February 22 was a seemingly normal, snowless day at Taos Ski Valley outside of Taos, New Mexico. That is, until the U.S. Forest Service showed up and started treating the place like the scene of a major crime in progress.
Instead of focusing on real problems in our national forests like poaching, four armed Forest Service agents wearing flak jackets took a drug dog around the resort parking lot and to cars along the side of the road to bust pot smokers (and people with cracked windshields).
Maria Botker throws her arms forward and droops her head, mimicking, in slow-motion, the way in which her seven-year-old daughter wilts daily. She calls the worst of these “drop seizures.” The Botkers live a fragmented life between Minnesota and Colorado so they can get access to Charlotte’s Web — a strain of marijuana that, when ingested as an oil, has been shown to control epilepsy and help children like theirs regain cognitive functions.
“This is not the way we want to live,” Botker says.
Minneapolis City Pages has the full coverage.
Tuesday marked one of the best of times for marijuana reform in the nation’s capital of Washington D.C., and one of the worst of times.
It truly seemed to be a tale of two cities yesterday as the local District council voted 10-1 to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of weed, while right across town federal U.S. lawmakers were battling with the Chief Deputy of the DEA over anti-weed talking points as tired as most of the cranky old men arguing.
(Ex) Buffalo Police Officer James Hamilton is a hypocrite. On one hand, he’s a cop. His job is to bust pot dealers, growers and users in his town along with the rest of the Buffalo Police. They are good at it, too.
On the other hand, Hamilton allegedly was a mid-sized pot grower and dealer who tended a basement garden with 82 marijuana plants while on the force where he recently was named “Rookie of the Month,” according to the Buffalo News.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is conducting raids at this writing at multiple marijuana businesses in the Denver area.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver has issued a statement confirming the ongoing operation, which is being conducted by the DEA in collaboration with the Internal Revenue Service and the Denver Police Department. Denver Westword sources tell them it’s likely to continue throughout the day and involves a notable number of targets. Click over to The Latest Word blog for more on this constantly-evolving story.
| Robert Pittman/William Breathes. |
Back in July of this year, TokeOfTheTown.com editor, William Breathes, reported on headlines coming out of the Middle Eastern nation of Turkey, where government officials had just confiscated roughly three tons of hash during a drug sting on an illegal weed growing operation. Being a visual learner myself, the imagery he provided of “6 right whale testicles” painted just the comparative masterpiece that I needed in order to comprehend the magnitude of the 3-ton hash bust in Turkey.
Reports from Turkey this week are that they have broken their all-time record for drugs seized in a single operation, when anti-smuggling and organized crime agents from the Diyarbakir Police Department uncovered over 23 tons of weed – a stash roughly the size of a full grown killer whale, testicles and all.
Thinking of taking a ski vacation in the high country of Colorado in 2014? Last week, Telluride officially approved sales of recreational cannabis, joining a majority of other tourism-reliant ski towns around the Centennial State that have given an okay to the ganja.
Which towns, exactly? Denver Westword has the growing list.
An exclusive report released today by Reuters outlines a long-running campaign of the federal government knowingly withholding evidence in numerous cases involving the DEA, and a highly classified multi-agency wing of the DEA known as the Special Operations Division (SOD). By withholding the true sources of their investigations, critics contend that defendants’ rights to a fair trial are being compromised daily.
Oklahoma toughened their marijuana driving laws this week, creating a limit of zero THC in a driver’s blood and setting it as a per se limit. That means that if you have any marijuana or marijuana metabolites in your system whatsoever, you’re guilty of driving under the influence.
So, if it wasn’t already on your list of life rules, you should add DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH OKLAHOMA on there. Sorry Oklahoman’s but your state is about as far from being okay with marijuana as it gets.
According to the Michigan Supreme Court, medical marijuana patients who drive after using cannabis are not automatically breaking the law reversing a lower court decision that barred medical patients from driving with any amounts of THC in their system.
The unanimous ruling issued Tuesday, centers around Rodney Koon, who was pulled over for going nearly 30 mph over the limit back in 2010. Koon admitted to drinking a beer and taking his meds earlier in the day and a blood test for active THC proved he had about 10 nanograms per milliliter of blood, but he contends that wasn’t why he was speeding. After being shot down in lower courts, he appealed his way to the Supreme Court.