Free Republic

VALENCIA — A Tracy man stopped Thursday afternoon for not wearing his seat belt in Southern California was found carrying about 400 kilograms — about 880 pounds — of cocaine in the back of his pickup, California Highway Patrol officials said. Juan Alvarez, 31, was arraigned Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court on two felony charges: possession for sale of a controlled substance and transportation of a controlled substance, according to court documents. Both charges carry an enhancement for exceeding 80 kilograms and could net Alvarez a maximum of 50 years in prison. Alvarez did not enter a plea...

GETTYSBURG, Pa. - A woman admitted to smoking marijuana daily with her 13-year-old son to reward him for completing his homework. Amanda Lynn Livelsberger, 30, pleaded guilty to several charges Monday and will be sentenced Nov. 27. Livelsberger, of Conewago Township, admitted in Adams County court that she had been smoking marijuana with her son since he was 11, and that she often gave it to him as a reward. The boy told police that he was required to do his homework as soon as he got home from school, and then was allowed to smoke marijuana with his mother,...

Generally, there are two types of marijuana users. First is the most commonly stereotyped “stoner,” depicted in the media of movies (e.g. Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and television (e.g. Shaggy from Scooby Doo). These are the dead-end job, ambitionless abusers who ingest marijuana to escape their already dismal lives. They represent the image which is most often associated with marijuana use. Certainly, the average American high school is teeming with similar directionless pot-smoking losers, further cementing this public perception.

Drug use up for boomers, down for teens By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Some moms and dads might want to take a lesson from their kids: Just say no. The government reported Thursday that 4.4 percent of baby boomers ages 50 to 59 indicated that they had used illicit drugs in the past month. It marks the third consecutive yearly increase recorded for that age group by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Meanwhile, illicit drug use among young teens went down for the third consecutive year — from 11.6 percent in 2002 to 9.9...

It turns out that alcohol is legal for the simplest, most nostalgic, and most American reason of all. Despite its risks and harmful side-effects, adults are reserved right to drink because they are independent adults in a free country. For all of the empty rhetoric about economics and black markets, the end of Prohibition was due to a single principle: even if drinking may be bad for society, government has no right to keep the people from doing it. The ability to get drunk is an inalienable right that we have forever confirmed with the 18th Amendment.

Denver DEA Rep: Don't Legalize It Colorado -- The Drug Enforcement Agency is stepping into the political fray to oppose a statewide ballot issue that would legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. In an e-mail to political campaign professionals, an agent named Michael Moore asks for help finding a campaign manager to defeat the measure, which voters will consider in November. If passed, it would allow people 21 and older to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana. In the e-mail, which was sent from a U.S. Department of Justice account, Moore also writes that the group has $10,000...

Marijuana Amendment Will Be On Ballot Denver -- Coloradans are to decide this fall whether to make it legal under state law for anyone age 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana. Secretary of State Gigi Dennis said Wednesday that backers of that initiative had turned in enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 7 general election. The proposal will be Amendment 44 on the state ballot, Dennis said. Under Colorado law, anyone in possession of an ounce or less of marijuana can be charged with a Class 2 petty offense, punishable by a fine of...

Nearly two week ago, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell suggested hard-line Communist Raul Castro really did have a soft spot for capitalism. “Raul has been in charge of the military and the economy,” Mitchell explained to the August 2 “Today” show audience, calling Fidel’s younger brother “politically hard-line but more open than his brother to free enterprise, including foreign investment.” She might be on to something, after all. “Federal prosecutors in Miami were prepared to indict Raul Castro as the head of a major cocaine smuggling conspiracy in 1993, but the Clinton Administration Justice Department overruled them, current and former Justice Department...

SUMMIT — Sheriff's patrol Sgt. Mark Yanez surveys the mess the pot farmers left behind: trash, empty propane tanks and gardening supplies. A blue jug of Power Force Multi Insect Killer and a paper sack with crumbly remains of ammonia sulfate are most damaging to the forest, he says. But Sgt. Steve Carney, leader of the three-man team, knows his crew's efforts will only slow the expanding problem on state and federal lands: marijuana-growing operations that deputies say are controlled by Mexican drug cartels. The pot farms present a multitude of problems. Armed men camp nearby to defend the gardens,...

Reefer is Worth Getting Mad About Vienna -- Supporters of the legalization of cannabis would have us believe that it is a gentle, harmless substance that gives you little more than a sense of mellow euphoria. Sellers of the world's most popular illicit drug know better. Trawl through websites offering cannabis seeds for sale and you will find brand names such as Armageddon, AK-47 and White Widow. "This will put you in pieces, then reduce you to rubble -- maybe quicksand if you go too far," one seller boasts. This is much closer to the truth. In Canada, as in...

