A husband allegedly shot is wife in the head in Denver Monday night. And while the crime is horrible, it is primarily making news because police and Denver media are latching on to the rumor that the man may have been high on marijuana at the time.
But what police aren’t making a big deal is their absurdly slow reaction time – 13 minutes – nor do they have any concrete evidence of marijuana consumption or that it contributed to the incident (hint: it didn’t).
Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to randomly drug test every single state employee in Florida — from department heads to minimum wage DMV janitors — has already failed the common-sense test and an appeals court ruling. A trial run of the program found that almost no state employees were failing, while an appeals court ruled that the program violated the constitution.
But Scott hasn’t given up on the idea yet. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely decide this week whether to take up the latest petition filed by Scott’s lawyers.
Both the State of Colorado and City of Denver tourist agencies have resisted the temptation to use marijuana as a way to lure visitors to the area, despite mainstream media pot coverage that’s essentially free advertising. It seems their non-approach isn’t working.
Against that backdrop comes word that hotel searches for Denver on 4/20 weekend are up 73 percent from this time last year — and a national cannabis activist thinks the digits might be even higher if officials weren’t so shy about embracing weed.
| Some say the Death Star was destroyed by an errant hash maker. |
Proving that trying to extract high concentrations of THC from marijuana plants can be just as destructive as tweakers running meth labs, a man in Malibu blew up a rental home this week.
The house at 1170 Encinal Canyon Road was no shack – it sat on 34 acres and was worth about $600,000. LA Weekly has more.
We really feel for our fellow writers at our sister paper in Houston, The Houston Press. Not only can they not legally go home and smoke marijuana, they don’t get the pleasure of covering the medical marijuana industry and culture from a first-hand perspective (except for the occasional strain review of lab-make smokable drugs often called “synthetic cannabis).
But they can dream, can’t they? Case and point: Angelica Leicht’s Best Pot-Related Jobs in the Cannabis Industry. Read on for more.
| A still from Vice’s interview with José Mujica. |
Marijuana use, cultivation and sales of limited amounts is now legal in Uruguay, though the country is still working out the kinks on just how it will be grown. Uruguayan President José Mujica, 78, has made it clear that he’s never tried marijuana and that he doesn’t intend to do so, but he thinks is insane to continue arresting people for the plant.
It’s a big story: a country legalizing a plant that is illegal pretty much everywhere else around the world. So Vice Magazine sent reporter Krishna Andavolu down there to investigate and interview Mujica — where he promptly lit up a doobie in the nation’s leader’s garden.
More people have been bringing their pets to Phoenix-area animal hospitals to treat marijuana ingestion, according to a local chain of animal clinics. According to the Emergency Animal Clinic — which owns five hospitals across Phoenix, the East Valley, and West Valley — there’s been a pretty sharp increase in such cases over the past few years.
According to the Emergency Animal Clinic, they averaged about six cases a month in 2012, nearly a dozen a month in 2013, and nearly two dozen a month so far this year.That increase happens to coincide with the opening of medical-marijuana dispensaries in Arizona. And you’d better believe the vets are making that connection.
| Colorado Supreme Court courtroom. |
A group of Colorado activists have filed a request with the Colorado Supreme Court to consider the rights of patients when they review — once-and-for-all — whether or not medical marijuana patients have a right to use cannabis and whether or not the federal controlled substances act supersedes state medical marijuana laws.
It’s a complicated matter that has arisen several times, though most recently it stems from the 2012 drug-test-failure firing of a paraplegic DISH Network employee who was licensed by the state of Colorado to use medical cannabis.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has given his final approval to a legislative bill that decriminalizes the possession of up to ten grams of pot in his state, putting the offense on the same level as a traffic infraction.
“The marijuana decriminalization bill will make it easier for law enforcement to focus on higher priority crimes & drive down violence in MD,” the governor tweeted after signing the bill.
Denver city officials expect organizers of this weekend’s 4/20 event at Denver’s Civic Center Park to actively discourage public pot smoking — an activity that’s illegal under Colorado law. However, liquor will be sold and can be consumed at the McNichols Building on the Civic Center complex during the festival. Among those who sees this situation as contradictory is Miguel Lopez, the 4/20 weekend’s organizer who applied for the right to sell beer in the first place.
According to Lopez, the beer-sale request was submitted to Denver Arts & Venues, the city department that oversees the McNichols Building — and it has been approved.