Free Republic

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.

Help Musicians, Britain's largest independent music charity and provider of health and welfare support, has announced a new campaign for the music industry called MUSIC MINDS MATTER. This offers wide support of the world's first dedicated 24/7 mental health service for people working in the music industry. Help Musicians has been serving the music industry for almost 100 years and has identified a ‘mental health crisis’ in the music industry, which has led the charity to initiate a unique Mental Health Fund with an investment starting at £100,000. The announcement of the campaign sees Help Musicians call for ‘arm in...

Nevada state officials declared a state of emergency after stores that sell recreational marijuana reported that their supply is running out just less than two weeks after the drug went on sale legally. Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nev., issued the state of emergency on Friday, which will allow state officials to decide on new rules that could ease the shortage of marijuana, according to Fox 13 Now. Nevada’s Department of Taxation released a statement that said it will contemplate emergency regulations that would permit liquor wholesalers to cash in on the marijuana sales. “Based on reports of adult-use marijuana sales already...

Last month I gave the keynote address at the Cannabis World Congress Business Expo in New York City. CWCBExpo is the trade show for the cannabis industry. I had the pleasure of meeting thousands of like-minded cannabis activists, and the experience was truly refreshing and inspiring on many levels. I learned firsthand that those in the legal cannabis industry — whether they're growing hemp, medical marijuana or recreational marijuana in Colorado or California or Oregon or wherever — have formed a united front. Everyone at the convention was looking to work together to come up with solutions on how to...

Recently, there was a report posted about the decline of the Denver Public Library, due to rampant drug usage and criminal activity. Apparently, a lot of the library "regulars" are homeless people who have been victimized by drug dealers who take over the bathrooms to do their deals. Other library users complain that the computer terminals are all taken up by the homeless people and back packing vagrants passing through the area, and that the place stinks. Apparently, the Denver Police have increased patrols and at least cleaned it up to some extent. They even closed off the bathrooms on...

As canna-business strategist Elise McRoberts walked across an animal skin rug and into the living room of a Pacific Heights home for the recent San Francisco launch of Beboe, an upscale cannabis brand from Los Angeles, she assumed she would see the usual faces on the marijuana circuit — growers, dispensary owners and cannabis chefs. Instead, the party was a cross-pollination of the worlds of high society, Silicon Valley, politics, fashion and design: industrial designer Yves Béhar, former Mayor Willie Brown, who carried decriminalization bills in the state assembly in the 1970s, philanthropists Katie and Todd Traina, boutique owner Emily...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Latest on Nevada becoming the fifth state in the U.S. with stores selling marijuana for recreational purposes (all times local): Minnesota resident Edgar Rosas Lorenzo on Saturday flew with his family to Sin City for a wedding. But even before he checked in to his hotel, he stopped at a pot dispensary on the Las Vegas Strip. The 21-year-old says he learned of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Nevada while he was at the airport waiting for his flight to depart. He waited in line about 40 minutes before he could buy one-eighth of...

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – 20 kilos of deadly fentanyl are off our streets after a major drug bust, but authorities say more is coming, and they can’t keep up. The Montgomery Sheriff’s Office is already predicting that overdose deaths in 2017 will be double the amount reported last year.We’re gonna crush records,” Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said. “This year, at this pace unfortunately.” Setting the pace, is a Mexican drug cartel known as Sinaloa. They’re the source of the more than 20 kilos of fentanyl recovered in Wednesday’s massive drug bust.

Drug overdose deaths have increased by 33 percent in the past five years across the country, with some states seeing jumps of nearly 200 percent. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 states saw increases in overdose deaths resulting from the abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers, a class of drugs known as opioids. New Hampshire saw a 191 percent increase while North Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine had death rates jump by over 100 percent. …

A BBC chief insists she is 'proud' of the controversial programme targeting children as young as six about a schoolboy who takes sex-change drugs. Children's director Alice Webb defended Just A Girl after parents reacted angrily to the CBBC show, which depicts an 11-year-old's struggle to get hormones that stunt puberty, making it easier to have sex-change surgery in the future. Concerned campaigners said it could 'sow the seeds of confusion' in young minds. But Ms Webb said the BBC has a duty 'to make sure that we are stimulating conversation'.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union released a report on Wednesday in support of the effort to stop drug arrests and convictions for the personal use of all drugs, citing the harm it does to people, including non-citizens, who might face deportation. “The consequences of a conviction can mean that individuals and sometimes whole families are excluded from public benefits such as food stamps, housing, wages and job opportunities and even the voting booth next month,” Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at both liberal organizations and author of the report, said at a press conference at the...

