marijuana – praag.org

Pothead takes Emmy award

Prior to her surprise Emmy win on Monday night, Sarah Silverman made another contribution to this year’s Emmy’s carpet during an awkward interview when she revealed a vaporizer pen for smoking marijuana.

She told an NBC reporter that it contained liquid pot. Silverman was visibly under the influence of the drug during the incoherent interview.

Silverman has long been open about her affection for getting high. During the intro to the nominated show, HBO special “We Are Miracles,” she smokes a joint outside an L.A. comedy club.

She said in a live interview last year, “I have very few vivid memories because I smoke a lot of pot.”

Meanwhile a company in Longview, US is hoping to cash in on legal marijuana by creating a new way to ingest pot.

“So it’s infused with 20 mg of THC,” said Stites.

Adam Stites works for the Longview company, Mirth, which saw a gap in Washington’s new legal marijuana market. They’re hoping pot-infused soda and coffee will fill it.

They’re calling the product “Legal.” The label reads “Couch meet butt.”

Pat Buchanan asks if America is going to pot

Smoking Marlboros is now forbidden in Irish bars in New York City. But buying, selling, and smoking marijuana is legal in Colorado.

It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

But where are we going?

One certain result of the legalization of marijuana is that there are going to be more potheads, more dropouts, and more deaths on highways from those high or stoned — and more rehab centers.

Scores of thousands of Coloradans may relish the freedom they have voted for themselves. But the costs will be borne by society and the families of future victims of potheads behind the wheel.

So it has been with alcohol. All of us can recall classmates injured and dead in auto accidents, jobs lost by friends, lives destroyed, and families smashed because of booze.

Just as beer opens the door for the young to bourbon, scotch, gin and vodka, marijuana is the gateway drug, the escalator drug, to cocaine and heroin.

And if marijuana sales bring in the revenue Colorado envisions, other states will follow suit, and some state will become the first to decriminalize cocaine.

Undeniably, the cultural revolution is gaining converts and picking up speed. The haste with which some Republicans are deep-sixing the social issues to focus on tax cuts testifies to this.

What does this tell us about our country?

America is not only diversifying racially, ethnically and religiously as a result of continuous mass immigration, legal and illegal. We are diversifying, and disuniting morally, culturally, and politically.

The government has shouldered aside organized crime to take over, tax, and regulate the rackets. At federal, state and local levels, the government rakes off vast revenues from taxes on booze, bars, cigarettes, casinos and, coming soon, online poker.

Contraceptives are now handed out to high schoolers and a right to contraception has been written into Obamacare.

Abortion and homosexuality used to be scandalous. Now they are constitutional rights and popular social causes, and same-sex marriage is the civil rights cause of the 21st century.

As Justice Antonin Scalia noted, if tradition, religious beliefs, or a community animus against conduct is insufficient to restrict private behavior, upon what legal ground do we stand upon to outlaw polygamy, adult incest, or prostitution?

Yet traditional America is not rolling over and playing dead.

While a libertarianism of the left appears ascendant, there is also a rising and militant libertarianism of the right.

The triumph of the sexual revolution has not been without its casualties, e.g., an endless supply of new HIV/AIDS and STD cases and a national illegitimacy rate of over 40 percent of all births.

And the correlation between that illegitimacy rate and the dropout rate, drug use rate, delinquency rate, crime rate, and incarceration rate is absolute.

Undeniably, the claims of the individual to maximum autonomy and freedom appear triumphant over the claims of community. The clamor of me is prevailing over the claims of us.

But in yielding, America has not only tossed overboard the moral compass that guided us for two centuries. We no longer even agree on what is “True North” anymore.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

More drivers test positive for pot in Washington state after its legalization

New figures from the Washington State Patrol show that more drivers have tested positive for marijuana since the state legalized the drug last year.

In the first six months of 2013, the patrol’s crime lab says, 745 people tested positive for marijuana. Typically there are about 1,000 positive pot tests on drivers in a full year.

Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins says it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s been a rash of people driving high. He says troopers are looking harder for drivers operating under the influence of pot, and they might be ordering more marijuana blood tests.

Of the 745 people who tested positive for marijuana in the first half of this year, the state patrol says a majority tested above the legal limit of 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood. The exact number was 420. – AP

Uruguay legalises cannabis

Uruguay’s parliament voted to be the world’s first country to license and regulate production, distribution and sale of dagga for adult consumers.

Uruguay’s lower house of Congress voted for dagga legalisation. The law now needs to pass through Senate to become effective.

The unprecedented plan to create a legal marijuana market was approved by 50 of the 96 lawmakers present in the lower house of Congress just before midnight Wednesday after more than 13 hours of passionate debate. It now needs to pass through the Senate.

Legislators in the ruling coalition said legalising marijuana would help fight organised crime. They said putting the government at the center of a legal marijuana industry was worth trying because the global war on drugs had been a costly and bloody failure, and displacing illegal dealers through licensed sales could save money and lives.

They also hope to eliminate a legal contradiction in Uruguay, where it has been legal to use dagga but against the law to sell it, buy it, produce it or possess even one marijuana plant.

President Jose Mujica had postponed voting for six months to give supporters more time to rally public opinion. However, recent polls said two-thirds of Uruguayans remained opposed despite a “responsible regulation” campaign for the bill.

National party deputy Gerardo Amarilla said the government was underestimating the risk of marijuana, which he called a “gateway drug” for other chemical addictions that foster violent crimes.

“Ninety-eight percent of those who are today destroying themselves with base cocaine began with marijuana,” Amarilla said. “I believe that we’re risking too much. I have the sensation that we’re playing with fire.”

Activists
Dozens of pro-marijuana activists followed the debate from balconies overlooking the house floor, while others outside held signs and danced to reggae music.

“This law consecrates a reality that already exists: The marijuana sales market has existed for a long time, but illegally, buying it from traffickers, and in having plants in your house for which you can be thrown in jail,” said Camilo Collazo, a 25-year-old anthropology student. “We want to put an end to this, to clean up and normalise the situation.”

Mujica, for his part, said he never consumed marijuana, but that the regulations are necessary because many other people do. “Never in my life did I try it, nor do I have any idea what it is,” he told the local radio station Carve.

The heavy toll, costs and questionable results of military responses to illegal drugs have motivated marijuana legalisation initiatives in the US states of Colorado and Washington, and inspired many world leaders to re-think drug laws.

The secretary-general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Inzulza, told Mujica last week that his members had no objections. Pope Francis, however, said during his visit to Brazil that the “liberalisation of drugs, which is being discussed in several Latin American countries, is not what will reduce the spread of chemical substances.”

New legislation
Under the legislation, Uruguay’s government would license growers, sellers and consumers, and update a confidential registry to keep people from buying more than 40 grams a month.

Carrying, growing or selling dagga without a license could bring prison terms, but licensed consumers could grow up to six plants at a time at home.

Growing clubs with up to 45 members each would be encouraged, fostering enough marijuana production to drive out unlicensed dealers and draw a line between dagga smokers and users of harder drugs.

The latest proposal “has some adjustments, aimed at strengthening the educational issue and prohibiting driving under the effects of cannabis,” ruling coalition deputy Sebastian Sabini said. “There will be self-growing clubs, and it will also be possible to buy marijuana in pharmacies” that is mass-produced by private companies.

An Institute for Regulation and Control of Cannabis would be created, with the power to grant licenses for all aspects of a legal industry to produce marijuana for recreational, medicinal or industrial use. – Sapa-AP

First day of legal pot ends in shoot-out

legalizedweedstates — States where cannabis is decriminalized

Two suspected robbers believed to be targeting an alleged home-based marijuana growing operation were killed in a shootout on the first day of legal marijuana in Washington state, authorities said.

