ReeferSmoke – A Marijuana Blog

If a California company has its way, recreational marijuana users in Colorado and Washington state will one day be able to get their pot out of vending machines.

Such machines are already in use in some states where medical marijuana is legal, but now the maker’s founder says the company is working to adapt the machines to comply with new laws in Colorado and Washington, where adults can legally use marijuana for recreation.

The vending machines for medicine require a fingerprint scan to verify the identification of the patient, which is then linked to a prescription on file.

But as Washington and Colorado figure out how to create a legal pot market for the masses, Hollywood-based Medbox, a public company, is offering up its expertise in convenient delivery systems.

“One day we envision these machines to be accessed, when it’s allowed, 24 hours a day,” Vincent Mehdizadeh, the founder and chief consultant of a subsidiary of Medbox that produces, installs and consults on the vending business, told NBC News. “One day in the future that may happen, but for now these machines sit behind the counter as an inventory control and compliance tool.”

He said the Medbox pot vending machines and consultancy are in high demand in states such as Arizona, Massachusetts and Connecticut that have published medical marijuana regulations. Dispensaries use them to keep marijuana from being pilfered and comply with laws.

So where will all that ‘legal’ pot come from? Sale of pot stymied

Medbox is now offering to work with Washington and Colorado officials who are mobilizing to create the framework for a legal marijuana industry – and to collect taxes on pot sales.

“These machines behind the counter act an inventory control and taxation tracking tool so that the states can effectively track the taxes and collect on them more efficiently with real-time reporting directly from the machine to the state database,” Mehdizadeh said.

The company also helps operators get licensed in states that have licensing programs.

“We’ve probably been the most successful consulting firm in the marijuana business,” he said.

Mikhail Carpenter, spokesman for Washington’s Liquor Control Board, said Medbox has been in contact with the state but at this point no outside vendors have been chosen to help with marijuana sales.

Under state law, marijuana and marijuana-infused products, Carpenter said, would have to be sold from inside the confines of a retail outlet.

“So I can’t imagine with the way the law is written that you would see vending machines on the street corner,” Carpenter told NBC News.

In November, Washington and Colorado voters passed initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Those laws went into effect last month.

Buzzkill: Feds fire warning shot over pot legalization

In Washington state, voter-approved Initiative 502 made it legal for anyone 21 or over to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, 16 ounces of “solid marijuana-infused product” (pot brownies and such) or 72 ounces of “marijuana-infused liquid.

Washington’s Liquor Control Board has until Dec. 1 to develop rules for implementation of its new recreational marijuana law.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

Colorado, under Amendment 64 to the state Constitution, legalized not only recreational use, but also home growing, which is still illegal in Washington.

Growing, selling and possessing marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and the federal government is reviewing options in both Washington and Colorado.

President Barack Obama last month weighed in on the issue, telling ABC’s Barbara Walters the federal government has more important things to do than go after recreational marijuana users.

“We have bigger fish to fry,” he told Walters.

Source – NBC News

A love of good pot…and driving fast

It would appear that Mr. Ocean knows how to celebrate and bring in the New Year.  And while it may not be alcohol, driving around with weed in your car, on what has to be the ultimate rookie night  of the year “New Year’s Eve” is never a good idea.  Now he knows that.

Ocean was issued a notice to appear in court for speeding, driving with a suspended license, having his front windows tinted …and of course, marijuana possession. 

The cross genre singer / songwriter was pulled over by the CHP in Mono County, California for exceeding the speed limit, blowing past the Highway Patrol in a black BMW  at 90 MPH, headed southbound on US-395.

The CHP also claimed to have found the “small bag” of pot while giving his vehicle the once over.

We’re told Ocean was cited for marijuana possession, driving on a suspended license, and tinted windows.

Ocean was released on the spot, but his passenger had to drive him home — because cops confiscated Ocean’s license.