A 7-year-old girl in McKeesport, Pennsylvania got on the bus and went to school as normal Monday morning, but on the way home she told her bus driver she hadn’t been able to wake her parents. The bus driver alerted police who responded to the home. From the Washington Post: Inside the home, authorities found the bodies of Christopher Dilly, 26, and Jessica Lally, 25, dead of suspected drug overdoses, according to police.Also inside the home were three other children — 5, 3 and nine months old. Courney Lally, the deceased woman’s sister, had tried to alert authorities to the...

Nearly every 12 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a drug overdose. People in communities across America are abusing both prescription pain killers and heroin. It is an epidemic. No one is immune; it is a sad reality that is playing out across the country, including in my own district in Southwest Michigan. There were 13 suspected overdoses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the first quarter of 2013, up from 9 in the first quarter of 2012. Behind these numbers are real folks, and their families, suffering. In 2008, we lost Amy Bousfield, an 18 year-old graduate of Portage Central...

Police found Brian Knighton’s unresponsive body in a Linthicum, Md., McDonald’s bathroom Professional wrestler Axl Rotten — real name Brian Knighton — died earlier this month from a heroin overdose, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore told TheWrap on Wednesday. Police had suspected heroin use, due to the discovery of a “brownish” substance in an unmarked pill bottle found alongside Knighton’s unconscious and unresponsive body in a Linthicum, Md., McDonald’s bathroom. Additionally, Knighton had placed drug paraphernalia and a broken burnt tablespoon with a “crystalline residue” on the restroom’s infant changing table. Knighton was pronounced dead at...

The Department of Veterans Affairs seems unwilling to fire its employees, regardless of outlandish conduct. A new investigation has turned up instances in which employees had sex at work or slept in patient rooms only to receive mild reprimands. This misconduct occurred in hospital facilities spread out among West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Three facilities, one in each region, disciplined, but did not fire, a total of 300 employees, according to a Freedom of Information Act request by NBC4 Washington. In one case at the Martinsburg facility in West Virginia, employees actually had sex at the center....

(CNN)—An actress best known for "Star Trek: Voyager" was arrested on September 3. Jennifer Lien, who played Kes in the first few seasons of the "Star Trek" spinoff series, has been charged with indecent exposure. According to CNN affiliate WATE, Lien was arrested in her home in Harriman, Tennessee. Neighbor Carey Smith told WATE that Lien came by her home to comment on how Smith's children were being raised and started using vulgar language. "All of a sudden, here come the shirt up," said Smith. "She started flashing and, 'Woo hoo,' and I said, 'And what respect is that for...

A new Norwegian study has shown that alcohol and drug abuse is much more common among patients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression than in the population at large. The study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, looked into the extent of drug and alcohol dependence among Norwegians diagnosed with serious mental health disorders. Every fourth patient with schizophrenia and every fifth with bipolar disorder also suffered problems with substance abuse.  One in ten people who were severely depressed also had problems with alcohol or drug-related health problems.  It is estimated that one in forty Norwegians indulge...

Iran is breaking bad. Officials say methamphetamine production and abuse of hard drugs are skyrocketing in the country despite potentially lethal criminal penalties for users if they are caught. The increase is partly because of Iran’s status as the gateway for the region’s top drug exporter, Afghanistan—and partly because Iranian dealers are profiting so handsomely from sales to overstressed students and exhausted double-jobbers. Ghazal Tolouian, a psychologist who treats dozens of meth addicts at a therapy camp in a mountain village northwest of Tehran, says most of her clients fall into two categories: students “who want to pass university entrance...

FLORENCE, Ky. – Briana and Kaitlyn Himes said they feel lucky they're not planning a funeral for their parents after five adults overdosed on heroin at their parents' mobile home Saturday. While the adults got high and passed out, three children they were supposed to be caring for – ages 1, 11 and 12 - were in the house with them, according to a Boone County deputy's report. The Himes sisters said the adults might have died if their uncle, Michael Young, hadn't arrived just in time to save them.

The federal government is on the brink of lifting restrictions put in place more than three decades ago when regulators, alarmed by the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, barred men who had sex with other men from donating blood. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will begin a two-day meeting on the issue Tuesday, amid growing calls from medical groups, gay rights activists and lawmakers to jettison the ban as outdated and discriminatory.