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New York Times, 27 Jul 2018 - The federal government should follow the growing movement in the states and repeal the ban on marijuana for both medical and recreational use. It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflictingA great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.

CTV News
Private sector to sell marijuana in Ontario once pot can be legally sold: report
CTV News
TORONTO -- The Ontario government will reportedly allow private stores to sell marijuana once recreational cannabis becomes legal on Oct. 17. A source in the provincial government told the Globe and Mail that Finance Minister Vic Fedeli and Attorney ...
Politics Briefing: Doug Ford to hand control of cannabis sales to private sectorThe Globe and Mail
Ontario government will turn to private retailers to sell marijuanaThe Globe and Mail

all 61 news articles »

News1130
RCMP seizes half ton of pot and cannabis products
News1130
RCMP seizes half ton of pot and cannabis products. Police near West Hawk stopped a commercial semi carrying 455 kilograms of marijuana, and another 34 kilograms of cannabis shatter, oils, and edibles. RCMP say this is the biggest highway drugs seizure ...
RCMP seize nearly half-tonne of cannabis products after stopping semi-trailerCBC.ca

all 5 news articles »

WPLG Local 10
Florida medical marijuana director abruptly resigns - WPLG
WPLG Local 10
Florida medical marijuana director Christian Bax, who has been a frequent target of lawmakers and patients over delays in the program, is stepping down.
Florida's medical marijuana director abruptly resignsOrlando Sentinel
State medical marijuana director Christian Bax resignsTampabay.com

all 11 news articles »

TNW
Researchers published a cannabis study that's dangerously misleading
TNW
Let's talk about the differences between cannabis and synthetic weed. There are no confirmed accounts of cannabis, alone, being the cause of anyone's death. When a news outlet reports a “Baby boy is first marijuana overdose death, doctors claim,” it's ...

The Globe and Mail
Ontario said to be moving toward allowing private sector pot shops to sell marijuana
Financial Post
TORONTO — The Canadian cannabis industry was chomping at the bit Friday over the prospect of being allowed to sell legalized marijuana in Ontario through private-sector pot shops, and not just those of the provincial government. Until recently, the ...
Ontario government will turn to private retailers to sell marijuanaThe Globe and Mail
Ontario government now wants to privatize marijuana sales: reportCityNews
Report: PC government to allow privatized marijuana salesCHCH News
Narcity -BNNBloomberg.ca
all 238 news articles »

Saskatoon StarPhoenix
'Massive' marijuana bust called Manitoba's biggest
Saskatoon StarPhoenix
In what the RCMP is calling the largest drug bust Canada has seen in years, over 1,000 pounds of marijuana and cannabis product were seized from a semi transporting them across the country. On Sunday an RCMP officer performed a random traffic stop on ...
Manitoba RCMP make 455-kilo marijuana bust after officers pull over semi-trailerThe Globe and Mail
Manitoba RCMP find nearly 455 kilograms of marijuana after semi-trailer pulled overCTV News
Agassiz man connected to Canada's largest traffic stop marijuana bust since 2015Abbotsford News

all 16 news articles »

States' rights—not just for racists anymore.

Even as he defended federal marijuana prohibition, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday conceded that states have the right to pass their own marijuana laws.

Sessions, an avowed foe of marijuana legalization, has moved to rescind Obama-era guidance to prosecutors that gave some protection to state-legal marijuana operations, but the reality on the ground is that even when given a green light by the Justice Department to go after state-legal marijuana, federal prosecutors in those states are largely leaving it alone.

Sessions has also been left isolated by President Trump, who has signaled support for legislation that would end federal marijuana prohibition.

On Thursday, Sessions was in Massachusetts, where voters in 2016 approved marijuana legalization and where sales in pot shops are expected to begin sometime this year. A reporter asked Sessions about the federal stance on marijuana amid legalization in Massachusetts.

"We'll enforce the federal law; the federal law remains the law of the land," he replied. "Personally, my view is that the American republic will not be better if there are marijuana sales on every street corner, but states have a right to set their own laws and will do so, and we will follow the federal law," he said.

After the press conference, a Department of Justice spokesperson told MassLive.com the comments did not represent a shift for Sessions. This is true: Sessions remains committed to federal marijuana prohibition, but he can't seem to get his U.S. attorneys in states where marijuana is legal to do anything about it. And now, he's at least admitting that states have the right to craft their own pot laws.

