By Peter Hecht (Sacra­mento Bee) Ran­cho Cor­dova is ask­ing vot­ers to make the city the first in Cal­i­for­nia to approve a tax on home-​​grown pot for per­sonal use. Advo­cates for med­ical mar­i­juana and a state ini­tia­tive to legal­ize pot for recre­ational use say the pro­posed tax is so pro­hib­i­tive that vir­tu­ally no one could...
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First of all, does anyone know why the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform even held a hearing about steroid usage among baseball players? Was there a dry spell and the Committee couldn't find anything in the government that needed to be reformed? This is the Congress that in 1994 didn't ask for...
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The Sen­ate is await­ing a vote on a bill that would dou­ble penal­ties for any edi­ble prod­ucts com­bined with med­ical mar­i­juana in Cal­i­for­nia and other states that pro­vide relief for patients. S. 258, the Sav­ing Kids from Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act, was intro­duced by Sen. Diane Fein­stein and is using a media scare about “candy...
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(Sci­enceDaily) Although caf­feine is the most widely con­sumed psy­choac­tive drug world­wide, its poten­tial ben­e­fi­cial effect for main­te­nance of proper brain func­tion­ing has only recently begun to be ade­quately appre­ci­ated. Sub­stan­tial evi­dence from epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies and fun­da­men­tal research in ani­mal mod­els sug­gests that caf­feine may be pro­tec­tive against the cog­ni­tive decline seen in demen­tia and...
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by Michael Montgomery (NPR) For decades, ille­gal mar­i­juana cul­ti­va­tion has been an eco­nomic lifeblood for three coun­ties in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia known as the Emer­ald Triangle. The war on drugs and fre­quent raids by fed­eral drug agents have helped sup­port the local econ­omy — keep­ing prices for street sales of pot high and keep­ing prof­its rich....
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(The Local) A man walked into a police sta­tion in south­ern Swe­den last week to com­plain about the qual­ity of the hash that he had been sold, ask­ing for a lump to be tested for traces of LSD. The 26-​​year-​​old cannabis con­nois­seur declared to sur­prised police offi­cers in the provin­cial Skåné town of Eslöv that...
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(The Denver Post) Federal prosecutors Tuesday filed drug-distribution charges against a Highlands Ranch man who operated a massive basement marijuana garden that he said served medical-marijuana patients. Chris Bartkowicz was charged with a single count in U.S. District Court and could face up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine, according to...
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(ABC) Eight in 10 Amer­i­cans sup­port legal­iz­ing mar­i­juana for med­ical use and nearly half favor decrim­i­nal­iz­ing the drug more gen­er­ally, both far higher than a decade ago. With New Jer­sey this week poised to become the 14th state to legal­ize med­ical mar­i­juana, 81 per­cent in this national ABC News/​Washington Post poll sup­port the idea,...
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By Ger­rick Kennedy (LA Times) A judge in Los Ange­les ordered the return of 60 pounds of pot to a man after his attor­neys suc­cess­fully argued that a state law gave him the right to trans­port it. Saguro Doven, 33, was ini­tially charged with pos­ses­sion of mar­i­juana for sale and trans­porta­tion. But defense attor­ney Glen...
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By Christo­pher N. Osher (Den­ver Post) Den­ver now appears to have more mar­i­juana dis­pen­saries than liquor stores, Star­bucks cof­fee shops or pub­lic schools, accord­ing to city and cor­po­rate records. As of last week, Den­ver had issued more than 300 sales-​​tax licenses for dis­pen­saries. That num­ber slightly exceeds the num­ber of Star­bucks cof­fee shops in Den­ver...
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