| Nick Bhardwaj/The Fiscal Times |
In a development that should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone with even a passing familiarity with drug policy and its effects, black-market marijuana growers and dealers are profiting greatly from the federal crackdown on legal medicinal cannabis dispensaries.
| Charles Dhaparak/AP |
| Iowa state Senator Kent Sorenson speaks at a rally for Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul on Wednesday at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines |
People are talking about rats abandoning sinking ships. Michelle Bachmann’s Iowa Presidential campaign chairman has switched to rival Ron Paul’s political camp — and the switch could have been prompted by his conviction on a marijuana charge back when he was 20 years old.
| Steven Senne/AP |
| Rhode Island Speaker of the House Gordon D. Fox: “I think it’s been too long and there have been too many people waiting” |
Rhode Island’s Legislature legalized medical marijuana back in 2006. Three years later, in 2009, the Legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto to allow medicinal cannabis dispensaries in the state with an overwhelming 68-0 vote in the House and 35-3 in the Senate.
| Jezebel |
| Want your welfare check? Whip it out, hippie. |
It’s a popular strategy — blame and victimize the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, punishing them for an activity which all social classes engage in, by taking away what little they have.
| Cracked |
| Hemp kills in Malaysia — because hemp rope is what they use to hang you. |
A 39-year-old laundry operator in Malaysia was sentenced to death by the High Court there for “trafficking more than 1kg of cannabis last year.”
| Bangor Daily News |
It’s often hard to know exactly what government bureaucrats want from medical marijuana dispensaries. Despite the fact that voters in 16 states (and the District of Columbia) have decided for themselves to allow the medicinal use of cannabis, it seems that stuffed-shirt anti-pot types always find objections to the existence of places where patients can actually, you know, get marijuana.
| The Weed Blog |
Marijuana advocates in Washington state have had a long, hard battle to get as far as they’ve come in the 13 years since voters legalized cannabis for medicinal uses back in 1998. But I-502, a new tax-and-regulate initiative — which appears to have enough signatures to be on the November 2012 ballot — is apparently not a banner under which all legalization proponents are willing to unite.
| KTVQ |
The collapse of Montana’s once-booming medical marijuana industry after a conservative Republican-controlled Legislature all but shut the program down with tough restrictions — in addition to raids where federal agents hit dozens of providers — was Montana’s top news story of 2011, according to an annual member poll from The Associated Press.
| Nirvana Wellness Center |
| “…[T]he assumption that this approach reduces cannabis potency, increases price or meaningfully reduces cannabis availability and use is inconsistent with virtually all available data” |
Throwing more and more money at anti-marijuana law enforcement does not meaningfully reduce the potency, or availability of cannabis and creates lucrative profit opportunities for organized crime, according to a new report by a group of marijuana policy advocates.