Sean Azzariti spent six years in the Marines and was deployed to Iraq twice. Today he’s fighting for the right to use medical marijuana. “When I first got out of the military, in October 2006, I was diagnosed with severe PTSD,” he recalls.
The doctors prescribed heavy prescription drugs, but they didn’t work for him. Instead, Azzariti turned to cannabis. “It saved my life,” he says.
| Brandon Coats and his attorney Michael Evans. |
The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments on why medical marijuana patients should have the right to use their medicine off work.
As we wrote on Monday, the case stems from the firing of Brandon Coats, a paraplegic former DISH Network call-center operator who tested positive for marijuana in a drug test but contends that he was never high on the job. He says he was open about his medical cannabis use to his bosses, and that they simply targeted him for firing knowing a hot test would mean the end of his job.
As far as Angel Martinez was concerned, the police officer at the front desk that night wasn’t much more than an inconvenience. Sure, he’d refused to take Martinez’s complaint. He was even a little rude about it. But for Martinez, after a night in Queens central booking, with his face battered and welts blooming all over his body, that officer was an afterthought.
Martinez was more concerned about the other two cops. The ones he says kicked his ass for no good reason. The ones who’d approached him and started patting him down without a word of explanation. The ones who slammed his face into a parked car, then onto the sidewalk, when he objected. The ones who ruined the new plaid button-down he’d bought for a job interview earlier that day — torn it to shreds.
| Voice Media, 2014. |
Operation Grow4Vets, a group we’ve reported on in the past, gave out marijuana and marijuana edibles to hundreds of veterans in Colorado over the weekend dubbed the Denver Cannabis Givewaway Event.
The giveaway, at a Quality Inn in Denver on Saturday, was open to everyone 21 and up. Under Colorado law, adults can give away up to an ounce of herb at a time to other consenting adults over 21.
Once more, Santa Ana’s City Council brought up the recent whirlwind of medical marijuana clinics at the September 16th city council meeting. For the first time since the July 15th meeting, they even decided to have a discussion about it. Prior attempts to do so have been delayed due to absent council members. At the July 15th city council meeting, the council voted in favor of allocating $500,000 toward marijuana enforcement, a move initiated by Councilwoman Michelle Martinez. However, they didn’t inform the general public at that meeting (or any subsequent meetings) that pulling money from the city’s reserve funds requires a “supermajority,” in this case, a minimum of 5 “yes” votes. As the July 15th vote didn’t actually have a supermajority, they had to vote on it again at the September 16th meeting.
All this after several high profile dispensary raids this summer.
Nine medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon – six in Portland alone – have been forced to shutter their doors after state officials say they were operating illegally and in opposition to the state’s newly-launched medical marijuana program.
For some, it is because they were too close to schools. Others simply didn’t have a license, or even an application in the works, but kept their doors open anyway.
Starting October 1, anyone caught with ten grams of pot or less in Maryland will face a ticket instead of jail time. Fines increase with each time you’re busted, starting at $100 on first offense, $250 on second offense and mandatory clinical assessment for substance abuse on third offense.
| Commons/Deerstock. |
The Wolves of Wall Street may have paved their way to success and ultimately, a federal penitentiary by snorting copious amounts of cocaine and gang banging high-end prostitutes while running penny stock scams on blue-collar America, but these cash carnivores are preparing to sink their teeth into a new kind of green these days – legal marijuana.
There is so much speculation surrounding the killing of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. Despite eyewitness accounts, a federal investigation by the Justice Department, and three separate autopsies, there is still no common consensus as to what exactly happened that fateful day.
Much like in the case of the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, there seems to be a go-to formula that the defenders of the shooters tend to roll out each time we face one of these tragedies, and it seems to always paint the dead victim as a dangerous pothead.
| Eric Hood/OC Weekly. |
According to a Santa Ana Police Department investigator, 17 medical marijuana dispensaries were visited by police in the past week. 42 tickets were issued to dispensaries operating in violation of the city’s 2007 ban on pot clubs, three of which–Wax City, Emerald, and Wax-R-Us–have now closed. The operation came in the wake of a July 15 city council meeting in which councilmembers voted to appropriate $500,000 for ongoing anti-pot enforcement actions.