Cops slip up on medical marijuana Not many people go to the Denver Police Department to pick up bags of marijuana, but Thursday a police officer handed Larisa Lawrence about 2 ounces of the drug. "It's squished," she said, scrunching her nose and pressing down on the red evidence bags. "It's just not the same." Late Tuesday, Lawrence's marijuana was seized by Denver police during a traffic stop even though she produced proof that she was allowed to carry it under the state's medical marijuana law. Lawrence, 30, and her husband, Thomas, are caregivers who run a medical-marijuana support center...

Drug agents have raided one of the largest marijuana operations ever discovered in Gila County. The garden, located east of Payson and about a half mile east of the Tonto Creek Fish Hatchery, contained about 30,000 plants spread out over a half-mile area. The raid on the illegal operation occurred July 29 but law enforcement officers didn't begin eradication of the plants, some of which were seven feet tall, until Aug. 3. The garden was kept intact to allow other law enforcement officers, state officials and the media an opportunity to visit the site and see the garden firsthand. Also,...

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK - Gov. Mike Huckabee, who successfully pushed for a statewide workplace smoking ban earlier this year, predicted Wednesday that cigarettes eventually won't be sold because of their health risks. "I think the day will come when we probably won't" sell cigarettes, Huckabee said on his monthly call-in radio show. "If cigarettes were introduced to the marketplace today, they wouldn't be sold. They'd never make it because what we didn't know when they were first created, sold and marketed is just how deadly harmful they were." Huckabee was responding to a caller's question of why cigarettes are...

CHARDON, Ohio (AP) -- Though she's only a 6-pound Chihuahua-rat terrier mix who looks like she belongs in Paris Hilton's purse, Midge has the will, skill and nose of a 100-pound German shepherd.

Journalists have turned the radar up so high in their coverage of illicit drug use that a pair of migrating Blackburnian warblers would look like a squadron of B-52s if they applied the same scrutiny to the skies. This week's example of journalistic overkill in the pursuit of a drug story owes its origin to a 400-word letter in the July 27 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Twin Girls With Neurocutaneous Symptoms Caused by Mothball Intoxication," in which three physicians in France solve a medical mystery posed by an 18-year-old patient. The woman had developed a...

Hunter knows how to mellow out on marijuana. It's something he does all the time. But the first time he smoked the leaves of a plant dubbed the "magic mint," he felt as if he'd been slammed into another dimension. As drug trips go, this one was more terror than pleasure. "The first time I did it was with a lot of people," recalls Hunter, a Toronto university student who asked that his real name not be used. "That was probably a bad idea because I did it and before I even knew what was happening, I was just like...

Feds Warn Of Marijuana-Filled Gumballs Gumballs Called 'Greenades'POSTED: 8:00 am EDT July 27, 2006 ELLICOTT CITY, Md. -- Authorities aren't happy about yellow, smiley face gumballs. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency is warning about so-called "Greenades," which are marijuana-containing gumballs. Survey: Used Drugs? The DEA is issuing an intelligence bulletin about the pot candies to police departments across the country. The smiley face gumballs were first discovered at a Howard County, Md., high school in January. Police charged three 17-year-old students after a teacher alerted a school resource officer. She told the officer that she saw a student give a...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 3 — The newest attraction planned for Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco's most popular tourist destination, has no sign, no advertisements and not even a scrap of sourdough. Yet everyone seems to think that the new business, the Green Cross, will be a hit, drawing customers from all over the region to sample its aromatic wares. For some, that is exactly the problem. "The city is saturated with pot clubs," said T. Wade Randlett, the president of SF SOS, a quality-of-life group that opposes the planned club. "Fisherman's Wharf is a tourism attraction, and this is not the...

Should last week’s joint disqualify a pot smoker from driving today?A police officer pulls you over at a checkpoint and asks, "Have you been drinking?" Assuming he wants to know whether you have consumed alcohol in the last few hours, such that it might be affecting your ability to drive, you say no. "Not at all?" he asks. Well, you admit, you did have a beer the night before, whereupon he arrests you for driving under the influence. If that scenario makes sense to you, you should have no problem with Michigan's new policy regarding driving and drug use. As...

THE drugs watchdog of the United Nations has rebuked the UK government's policy change on cannabis, saying it sent a confusing message to young people. UN experts also warned that a major increase in the potency of cannabis means it now poses health risks similar to those of heroin. The decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class C drug - made by the Home Secretary in 2004 - was implicitly criticised by Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, who warned of the growth in its use. Cannabis had become more potent in...