STRAIN OF THE DAY 03/15/2017: J-27 (SATIVA)

CANNABIS STRAIN OF THE DAY 03/15/2017: J-27 (SATIVA)

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What Does the Future Hold for Cannabis Coffeeshops?

By banning public use, states may be missing an opportunity to promote responsible behavior while hindering cannabis-related tourism.

The post What Does the Future Hold for Cannabis Coffeeshops? appeared first on Leafly.

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The Problems Plaguing Cannabis Coffeeshops

The evolution of Dutch coffeeshops has led to the paradox that while cannabis sales are legal, coffeeshops are still supplied via an illegal production system.

The post The Problems Plaguing Cannabis Coffeeshops appeared first on Leafly.

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https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/cannabis-coffeeshop-problems

How Are ‘Coffeeshops’ Different From ‘Coffee Shops’?

What's the difference between coffeeshops and coffee houses, and how does the Dutch government properly regulate these cannabis-friendly establishments?

The post How Are ‘Coffeeshops’ Different From ‘Coffee Shops’? appeared first on Leafly.

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The History of Dutch Cannabis Coffeeshops

Explore how Amsterdam's famous cannabis coffeeshops emerged in the Netherlands and the various changes they have undergone over time.

The post The History of Dutch Cannabis Coffeeshops appeared first on Leafly.

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Feds Still Jail More People for Cannabis Than Heroin

But there's a silver lining: The number of people sentenced for federal cannabis-related crimes has dropped for the fifth year in a row.

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Trump’s FDA Chief Is a Close Friend of Pot’s Sworn Enemy

When President Donald Trump’s selected Scott Gottlieb—a physician and fellow at a conservative think-tank—to head the Food and Drug Administration, marijuana’s last hope for some help in Trump’s cabinet died out.

Earlier names floated for the position of American drug czar included Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose claim to something other than infamy is that he’s a friend of Peter Thiel, Trump’s best friend in tech, and briefly served on the board of directors for a (failed) California marijuana legalization initiative. But since O’Neill is also an anti-regulation libertarian who advocated for ending the FDA’s practice of testing medicines for safety before they’re sold to the public—which is sort of what the FDA is all about—he received some consideration from Team Trump.

So instead, we have Gottlieb, who has been a dutiful soldier in the fight against giving Americans more healthcare.

Since Congress is taking the lead on becoming America’s death squad, killing health insurance for 24 million Americans, Gottlieb will be best-positioned to address Trump’s purported goal of bringing down the price of prescription drugs. (But not by letting generic drugs in from Canada; that would be… bad, somehow.)

This choice may also impact cannabis reform in America, and not in a good way. With Gottlieb’s elevation, there’s now a trifecta of serious stumbling blocks to marijuana reform calling key shots in the White House.

There are some positives for anyone interested in safe drugs to draw from Gottlieb’s appointment, as a review of Gottlieb’s C.V. and recent speeches published by the helpful wonks over at Vox shows. Unlike O’Neill, he’s actually a physician. He wants a faster approval track for experimental pharmaceuticals, and he wants to give doctors more power to decide what treatments may be best for their patients.

Most of this sounds OK. And it might be.

Gottlieb does not appear to be nearly as ideological (in all the wrong ways) as Tom Price, the current head of the Department of Health and Human Services who was a staunch anti-medical-marijuana vote while in Congress. And he’s no Jeff Sessions (for there to be multiple living, breathing Civil War re-enactors in Washington’s echelons of power would be a neat trick). 

Parsing his own words, Gottlieb appears almost agnostic on cannabis. Aside from tweeting out links to a few studies, he has said next to nothing on the subject. He doesn’t have to. With Gottlieb, there’s one significant problem: He’s a very, very good friend of one of marijuana’s sworn enemies.

After leaving the George W. Bush-era FDA, where he served as a top deputy, Gottlieb jumped straight into the arms of the pharmaceutical industry.

As Leafly News reported, he’s been a consultant for several very big pharma firms and raked in $400,000 from pharmaceutical companies in recent years. His ties to drug companies are strong—and drug companies, you may recall, really don’t like marijuana. At all.

The lone statewide legalization initiative to lose at the ballot box in November was in Arizona. There, the anti-legalization campaign received a $500,000 donation from Insys Therapeutics, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Fentanyl, the ultra-powerful synthetic opiate that’s believed to have killed Prince. I

n company SEC filings published by the Intercept, Insys executives stated what’s now become obvious, even as White House officials deny it: Legal marijuana is a viable substitute for prescription painkillers peddled by pharmaceutical companies. Other pharmaceutical companies have donated to similar “anti-drug” measures across the country. There’s a tinge of irony because the cash comes from drug companies; the donations are more “anti-drugs that aren’t the drugs we sell.”

Nearly all significant progress toward undoing the War on Drugs and pushing for more knowledge about cannabis and what it does to our brains and bodies has been at the state level. That’s good, but it can only go so far.

Across the country, scientists and now elected officials are lamenting how little we actually know about marijuana. The federal government wields significant power over scientific research—feds decide where grants go, and the feds also have control over the lone supply of marijuana available for study.

To push forward, cannabis is in need of an ally—someone who will make it easier for researchers—if Trump’s people were serious about deregulating everything, including restrictions on who can study Schedule I drugs like marijuana and how, maybe, it would be a good thing.

But with Price and Sessions calling shots over Gottlieb’s head, this seems unlikely. Trump’s cabinet remains an anti-marijuana minefield.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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http://hightimes.com/news/trumps-fda-chief-is-a-close-friend-of-pots-sworn-enemy/

Pie Strains for your Pie-Day Brains

The mathematical concept of Pi pervades our world — and on 3.14 each year, nothing's more satisfying with celebrating Pi's homonym with pies and pie strains.

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The High Score: Zelda, Breath of the Wild Game Review

We got stoned and played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Read about the immersive gameplay and how it’s perfect for a higher state of mind.

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First-of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Takes Big Pharma to Court Over Black Market OxyContin

One local newspaper said that this first-of-its-kind lawsuit reads like Everett, Washington is suing Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzman, rather than Purdu Pharma, which turned a blind eye for years to the black market distribution of its highly addictive OxyContin in order to “reap large and obscene profits.”

Now, the City of Everett is proving this outrage in court and wants compensation for having to deal with the aftermath of years of Oxy addiction.

Black Market? Yes.

Here’s what former State Attorney General Rob McKenna said: “The lawsuit claims Purdue is responsible for knowingly, recklessly, and/or negligently supplying OxyContin to obviously suspicious physicians and pharmacies and enabling the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market.”

Purdue and El Chapo: Same Shameless Business Model

An exhaustive investigation done by the Los Angeles Times last year revealed that Purdue had its own extensive evidence that illegal trafficking of its pills was going on, big time, all over the country.

Internal Purdue emails included a 2009 excerpt from an exchange between the company’s compliance director and a sales manager who had become suspicious of the high number of OxyContin prescriptions traced back to a certain clinic in Los Angeles.

After visiting the clinic, according to the LA Times, the sales manager wrote that, “the line was out the door, with people who looked like gang members. I feel very certain that this is an organized drug ring.”

That person was right.

But instead of sharing that info with the DEA, the cops or cutting off production, Purdue just kept churning out more and more Oxy and raking in the profits.

A Los Angeles drug ring was indeed supplying OxyContin to gang members, who were trafficking it directly to Everett, a city of 100,000, north of Seattle.

Serious Charges

While other states have sued Purdue over its deceptive marketing campaigns that exaggerate the benefits while minimizing the risks of the pain med, Everett’s lawsuit is the first to claim that Purdue knew Oxy was being diverted and peddled on the black market and did nothing to stop it.

If successful, Purdue could be held responsible for footing the bill to wean people off Oxy, rehab and other related costs. The lawsuit also states that Purdue fueled a heroin crisis in Everett.

