Singapore executed Chijioke Stephen Obioha by hanging. A Nigerian national and football player, Obioha was found with 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds) of marijuana in 2007. According to Singapore law, anyone with more than 500 g is presumed to be trafficking.
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, known as “The Punisher” for his advocacy of vigilante murders,threatened his human rights activist critics.
A Florida county sheriff’s office may have trained drug sniffing dogs with material other than drugs, according to ProPublica. Another ProPublica report led Portland, Ore. to change its policy for the drug tests used in many arrests.
The U.S. Supreme Court won’t take up the case of a Native American church in Hawaii that wants to be exempt for marijuana laws.
A college student who had $11,000 confiscated at the Cincinnati airport after his checked bag smelled of pot, challenged the forfeiture and got his money back.
The Bay Area has the country’s highest concentration of cannabis users in the country.
My friend Reilly Capps wrote a story for The Rooster about “ Stoners anonymous.”
A survey found that cannabis is attracting an increasingly upscale clientele.
Anita Thompson, widow of Hunter S. Thompson, wants to market the gonzo journalist’s personal cannabis strains. Skepticism abounds.
The founder of Healing Church, a Catholicism-inflected pot “ministry” in Rhode Island, is involved in abizarre legal situation. If I’m reading this correctly, Anne Armstrong had a vision of cannabis leaves on a six-foot replica of the Virgin of Guadeloupe – an image said to have appeared on a Mexican peasant’s poncho in 1531. Armstrong later obtained and then lost custody of the replica. She also faces a possession charge.
The Stranger put together a cannabis gift guide. It includes weed filled advent calendars and Christmas ornaments. The piece also cites scripture to prove Jesus was a stoner.
Country music legend Loretta Lynn smoked pot for the first time at 84, for her glaucoma. She didn’t like it, but defended Willie Nelson and the right to do it.
A woman in Greensboro, N.C., was “shocked,” in a bad way, when someone mistakenly mailed her four pounds of weed.
Steve Kerr is a six-time NBA champion, having won five titles as a player and a sixth as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors. He has the highest 3-point career percentage of any player in NBA history, he’s the reigning NBA Coach of the Year, and last week he became the most recent high-profile athlete to admit to using marijuana for pain relief.
On a CSN podcast released last Friday, Steve Kerr told host Monte Poole that he while he’s not a “pot person,” he tried using weed to treat the back pain he’s had for the past two years.
If you know cannabis in Colorado, you’ve heard of Jane West. Whether you’ve seen her on Nightline, CBS or NBC, read about her in Forbes, Time, Rolling Stone or, most recently, Playboy, she’s been the face of women in the industry since she started her company in 2014.
The funny thing, though, is that West fell into it almost by accident. For eight years, she ran ten-day experiential education programs for students who wanted to be doctors in thirteen cities nationwide. Then, after Coloradans legalized recreational marijuana, she started hosting cannabis event, and the Denver Post did an article about her new company. The paper ran her photo with the story, and she was sure someone at her work would see it and she would be fired — but nothing happened.
Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals will start to distribute a medical cannabis inhaler developed by Syqe, an Israeli start-up that raised money from tobacco giant Philip Morris. The inhaler may also be tested with opiates.
An editorial in The Scientist says its unacceptable that the World Health Organization has not developed positions on legalization.
Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children will begin a clinical trial of cannabis extracts containing CBD and THC for children with severe epilepsy.
A new study from Steep Hill Labs found that 83 percent of California weed wouldn’t pass Oregon’s testing standards. An industry report says Oregon’s strict regulations are crushing the state industry. Willamette Week reports that business conditions are pushing some entrepreneurs back to the underground market.
Rehab provider Spectrum Health Systems said a doctor was not to blame for revealing to a patient’s employer that she uses MED.
A survey of cannabis researchers finds out what they want from the government in order to pursue their work.
A Reason investigation finds that conservative authorities in Idaho “conspired to restrict a promising cannabis-derived seizure treatment.”
The National Fire Protection Association is developing fire safety standards for cannabis businesses.
The FDA will allow a late stage clinical trial for ecstasy as a treatment for PTSD.
Minnessota approved PTSD as a MED qualifying condition. New York approved chronic pain.
Canada’s legalization push is getting complicated. The much-anticipated task force report on legalizationhas been delayed. Meanwhile activists wonder why shops are getting raided if the government plans to legalize. For more see here.
Bill Blair a Canadian government official overseeing the issue appeared at a “ cash-for-access” fundraiser with cannabiz leaders that may have violated Liberal Party ethics guidelines. Blair defended recent raidssaying, “The only system for control is the existing legal regime. And we’re a society of laws,” he says.
In a recent interview, University of Denver law professor Sam Kamin outlined three ways Donald Trump could shut down state-legal marijuana — a prospect that has raised increasing levels of concern among cannabis reformers since the president-elect’s nomination of pot-hating Senator Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General.