The 35-year-old homeowner told detectives he shot the masked intruders Thursday after they broke into his home near Puyallup, Pierce County Sheriff spokesman Ed Troyer said, according Komonews.com. Troyer told the news outlet that the masked men most likely sought to grab the pot and maybe cash.

The Associated Press reported the secluded, luxury home had a security system, a private driveway and that the homeowner had motorcycles, boats and nice cars.

The homeowner and his 9-year-old son were not hurt. The homeowner, whose name was not released, was detained, at least pertaining to an illegal growing operation, Troyer told the wire service. He has since been released.

The marijuana at the home was of large quantity, much more than one would need for medicinal use, Troyer said.

The shooting occurred on the first day of legal marijuana in the state. The law, which voters approved in November, allows those 21 and older to possess an ounce or less of pot.

Backers of the initiative hope the law puts an end to the black market marijuana industry, such as the alleged growing operation where the shooting took place.

At the moment, it is still illegal to buy, sell or grow marijuana. The state’s liquor control board is now tasked with drafting a framework for licensing growers, handlers and retailers. – LA Times

Obama, pot win in Colorado, Washington

Colorado and Washington became the first US states to legalise the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use on Tuesday in defiance of federal law.

Amendment 64 supporters were ecstatic at their gathering in Denver Tuesday night when news came down.

“Marijuana prohibition has failed in Colorado and it has failed in all sorts of other places,” Amendment 64 advocacy director Betty Aldworth told CBS4. “I’m so proud and so honored to have worked with this team of people and to live in a state where people recognize marijuana prohibition is a failure and we can do better.”

The amendment allows adults over 21 to possess as much as an ounce of pot. It also allows people to grow as many as six pot plants in secure, private areas.

Supporters believe legalization will generate tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for Colorado.

The approval of the amendment puts Colorado in defiance of federal drug law.

“It’s still against federal law,” Gov. John Hickenlooper told CBS News anchor Scott Pelley about an hour later. “I’m not sure we can make it as legal as the voters would like us to do. But clearly the will of the voters spoke.”

Hickenlooper, who opposed the measure, said it’s “not immediately apparent” how the amendment will hold up against the national law.

Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office released a statement after the measure’s passage, saying the “Department of Justice’s enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged.”

“In enacting the Controlled Substances Act, Congress determined that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance. We are reviewing the ballot initiative and have no additional comment at this time,” Dorschner said.

State voters rejected recreational pot in 2006, but Aldworth said this measure comes at a time when voters have a different mindset, thanks in part to the burgeoning medical marijuana industry in several areas of the state.

“Amendment 64 is quite different from Amendment 44 in 2006 in that it envisions the regulated model for marijuana sales whereas Amendment 44 only decriminalized for adult use,” she said. “What we know is that Colorado voters have accepted the idea that we can regulate marijuana like alcohol successfully and we can make a safer, healthier and more just Colorado by doing so.”

The measure had the backing of the NAACP, the ACLU and the state public defender’s office, but most major state leaders came out in opposition.

Roger Sherman, the No on 64 campaign director, released a statement just after 9 p.m. on Election Day conceding the race:

“We knew all along this was an uphill battle against a well-funded national movement. We appreciate the efforts of Governor John Hickenlooper, former Governors Bill Owens and Bill Ritter, Attorney General John Suthers, Mayors Michael Hancock and Steve Hogan and countless other sheriffs, county commissioners, district attorneys and local elected officials who joined with the business community and citizens of Colorado to oppose this ill-conceived amendment.

“We can only hope that our concerns and fears about amending the Constitution to make Colorado the first state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana do not come true.”

The states of Oregon and Washington also had pot legalization amendments on the ballot, and at least one of those states — Washington — also approved their measure.

Colorado is already one of 17 states that allow marijuana use by people with certain medical conditions.