“Other communities have been devastated as well,” McKenna told MyNorthwest.com. “That could run into the billions and put them out of business or put them out of the business of making OxyContin.”

Everett’s jails and detox facilities are overflowing with addicts, a recent NBC report revealed.

In pursuing the lawsuit, Everett’s Mayor Ray Stephanson cited what he called “clear evidence that Purdue ignored their responsibility to stop the diversion of OxyContin into the black market” in its quest for profits.

“Purdue needs to be held accountable for not taking the action they should have taken, that allowed drugs to hit these streets and make addicts of many of my citizens,” Stephanson told NBC News.

The city of Everett’s court filing is available here.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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http://hightimes.com/news/first-of-its-kind-lawsuit-takes-big-pharma-to-court-over-black-market-oxycontin/

Watch: Episode 2 of ‘Growing Exposed’—Growing to New Heights

This second episode of “Growing Exposed” features an impressive indoor garden with cannabis plants reaching a height of over 10 feet tall. Come harvest time, these plants, which resemble trees, have massive buds swelling to the size of two-liter bottles. Founder of Cannabis In Canada, Jason Wilcox leads you through this jungle of towering plants as your tour guide. From start to finish, Jason explains his perfected system and set up that allows for complete control.

“That’s the cool thing about this series” explained the show’s producer Jeremy Deichen. “The viewer gets a behind the scenes look at what other growers are doing. We don’t just show you a perfect bud on a dry rack; we break down the individual techniques used to achieve that final result.”

Jason begins his tour by taking us to the roof—where he reveals the high-tech equipment this grow uses to control their growing facility, from lighting, climate control, water filtration and more. Cooled by three 5-ton air conditioning units, the rooms are built inside of a warehouse the size of a football field.

By the end of the episode, Jason is climbing up ladders inspecting terminal buds of a cannabis variety called Moby Dick. Excited, he takes a moment to compare it to the size of his head.

“These are really chunky beautiful buds that are resinous and smell incredible.” Like a kid in a candy store, Jason goes on to explain, “I’m in heaven.”

Jason makes a point of showcasing the plant food this grower uses. It’s a 3-part base formula created by Green Planet called GP3. The grower explained that a 3-part formula gives him maximum control throughout the vegetative and bloom cycles. He was already using the most popular 3-part system in the industry for years until he learned about a cleaner formula on the market that did not contain carbonates. Carbonates are essentially fillers commonly used in the industry. No one likes salt build up around drip lines and reservoirs.

When we asked Green Planet’s owner Justin Cooper why we keep seeing this line of food behind some of the nicest grows we visit, he answered: “Green Planet Nutrients have been created from the highest sourced ingredients. We believe our formulas are the best in the world. We simply don’t cut corners by using anything artificial. We then take it one step farther by challenging ourselves to bring you the best value possible.”

The master grower I spoke to, made it clear, that this formula promotes healthy aggressive growth. This resulted in significantly boosted yields and really was an easy switch.

If you are already using a 3-part, then GP3 can be substituted even mid crop, and the only thing you will notice is your plants getting happier. I think another reason people like GP3 from Green Planet Nutrients is you won’t have a learning curve.  If you’ve ever used any other 3-part on the market, then you will easily be able to understand the feeding schedule and dial this one in to your liking.

The garden also features an activated charcoal filter to clean the air going out of the facility (known as a scrubber), a dehumidifier which recycles the water the plants transpire back into the system, a high-end water filtration system that removes both chlorine and chloramine (which is damaging to crucial inoculants), a water chiller to keep water at a steady 70°F and to top it off, each room is certified fire-safe. Every single component is wired for precision and efficiency.

This facility keeps a room packed full of mother of optimal phenotypes and hybrid strains; it is a forest of ganja. However, how do you select a mother plant?

The keen knowledge of David Robinson, the Garden Sage, explains this topic in the second episode of Growing Exposed.

Robinson explains that it takes roughly 6 – 9 months to identify the best phenotype out of a batch of seeds, which becomes your mother plant. The mother plant is sustained in vegetative growth, so it is kept under a constant 18 hours of light a day. This plant will never flower, but the clippings taken from the plant, which have a rooting hormone applied to the stem to encourage roots to form and thus create a “clone,” are grown to bloom.

Also featured in this episode is Keirton, a company that manufactures a product called the Twister. The Twister is a wet and dry trimmer for the cannabis industry, and it literally saves the day. With conveyor belts and all sorts of high-tech machinery, this trimmer can wet-trim an incredible 9 pounds of cannabis in an hour, which is a necessity for a grow operation of this scale.

We hope you enjoy the tour of this facility on Episode Two of “Growing Exposed” exclusively on HIGHTIMES.com.

Don’t Miss Episode 1 of “Growing Exposed”—Clandestine Gardens! 

For all of HIGH TIMES’ grow coverage, click here. 

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http://hightimes.com/grow/watch-episode-2-of-growing-exposed-growing-to-new-heights/

The Federal Government Is Cheating Young Addicts Out of Treatment

Adolescents suffering from the often-deadly grips of opioid addiction are not receiving the same level of treatment as their adult counterparts, according to the latest study from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Researchers say that while 26 percent of adult heroin addicts in the United States were given medication-assisted treatment back in 2013, in the form of methadone or suboxone, only two percent of the adolescent population received the same opportunity.

Sadly, this lack of attention to the young drug addict also takes place when it comes to cases involving prescription painkillers.

In examining the data of nearly 140,000 patients, researchers found that 12 percent of the adult addicts were given federally subsidized medications to help ease them into recovery, with less than one percent of adolescents being given the same consideration.

These findings are detailed at great lengths in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

This is a problem that is going to require a great deal more attention, said lead researcher Kenneth Feder. Otherwise, the opioid epidemic could spiral into something far worse than what we are witnessing today.

“There’s more that needs to be done across the board to facilitate access to these treatments when they’re medically necessary,” Feder told Reuters Health. “The best validated treatment for somebody struggling with an opiate addiction is treatment that includes some sort of medication assistance.”

But the system is simply not set up to take care of youngsters grappling with a drug problem.

As it stands, methadone and heath care clinics cannot treat anyone under the age of 18 without written permission from a parent or guardian. What’s more is Medicaid requires adolescent drug addicts to actually fail a treatment program at least two times before it pays for them to get on methadone—a policy that is contributing to more sickness and death than healthy Americans.

In 2015, somewhere around 276,000 adolescents were using opioids, with 122,000 having an addiction to these substances, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Of these cases, thousand of them died from overdoses to heroin, prescription pain pills and methadone, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical experts, like Dr. Lisa Marsch of the Geisel School of Medicine in New Hampshire, say the federal government’s current policy on treating adolescent drug addiction is “a real disservice based on the science and the data.”

She believes it is imperative for youngsters to receive medication-assisted treatments the moment an addiction is identified.

“We want a chance to stop this problem early,” she said.

There is some concern that the situation will only worsen with the Republican’s plan to repeal Obamacare. The party’s newly drafted “American Health Act” would reportedly freeze Medicaid expansions and sever ties with some “essential” heath benefits under Obamacare, including substance abuse programs.

Medicaid, which presently covers around 70 million Americans, pays for more drug addiction services than any other insurer in the nation.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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http://hightimes.com/news/the-federal-government-is-cheating-young-addicts-out-of-treatment/

Group Urges MA Lawmakers to Hold off on Cannabis Law Changes

The group behind a ballot initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in Massachusetts is now urging state legislators to keep the new law intact.

The post Group Urges MA Lawmakers to Hold off on Cannabis Law Changes appeared first on Leafly.

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Philippine Police Face Lawsuit Campaign Over Drug Killings

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A group of Philippine human rights lawyers filed murder complaints Tuesday against eight policemen accused of killing a father and his son last year at the start of a campaign to bring lawsuits against enforcers of the president’s deadly anti-drug crackdown for alleged extrajudicial killings.

