Chris Christie Vows To Enforce Federal Marijuana Laws If Elected President

Chris Christie is looking for an angle to get him on that debate stage. Bloomberg reports:

Residents in U.S. states that have legalized marijuana should toke up while they still can, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said. “If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it,” Christie, a Republican campaigning for the 2016 presidential nomination, said Tuesday during a town-hall meeting at the Salt Hill Pub in Newport, New Hampshire. “As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws.” At a time when a majority of Americans say recreational pot use should be legal, and four states have already made it so, Christie remains opposed. The former federal prosecutor said Democratic President Barack Obama has selectively chosen which laws to enforce. Christie is trying to pump up his candidacy ahead of the first Republican debate on Aug. 6 by talking to voters in New Hampshire, the state with the first primary.

Christie currently ranks ninth in the GOP polls.

Smoking Crayfish & Gay Marriage

Rep. Jared Polis gets the Gregory Brothers treatment.

Bill Maher Launches 4/20 Holiday Petition

From the petition:

Now that marijuana is legal in one form or another in 24 states and counting, I’m here to urge you to sign my petition to make 4/20 a national holiday. We celebrate everything from Arbor Day to Groundhog Day to a National Day of Prayer. It’s high time we had a weed day. Because if we can set days aside to pay tribute to trees, a rodent or a space ghost, we can certainly designate one day to officially recognize a true American institution. Sign my petition and make 4/20 a national holiday.

DC Legal Pot Law Goes Into Effect, GOP Threatens To Have Mayor Arrested

Via USA Today:

Despite warnings from congressional Republicans, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed D.C.'s marijuana legalization law to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, told Bowser that if she continued with her plan to implement marijuana legalization she would face "very serious consequences," The Washington Post reported. "You can go to prison for this," The Post quoted Chaffetz as saying. "We're not playing a little game here." Bowser was undeterred by the threat of prison time. "We are acting lawfully," she told reporters. "I have a lot of things to do, being in jail wouldn't be a good thing." Nearly two thirds of D.C. voters approved Initiative 71 in November. Under Initiative 71, people ages 21 or older will be allowed to possess two ounces or less of marijuana, use marijuana on private property and give one ounce or less to another person as long as no money, goods or services are exchanged. Residents will also be permitted to cultivate up to six marijuana plants — although no more than three mature plants— in their primary home.

Recreational use of marijuana is also legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state.

GOP Might Kill Legal Pot In DC

Via the Washington Post:

Tucked in the massive spending bill needed to prevent a federal government shutdown may be a measure sought by conservative House Republicans to halt marijuana legalization in the nation’s capital, advocates for the measure say. Seven in 10 D.C. voters backed an initiative last month to follow Colorado and Washington state in legalizing marijuana. But three people who have been closely tracking the issue say budget negotiators in the Democratic-controlled Senate have agreed to curb the popular measure. Congress has the power to do so by restricting city spending. Congressional Republicans have previously used the technique, known as a spending “rider,” to prevent the heavily Democratic city from spending money on abortion coverage for the poor. For 11 years, one was used to prevent D.C. from implementing a voter-backed measure to allow medical marijuana.

Even though right wing Republicans are behind the rider, marijuana activists say they will blame Democrats, who still have a month of control left in the Senate.

NYPD To Ease Pot Arrests

Fairly major marijuana news for New York City:

In a historic change, city cops on Nov. 19 will stop arresting people on low-level marijuana charges and issue them tickets instead, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said on Monday. People caught smoking on the street would still wind up in the pokey, however, but someone caught with less than 25 grams of marijuana would be slapped with a noncriminal violation. “As for those who want to avoid summonses, don’t do it; it’s that simple,” Bratton said at a press conference at NYPD headquarters, holding up a baggie of oregano as a visual aid. “It’s still against the law. I’m not giving out get-out-of-jail-for-free cards.” If found guilty, a first-time violator would face a fine of $100; for a second offense, a fine of $250 could apply, a high-ranking police source told the Daily News. Mayor de Blasio, who made curtailing the NYPD’s use of the stop-and-frisk tactic a central campaign pledge, said the new policy would be more fair. “Too many New Yorkers without any prior convictions have been arrested for low-level marijuana possession,” he said. “Blacks and Latino communities have been disproportionately affected.” A marijuana arrest, if it leads to a conviction, means one has a police record, and that “hurts their chances to get a good job, it hurts their chances to get housing, it hurts their chances to qualify to get a student loan,” de Blasio said. “It can literally follow them the rest of their lives.

Alaska TV Reporter: Fuck It, I Quit

Via the Independent:

KTVA reporter Charlo Greene quit her job on live TV last night, outing herself as the owner of an Alaskan cannabis club and declaring "fuck it". Having grown weary of reporting the news, Green told viewers she would be instead putting all her energy into the fight to legalise marijuana in the state, previously having reported on Alaska Cannabis Club without mentioning her connection to it. In a jaw-dropping twist to the end of a segment she said: "Now everything you heard is why I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, will be dedicating all of my energy for fighting for freedom and fairness which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit."

The anchor was left flummoxed.

(Tipped by JMG reader Christopher)

Barney Frank: Pot Will Be Legalized

"Former US House Representative Barney Frank argues that the ignorance underlying resistance to same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization is similar. In both cases, he says, reality will overcome prejudice and ultimately be adopted as the law of the land."

New York Times: Legalize Marijuana

From the editorial board of the New York Times:

It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol. The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana. We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws. There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.

Maureen Dowd Tries Pot-Laced Candy

"For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand. But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy. I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me." - Maureen Dowd, in a New York Times piece about marijuana labeling issues in Colorado. The candy bar she ate was apparently meant to be divided into 16 pieces for "novices."

