Free Republic

A spate of violent robberies targeting marijuana businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area last month have thrown into question the survival of several small businesses, with the combined losses of those operators estimated to be at least $5 million. The crimes ranged from break-ins that resulted in minor damage to, in some instances, wild gunfights between criminals and security guards, according to media reports and sources. At least one person was shot, and a scandal has emerged over San Francisco police officers apparently looking on while burglars made off with cannabis products from a store they’d broken into. The...

Among the more than a dozen smash-and-grab robberies in the Bay Area in recent weeks, cannabis facilities may have been the hardest hit. In San Francisco, at least four cannabis businesses have been robbed in the last two weeks, according to news reports. At least 20 have been hit in Oakland, where most of the Bay Area’s cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution facilities are located. “It’s proving to be unbearable for cannabis operators,” said Amber Senter at an Oakland press conference held by cannabis business owners on Monday. Senter owns multiple cannabis business licenses in San Francisco and Oakland, and...

A federal raid on a household marijuana garden on tribal land in Picuris Pueblo is sowing uncertainty and resentment about U.S. drug enforcement priorities on Native American reservations, as more states roll out legal marketplaces for recreational pot sales. In late September, Bureau of Indian Affairs officers confiscated nine cannabis plants from a home garden that was tended by Charles Farden, a local resident since childhood who is not Native American. The 54-year-old is enrolled in the state’s Medical Cannabis Program to ease post-traumatic stress and anxiety. New Mexico first approved the drug’s medical use in 2007, while Picuris Pueblo...

Deputies in Florida found a live grenade in the truck of an “idiot” who was driving with a terrifying clown mannequin in the passenger seat, wild video shows. The footage released Monday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office shows the moment a deputy stumbled upon the explosive find after Louis Branson, 65, was pulled over in Bunnell for expired tags on his Dodge pickup. “Oh shoot, is this for real?” a deputy asks her partners after discovering the grenade inside a sealed canister in the back of Branson’s ride, video shows. “Get out of the truck, it looked like a...

Legalizing recreational marijuana was always bound to cause unintended consequences, including more traffic accidents, addiction, and worse mental health issues. But Jackson County, Oregon, has added another downside to the list: severe water shortages. It turns out that when Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, southern Oregon saw a surge of illegal marijuana farms posing as legal hemp farms. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission recently reported that nearly 50% of registered hemp farms inspected by the state grow marijuana with THC content above the legal limits. With marijuana “legal” in Oregon now, these illegal farms operate with near...

Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) on Thursday said that he would expunge criminal records of those facing certain marijuana-related charges and legalize the drug if he is elected the governor of Florida. “Let me be clear: If I’m elected governor, I will legalize marijuana in the Sunshine State,” Crist said in a video posted on his Twitter on Thursday. “This is the first part of the Crist contract with Florida.”

A Pennsylvania mom admitted giving her teen daughter psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana during a “bonding experience,” authorities said. Brandy Lee Betz, 42, was charged with felony child endangerment after she was reported to cops in June regarding her drug use earlier this year with her 14-year-old daughter, according to an affidavit obtained by the Patriot-News. The referral indicated Betz gave the teen “shrooms” and marijuana while in her Middletown home. Dauphin County child welfare officials conducted a parallel probe and Betz confessed to smoking pot with the girl, according to the affidavit.

Heavy marijuana users who are also vaccinated may be more susceptible to breakthrough cases of COVID-19, a new study found. The study, published last Tuesday in World Psychology, found that those with a substance use disorder (SUD) — a dependence on marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, opioids and tobacco — were more likely to contract the coronavirus after receiving both of their vaccination shots. Those without a SUD saw a 3.6 percent rate of breakthrough infections, compared to a 7 percent rate in those with a SUD.

@RepMattGaetz Today I voted YES on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule 1 drugs, decriminalizing the substance at the federal level and enabling states to set their own policy. (1/2) Though not perfect (bad tax and spending provisions) the MORE Act is a step in the right direction as science has already proven the substance has healing properties in many chronic ailments. (2/2)

The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission said Friday night that it has solved the mystery of why people were getting high on CBD products supposedly made from hemp, which ordinarily don’t contain the psychoactive ingredient THC. Oregon manufacturer Select, also known as Cura Cannabis, evidently mixed up two lines of products at its Portland manufacturing site, according to the commission. The company’s workers apparently confused a line of CBD products without THC with a line of recreational marijuana products that do usually contain the psychoactive ingredient associated with marijuana use.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked President Biden to issue an emergency declaration for his state due to the increasingly difficult border crisis. In a letter to the president, Abbott specifically pointed to Val Verde County, where Haitian migrants have set up an encampment in Del Rio under the International Bridge. The governor said that as of Saturday there were nearly 16,000 migrants in Del Rio.