Lawyer Maria Kristina Conti said the murder complaints her group filed in behalf of Mary Ann Domingo against the policemen led by Superintendent Ali Jose Duterte will be followed by more lawsuits from families of poor victims of alleged extrajudicial killings under President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown.

Domingo’s husband and son were gunned down in their house in suburban Caloocan city in metropolitan Manila by the policemen in September in what they claimed was a gunbattle with drug suspects but which she said was a brazen rubout.

Several protesters, carrying placards that read: “Stop killing the poor,” gathered outside the office of the government Ombudsman, who prosecutes officials accused of corruption and other crimes, as Domingo and her lawyers filed the complaints.

It’s not immediately clear if Duterte, the police officer, is related to the president. Conti said her group, the National Union of People’s Lawyers, did not pick the case to launch their campaign against extrajudicial killings because the main suspect was a namesake of the president.

“The filing of the charges against the policemen involved in the killing … is just the beginning,” Conti said. Other criminal cases would be filed “in coordination with community organizations and church groups as part of a mounting grassroots campaign against recent rampant human rights violations committed under the ambit of the government’s so-called war against drugs.”

More than 8,000 mostly small-time drug suspects have been gunned down by policemen and unidentified gunmen since Duterte launched his brutal campaign after taking office in June. Duterte has denied condoning unlawful killings but has repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death in public speeches.

Duterte has assured policemen he would defend them if they run into lawsuits while cracking down on illegal drugs.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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http://hightimes.com/news/philippine-police-face-lawsuit-campaign-over-drug-killings/

Radical Rant: Oklahoma Shenanigans (Or, What’s the Point of Democracy?)

Tight Budget Could Complicate Sessions’ Vow to Fight Crime

BY SADIE GURMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is promising his Justice Department will lead the charge in helping cities fight violent crime, and police chiefs are ready with their wish-lists.

More technology to trace guns after shootings. More grant money. More intelligence analysts to help dismantle gangs. More protective gear and equipment. As the head of one police officers’ union put it, “We need more of everything.”

But Sessions, who cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war in the 1980s, has inherited a federal government that built itself to fight terrorism since 9/11 and, more recently, to combat cybercrime.

Since taking office, Sessions has spoken repeatedly about a spike in murders. He and President Donald Trump ordered the creation of a crime-fighting task force, bringing together the heads of the major law enforcement agencies. And they seem to be counting on tighter border security to stop a flow of drugs and reduce crime.

But they have yet to offer new money for crime-fighting, especially in the face of Trump’s plan to slash nonmilitary budgets. More clarity could come Thursday when the administration unveils its budget proposal. Sessions also has not said how federal law enforcement will be able to juggle priorities.

“He’ll find out very quickly that you can’t pull people off all these other things just to go do that,” said Robert Anderson, who was the FBI’s most senior criminal investigator until his retirement in 2015. Anderson joined the bureau in the 1990s, when combating violence and drugs was its top challenge. “Now he’s walking into a much different Justice Department and FBI.”

Kerry Sleeper, assistant director of the FBI office that works with local law enforcement, said that after decades of declines in violence, police chiefs are coming to grips with a new uptick and asking for federal help.

What they’d like to see:

– In Milwaukee, Police Chief Edward Flynn said he would like an expansion of the work done in that city by the Justice Department’s Violence Reduction Network. It teams officers with deputy U.S. marshals and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Drug Enforcement Administration to target high-crime areas. “It’s encouraging to have an incoming administration take an interest in the spikes in violence in central cities,” he told The Associated Press.

– In Baltimore, which recorded 318 homicides last year, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has said he would like federal agencies to double the number of agents assigned to cities experiencing spikes in violence.

– In Chicago, singled out by the White House for its surge in shootings, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has said he would welcome more agents and money for mentorship and after-school programs to help kids in violent neighborhoods and, in turn, reduce crime.

Other cities want help processing evidence, tracing guns and prosecuting drug traffickers and dealers as they combat heroin and opioid addiction.

More chiefs are asking the FBI for its help with intelligence-gathering to thwart crime, said Stephen Richardson, assistant director for the FBI’s criminal division.

Making violent crime a priority is a departure for a Justice Department that has viewed as more urgent the prevention of cyberattacks from foreign criminals, counterterrorism and the threat of homegrown violent extremism. And while local police say they want more help fighting violence, such a plan could put new pressure on Justice Department agencies already strapped for resources.

“Our budget’s been eroding,” Thomas Brandon, acting ATF director, told a congressional committee last week. The ranks of the agency’s special agents hit an eight-year low in fiscal year 2013 and have not grown dramatically since then.

Sessions’ focus fits his background. His career as a prosecutor began when there was bipartisan agreement in Washington that the best way to fight crime was with long, mandatory prison sentences. And he views today’s relatively low crime rates as a sign that those policies worked. Just last week, he underscored his priority telling the nation’s federal prosecutors they should use all available resources to take down the worst offenders.

In contrast, the Obama administration’s Justice Department focused its aid to local police on improving community relations.

The federal government has long played a role in fighting crime through grants and partnerships. Agents assigned to field offices work with local police to share intelligence on gangs and shootings, hunt fugitives and probe bank robberies. Constance Hester-Davis, special agent in charge of the ATF’s field division in New Orleans, said her agents routinely work alongside local counterparts, even attending community meetings.

“At the end of the day, crime is a state and local concern,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank. “However, what police chiefs say is the federal government does have a responsibility, particularly when they prosecute.”

Such cooperation can work. Oakland, California, police saw killings fall from 126 in 2012 to 85 in 2016, two years after FBI agents were embedded in the homicide unit. Ten agents share an office with Oakland detectives, offering help gathering evidence, collecting DNA, chasing leads and bringing federal prosecutions that carry longer sentences in far-away prisons. Detectives solved at least 60 percent of their cases last year, compared to about 30 percent in 2010, said Russell Nimmo, FBI supervisory special agent on the Oakland Safe Streets Task Force.

“It’s very complementary to what our mission is,” Nimmo said. “We’re a big organization. The challenge for our leadership is determining how many resources to allocate to each of those competing priorities.”

Richardson, who formed the first FBI task force in the Western District of Louisiana to combat violent criminals, said the new focus will mean shifting resources in ways that are yet to be seen. The FBI is finalizing a strategy to “surge” resources, including agents, in certain cities this summer.

“We won’t be able to do all the cities we’d like to at once,” Richardson said. “I firmly believe it will make a difference.”

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

from
http://hightimes.com/news/tight-budget-could-complicate-sessions-vow-to-fight-crime/

What the Mass Purge of U.S. Attorneys Means for Weed

Last week, the Justice Department announced what sounded like a drastic, desperate overhaul of how it does business: 46 local U.S. attorneys appointed by Barack Obama were asked by current Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign.

Some went quietly; others, like Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan (who said that Donald Trump had personally asked him to stay on in November), refused and later publicly announced that Trump had him fired.

You can be forgiven for forgetting—so much has happened in the last few weeks—but this is a regular occurrence. United States attorneys, who head up district offices throughout the country and set policy, are political appointees; the prosecutors and investigators who work under them are career officials and stay put. Every president over the past few decades has cleaned house in this way, removing the past president’s political choices in favor of his own.

But since this is Donald Trump, nothing is regular or normal.

As The New York Times noted, the firings came a day after Fox News host Sean Hannity suggested that Obama holdovers were “saboteurs” that needed a “purge”—and that it could be Justice Department officials who are responsible for leaking to the public the latest embarrassing revelations of how bad of a shit show Team Trump is running.

As we know, Trump consumes knee-jerk news like Hannity religiously, and on at least one occasion, conservative news talking points have preceded Trump policy statements (and tweets).

Bharara’s firing also follows news that he may have begun investigating whether Trump’s business ties and worldwide real-estate holdings violate rules prohibiting the president from using the office to make personal profit.

For marijuana, this means a total changing of the guard.

