Posts Tagged ‘4/20’
Washington’s new pot consultant once called legalization a ‘pipe dream’
Tuesday, 19 March 2013 08:25
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Washington officials are expected to announce Tuesday that they have hired the nation’s first marijuana consultant: a corporation run by a gentleman who once called the very kind of legalization Washington is pursuing a “pipe dream.”

According to the Medical Marijuana Business Daily, the company is Botech Analysis Corporation, which does consulting work for state and local governments on a range of issues, usually focusing on how a government program is impacting a local population. Botech is led by Mark Kleiman, a policy analyst and UCLA professor who authored the books, “Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know” and “Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control.”

(Read more…)

Kleiman’s company is a surprising choice for Washington, given that he declared in 2010 that marijuana regulation and taxation at the state level is impossible. ”There’s one problem with legalizing, taxing and regulating cannabis at the state level: It can’t be done,” he wrote for The Los Angeles Times. “The federal Controlled Substances Act makes it a felony to grow or sell cannabis. California can repeal its own marijuana laws, leaving enforcement to the feds. But it can’t legalize a federal felony. Therefore, any grower or seller paying California taxes on marijuana sales or filing pot-related California regulatory paperwork would be confessing, in writing, to multiple federal crimes. And that won’t happen.”

Despite again calling state-by-state legalization “a pipe dream,” Kleiman went on to say that legalization is not “a terrible idea” so long as it is done on a “non-commercial (grow-your-own or consumers’ co-op) basis rather than creating a multibillion-dollar industry full of profit-driven firms trying to encourage as much cannabis use as possible.”

The selection of Botech is not quite official, the Business Daily noted: the company is as of yet just the “apparent successful proposer,” and certification of their contract has not yet happened. Once it does though, Botech Analysis Corp. will be the nation’s first legal marijuana consultant, providing advice to Washington’s Liquor Control Board on how marijuana should be regulated in the state.

It’s not yet clear how the Obama administration will react to Washington and Colorado’s new marijuana laws, which voters passed last November, legalizing the use, possession and sales of marijuana. It is possible that Washington officials saw Botech as the least controversial choice out of hundreds of avid marijuana enthusiasts who applied, but it’s not clear what effect Kleiman may have on whatever regulations are ultimately rolled out.

Washington officials are expected to announce Botech’s selection at a televised press conference set for 10 a.m. PST.
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Photo: Shutterstock.com.

 
Massachusetts Attorney General: Pot shops allowed statewide
Thursday, 14 March 2013 10:32
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Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley ruled Wednesday that medical marijuana dispensaries must be allowed statewide and individual municipalities cannot legally block them.

The ruling (PDF) was issued by Coakley’s Municipal Law Unit in response to a 2012 bylaw passed by officials in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Two other nearby towns also passed a similar ordinance.

(Read more…)

The logic behind the ruling is simple: It says that the legalization of medical marijuana, enshrined in state law, “cannot be served if a municipality were to prohibit treatment centers within its borders, for if one municipality were allowed to do so, all could do so, making reasonable access impossible.”

Wakefield officials argued that they had the right to ban medial marijuana sales because marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substances prohibited under federal law. However, Coakley wrote that because no court has ruled against Massachusetts’ medical marijuana law, it’s not in her purview to “determine that issue.”

In striking down the general bans, Coakley also wrote that towns may still adopt zoning rules that limit where dispensaries can set up shop in order to preserve “public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.”

This video is from NECN.com, published Thursday, March 14, 2013.

 
‘High Times’ publisher: Fake penis proves how easy it is to beat drug tests
Wednesday, 13 March 2013 12:29
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In video published Tuesday by The Huffington Post, High Times associate publisher Richard Cusick explained all the many ways people use to trick drug tests, saying that products which help people do just that — including a fake penis called “The Whizzinator” — equate to roughly a $600 million industry every year.

“That’s the problem with urine analysis,” Cusick said. “It’s so easily beaten. You can use a spike where you put something into your urine and it comes out clean. (Read more…) You can take a substitution where you take clean urine and you put that in… Or you can take dilution, the most common way, in which you drink a lot of fluids and pee it all out, and then when it comes time to [take the test] it is masked.”

He added that some people swear by a product, a version of which is now illegal, called “The Whzzinator,” a fake penis that can be used to inject either clean or synthetic urine into a drug test. “I’ve said it a million times, you can go to your drug test stoned with this,” Cusick deadpanned.

While “The Whizzinator” might get around some minor drug interdiction efforts like pre-employment screenings, it’s not foolproof in closer encounters. Officers trained in drug detection know to look for them and know the psychological cues people give off when wearing such a contraption, and many times the faux penis that’s a slightly different color than the skin of the person wearing it has proved a dead giveaway.

“I say that frivolusly but it’s not a frivolus statement,” Cusick added. “These drug tests don’t work. They are easily beaten. I do it all the time. I know how this is done. If it doesn’t work, there is no safety in the workplace. What we need is impairment testing, and we need it now.”

This video is from The Huffington Post, published Tuesday, March 12, 2013.