Source – TMZ

“By jumping the gun and opening early I absolutely screwed myself out of my building…”

Well that was fast … Grand opening, grand closing – all within the same 24 hour period. Apparently some landlords are sticklers about the contracts they sign… Particularly when it comes to taking occupancy and opening up shop before you are legally given possession. Which is exactly what the recreational – BYOP smoking club in Colorado had done.

A BYOP (bring your own pot) club by the name of the White Horse Inn, in the remote and miniscule southern Colorado town of Del Norte, fired up for business Monday as the first in the state to offer their clients the opportunity to smoke some good weed with their cup of caffeine laced coffee. However the upset owner noted late Tuesday morning, due to the tenets inability to follow the contract, the business is been closed and the contract canceled.

Though Lovato (the tenant) had the keys to the building that housed the White Horse Inn on Monday, his lease on the building didn’t start until Tuesday. The would be tenant said, when his new landlord noticed the national publicity his new club received, he immediately voided the lease before it took effect.

“By jumping the gun and opening early I absolutely screwed myself out of my building,” Lovato said Tuesday.

Colorado voters in November legalized use and limited possession of marijuana. Though it currently remains illegal to sell non-medical weed in the state — recreational pot shops won’t be able to get licenses to open for about another year — the law allows people to give marijuana to one another without compensation.

Lovato’s business model called for having a storefront where customers could buy coffee, T-shirts and other items and then a private building next door where they could smoke free samples of marijuana. He had planned to open just after New Year’s Eve ticked over into New Year’s Day. But pressure from another cannabis venue — Denver’s Club 64, a members-only gathering that intends to stage at different spots throughout the year — caused Lovato to speed up his timetable.

Lovato said he opened for a few hours during the day Monday, long enough to be the first in the state and to draw the media attention that came with the distinction.

“Wow guys!” Lovato wrote on the club’s Facebook page. “Today was a blast and a blur!”

The publicity also drew the attention of his landlord, who was less thrilled about the business, Lovato said.

“It was really unexpected,” he said. “I got caught up in the whole, ‘I want to be the first to open’ thing. And I did that. I was the first. … I’m pretty proud of that.”

Lovato said he may adopt Club 64′s model for the next year and then try to open a recreational marijuana shop when he’s allowed to. Until then, he said, he will do what he can to keep his vision for the White Horse Inn as alive as possible.

After Monday’s opening, Lovato said he got calls from people in New Mexico who wanted to drive up to visit. He expected them to arrive sometime Tuesday morning.

“We’re doing the White Horse Inn at my house today,” he said.

Source - Denver Post 

Voters and legislators alike have asked cops to end these kinds of busts

When done properly a good article has the ability to produce anger, in addition to the much-needed awareness. Medical marijuana and weed legalization supporters are often easily perturbed when they’re high has been violated, however last week’s S.F. rag, the Bay Citizen story of a militaristic like surge in police marijuana buy-busts in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district had them going apocalyptic.

There’s a reason why drug war opponents in San Francisco get angry when SFPD goes about busting low-level marijuana offenders: It’s supposed to be against the law. In San Francisco, voters and legislators alike have ruled that a $20 nickel sack of pot is supposed to be police officers’ “lowest priority,” and certainly not enough to warrant an investigation from a veteran cop with nearly 40 years experience (some of it spent busting the same people who made medical marijuana legal) working undercover, that results in felony charges.

The problem is, there are other laws on the books — such as the law making marijuana illegal. Guess which one wins?

The man on the street in the Haight is new Park Police Station Capt. Greg Corrales. The 64-year old Vietnam-era Marine, a former head of narcotics, has been at the police station in Golden Gate Park since June, the Bay Citizen’s Shoshana Walter reports, and has stepped up “buy-bust” operations in the area at the behest of police Chief Greg Suhr.

The crowd at Haight and Stanyan streets selling a High Sierra Music Festival-worthy pharmacopeia are nuisance to some, Haight-Ashbury landscape to others. But it appears the former perception is winning out, as residents and merchants are complaining about the young hooligans and wayward youth in greater numbers — and SFPD is responding.

