| Commons/postdif. |
| “Hello Brooklyn”. |
Despite Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announcing last week that his office will no longer prosecute cases for low-level marijuana possession, the New York Police Department says it is business as usual when it comes to busting stoners in the streets of the Big Apple.
Just days after Thompson received praise from marijuana proponents for taking a stand against the war on drugs and its fierce efforts to lure non-violent offenders, especially those of African American decent, into the criminal justice system, police commissioner Bill Bratton emerged with a subsequent statement demanding officers to ignore the new policy.
The Denver Broncos are facing a lawsuit against the team and its owner, Pat Bowlen, after police twice ejected a Cannabis University vehicle from a Mile High Stadium parking lot, allegedly because the word “cannabis” was printed on it.
The complaint has already been amended once. But now, powerful attorney David Lane has taken on the case, and he predicts that the Broncos are headed for a loss.
The 9-year-old Barnesville girl who snitched on her parents for growing pot entered the police station on June 6 “visibly upset” and, though tears, told officers she took her story to authorities because “doing drugs is bad.”
“She didn’t want to be around marijuana smoke anymore because it made her sick,” an incident report sent to our friends at the Minneapolis City Pages by the Barnesville Police Department says. “She also indicated that she was concerned… because [redacted]blow marijuana smoke into [her]dog’s mouth.”
Read the (heavily redacted) report below.
| Ildar Sagdejev/Commons. |
| “Quick! Come up with a lie we can use to bust some harmless pot smokers!” |
Cops in Durham, North Carolina lied about 911 calls to trick residents into opening the doors and letting the pigs inside when they otherwise wouldn’t have had access.
This wasn’t just once, mind you. Apparently, it was a pseudo-policy for the department despite Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez’s denial.
Were Danielle Cordova, Matt Ackerman and Paul Mannaioni responsible for a hash-oil explosion that seriously burned all three of them? Or were they merely bystanders who were too badly hurt to escape along with several others seen fleeing from the fiery scene?
The Denver District Attorney’s Office has charged the trio in the blast. But in an arrest affidavit, Cordova repeatedly insists the person actually responsible got away — and she doesn’t know who he is. Denver Westword has more.
| Boston Public Library Flickr edited by Toke of the Town. |
As we reported back in June, Maryland state Rep. Andy Harris, a Republican, is spearheading a move that would block the decriminalization of limited amounts of marijuana in Washington D.C.
But many, including D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray see it as a shot to D.C.’s home rule and Democrat-controlled city council. Now Gray is urging all D.C. residents to boycott Maryland’s beaches and resort towns.
When attempting to smuggle marijuana across town in your damned underwear, it is probably in your best interest to avoid packing a semi-automatic heater as well as making the choice to not wear weed-related apparel.
This is apparently a common sense lesson in cannabis that one South Carolina man just had to learn the hard way. According to the Rock Hill Police Department, 26-year-old Kim Leonard Grafton Jr. was busted earlier this week after officers discovered over forty baggies of marijuana stuffed in his underpants after a traffic stop.
Last week, Gov. Mark Dayton named 16 people to a task force that’s responsible for evaluating the state’s medical cannabis program. The list is a mixed bag, including eight healthcare providers and four members of the public — but also four opponents from the law enforcement community.
None of them have been content to sit on the sidelines. Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom, for instance, once wrote an op-ed calling cannabis “the most dangerous illegal drug in our nation,” and reaffirmed that position last November, mocking the use of the term “medical.”
Update, July 11 at 2:49 p.m.: We spoke with representatives from the Bakersfield PD who tell us they did not make a mistake. Seriously. The Sergeant we spoke with said that they valued the haul based on a price per-gram. Yes, they value all 3,067,192 grams at roughly $24 a pop. He said they don’t go by the bulk price, only the street price, and according to their research, they think $24 a gram is reasonable.
But the reality is that by doing that, they’ve completely blown any credibility they had left. Nobody is selling 3 million grams of pot by the gram. Nobody. Try as you may to sell even an ounce at that rate, and you’d go crazy. That’s why people (the majority) buy in bulk. Also, nobody in California is paying $25 a gram on the street. Nobody. These cops are just plain clueless about the things they are supposed to know about. A more reasonable figure would be $7.6 million, or just over $1,000 a pound. Even if it was top shelf, it wouldn’t get more than $3,500 a pound — meaning it would be worth $23.67 million at most.
| A DEA raid in Denver. |
Back in January, Marijuana Policy Project spokesman and Amendment 64 advocate Mason Tvert applauded comments by President Barack Obama in which he suggested that marijuana is not as risky as alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
Nonetheless, the new National Drug Control Strategy document for 2014 (see it below) reflects little or no softening of the feds’ approach to pot. And that leaves Tvert feeling frustrated.