LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST: Fear and Loathing the New Federal Marijuana Policy By Sean McCaffrey When President Obama’s Justice Department signed a memo in 2013 that told U.S. Attorneys to relax their prosecution of recreational and medical marijuana crimes, two things happened. Conservatives, afraid of pot-smoking hippies and drug trafficking cartels taking to the…
LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST: By Steve Birr Lawmakers are mulling a marijuana legalization bill in Washington state that would assist families who are forced to treat their child’s severe conditions with illegal pot. The state is considering making it legal to grow marijuana on private property and to share the substance with other people….
Listen to TLR’s Podcast! By Steve Birr GOP Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions argued Congress ultimately needs to change federal pot laws if Americans do not want him to crackdown on states’ rights, leaving uncertainty within the marijuana industry. Sessions, who started his confirmation hearing Tuesday for the post of attorney general, is a staunch opponent of…
By Steve Birr Marijuana use among America’s youth is experiencing a decline and young teens say the drug is growing increasingly difficult to find. Marijuana accessibility is at a record low for 8th and 10th graders and has stayed roughly stagnant among students in 12th grade. Just 34.6 percent of 8th graders said they could…
by Steve Birr Marijuana advocates stand to secure major victories on election day as nine states gear up for ballot votes on legalization for recreational and medical purposes. Five states are putting recreational marijuana legalization on the ballot this November — California, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — while an additional four states are voting…
by Wayne Pac Canadian songwriter Alan Ranta was traveling to Washington when he was questioned by police officers if he smoked marijuana. When the police asked if he had ever smoked, he told the truth — that he had smoked it regularly. The police then handcuffed Ranta and took him to the PD, then proceeded…
Craig Boudreau A Massachusetts ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana has enough signatures to be on the ballot in November, meaning the Bay State could be the next state to legalize pot use. The Massachusetts secretary of state told the initiators of the measure, The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, that it had passed the threshold…
Craig Boudreau California’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to know why more of his colleagues don’t support efforts to legalize marijuana. Newsom said that many of his colleagues say the so-called “war on drugs” as a failure, so he wonders openly why they don’t see the benefits of legalizing the drug, The Huffington Post reported Thursday. “What we’re doing to criminalize the…
By Craig Boudreau A new study, fittingly done by the Netherlands and published in the journal Psychopharmacology, says that alcohol increases aggressive tendencies, while marijuana decreases them. The team of researchers selected 20 people to drink alcohol, 21 to smoke marijuana, and 20 controls who used neither of the substances. They then put the people in situations…
Steve Birr Officials in Washington, D.C., have called for a regulated market for marijuana consumption and redefined the issue as a threat to public health and safety, in an effort to circumvent Congressional blocks to the District’s efforts to legalize the drug. The D.C. Department of Health released a July report calling on officials to…