Search Results seized

Top Drug Cop Killed In Honduras

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 9, 2009 Global, News

Photo: Zack Clark

Honduran police face a tough fight with drug traffickers, despite plenty of Yankee dollars.

The top anti-drug cop in Honduras was killed by unidentified gunmen on Tuesday, a national police spokesman told CNN, Mariano Castillo reports.

Gen. Julian Gonzalez, director of the Office for Combatting Drug Trafficking, was shot in his SUV by two people on a motorcycle, according to police spokesman Orlin Cerrato.

No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains active, Cerrato said.

Barack Obama ‘Ecstasy’ Hits The Streets — But It’s Fake

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 7, 2009 Culture, News

AP Photo

They wanted to make a Palin version, but it stopped working halfway through the trip.

Police in Palmview, Texas last week seized a batch of reputed Ecstasy pills made in the image of President Barack Obama, Ryan Smith reports on CBS’ Crimesider blog.

A stash of the orange tablets was found last Monday during a south Texas traffic stop.

The 22-year-old driver had a drug collection of Hunter S. Thompson-esque proportions. Found in the car were black tar heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, along with the supposed Obama Ecstasy. He’s expected to face multiple felony drug possession charges.

Mass. Cops Claim Home Marijuana Grow Worth Half A Million

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 7, 2009 Growing, News

“More than half a million dollars worth of marijuana plants”?

Well, who knows how much credit to give cop dope estimates, but any way you count it, more than 500 plants were taken from a suburban Massachusetts home.

FOX25 in Boston reports on the “major pot bust,” with hundreds of plants seized from a Center Street home in Brockton, Mass.

U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Slow To Arrive In Mexico

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on December 4, 2009 Global, Legislation, News

DEA

“Drug money” and cartel weapons seized by the Mexican Federales and the DEA

Promised security help from the United States for Mexico’s drug war, including helicopters and scanners for contraband detection, has been held up by bureaucratic red tape and is slow in arriving, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Ken Ellingwood reports in the Los Angeles Times.

The GAO examination said that just $26 million, or 2 percent of the nearly $1.3 billion appropriated for security aid, had been spent by the end of September.

The multi-year Merida Initiative is intended to help Mexican officials, who are locked in a bloody three-year offensive against illegal drug cartels. The Mexicans have complained that the promised American help has been too slow to reach them.

Hamas Approves Law To Execute Pot Dealers In Gaza

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 30, 2009 Global, Legislation, News

“Jephthath’s Sacrifice” by Maciejowski (c. 1250)

If you sell pot on the Gaza Strip, be careful or you could lose your head.

Selling pot can now officially get you killed in Gaza City — by the government, that is.

Despite the area’s proud tradition of fine hashish (Blond Lebanese, anyone?) the Hamas-run government of Gaza has approved a law that will allow for the execution of “convicted drug dealers,” its attorney general said today, according to the Associated Press.

The Islamist government ruling Gaza is taking a page from the tired old playbook of drug prohibitionists in America and worldwide — that imposing draconian sentences will reduce drug smuggling and discourage drug use. The policy, in place for close to a century in many parts of the world, has proved to be a colossal failure.

Hamas has cracked down on drugs, saying it has arrested more than 100 drug dealers and users. Dozens of pounds of contraband, mostly marijuana, have been seized.

Blithely undeterred by the facts, Gaza’s attorney general blamed the Israeli government for not punishing potheads severely enough (or killing them quickly enough). If the intent is to prove governments in the Middle East can have drug policies even dumber than those of the United States, then mission accomplished!

Judge Orders Cops To Give Man Back 11 Pounds Of Pot, A Little At The Time

By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ on November 27, 2009 Medical, News

Photo: Pablo-flores, Wikimedia Commons

Washington judge gives the green light to medical pot patient

An interesting thing is happening in states which have legalized medical marijuana. There’s an ongoing culture war between cops who hate all marijuana, period, and patients who take the law at its word when it says they can use pot legally. From time to time, the patients win big.

Such is the case in Kent, Washington, where King County Judge Mary Roberts ordered the police department to give 11 pounds of seized marijuana back to Matthew Zugsberger, who holds a valid California medical marijuana card.

After police (with the aid of a trusty drug dog) found the stash in the trunk of Zugsberger’s car last February in the parking lot of a pharmacy in Kent, they arrested the Californian and his girlfriend and seized the weed.

Zugsberger says the cops accused him of importing marijuana from Canada (which does happen a lot in this area, being not far from the B.C. border). “Why the hell would I buy pot from Canada if I have a field of it in my back yard?”, Zugsberger reasonably asked, according to the Seattle P.I.

The California man said he began using marijuana medicinally in 2007 to manage nausea caused by a severe injury sustained while working as a underwater welder in the Gulf of Mexico. After the accident, he was prescribed opiate painkillers; Zugsberger said the drugs gave him liver problems, and he was concerned about becoming addicted to them.

Zugsberger pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession and was sentenced to three months’ probation. But defense attorney Aaron Pelley wasn’t done with the case. Pelley, who is active with Seattle-based medical marijuana advocacy organization Cannabis Defense Coalition, filed a petition in August seeking the return of the marijuana to his client, since Zugsberger is a legal medical pot patient.

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