the herb grinder

Tulsa World, 05 Sep 2010 - Following the recent indictment of several Tulsa police officers, the district attorney's office has widened its review of drug cases to include cases that involve eight officers whose names have surfaced in a grand jury investigation. District Attorney Tim Harris' office [...]

The Daily Tribune, 05 Sep 2010 - Michigan's Legislature may not have gone far enough when it approved legislation following voter approval of medical marijuana in 2008. But it was clear that it did not legalize the sale and purchase of marijuana by those with no medical needs. And the law and how i [...]

Edmonton Sun, 05 Sep 2010 - Oblivious Canadians Romp on the Beach As Thousands Executed in Vile Drug War What conflict has resulted in more than four times the deaths of allied casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan combined? Would it help to know it's a country where more than one million Canadians va [...]

I don’t smoke pot. And I pretty much think people who do are idiots. This certainly includes Marc Emery, the self-styled “Prince of Pot” from Canada whom I indicted in 2005 for peddling marijuana seeds to every man, woman and child with an envelope and a stamp. Emery recently pleaded [...]

Auburn Journal, 04 Sep 2010 - Is the Proposition 19 pot initiative going to harm or help California? Proponents like Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of Oakland's Oaksterdam University, contend passage of the proposition will save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars now wasted on enforcing [...]

Los Angeles Times, 04 Sep 2010 - A medical marijuana dispensary that Los Angeles was seeking to shut down under its three-month-old ordinance has won a court order allowing it to stay open, the first ruling from a local judge to favor one of the hundreds of stores affected by the new law. On Thursd [...]

The Record, 04 Sep 2010 - STOCKTON - There was a short stack of reports on the desk of police Sgt. Cliff Johnson, a Stockton narcotics investigator, on Thursday morning, each of them from someone complaining of illegal drug activity. They were about to become someone else's problem. "If we can [...]

Jim Lewis, a 76-year-old grandfather and former missionary worker, got a surprise visit from the police last month. It was around dinnertime, when he heard a knock on the door of his Flint Township home.  He answered the door and found police officers from the Flint Area Narcotics Group. Someone had given a tip [...]

GW Hatchet, 02 Sep 2010 - GW Needs To Revisit The Medical Marijuana Ban With the passing of Initiative 59 this spring, medical marijuana became legal in the District. Finally, the D.C. Council realized the lunacy of keeping the substance illegal for medical purposes. But GW administrators clearly s [...]

Seattle Times, 04 Sep 2010 - The U.S. war against marijuana has failed and actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions. Guest columnist John McKay, Seattle's former U.S. attorney, argues why the laws against marijuana should be changed. I DON'T smoke pot. And I pretty mu [...]

The Aspen Times, 01 Sep 2010 - Town Staff, Applicants At Odds Over The Review; Decision Will Be Appealed To Town Council BASALT -- The town government has rejected an application from a group of businessmen to reopen the town's only medical marijuana dispensary and start a pot farm. [...]

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, was presented to SGA by the local chapter’s founders and it became official an official student organization on April 13th of this year. Chris Cahill, a senior from Memphis, Tenn., and president of the UTC chapter of NORML, said he felt inspired to start a local [...]

Chesterton Tribune, 03 Sep 2010 - A spike in fatal and near-fatal overdoses in Northwest Indiana is prompting suspicion that heroin now in circulation may be Fentanyl-laced, extremely pure, or a combination of both. In a guest commentary published elsewhere in today's edition of the Chesterton Trib [...]

Butte County Stalls in the March Toward Regulation, Choosing Prohibition Instead The day started off like any other.  Rick Tognoli was tending to his indoor garden.  Robert Galia was at home with his fiancee.  And Hilary Tellesen was doing laundry.  Then unexpected visits turned their lives upside down. Tognoli saw the Butte County Sheriff’s Office vehicle heading [...]

California — The Los Angeles County sheriff has escalated his war of words against California medical marijuana dispensaries, saying as many as 97 percent operate as criminal enterprises. Some of the pot shops get marijuana from Mexican drug cartels, and most dole out pot to people with no medical need for [...]