Only two U.S. attorneys survived the purge, according to the Times, and they serve in Virginia and in Maryland. Everywhere commercial sales of adult-use marijuana is legal, everywhere a robust (or even barely effective) medical marijuana distribution system can be found, a new federal prosecutor is coming to town. They will be appointees of Jeff Sessions, and we can be confident they will share his views and be empowered to carry out his policies.

The irony is that past U.S. attorneys under Barack Obama haven’t been necessarily all that friendly. In 2010 and 2011, before marijuana legalization became a mainstream view across the country and a near-certainty almost everywhere the question was considered, Obama appointees did much to muck things up.

In the summertime, California’s four federal prosecutors announced sweeping raids of medical marijuana cultivation sites way up in the foothills and mountains; in fall 2011, they started cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries in the cities. Hundreds across the state shut down after their landlords received threatening letters from federal prosecutors; not one was ever accused of breaking state or local law.

More recently, a U.S. attorney disrupted the HIGH TIMES Cannabis Cup in the Nevada desert, informing organizers that no cannabis could be sold; other federal prosecutors have taken cracks at the massive gray-area grows proliferating in Colorado. These were all Obama appointees.

What happens next will hinge heavily on who Sessions installs in each district.

If the past is any indication, the retrograde Sessions will go backwards, just like George W. Bush did. In San Francisco, the rotation went like this: after firing his initial choice for U.S. attorney for rank incompetence, Bush picked to succeed him Joe Russoniello, an old-school hard-liner who did the job under Ronald Reagan.

But here’s where the good news is buried.

U.S. attorneys need nomination and confirmation by the Senate. As drug-policy advocates point out, there is a procedure in Washington, though not often used, that gives U.S. senators the power (at least in theory) to block unwanted attorneys from taking office.

Senators from legalization states have the power to “blue slip” & stop anti-marijuana U.S. Attorney nominees https://t.co/cGfHBCZGao

— Bill Piper (@billjpiper) March 10, 2017

Under Senate tradition, members of the Judiciary Committee ask a nominee’s home-state senators whether they approve or disapprove of the nominee. Senators are asked to mark their preference on a blue-colored piece of paper. Whether the committee cares what the home-state senators think or even bother to read the slips depends on who chairs the committee.

The current chair is Sen. Chuck Grassley—the same Chuck Grassley who thought it a good use of power to violate the Constitution and deny Barack Obama’s nomination for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, so much as a confirmation hearing.

So Sessions will likely get his people. They will be Trump people—they will be Steve Bannon people. Who they are and how effective they’ll be remains to be seen, but it’s safe to assume they won’t be marijuana people.

That, at least, will be consistent with Obama.

RELATED: Jeff Sessions Admits He Can’t Stop Marijuana Legalization (Sort Of)

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

from
http://hightimes.com/news/what-the-mass-purge-of-u-s-attorneys-means-for-weed/

Grow Q&A: My Pot Plants Are Root-Bound! What Should I Do?

Marijuana Menu for St. Patty’s Day Celebrations

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with the green herb instead of green beer! These soulful recipes from Jeff the 420 Chef showcase cannabis cuisine with traditional Irish flavors.

Infused Vegan Irish Stew

Try this contemporary vegan twist on an old Irish favorite. This is not your mama’s stew!

Servings: 6

Prep Time: 40 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Approximate THC Per Serving*:
10%: 3.3 mg per piece of “meat”
15%: 5 mg
20%: 6.6 mg

Ingredients for the Broth:                                                                                    

• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 medium Spanish onion, sliced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1 cup carrots, cut into thirds (or you can use baby carrots)
• 6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes
• 6 cups vegetable broth
• 2 tablespoons powdered mushroom broth or bouillon
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt

Ingredients for the “Meat”:

• 2 cups Cremini mushrooms, shredded
• 1 small Portobello mushroom, shredded
• 1 medium red onion, chopped fine
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• ¼ cup brown rice flour
• 1 tablespoon tapioca flour
• 1 tablespoon Vital Wheat Gluten
• 2 tablespoons Jeff’s Light Tasting Canna–Olive Oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

 Steps:

Make the Stew Base

1. In a large pot, sauté onions and celery in olive oil until onions are lightly golden.
2. Add potatoes, carrots, Celtic sea salt and pepper. Continue to sauté for another 2-3 minutes.
3. Add vegetable broth and bay leaf. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Make the “Meat”

1. Sauté onions until lightly brown.
2. Add mushrooms, thyme and smoked paprika. Salt and pepper to taste and continue to sauté until all the liquid is absorbed.
3. Transfer sautéed mushrooms on paper towels to soak up any leftover moisture. Let sit for 20 minutes.
4. In a large bowl, mix together the sautéed mushrooms, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, Vital Wheat Gluten and canna–olive oil.
5. Form into 18 chunks..
6. Heat a large frying pan and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil
7. Lightly fry each “meat” chunk till evenly browned and set aside.

Bake the Stew 

1. Preheat oven to 340ºF.
2. Transfer stew base to a casserole dish.
3. Place “meat” chunks on top of casserole and bake for 40 minutes until lightly browned.
4. Remove from oven and serve immediately! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

*Approximate dose per serving is based on infusing 5 grams of cured/dried/decarbed cannabis into 5 ounces of oil.

Shamrock Canna-Cheesecake Cookies   

Servings: 24

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 25 to 28 minutes

Idle Time: 30 minutes

Approximate THC per Serving*:
10%: 3.5 mg
15%: 5.3 mg
20%: 7 mg

You’ll need a mini muffin tin to make these look like little cheesecakes.

Ingredients:

• Cooking spray (I prefer butter-flavored)
• 4 oz (or half a package) cream cheese, softened
• ½ stick Jeff’s “Light Tasting” Cannabutter, softened
• ½ stick grass fed butter, softened (Kerrygold is the best)
• ½ cup raw cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 2-3 drops green food coloring gel
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 5 whole graham crackers + 1 teaspoon cannabutter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon + 1 teaspoon sugar

 Steps:

1. In a large bowl, mix butter, cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and green gel coloring until smooth and creamy.
2. Slowly add flour and combine.
3. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 340ºF. Lightly spray muffin tin with cooking spray.
5. Place graham crackers, 1 teaspoon of butter, cinnamon and sugar into food processor and pulse into crumbs.
6. Place canna-graham cracker crumbs into a large bowl.
7. Place ½ teaspoon graham cracker crumbs into the bottom of each muffin mold.
8. Remove cookie dough from refrigerator.
9. Use a small ice cream scoop to drop cookies into bowl with graham cracker crumbs and roll to coat.
10. Place coated balls on top of crumbs and gently press down so that the top of cookie is flush with the tin.
11. Bake for 25 – 28 minutes.
12. Let cool, remove cookies from muffin tin and voilá!

*Approximate dose per serving is based on infusing 3.5 grams of cured/dried/decarbed cannabis into 8 ounces (1 stick) of grass fed butter.

Jeff’s Irie Irish Cream

Better than Baily’s…non-alcoholic. Infused with THC! A totally unique experience!

Servings: 6 – 4 oz servings

Approximate THC per Serving*:

4.5 mg THC per serving

*Milligrams per serving based on Kiva’s Terra Espresso beans 5 mg THC content.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups Jameson Irish Whisky (we are going to boil out the alcohol content)
• 5 ice cubes
• 6 KIVA Terra Espresso Beans (5 mg each)
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 shot of espresso or 1 teaspoon instant coffee
• 1 cup Half and Half
• ½ cup sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tablespoon Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup

Steps:

1. Bring Irish whisky to a boil over a medium/low flame for 5 minutes to reduce and begin to boil off the alcohol content.
2. To finish, (this is fun but be very careful!), using a long neck lighter, ignite the whisky in the the pot. A light blue flame will burn on top of the alcohol for about 5 – 7 minutes until all the alcohol has evaporated. Set aside to cool.
3. In a blender, add ice cubes, vanilla, espresso, heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, Jameson and Kiva Terra Espresso beans.
4. Blend until smooth and creamy.
5. Strain through a fine strainer or cheesecloth and voila!

