| Marc Emery in 2007. |
Finally some good news for Marc Emery. Emery’s wife, Jodie, tells the Canadian Press that her husband has been approved for deportation from the United States to Canada to finish out his five-year sentence for mailing cannabis seeds into the U.S.
The next step is for the Canadian government to give their approval, and Emery could be back on Canadian soil by Christmas.
Colorado democrat congressman Ed Perlmutter today introduced a bill that would allow banks to carry the accounts of medical marijuana and state-legal recreational marijuana businesses.
Because marijuana is illegal in all forms at the federal level, banks insured by the federal government have been reluctant to do business with marijuana dispensaries, even though the pot shops are legal at the state level. That has left hundreds of legal marijuana-related businesses across the country operating on a cash-only basis or hiding the true nature of their business from bankers.
| Flickr.comtd> |
| An alcohol awareness poster in Sydney, Australia. |
Legalizing marijuana can protect Australia’s youth from the dangers of binge drinking.
That’s the message from Robin Broom, director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Australia’s primary, government-funded alcohol research group.
Room, a professor at Melbourne University, tells the (Melbourne-Victoria) Herald-Sunthat Australia needs to be progressive with this issue and work towards a legalized and controlled market for cannabis. He says that it should be sold through state stores, not unlike how some U.S. states handle alcohol sales.
Washington D.C. council member Tommy Wells wants to stop making criminals D.C. residents for possession of small amounts of cannabis, and will introduce legislation today to do just that.
Wells, a democratic candidate for mayor, announced his plans to make possession of less than an ounce a civil fine with a $100 fine as the maximum punishment. The goal, he says, is to end the criminalization of youth in his community.
| @NBCLA Twitter. |
A suspect who allegedly robbed a Los Angeles-area marijuana dispensary opened fire on police, riddling an LAPD cruiser with bullets in Northridge, police said. Police last night said two suspects had been arrested and another was detained in connection with the robbery, pursuit and shootout. L.A. Weekly has the rest.
| A drop of hash oil from Wikipedia. |
A Tustin, Calif. condominium apartment exploded over the Fourth of July weekend not due to firecrackers but, according to police, a residential cannabis oil extraction operation gone wrong. The blast caused considerable but non-life-threatening injuries to two men.The men were taken to UCI Medical Center for treatment after police responded to Friday’s explosion call just before noon, according to Tustin Police Lt. Paul Garaven.
The OC Weekly has the rest of this scary tale of hashmaking gone horribly wrong.
| New Jersey Governor Chris Christie isn’t sympathetic to severely sick children. |
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie spent most of the day Monday with his wife Pat, and his good buddy, and fellow Jersey boy, Jon Bon Jovi at Borough Hall in Sayreville, N.J. They gathered in front of a hand-chosen crowd to celebrate a very generous one million dollar donation made by the rock-star to the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund, which is chaired by the Governor’s wife. So that explains why two out of the three were there, at least.
Meanwhile, it has been five days since we last reported on recently approved changes to the state’s medical marijuana laws that would help extremely sick kids get access to cannabis if needed. The Democrats who lead the state legislature pushed the bill to the Governor’s desk on June 25th, or two weeks ago, where it sits waiting for the Governor’s signature. But c’mon, its Bon frickin JOVI!
| Trayvon Martin, from Wikipedia. |
Marijuana use has been needlessly dragged into one of the messiest murder trial battles in this country, with the defense in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman murder trial pushing to introduce Martin’s trace amounts of THC in his system into evidence to show that the Florida neighborhood watch was justified in shooting the unarmed teenager.
It’s stories like this one that give cannabis consumers, users and dealers a bad — and paranoid — face. But we’ll tell it anyway as a cautionary tale and to point out that not all pot smokers keep homemade explosives along side their bongs. An unspectacular bust of a low-level pot dealer in north Phoenix got pretty spectacular after police found a powerful bomb at the house.
Phoniex police were serving a warrant at the home of the alleged weed salesman, 21-year-old Todd Robertson, when officers found the device that bomb technicians said “would ‘level’ the entire residence,” according to court documents obtained by the Phoenix New Times. Read the rest of this WTF moment over at the New Times site.
After the Michigan Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that dispensaries have no legal grounds to operate in the state shutting down all but a handful of dispensaries, thousands of patients were left without a reliable and safe means of accessing medicine.
State lawmakers see that as a problem, and are currently in talks over a bill that would legalize and regulate the dispensaries reports Jake Neher with Michigan Public Radio.