| Rick Kimpell/Commons. |
| Jefferson County, Colorado. |
Jefferson County, Colorado has resisted marijuana businesses for years — and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. Several months before Jeffco’s current moratorium is set to expire, the county’s Marijuana Task Force has issued a 134-page report arguing that cannabis sales should be permanently banned.
Live in Santa Fe, New Mexico? Use cannabis? Well, this November you should vote to make your life just a little easier and stress-free by voting to abolish laws making the possession of up to 28 grams a misdemeanor charge worth up to 15 days of your life in jail and $100 in fines.
Under the proposed changes, marijuana possession of up to 28 grams would be a civil infraction punishable by a $25 fine. Read it below.
Local beat cops just love busting stoners. Really, it’s probably a pretty easy racket. They rarely fight back, and in many cases the arresting officer can score a 2-for-1 by nabbing a minority carrying some weed. That may sound harsh, but statistics have shown for quite some time that pot busts – particularly those involving minorities – are the low hanging fruit in the world of law enforcement.
A review of the first six months of the new marijuana laws in Seattle, Washington has revealed equally disturbing numbers and trends. And shocking nobody, law enforcement spokespersons in America’s fastest growing city are showing little sympathy for the terribly skewed results.
In an unprecedented move earlier this year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to drastically reduce the sentencing recommendations for non-violent convicts of drug-related crimes.
Just this past Friday, in a move that received shockingly little press, that same U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to apply the same guidelines to eligible inmates already serving time behind bars. Though no inmates will see an early release thanks to the new legislation until November of 2015 at the earliest, experts says that as many as 46,000 currently incarcerated prisoners will be eligible to apply for an expedited sentence.
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.
Arizonans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder now qualify for medical cannabis recommendations in the state, according to a health department ruling Wednesday. This is the first time a condition has been added to the list since voters approved the program in 2010 and is a huge victory for Arizona’s large veteran population.
According Arizona Department of Health Services director Will Humble there is at least one study showing that cannabis can help with PTSD symptoms and that the study, combined with numerous of anecdotal accounts, was enough to sway his decision.
Here’s a tip to all of you doctors out there: If you’re going to be indiscriminately writing scrips for medical marijuana, at least put some leg work into it, or you’re going to end up like Long Beach doctor Dennis Larry Clark. Clark was put on one year probation earlier this month, as well as being barred from making any medical marijuana recommendations.
Why? Well, he got caught indiscriminately giving recommendations, and he didn’t even try to make it look not shady. The OC Weekly has more.
| Pat Arnow/Flickr. |
Medical marijuana patients should not be allowed to smoke cannabis, nor should they be allowed to share it with other patients. That’s the decree from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who says a medical marijuana proposal currently locked in state Senate committees needs major overhauls before he would ever consider signing it.
Also, if you fake an ailment for a recommendation, it should be a felony.
| William Breathes/TotT. |
A bill that would ban the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration from prosecuting medical marijuana patients, caregivers and businesses which are otherwise following state laws is up for debate this week in Washington D.C.
Similar measures have failed in recent years, but bipartisan backers of the bill – including author Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California – say they’ve got the support this time around.
| Toke of the Town. |
A New Mexico state appeals court ruled this week that worker’s compensation insurance policies in the state must also cover medical marijuana in addition to any other treatments directly related to the injury.
The ruling stems from 55-year-old former mechanic Greg Vialpando, who uses medical marijuana to help alleviate the pain from a back injury in 2000. The man’s former employer, Ben’s Automotive in Santa Fe have fought the initial decision, arguing that they shouldn’t have to pay for something federally illegal.