Free Republic

IÂ’m no saint, nor have I ever professed to be. There are too many people currently living who could give testimony to the contrary should I ever decide to, so I wonÂ’t here. With that out of the way (itÂ’ll make more sense later in the piece), there is an area on the issue of this countryÂ’s drug laws where Republicans could both do the right thing and win some support. LetÂ’s be honest: there isnÂ’t much to vote for in the in 2018 midterm elections. For Democrats itÂ’s all about not being Donald Trump. They arenÂ’t offering up much,...

Federal and state data show that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana has more than doubled since 2013. A Denver Post analysis of the data and coroner reports provides the most comprehensive look yet into whether roads in the state have become more dangerous since the drug's legalization. It shows that Increasingly potent levels of marijuana were found in positive-testing drivers who died in crashes in Front Range counties. The trends coincide with the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado. However, Colorado transportation and public safety officials say the rising number...

Democratic Candidate Attempting to make U.S. History At a time when the US is grappling with the issue of Muslims, son of Egyptian Muslim immigrants Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is all set to run for the post of Governor of Michigan state. Having served as the executive director of the Detroit Health Department, he shifted to politics. Despite the discrimination against Muslims in the United States, his election manager thinks he has a fairly strong chance of winning. “The electorate [in Michigan] doesn’t know what it wants, but it wants something different,” says El-Sayed’s manager, Max Gloss. div.TT_wrapper { <p> background-color:...

Netflix has co-created a set of cannabis strains based on a selection of its most popular original shows. The set, called The Netflix Collection, will be sold as part of a pop-up event at Alternative Herbal Health Services in West Hollywood from 25-27 August to legal medical marijuana card-holding customers. Federal laws prevent the products being available by mail and Netflix will not be profiting from any of the sales. “Each strain was cultivated with the specific shows in mind, designed to complement each title based on their tone,” a press release read. “For example, sillier shows may be more...

Entry-level position can give preview of industry demands According to New Frontier Data, a national research firm, by 2020 the legal cannabis market will create more than a quarter of a million jobs. Comparable statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that will be more jobs than the manufacturing industry. If you want to be part of this industry but don’t know much about growing or selling, consider starting as a budtrimmer. This entry-level position in the growing and processing side of the industry provides a foot in the door for cannabis career opportunities. Budtrimmers are asked to...

t’s no secret that Latin America is rife with violence. A recent ranking from the Citizen's Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP) further illustrates this point with the top 10 most violent cities in the world being exclusively located in Latin America. Additionally, Latin America has the dishonor of having 43 of the 50 most violent urban centers located in the region. These shocking levels of violence can be attributed to several factors — corruption, failed drug war policies, and the lack of rule of law in the region.

I remember a LOT of discussion during the '80s and '90s about what was going to happen in the future to the kids whose parents were feeding them mood-altering drugs like Ritalin to calm the little hellions down. Are we seeing the results right now?

Waiting staff in the US rely heavily on their tips to make up for their low wages, but one server in Rockford, Illinois, was surprised to find the reason for the lack of a gratuity written on a receipt. "Can't tip someone who doesn't love Jesus! Bad tatoo [sic]" wrote the customer, instead of a tip, for Samantha Heaton, who bears rainbow-coloured equality bars on her arm, and has been serving at Buffalo Wild Wings for a year. "It was shocking. I couldn't help but feel hurt," Samantha told the BBC. "I would've openly discussed my tattoo with them, had...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — This school year, children who are prescribed medical marijuana will be allowed to use the drug in school. "They should treat it like the medication that it is,” Ava Pence said.

A group that believes cannabis has a secret historical role in Christianity is forging ahead with plans to visit the largest Roman Catholic church in the nation during next week's solar eclipse, where members intend to light incense doused with cannabis-infused olive oil. Yet church leaders say the event won't happen. Anne Armstrong, founder and deaconess of Rhode Island's Healing Church, said the Monday afternoon service could "end degeneration, disaster and war" by consecrating the Americas to the Virgin Mary. ... "I don't anticipate any trouble, but if there is, we'll go outside," she said. "If they tell us to...

