Search Results: chief (508)

Photo: The Commercial Appeal
Dr. Bruce Levy

​OK, so you’re at the top of your game. You lead the field in your state. And after a long day’s work of conducting autopsies, who’s to blame you if you need to toke up and unwind with a little of the kind? The Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, that’s who.

Bruce Levy, chief medical examiner for Tennessee, was arrested in Mississippi and charged with felony marijuana possession, police said Wednesday.

Dr. Levy, 49, was arrested after police found a package of marijuana with his name on it — not a smart idea, in case you were considering it! — and more pot at his hotel room in central Mississippi, where he has a lucrative side gig as a coroner.
The package with Levy’s name on it at a distribution center contained less than an ounce of marijuana, according to Jon Kalahar of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Agents on Tuesday also found several containers at his Ridgeland, Miss., hotel room, each with less than an ounce of pot, reports The Associated Press.

Graphic: salem-news.com

​Medical marijuana supporters say they are “outraged” over President Obama’s re-appointment of Bush Administration holdover Michele Leonhart as chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“The retention of this Bush-era holdover is a profound disappointment to all of us who hoped that Obama would bring meaningful change to Washington,” lamented Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).


Photo: Daily Mail
Professor Les Iversen (left), who has said cannabis is safer than most other drugs, is taking over as interim chairman of the U.K. Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs after Professor David Nutt was sacked for saying — you guessed it! — that cannabis is safer than most other drugs.

​A retired Oxford professor who said marijuana was one of the “safer” drugs has become the United Kingdom’s chief drugs adviser — replacing a professor who was sacked for saying that marijuana is one of the safer drugs.

Pharmacology specialist Les Iversen has replaced David Nutt, who was sacked last October after saying cannabis was less harmful than alcohol and nicotine, and arguing that penalties against the herb had been upgraded to Class B for political reasons, reports James Slack at the Daily Mail.
Professor Iversen, who has served on the committee for five years, seems to share predecessor Nutt’s view that marijuana is just not that dangerous.
And after all, should it be that shocking that the world’s foremost experts on psychoactive drugs would have similar opinions regarding the relative safety of marijuana?

Photo: www.freedomsphoenix.com
Calm down, Chief. It’s just pot.

​Port Orchard, Wash., Police Chief Al Townsend is against legalizing pot, and he’s called a new bill to legalize marijuana in the state “ludicrous.”

“If the goal of the bill is to legalize marijuana for the purpose of generating tax revenue, that’s ridiculous,” Townsend wrote in an email to Kitsap Sun crime reporter Josh Farley.
Chief Townsend calls into question the judgment of his fellow Kitsap Countian, Rep. Sherry Appleton (D-Poulsbo), one of the co-sponsors of HB 2401, which would legalize marijuana for persons 21 and older.

Photo: normstamper.com
Norm Stamper of LEAP: “Legalizing pot but not other drugs will leave huge social harms unresolved”

​With marijuana legalization apparently headed for the California ballot in 2010, Seattle’s former police chief is asking, “Why stop there?”, reports Matt Coker in the OC Weekly.

Police veteran Norm Stamper wore the blue for 34 years, and was the top cop in Seattle from 1994 until 2000. He’s also the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing and one of the most prominent members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).
Norm breaks it down in an AlterNet post, “Let’s Not Stop At Legalizing Marijuana,” citing polls that show a majority of Americans realize legalizing pot will produce a host of benefits, including, of course, the fact that 800,000 people a year will no longer be arrested for the herb. Taxation and regulation further bolster the pro-legalization arguments.

The hoopla surrounding CBD has become so loud that even CBD companies are starting to get annoyed. One Colorado CBD brand recently went so far as to buy ads in New York’s Time Square to attack gimmicky products and marketing campaigns that push CBD into everything from candles to firewood.

CBDistillery, a company known for hemp-derived CBD edibles, oils, capsules, vaporizers and more, wants people to be more discerning about how they consume CBD. But where is that line drawn, and who should be leading the conversation? We chatted with CBDistillery chief marketing officer Chris Van Dusen to see what he thinks.

