Free Republic

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...

The maker of Budweiser is partnering with medical cannabis company Tilray in a $100 million deal to research cannabis-infused drinks for the Canadian market. The alliance announced Wednesday is the latest foray by a major beer company into the cannabis business in Canada, which legalized recreational marijuana in October. Anheuser-Busch InBev and Tilray Inc. said each would invest $50 million in the project to study non-alcoholic drinks containing cannabidiol, or CBD, which some claim has calming and healing affects, and THC, the cannabis compound known for its psychoactive effects.

Perhaps it is uncharitable of me, but the minute I hear the words "as a former addict myself," I stop listening to the speaker. Yesterday that speaker was Patrick Kennedy of the famed Kennedy clan. Kennedy, who had some problems with drugs back when he was a congressman, was testifying before a joint committee of the Legislature that is looking at legalization bills. He did a lot of fulminating, as Kennedys do, raising his voice and gesturing with his hands as he said things like, "As a father of five, the last thing I want is edibles sold on every...

In just 10 months, the sixth-largest company in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids — nearly 10,000 pills a day on average — to a single pharmacy in a Southern West Virginia town with only 400 residents, according to a congressional report released Wednesday. McKesson Corp. supplied “massive quantities” of the painkiller hydrocodone to the now-shuttered Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit, even after an employee at the company’s Ohio drug warehouse flagged the suspect pill orders in 2007, the report found. That year, McKesson — ranked 6th in the Fortune 500 — reviewed its customers, including Sav-Rite, and reported...

The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on an amendment that would federally legalize marijuana by allowing states to regulate their own medical and recreational pot markets. But even one senator can block a vote on the amendment, which would address a longstanding conflict between federal and state law. Sen. Cory Gardner, D-Colo., is seeking to attach the measure to the First Step Act, a bundle of prison, prisoner re-entry, and sentencing reforms that senators voted 81-12 to advance Monday.

There is a strange dichotomy taking place in society today. On the one hand, laws against marijuana are being eliminated. People who abuse pot are now able to feed their addiction with an overly generous supply of the drug. For example, in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal, users can purchase up to 2.5 ounces every two weeks. This is enough to be stoned every day. Once you have a prescription, you can refill it for an entire year without going back to renew the prescription. It’s easy to get a prescription in most states that have legalized medical marijuana,...

A divided Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Lawrence Hubbard’s misdemeanor convictions in a case demonstrating police officers relying exclusively on olfactory skills to detect raw marijuana can supply probable cause to support search of a residence. The decision by the high court extended to a private residence the accepted principle in Kansas that a trained and experienced officer’s detection of the aroma of marijuana could justify the legal search of a vehicle. The ruling also resolved conflicting Kansas Court of Appeals decisions. Supreme Court justices, on a 4-3 vote, rejected arguments put forth by Hubbard’s attorney, including questions about whether Lawrence...

REVERE — Prosecutors say the 42-year-old Boston woman who allegedly struck five pedestrians with her SUV on Route 145 Sunday night, killing a 5-year-old girl and critically injuring a 2-month-old infant, may have been impaired from a combination of beer, sleep medication, and CBD oil. The 5-year-old girl has been identified as Adrianna Mejia-Rivera, a student at an undisclosed elementary school in Revere. Autumn Harris pleaded not guilty to charges of motor vehicle homicide and negligent operation of a motor vehicle in Chelsea District Court on Monday. Harris was held on $10,000 bail and ordered to remain drug- and alcohol-free...

U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped 12 smuggling operations and seized nearly two tons of marijuana worth over $1.5 million during a weekend crackdown, officials with Customs and Border Patrol wrote in a press release Monday. On Friday, agents working near Mission, Texas, saw "smugglers utilize a raft filled with bundles of marijuana cross the Rio Grande," officials wrote. On the Texas side of the river, they loaded up a Ford F-150 pick up truck with the pot. "As mobile units responded to the area, the vehicle fled at a high rate of speed," officials wrote. When agents stopped the truck,...

An Ecstasy pill found in a child’s hamburger wrapper lead to the arrest of three Sonic Drive-In employees. On Friday, a manager of the SONIC in Taylor is facing charges of Possession of a Controlled Substance, Delivery of a Controlled Substance, and Endangering a Child.According to the Taylor Police Department, the pill was discovered during a family outing to pick up dinner at the SONIC Drive-In located at 1700 N. Main. “The 11-year-old daughter was opening the hamburger for her 4-year-old brother. It was a kid’s meal,” said Henry Fluck, Chief of Police in Taylor. But within seconds, the girl...

