Nine senior engineering students at the University of Colorado are teaming with a Boulder-based Surna to design the company's new hybrid building for pot growers. Surna engineers equipment for controlled environments with a focus on the marijuana industry. The student team is helping with its newest product: a climate-controlled building that is a mix of an indoor grow operation and a greenhouse. The design includes a clear ceiling over an indoor grow. "It is sunlit - no one disputes that plants grow best under sunlight," Surna CEO Stephen Keen said. It will result in significant energy savings by redistributing heat and recycling water. [continues 67 words]
Look Back to Alcohol Prohibition for Understanding of Why Taboos about drugs are lying shattered across the U.S., like broken debris after a party. But even as some states have begun to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, there is an argument that is making some Americans hesitate. They ask: Aren't many drugs, even pot, much more potent today than they were in the 1960s, when the boomers formed their views on drug use? Hasn't cannabis morphed into super skunk? Aren't people who used legal painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet sliding into heroin addiction - suggesting that legally accessible drugs are a slippery slope toward the abuse of harder drugs? [continues 608 words]
Santa Rosa took another step toward becoming the center of the North Coast's commercial medical marijuana industry Tuesday when the City Council pushed forward a plan to regulate cultivation instead of banning it. Following the advice of its subcommittee, the council rejected an outright ban and instead approved a plan to temporarily allow large-scale marijuana cultivation in at least three nonresidential zoning districts with special permits approved by the Planning Commission. The 7-0 vote was wildly applauded by a chamber filled with people who said they were grateful for the chance to conduct their underground business legally. [continues 792 words]
Not for kids If you're under 18, don't get caught with marijuana paraphernalia in Colorado Springs. You could face harsher punishment here than anywhere else in the state. On Tuesday, City Council adopted an ordinance that imposes a maximum fine of $500 on minors found in possession of paraphernalia, broadly defined to include "equipment, products or materials of any kind which are used, intended for use or designed for use in propagating, manufacturing, compounding, converting, production, processing, preparing, testing, analyzing, packaging, repackaging, inhaling or otherwise introducing marijuana into the human body." The new local law reiterates a state law passed in 2014, but with added teeth at the recommendation of local law enforcement, prosecutors and the municipal court. [continues 465 words]
Colorado Cities High on Benefits of Taxing Marijuana; Proceeds Go to Infrastructure, Substance-Abuse Programs The gym rats who join the still-under-construction recreation centre in central Denver will owe their workouts to weed smokers. In Pueblo County, south of Denver, students will soon be able to walk to school on a sidewalk paid for by marijuana tax revenue, or apply to the world's first cannabis-funded scholarship program. "We're taking dollars that were previously going to drug cartels in Mexico and using them to provide opportunity and education to the next generation," says Pueblo county commissioner Sal Pace. [continues 616 words]
Taboos about drugs are lying shattered across the U.S., like broken debris after a party. But even as some states have begun to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, there is an argument that is making some Americans hesitate. They ask: Aren't many drugs, even pot, much more potent today than they were in the 1960s, when the boomers formed their views on drug use? Hasn't cannabis morphed into super skunk? Aren't people who used legal painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet sliding into heroin addiction - suggesting that legally accessible drugs are a slippery slope toward the abuse of harder drugs? [continues 611 words]
What Toronto can learn from Colorado's taxation of pot sales The gym rats who join the still-under-construction recreation centre in central Denver, Colo., will owe their workouts to weed smokers. In Pueblo County, south of Denver, students will soon be able to walk to school on a sidewalk paid for by marijuana tax revenue, or apply to the world's first cannabis-funded scholarship program. "We're taking dollars that were previously going to drug cartels in Mexico and using them to provide opportunity and education to the next generation," says Pueblo County Commissioner Sal Pace. [continues 616 words]
Mexico City - ON the morning of Jan. 2, a team of hired killers set off for the home of 33-year-old Gisela Mota, who only hours before had been sworn in as the first female mayor of Temixco, a sleepy spa town an hour from Mexico City. Ms. Mota was still in her pajamas as the men approached her parents' breezeblock house. She was in the bedroom, but most of her family was in the front room, cooing over a newborn baby. As the family prepared a milk bottle, the assassins smashed the door open. Amid the commotion, Ms. Mota came out of her bedroom and said firmly, "I am Gisela." In front of her terrified family, the men beat Ms. Mota and shot her several times, killing her. [continues 1708 words]
Taboos about drugs are lying shattered across the U.S ., like broken debris after a party. But even as some states have begun to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, there is an argument that is making some Americans hesitate. They ask: Aren't many drugs, even pot, much more potent today than they were in the 1960s, when the boomers formed their views on drug use? Hasn't cannabis morphed into super skunk? Aren't people who used legal painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet sliding into heroin addiction - suggesting that legally accessible drugs are a slippery slope toward the abuse of harder drugs? [continues 610 words]
Last week, Sean Parker made an honest issue out of cannabis legalization. The former Napster and Facebook whiz kid (and current philanthropic billionaire) plunked down $500,000 towards the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, a legalization measure vying for the Nov. 2016 ballot. The check was a long-awaited confirmation: It had been known as the "Parker Initiative," despite no material support from Parker until last week - and only tepid verbal approval. Along with $250,000 donations from a political action committee controlled by WeedMaps - the dispensary-finding website that serves as the "Google Maps for Pot" - and from legalization veterans Marijuana Policy Project and the Drug Policy Alliance, to whom much of the credit for legalizing in Washington, Colorado, and Oregon are due, Parker's half-million is the biggest donation to the campaign committee called "Californians to Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana While Protecting Children." [continues 765 words]