RELATED: Drink This Cannabis Cocktail Instead of Beer on St. Patrick’s Day

For all of HIGH TIMES’ edibles coverage, click here.

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The Greatest Marijuana Hustle: Legalization’s First Unicorn Was a Total Fraud

In Silicon Valley parlance, “unicorns” are startup companies worth more than $1 billion. That’s why they’re called unicorns—they’re rare. They don’t happen often, and everyone (read: every investor) is on the lookout to be the first to spot the next one, just before everyone else does.

The first unicorn to emerge from the marijuana sector appeared shortly after Colorado and Washington legalized adult-use marijuana in November 2012. Within two weeks of the first legalization votes and Barack Obama’s re-election, shares in California-based Medbox gained 3,000 percent, from under $3 a share to $215 a share.

Sales flourished. Medbox kept shipping units to dispensaries in multiple states. The company boasted in a series of breathless press releases. At one point, Medbox was worth $3 billion; its founder, Vincent Mehdizadeh, was worth $2 billion. 

On paper, anyway.

Forget for a second that Medbox was already publicly traded by the time anyone had heard of it—and on the OTC markets, where grifters tout shady penny stocks and run pump-and-dump schemes. And never mind what Medbox actually did—build medical marijuana vending machines—didn’t really seem to take on with the public. Actually finding a Medbox unit in a California dispensary, or anywhere else, was a challenge.

In the Bay Area, there was one—one!—in a San Jose-area dispensary, supposedly. But who cared, when there was an enormous sum of money to be made by the right people in the right place at the right time?

You might be able to see where this is going.

After the hype-fueled gold rush, came the inevitable crash; rags to riches to rags. Close: This is no Horatio Alger story in reverse—this is the monorail episode from the Simpsons, with a sixth act tacked on, in which the snake-oil salesmen receive justice after skipping town.

Medbox’s stock did crash, and Mehdizadeh was ousted from the now-defunct company, though not before cashing out millions in stock, enough riches to buy a home in an exclusive seaside town near Los Angeles.

Some market watchers called Medbox a “systemic fraud” that would “make [Bernie] Madoff proud.” Outraged investors filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in 2015, alleging that the company worked overtime to inflate its stock value through press releases and media appearances.

And according to charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, they were right: It was all a fraud. Medbox really had no sales at all. Its “revenue” was in the form of illegal stock sales to a shell company set up and controlled by Mehdizadeh’s onetime fiancé. And privately, he admitted to it.

“[T]he only thing we are really good at is public company publicity and stock awareness,” he wrote in a text message, according to the SEC. “We get an A+ for creating revenue off sheer will but that won’t continue.”

According to federal investigators, Mehdizadeh conspired with Bruce Bedrick, Medbox’s CEO, and Yocelin Legaspi, Mehdizadeh’s then-fiancé, to set up a fake shell company called New-Age. Bedrick and Mehdizadeh would sell restricted shares of company stock to New-Age. Proceeds from the sales would then appear on Medbox’s ledger as revenue.

As Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles office, put it in a press release, investors “were misled into believing that Medbox was a leader in the burgeoning marijuana industry when the company was just round-tripping money from illegal stock sales to boost revenue.”

Here’s the SEC. As you’ll read, everything Medbox did was thanks to this shell game:

“Revenues from the New-Age accounts receivable deal comprised 22% and 65% of Medbox’s reported revenue in 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, respectively. Within a month, Mehdizadeh caused New-Age to funnel those proceeds back to Medbox, ostensibly in exchange for: dispensary “management rights” that Medbox did not actually own; equipment associated with a marijuana cultivation build-out that never occurred; and the exclusive right to place Medbox machines in Denver, Colorado, notwithstanding the fact that New-Age had no dispensary license in Denver, and no reasonable prospect of obtaining one, either.

Bogus revenues from these transactions, which Medbox falsely described in SEC filings as transactions with a ‘non-affiliated shareholder,’ amounted to nearly 90% of Medbox’s reported revenue in the first quarter of 2014.

In the period of time that New-Age was artificially inflating Medbox’s reported revenue, Bedrick unloaded over 710,000 of his Medbox shares in private placements or public sales, reaping $6,483,180 in total sales proceeds. Mehdizadeh likewise enriched himself through the fraud, selling more than 950,000 of his own Medbox shares for $6,014,048 in sales proceeds. In connection with these sales, both Bedrick and Mehdizadeh signed, as sellers, stock purchase agreements falsely claiming that the company’s SEC filings contained no misrepresentations.”

Medbox was not Mehdizadeh’s first grand mal scheme.

A lengthy investigation published by the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation revealed that Mehdizadeh and his father had pleaded no contest to charges that they posed as lawyers running a legal referral service, which charged working-class customers for work that never appeared. Mehdizadeh dodged jail time by paying $450,000 in restitution. And soon after, he entered the weed business.

After the DEA raided a dispensary that Mehdizadeh operated in 2007, he shifted away from dealing with the plant and toward penny stocks. Pot-related penny stocks have proven to be a magnet for shady characters; in 2014, the SEC sent an investor alert, warning of “fraudsters… creating losses for unsuspecting investors.”

As part of a plea deal with the SEC, Mehdizadeh has agreed to pay $12 million in restitution and never again be involved with a penny-stock outfit. Charges are still pending against Bedrick, Legaspi and the phony company New-Age.

The drama may not be over. The current “nobody learned anything” post-script is that Mehdizadeh never admitted to any wrongdoing.

He pleaded no contest, which while somewhat as effective as a guilty plea, isn’t.

In a statement, he said he hasn’t read the SEC complaint and doesn’t plan to.

“They have their version of what happened,” he said, according to FOX-43, “and I have mine.”

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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Photos Prove Government-Grown Cannabis Is Basically Ditch Weed

Yes, what you're looking at is, technically speaking, cannabis.

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STRAIN OF THE DAY 03/14/2017: BLACKBERRY (HYBRID)

CANNABIS STRAIN OF THE DAY 03/14/2017: BLACKBERRY (HYBRID)

from
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Youth Center, Schools Win Colorado Cannabis Tax Grants

A youth center for Longmont, and school improvements in Jefferson County.

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Jeff Sessions Admits He Can’t Stop Marijuana Legalization (Sort Of)

President Donald Trump has yet to demonstrate if he and his administration are any good at governance—and there is mounting evidence that, in fact, Steve Bannon and company may be very bad at this job—but his team is at least consistent in one area: Disseminating threatening information to the country via conservative media and watching the ensuing confused freak-out with evident twisted satisfaction.

Last week, our mendacious and Russophilic Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared on the talk show of Hugh Hewitt, a conservative commentator who also has a Washington Post column (and voted for Donald Trump in November, after asking him to drop out of the race in October).

The week before, prior to revelations that Sessions at best misled fellow U.S. senators during his January confirmation hearings regarding his contacts with Russian officials, Sessions sent the marijuana industry grasping for Xanax with the latest in a series of vague statements on what—if anything—he plans to do about the country’s marijuana industry.

Speaking with Hewitt, Sessions delivered more of the same, declaring, as he suggested in January, that the Justice Department plans to enforce federal laws on marijuana—but in an “appropriate way.”

“[M]arijuana is against federal law, and that applies in states where they may have repealed their own anti-marijuana laws,” Sessions told Hewitt, according to a recap of the show published by Business Insider. “And I’m not in favor of legalization of marijuana. I think it’s a more dangerous drug than a lot of people realize.”

“Neighbors are complaining, and lawsuits are being filed against them,” said Sessions, referring to the (failed) efforts by the attorneys general of Oklahoma and Nebraska to compel the federal government to intervene and punish Colorado for its marijuana legalization experiment.

