Bumpy landing for luxury jet packed with cannabis

 Law Enforcement, Marijuana Law, Pot-pourri
Jun 162010
 

Sometimes, it’s possible to have too much luggage. Just ask Lisette Lee, 28, who was arrested after a flight Monday from Van Nuys Airport to Columbus, Ohio, after federal authorities found 506 pounds of marijuana packed in the 13 suitcases she’d brought aboard the luxury private jet. It was the “excessive amount of luggage” that drew the attention of Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who according to the L.A. Daily News found 23 bales of marijuana with a street value of at least $500,000 crammed inside the nondescript suitcases. Lee, of Beverly Hills, initially told agents [...]

Judge OKs shutdown of Mountain View dispensary

 Courts, Marijuana News, Pot-pourri
Jun 162010
 

A judge has granted the city’s request for a temporary injunction to close Buddy’s Cannabis Patient Collective on Bayshore Parkway, which must now close by 5 p.m. July 7. “It is a very sad day for the sick and ill in Mountain View,” said Matt Lucero, a former corporate attorney who opened the medical marijuana dispensary in April, the Mountain View Voice reports. San Jose Mercury News coverage The injunction is temporary as the city is also seeking a permanent injunction through more lengthy court proceedings. Lucero has said he is willing to take the [...]

San Mateo approves permit for medical marijuana collective

 Pot-pourri
Jun 092010
 

San Mateo has its first officially sanctioned medical marijuana collective since local and federal authorities shut down three dispensaries in the city almost three years ago, the San Mateo County Times reports in the San Jose Mercury News. It’s not clear if the Holistic Resource Center has actually begun operating yet, said San Mateo Deputy Police Chief Mike Callagy, but the group’s application has been approved. The collective’s operator, Barris Allen, did not respond to requests for comment. However, an apparently new metal security door and surveillance cameras at the collective’s location in the 100 [...]

Study finds link between teen pot use, relationship problems

 Pot-pourri
Jun 032010
 

Being young involves quite a bit of exciting change. There’s the end of high-school, the start of college and some measure of independence, and a whole slew of new experiences. A recent study conducted by Judith Brooks at NYU School of Medicine has revealed that one of those experiences, smoking marijuana (weed) may be associated with more relationship conflict later in life, Adi Jaffe writes in his Psychology Today blog. What’s amazing about this study is that the drug use here occurred earlier in life for most of the 534 participants, while the relationship trouble [...]

Man arrested after failed attempt to hide pot on 6-year-old

 Law Enforcement, Pot-pourri
May 272010
 

Bud’s note: File this story under “Why cops have a bad attitude about pot.” Seriously, can you blame them? ===================== Police arrested a 27-year-old man who reportedly tried to hide bags of marijuana in a 6-year-old child’s pants during a traffic stop Wednesday in southeast Fresno. The man, who also had a 4-year-old child with him, attempted to leave the vehicle on the 500 block of South Chestnut Avenue after being stopped. The man kicked the vehicle’s door open, the Fresno Bee reports, striking a police officer. He ran from the vehicle but was arrested [...]

Permit or not, World Hemp Expo taking shape in Tehama County

 Advocates, Law Enforcement, Pot-pourri
May 242010
 

RED BLUFF — Permit or not, Donna Will said the stage for a Memorial Day weekend marijuana festival will go up today. “Everything is going forward,” said Will, organizer of the World Hemp Expo Extravaganja. After an update last month of a 40-year-old law designed to regulate outdoor rock festivals akin to Woodstock, leaders from several Tehama County departments turned in comments to the Tehama County Planning Department on Friday. “The agencies are getting together on Monday,” said Bob Haplin, senior planner for the Planning Department. He declined to say whether that meant they would [...]

Alaska’s longtime tolerance for pot offers lessons to California

 Government, Initiatives, Legalization, Pot-pourri
May 242010
 

If Californians want a glimpse of how the landscape might look should a November ballot initiative to legalize marijuana pass, they could turn north. They would see complication, Kevin Fagan reports in the San Francisco Chronicle. And a cautionary lesson. And maybe hope for those who want pot smoking legitimized. For 35 years, it’s been virtually legal in Alaska, with its fiercely frontier mentality, to smoke marijuana at home and grow small amounts there – currently up to 1 ounce – just as proposed in California’s Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act. It’s the most [...]

From L.A. Weekly, a tongue-in-cheek look at ‘Cannabis Rising’

 Advocates, Business, Law Enforcement, Legalization, Media, Medical marijuana, Pot-pourri
May 092010
 

What a treat to stumble across this Mark Cromer piece in L.A. Weekly, aptly headlined “Cannabis Rising.” Good reporting coupled with writing that entertains and makes you think. =============== Maybe somewhere high above L.A., on a big, wispy puff of a magic-dragon cloud, Daryl Gates found himself with Jack Herer looking down on his old, literal stomping grounds. What the heavenly odd couple, who died a day apart in mid-April, might have thought as they mulled over a gathering tribe downtown in the City of Angels is anyone’s cosmic guess — even if the former [...]

Synthetic marijuana product starting to gain notice in California

 Business, Law Enforcement, Pot-pourri
May 032010
 

Sitting behind a glass case on the counter of Less Smoke Shop on Eureka Way in Redding is a marijuana alternative that is potent, won’t show up on drug tests and is perfectly legal. It’s called Black Mamba. Sold in round, quarter-ounce, clear plastic containers, the substance looks similar to the dried herbs Aunt Molly would stir into her spaghetti sauce, Amanda Winters reports in the Redding Record-Searchlight. But officials say the herbal blend has the power to increase blood pressure, cause paranoia, agitation, hallucinations and get users very, very high. In the Midwest, where [...]

Toned-down Cannabis Freedom Day planned Saturday in San Francisco

 Advocates, Law Enforcement, Pot-pourri
Apr 292010
 

?It seems 4/20 isn’t the only holiday on a marijuana aficionado’s calendar. In San Francisco there’s a more important — if more obscure — fete just a few weeks afterward. That’d be Cannabis Freedom Day, which is traditionally the first Saturday in May. That’s this Saturday, May 1. While, in the past there’s been some confusion if it’s called Cannabis Awareness Day, Cannabis Freedom Day, or …eh, it escapes us … it’s been accepted here in San Francisco that this is a fine day to get ripped in public. And that will all happen this [...]

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