Free Republic

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The slayings of eight family members in rural southern Ohio "was a pre-planned execution" and the investigation will be lengthy, the state's attorney general told reporters Sunday... Authorities said it was clear that the Rhoden family was targeted, and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said he's told relatives to be armed. Reader said he did not believe there was a safety issue for other residents. But "If you are fearful, arm yourself," he said. Authorities have been scrambling to determine who targeted the clan and why. Investigators have interviewed between 50 and 60 people in hopes...

PIKE COUNTY, Ohio (WSYX/WTTE) — The mass murder that left eight members of the same family dead, unveiled marijuana grow operations at three crime scenes, according to the Ohio Attorney General. Those were Mike DeWine's final words at a press conference for an update on the investigation of the "execution-style" deaths within the Rhoden family in Pike County, about 70 miles south of Columbus, on Friday.

World Cup winner and two-time Olympic champion Abby Wambach has admitted taking cocaine and smoking marijuana. American Wambach, the world's all-time leading international goalscorer, was arrested on Saturday for drink-driving. Court documents connected to the 35-year-old's arrest said that "the defendant tried cocaine at age 25".

The call for action from scientists in the UK, US, Europe and Australia reflects a growing consensus among experts that frequent cannabis use can increase the risk of psychosis...In the UK, cannabis is the most popular illegal drug, and according to Public Health England data, more young people enter treatment centres for help with cannabis than any other drug, alcohol included.

Persistent users likely to be lower paid and have relationship difficulties Research found abusers ended up in a lower social class than their parents Also more prone to be in less skilled, prestigious jobs and to run into debt Study by Californian university followed children from birth up to age of 38The study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Magdalena Cerda at the University of California and Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt at Duke University, appeared in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. 'Our research does not support arguments for or against cannabis legalization,' said Cerda. 'But it does...

If California is the land of reinvention, the small desert city of Adelanto fits the bill. Roughly a two-hour drive east from Los Angeles, Adelanto was founded in 1915 by an inventor who wanted to sell land to World War I veterans. His dream never materialized and the region was taken over by orchard farms, then poultry ranches. The nearby George Air Force Base opened and eventually closed in the early 1990s. The city more recently made a solar play, but the energy market fizzled. City unemployment hovers at 14 percent, well above the national unemployment rate of under 5...

Pennsylvania will soon become the first state to legalize medical marijuana through the legislature. The Pennsylvania House on Wednesday made a final vote in favor of a medical marijuana bill introduced in 2014. Gov. Tom Wolf said he will sign the bill on Sunday, the AP reports. The overwhelming support of a 149-46 vote capped an intense legislative process for the bill that was initially approved by the Senate last year. The bill has bounced back and forth between Senate and House, each time with added small changes, over the extended period of time

As of 5:55 mountain time

The recent bankruptcy filing by Sports Authority has raised questions about possibly renaming the stadium the Broncos play in, and a marijuana company is one such interested buyer. Native Roots is one of Colorado's largest dispensaries. It expanded from one to 14 stores over the last year. The marijuana dispensary chain said they are fully ready to make a multi-million dollar commitment if the contract between Sports Authority Field at Mile High and Sports Authority ever ends. . . They also acknowledged the poor timing of announcing the news on April Fools' Day, but insisted that they are serious about...

U.S. authorities on Wednesday seized a cross-border tunnel that ran the length of four football fields from a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, to a newly built house in Calexico, California, following an investigation that netted more than a ton of marijuana and resulted in four arrests. The tunnel was the 12th completed secret passage that U.S. authorities have discovered along California’s border with Mexico since 2006. They have found more than 75 along the entire U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years, mostly in California and Arizona and many of them incomplete.

SAN DIEGO, California — Authorities have discovered a 415-yard tunnel used to smuggle drugs from Mexico into the U.S., and the traffickers reportedly bought land and built a home in order to conceal the American side. ABC News reports the tunnel ran from a restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, to the living room of a three-bedroom home in Calexico, California, a city located just east of San Diego. Four people have been arrested and more than a ton of marijuana was seized, the Los Angeles Times reports. The drugs are valued at more than $1 million. Investigators with U.S. Homeland Security...

Supreme Court rejects suit against Colorado over marijuana law The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lawsuit filed by the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma against their neighbor Colorado over a law approved as a ballot initiative by Colorado voters in 2012 that allows the recreational use of marijuana. The court declined to hear the case filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma, which said that marijuana is being smuggled across their borders and noted that federal law still prohibits the drug. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they would have heard the case. Nebraska and Oklahoma contended...

Bear hunting this drainage while off-duty, CDFW fisheries biologist Tim Hovey's most valuable possession turned out not to be the rifle slung on his pack, but his quick wits and the .357 (below) holstered on his side during an encounter with three shady characters.This time I'd be hiking for pleasure, and with a bear tag in my pocket I wasn’t going to be counting frogs. With over 2 miles of hiking ahead of me, I loaded my pack with my game-processing gear, some water and called it good. I strapped my rifle to the outside of the pack, locked up...

Is this a great country or what? Oh, sure, as Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump puts it, “We are led by very, very stupid people,” but still — the ingenuity of the populace shines through. Sometimes the inhabitants of America find a path around their political potholes. Case in point: the amazing progress being made in the War on Drugs. “Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn’t,” explains Christopher Ingraham at The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, “taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels’ profits.” Oh, wait a second. “Legal marijuana” hardly qualifies...

Denver has just released its crime statistics for February of this year, and the city's post-marijuana crime explosion continues. In the first two months of 2016, total reported offenses using the NIBRS definitions are up a further 10.5% over this time last year. Crimes against persons have increased 14.1%, property crimes are up 13.8%, and crimes against society are up 18.4% compared to the same time frame in 2015. For comparison, in January and February of 2013 – the last year for these two months before marijuana legalization – there were just 6,791 crimes in the city. During January and...

In February of 2015, it became legal to grow and consume marijuana in Alaska. And, as has happened in Denver and Seattle, crime immediately began to increase after being stable or declining in the pre-legal pot era. According to the FBI's Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report for the first six months of 2015, the number of violent crimes in Anchorage (the only city reporting for Alaska) increased 34% compared to the same period in 2014. Murders were up 167%, and aggravated assaults increased 32% versus the first six months of 2014.

Utah’s staunchly conservative legislature came close to eliminating the death penalty and gave serious consideration to setting up a system to grow and distribute medical marijuana — making the 2016 session a surprising one that may foreshadow future traction for progressive issues. […] The lean toward progressive issues was led by a pair of outgoing GOP lawmakers who went all in on their bills. Sen. Mark Madsen led the medical marijuana push, while Sen. Steve Urquhart pushed the death penalty abolishment. Urquhart also backed a failed measure that would have added discrimination protections for gay and transgender people. A year...

Abstract OBJECTIVES: The objective this prospective, open-label study was to determine the long-term effect of medicinal cannabis treatment on pain and functional outcomes in subjects with treatment-resistant chronic pain. METHODS: The primary outcome was change in pain symptom score on the S-TOPS (Treatment Outcomes in Pain Survey - Short Form) questionnaire at 6 months follow-up in intent-to-treat (ITT) population. The secondary outcomes included change in S-TOPS physical, social and emotional disability scales, pain severity and pain interference on brief pain inventory (BPI), sleep problems, and change in opioid consumption. RESULTS: 274 subjects were approved for treatment; complete baseline data were...

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."