Corrales and other cops dress in street clothes and seek out marijuana salesmen. When someone unlucky enough to offer the Disney-jersey-clad cop a $20 dime bag, he or she is arrested — and then charged with a felony by District Attorney George Gascón, the former chief of police.

Voters and legislators alike have asked cops to end these kinds of busts — not once, but several times over the past 20 years. The Board of Supervisors first passed a “lowest-priority” ordinance, deeming it city policy for the Police Commission and chief of police to de-prioritize low-level weed busts, in 1992. Another version of the law, authored by now Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, was passed in 2006.

SFPD listened … for a while. In 2006, then-Chief Heather Fong gave the law teeth when she issued a departmental bulletin. But under successor police chiefs Gascon and Jeff Godown, marijuana arrests increased. Statistics for arrests under Suhr’s tenure have yet to be produced.

“We put it on the ballot in San Francisco long ago and citizens wanted marijuana enforcement to be the lowest priority for police,” Ammiano said in an e-mailed statement. “Now, with Colorado and Washington going in that direction there’s one upper officer who wants to play cops and robbers instead of worrying about real problems. People in the neighborhood have some fair complaints about what’s happening there, but this is not going to solve it. We need real policy change on marijuana and shouldn’t waste resources on a minor issue.”

While many thought that lowest-priority meant marijuana was legal, others admitted at the time that it was largely symbolic. Drug-dealing — the section of criminal code makes no distinction between $20 worth of marijuana or $2,000 worth of meth for sale, it’s the same citation — is still illegal, police spokesman Sgt. Michael Andraychak pointed out. Cops perform buy-bust operations, and if it’s marijuana and not something “harder,” so be it: the law is the law.

“The department must respond to complaints of drug dealing and illegal activity and takes such complaints seriously,” Andraychak said in an e-mail. “Drug dealing is a felony and there are usually associated side effects such as, blight, deterioration of neighborhood, robbery, turf disputes, gang issues and quality of life issues that arise as a result of street sales of drugs.”

As it turns out, even when demanded by brass, these buy-bust stings aren’t a big priority: there were five arrests for marijuana sales by Park Station police over the week of Dec. 14 to 21, all on Dec. 16, according to Corrales’s most-recent station newsletter.

The real issue, as Walter reported, may be the people now in the criminal justice system for selling $20 worth of a substance that local law says is mostly benign and somewhat medical. Is a $20 sack worthy of a felony charge? Maybe, maybe not, but that is for now the law.

Source – S.F. Blog

“I understand that David Crosby, of Crosby stills Nash and Young turned you on to LSD”

You gotta love Larry Hagman, the ex Dallas TV star… And I dream of Jeannie icon.  Not only was he famous for loving a good joint of some well grown weed, but apparently he also enjoyed the occasional trip on acid, LSD.

When Joy Behar tried to catch Larry off guard and dropped the LSD question on him, “I understand that David Crosby, of Crosby stills Nash and Young turned you on to LSD”  Larry…simply replied by asking her “how much time we got?” knowing that it was some what of a rhetorical question, and to retarded to be answered.

Joy persisted… And Larry explained the exhilaration of not fearing death and the comfort that comes with understanding the white light waiting for all of us at the end of this journey.

So I’m guessing that when Larry passed away just recently this was just another great acid trip for him.

Peace big guy…

Check it out…

Wow – this starts off really offensive, but I get where it’s going… I guess?

Fair Warning: This article begins with material that some may find offensive, but for a point.

“Why do Concentration Camp shower heads have eleven holes? Because Jews only have ten fingers.”

Find me a joke about the Cannabis community that borders on that kind of black humor. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

“What’s the difference between a Jew and a pizza? Pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven.”

Same challenge. Still waiting.

“Holocaust jokes aren’t funny, Anne Frankly, I won’t stand for them!”

Gotta love wordplay. Some of my favorite jokes are the result of clever word choice. Still nothing on the offensive weed jokes? Well, then.