Erik Altieri, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, shorthanded as NORML, acknowledges that such worries are prevalent right now, and he doesn’t dismiss them out of hand. Indeed, he encourages NORML supporters and anyone who objects to the federal government treating marijuana as a substance on par with heroin to be prepared for a crackdown, even if one has not yet been announced.
Since voters there legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, officials in Alaska have been hashing out logistical issues, including how to transport marijuana to communities across the state without violating federal law, since there are few roads and it’s against federal law to move marijuana on planes and boats.
Alaska is massive, twice the size of Texas — but with a population of a little over 738,000, it’s ranked last for population density in the United States. The bulk of Alaska’s residents live in the city of Anchorage and surrounding areas, and most of the rest of the population resides in small cities and towns dotted across the beautiful but unforgiving landscape, with many of these communities positioned along Alaska’s extensive coastline.
Ever since the nomination of hardcore pot prohibitionist Senator Jeff Sessions for the position of United States Attorney General, numerous members of the cannabis community have expressed increasing concern that the incoming Donald Trump administration might crack down on state-legal marijuana businesses in Colorado and beyond.
At this writing, neither Trump nor Sessions has publicly announced such a policy. But if they decide to move in this direction, what tactics would be at their disposal? How would they go about attempting to outlaw an entire industry — one that employs thousands of people and generates millions in tax revenues for the State of Colorado?
Possibly the largest legal pot company in the world.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.
Canada’s Canopy Growth Corp. will acquire Mettrum Health Corp. for C$430M, creating a dominant Canadian player.
Vice examines 280E, the tax code provision used to tax marijuana businesses more than other businesses.
Warehouse rents are skyrocketing in legal states. But the New York Stock Exchange IPO of cannabis real estate trust Innovative Industrial Properties went nowhere, following the Sessions nomination.
The BBC calls Albania, a small, poor country in southeast Europe, the continent’s “ outdoor cannabis capital.”
The industry could create an opportunity for clean energy technologies like “ renewable microgrids.”
LAWeekly asks if small cannabis businesses can survive legalization.
Accounting Today says, “ The Cannabis Industry Needs Accountants.”
Pot was a hot topic at the 2016 Wine Industry Expo. For more see here.
Financial firm Cowen said legalization is bad for beer sales. MarketWatch disagrees.
Dispensaries offered discounts for “ Green Friday.” (The shopping day after Thanksgiving.)
The BBC profiles John Stewart, an executive who was CEO of Purdue Pharma, which sells the opioid Oxycontin and now leads a MED company in Canada.
There’s an incubator that aims to turn formerly-incarcerated drug dealers into legal entrepreneurs.
Century Bank in Massachusetts openly works with pot businesses.
A new site called The Cannifornian will cover legalization in the state. Parent company Digital First Media also owns The Denver Post and its site The Cannabist.
RAND Corporation scholar Beau Kilmer editorializes in favor of the state legalization experiments.
Denver’s social use measure may face legal challenges. Juneau, Ak.’s first dispensary opened and sold out in three hours.
Maryland’s pot regulator has hired a diversity consultant, after it failed to award any of its initial 30 licenses to African-Americans. It has also given preliminary approval for 102 MED dispensary licenses. The names will be made public this week.
Florida’s MED community has few friends in Tallahassee. The new law will also undermine the state’s largely disregarded bong ban.
The Cannabist meets Rilie Ray Morgan, the 66-year old man who championed MED in North Dakota.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) is launching a new effort to use pot taxes to build apartments for the chronically homeless.
Massachusetts may delay implementing aspects of its REC law. Maine will recount its REC vote. MED legalization is on the table in Ireland and South Africa.
British politician Nick Clegg called for legalization. Vice sketches out what a legal U.K. market for recreational drugs could look like.
He’s taking us high in the sky: Scotty ATL is launching Scotty’s So High Select, a sativa strain named after the song “Cloud IX,” which he calls his “crazy stupid high” single.
He’s doing it in partnership with the Denver Dab Co. by Next Harvest, whose dispensary will host a meet-and-greet event with Scotty from noon to 2 p.m. on December 10.
“Everybody on the West Coast knows about weed and what’s going on, but in the South people aren’t up on it,” Scotty says. “I’m trying to introduce my people in the South.”
Bananas are the Jan Brady (or Meg Griffin, for you millennials) of fruit. Most of us couldn’t even spell the word if it weren’t for that annoying Gwen Stefani song. Possessors of easily my least favorite fruit flavor, bananas are only edible in cake form because of the accompanying cream-cheese frosting and are largely eaten because we’re too lazy to wash an apple or cut a kiwi. Banana-flavored Runts? I send ’em back. Banana Laffy Taffy? Go fuck yourself. But if you have Banana Kush, pull up a chair. Let’s talk.