San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano bravely introduced reasoned, serious legislation about confronting, revising, and ultimately turning California’s oppressive marijuana laws to our benefit. In these trying economic times, it just makes sense. Its budget meltdown has California taking a look at legalizing marijuana as a means to revive its depleted treasury. But common sense, not economic need, should persuade Americans it’s past time for a sober look at our mad “reefer madness” laws.

The Golden State legislator pushing the idea, Tom Ammiano of — plug in the appropriate joke — San Francisco, says licensing and taxing legal marijuana production and sales would earn California $1.3 billion a year. His bill would legalize marijuana possession and use for adults 21 or older, license commercial farming of it and tax it at $50 an ounce.

A big problem: California can’t do this on its own. The federal prohibition law would have to be changed for Sacramento to impose and collect the licensing fees and taxes. Given all the controversial financial and social engineering bills on its plate, Congress likely isn’t eager to take on this contentious issue. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found only 41 percent of Americans favor legalization. That’s an improvement over the 34 percent in a 2002 CNN/Time poll, but still 52 percent are against it.

It would be best if Washington could leave this matter in the hands of states. Thirteen states have to some extent decriminalized marijuana. Massachusetts is the latest. Its voters last month eliminated criminal penalties for possession of small amounts.

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Full length doc about the California big business Marijuana trade.

Great list compiled and cool photoshoped pix I found at cityrag

Paris Hilton Smokes a Joint in the Car
Lindsay Lohan Smoking a Joint in a Club
Cameron Diaz & Drew Barrymore Get High
Micha Barton Tokes Up As She Drives
Halle Berry Admits to Trying Weed
Luke Perry is a Pot Dealer
Bud Bundy in Pot Clinic Dispute
Joss Stone Enjoys The Occasional Joint
George Michael Slammed for Smoking Joint on TV

An unruly Jersey girl who got bounced from a Shore bar and then kicked, punched, and bit some cops.

Unknown but crazy!

Meet Travis Stone. Las Vegas cops this morning arrested Stone, 28, on a drunk driving charge after he lost control of his Mercedes and ran it into a retaining wall. As seen in the below mug shot, Stone was covered in body paint, presumably as part of a Halloween costume (the Silver Surfer, perhaps?). KTNV in Las Vegas has some marvelous aerial footage of Stone’s arrest and roadside sobriety tests.

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http://streetknowledge

They buried this fool with almost two pounds of herb!! Oldest stash of weed every found!

Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

“To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent,” says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.

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I’m obviously in the wrong business.
Clandestine cannabis growers in the Netherlands net two billion euros (2.7 billion dollars) a year — worth almost half the country’s horticultural sector — a Dutch newspaper reported on Saturday.

By comparison, according to NRC Handelsblad, country’s horticultural sector generates about 5.5 billion euros in annual income.

“There is major demand from England, Belgium, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries and at the moment the Baltic countries,” Max Daniel, the senior police officer who heads the Dutch agency charged with combatting cannabis-growing, told the newspaper.

Police investigations suggested that about 500 tonnes of Dutch cannabis were exported each year.

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On the Caribbean island of Carriacou, scientists have discovered drug paraphernalia suggesting Stone Age man used herbal mixtures to get high. Ceramic bowls and tubes dating back to at least 100 B.C. were used to huff or snort cohoba, a hallucinogen made from mimosa beans.

Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough.

They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands.

Paul Armentano delivered this speech at NORML’s 2008 National Conference, “It’s Not Your Parents’ Prohibition” in Berkeley, Calif.

Young people, in many cases those under 18 years of age, disproportionately bear the brunt of marijuana law enforcement.

Demographically speaking, the above statement is a “no-brainer.” Yet this is hardly a fact that we as a reform community like to admit or emphasize. Instead, you’ll hear reformers argue that the war on pot is a war on patients — and at some level, it is. Or you’ll hear advocates proclaim that marijuana enforcement disproportionately impacts African-Americans and Hispanics — and to some degree, it does. Attend enough of these conferences and you’ll inevitably hear that our movement needs better representation from women and minorities, both of whom face unique hardships because of the drug war, and that criticism is appropriate too. But, one thing you’ll most likely never hear is that our movement needs greater involvement from teenagers and young adults.

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Thanx to my fam @ streetknowledge

In the first of two pieces on organised crime accompanying his Radio 4 series How crime took on the world, Misha Glenny visits British Columbia in Canada where homegrown marijuana has become big business.

As we walk into John’s basement, the smell is so overwhelming it almost knocks me off my feet.

In front of me stand 120 marijuana plants whose thick bushy leaves cover the strong stems.

John explains quite nonchalantly that this is just a small growing operation, or grow-ops as they are known throughout Canada.

But he pays loving attention to the crop – adjusting temperature, light and nutrient supply – to ensure that it enjoys the best possible environment.

Every two to three months, John harvests some 8lbs (3.6kg) of his crop, worth about $20,000.

So even if he didn’t work at other jobs, that nets him a tidy salary (untaxed of course) of about $80,000 a year.

‘BC Bud’

Inspector Brian Cantera of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver believes that John’s small grow-op is one of 20,000 to be found in residential houses around the province.

That figure excludes the larger grow-ops in industrial locations, not to mention the huge dope farms that are scattered around British Columbia’s vast interior.

