Free Republic

VIDEO John Hickenlooper announced his candidacy for President today to universal ennui. However, the one place that is not completely oblivious to his candidacy is the DUmmie FUnnies. We here wish to become the semi-official chronicler of Hickenlooper's exploits on the 2020 campaign trail from a humor perspective. In fact, when Hickenlooper campaigns in Florida, he has an open invitation to be interviewed by the DUmmie FUnnies. It could well be his only interview invitation in the Sunshine State. Therefore let it be announced unto all the world that John Hickenlooper is now being endorsed (it could be his first...

The subways are going to pot — and that may be a good thing. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced that revenue from legal marijuana sales in New York state would help fuel repairs to the crumbling MTA.

Cuban exile Antonio "Tony" Bascaro is preparing to leave federal prison, where he has spent most of his adult life serving the nation’s longest-known stretch for dealing marijuana. But the 84-year-old fears trading one cell for another. That’s because Bascaro, a pilot who trained for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, is not a U.S. citizen and risks being detained and ejected from the country upon release. Bascaro says if he's returned to Cuba, he could spend the rest of his life as a political prisoner. “My life will be in jeopardy, if deported,” Bascaro told the Washington Examiner from...

No Democrat running for president has had a better 2019 than Kamala Harris. The numbers tell the tale. The California senator was in the low single digits in polls conducted before her official launch on January 28. She is now in the low double digits, running third behind Joe Biden, who enjoys cosmic name recognition, and Bernie Sanders, whose devoted supporters brought him a second-place finish last time. But polls do not tell the whole story. Harris raised $1.5 million in the day after declaring her candidacy. That number, impressive for a senator not even a third of the way...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) earned praise from “drug justice” advocates after criticizing a growing marijuana legalization and business model that is paving the way for white male investors to reap major profits after minorities spent decades in prisons for selling pot. She made her comments during a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing this week on banking services for the burgeoning cannabis industry as more states legalize the sale and use of marijuana. She suggested the growing industry was “compounding the racial wealth gap” by allowing wealthy white-dominated companies to gain a quick advantage in the industry. She complained that communities...

A Salisbury University student has been charged with illegal wiretapping after prosecutors said he streamed a meeting with a congressional staffer for Maryland Rep. Andy Harris via Facebook Live without permission. Jake Burdett, 20, was charged last week with two felony counts of making an illegal recording and distributing the video filmed during a Maryland Marijuana Justice rally at Harris’s Salisbury office in October, the state prosecutor’s office announced Thursday. Marijuana legalization protesters have long tangled with Harris, who in 2014 worked to block full legalization of the drug in the District of Columbia. A protest outside the Republican’s Capitol...

Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence January 2019 • Volume 48, Number 1 • Alex Berenson Alex Berenson "Seventy miles northwest of New York City is a hospital that looks like a prison, its drab brick buildings wrapped in layers of fencing and barbed wire. This grim facility is called the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Institute. It’s one of three places the state of New York sends the criminally mentally ill—defendants judged not guilty by reason of insanity. Until recently, my wife Jackie­—Dr. Jacqueline Berenson—was a senior psychiatrist there. Many of Mid-Hudson’s 300 patients are killers and arsonists. At least one is...

[snip] So I did. The big studies, the little ones, and all the rest. I read everything I could find. I talked to every psychiatrist and brain scientist who would talk to me. And I soon realized that in all my years as a journalist I had never seen a story where the gap between insider and outsider knowledge was so great, or the stakes so high. I began to wonder why—with the stocks of cannabis companies soaring and politicians promoting legalization as a low-risk way to raise tax revenue and reduce crime—I had never heard the truth about marijuana,...

Baltimore’s top prosecutor has filed a rarely used legal petition intended to vacate 3,778 convictions for possession of marijuana, arguing an extraordinary legal strategy is necessary to “right an extraordinary wrong.” In a highly unusual “Maryland v. Maryland” filing in state court, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby used a petition called “writ of error coram nobis” that allows a court to reopen cases when substantial error is found that wasn’t apparent in initial judgments. The petition, if granted, could wipe out thousands of pot possession convictions. Mosby’s arguments are based on what she paints as an opportunity to achieve retroactive justice...

Older people are the fastest-growing group of cannabis users, as stigma fades and some seek an alternative to prescription drugs As attitudes towards cannabis shift, the fastest-growing group of users is over 50 – and marijuana’s popularity among seniors is beginning to change the American experience of old age. Why are more seniors getting high? It might make more sense to ask: “Why not?” As adults reach retirement, they age out of drug tests and have far more time on their hands. Some feel liberated to abandon long-held proprieties. Elegant vape pens and other attractive, discreet products have helped de...

