Free Republic

A cannabis company in Portland, Oregon is the latest marijuana business to raise money for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Sanders has been the most outspoken in terms of marijuana reform, drawing support from all corners of the industry. Dispensaries Foster Buds and Glisan Buds, which are owned by the same parent company, are partnering with marijuana grower Farmer 12 for its "Burn One for Bernie" campaign. They're selling special one-gram joints for $10 apiece and will donate 10% of sales to the Sanders campaign. Other businesses in the pot industry have also been championing the candidate. Just last week, a...

"Duane Stone is a veteran Seattle mental health specialist. He's seeing a surprising increase in patients experiencing psychotic episodes as well. Many have never had any mental health problems before. "I get lots of first break kind where this person doesn't have an experience with mental illness, they don't have a diagnosis, they're 30 or 40-years-old. And the only thing they've been doing has been smoking marijuana for the last year or two," Stone said. It's not just your stereotypical stoner. They're family people working at places such as Microsoft and Amazon."

Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn't: taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels' profits. The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009. The data supports the many stories about the difficulties marijuana growers in Mexico face in light of increased competition from the north. As domestic marijuana production...

An 8-year-old boy said he helped his mother's boyfriend grow "special medicine that can cure anything at all," The Times-Argus reportsA second-grader's story about helping a farmer grow "special medicine" plants led to the bust of an indoor marijuana growing operation in Vermont, authorities said. According to an affidavit, an 8-year-old boy told school officials and Windsor police detective Jennifer Frank that he helped his mother's boyfriend, 54-year-old Steven Mann, grow "special medicine that can cure anything at all," The Times-Argus reports. Police said they found 50 marijuana plants worth $75,000, along with two "grow rooms" next to the...

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- An Oregon woman is supporting Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign by selling ceramic pipes featuring his campaign logo. Ariel Zimman, a 29-year-old artist from Portland, is selling the pipes through her company Stonedware and promising a portion of the sales towards donations to Sanders' campaign."It was really just a way to show my support for him as a candidate," Zimman told the Center for Public Integrity. "People love [the pipes], and once they hear they are contributing in some way to the campaign they are all about that too." Zimman offers both short and long...

A Federal Court judge has struck down federal regulations restricting the rights of medical marijuana patients to grow their own cannabis

On my way to a voodoo ceremony with a Ghanian tour guide, I reflected on my career path, admitting to him that I'd lost focus and felt unfulfilled. What he told me changed the course of my life: "You either work on something you love, or work because it supports the people you love." That's when I quit Google. For years, I had structured my life around achieving work-related success: Work hard, get promoted, make more money. Lather, rinse, repeat. I craved the validation of corporate success. I wanted badly to be recognized for my intelligence, for my parents to...

I am unfamiliar with this website. Here's the excerpt: Though the Court of Appeals initially ruled the search and seizure unconstitutional, the Supreme Court “found that the police were not investigating a crime but exercising their ‘community caretaker’ function." In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court just killed the rights of citizens outlined in the Fourth Amendment by stating that police officers may enter a home, or parts of the home, without a warrant and can seize evidence to use in the arrest and prosecution of citizens. The Fourth Amendment states that unreasonable searches and seizures are not allowed...

In October of 2014, Steven Pratt was supposed to begin his life anew. He had served out a 30-year prison sentence and gone home to Atlantic City, N.J., where his family held a party to welcome him. But a violent history would repeat itself all too soon. Pratt was 15 when he got into an argument with his next-door neighbour, Michael Anderson. Court records show that Anderson was a father figure of sorts to Pratt. On Oct. 11, 1984, he asked Pratt and his friends to vacate a hallway in their apartment building where they were noisily hanging out and...

Legal marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington State have grossed billions, but legal dealers will see little of that thanks to a draconian federal law meant to punish street pushers. In one of the first years of legal sales, 2015, Colorado moved nearly $1 billion worth of marijuana and is estimated to take in $135 million in taxes on it. Meanwhile, Washington is expected to pull in around $1 billion in revenue from sales taxes between 2015 and 2019. Despite technically being illegal on the federal level, these businesses must file taxes to the Internal Revenue Service—and they may pay...

An 8-year-old Klamath Falls boy became ill last Saturday after eating a marijuana-infused cookie that he found on the ground. The child's mother, Jessica Hart, 30, said her son, Jackson, came home from an afternoon outing at a local rock quarry complaining he was sick. He pulled at his chest and made motions that suggested he was choking. He had trouble keeping his eyes open.

