Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm | By: Radical Russ
(NY Times via CNBC) Among the 14 states with medical marijuana laws, Colorado has experienced particularly brisk growth in the stores. From fewer than two dozen dispensaries in the state in January, there are now more than 60 just in Denver and nearby Boulder, and more than 10,000 registered medical marijuana patients statewide, according to reports in Westword, a Denver alternative weekly.
Now a business that has nothing to do with cannabis is aiming its ads at medical marijuana patients. A new print ad — by TDA Advertising and Design of Boulder — for Hapa Sushi, a restaurant chain based in Boulder, features a map of Denver and Boulder with 63 dots. Four dots are red, representing the four Hapa locations, and the remaining 59 are blue, representing medical marijuana dispensaries, some of which, it turns out, are just a stone’s throw from the restaurants. The ad was to appear Thursday in the Denver/Boulder edition of The Onion and in Westword later in the month.
“We’re just kind of saying, ‘Look, these dispensaries exist and they’re becoming part of our community, so let’s welcome them in and have some fun,’ ” said Mark Van Grack, owner of Hapa Sushi, a privately held, 10-year-old chain. “If you’re going to smoke pot, you’re going to get the munchies, so come to Hapa to eat.”
And when it comes to tasty munchies, you can’t get much healthier than sushi. (Denver’s one of the few landlocked states where I’ll eat sushi, since they have a major airport just a couple of hours from the coast by air.)
Once again, the business world can’t get enough of the power of pot. There is so much economic opportunity locked up in the underground marijuana market and the money sharks can smell it.
It’s not just the revenues that could be made by taxing cannabis and the savings from not prosecuting its users. It’s also the ancillary businesses that would thrive in a legal marijuana market – glassblowers, paper mills, timber mills (for hemp pressboard), farmers, retailers, restaurants, and so on – and the jobs they would create. It’s also the extra cash freed up for other purchases; if a guy used to paying $400 an ounce is soon paying $100, even with taxes, he can afford to buy some more clothes or go out to a dinner and a movie. Or maybe some sushi.
Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am | By: Radical Russ
(Denver Post) Leo Cisneros was sentenced to 15 years in prison today for selling marijuana out of his family’s Denver apartment, nearly two months after a jury found him not guilty of child abuse resulting in the death of his daughter, Auralia.
Cisneros, 31, was convicted of possession with intent to distribute marijuana and having a gun while dealing drugs.
Three men tried to force themselves into the Cisneros family home the night Auralia was killed and they exchanged gunfire with Leo Cisneros. Auralia was shot in the face in the crossfire.
The intruders — Trivi Trujillo, Joshua Rojas and Juvencio Hernandez — all pleaded guilty in the case and are serving between 16 and 24 years in prison.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea to deal a pound of weed per week out of your apartment when your little girl is living there. What I’m saying is that it is unjust to sentence a man who was selling a non-toxic substance to willing customers to one year less than a man who violates the sanctity of your home, guns blazing, and kills your child.
Of course, I’ve always had a problem with how we sentence pre-meditated violence in our country compared to other crimes. To me, there is no greater crime than assaulting or killing another human being. There should certainly be some temperance when we’re talking about spontaneous or emotional violence, but when someone coldly plans to physically harm another person, I’ve got a “one strike and you’re out” policy.
For example, take Bernie Madoff. A really rich guy suckers some other really rich people into throwing away more money than I’ll ever see on a too-good-to-be-true Ponzi scheme. The really rich people who were snookered lost a lot, but it’s not like you’re going to see Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon standing with a “Will Act for Food” sign at a freeway onramp anytime soon. And it’s not as if once this was all revealed, Bernie Madoff was going to be able to pull it off again. But for the sake of preserving society and punishing Madoff, he’s sentenced to 150 years and will never see the light of day again.
But if Bernie Madoff were just Bernie the Child Molester or Bernie the Rapist or Bernie the Murderer, depending on the circumstances he would likely be out of prison in three-to-six years. We have mandatory minimum sentences for people who sell drugs to other people who willingly buy them, but no such mandates for people who rape, assault, and kill innocent others. We have jails and prisons that are at 200% capacity, being ordered by federal courts to release tens of thousands of prisoners, but they can’t release the non-violent drug offenders because of the mandatory minimums, so thieves and violent offenders must be set free.
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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 8:24 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Westword) To make a long story short, the board voted 9-0 this morning to strike language stating that a marijuana caregiver has to have “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient.”