What does all that mean—in the real world, and in Sessions’ head? Nobody really knows. But later in the conversation came Sessions’ big tell.

As Business Insider reported:

“…. Sessions did admit that it’s not possible for the federal government to go in and enforce federal law in every legal state, where police and local authorities are beholden to state law.”

This is consistent with observations made by drug policy expert Mark A. R. Kleiman and others: There are but 4,000 DEA agents worldwide, and it would require all their combined might, and the help of many, many others, to put even a significant dent in America’s burgeoning, worth-many-billions weed industry.

Attorneys advising the cannabis industry say that the most-likely targets are “bad actors” who break state law. These are the kinds of businesses already in the crosshairs of authorities, both state and federal.

Some marijuana insiders believe the decider will be Trump, if the president would only say something.

For some reason, despite a well-noted tendency to spout off on anything and everything else, Trump himself has yet to say anything publicly about marijuana since taking office, despite pleas for something as insubstantial as a tweet.

But that’s probably not realistic.

Judging by how the Trump White House has operated on immigration, on health care and on international relations, Trump takes his cues from his in-house team of deplorables. Steve Bannon writes executive orders, shady characters like Paul Manafort dictate policy on Russia. And Jeff Sessions will take the lead on drug policy.

What that lead will be, nobody but him can say—and he might not know, either.

It’s quite possible Sessions himself has no idea what to do or where to start and is taking his time to weigh his options before making a move. Sessions is surely aware that legalization enjoys record support among Americans—and that if the will of the people were reflected in Congress, federal lawmakers would legalize cannabis, just as Sessions himself suggested during his January confirmation hearings.

Then again, as we and many others have said, Sessions is doing damage to the marijuana industry just by speaking up from time to time. If he can keep cannabis off-balance and anxious, that might be enough for now.

RELATED: Sessions Backs Down on Legalization

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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How Much Tax Revenue Do Legal Cannabis Sales Generate?

Learn how much tax revenue legal cannabis sales generated in 2016 to gain a better understanding of the way the industry works and the benefits it can produce.

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Colorado House Approves 16-Plant Homegrow Limit, End to Co-Ops

The nation's most generous grow-your-own laws are closer to being curbed in Colorado.

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Emerald Exchange Brings NorCal Treats to Southern California

The sweet smell of Northern California sun-grown cannabis will waft through the hills of Malibu as Emerald Exchange comes to Southern California for the third time later this week. The medical cannabis wellness event will take place on a private ranch near Malibu this Saturday, March 18.

Emerald Exchange 3 aims to expose the SoCal medical marijuana community to the benefits of high quality cannabis grown outdoors by craft cultivators in Northern California’s Emerald Triangle. The gathering will also feature a myriad of therapeutic products, all manufactured by companies that use Northern California marijuana to formulate their medicines. Art, musicians and dancing fill out the alt-cultural experience scheduled to last well into the evening.

Michael Katz, co-founder of The Emerald Exchange and the CEO of specialty vape pen manufacturer EVOXE laboratories, explained what makes the event special compared to other cannabis trade shows.

“Number one is the unique experience that the location creates,” Katz said. “The Exchange takes place on a gorgeous ranch near Malibu, with views of the ocean to the west and the rolling hills to the east. The setting takes the exchanges to a different place, rather than the traditional dispensary back-rooms or random meet ups.”

Katz added that the Southern California medical marijuana community is learning to appreciate the artisanal quality of flowers sun-grown by small-batch cultivators.

“More and more, people are thinking about cannabis the way they think about food,” he continued. “They want to know where it comes from, how it’s grown, if possible they want to know the person who grows it, to make a connection with that person and help support their way of life.”

He sees The Emerald Exchange as a forum for creating those connections between small Emerald Triangle growers and SoCal patients and dispensaries.

The day kicks off at noon with a farmers’ market featuring more than 40 vendors. Products available will include flower, concentrates and cannabis-infused topicals and edibles, including chocolates, jellies and beverages. Music, art, a wellness spa and a speakers panel will also be included in the daytime lineup.

As the sun heads toward the Pacific Ocean horizon at 6 p.m., the party starts with a mixer and dancing until midnight. Beats will be courtesy of an all-female slate of DJs.

Emerald Exchange 3 takes place Saturday, March 18 from noon until midnight at a private ranch near Malibu, California. Ticket prices range from $75-$600 based on the level of experience.

HIGHTIMES.com readers can use discount code mrldxchng10 to save 10 percent!

Pursuant to California medical marijuana law, all products will be available with a donation to the onsite collective. A valid ID and medical marijuana recommendation are required for admission. Medicating onsite will be allowed.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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Ex-Mayor Pleads Guilty to Distributing Meth Following Sting

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A former Virginia mayor has pleaded guilty to distributing methamphetamine after a drugs-for-sex sting.

News outlets report that former Fairfax Mayor R. Scott Silverthorne entered the plea Monday in Fairfax County Circuit Court.

Silverthorne had been free on bond, but the judge ordered him held in jail until his June sentencing. Attorney Brian Drummond says Silverthorne faces up to 40 years in prison, but will likely get a light sentence or probation.

Silverthorne was arrested in August after a sting at a Tysons Corner hotel. Police say they set up the sting after receiving a tip that Silverthorne was using a dating website to set up sexual encounters with men in exchange for drugs.

Police say Silverthorne gave an undercover detective 2 grams of methamphetamine before his arrest.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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Legalization Catches Eye of Connecticut Legislature

Despite growing enthusiasm, it's questionable whether any of the state's adult-use bills will ultimately survive this session.

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Canadian Company Moves In To Take Hold of Medical Marijuana in Colombia

Colombia has the perfect climate, landscape and geography to cultivate weed, not to mention its year-round, near-the-equator growing season.

After signing a peace deal with the country’s rebels-turned-drug-traffickers, thus ending a 50-year conflict, then kindly requesting that the United States stop spraying their coca and poppy fields, the Colombian government has a plan.

Having legalized medical marijuana, the Health Ministry is working with a Canadian-based company to grow weed in areas once controlled by the rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

PharmaCielo, based in Toronto, is the first company in Colombia to receive a license from the government to manufacture cannabis products.

Colombia, which has received over $9 billion dollars in U.S. aid to eradicate the drug trade in the past two decades, will begin processing licenses for a small number of companies, including PharmaCielo.

According to its website, PharmaCielo is preparing to grow and process large volumes of premium cannabis into MMJ oil extracts and related products.

PharmaCielo’s directors include former executives from Philip Morris and Bayer, the corporate likes of which may not bode well for small farmers who fear getting pushed out by large companies.

The Colombian government says small farmers have nothing to fear.

“Colombia may be the winner of this emerging market of medicinal marijuana,” said Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, Colombia’s health minister. “This will result in more jobs in our country and greater prosperity for the communities and municipalities where this industry is situated.”

A New York Times report from Corinto, in the southwestern Cauca region, a weed-growing area that still has problems with paramilitaries bumping off human rights workers, included interviews from locals as well as PharmaCielo directors.

“The peasants were forced to produce these plants,” says Federico Cock-Correa, head of the Colombian subsidiary of PharmaCielo, who promises to pay his growers far more than what they earned during the war.

PharmaCielo’s Colombian headquarters are located on the farmlands outside of Medellín, Pablo Escobar’s former stomping grounds.

Cock-Correa told the NY Times that he’s new to the weed business. He built his career growing and exporting chrysanthemums to the United States, which he says is similar to growing weed.

While showing the NY Times the vast greenhouses ready to be used by PharmaCielo, the chrysanthemum king said the Colombian government will continue to eradicate coca leaves and marijuana grown in violation of the new law.

In visits to other parts of the country, the NY Times met people who were skeptical about the government and big business telling them how and how much weed to grow on their own private or communal land.

“What’s important here is we don’t go 500 years backward to the times where indigenous people were working for outsiders and marginalized,” said one man from Corinto, where two-thirds of the town’s 32,000 people rely on cannabis cultivation for a living.

