of McFeters’s story.
| “Ay, no.” |
A housekeeper for a 23-year-old man in Chicago unknowingly ate a pot-filled brownie earlier this week.
That shouldn’t normally be a headline, but apparently this woman couldn’t handle her shit and freaked out. So bad, in fact, that the 23-year-old resident of the house called 911 for an ambulance – even though he clearly knew what she had consumed because he’s the one who made the brownie in the first place.