Free Republic

Heavy regulation, high taxes, and local bans combined to cripple the legal cannabis industry, which accounts for just a third of the state's pot market.Six years after California legalized recreational marijuana, the black market still accounts for roughly two-thirds of the state's cannabis sales. Since legalization was supposed to eliminate the black market, that embarrassing situation represents a stark failure to fulfill the promise of Proposition 64, the 2016 ballot initiative that allowed recreational consumers to buy marijuana from state-licensed retailers. Regulatory costs, high taxes, and local bans on retailers are the main factors impeding the transition to a legal...

Democrats in Washington state are cracking down on marijuana — not the actual drug, the word itself. The Evergreen State legislature recently passed a bill banning the word “marijuana” from official state law and documents over concerns that it is “racist.” At the same time, to help increase diversity in the cannabis business, a taxpayer-funded task force has been spending the last two years focusing on helping minorities in Washington state break into the marijuana business. “The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Washington state Representative Melanie Morgan (D) said during testimony regarding the piece of legislation officially known...

A woman is facing a drug charge after police discovered 229 pounds of marijuana inside the car she abandoned on a Tennessee bridge when the vehicle ran out of gas, authorities said. According to WHBQ-TV, Memphis police arrested Catherine Mardesich, 54, on a charge of possession of a controlled substance in connection with the incident, which occurred Sunday. In a Facebook post Monday, the department said Tennessee Department of Transportation and Arkansas State Police responded at 3:30 p.m. Sunday to a report of an abandoned Chevrolet Suburban on the Interstate 55 bridge. Authorities moved the vehicle, which had been struck...

Kamala Harris is a nightmare to work for, reportedly refusing to do her 'homework' her staff prepare for her and then blaming staff when her ignorance makes her a laughingstock to the public. Not surprisingly, she hasn't been able to keep staff. That was news a few months ago, and the bad public relations from it died down with the news cycle. But it doesn't mean the flight still isn't happening. The Daily Mail did some interesting digging and found this: Kamala Harris is losing her ninth staffer since June in deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh, who is moving to...

In what appeared to be an off-script opening to her speech, the vice president said: 'The Governor and I and we were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time. Right?' 'The significance of the passage of time,' she repeated. 'So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires, what we need to do to create these jobs,' Harris continued. She went on: 'And there is such great significance to the passage...

"Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do...there is such great significance to the passage of time."

Harris repeated the phrase "the passage of time" at least four times within the span of a minute, seeming unable to move the conversation forward during remarks she made in Sunset, Louisiana, on Monday. "We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time right. The significance of the passage of time, so when you think about it there is great significance to passage of time," Harris said. "There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation on Monday that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and eliminate legal hazards facing many cannabis-related businesses while regulating its use like alcohol. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who is spear-heading the legislative effort, described the bill as a "compromise" with less onerous regulations than measures proposed earlier by other lawmakers including Democrats. The legislation's path in the Democratic-controlled House was uncertain. Mace, a first-term lawmaker, said the measure has five Republican co-sponsors. Adult use of cannabis is legal in 18 U.S. states and allowed medically...

FACT: There has been a massive increase in deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) this year. That’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that’s an indisputable fact. You can try to explain it or justify it, or even argue it doesn’t matter, but you can’t deny it. We’re not talking about a modest increase in death reports, something we might chat about in concerned voices over Chai tea and bagels at a company mixer. We’re talking about a huge and unprecedented increase—so massive that in the last 4 months alone, VAERS has received over 40% of all death...

Virginia, which for decades has sent thousands of people to jail for selling or using marijuana, is about to make it legal. In a historic shift for this traditionally conservative Southern state, the General Assembly voted Friday to allow its possession, manufacture and sale.

Appearing far older than his years, with white hair, bent back, sunken eyes, and a shrill voice that often cracked and stuttered terribly while speaking, former president Barack Obama stood before an audience of just 500 and put on a display that left many wondering if he was okay. To have so few willing to see and listen to him these days has to be jolting for the political media darling. But then to have those few seeing him so diminished, so unable to even read from a teleprompter like he used to, has to be many times more discouraging.

A 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana Tuesday night after a multicar crash killed three in Fremont. The collision, which involved five vehicles, occurred around 9:30 p.m. on the northbound I-880 near Stevenson Boulevard, according to the California Highway Patrol. Three people were killed when they were ejected from an Escalade — a woman, a teen and a child. Five other people, four of whom are juveniles, were injured in the crash. … Similar to other states that have legalized pot, California now relies on drug recognition experts — police officers trained during...

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters back legalizing marijuana, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. Support for legalization hit 63 percent in the survey — the highest level of support recorded by a Quinnipiac poll. A third of American voters still oppose legalization, the poll found. Support for medical marijuana is even higher, at 93 percent. Only about 5 percent of respondents opposed it. The poll also found little support for Attorney General Jeff Sessions's decision earlier this year to rescind an Obama-era policy that paved the way for individual states to legalize marijuana without federal interference. Seventy percent...

A Pennsylvania school district has armed its students with rocks to defend themselves in the event of a school shooting. David Helsel, the superintendent of Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, said at a state House Education Committee hearing on school safety this week that his district's classrooms are equipped with 5-gallon buckets of river rocks. "If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks," he said. "And they will be stoned." Helsel emphasized to Buzzfeed News that the so-called "go buckets" are a...

I thought I had it all figured out: self-driving cars are being developed to enable the entire population to be stoned and still arrive at their jobs, assuming they have a job, safely. Honey, I’m home!In the interim, a fierce PR campaign has been conducted via the media echo chamber to ensure everyone that legal pot is having absolutely no negative effect on vehicular accidents in order to continue our progressive march towards the Brave New World. “Public safety doesn’t decrease with increased access to marijuana, rather it improves,” Benjamin Hansen, one of the authors of the previous study, said...

Barack Obama has chided Donald Trump as "wacky" and "uninformed" after the Republican candidate said Russia's President Putin was a better leader.

According to the Washington State Marijuana Impact Report, the incidents of marijuana-impaired driving are increasing dramatically. Fatal driving accidents have risen 122 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission. Marijuana is big business in Washington state. There are more marijuana businesses than Starbucks in Washington state (despite the fact that Starbucks was founded in Seattle). The traffic safety organization AAA has its own reports on marijuana use among drivers in fatal crashes, and the picture is equally bleak.

FORT GREENE — Surveillance video appeared to capture a woman calmly munching on a slice of pizza moments after an unlicensed driver hurtled onto a curb and fatally struck a 30-year-old woman Sunday on Fulton Street. In the video, the hungry witness is shown turning to look back at the victim, Victoria Nicodemus, lying beneath the wheels of a Chevrolet, but continuing to walk down the street unfazed after the crash near South Portland Place about 5:26 p.m. Just before walking off screen, the woman lifts her slice and takes a bite while others race to the victim's aid, the...

Barack Obama in the Philippines Press Conference Q+A 11/18/15

<p>CARSON CITY, Nev. — Pets might soon be able to use pot under a bill introduced Tuesday in the Nevada Legislature.</p>