A big player in the world of entertainment and digital media plans to bring 4,000 jobs and a 70-acre campus to Parker by 2020. At an Aug. 11 press conference at the state Capitol in Denver, Gov. John Hickenlooper, Parker officials and Redbarre executives announced plans to create the Redbarre Digital Media & Technology Campus in the Compark area just north of E-470. The 1.9 million-square-foot, mixed-use development will focus on feature film, television and digital media production. "Something like that can be transformational," said Dennis Houston, CEO of the Parker Area Chamber of Commerce. "It's life changing, what it...

Quitting finance to focus on marijuana sounds like it’s something that involves finding yourself by surfing and living in a beach hut in California. But with momentum building for the legalization of cannabis in the U.S. – 29 states and the District of Columbia have laws legalized marijuana in some form – finance professionals are increasingly viewing it as a big business opportunity. The number of jobs that the cannabis industry is creating continues to increase. New Frontier Data, a research and analytics firm, projects that the legal cannabis market will create more than 250m jobs by 2020 – more...

PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - On Tuesday morning Doyen Elements officially broke ground on a 234-thousand square foot cannabis grow facility in Pueblo. It'll be located at 1900 Freeway Drive in Pueblo, which is the former Pepsi bottling facility. "We've taken the facility and we are retrofitting it into a 234,000 square foot grow facility that will be developed into three separate phases," said Geoff Thompson with Doyen Elements. "Phase one will take 9-11 months and then the next two phases through an 18 to 24 month period of time." Once construction is complete the entire facility will run 24 hours...

Bricks of marijuana were found in bags of charcoal shipped to grocery stores in the San Saba area this week. KWTX reports San Saba Police Department found six bricks of marijuana hidden inside a bag of Encino Brand charcoal at Lowe's Grocery store on Tuesday. A shopper also purchased the same brand of charcoal from the Lowe's Grocery in Mason, Texas, and found about a pound marijuana inside, according to the KWTX report.

American Green Inc. announced Thursday it is buying all 80 acres of Nipton, which includes its Old West-style hotel, a handful of houses, an RV park and a coffee shop. It says it plans to transform the old Gold Rush town into what it calls "an energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination." The town's current owner, Roxanne Lang, said the sale is still in escrow, but confirmed American Green is the buyer. She declined to reveal the price before the sale closes, but noted she and her late husband, Gerald Freeman, listed the property at $5 million when they put it up...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.

SEE VIDEO AT SITE: This is the shocking moment a 44-year-old father was beaten by a gang of youngsters on board a Dallas train after asking them to stop smoking marijuana. Kennan Jones was attacked by the group on Sunday as they rode towards Deep Ellum in Dallas, Texas. He had asked them to stop smoking marijuana on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit train. The group included young men and women who punched him and threw him against the train's doors before arriving at the station. Some of them pushed off the handle poles to kick Jones from the air....

A case just decided by the Tenth Circuit shows how utterly absurd the “war on drugs” has become, how petty and power-mad the police can be, and how blindly deferential some of our federal judges are. The case, Harte v. Johnson County Board of Commissioners, arose out of an idiotic, military-style raid by Kansas police on the home of Robert and Adlynn Harte in 2012. They were not in any way involved with drugs (particularly marijuana), but a few officers came to the conclusion that they might be. Here’s how. One August day in 2011, Mr. Harte and his two...

SOME NEWS -- We asked COLORADO GOV. JOHN HICKENLOOPER during a Playbook Exchange event here if he would run for the White House on a ticket with OHIO REPUBLICAN GOV. JOHN KASICH. He said: “I don’t think Kasich would ever do that … You never know. You never say. He’s an easy person to work with. He’s strongly opinionated. And quick to his opinion. But he also knows as much about the federal budget, and understands health care at a deeper level than almost any other governor I know. ... I don’t think it’s in the cards. But I do...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Jesus Aponte pushes a door open to reveal hundreds of aromatic, spiky green plants, a crop that Puerto Rico hopes will help it ease a grinding economic crisis by generating millions in revenue and tens of thousands of jobs. Aponte, a 29-year-old biologist and chemical engineer, had been thinking of joining the wave of young Puerto Rican professionals heading to the U.S. to seek work — an exodus that has aggravated the U.S. territory’s woes. But then he saw the saw the island’s medical marijuana industry start to expand, and found one of the...