Medical Marijuana Business Attracts Hedge Funds, Venture Capitalists

Marijuana has been a cash crop for many years in this country. The only problem is that most of that crop had been grown illegally. Now, that medical marijuana is legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana has quickly become so popular it is attracting attention from hedge fund managers and [...]

Four Queens men sue NYPD after being held for 30 hours, busted for laughing at cops

Four Queens men claim they were locked up for more than 30 hours by cops seeking revenge on a crowd of men who laughed at an officer who couldn’t catch a fleeing drug suspect. The men insist they didn’t even laugh, says their lawyer Gabriel P. Harvis, who filed suit against the NYPD and 10 [...]

Move over, Big Pharma and Big Oil, Big Marijuana is here

Legalization ‘looking inevitable,’ spokesman says If there’s one group of people who get their way in Washington, it’s lobbyists. Now, advocates of marijuana legalization may have a reason to cheer that political reality: They’re getting their own marijuana lobby group. And just Big Pharma and Big Oil lobby for greater leeway for their businesses, so [...]

Calilfornia marijuana Legalization debate gets interesting

Two Norfolk teachers put on leave over material about police

Two Norview High School teachers were placed on paid administrative leave this week after a parent complained that they distributed classroom materials that gave advice on how to deal with police if stopped. The materials – a one-page handout and a video distributed and aired in a 12th-grade government class – are sponsored by two [...]

Gun Running, Drugs and Flamenco: US Army Human Terrain System Has It All

See also:  Nature: Shut Down Army’s Human Terrain Program A member of the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command management team in Afghanistan, according to sources, is a “gun runner.” That individual is allegedly listed in an “Federal Bureau of Investigation database” and has “ties to Ahmad Wali Khan Karzai and the drug business.” Another [...]

VicPD Officer Ordered to Stay Quiet

Snails on speed

Biologists turned snails into tweakers to learn more about how crystal meth seems to improve memory in humans. According to the Washington State University and University of Calgary researchers, memories formed while on methamphetamine may be more durable. (They ran another snail study in 2006 using cocaine instead of meth.) Their work could someday provide [...]

San Jose union begins organizing pot workers

A major California labor union is organizing medical cannabis workers in Oakland, a move that analysts say will help efforts to legalize marijuana and open the door for the union to organize thousands more workers if state voters pass a measure in November to allow recreational marijuana use by adults. The 26,000-member United Food and [...]

Stupid Drug Story of the Week: The Associated Press on the arrival of “deadly, ultra-pure heroin.”

Yesterday, the Associated Press moved a story completely devoid of historical context. The piece, titled “Deadly, Ultra-Pure Heroin Arrives in U.S.,” claims that in “recent years”—a time frame that goes undefined—Mexican dealers have started peddling “ultra-potent” black tar heroin and are selling it for as little as $10 a bag. In alarmist prose, the article [...]

2010 National Drug Control Strategy

President Obama’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy uses a multifaceted approach to combat drug abuse and drug use in America’s communities. This Strategy “provides a collaborative and balanced approach that emphasizes community-based prevention, integration of evidence-based treatment into the health care system, innovations in the criminal justice system, and international partnerships to disrupt drug trafficking [...]

Columbia, Missouri Police Chief on Board With Legalizing Marijuana?

War on drugs goes literal: biowarfare on poppies

US and British forces in Afghanistan have been accused of waging biological warfare on poppy fields to stymie opium crop production. Last week, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported: Poppy plants have been suffering from a mysterious disease which leaves them yellow and withered and slashes the yield of opium resin which is sold on and [...]

California To Collect $100 million in Cannabis Taxes This Year

While the State of California begins to debate the consequences of taxing and regulating cannabis for personal use, it’s important to note the state is already taxing and regulating the agricultural product used by 2.9 million Californians monthly. California Board of Equalization official Anita Gore told the Express this week that the board estimates it [...]

Another fascist pig home invasion

Wildomar moves to allow medical marijuana in its city

Once drafted, and if passed by council member vote, the new ordinance would establish Wildomar as the only Southwest Riverside city to allow medical marijuana within its borders. In front of a standing-room-only audience, and after more than two hours of discussion and heated debate, the Wildomar City Council passed a motion during its council [...]

San Bernardino Deputy District Attorney Bruce Brown with marijuana activists

New Study: Drug law enforcement contributes to gun violence and high homicide rates and increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting organizations involved in drug distribution could unintentionally increase violence

See also: Study links drug enforcement to more violence Today, the newly formed International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) released their first report: Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review. “Given the growing emphasis on evidence-based policy-making and the ongoing severe violence attributable to drug gangs in [...]

