| Photo: JP Laffont |
Do Americans live in a barbaric nation?
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal from convicted Mississippi marijuana dealer Lorenzo Tarver.
Tarver was sentenced in 2006 in Leflore County, Mississippi, to 60 years for possession of more than 81 pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute, according to AP.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals upheld his conviction in 2009.
| Photo: The Bigheart Times |
| The Halls, from left: former juvenile probation officer Stacy, 46; Dale, 48; Nicholas, 23; and Jared, 19. Charges against the other three family members were dropped when Jared pleaded guilty to marijuana cultivation. |
Marijuana cultivation charges against a former Oklahoma juvenile probation officer, her husband, and a son are being dismissed after another son pleaded guilty and said other family members were not involved.
Prosecutors dropped the charges Friday against Stacy Hall, 46, her husband Dale Hall, 48, and son Nicholas Hall, 23, reports Randy Ellis at The Oklahoman. The case against the other three was too weak to pursue after 19-year-old Jared Hall, the youngest member of the family, pleaded guilty, according to Special Prosecutor Rob Hudson.
Charges were filed against all the Halls after cannabis plants were spotted growing on the family’s farm between Ponca City and Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Officers raided the farm on September 5, 2009.
| Photo: Stella Pictures/Posh24 |
| Rhys Ifans: “Everyone has a little smoke once in awhile, you know. It’s one of life’s little pleasures.” |
Actor Rhys Ifans, star of Notting Hill and the upcoming Mr Nice, has backed the legalization of cannabis in the U.K., calling it “one of life’s little pleasures.”
Ifans, who portrays his friend, drug smuggler Howard Marks, in Mr Nice, said he had smoked pot with Marks before, reports the London Evening Standard.
“In the past we have had a little smoke, the odd toke,” Ifans said in an interview with the Standard. “I didn’t inhale, though. Howard still has a smoke. Everyone has a little smoke once in awhile, you know. It’s one of life’s little pleasures.”
Ifans publicly defended his belief that marijuana should be decriminalized.
“You look at any culture and prohibition has invariably been an unmitigated failure,” Ifans said. “It is just idiotic to criminalize any substance, I think. It needs to be controlled, managed.”
“It is not going to go away,” Ifans said. “The War On Drugs is being lost on a daily basis.”
| Photo: Jon Lok/The Seattle Times |
| Jamal Atofau |
| Photo: Jon Lok/The Seattle Times |
| Andre Barrington |
Police arrested two members of the Washington State Cougars football team early Sunday morning after finding 38 marijuana plants growing in a house they rented with two other people.
Jamal Atofau, a redshirt freshman backup linebacker, and Andre Barrington, a redshirt freshman who is academically ineligible this semester, were busted along with 20-year-old Washington State student Bailey Woods and Zachary Uttech, also 20, according to police records, reports Vince Grippi of The Spokesman-Review.
Pullman Police came to the home on College Hill just north of Beasley Coliseum to serve an unrelated search warrant, said police spokesman Cmdr. Chris Tennant.
| Photo: My Fox Orlando |
| I hope he’s calling his lawyer. Bryan Hartman, 45, of St. Cloud, Fla., was arrested and charged with cannabis cultivation after drug agents found plants up to 7 feet tall growing in plain sight in front of his house. |
Most folks who illegally grow marijuana go to the trouble to hide it in the closet, or at least put it behind the house. But a Florida man allegedly had 17 cannabis plants — some as tall as seven feet — in his front yard.
Bryan Hartman, 45, of St. Cloud, Fla., was arrested and charged with pot cultivation after agents with the Osceola County Investigative Bureau came to his residence after reports of suspected marijuana plants growing right in front of his house, reports WOFL Fox 35.
Upon arrival at Hartman’s place, officers saw the plants — easily visible from the roadway, with an unobstructed view of the residence — growing in planters in front of the house in the 1100 block of Mississippi Avenue.
| Graphic: turn.org |
Indoor cultivation of cannabis could take huge hit from law enforcement with new, “smart” electrical meters being used to blow the whistle on the power consumption of indoor marijuana grow lights.
Many clandestine marijuana growers, rather than using metered kilowatts to power their lights, use pirated electricity by tapping the lines and routing it, unmetered, to their grow rooms, reports Jay Hancock of The Baltimore Sun. Utilities have had great difficulty in detecting indoor marijuana grow operations unless they actually spot the illegal lines, because until now they’ve had little real information about what’s going on on their power grid.
But now, technology has produced smart meters which measure in real time how much energy goes into the network and how much is used at the other end by paying customers. Any difference, apart from normal resistance and line loss, is electricity theft.
“Today we are operating blind,” British Columbia Hydro’s smart-meter expert, Fiona Taylor, told The Vancouver Sun. “This system will allow us to follow the flow of electricity from point to point. We will be able to see at a macro level what is happening.”
| Photo: The Slanch Report |
| Ron Artest and other obnoxious rich idiots are against marijuana legalization |
NBA loudmouth Ron Artest of the Los Angeles Lakers is always happy to share his opinions, no matter how dumb they are, on any subject — and marijuana is no exception.
“Even if they legalize marijuana, I won’t be smoking marijuana,” Ron-Ron told Kevin Ding of The Orange County Register.
“So there you have it,” writes The Daily Heat. “The man who once admitted to drinking before his games while on the Chicago Bulls roster (who wouldn’t?) has turned turned over a new leaf.”
But the would-be political commentator Artest wasn’t content to spread his vast knowledge on the subject only with the Register.
“He took his fight to the one true intellectual battlefield (apart from Opposing Views) left in the world: Twitter,” The Daily Heat tells us.
| Photo: National Post |
| Wake Me Up Before You Go Go: George Michael’s a free man again after being discovered slumped over the wheel of his car and serving half of an eight-week prison sentence for DUI and cannabis. |
Singer George Michael has been released from prison in the U.K., after serving four weeks of an eight-week sentence for DUI and possession of marijuana.
The 47-year-old pop star, freed after serving half of his sentence, told reporters he “just wants to start again” and that it was “fantastic” to be free on “a beautiful day,” reports BBC News.
“I just want to way thank you for everybody who has supported me in there,” the singer told reporters outside his home in north London.
Michael was arrested in July after being found slumped at the wheel of his Land Rover in Hampstead, north London, after a Gay Pride parade on July 4.
| Photo: SodaHead |
A store clerk in Tennessee found about two grams of marijuana among the candy bars and chewing gum in her store’s candy aisle early Thursday morning.
Officer Craig Taylor went to the Pilot Truck Stop in Cookeville, Tenn., just before 4 a.m. on Thursday after the clerk called about the cannabis, reports Mary Jo Denton of the Cookeville Herald-Citizen.
“She stated she was checking the candy rack located at the cash register when she observed a small plastic bag of suspected marijuana on the rack,” said the police report.
| Photos: The Lariat |
| Willie Jefferson, left, and Josh Gordon were busted for pot early Sunday after falling asleep in the Taco Bell drive-through line. |
I’ll have some of what they’ve been having, please. Just hours after last weekend’s 55-7 victory over Kansas, Baylor wide receivers Josh Gordon and Willie Jefferson were arrested in Waco, Texas, on allegations of marijuana possession after they were discovered asleep in a Taco Bell drive-through line near campus.
Waco police received the call at 2:15 a.m. Sunday about a man passed out in the restaurant’s drive-through lane, reports Dwain Price at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. After a search of the vehicle, officers found bags of marijuana, according to police reports.
Jefferson was driving the vehicle, while Gordon was a passenger in the front seat.