Colombian Senator Jorge Iván Ospina, from the Green Alliance, made a video published by El Espectador in which he calls on the Healthy Ministry to grant licenses to farmers in the Corinto region who have been growing weed for many years rather than to a Canadian company.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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Police Dispatcher Busted with ‘Couple Hundred Pounds’ of Cartel Pot

A Cincinnati police dispatcher was one of six people arrested last week in a DEA bust that yielded more than 600 pounds of black-market marijuana, a monster stash smuggled all the way to the Midwest from Mexico.

Two hundred pounds ended up at the home of Teneal Poole, 36, who—at least as of recently—worked as a supervisor in the Cincinnati Police Department’s 911 call center, according to a press release from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.

Local police say that the 600-pound load—brought from Mexico concealed in the walls of a tractor-trailer, driven north across the border and through multiple states—was part of a cartel-connected drug operation. They did not name which cartel, but said more arrests are likely in an “ongoing” investigation.

“This is definitely not the first load they did,” said DEA Agent Tim Reagan at a recent news conference called to announce the bust. “We are confident four or five times at least they ran this up into this area.”

Poole told authorities that the marijuana wasn’t hers, but her boyfriend’s—but she also copped to being aware that the garage-sized stash was in the house, according to authorities. Also arrested at Poole’s suburban Cincinnati home was Damian Gray, 40.

Poole is not a sworn police officer but a civilian employee who has worked as a supervisor in the local 911 call center, according to Cincinnati.com. As of late last week, Poole had yet to be fired or even disciplined; her “job status is being reviewed,” Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black told reporters.

Taking down this crew took an investigation of longer than a month, authorities said. Apparently cops became familiar enough with the smugglers’ routine to observe them removing bales of marijuana from the walls of the tractor-trailer in the parking lot of an antique mall. Undercover agents and sheriffs’ deputies watched them at work for six hours—loading the weed from the trailer into a U-Haul for delivery—before swooping in.

In Ohio these days, six hundred pounds of cartel cannabis is worth about $500,000, according to Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones. One of the men arrested is apparently a Mexican national here illegally who’d been previously deported, Jones said.

Ohio is one of the states hit hardest by the country’s opiate epidemic. The state has approved a medical marijuana program, but cannabis is still as long as a year away from patients and caregivers, who are still waiting on state lawmakers and health officials to decide on the particulars of who can grow and sell, how, and where.

In the meantime, operations like the quarter-ton cartel connection will have incentive to keep smuggling reefer from across the border—a high-risk operation that for a moment appeared to be on the way out. Cartel-connected cannabis farmers in Mexico have been hit hard by plummeting prices, a phenomenon caused by decreased demand for illegal weed in states that have legalized domestic recreational or medical marijuana production.

Ohio sheriffs repeated that line. Here’s Jones, describing the state of local drug affairs:

“The price of cocaine went up substantially two days after the presidential election. We have also been told the Mexican cartel is starting to relook at the marijuana coming across the border because of the states legalizing marijuana and they are starting to grow more poppies. We are told they are going to be doing more heroin, more meth, and more cocaine… until then the marijuana is still here.”

As for those other drugs Jones mentioned, police in southwestern Ohio have been busy cracking down on them, according to local reports, with a string of busts over the past six weeks. It’s almost as if the drugs—and the cartel—will keep coming as long as there’s demand.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

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Product Review: Kurvana Vape Pen Cartridges

Leafly reviews Kurvana vape pen cartridges in the Originals and Infusions lines, weighing in with pros, cons, and a verdict of whether they're worth trying.

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Stoner Sex: Slut Shaming, Titty Fucking, Privacy & Hard Choices

Man With Over $100K Worth of Cocaine ‘Busting Out of His Pants’ Arrested at Airport

When smuggling large quantities of cocaine into the United States, it can be easy to get a bit over zealous with the strategy. After all, sending in a drug mule strapped with pounds of Caribbean go-go powder comes with more of a payday than constantly pushing a nickel and dime operation through a barrage of airport security sand customs officials.

However, the minute some poor bastard climbs off a plane with so much coke taped to his legs that it literally causes him to walk as though he was just humped into submission by a pack of horny wildebeests, it may be time to reassess trafficking methods.

The organization responsible for this tumultuous tale may want to go back to drawing board sooner rather than later.

Reports indicate that a man with several pounds of cocaine attached to his body was busted earlier last week when he attempted to get through airport security without someone noticing the awkwardness in his step.

Officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection say that Juan Carlos Galan Luperon, a citizen of the United States, was acting a bit peculiar when he stepped off the plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport after a visit to the Dominican Republic.

That’s when they pulled Luperon from the line and began giving him the third degree. “Why are your pants so bulky,” we imagine at least one agent said, while another probably just stood there intimidatingly along the sidelines, trying to figure out exactly what could cause a grown man to act like he was riding through customs on the business end of a broom handle.

Through a little deductive reasoning, agents agreed the incident could be drug-related.

We suspect this is when Luperon began to fall apart—his nerves rattling like a large animal caught in an electric fence; his heart pounding with such intensity that the drug sniffing hounds barking in the distance began to acquire an insatiable taste for blood.

Still, the man maintained…at least for a moment.

But as soon as customs agents got Luperon into a private interrogation room, the entire scene came crashing down—and hard. At least one agent may have pinned him in the corner, probably popping a latex glove in his face, as if to tell him that a vicious cavity search was on the horizon.

Luperon was probably one of those people who had never actually encountered the airport’s proctology division, so it makes total sense that he lost all nerve and gave them permission to conduct a search—exterior only, please!

Border agents discovered 10 pounds of cocaine molded around both of Luperon’s legs. The shipment was worth an estimated $164,000, according to the CBP.

Luperon is now facing federal drug trafficking charges. If convicted, he could serve at least 10 years in prison.

RELATED: The HIGH TIMES Guide to Flying with Marijuana

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

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Anchorage Sales Topped $400K in January

Retail shops across Alaska faced supply shortages going into January, which put a damper on business.

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Florida’s Physicians Seeking More Info on MMJ

Hundreds of physicians are gathering in Florida to explore the physiology of the endocannabinoid system, to learn how medical marijuana can be used for pain relief and the treatment Alzheimer’s disease and how to deal professionally with the state’s many medical cannabis patients.

This forward-thinking undertaking is going on as lawmakers, one of whom recently released a series of regulations that banned smoking, edibles and vaping, are trying to decide how to regulate MMJ after 72 percent of the state’s population voted to legalize it last November.

Now it’s time to educate the doctors. Enter Florida-based Canna Holdings.

“Our goal for this symposium is to create an environment where physicians can get answers to their questions from experts who have been researching and treating patients with medical marijuana,” Gregg Weiss, founder of Canna Holdings, told HIGH TIMES.

To serve Florida’s projected 500,000 MMJ patients, Weiss noted, physicians, medical workers and lawyers need information.

“The education of physicians is key to the successful rollout of the medical marijuana program here in Florida,” he said. “If doctors aren’t on board and educated, it won’t take off at all.”

There are currently some 600 physicians registered with Florida’s Office of Compassionate Use.

Experts at the symposium will present scientific studies on how cannabinoids can benefit debilitating conditions such as pain and the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Gregory Gerdeman, one of the country’s foremost experts on the endocannabinoid system with over two decades of research under his belt, said about the symposium: “Most conferences don’t undertake this type of educational event, even if they have great speakers.”

Gerdeman, a neuroscientist and professor of biology at Eckerd College in Florida, explained to Project CBD that the endocannabinoid system was discovered by understanding how cannabis works.

For that reason, Gerdeman finds the educational symposium to be a unique opportunity.

“By hosting educational events with specific learning objectives, Canna Holdings is serving Florida’s medical community and ultimately patients,” he said.

Gerdeman’s colleague, who will also speak at the symposium, agrees.