Another Mexican Politician Wants Legalization

The state governor of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera Beltrán, has called for the legalization of marijuana as one tool to reduce the narco-violence that plagues Mexico. He acknowledges that it is not a “silver bullet” that would eliminate the cartels or related violence (the straw man argument that many against legalization use to support their gossamer [...]

CNN poll confirms: Most Americans believe their government is a threat to their welfare

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and [...]

Major Drug Conference in Mexican Drug War Says Prohibition Has Failed, Calls for New Policy

Coming as Mexico‘s war on drugs turns bloodier by the day, the conference concluded that current prohibitionist policies are a disaster. Editor’s Note: With 137 people killled last week in the Mexican drug war, a conference on this topic couldn’t come at a more opportune time. On Monday and Tuesday in Mexico City, political figures, [...]

The Chemist’s War

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences. It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept [...]

U.S. Senators Seek Changes to Plan Colombia

WASHINGTON – Three influential Democratic senators have urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to review the U.S. contribution to the counter-narcotics initiative known as Plan Colombia in light of Bogota’s scant progress in reducing cocaine production or curbing human rights abuses. “Given U.S. record budget deficits, we cannot afford to continue assistance that is not [...]

Mexicans Say U.S. Drug Crackdown Feeds Violence

Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – A Mexican law enforcement agency is blaming recent violence along the border in large part to a U.S. crackdown on drug traffickers, prompting skepticism from American government agencies. Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Security (Secretaría de Seguridad Pública) reported that in the past six months the value of cocaine in [...]

Cop Says Drug Prohibition Places All the Power in the Hands of Criminals

David Bratzer enforces the law, but he doesn’t necessary agree with it when it comes to illegal drugs. “One of the sad things about the prohibition of drugs in our society is that despite more than four decades of heavy drug enforcement, we see today that drugs are cheaper, more available and more pure than [...]

A little brain food for the perpetually Recovering City of Big Bear Lake Council and other prostitutes of the Prison-Industrial Complex

Noriega Will Be Extradited to France, His Lawyer Says

Former Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno will extradited to France after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal against the extradition, his lawyer said, though the final say on the matter belongs to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Noriega “has exhausted all his legal options. He has to go to France,” defense [...]

Three Indiana teen girls sue city over strip search

MADISON, Ind. — The high school girlfriends weren’t known as troublemakers. One was a cheerleader, another a soccer player and the third grew up working on her family’s farm. But the Madison Consolidated High School seniors found themselves shivering on a winter night three years ago in a deserted church parking lot, surrounded by police, [...]

California is free to make its own drug laws

The Times raises two objections in its Jan. 13 editorial, “Legalize pot? Not so fast,” to a proposed state bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the sale of marijuana to adults 21 and older. First, the editorial claims that the purpose of California Assembly Bill 390 (Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act) is “simply” [...]

Big Bear’s Out, Aspen’s in Cannabis competition coming to Aspen this spring aims to find out

[ Don't waste your time in the Recovering Big Bear, where the Nazi Republican pigs are stinking, business sucks and attitudes offend visitors.  Big Bear is now devoted to AA and urine samples.  Let's head for Aspen! ] ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — It’s like a beer competition for marijuana. A cannabis festival in Aspen, Colorado, [...]

Prisons too expensive

The Extravagance of Imprisonment Revisited How much could the government save by cutting prison costs? According to a new report issued by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, billions of dollars could be saved through reforming the United States prison system. California alone could save an estimated $1.4 billion. As of 2006, the United [...]

LEAP’s Cops and Clergy Initiative

We are pleased to officially announce Law Enforcement Against Prohibition‘s latest project, the Cops and Clergy Initiative.  The initiative features an unstoppable alliance of representatives of the faith and law enforcement communities collaborating to make speaking appearances at places of worship and in the media across the country.  Earlier this month in California, prohibitionist police [...]

LAUSD Sued for Educators Using 12 Year Old in Drug Sting

LOS ANGELES– The parents of a 12 year old boy who was asked by educators to buy drugs from another student are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District. The lawsuit, filed Thursday, alleges that educators at George K. Porter Middle School gave the boy cash and told him to buy drugs from a student [...]

Current TV Bashes “Anti-Drug” Propaganda Campaign

Walter McKay on Police Accountability and Reform

I’m pleased to share a new blog with LEAP supporters. Walter McKay‘s blog is titled Police Accountability and Reform. It’s been around for a while, but recently he started posting on it more regularly. He lives in Mexico and so much of his writing focuses on the violence of the drug cartels in that country. [...]

Seattle’s new city attorney to dismiss cases of pot possession

Seattle‘s new city attorney is dismissing all marijuana-possession cases, starting with those that were already under way under the old city attorney. City Attorney Peter S. Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed. [...]