In November, Arizona voters will likely have the opportunity to decide whether marijuana should be regulated like alcohol in the state. With this vote on the horizon, it is time to seriously consider the implications of regulating marijuana. As a parent of five children and educator in Arizona for 25 years, my natural inclination is to wonder what impact it might have on young people in our state. While opponents of the proposed initiative claim it will be disastrous, the evidence suggests otherwise. [continues 575 words]
AUBURN, Maine (AP) - After years of trying to keep marijuana out of schools, educators across the country are grappling with how to administer cannabis to students with prescriptions for it. Medical marijuana has been legal in some states for two decades but school districts and lawmakers are only now starting to grapple with thorny issues about student use of a drug still illegal under federal law. "School districts are trying to find their way and navigate this landscape as laws develop and social norms change," said Francisco Negron, general counsel of the National School Boards Association. "This is a situation in which the changing social norms are ahead of the existing operational structure." [continues 550 words]
WASHINGTON - When Congress in effect lifted the federal ban on medical marijuana just over a year ago, Californians drove the change, which was tucked into a spending package by a liberal congressman and a conservative colleague. A year later, marijuana legalization advocates are conflicted over how big a victory the congressional vote, which was repeated last month, has turned out to be. "The number of raids has dropped substantially, though not completely," across the country, said Mike Liszewski, government affairs director for Americans for Safe Access, a medical-marijuana advocacy group. A federal court ruling this past fall, if it is upheld, would limit federal agents from targeting all but operations that are clearly flouting state law, he said. [continues 526 words]
A disgraceful, unjust chapter in Riverside County law enforcement may be behind us. For the second consecutive year, the Sheriff's Department has not engaged in undercover drug stings in Riverside County schools, a welcomed development given how frivolous and even abusive such efforts have been. From 2010 to 2013, the department placed undercover deputies at multiple high schools in the county. Posing as students, the deputies attempted to buy drugs to set the stage for mass arrests of teenagers, presumably for their own good, or something like that. [continues 315 words]
Silicon Valley Financiers Investing in Marijuana Apps, Services Venture Capitalists Get Behind Efforts to Legalize Recreational Pot Use Cannabis Startups Attracting Top Talent From Technology, Finance Sectors Henderson, Nev. - Isaac Dietrich was smoking marijuana at his best friend's college apartment a few years ago when an entrepreneurial vision burst forth as heady as the most potent strains of Head Cheese or Ghost Train Haze. "We had an epiphany," he said. "Grandma doesn't want to see me taking bong rips on Facebook. So we decided we needed a place where people could post about it." [continues 2383 words]
A Year After Congress Decided to End the War on Medical Pot, Federal Raids Continue in California. WASHINGTON - When Congress in effect lifted the federal ban on medical marijuana just over a year ago, Californians drove the landmark change, which was tucked into a sprawling spending package by a liberal lawmaker from the Monterey Peninsula and his conservative colleague from Orange County. A year later, marijuana legalization advocates are conflicted over how big a victory the congressional vote, which was repeated last month, has turned out to be. [continues 1017 words]
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - Ryan never imagined he would one day be a snitch. The soft-spoken University of Alabama student was watching a movie with a couple of friends at his off-campus house in Tuscaloosa one evening in late 2012 when a team of plainclothes West Alabama Narcotics Task Force officers knocked on his door. They were there to serve a warrant to search his home, as he had been outed as a drug dealer by a friend and fellow UA student the task force had "turned" and used as a confidential informant. Little did Ryan know, he would soon be turning on his own friends at the university. [continues 1517 words]
Blowing smoke Professor Herb Hill is designing a marijuana breath test to help police detect stoned drivers. Hill, who teaches chemistry at Washington State University, found out how tricky it can be to identify stoned drivers from a colleague in political science. "I said, 'Why don't we have a Breathalyzer for that?' He said none exists," Hill told NPR. "I said, 'We can probably make one.'" NPR reports preliminary testing has proven the basic concept: Hill's prototype can detect THC. But it's far from mass implementation. The device needs to be calibrated against blood tests to figure what it will read when a driver is legally intoxicated. Further adjustments will account for "gender, race, body types and level of use," according to the report. [continues 318 words]
The Novelty and Stigma of Marijuana Continue to Erode After Legalization Like countless commuters in Denver's urban core, Marty Otanez can't help but smell the pot smoke as he rides to work along the Cherry Creek bike path downtown. "A couple years ago it was only under the bridge at Colfax and Speer," Otanez said of the clouds emanating from public tokers. "Now it's pretty much every 100 meters." Increased pot smoke swirling around city streets and parks is one of the most recognizable effects of Amendment 64 - which legalized the recreational use and sale of marijuana in Colorado - particularly since public consumption remains illegal. [continues 930 words]
Two years after recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado, school officials still don't know if more kids are using or bringing the drug to schools. Educators say not much has changed since legalization, and the data tracking drug use, when available, are unlikely to have a big impact. But schools are encouraged by grants - funded by a portion of the state's marijuana tax revenue - that provide more health professionals in schools to support drug education and prevention programs. "Marijuana use has been a big issue for a long time. It's nothing new. Students have been able to find a variety of substances that aren't legal for them for some time now," said John Simmons, executive director of student services for Denver Public Schools. "But we have more in our bag of tricks now." [continues 862 words]