<p>San Quentin prison officials called an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss a possible connection between contraband lethal drugs and the unexplained deaths of two Death Row inmates on Monday and Tuesday, according to an internal prison document obtained by The Chronicle.</p>

It’s an old episode of The Twilight Zone: A woman sits in a hospital with her head heavily bandaged. A surgeon is warning her that this is his last attempt and that if this procedure of plastic surgery doesn’t take, there’s nothing else he can do. So far, we haven’t seen any of the faces of the other people. The surgeon begins to remove the bandages, and when he is done, he expresses shock: No change! The camera shows us a normal, indeed beautiful young woman, then pans to show us that everybody else is grotesquely misshapen. The young woman...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court left little doubt Wednesday that it would rule that the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines applies to the states, an outcome that could help an Indiana man recover the $40,000 Land Rover police seized when they arrested him for selling about $400 worth of heroin. A decision in favor of 37-year-old Tyson Timbs, of Marion, Indiana, also could buttress efforts to limit the confiscation by local law enforcement of property belonging to someone suspected of a crime. Police and prosecutors often keep the proceeds. Timbs was on hand at the high court for arguments...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that may rein in abusive property seizures by state and local governments through the highly controversial legal tool known as civil asset forfeiture. The case at issue involves a man named Tyson Timbs, who sold $225 worth of heroin to undercover police officers on two occasions, as a means of raising money to support his own drug habit. Police arrested Timbs while he was driving to a third drug deal, and he ultimately pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a year of home confinement and five years of...

...And as I tucked into my first vegan mockburger on the plane home – nicely pink inside, my tastebuds honestly couldn’t distinguish it from the real thing – it left me thinking, why are we so willing to wield the nanny state when it comes to cannabis but not something like meat, which does real social harm? ..... Take a step back and it seems bonkers that our political leaders hold firm on outlawing weed but seem loth to invoke the nanny state where it’s most needed: in avoiding catastrophic climate change. We won’t succeed in this unless we persuade...

The growing drugs crisis sweeping across the US is deadlier than gun violence, car crashes or Aids, none of which have killed as many Americans in a single year as overdoses did in 2017. Newly confirmed figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show the increasing scale of the crisis. The drugs epidemic is not confined to a small number of states nor to lower-income areas, but instead has spread across the whole country. While there are concentrations around the midwest, and regional differences in the type of substance, overdose deaths are happening everywhere. The US...

A historic $14 million settlement has been reached in a lawsuit surrounding the 2012 death of 19-year-old Northern Illinois University freshman and fraternity pledge David Bogenberger. David's father, Gary Bogenberger, said on Friday that it was a hollow victory, but emphasized his hope that his son's case would be "a loud and direct message to national fraternities and sororities that their day of reckoning is fast approaching." "It is over? Emotionally, never," Gary Bogenberger said. "Just a half-hour ago, we were sitting here looking at our beautiful 9-foot Christmas tree we've got set up, and my wife [Ruth] commented 'None...

On January 1, 2014, Colorado legalized the medical and recreational use of Marijuana. They claimed that it would add millions of dollars to the state’s revenue via state taxes which includes a 2.9% sales tax, 10% special sales tax and 15% excise tax, meaning the state would collect $27.90 for every $100 of recreational marijuana sold in the Rocky Mountain state. In April 2014, 19 year old foreign exchange student Levy Thamba plunged off a hotel balcony and died after eating legally purchased marijuana laced cookies. After eating just one cookie, Thamba became agitated and ran out onto the balcony...

A new study looking at alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use among adolescents gives some interesting and helpful conclusions. Well, helpful conclusions if people will be willing to remove their cultural blinders concerning marijuana. Since the politically and culturally popular thing to do is to extol the virtues of the recreational use of marijuana, the study's sharp gateway-drug implications will most likely be a warning that is derided and unheeded.Frankly, I don't really care if people smoke weed or not. To be clear, if asked, I'll warn against it. What bugs me, though, is that many who do choose to...

A Georgia woman spent more than three months in jail on drug charges after sheriff’s deputies mistook congealed cotton candy they found in a car she was riding in for methamphetamine. A state crime lab eventually showed that they were wrong. Now, she’s suing. In the lawsuit, filed this month, Dasha Fincher alleges that she was wrongfully arrested and incarcerated in December 2016, when she and her boyfriend were pulled over by Monroe County sheriff’s deputies. The deputies found a blue, crystal-like substance in a bag on a floorboard in the car and evaluated it using a roadside test kit,...