The board didn’t come up with a new definition, though — suggesting that it will wait for its regularly scheduled December 16 meeting to tackle the challenge. As of now, in other words, there’s no definition anywhere in state regulations stating what, exactly, it means to be a marijuana caregiver.
Gee, I wonder how many new dispensaries can set up shop in Colorado between now and December 16? Haven’t they learned anything from Los Angeles? State and local governments can’t just abdicate their responsibility to come up with clear regulations regarding medical marijuana. In the absence of guidelines, people will assume the best-case scenario that allows their businesses to flourish, and then when the government does come up with regulations, they end up destroying the businesses of many people who had the best of intentions along with the carpetbaggers who were just looking to make a buck of medical marijuana.
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 7:09 pm | By: Radical Russ
(Summit Daily) BRECKENRIDGE — Breckenridge residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and paraphernalia Tuesday under town law. In early returns, some 72 percent of voters approved the measure.
The vote means that, effective Jan. 1, people 21 and up in Breckenridge will be able to legally possess one ounce or less of the drug.
Possession remains illegal under state law, but Breckenridge Police Chief Rick Holman said his department will “still have the ability to exercise discretion.”
The decriminalization won’t change laws prohibiting smoking in public, use by minors or driving under the influence.
Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm | By: Radical Russ
In an underhanded move, the Colorado Board of Health will be voting to weaken the medical marijuana law at an “emergency” meeting on Tuesday, November 3 at 10:30am in Denver. At this stealth meeting the Board will be voting to redefine what a “caregiver” is to require such individuals to provide supplementary– and often unnecessary– services beyond simply providing sick patients with medical marijuana.
“This is like requiring my pharmacist to give me a massage or make me a sandwich,” said Dan Pope, muscular dystrophy patient and medical card holder. “I can do those activities myself. I need a caregiver to give me medicine. End of story.”
This meeting, which was announced in a late afternoon email to a small handful of patient advocates, is another example of the state engaging in underhanded tactics in their effort to undermine the medical marijuana law and the will of the Colorado voters. Please help hold them accountable.
Here’s How You Can Help:
(1) Attend the Meeting. This meeting will occur at 10:30am on Tuesday, November 3 in the Snow Room, 1st Floor Building A of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, 4300 Cherry Creek Dr. South, Denver CO.
(2) Call-in to the Meeting. While we strongly prefer that you attend in person, you can also call-in at 1-866-899-5399, conference code *3529725*
(3) Spread the Word. Please tell friends and family to attend the meeting and forward this alert widely!
Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm | By: Radical Russ
Voters in Breckenridge, Colorado are deciding whether to decriminalize personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana by adults. The editorial board of the local Summit Daily News has already come out in favor of this Measure 2F:
(Summit Daily News) …Breckenridge residents this Election Day will decide whether possessing less than an ounce of the intoxicating weed should be decriminalized.
…While police blotters and courts are filled with an extraordinary amount of problems directly related to alcohol abuse, it’s rare to ever find pot at the bottom of things like domestic abuse, bar fights, car crashes and the like.
…What the Breckenridge code change would do is one thing: decriminalize less than an ounce for adults. It will not make it more available to minors, won’t make it legal to smoke it on the street, won’t get you out of trouble if you’re stoned behind the wheel. What it says is that if you, as an adult, choose to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use, you won’t be busted for it. It’s still a much more stringent law than those that apply to alcohol — a substance you can own as much as you want of and consume in public.One last item remains, though: As the recent pot busts at Arapahoe Basin show, consumption of marijuana can have a greater potential “footprint” than, say, drinking a beer. No one wants to have to walk with their children through a parking lot full of cars emitting clouds of pot smoke, and we’re behind the Summit County Sheriff for cracking down on these folks. Eventually, it seems these small possession busts will be a thing of the past state-wide, which makes us conclude some kind of “nuisance pot smoke” ordinance needs to take their place — roughly analogous to public intoxication statutes. Sure, smoke your weed, but don’t blow it in our faces.
Ah yes, decriminalize the marijuana possession, but make the public use of marijuana an arrestable offense. If it’s in your baggie, it’s OK, but if it’s in your pipe, it is not. If I may paraphrase the late Johnny Cochran, “If the joint’s not lit, you must acquit!”
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 3:58 pm | By: Radical Russ
…but Colorado has also said that providing marijuana in and of itself counts as caregiving. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
The Colorado Court of Appeals issued a ruling today (10/29) creating the first case law on Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Law (Article XVIII, Section 14 of the Colorado Constitution). The court ruled that a medical marijuana caregiver must know their patients personally and must provide them with other services in addition to the acquisition of medical marijuana.