Many will find these kinds of jokes offensive. To be honest, they’re some of the tamest Jewish jokes that I know. It’s called Gallows Humor, the art of turning tragedy into hilarity, because the alternative to doing so is to give in to despair and disgust. For an oppressed people to claim the language used in their own dehumanization is a form of cultural empowerment, and part of that includes the use of their own slurs and derogatory humor.

If a Jew tells Holocaust jokes, do you have the right to be offended?

We will return to that question shortly.

I am a Jew, and I am a Cannabis grower and an activist, and I’m pretty annoyed that Marc Emery would equate one with the other.

Mr. Emery’s article is the latest in an ongoing exchange, a response to an article posted by Michael Coren of Canadian TV’s Sun News. After Jodie Emery, Marc’s wife, appeared on Mr. Coren’s program, the conservative TV host received messages and emails from Emery’s supporters calling him, amongst other things, “Jew Slime”. This was her third appearance on the program, in which Mr. Coren decided to remove his kid gloves. source

By Bryan Punyon Special to Toke of the Town

Corrales knew this signal: It meant Weed for sale!

“I’m 75 damn years old,” he yelled, adding more than a decade to his age. “How the hell am I going to be a cop?”

Apparently S.F. police Capt. Greg Corrales, has nothing better to do with his time than try and bust smalltime weed dealers… or maybe it’s just that he likes to cruise the dirt paths that line Golden Gate Park, around the Haight-Ashbury district.

Either way…Corrales, 64, had dumped his uniform at the police station, justa few short blocks from the drug infested area known as “the Haight Ashbury”. Instead, he put on pair of pink jeans, a tight shirt,  a “White Swallow” baseball cap…and tried to blend in..

Corrales made a “B” line for Alvord Lake, a manmade body of water just down from Hippie Hill, and spotted a group of “high as hell” young men. As he drew close, one looked at him and brought a closed finger and thumb to his puckered lips.

Corrales knew this signal:  it was the international sign for marijuana for sale.

The undercover captain said he wanted $20 worth of marijuana, pocketed his purchase and disappeared into the park. Moments later, a team of officers swooped in to arrest the unsuspecting seller.

The police operation was one of 50 undercover busts Corrales has led since transferring to the Haight-Ashbury district in June to lead a crackdown on street-level marijuana dealing.

To many residents, the arrests are a welcome relief in a neighborhood struggling with aggressive vagrants and dealers. In the district that was the birthplace of the hippie revolution, police are jailing suspects for amounts of marijuana that, in a possession case, would amount to a $100 ticket.

But to marijuana legalization activists and residents who fondly recall the Haight of the 1960s, the campaign represents a return to a time of zero tolerance for peace, love and weed. San Francisco once led the country in its tolerance and celebration of marijuana. Now, marijuana legalization activists say, it is moving backward.

“The people of San Francisco have voted repeatedly they don’t want marijuana laws enforced,” said Dennis Peron, a longtime medical marijuana activist who moved to San Francisco during the heyday of the hippies. “It’s a waste of time.”

Corrales, a former head of the narcotics division, is employing a tactic most commonly used to combat street sales of drugs such as heroin and cocaine. In buy-bust operations, an undercover officer poses as a customer and buys drugs from an individual he or she suspects of dealing.

In the Haight, Corrales conducted the first six himself.

Some of the operations have netted repeat offenders, including several suspects with guns or outstanding warrants. But most of the suspects carried small amounts of marijuana. Some had medical marijuana ID cards.

“It really doesn’t matter,” he said. “They can’t sell.”

Source

The task force has until the end of February to make recommendations to Mr. Hickenlooper

It has been a little over a month since Coloradans approved a groundbreaking law legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use.

Now that the celebratory haze has settled, state officials and marijuana advocates on Monday began sifting through the thorny regulatory questions that go beyond merely lighting up.

Among them: Who can sell marijuana? How should consumer safety be accounted for? How might employers and employees be affected by the new law?

