Cannabis Hemp News

A 60-year-old defense attorney had been smuggling marijuana and cigarettes into Cook County Jail as part of a scheme orchestrated by an inmate, authorities said. Dave Compton was arrested Wednesday afternoon after Cook County Sheriff's officers caught him making a transaction with the unnamed inmate's girlfriend, Angela Bell, and an undercover officer outside a courtroom at 26th and California, according to prosecutors. The sheriff's intelligence unit initiated an investigation when another inmate, Armond Williams, was spotted with a package containing the items on Jan. 7, assistant Cook County state's attorney Russ Baker said. Williams told authorities he received …

http://www.theage.com.au/national/100000-h...90109-7dk9.html A cannabis crop worth $100,000 has been seized by police in Melbourne's outer east after a tip-off from the public. Police raided a garage in Ferntree Gully and charged a Mulgrave man, 36, with a series of drug offences after discovering 115 cannabis plants. Acting Sergeant Lee Nichols from Croydon Divisional Tasking Unit said the garage's hydroponic set-up had allegedly used stolen electricity by connecting cables to the power before it was read by the meter. He said police searched the property after anonymous calls made to Crime Stoppers. "We are grateful to those in the community who have taken not…

ERIC PARNIS 13/01/2009 10:53:00 AM http://tenterfield.yourguide.com.au/news/l...rs/1407976.aspx Copyright © 2008. Fairfax Media. Police were out in force over the weekend, targeting drunk and drugged drivers making the voyage to the Exodus Festival held at Rover Park over the weekend. Numerous motorists were stopped by police at a stationary drug testing site set up on the Drake side of the location, as well as by officers who were conducting mobile patrols in the area. Festival patrons felt the police presence while making the journey to Rover Park, with some festival-goers travelling west from Casino reported being stopped at mobile and fixed sites up to three…

January 09, 2009 04:45pm http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0...40-2682,00.html Copyright 2009 News Limited POLICE have confiscated a large amount of cannabis after detecting a marijuana smell during a routine patrol at Waterloo Corner this afternoon. They removed 500 cannabis seedlings, 30 to 40 mature plants and about 10kg of cannabis which would have made up to 30,000 street deals from a rental property on Huxtable Rd. Police said the plants were grown in bedrooms of the four-bedroom house and the electricity supply had been tampered with. Lights and transformers were also confiscated. Police are still searching for the tenants of the house.

Sheriff Patrick Hedges’ involvement in the Charles C. Lynch medical marijuana case sparks a citizen complaint regarding possible misconduct. Lynch, the former operator of the Morro Bay medical marijuana dispensary, Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers (CCCC), faces up to 100 years in federal prison. Federal Judge George H. Wu scheduled Lynch’s Sentencing for Monday February 23rd 2009 at 8:30 AM SLO County's Sheriff Hedges The complaint alleges Hedges wasted untold amounts of California tax-payers’ money, beginning in March 2006 to present, to subvert California State law in favor of his own political agenda. Stacey Warde, publisher of the Rogue Voice, urges overs…

Pot, Postal Service -- A Bad Combination Postal inspectors intercepted and opened a suspicious-looking package that had been mailed from San Diego and was bound for Naperville. A narcotics dealer has been sentenced to six years in prison for his part in mailing a package that contained $80,000 worth of marijuana to an associate's Naperville home. Paul T. DeLong, of southwest suburban Midlothian, was recommended as a candidate for enrollment in the Illinois Department of Corrections' "impact incarceration" program, or boot camp. The recommendation was made as part of DeLong's sentencing Wednesday in DuPage County Circuit Court. He was also ordered to pay $8,100 in f…

Rationalitate Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Possible Surgeon General Sanjay Gupta's tortured logic on marijuana prohibition Word on the street is that Obama's choice for surgeon general is CNN medical journalist Sanjay Gupta, which is an interesting twist on an otherwise irrelevant cabinet position. The criticism of him on his Wikipedia page ain't too shabby – he's angered The Nation over his healthcare policy coverage and pissed off Michael Moore in his criticism of Sicko. But reading this article that he wrote for Time in 2006 on marijuana legalization makes me doubt the man's competence. Despite the fact that I know he's not an expert on marijuana, either scientifi…