By Coke

I don’t understand my people sometimes. I’ve read a lot of the black socially-political blogs lately. And I see a lot of black people angry with, (or hating on, depending on how you look at it) Obama, because of the comments he made on Fathers Day regarding black fathers. Now prior to this a lot of these same folks criticized Obama for not addressing the “black issues”. I once heard a preacher in church say, “if you cant say amen, say ouch!” Now, being a very present, black father (no baby daddy) myself, from the “hood” and a the product of a absentee father who I didn’t even meet until I was ten, I can tell you first hand absent black fathers is a HUGE problem in our community. It along with gang violence, drugs, racist cops and a biased judicial system, are to blame for the many disenfranchised young men we see hanging on corners, as well as the ones we hear in rap music spitting such non sense.
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Two teenagers who drove to Oniontown after a series of YouTube videos portrayed the hamlet as a run-down, backwoods dump were pelted with rocks by an angry group of young residents, authorities said.

The two 17-year-olds from Mahopac, about 30 miles south of Oniontown, suffered head and face injuries.

Troopers arrested a 17-year-old from Oniontown on Thursday and charged him with criminal mischief. Additional arrests were expected, police said.

State police investigator Eric Schaefer said it wasn’t the first time out-of-towners were attacked by local residents.

“The biggest recommendation at this point is for everybody to stay out of there,” Schaefer said. “Anybody that doesn’t belong there, anybody that’s not a resident, just stay out of Oniontown.”

In one YouTube video posted in May called “Oniontown Adventures,” three boys with foul mouths supposedly drive up to the town. While there, they mock the poverty they find — giggling at the garbage strewn along the streets and the abandoned cars in the front yards of trailer parks.

In other videos cops warn youngsters not to go there.

video below

FedEx prides itself on reliability. But a mistaken delivery tipped off police to a 200-pound shipment of marijuana that someone tried to send from Pembroke Pines, Florida to Baltimore via the shipping company.

Police tell The (Baltimore) Sun they learned about the shipment when it was delivered Tuesday to the wrong resident.

Authorities posed as FedEx employees and arrested the shipment’s intended recipient, 30-year-old Richard Gwatidzo.

Officials say he was charged Thursday with possession of a large quantity of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute along with other drug related charges.

Police say they also seized eight other FedEx boxes with nearly 400 pounds of the drug.

Authorities are trying to determine the sender’s identity

Photo grabbed at super cool site streetknowledge

Source

Nate Dogg was arrested this morning for trying to run his ex wife off the 405 in L.A.:

“Cops [have reported that] a woman who said she was Nate’s estranged wife called into 911 freaking out as she was driving, claiming Nate was making death threats against her and ‘dangerously’ following her as she drove down the road. The CHP stopped them both, and after interviewing both parties, arrested him for making terrorist threats and driving on a suspended license.”

Classy

Thanks to http://streetknowledge.wordpress.com/

Two veteran police officers were charged Friday with providing protection for purported shipments of cocaine and stolen goods in what was actually an undercover FBI operation.

Officer Geovani Nunez and Detective Jorge Hernandez are accused in court documents of helping protect shipments of what they thought were stolen televisions and computers and at least 12 kilograms of cocaine – sometimes by using their police cars to escort trucks.

Prosecutors said the 13-year veterans of the Miami Police Department were paid a combined $39,500 by a secret FBI informant they thought was involved in illegal businesses, prosecutors said.

Nunez and Hernandez were released on bail after appearing briefly in court. Nunez’s attorney, Michael Catalano, said the allegedly illegal conduct was staged and not real because it was an FBI sting. Catalano also said the officers would fight the charges, which carry potential life sentences.

“They are charged with committing crimes that did not exist,” he said.

It was not immediately clear if Hernandez had an attorney.

Police Chief John Timoney said the two officers would be fired.

“These two, as far as I’m concerned, are aberrations,” he said.

U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said the case was particularly disheartening in a year when several South Florida police officers have died in the line of duty.

“It is sad that a handful of individuals choose to repay their colleagues’ sacrifice through criminal conduct,” Acosta said.

The case is similar to a recent FBI sting that led to guilty pleas from five officers in Hollywood, Fla. Four received lengthy prison sentences.

More Funny Weed Pix Click Thru

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Most marijuana users who get caught smoking a joint summarily pay a fine, but when an undercover police officer detained Richard E. Cusick and R. Keith Stroup, the two chose instead to challenge the constitutionality of Massachusetts laws banning marijuana for the first time in 30 years.

Arrested for sharing a marijuana cigarette at the annual Boston Freedom Rally in September, Cusick and Stroup turned to Harvard Law School professor Charles R. Nesson ’60 for legal counsel. Nesson and his clients acknowledged that they had used the illegal drug, and decided upon an unusual defense: they argued that the statute outlawing marijuana in Massachusetts has no “rational basis,” and that the jury has the power of jury nullification, or ruling a defendant innocent while recognizing that he or she had violated a law.

Before the trial, which began Tuesday, Nesson called the case “extraordinary,” adding that it offered the chance to address larger legal issues, such as the meaning of a crime.

“On the one hand, it’s asserted that a crime is a violation of a statute, which has a certain circular quality to it,” Nesson said. “The contrasting view is that a crime is an offense against society, a behavior that offends.”

http://lolegag.com/

Juror No. 2 was caught smoking a joint during a break in the trial of a woman accused of marijuana possession, police tell the Houston Chronicle.

“I’ve had prospective jurors get lost before, but it never occurred to me that they might be getting ready for a marijuana trial by, allegedly, smoking marijuana,” Judge Sherman Ross says.

The woman was bounced from the jury pool. She now faces marijuana charges of her own.