| Michael Mol/Flickr |
A new study just put out by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has once again proven that Americans are misinformed, and therefore easily confused, when it comes to cannabis use and driving a car.
As cannabis reform sweeps the nation, so too does a new round of the same stale talking points about the supposed dangers of marijuana use that have been regurgitated for decades, always muddying the waters of the debate.
If the numbers revealed in the AAA study are anywhere near accurate, all it would prove is that you can probably train a monkey to hate bananas with the right amount of propaganda.
| Kríttik’l Kápchər/Flickr |
For over two hundred years, farmers in the state of Connecticut legally grew and harvested hemp for use in sails, ropes, and clothing. In fact, the value of hemp in colonial-era Connecticut was so high that it was actually illegal for farmers to not grow hemp. That sentiment continued all the way through World War II, when the U.S. government was distributing propaganda films urging farmers to plant hemp crops for the good of the nation.
In the 1950’s however, the hemp plant got caught up in the misguided reefer madness over marijuana, and has not been grown in Connecticut ever since.
But as cannabis acceptance grows in the state, so too does the demand for the right to grow the incredibly useful and perpetually renewable resource of hemp.
Yesterday on Israeli national television, a prominent Israeli political figure announced that he had recently taken a toke or two of cannabis. Of course, had he been caught doing it in his homeland, without the proper medical permit to be doing so, he would be breaking the law.
So seeing a conservative member of Israel’s Home Party just blurt out a confession to the world may have been surprising to some, but only if they haven’t been paying attention to Yinon Magal and his rise in national politics.
When the South American nation of Uruguay became the first country to officially legalize marijuana last year, headlines about $1 grams of cannabis made news around the world.
As it turns out, $1 per gram is considered to be outrageous in nearby Paraguay, where weed can be had for a mere $0.06/g.
| Flickr/danxoneill |
Lots of folks get a little lonely around the holidays, and they all deal with it in their own way. For 30-year old Jared Kreft, the best way he could think of to cope with the holiday blues was to seek out a little romance.
When he entered some stranger’s barn last Wednesday night in Wasau, Wisconsin, he knew he was trespassing… but love was in the air.
Late last week Oklahoma and Nebraska filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court to halt Colorado’s implementation of Amendment 64. Basically, both states say they are tired of dealing with marijuana that crosses the border. In the suit, they claim that Colorado cannabis ties up law enforcement agencies and is wreaking havoc on police and state trooper budgets. And now it seems another neighbor to the east is mulling jumping on the bandwagon.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has been debating whether to sue Colorado for months, according to his staff. Jennifer Rapp, spokeswoman for Schmidt, told KMBC News that Schmidt is still “weighing his options.”
Our own William Breathes has the full story over at the Latest Word.
An important state appellate court decision was just announced that may have just set a major precedent in how California cannabis law will view concentrated forms of THC.
Until now, hash makers and lovers alike felt as though they were operating in a very, very grey area of California’s 18-year old medical marijuana laws. But on Wednesday of last week, one man’s day in court gave Cali’s cannabis enthusiasts a rare occasion to cheer.
This year has not been a good one for the NYPD. The department has found itself in an uphill PR battle for pretty much all of 2014, starting as far back as December 2013 with then-Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s announcement that Bill Bratton, considered to be the architect of the NYPD’s much-reviled “broken windows” policing policy, would be returning to the force as its commissioner. There was the death of Eric Garner, who was killed when Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo used an apparent chokehold while trying to arrest him for selling illegal cigarettes on Staten Island. There was the shooting death of Akai Gurley at the hands of a rookie police officer. And then there was the Garner grand jury decision and the subsequent protests. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the NYPD will probably be happier than anyone to see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve.
| Benjamin Russell Halgren via GoFundMe.com. |
Even messier than gay marriage, the wild inconsistencies of marijuana policies across the nation are really too chaotic for anyone to keep up with. In the span of a week, the federal government came out in support of medical marijuana, and two states neighboring Colorado sued the weed mecca over its lax laws.
Congress’s shift on medical marijuana policy came rolled up in a massive spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday. For the first time, the federal government is giving individual states the option to decide whether weed has any medicinal value. For more, visit the Minneapolis City Pages.
Richard DeLisi, sentenced to three consecutive 30-year terms, or 90 years, for a marijuana importation conviction in 1989, will remain incarcerated. Judge Michael E. Raiden denied a motion requesting a review of his sentence last week. DeLisi has spent the past 26 years behind bars for a nonviolent offense that has a normal guideline sentence range of 12 to 17 years.