The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld a lower court’s ruling that warrantless blood-drawing in DWI cases is unconstitutional.
In a split 5-4 decision last week, the majority justices disagreed with prosecutors’ argument that driving on Texas roads is a privilege — not a right — and that “the driving public” is presumed to have read the statute outlining no-refusal blood draws. (We must say, there are plenty of roads in Houston that don’t really feel like a “privilege” to drive on.)
More at the Houston Press.
On an evening of largely peaceful protest in the Mile High City after a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s failure to indict a police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown, video has surfaced in which a Denver cop can be repeatedly punching a drug suspect in the head, as well as tripping a woman said to have been seven-and-a-half months pregnant.
For years, financial hassles have forced a multimillion-dollar industry to rely almost entirely on cash and to keep any bank accounts under hush-hush names because fed-fearing financial institutions are wary of doing business with state-legal pot shops. But dispensaries in Colorado are finally seeing a ray of hope, now that a marijuana banking co-op that received its charter from the state is moving forward with plans to open in the new year.
If you live in a place where marijuana is illegal and get locked out of your apartment and have left weed sitting out on the table and live plants growing in a back room, suck it up and call a locksmith or break a window and pay the cost to replace it. Whatever you do, don’t raise a scene outside and get the cops called on you. And if you can’t help yourself and have to bang and scream on the window so loud that the cops do come, do not let them let you in the door.
An Iowa woman clearly didn’t understand that very simple logic last week.
The 2015 legislative session is still months away, but already the smoke signals are starting to rise from certain legalization camps.
State Rep. Bill McCamley, a Democrat from the southern part of the state, said in an interim Health and Human Services Committee meeting that he would like to see the state seriously discussing pot legalization this session.
The strange (and shameful) tale of Sue Sisley, a woman who was set to lead the nation’s first large-scale study of medical cannabis for vets with returning post-traumatic stress disorder but fired for her outspoken support of medical cannabis at the state level, seems to have found a happy ending.
Monday, the state of Colorado announced that they will put $10 million toward medical research – including $2 million going towards Sisley’s study.
Georgia state Sen. Curt Thompson has two plans for legalizing pot next year and he’s not wasting any time getting them into the legislative process. The first bill would give lawmakers the ability to legalize the sale of medical cannabis for patients with certain debilitating conditions — currently there’s a limited, CBD-only law in place.
Thompson’s second bill would legalize the sale of cannabis for adults 21 and up, taxing sales and putting the money toward schools and improving mass transport around the state.
This church of ours is open to all. . . . There will be no outcasts,” reads a banner looming over comedian Pat Leborio as he struts onto the stage. He’s in the church hall of St. Clement’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente, ready to start a set for an audience that seem to be the last people on earth ready to listen to an hour of insults thrown their way: addicts.
As past weed-themed gift lists we’ve run featuring the best marijuana gifts of 2012 and 2013 demonstrate, Colorado pot shops have embraced the holidays for a while now. But 2014 promises more deals than ever, with a number specifically pegged to Black Friday.
As the Associated Press has reported, The Grass Station is promising to sell $50 ounces to the first sixteen customers per day Friday-Saturday, November 28-30. Here’s a graphic featuring all its Black Friday “door busters:” The Latest Word has more.
| VVM/Christine Cool. |
It’s become a common sight in Colorado — at Broncos games, in movie theaters and malls, in the bathrooms at bars and clubs, even behind high schools and in employee parking lots. People will quickly, slyly grab a device from their pocket that looks like a pen and put it to their mouth. Then, after just a tiny puff and the mere hint of the smell of pot or cigarette smoke, they’ll put the device — which doesn’t get hot — back into their pocket and go back to whatever they were doing.
The use of vape pens and e-cigarettes has been common for a while, but it caught on big in 2014 after recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado at the beginning of the year. So big, in fact, that Oxford Dictionaries chose “vape” as its word of the year for 2014. Denver Westword has more.