Author: Andrew Korner Date: 18th January 2009 Source: Queensland Times Copyright: 2009 Link: http://www.qt.com.au/story/2009/01/18/mari...ils-to-impress/ Marijuana lesson fails to impress WE'RE all familiar with the idea of growing and smoking your own marijuana for medicinal purposes, but what is the justice system's take on people who grow for educational purposes? After being caught with a 1m tall marijuana plant in his back yard, Tallegalla man Trevor Leslie Walters told police he grew the plant to teach his adult son a lesson about the beauty of naturally grown green stuff. It seemed the 54-year-old pensioner, who puffs to relieve chronic pain in his back a…

Good news from italy...not too much but better tha nothing http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/en..._114319935.html (ANSA) - Rome, January 14 - Italy's top court caused a flap on Wednesday when it said it was OK to grow marijuana as long as people didn't let it get big enough to have any of the drug in it yet. Overturning the conviction of a Marche man caught with 23 small plants in 2003, the Cassation Court said police should only step in when there was a concrete threat. Politicians pounced on the verdict, with Isabella Bertolini of the ruling People of Freedom (PdL) party saying: ''The Cassation judges really seem to be living on another planet. The next t…

THE Kings Cross safe injecting centre made no difference at all to overdose death rates in its local area in its first five years of operation. Statistics show death rates from drug overdose in the area around the injecting room are no less than in other areas across NSW. The findings into the $2.5 million-a-year facility are contained in an unreported independent evaluation that studied autopsy rates. The report assessed overdose deaths from heroin, morphine and other opioids in those postcodes - 2010 and 2011 - near the injecting centre and concluded that deaths rates fell at the same rate they did elsewhere in NSW. The most likely conclusion is that the falls w…

Cannabis Protest London: Date set 12 January 2009 PR Cannazine http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/content/view/807/27/ Jim (Pinky) Starr is the founder of www.protestlondon.co.uk , and someone who is a self-confessed medicinal user of cannabis. But try as he may, Jim Starr has failed to find out why he and other cannabis users deserve 5 years in prison for smoking cannabis and can face up to 14 years in prison now, just for sharing a spliff! Pinky is unable to sit back and relax after already calling protests against the government in 2008 to give medicinal and recreation users the right to use cannabis without the fear of prosecution. If the mountain won't come to Moha…

Cannabis users will escape with £80 fixed penalty fine Mathew Hickley 14 January 2009 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11...nalty-fine.html Drug users caught with cannabis will be given £80 on-the-spot fines and will not get a criminal record or have to appear in court under government plans. The use of controversial fixed penalty fines - originally created to deal with minor 'nuisance' offences - is being expanded to take in 21 new crimes. These include stealing petrol from a filling station, making threats to destroy property and drunken and yobbish behaviour on trains. Magistrates attacked the plans at a crisis meeting with Justice Secretar…

One More Chance for Religious Marijuana Jacob Sullum 13 January 2009 Reason Magazine http://reason.com/blog/show/131044.html Last week the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by a man who argues that his conviction on marijuana charges violated a state law protecting religious freedom. Daniel Hardesty, a member of the cannabis-centered Church of Cognizance, was arrested in 2005. His religious freedom argument was rejected at trial and by the Arizona Court of Appeal, but now he will get one more chance. Arizona's Free Exercise of Religion Act allows the state to impose a substantial burden on the exercise of religion only if it is "the least restrictive means"…

Man banned from leaving home at night 13/01/2009 The Press and Journal http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.a...990651?UserKey= AN ELGIN drug dealer will have to stay in his house overnight for the next 10 weeks after being convicted of supplying almost 10oz of cannabis resin. Michael Stanford, 25, of 4 School Brae Place, appeared at Elgin Sheriff Court for sentence after pleading guilty during a court appearance last month. He had been charged with being concerned in the supply of cannabis resin and possession of the drug at his address between August 1 and November 25 last year. Fiscal depute Shona Duncan had previously told the court that police were acting…

Pain relief dope crop costs paraplegic 12 January 2009 http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4816320a12855.html A man who became a paraplegic after a logging accident 10 years ago turned to cannabis for pain relief because he did not like the effects of his prescribed medication. But that has landed 48-year-old Graham Coote in Tauranga District Court on a charge of cultivating the class C drug and cost him a $600 fine. "Regrettably the law does not allow that," Judge Christopher Harding told the wheelchair-bound man who had to sit alongside the dock. "Any sympathy I might have has to be put aside." However, Coote was entitled to be dealt with as a first time drug offende…