However, the decision came in the appeal of a defendant who was arrested *before* the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued rules this summer clarifying the patient/caregiver relationship. So the Court of Appeals opinion may not have any immediate bearing on medical marijuana caregivers currently operating in compliance with those rules and regulations, but it may show the future direction the Court is likely to take on this issue.
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm | By: Radical Russ
DENVER (CBS4) ? A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time for a Colorado sheriff’s department but the sheriff says he’s working with the best information he’s allowed to use.
Summit County Sheriff John Minor says the problem is a lack of clear state rules on medical marijuana. The bust that went wrong used up several days of police work, but he says it was the best they could do with the information they had available. It turned out the growing operation was legal.
“We follow the law, but when the law is so ambiguous, it’s difficult,” Minor said. “Six or seven out of the last 10 in the last 6 months have all been legitimate operations.”
It’s been a perfect storm for law enforcement. Growers don’t have to register with the state, so officers don’t know what they are investigating until after they obtain a search warrant.
I think this story could’ve just begun and ended with “A marijuana investigation turned out to be just a big waste of time.” When at least 60% of your criminal investigations aren’t criminals, you know you’ve got a big problem. It used to be so easy for police: see marijuana, bust people, end of story. Now they have to go through the trouble of determining whether that grower is lawfully providing medicine for sick people, or breaking the law by providing it to healthy people.
It’s funny to me how Colorado police are freaking out about the explosion of dispensaries in Colorado, the inability to bust the plethora of Colorado grows because so many are legal, and the massive increase in registered medical marijuana cardholders. So, in essence, your problems are businessmen who used to sell pot now want to do so legally, people that grow pot now want to do so legally, and people who use pot now want to do so legally. In what other public policy arena aside from marijuana are law enforcement frustrated by more people who want to obey the law?
Maybe the people of Colorado can convince their law enforcement that the problem isn’t that the limited legalization of marijuana for medical purposes creates gray areas in the law that non-medical users can exploit with impunity. The problem is that medical marijuana is too limited to protect the majority of marijuana consumers who simply want to enjoy marijuana legally and not go to jail. The problem isn’t that medical marijuana wastes police resources, it’s that busting people for marijuana wastes police resources.
bullbog: Hawkeyes you had a good run...this toke is for you.
Track Snack: Mornin Stashers! Tokin on the Mean Green Martian for breakfast.
MrSpof: Maybe Dr Mitch could comment on the efficacy of reasonable amount of weed like that consumed (smoked) quickly mitigating migraine effects. I know the lowering of blood pressure would be [...]
MrSpof: Had the onset of a migraine yesterday. Immediately took 8 , moist cool washcloth on eyes, heating pad on neck and upper back, turned off lights. Migraine gone in [...]
MrSpof: As you personal non-accredited doctor, I advise the rest of you to smoke/vape/eat heavily
slash5city: frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
MrSpof: Risen and roasted How the hell are you?
RevRayGreen: always Fidget......always.
Adam: Maybe in WA, judges are starting to think about the true cost of a Drug charge...
Adam: Tim Lincecum, pitcher for the San Francisco Giants will pea to a paraphernalia charge/ Possession charges DROPPED
Adam: Add some cottage cheese to your pancake batter, replace the maple with a fruit syrup! f-ing killer, YES I was stoned...
Fidget Truittelli: Good morning from beautiful Arizona! I hope you all have a happy, fun day. Remember to 'pay-it' forward. Do something nice for someone.
BenJaMin: Go NORML!!!
BenJaMin: Russ Is Tha BEst! :smokin:
SneakerPimp: oh there it is thanx russ
SneakerPimp: so whats up with today stash?
RevRayGreen: Barney Frank Present When Partner Arrested for pot-- http://bit.ly/1XpM2R
RevRayGreen: KMK 11/17/09 VAL AIR ballroom DSM
bullbog: that's crazy. I had a NORML black t-shirt on. It was hell of a show
RevRayGreen: dude I was probably 4-5 seats from you then
bullbog: 4th row center. I wish I was closer.
RevRayGreen: were in in the orchestra pit 4th row? or 4th row center, that's where I was bu slightly to the right
RevRayGreen: our show ______v'''''''
RevRayGreen: catch our chow tomorrow online Carl'sCannabis Corner
www.macswordlive.com 12-2 PM you can go there now and find archived shows
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Munchies ‘R’ Us: Colorado sushi restaurant hyping proximity to dispensaries
frickazee'd.... Mr. Spof, thank you very much
and roasted 
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