Legal marijuana is big business — or at least that’s what investors are banking on. On Tuesday, 22 cannabis entrepreneurs pitched their business ideas to more than sixty investors gathered at the Denver Athletic Club in the second Mile High confab hosted by the California-based ArcView Group, which connects investors with pot-related startups.
Though not all of the deals are finalized yet, ArcView CEO Troy Dayton estimated that the pitch slam resulted in “well over $1 million” in investment. Denver Westword‘s Melanie Asmar has the full story.
It’s that time of year again: harvest season. And while it means a stony winter is ahead for many, it also means a season of increased paranoia as the buzzing of helicopters overhead has hundreds if not thousands of marijuana growers in the United States scared they are the next to be busted.
Already, stories are coming in from all over about police buzzing fields to find pot then raiding the homes below. Police in Indiana, for example, are bragging about a $75,000 harvest they raided Thursday.
More than half of all Californians want marijuana legalized, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
This is the first time that PPIC has polled a majority of Californians in favor of cannabis legalization. Similar polls in 2010 and 2012 had only 45 percent in favor of freeing the weed.
Marijuana has no negative effects on human health, according to researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.
The study, which randomly sampled patients who tested positive for marijuana to see if the marijuana-use had any impact on their health, came up with no negative correlations. Basically, there’s no difference between people who smoke cannabis daily and those who do not.
| Sierra Blanca, Texas. |
Sierra Blanca, Texas. It’s not in any worthwhile tour guide books and you probably would have never heard of it except for Sheriff Arvin West and the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s department. See, it’s in Sierra Blanca that police love to search musician tour buses (and us normal citizens) and bust them with marijuana.
They don’t care who you are. Snoop Lion, Fiona Apple, and even Texas hero and legend Willie Nelson have been pulled over and arrested near this tiny wetfart of a West Texas town at an “interior border checkpoint” on I-10. But now county officials are saying they can’t pay for all of this enforcement unless the feds keep ponying up to foot the bill.
Californians: Wrapping weed in birthday presents does not prevent cops from finding them.
We’ve been over this before, yet still some people keep trying it. Take the two geniuses who checked into LAX headed for Atlanta with about 100 pounds gift-wrapped up in their luggage yesterday, for example.
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.
| Marijuana Policy Project’s Matt Simon. |
West Virginia lawmakers have begun considering the possibility of allowing for legal medical marijuana use and cultivation in their state. As we reported earlier this week, an interim joint health committee (no pun intended) has been called to evaluate whether legalizing medical cannabis is the right move for the state. Yesterday was the first of the hearings, with Marijuana Policy Project analyst and spokesman Matt Simon taking the stand and urging politicians in his home state to come to their senses.
“Those are some of the really tragic cases in my opinion, patients who have to move to another state just to try a plant that would work for them,” Simon told lawmakers.
Over the last six years, more than 80,000 Mexicans have been killed due to excessive drug violence in their country – in part due to the marijuana trade. Legalizing marijuana would help curb that violence and help repair a country that has been torn apart in places by drug cartels and the criminalization of marijuana consumers.
That’s the message from 67 high-profile Mexican businessmen, ministers, artists, attorneys and even a Nobel Prize-winning scientists delivered Wednesday in a paid petition in several newspapers across the country.
For the past four decades, the University of Michigan and the National Institute on Drug Abuse have been conducting a study named Monitoring the Future, which collects and reviews annual changes in drug and alcohol use among American teenagers. Their latest study surveyed over 47,000 students in 8th, 10th & 12th grade, and the numbers regarding teen marijuana use have some people incredibly concerned.