The Sacramento branch of the California tax collection agency reeks of marijuana. That's because it's cash day at the collection center - when marijuana dispensary owners are allowed to bring in paper money to pay their quarterly sales tax bill - and the smell of their inventory clings to everything. California, like all states with any form of legalized marijuana, faces a growing problem over the federal government's position that cannabis remains a Schedule 1 illegal drug, classified the same way as meth or cocaine, with no legal uses - and therefore no legal access to traditional banks. That means...

Just got back from Colorado Springs. Sad to see what CaliPorninans and LIBERALS have done to this once Beautiful City and State! Pot Holes and POT Shops EVERYWHERE! frown emoticon! O well Broadmoor, Garden of the Gods and Woodland Park was nice.

US veteran's children taken away over his use of medical marijuana When Raymond Schwab talks about his case, his voice teeters between anger and sadness. "People who don't understand the medical value of cannabis are tearing my family apart," says the Kansas father and US veteran, who has a prescription for marijuana in neighboring Colorado, where it is legal. Nine months ago, Schwab tried to move to Colorado to grow medical marijuana for fellow veterans. While he and his wife were there preparing for the move, the state of Kansas took five of their children, ages 5 to 16, into...

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider the role legal marijuana could play in the prescription opioid epidemic.Warren asked for more research into medical marijuana and painkiller addiction in a letter to the CDC director, Thomas Friedan."Opioid abuse is a national concern and warrants swift and immediate action," Warren wrote. Her request comes as politicians, including the presidential nominees, search for the best response to the opioid epidemic. The use of prescription opioids doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the CDC. And Massachusetts experienced its highest number of unintentional opioid...

Donald Trump's position on cannabis appears to have flip-flopped wildly over the years. (No comb-over jokes - promise.) "Legalized marijuana is always a very difficult question - for medicinal purposes and medical purposes, it's fine," says Trump in the video. Earlier this year, Trump told FOX's Sean Hannity he supports medical users "100 percent," but added that overall, marijuana legalization has been "a bad thing for Colorado." He added the Evergreen state is now facing some "big, big problems." But back in 1990, Trump told the Sarasota Herald America's drug policy was "a joke," and legalizing all drugs was the...

Just after Uncle Ike's Pot Shop opened in Seattle's Central District, it boasted in an ad, "Our weed cures Ebola." Knowing that merchants in the new industry weren't allowed to make any medical claims about pot, the fine print disclaimer winked: "If you believe this ad, you are a (expletive) moron." That in-your-face Vern Fonk-on-weed sensibility has helped make Uncle Ike's the state's top-selling pot store, with $1.4 million in monthly sales. It's also changing the personality of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street, once a predominantly African-American corner, with neon signs, a wall-mural ad, food truck, sign-waving mannequin and...

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned a Facebook post by rock musician and gun rights activist Ted Nugent suggesting that prominent Jewish Americans are behind the advocacy for stronger gun control laws. Earlier today, Nugent shared a graphic titled “So who is really behind gun control?” on his Facebook page. The visual featured thumbnail photos of prominent Jewish Americans, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Chuck Schumer, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and several others, with each photo emblazoned with the Israeli flag. The post was accompanied by a written message from Nugent:...

A 19-year-old killed his mother and two neighbors before turning his gun on himself in a shooting that brought SWAT and various emergency vehicles to a rural area in Texas, authorities said Sunday. ... When officers arrived they heard another gunshot. Not knowing whether there were multiple gunmen or whether the gunman was dead, authorities surrounded the homes and began evacuating people nearby. It was during that search that they found Jacques' body. The family's dog had also been killed. Mendeke said he called in about 50 to 60 officers from different agencies as well as a Texas Department of...

A 50-year-old Philadelphia man was arrested on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Sunday evening, preventing him from making the 2,800-mile trip to the Super Bowl in California. Charles E. Robinson was pulled over for speeding at around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday near mile marker 230 heading east on the Turnpike, state police said in a news release. Trooper Mark Gray said Robinson was going about 100 mph in a rental car. Robinson told Gray that he was traveling to the Super Bowl, according to the release. Gray wrote in his report that he "immediately detected a strong odor of marijuana," which led...