Jack Dwyer pursued a dream of getting back to the land by moving in 1972 to an idyllic, tree-studded parcel in Oregon with a creek running through it. “We were going to grow our own food. We were going to live righteously. We were going to grow organic,” Dwyer said. Over the decades that followed, he and his family did just that. But now, Deer Creek has run dry after several illegal marijuana grows cropped up in the neighborhood last spring, stealing water from both the stream and nearby aquifers and throwing Dwyer’s future in doubt. From dusty towns to...

FORDHAM HEIGHTS, the Bronx — A father riding the subway with his 4-year-old daughter in the Bronx was threatened and spit on after asking a man not to smoke on the train earlier in September, according to the NYPD. Police said it happened around 3:20 p.m. back on Sept. 5 as the dad and daughter were aboard a southbound D train. An unidentified man sitting in the same car was smoking alleged marijuana while riding the train, authorities said. The father, 35, asked the man not to smoke aboard the train, a which point the other man started yelling...

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich (FOX 2) - Sterling Heights police are investigating after a garbage truck crashed into a marijuana grow operation Wednesday morning. The truck was traveling south on Mound Road approaching 15 Mile Road around 5:30 a.m. when a vehicle turned south onto Mound from a turnaround just north of 15 Mile while the light was red, cutting off the truck. The garbage truck driver swerved but still hit the turning vehicle, police said. The garbage truck drove through the northbound lanes of Mound. No other vehicles were hit, but the truck struck a building at 35100 Mound. The...

‘Covid & Marijuana – The Shocking Link Exposed’ – The Michael Savage Show – Tuesday September 7, 2021 "In this blockbuster podcast, Savage leaves behind a world in collapse due to Biden’s merry pranksters, and takes on something that may be far more important! Information of VITAL importance to the health of you and those you love. There is a clear connection between Covid and Marijuana. It has long been known that marijuana suppresses the immune system. Savage cites several research studies, including one from 2003 which came out long before pot was turned into a multi-billion-dollar business thanks to...

Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell of Base Gagetown faces maximum of 5 years in prison New Brunswick soldier accused of giving cannabis-laced cupcakes to troops on a live-fire training exercise has been found guilty of nine charges. Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell was convicted Wednesday of eight counts of administering a noxious substance to soldiers without their consent and one count of behaving in a disgraceful manner, a charge under the National Defence Act, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to the prosecution. A 10th charge of committing an act to the prejudice of good order and discipline, which...

Climate change is back in the news probably because a new report declared that this is a make-or-break decade to curb global warming. This is what—the seventh time we were told this was a critical decade for climate change. In 2007, these experts said that the Arctic Ice Cap would be gone by 2013. It ended up growing by over 533,000 square miles. And then, they said in the 1970s that global cooling was an existential issue as we undergo periods of glaciation. They were wrong again. As the environmental Left goes haywire over carbon emissions, everything has been slated...

Canadian marijuana manufacturers are sitting on 1.1 billion grams (2.4 million pounds) of the drug that they can't sell as the country's legalized weed industry runs out of puff. Last October, Canadian cannabis firms had around 1.1 billion grams of harvested or processed cannabis sitting in storage. Around 95 per cent of that weed is considered ‘largely unsaleable’ because it has been spoiled by time, and because there's just too much existing supply to try and sell it. The low quality of the products as well as the slow process by which the provinces allowed for licensed stores to sell...

While Tennessee sits on the sidelines of marijuana legalization, Tennesseans are choosing Delta-8, a psychoactive cannabis product nearly identical to marijuana. The two are isomers—chemical compounds with the same formula but different atomic arrangements—that offer similar mental effects with medicinal and recreational applications. Since legalizing CBD oil in 2015, the Tennessee state legislature has failed to pass any laws legalizing medical or recreational cannabis. Tennessee has become a national outlier, one of five states in which marijuana is not legal for any purpose, not decriminalized, and potentially a felony. The state continues to widely enforce consequences for possession, reporting 30,781...

A new study from Denmark reveals that the connection between people who experience schizophrenia and who smoke a problematic amount of weed is on the rise, CNN reports. The study, which was published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry, shows that the link between the mental health disorder and cannabis use disorder in Denmark was two percent in 1995, four percent in 200, and eight percent in 2010. Cannabis use disorder is the clinical name for cannabis addiction. “I think it is highly important to use both our study and other studies to highlight and emphasize that cannabis use is...