| Jay Kumar Koulampet/Commons. |
| Wisconsin state Capitol. |
A bill that would allow children suffering from severe seizure disorders to access cannabidiol (CBD) oil for treatment was unanimously approved by the Wisconsin state Senate yesterday — though just where that oil would come from is unclear.
The bill has already been given the green light by the state House, and now heads to Gov. Scott Walker for approval. Walker has not indicated which way he plans to go with the bill.
Medical marijuana dispensaries, farms and testing facilities all became legal yesterday in Nevada, though it could take months before any of them open to the general public.
The state Legislative Commission adopted the final rules for the industry Monday, beginning the licensing phase for cities and counties across the state that have chosen to allow the businesses to operate.
| Jesse Holland |
| Screenshot from digital Weedmaps ad playing in Times Square, NYC |
As terribly predictable April Fool’s Day jokes rang out everywhere you looked yesterday, both online and off, somewhere around a million motorists and pedestrians passing through Times Square in midtown Manhattan probably wondered if they were getting fooled with when they saw the first ever pro-marijuana advertisement to ever be displayed in the historic mecca of marketing.
| Medical and recreational marijuana for sale in Colorado. |
Kevin Sabet is not one of the more than 70 percent of Floridians who want Amendment 2 to pass in November. Sabet — director of the drug policy institute at the University of Florida and a professor at the college of medicine there too (in other words: dude profits from prohibition and addiction) — is one of the few experts who’s been outspoken in opposition to the medical marijuana movement.
Originally from California, he witnessed the effects of legalization there and claims it’s one of the reasons he’s so passionately against medical marijuana. He’s worked in the Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations, so he insists that he comes at the issue with a nonpartisan point of view. He’s cofounder and director of Smarter Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and works closely with Patrick Kennedy on the left and David Frum (former speechwriter for George W. Bush) on the right.
If you’re going to fight cannabis prohibitionists, you’ve got to know where they stand. Check out the Broward-Palm Beach New Times interview with Sabet.
| Flickr/Fleur-Design. |
Two St. Louis-area Police officers face drug charges on suspicion of robbing heroin while on duty before selling the drugs to a dealer and splitting the profit.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Hillsdale Police Lieutenant Parrish Swanson, 40, of St. Louis, and Officer Raymond Stephens, 28, of St. Charles, with felony counts of conspiracy to distribute and attempted distribution of heroin, according to a release.
The Riverfront Times has more.
| Brownies are okay, but candies like this will remain illegal. |
As we reported last week, Oregon recently began re-allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to operate in the state under a new, uniform set of guidelines. Among those rules: dispensaries weren’t allowed to sell edibles that could be “attractive to minors”. That meant no cookies, brownies, crackers, candies or anything sweet and loaded with cannabis extracts could be sold.
But state officials fixed that problem last night, issuing a revised set of rules that allows for baked infused-foods but still banning anything that is colorful and childlike, or anything that is “an animal or any other commercially recognizable toy or candy.”
Your average U.S. truck driver in the makes something like $.30 or $.40 cents per mile. It’s enough to make a living but not much else.
Swap the 18-wheeler full of widgets for one full of Mexican marijuana, and the job becomes way, way more lucrative. Reliable data are tough to come by — this particular sub-occupation isn’t tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it’s not a topic that comes up in online trucking forums — but anecdotally, a driver transporting weed can make $50,000 for a 430-mile trip, or roughly 300 times his law-abiding counterpart. That’s at least the amount that was offered last week to an undercover law enforcement officer in Laredo for the eight-hour drive to Dallas.
| Wing-Chi Poon/Commons. |
Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told the media last summer that returning marijuana to a medicinal user was “not how we do business.”
But Wilmot did not return calls or even issue a statement this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court decided — by its inaction — that Wilmot must give the pot back to the patient. With the decision to turn down the Yuma case for a hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided squarely with the state’s medical-marijuana law.
| U.S. Navy images. |
Washington D.C. elected officials have decriminalized up to an ounce of cannabis in our nation’s capitol, though the law still needs approval from the U.S. Congress before it is official.
Mayor Vincent Gray signed the measure last night, making the possession an ounce or less a civil offense punishable by a $25 fine at most. Smoking ganja in public remains illegal, and you can still be jailed for up to two months for lighting up a spliff anywhere other than the safety and privacy of someone’s home. Marijuana possession does remain illegal on federal property in the city, however (which is practically everywhere).
A Florida woman was abruptly visited by Florida Child Protective Services last week on an anonymous tip that she had been administering marijuana to her son, who suffers from a rare form of epilepsy.
Turns out, Renee Petro was not administering any marijuana to her 12-year-old son, Branden. Petro has, however, been an outspoken advocate for medical marijuana. The real crime, it would seem, was the intrusion of CPS agents arriving at her home to interrogate her 9-year-old daughter and the nurse who takes care of Branden.