Meth hype by DEA Agent, prosecutor, gets life sentence overturned

Some 3-1/2 years ago I highlighted a case out of my hometown in Tyler, Texas, where two newlyweds were sentenced to life in prison for possessing 255 grams of meth. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified at trial that 255 grams was enough to get 45,000 people “high” — “If those people were lined up [...]

Just a reminder to the pig-sucking, brain-dead, flacid, perpetually-Recovering City of Big Bear Lake Council

Paul Chabot would love this commercial: Teens Too Smart To Buy Anti-Drug Ads A kid of about 13 wanders through a house party.  He goes outside where there are a quartet of pot smokers who offer him a joint. He thinks for a moment, then there are all these quick flashes of him with pills, [...]

Lima, Ohio, to pay $2.5 million to family of woman killed by police in drug raid

LIMA, Ohio — The insurance carrier for the City of Lima, Ohio, has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the family of a woman who was shot and killed by a Lima Police Department sergeant in January, 2008. City Law Director Tony Geiger said Thursday afternoon that the company and the family of Tarika Wilson [...]

Welcome To The NORML Women’s Alliance

Attention, Big Bear Ladies:  Let’s Rock!  The Secret to Legal Marijuana? Women The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the nation’s oldest and most well respected grassroots marijuana law reform organization, is pleased to announce the launch of the NORML Women’s Alliance. Click image for details

Cocaine Vaccine Leads Users to Take 10 Times More Cocaine

Over the last decade, the advances in neuroscience that led doctors to view addiction as a disease, rather than a desire or personal failing, raised the natural question of whether or not addicts could be vaccinated against drug use as if it were a virus. While the theory remains valid, the recent clinical trial of [...]

Minnesota monitoring prescription drugs

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Starting this week, Minnesota residents who fill prescriptions for addictive drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin are going into a new state database. The aim is to stop drug abusers and dealers from shopping around for prescriptions. Pharmacies were required to start reporting to the Minnesota Prescription Monitoring Program on Monday. [...]

Jury selection begins in trial of Ohio DEA agent

CLEVELAND — Jury selection began Wednesday in the trial of a federal drug agent charged with framing 17 people in a case that could influence the way confidential informants are handled. Prospective jurors crowded the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. for the opening of the government’s case against Lee Lucas, 41. Lucas, [...]

Rival Gangs Doing Business Together in L.A.

LOS ANGELES — Some neighborhoods in Southern California are experiencing a kind of truce between rival gangs that used to fight each other. The decrease in gang violence in recent years has led some experts to theorize that gangs are now working together. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Los Angeles told La Opinión [...]

NYC Government Releases Guide To Heroin Use

The New York City Health Department and Mental Hygiene has released a 16-page pamphlet that, among other things, teaches the city’s citizens how to shoot heroin. Also useful for tourists who need to learn these things fast during their visit. From the New York Post: The city spent $32,000 on 70,000 fliers that tell you [...]

Wife of slain El Monte civic leader didn’t think drug war would touch her family

[ When you live in a democratic society, you are equally responsible for the crimes you allow your "po-po" to commit.  Take back control of your life from him  Stop the drug war. See Law Enforcement Against Prohibtion. ] Betzy Salcedo cited an old Mexican saying: He who doesn’t owe anything has nothing to fear. [...]

Small Town Illinois Sheriff Charged With Pot Dealing And Murder-For-Hire

Raymond Martin had been sheriff in tiny Gallatin County, Illinois, for 20 years. So when he was arrested on federal drug and gun charges last May for allegedly running a large-scale marijuana dealing operation out of his police SUV, residents were shocked. But that was only the beginning. On Saturday, when Martin’s wife Kristina Martin [...]

Drug Smuggling At Costa Rica’s Main Airport Up 63%

Perhaps it is due to the economic crisis or just a fast way to get rich, as many more this past year have decided to take the chance and smuggle drugs out of Costa Rica by was of the country’s major airport, the Juan Santamaría International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional Juan Santamaría), in San José. The [...]

Shining Path Indoctrination School Dismantled in Lima Jail

LIMA – Authorities at Lima’s Canto Grande Prison dismantled a school of the The Communist Party of Peru (Partido Comunista del Perú), more commonly known as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), terrorist group that was indoctrinating inmates and their families in that jail, the local press reported on Saturday. According to the daily El Comercio, [...]

7,724 Slain in Mexico in 2009

MEXICO CITY – Last year was the deadliest in Mexico in the past decade, with 7,724 people killed in violent incidents attributed to organized crime, Mexico City daily El Universal said on Friday. That total translates into an average of more than 21 homicides a day. The newspaper, which has been keeping a daily tally [...]