The Cortez Journal, 02 Sep 2010 - Southwest Intertribal Voice will host an open Native American Church prayer ceremony Friday as part of its ongoing Native American Cultural Preservation Project. The space has already been cleared and plans drawn for the ceremonial grounds, which will include a hog [...]

There is something very weird about asking directions to the marijuana expo at the Anaheim Convention Center. You feel like a young rebel.  You wonder if the security guards think you’re high.  And you fear someone’s going to get busted. Paranoid? Hardly.  Marijuana’s illegal and the smell of pot is in the air.  I’m [...]

Marijuana is thought by some to be a gateway drug among young people who eventually go on to try stronger substances. But that may be the exception rather than the rule, a new study finds. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire looked at data from a random group of 1,286 children, [...]

Flint Journal, 02 Sep 2010 - QUESTIONABLE PATIENT-CAREGIVER RELATIONSHIPS LED TO LAPEER COUNTY RAID ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARY DRYDEN, Michigan -- Lapeer County Sheriff Ron Kalanquin said a search warrant that was executed Tuesday on a Dryden medical marijuana dispensary was based off of three [...]

Central Michigan Life, 03 Sep 2010 - Marijuana is prohibited on Central Michigan University's campus, despites the state's legalization of the substance for medical purposes. CMU must abide by federal law, which states the substance, whether medicinal or recreational, is illegal to use or possess. [...]

The Daily Tribune, 02 Sep 2010 - FERNDALE - One of the owners of a Ferndale medical marijuana dispensary raided last week said the facility won't reopen until court cases against owners and employees are resolved. "We're pretty much sitting on our hands waiting to see what the court does," [...]

Police in Dargaville unlawfully trespassed a cannabis law reform group when it tried holding a political meeting in a building which they already had been granted permission to use.

Detroit Free Press, 31 Aug 2010 - A ballot measure to legalize a small amount of marijuana in Detroit won't make the November election as originally hoped, petition organizers said today. Organizers for the Coalition for a Safer Detroit warned that the battle to legalize up to an ounce of pot may b [...]

The Exponent, 31 Aug 2010 - Two businesses were asked to stop selling the synthetic marijuana, spice, by the West Lafayette Police. Chief Jason Dombkowski said he sent letters to the Citgo gas station at 101 W State Street and Amused on Chauncey Hill "officially requesting" that they ceas [...]

The Southeast Sun, 01 Sep 2010 - Though the use of lithium strips has long been used in the manufacturing of methamphetamine across the nation, Coffee County Sheriff's Department officials say it is increasing in popularity in the county. In recent drug raids by the Coffee County Sheriff's Departme [...]

The Madison Courier, 01 Sep 2010 - Website Will Track Sales Of Ingredients A new Web-based tool in the fight against methamphetamine will allow retailers to put in data about pseudoephedrine purchases and will give people an opportunity to file anonymous tips about suspected methamphetamine activit [...]

Colorado — New legislation regulating Colorado’s budding medical marijuana industry is leaving local dispensary owners and county officials in a grey area, as dispensaries try to meet a new requirement that they cultivate at least 70 percent of their cannabis on site or at an optional premises cultivation operation. A number [...]

With the passing of Initiative 59 this spring, medical marijuana became legal in the District. Finally, the D.C. Council realized the lunacy of keeping the substance illegal for medical purposes. But GW administrators clearly still fear the reefer, because they have banned the use or possession of medical marijuana on campus. While [...]

Chico Enterprise-Record, 01 Sep 2010 - Our view: An empty warehouse filled with marijuana? Sounds like a nightmare Chico shouldn't encourage. At first it sounded like a joke. Somebody wants to take a huge vacant building near the Chico Municipal Airport and fill it with 600,000 square-feet of marij [...]

I’ll bet a beer that most of you would have no problem finding a gin and tonic, if booze was illegal today. Guys like Al Capone would see to that.  Big Al, they say, was knocking down $60 million per year in the late 1920s from alcohol alone, during a period when our government brain trust [...]