Here's the video:

This article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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The Globe and Mail
Manitoba RCMP make 455-kilo marijuana bust after officers pull over semi-trailer
The Globe and Mail
“When the officers opened the trailer, they found 925 pounds (almost 455 kilograms) of vacuum-sealed marijuana, as well as 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of cannabis shatter, oils, edibles and other products,” McMurchy said. The expertly sealed and packaged ...
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KelownaNow
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NewsOK.com
Health Department unveils new proposed marijuana rules
NewsOK.com
The Oklahoma State Department of Health unveiled new draft medical marijuana rules Friday which would get rid of many of the most controversial measures its board passed two weeks ago. The Board of Health will meet Wednesday to discuss legal ...
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Financial Post
Cannabis companies would have to scramble to build stores in Ontario if Doug Ford changes rules
Financial Post
Canada's cannabis companies say they're ready to start building stores in Ontario if the government allows private sales of recreational marijuana, in what would be a dramatic policy shift by Doug Ford's new government less than three months before ...
Ontario government will turn to private retailers to sell marijuanaThe Globe and Mail
Ontario government now wants to privatize marijuana sales: reportCityNews
Report: PC government to allow privatized marijuana salesCHCH News
Narcity -BNNBloomberg.ca
all 359 news articles »

Click here for reuse options! It remains to be seen how soon Marvin Guy, who was never granted bail, will go to trial.

After four years in jail, Marvin Louis Guy—the Kileen, Texas man who is facing capital murder charges for killing a narcotics officer during a no-knock drug raid in 2014—has yet to go to trial. But it isn’t because Guy’s main attorney, Carlos Garcia, hasn’t been trying to pin down a trial date. Last week on July 19—when Guy, Garcia and the prosecution met with Judge John Gauntt in a courtroom in Bell County, Texas for a status hearing—Garcia stressed that he was ready to go to trial.   

“We’re ready,” Garcia told Judge Gauntt. “We’ve been ready. We’re ready to go. Give us a date.” But no trial date was set, although another status hearing has been set for Thursday, August 9.

Guy is facing one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder for an incident that occurred on the morning of May 9, 2014, when he shot and killed narcotics officer Charles Dinwiddie. The prosecutors in the case include Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza and Bell County Assistant District Attorney Fred Burns, who are seeking the death penalty. And to those who believe that Guy never should have been arrested in the first place—including journalist Radley Balko—the case epitomizes everything that is wrong with the War on Drugs. 

Guy doesn’t deny that he shot and killed Dinwiddie, but his version of the events differs wildly from how the prosecution sees it. When a SWAT team raided Guy’s home in Kileen at around 5:30 a.m., they were operating on a tip from an informant who had claimed that he was selling bags of cocaine. Guy, who grabbed his gun and opened fire during the no-knock raid, has asserted that he had no idea the men invading his home were law enforcement officers—he thought he was being robbed. And the evidence strongly suggests that Guy did, in fact, believe he was acting in self-defense.

No bags of cocaine were found in Guy’s home. Nor were any other drugs—not even marijuana. The only thing officers found was a glass pipe and a grinder, which indicates that Guy was, at worst, a recreational drug user and not a drug dealer. And that’s exactly how Balko sees it.

After Guy’s arrest, Balko—who has been a vehement critic of the War on Drugs and wrote the 2013 book “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”—asserted that between his arrest and the May 9, 2014 SWAT raid, Guy was getting a very raw deal.

In a May 16, 2014 article for the Washington Post, Balko asserted, “The fact that the police didn’t find any drugs in the house suggests that Marvin Louis Guy didn’t know he was shooting at cops. Drug dealer or no, unless he had a death wish, it’s unlikely that a guy would knowingly fire at police officers when he had nothing in the house that was particularly incriminating.” 

A similar incident took place in Burleson County, Texas on December 19, 2013, but with a very different outcome in court. That day, a SWAT team carried out a no-knock raid on the home of Henry Magee after an informant claimed that he had a large marijuana-growing operation. Magee shot and killed one of the officers, Adam Sowders—and like Guy, Magee asserted that he thought he was being robbed, had no idea he was shooting at law enforcement officers and believed he was acting in self-defense.

Magee was facing the possibility of capital murder charges, but a grand jury decided that he legitimately believed he was acting in self-defense—and Magee was not indicted. The Magee case, in fact, was mentioned in 2014 in a Change.org petition asking prosecutors to “please drop the capital murder and attempted murder charges against Marvin Louis Guy.” The petition pointed out that Guy thought he “was defending his wife and home, just as Magee believed he was doing.” 

There is an important difference between the Magee and Guy cases, however: Magee is white, while Guy is African-American. And given the long history of abuses that people of color have suffered with Texas’ judicial system, it’s hard not to notice that in two very similar cases, the white man walked free while the African-American man has spent four years in jail awaiting trial and still might end up on Texas’ death row.