Marijuana consumers are a little too high on themselves behind the wheel, according to government and road safety organizations — but the affects of the plant on drivers aren’t as clear as those of alcohol.

Recent studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Colorado Department of Transportation and American Automobile Association highlight growing concerns among law enforcement, chiefly that a large portion of marijuana consumers think they’re better at driving after using pot, and the majority of Americans don’t think stoned drivers will be caught by police.

Possible windfalls from legalizing hemp and CBD may get all the headlines, but terpenes could have just as much commercial potential. Terpenes are responsible for the smells and flavors that help us distinguish different strains of pot; like elevator songs and character actors, you recognize them without knowing what they are.

Terpenes are found in many plants, which is why cannabis can taste like citrus fruit, lavender and so on. They’ve shown potential for aiding in pain relief and other medical ailments, and you can consume them much like cannabinoids, via vaping or ingestion. But the public still doesn’t know much about identifying terpenes, and scientists are nowhere near understanding their full potential. To learn more about them, we chatted with Dr.Tristan Watkins, chief science officer for Lucid Mood, a cannabis vaping company that manipulates terpenes for desired effects.

The National Association of Cannabis Businesses’ draft guidelines to establish a country-wide advertising standard for the marijuana industry was the subject of a months-long comment period and is expected to be finalized this summer. Doug Fischer, chief legal officer for the NACB, believes such a criterion is needed as soon as possible, even though cannabis remains illegal on a federal level.

In his words, “The time to do this is now.”

Toke of the Town is joining forces with one of the Internet’s best cannabis guides to give consumers and marijuana businesses greater access to a national platform of online resources.

Toke’s parent company, Voice Media Group, owns and operates the cutting-edge digital advertising agency V Digital Services and publishes an array of iconic print newspapers and websites, including Phoenix New Times, Denver Westword and Miami New Times. In 2017, V Digital Services posted 40 percent year-over-year growth and was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the U.S.

Our new partners at Herban Planet publish one of the most comprehensive online cannabis guides, offering a one-stop ecosystem for cannabis producers, business owners, consumers, medical professionals, patients, caregivers and activists. Now Herban Planet’s content will be available directly from Toke of the Town – see the nifty link at the righthand side of our top navigation bar. We’ll also be linking to Herban Planet from from the websites of VMG’s core branded properties, putting a vast nationwide marijuana database at our readers’ fingertips.

VMG chief executive officer Scott Tobias notes that VMG and Herban Planet are already leaders in providing readers, consumers and businesspeople with information about the cannabis industry. And thanks to its decades of doing business in major markets across the country, VMG brings something else to the mix: Hundreds of long-established relationships with business owners, dispensary owners, cultivators and leading figures in the industry. Those carefully nurtured local, regional and national relationships should accelerate growth of Herban Planet’s market share.

Denver Westword was the first publication in the country to hire a marijuana reporter and is known for its expert coverage of the industry. And V Digital Services has long specialized in helping marijuana businesses maximize their digital footprint through its work with Marijuana Marketing Xperts.

As a division of VDS, industry-leading MMX has the advantage of focusing solely on marketing for the marijuana industry and helping business owners in the rapidly growing field devise smart digital strategies designed to increase web and mobile presence, generate leads to expand their customer base, and navigate a maze of legal restrictions and regulations. Equally unique is its programmatic advertising network for cannabis, a pioneering technology specially engineered to engage audiences interested in medical and recreational marijuana.

Combining Herban Planet’s thriving web platform with VMG’s technology, marketing and media muscle is the goal of the new partnership, says Tobias. “Joining with Herban Planet to help grow a national marijuana platform made perfect sense,” he adds. “We are very excited about this partnership.”

Herban Planet founder and chief executive officer Babak Motamedi says he’s also excited about the synergies made possible by the partnership. VDS marketing services will now be available to Herban Planet customers at preferred prices, and the companies will also continue to explore additional content-sharing opportunities on their websites.

“People in the industry have a choice between platforms,” says Motamedi. “Now Herban Planet will be powered by a multi-market media company, so obviously we will have broader reach. We think we can really change the industry, both in terms of connectivity and bringing it more mainstream.”

1 2 3 4 5 51