“Thousands of patients and their doctors want to know how it’s possible that one herb can safely and effectively treat so many medical conditions. The answer lies in the endocannabinoid system,” said Dr. Dustin Sulak, director of Integr8 Health and cofounder of Healer.com.

Both Sulak and Gerdeman believe the study of the endocannabinoid system should be part of neuroscience curriculums at all universities.

Fortunately, Sulak wrote in an essay, the lack of information is changing, partly because the public is demanding more knowledge.

“People want safe, natural and inexpensive treatments that stimulate our bodies’ ability to self-heal and help our population improve its quality of life,” Sulak explained. “Medical cannabis is one such solution.”

In the meantime, Canna Holdings is attempting to fill that vacuum with its educational symposium.

Weiss told HIGH TIMES that he feels strongly about providing scientific information to physicians so they can help those who need it most—the patients.

Canna Holdings had it first educational symposium last September. Weiss said they intend to hold another this June in Orlando, Florida.

Then, hopefully, they will move on to states that have legalized medical marijuana, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ marijuana news right here.

from
http://hightimes.com/news/floridas-physicians-seeking-more-info-on-mmj/

Puff, Puff, Pass: New Vaccine Could Help Herpes-Suffering Stoners

Communal joints and blunts have long been a pillar of the weed tradition, and even if you grew away from them toward bongs and pipes, there is always the memories of rolling and passing blunts late at night with friends. You probably also remember the negative side—a wet blunt from someone’s lips, passed around to multiple people, accumulates and spreads germs.

Generally, we assume there’s low risk here—sure, you might catch the sniffles that your buddy has been nursing for a week or two, but that’s a low risk compared to the high return of friendship and camaraderie. However, there’s a more sinister risk lurking beneath your friends’ skin: oral herpes.

“If you have oral herpes and a cut on your lip, you could easily spread the disease by sharing blunts or joints,” said Dr. Carolyn Cegielski, a gastroenterologist from Mississippi.

With over 50 percent of the American population suffering from herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the risk is not impossible. And as HSV-1 is mostly asymptomatic, the majority of people are not even aware that they have it, leading to easy spread of the disease

As long as you are conscious of cuts or nicks in your mouth, contraction is easy to avoid. But what do you do if you’re one of the sufferers?

According to CBS New York, a possible breakthrough in the fight against herpes is coming. Called Theravax and manufactured by biotech company Rational Vaccines, the vaccine is proving effective in trials and could potentially be a huge benefit for stoners everywhere.

Herpes contributes to a wide range of negative physical and psychological health effects: oral herpes can cause social stigma and and psychological distress, according to the World Health Organization, and an HSV-1 infection can potentially lead to an HSV-2 infection (genital herpes). With what is at risk, the stakes are high.

“We observed a significant reduction of symptoms, 65 percent of the patients achieved complete remission. The other 20 percent, the outbreaks were reduced maybe two-thirds or more,” Agustin Fernandez, CEO of Rational Vaccines, told CBS New York.

Theravax is now entering the second phase of testing, but it could still be a long time before it hits markets due to FDA approval processes. Fernandez noted that he expects the vaccine to go on sale first in the Caribbean and Mexico, where Americans can potentially acquire the vaccine if they wish.

“A vaccine of this magnitude could be massively important to the cannabis community,” Cegielski said.

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’  news right here.

from
http://hightimes.com/medicinal/puff-puff-pass-new-vaccine-could-help-herpes-suffering-stoners/

Gorsuch Might Be Tough to Predict on Criminal Justice Cases

BY SAM HANANEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Neil Gorsuch wasn’t convinced that a teenager who made burping sounds in a classroom should be arrested, handcuffed and taken to juvenile detention in a police car.

Gorsuch said the 13-year-old student from Albuquerque, New Mexico, should have been able to sue the arresting officer for excessive force. His powerful dissent in the case last year offers a glimpse of how Gorsuch – a favorite among conservatives – might be hard to pigeonhole on criminal justice issues if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court.

“Arresting a now compliant class clown for burping was going a step too far,” Gorsuch wrote, saying there is a difference “between childish pranks and more seriously disruptive behaviors.”

During a decade on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch has raised concerns about intrusive government searches and seizures that he found to violate constitutional rights. He generally has ruled against defendants appealing their convictions and those who claim they received unfair trials. But he also has warned in writings and speeches about the danger of having too many criminal laws on the books.

“What happens to individual freedom and equality when the criminal law comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?” he said in a 2013 speech.

That skepticism seems to align him with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a strong believer in protecting people from overzealous police and prosecutors. Scalia at times sided with liberals in tossing out evidence that breached privacy rights and in strengthening the right to confront accusers in court.

Liberal groups are opposing Gorsuch’s nomination, in part based on views that his overall record on criminal justice is too harsh.

“At a time when the abuses of our criminal justice system are becoming a national crisis, we cannot confirm a justice who does not understand the role of the Supreme Court to protect the most vulnerable among us,” said a report from People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group.

When Gorsuch has said there are too many criminal laws, he has often focused on business regulations, such as requirements that mattress sellers preserve mattress tags or that lobster importers use cardboard instead of plastic.

Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, says such decisions could forecast that Gorsuch may be a vote to curtail criminal prosecution of Wall Street executives and financiers.

“He is likely to read federal criminal laws narrowly,” Winkler said. “Gorsuch is also likely to favor industry against what he sees as excessive criminal laws regulating business.”

Some of his opinions have faulted police for seizing evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches. In a case last year, Gorsuch parted from the two-judge majority in a ruling that said police had a right to walk onto a man’s property to knock on the front door even though there were several “No Trespassing” signs in the yard.

Gorsuch mocked the majority’s opinion, saying it gave government agents the right to “invade” a homeowner’s property “whatever the homeowner may say or do about it.”

The homeowner “might add a wall or a medieval-style moat, too,” Gorsuch wrote. “Maybe razor wire and battlements and mantraps besides. Even that isn’t enough to revoke the state’s right to enter.”

In a separate 2016 case, Gorsuch was on a panel that found the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children violated the Fourth Amendment when it searched a man’s emails without a warrant and discovered child pornography. The emails had been forwarded by AOL, the man’s internet service provider, after the images were flagged by an automatic filter.

Writing for the panel, Gorsuch said the center is a government-like entity “endowed with law enforcement powers beyond those enjoyed by private citizens.” The case was sent back to a lower court to decide whether the search still might be reasonable on other grounds.

Paul Rothstein, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said Gorsuch appears to have a mixed record in criminal cases and “seems to call them as he sees them.”

“I think his primary area of concern for the citizen is in the privacy of your home or your private belongings,” Rothstein said. “He believes there is a private area and he’s pretty strong about that.”

Gorsuch has been less sympathetic to defendants in other rulings.

In a 2012 case, Gorsuch dissented from a majority opinion in which his colleagues sided with an Oklahoma man seeking to overturn his murder conviction due to an ineffective lawyer. The lawyer had advised his client to reject a plea agreement that called for a 10-year sentence. Instead, the man went to trial, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The majority said the lawyer’s decision to reject the plea had “disastrous results” for his client. But Gorsuch said the man’s right to effective representation was not violated because he was later convicted in a fair trial.

In 2013, Gorsuch wrote a majority opinion ruling that a police officer did not use excessive force when he shot a man in the head with a stun gun during a chase. The man, who was suspected of growing marijuana plants and fleeing from police, later died. The officer said the suspect reached for his pocket despite warnings not to do so. A dissenting judge noted that the officer’s training manual specifically warned against aiming a stun gun at the head unless necessary.

Gorsuch said the situation facing the officer at the time was “replete with uncertainty and a reasonable officer in his shoes could have worried he faced imminent danger from a lethal weapon.”

You can keep up with all of HIGH TIMES’ news right here.

from
http://hightimes.com/news/gorsuch-might-be-tough-to-predict-on-criminal-justice-cases/