Davis police investigators said they recovered evidence from the rental property of the man who shot and killed one of their officers Thursday, including a note they believe was written by the man and two guns that were not registered to him. On Saturday, police released a one-paragraph letter they believe was written by Kevin Douglas Limbaugh. Spokesman Lt. Paul Doroshov told reporters that the paper was found face up on the bed of the gunman. The letter reads: “The Davis Police department has been hitting me with ultra sonic waves meant to keep dogs from barking. I notified the...

Industry experts say the diminished tax income reflects a somber reality: Most consumers are continuing to purchase pot in the illegal marketplace, where they avoid taxes...Newsom also recommended a sharp increase in spending for regulatory programs, although it’s an open question whether it will be enough to help steady the state pot economy. The budget recommends just over $200 million for marijuana-related activities in the fiscal year...

Ten states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized adult use of marijuana.Supporters of America's long war on drugs said legalization would create disaster. Has it? No.Colorado and Washington offer the longest points of comparison because weed has been legal in those states now for five years.More people in Colorado tried marijuana after legalization, but that's not a surprise.Colorado's crime rate did rise a bit. But many things influence crime rates. Washington state's violent crime rate rose a little but slightly less than the national average.In California, people I interviewed said legalization made the streets safer. "It's cleaned up the corner,"...

A 2018 survey of employers across the U.S. found that 5% are considering removing marijuana from their workplace drug testing panel in the next 12 months[1]. Perhaps more frightening is the number of employers who are on the fence about the removal of marijuana from their panels – a shocking 23% of employers from the same survey. At first glance, removing marijuana from the panel may seem like a good idea – but is it really? Aren’t There Pros to Removing Marijuana From my Testing Panel? Undoubtedly, an employer could identify pros in deciding to stop testing for marijuana in...

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.) became the first senator in his party to call for an end to the partial government shutdown, even if President Donald Trump doesn’t get funding for his border wall. “I think we should pass a continuing resolution to get the government back open,” Gardner told The Hill in an article published Thursday. “The Senate has done it last Congress, we should do it again today.” The shutdown began last month and is now in its 13th day with no end in sight. Newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to push through legislation to reopen the...

... The most obvious way that cannabis fuels violence in psychotic people is through its tendency to cause paranoia. Even marijuana advocates acknowledge that the drug can cause paranoia; the risk is so obvious that users joke about it, and dispensaries advertise certain strains as less likely to do so. But for people with psychotic disorders, paranoia can fuel extreme violence. A 2007 paper in the Medical Journal of Australia looked at 88 defendants who had committed homicide during psychotic episodes. It found that most of the killers believed they were in danger from the victim, and almost two-thirds reported...

The experiment to sell recreational marijuana in Ventura County has largely been successful if you ask law enforcement officials in both Port Hueneme and Ojai, where the first shops opened legally. In 2018, California legalized the sale of recreational pot for the first time. As of Wednesday, 639 medicinal and recreational retailers were licensed to sell cannabis products, according to the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control. Of those, 38 are recreational, 83 are medicinal, 517 are both and one has no designation. In Ventura County, the two cities – and seven dispensaries – where sales are permitted have served as...

When Californians voted in 2016 to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, advocates of the move envisioned thousands of pot shops and cannabis farms obtaining state licenses, making the drug easily available to all adults within a short drive. But as the first year of licensed sales comes to a close, California’s legal market hasn’t performed as state officials and the cannabis industry had hoped. Retailers and growers say they’ve been stunted by complex regulations, high taxes and decisions by most cities to ban cannabis shops. At the same time, many residents are going to city halls and courts to...

California marijuana dispensaries reported record-high holiday sales this Christmas as pot products became popular stocking stuffers this holiday season. Pot sales in the state soared in the first holiday season where recreational marijuana is legal in California, as many stores reported seeing five times the amount of customers they normally see. One Sacramento-area store, All About Wellness, reported seeing more than 150 customers per day during the 2018 holiday shopping season. On average, the store sees 20 to 25 customers per day. The increase in pot-hungry customers has also led to lines going out the door at stores. Kysa Butler,...

This is a subject we’ve tackled here before, but as more and more states approve either medical or recreational marijuana use it’s going to keep coming up. If people can legally partake in the use of the drug, how does law enforcement deal with suspected impaired drivers? There may be similar issues for people attempting to drive while drunk or stoned, but the medical science behind determining who is “too high” is far behind our ability to supposedly detect who is “too drunk” to drive. Massachusetts tasked a state commission with coming up with an answer and it doesn’t...