Guy and Magee are hardly the only Americans who have faced the possibility of prison or the death penalty after shooting narcotics officers during militarized no-knock drug raids. There have been many others, from Ryan Frederick in Virginia to Christina Korbe in Pennsylvania to Cory Maye in Mississippi. Frederick, Korbe and Maye all maintained that they believed they were acting in self-defense, but that didn’t keep them out of prison.

Korbe was sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and weapons charges—a plea bargain she decided was preferable to the life-without-parole sentence prosecutors originally wanted—while Frederick received a ten-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter. Balko believes Frederick’s sentence was totally unjust; in a March 18, 2008 article for Reason, he commented, “Ryan Frederick is merely the latest citizen to be put in the impossible position of being awakened from sleep, then having to determine in a matter of seconds if the men breaking into his home are police or criminal intruders.”

Maye—who, like Guy, is African-American—actually went to Death Row because of an incident that occurred in Prentiss, Mississippi around 11 p.m. on December 26, 2001, when narcotics officers targeted two sides of a duplex for a no-knock drug raid. Maye lived on one side of the duplex, while his neighbor, Jamie Smith, lived on the other side; Smith was the one suspected of selling large amounts of marijuana, but both sides of the duplex were raided—and Maye, believing he was being robbed, fired three shots. 

Officer Ron W. Jones was shot and killed, and even though no drugs were found on Maye’s side of the duplex, Maye was convicted of first-degree murder by a predominantly white jury and sentenced to death by lethal injection. But in 2010, the Mississippi Supreme Court decided that Maye was entitled to a new trial; Maye pled guilty to manslaughter, was given a new sentence of ten years in prison with time already served, and released from prison on July 18, 2011.

But Maye never should have been prosecuted in the first place—nor should Korbe or Frederick have been. All of them were railroaded just as Texas prosecutors are still trying to railroad Guy now. And when it comes to militarized no-knock drug raids, there is an appalling double standard at work: narcotics officers who kill, injure or maim innocent people are seldom prosecuted when they screw up, but anyone who shoots an officer during those raids is likely to face murder or manslaughter charges.

When it comes to the War on Drugs, police often act with impunity, while the burden of proof is firmly on those they harm. The examples of narcotics officers screwing up and raiding the wrong home are numerous, and journalist Abby Martin (formerly of RT America and now hosting “The Empire Files”) put it perfectly when she asserted that the War on Drugs operates in a “two-tiered justice system that shelters police from accountability time and again.”

Take, for example, the 2014 case in which a SWAT team in Habersham County, Georgia conducted a botched drug raid on the home of Alecia Phonesavanh and severely insured her toddler, Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, by setting off a flash-bang grenade. No drugs were found in the home, the person they were looking for wasn’t even living there, and the grenade blew a hole in the toddler’s face and chest. But despite all that, a grand jury decided not to charge any of the officers.

Narcotics officers who recklessly throw a grenade in a toddler’s crime are given every benefit of the doubt, while Guy must fight a long, had battle to avoid death by lethal injection.

It remains to be seen how soon Guy, who was never granted bail, will go to trial. But even if all charges against him were dropped today, he has already, in effect, served a four-year sentence. And like so many Americans caught up in the War on Drugs, Marvin Louis Guy knows all too well what it means to be guilty until proven innocent.

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Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
Cannabis Doesn't Help Exercising COPD Patients
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
At first blush, it would seem almost obvious that individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) did not show improvement after inhaling vaporized cannabis. However, with real clinical data for cannabis' true effects on human health ...

and more »

nbc-2.com (US) Florida's medical marijuana director abruptly resigns - NBC2 News Florida's medical marijuana director abruptly resigns (AP) - Florida's embattled director of its medical marijuana office is stepping down. (Fri Jul 27 19:59:26 2018 PDT)

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ijpr.org (US) Coaching Helps Parents Whose Children Are Addicted To Opioids But a new video produced by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids promotes compassion and understanding instead of punishment. (Fri Jul 27 21:50:13 2018 PDT)

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kmed.com (US) 7-26-18: MEDFORD TO DECIDE HOW TO SPEND 600 LARGE IN POT REVENUE - KMED-AM - Turning up YOUR voice - AM 1140 KMED THE CITY OF MEDFORD WILL LOOK AT, JUST HOW TO SPEND SOME 600 GRAND IN MARIJUANA REVENUE. (Fri Jul 27 21:48:29 2018 PDT)