Be careful what you wish for. That is the lesson being realized today by pro-cannabis advocates and activists in America’s Finest City.
| San Diego, California |
Yesterday, on a nearly unanimous 8-1 decision, the San Diego City Council finally cast a meaningful vote on establishing an official medical marijuana business ordinance in the city, laying down a law on pot shops for the first time since the California Compassionate Use Act, commonly referred to as Prop 215, was passed nearly 18 years ago.
| Pristoop. |
We all know cops aren’t the brightest bulbs on the shelf (after all, if they were smarter they wouldn’t be cops). But in case you needed a reminder of the mental heavyweights we are dealing with, Annapolis Police Chief Michael Pristoop had to publicly apologize yesterday for passing on a satirical, hoax news story claiming 37 marijuana deaths the day Colorado legalized pot sales.
Even better: Pristoop admits that he believed the information was completely accurate, and even though none of it is true he still is sticking by his wrongheaded position.
California state Senator Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) has pulled off the impossible: he’s authored medical marijuana legislation that is actually supported by both the California League of Cities (which has both lobbied against pot dispensaries and helped cities actively ban them) as well as law enforcement, which has never supported a single pro-pot bill.
Check out the OC Weekly for more.
| Video below. |
Back in 2012, Denver’s Westword offered an in-depth tour of smoke shacks — low-key structures at numerous Colorado ski resorts where particularly kind skiers stop to smoke a little pot before getting back to the slopes. Now, Inside Edition has discovered these venerable attractions, but the hilariously hysterical tone of the report, which employs hidden cameras and focuses on the prospect of carnage and catastrophe, couldn’t be more different from Breathes’. Look below to see the crazy video, which, as you may have already discovered, is in auto-play mode.
Check out the vid over at Westword.com
| Russian Federal Narcotics Service director Viktor Ivanov. |
In Russia, marijuana smokes you! Or, apparently that’s what Russian officials want the Russian public to believe. According to Russian Federal Narcotics Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov, marijuana users are 60 times more likely to be heroin users than non-marijuana users. In addition to becoming junkies, pot smokers end up depressed and schizophrenic in later life.
Not that the former KGB officer backed up those statistics with any actual documentation or anything like that.
| flickr.com/mrthomas |
We’ve been over this before, but bringing pot into prison for an incarcerated inmate is not the best idea, but it’s especially dumb if you’re already in jail yourself or happen to work there.
Case and point: Vermont inmates Trish Belliveau and Wesley Kidder and former Windsor Prison guard Brett Jasinski, both convicted of bringing marijuana into a detention facility after Belliveau bribed Jaslinski into bringing pot and cigarettes back into the prison while Belliveau was out on furlough. It’s a strange story that involves some bumbling cloak and dagger actions, notably that the entire thing was caught on security cameras.
The neighborhood cop shop in Roubaix, France, has apparently been busy busting enough local weed dealers to cause quite a stink. They estimate that they have seized at least 40 kilograms of cannabis and ‘resin’, and their successes on the streets and the resulting stockpile of pot has them feeling pretty high…literally.
In an interview with local news outlet 20 Minutes (so many jokes…), one officer who either didn’t want to be identified, or couldn’t remember his name, was quoted saying, “Already on the ground floor it smells a bit. But on the first floor, the odor is really strong. When you go there, you clearly smell the weed. And after a day, you are stoned.”
| Wikimedia Commons |
| Mairie de Roubaix, the city hall of Roubaix, France |
Fox Business talk show host Don Imus has come out in support of hemp-backing Richard “Kinky” Friedman‘s campaign for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. He’s also having some fun with it. Imus had a phone conversation with Friedman on his show Wednesday morning.
Our friends at the Houston Press have a transcript the show.
| Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon. |
In what could possibly be a shift in the way Governor Jay Nixon will approach reforming Missouri’s draconian marijuana laws, he gave an ever-so tepid “maybe” to the question of legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes when asked about it on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
On a panel with three other governors – Rick Perry from Texas, Mike Pence from Indiana, and Dan Malloy from Connecticut – host Candy Crowley asked Nixon his thoughts on legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
Well, sort of. The Riverfront Times has more.
| John Hickenlooper. |
Legalizing limited amounts of pot for personal use and cultivation has been a great idea, raising millions in tax revenue and creating a newfound sense of freedom for people who choose to use cannabis. But Colorado’s governor feels much, much differently.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told his peers at the National Governors Association that they shouldn’t rush into changing their laws any time soon.