| Nevada Sen. Tick Segerblom. |
Could medical marijuana dispensaries dot the landscape between the casinos of Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada? That’s what one Nevada state senator is hoping to accomplish this session with a bill that would legalize medical marijuana centers in that state.
A proposed DUI bill in Colorado being discussed later today would set the blood-THC limit at 5 nanograms of active THC for every milliliter of blood. The key here is that it’s active, as latent inactive THC levels can linger in the system for weeks after use causing no actual impairment.
But state law doesn’t always recognize these differences, as seen in an Arizona court ruling. It establishes that people there can be found guilty of driving under the influence whether they’re impaired or not — and even if they’ve got negligible amounts of THC in their system.
Sorry North Carolina. Apparently residents in your state were so in favor of a bill that would have allowed access to medical marijuana that state legislators had no choice but to table discussions and kill the bill before it could even get out of committee. Make sense to you? No? Good. That means you aren’t a North Carolina congressperson.
Earlier this week, the Denver Westword posted about an Amendment 64 task-force recommendation to allow marijuana tourism. But while Christian Sederberg, a task-force member with whom we spoke about what some see as a one-year licensing monopoly for current medical marijuana centers, concedes that the proposal would indeed allow out-of-staters to buy weed here, he thinks its potential to fight crime might be even more important.
Read the rest on Colorado’s pot tourism over at our sister paper, The Denver Westword.
When the final tally rang on election night, hundreds of thousands of voters in Colorado and Washington rejoiced at the passing of their respective marijuana bills. In these states, the people had spoken: legalize it. Amid the hazy celebrations, however, one acknowledgement was conspicuously absent. Alaska had actually legalized marijuana first. Sort of. Westword has the story.
Urban Dictionary defines a cannasmurf as “a person who is a member of several medical cannabis dispensaries and who obtains the maximum allowable quantity of cannabis from these clubs in order to obtain a sizable amount of cannabis for personal or commercial reasons.” Colorado’s governor-appointed task force has determined that marijuana tourism is OK, but its members also believe restrictions should be put in place to prevent smurfing. Which is where things could get complicated. Westword has the story.
| Via sd34.senate.ca.gov/ |
| Senator Lou Correa |
Under a new law proposed by State Senator Lou Correa, it would become illegal in California for a person to drive a vehicle if his or her blood contains any detectable amount of marijuana. This includes medical marijuana, so card holders wouldn’t be exempt from this “zero tolerance” policy. Furthermore, considering marijuana can be detected in one’s system weeks after use, it’s entirely possible a driver could be slapped with a DUI charge after the effects are long gone. LA Weekly has the story.