Product Positioning

Details.

Obama: Pot Is Safer Than Booze

In a long interview with the New Yorker, President Obama said that he believes marijuana is safer than alcohol. The question came regarding the legalization of the sale of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state.

When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinion—the legalization of marijuana—he seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” Is it less dangerous? I asked. Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, “Scratch that,” or, “I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.”

Less dangerous, he said, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer. It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.” What clearly does trouble him is the radically disproportionate arrests and incarcerations for marijuana among minorities. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.” But, he said, “we should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”

Read the full interview.

Crowds Flock To Colorado's Pot Shops

NEW YORK: State Sen. Liz Krueger To Introduce Bill To Legalize Marijuana

My state senator wants to New York to follow in the footsteps of Colorado and Washington state. Via press release:

Joined by a broad spectrum of drug law reform advocates and fellow elected officials, State Senator Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) announced that she will be introducing the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) today. The legislation would legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana under state law along lines similar to the state’s current system regulating alcohol, and would represent a new approach for New York State after decades of costly, counterproductive policies that have produced racially discriminatory outcomes. “Prohibition of marijuana is a policy that just hasn’t worked, no matter how you look at it, and it’s time to have an honest conversation about what we should do next,” said Sen. Krueger. “The illegal marijuana economy is alive and well, and our unjust laws are branding nonviolent New Yorkers, especially young adults, as criminals, creating a vicious cycle that ruins lives and needlessly wastes taxpayer dollars. Worst of all, this system has resulted in a civil rights disaster: African Americans are dramatically more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites, despite similar rates of marijuana use among both groups.”

The Weed Blog reports on the ridiculous pot arrest stats for New York state:

New York’s current marijuana policies are widely recognized as broken. Approximately 600,000 people, mostly young Black and Latino men, have been arrested for marijuana possession in NY since 1997, saddling them with criminal records that impede their ability to obtain jobs, student loans, and housing. In New York City, marijuana possession is the number one arrest, and NY makes more marijuana arrests than every other state in the country, including California, Florida and Texas. Nearly 97% of all marijuana offenses in New York were for mere possession. The vast majority of those arrested (85%) are Black and Latino, mostly young men, even though numerous government studies report that young white men use marijuana at higher rates.

Uruguay Becomes World's First Nation To Legalize Pot Sales, Growth, Usage

In what Reuters describes as a  "pioneering social experiment" that  will be watched around the globe, Uruguay yesterday became the world's first nation to completely legalize marijuana.

A government-sponsored bill approved by 16-13 votes in the Senate provides for regulation of the cultivation, distribution and consumption of marijuana and is aimed at wresting the business from criminals in the small South American nation. Backers of the law, some smoking joints, gathered near Congress holding green balloons, Jamaican flags in homage to Bob Marley and a sign saying: "Cultivating freedom, Uruguay grows." Cannabis consumers will be able to buy a maximum of 40 grams (1.4 ounces) each month from licensed pharmacies as long as they are Uruguayan residents over the age of 18 and registered on a government database that will monitor their monthly purchases.

In addition to the commercial sales, Uruguayans will be able to grow their own at home, with a limit of 480 grams per year.

Denver Post To Launch Marijuana News Site, But Will Drug Test Its Reporters

From the news director of the Denver Post:

Colorado will open the doors to legal recreational marijuana sales in the new year. We have been covering the medical marijuana industry for more than a decade. But last year, voters approved legalized recreational marijuana. We have written extensively about the research on marijuana, the regulation, the wrangling in the legislature, cooking with marijuana and growing it. The new year will bring all angles together in a way that is challenging and exciting for us. We plan to do what we do with any major story: throw our best muscle, creative minds and ingenuity at the project. We’re going to have some fun – with a mix of news, entertainment and culture stories. Say what you want about the newspaper industry, but The Post is the most powerful news organization in the region. We know how to cover big stories. And with pot, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Majority Support For Legalized Pot

Gallup reports:

For marijuana advocates, the last 12 months have been a period of unprecedented success as Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational use of marijuana. And now for the first time, a clear majority of Americans (58%) say the drug should be legalized. This is in sharp contrast to the time Gallup first asked the question in 1969, when only 12% favored legalization. Public support for legalization more than doubled in the 1970s, growing to 28%. It then plateaued during the 1980s and 1990s before inching steadily higher since 2000, reaching 50% in 2011.

38% of Americans now "admit" to having tried marijuana.

Feds Won't Stop Legal Pot Laws

Tweet Of The Day - Seattle Police Dept

Printed on the back of the bags is a listing of what is allowed under Washington state's marijuana laws.

Marijuana Causes Terrorism

"The older brother was a marijuana smuggler, but the younger brother was a pothead and a dealer. The Boston Globe says three people admitted buying drugs from the 19-year-old. Perhaps if the drug laws were being vigorously enforced in liberal Massachusetts, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have been picked up by the authorities before joining his brother in the Boston bombing. Perhaps his arrest could have led to his supplier, his own brother. But it looks like drugs were common on campus, and among students, and so everyone just looked the other way. Marijuana is not the harmless drug the media frequently claim it to be. It is a mind-altering substance that can play a role in creating communist or Islamic terrorists." - Accuracy In Media crackpot Cliff Kincaid, quoted by Right Wing Watch.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Kincaid says gay people live a "disease-ridden lifestyle."  Kincaid lectures at Porno Pete's hate academy.  Kincaid says gay people want to give Americans AIDS by donating blood. Kincaid endorses Uganda's "kill the gays" bill.