At a packed meeting at a state building in this suburb west of Denver, a task force convened by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper began wrestling with some of these questions in an effort to forge a framework for how the law should work.

The task force, made up of designees from an array of state offices as well as various marijuana advocates, weighed in on matters including the identification of weed revenue sources and the prospect of the federal government cracking down on the drug.

“We’re not here to have a discussion on whether legalizing marijuana was the right thing to do,” said Jack Finlaw, Mr. Hickenlooper’s chief legal counsel and a co-chairman of the task force. “Our job is to find ways of efficiently and effectively implementing it.”

Colorado’s Amendment 64 sets the stage for marijuana to be regulated much like alcohol. But the state will have a whole new set of variables to consider, like licensing retail facilities and determining what sort of security measures stores should have.

And Mr. Finlaw said he was not sure that alcohol could be used as a model for marijuana, given the inevitable differences in how it would be sold.

Aside from the regulatory challenges of moving from a black market to a legitimate one, there are also health issues to be considered. Dr. Chris Urbina, the executive director of Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment, raised the prospect that marijuana should be regulated differently depending on whether it is smoked or eaten.

“We expect this to be challenging,” said Mark Couch, a spokesman for Colorado’s Department of Revenue, which will be largely responsible for regulating the sale and use of marijuana.

“The department does have some experience with licensing and regulating products that have certain restrictions,” Mr. Couch said. “Obviously, that is complicated by the fact that federal law makes this product illegal.”

In an interview last week with Barbara Walters, President Obama assuaged the fears of marijuana proponents, saying the federal government would not pursue marijuana users in states where the drug is now legal.

But it was still unclear whether the Justice Department would permit stores in Colorado and Washington, which also legalized marijuana in November, to sell the drug, leaving it in a regulatory netherworld when it comes to federal law.

Barbara Brohl, the executive director of the state’s Department of Revenue and a co-chairwoman of the task force, said Colorado was consulting with officials in Washington State as it moved through its own process.

Christian Sederberg, a Denver lawyer who is on the task force and whose law firm helped draft Amendment 64, said he thought Colorado was well positioned to settle on new regulations, given that medical marijuana was already legal here.

Still, Mr. Sederberg said that medical marijuana rules were undergoing substantial revisions in Colorado and that there was clearly a need for distinct regulations for recreational use.

“I’m of the opinion that we have a very good base to work with on the policies Amendment 64 intended to push forward and how those policies fit in with regulations already in place,” he said.
The task force has until the end of February to make recommendations to Mr. Hickenlooper; the state attorney general, John W. Suthers; and the General Assembly. The regulations must be completed by July 1. source

You know your neckdeep into the 2012 holidaze season ,  as Marijuanakkah has already begun... And the department stores have already begun to fire up jingle bowls.

Here’s a tasty little Nug from Gil at weedmaps.TV and Nugporn on YouTube. Some may or may not be aware of Gil’s weed adventures, quick little video blogs of Gil as he travels throughout the country visiting various Pro 420 events.

Here’s a compilation of 2012’s dabs from abroad thanks to Gil.

Deceit, Fear And Marijuana Propaganda  

The University of Colorado risks losing nearly $1 billion a year in federal funding because of the looming decriminalization of marijuana in this state under Amendment 64, President Bruce Benson warned alumni in an e-mail sent late Friday night.

That message quickly drew a pointed response from U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, who took to Twitter to decry Benson’s e-mail as “false and misleading” and claim that “the president of CU should not spread lies about the will of Colorado voters just because he personally disagrees.”

In his e-mail, Benson, a Republican,

Notes he personally opposed the popular weed issue, Amendment 64 and “worked on my own time to defeat it.” Since the measure’s passage by voters last month, Benson wrote, CU is trying to determine the implications it will have on the university.

“Pot threatens to cost the university nearly a billion dollars annually in federal revenue, money we can ill afford to lose,” Benson wrote. “The glaring practical problem is that we stand to lose significant federal funding. CU must comply with the federal Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which compels us to ban illicit drugs from campus. Source