PHOENIX - Medical marijuana patients whose drugs are taken by police are entitled to get it back, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled. In a brief order, the justices rejected arguments by prosecutors that the drug is strictly regulated by the federal government, leaving police legally powerless to turn marijuana over to anyone else. They gave no reason for their ruling. The order most immediately affects Valerie Okun, whose drugs were taken from her nearly two years ago on Interstate 8 near Yuma. While she was never prosecuted - she has a valid medical marijuana card from California - sheriff's deputies refused to return the drugs. [continues 416 words]
A Detroit police officer is accused of felony involuntary manslaughter and gross negligence in the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. In testimony Wednesday, Sgt. Anthony Potts recalled being outside Aiyana Stanley-Jones's the home watching the upstairs balcony as members of the Special Response Team raided the two-unit dwelling looking for a homicide suspect on May 16, 2010. A flash-bang grenade went off, and later, he heard a "pop" and suspected the entry team had shot a dog inside the home with an MP5 submachine gun, Potts said. [continues 603 words]
Media Blitz Helped Get Arizonan Freed After spending more than a week in a Mexican jail facing drug-smuggling accusations, the woman who had become the center of a social-media and news-media storm returned home to metro Phoenix even as her case turned into a political lightning rod. Early Friday morning, she and her family crossed the border into Arizona. There, by day's end, a congressman had called for an investigation into the case, suggesting someone planted the 12 pounds of pot that was found under the woman's seat on a Mexican bus, and a Mexico governor had apologized for the incident. [continues 1310 words]
A Mormon mother from Goodyear whose detention in a Mexico jail on suspicion of drug smuggling made international headlines, inspired a "Free Yanira" hashtag on Twitter and won the attention of politicians on both sides of the border was freed by a judge late Thursday after spending nine days in jail. Family members said a surveillance video shown during a court hearing Thursday helped prove that Yanira Maldonado was not trying to smuggle bundles of marijuana as had been alleged by Mexican federal authorities last week. [continues 744 words]
Her Lawyer Claims She Was Framed PHOENIX (AP) - An Arizona mother of seven accused of trying to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. had a court hearing Wednesday where her lawyer pushed for her release from a Mexico prison, saying she was set up. In an interview with The Associated Press after the hearing, lawyer Jose Francisco Benitez Paz expressed optimism that he had proven the charges against Yanira Maldonado were baseless and that the 42-year-old could be released by Friday. [continues 398 words]
Today, we're going to play You Be the Judge. You are only competing against The Honourable Martel Popescul, chief justice of Saskatchewan's Court of Queen's Bench, who presided over the trial. The following details are from his written judgment, issued last week: The case begins in the fall of 2010 with a young woman driving alone in her sister's 2002 Acura from Calgary to Winnipeg. Near Swift Current on Highway 1, she is seen by a patrolling RCMP officer to be using a handheld cellphone. She stops promptly when the red and blue lights come on behind her. [continues 592 words]
The Cathy Jordan Medical Cannabis Act will come before Florida legislators in 2013 in honor of a wheelchair-bound Parrish woman who has fought for the past 16 years for the legalization of medical cannabis in Florida. But Cathy Jordan's celebrity in the area of medical cannabis, including her conviction that the herb has helped her battle her Lou Gehrig's disease, does not insulate her from existing marijuana laws. Jordan's husband, Robert, told the Bradenton Herald that his Parrish home in Beck Estates on 98th Avenue in Parrish was raided shortly after 2 p.m. Monday by deputies and detectives with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office drug intervention unit who wore ski masks. [continues 525 words]
[name redacted] was scheduled to have an operation on her hip this week. Instead, the 79-year-old southeast Atlanta woman sits in the Fulton County jail after police say they discovered more than 9 pounds of marijuana in her home last week. "I can't believe that she's over 60," neighbor Jennifer Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. "Let alone that she (might be) doing that kind of stuff. This is too much." The arrest warrant states that [name redacted] was spotted Thursday evening selling more than 8 ounces of pot - a felony - in Buckhead. [end]
OROVILLE - A judge has declined to take a woman facing marijuana charges into custody after she was arrested in a new case Tuesday. Daisy Jean Bram was arrested with Jayme Jeff Walsh at their Red Bluff residence Tuesday on suspicion of cultivating marijuana, possessing it for sale and child endangerment. Their three young sons - Thor, Zeus and Invictus - were removed and placed into protective custody. Bram was able to post bail in Tehama County, but Walsh was in custody Thursday. Butte County deputy district attorney Jeff Greeson asked Superior Court Judge James Reilley on Thursday to remand Bram into custody for violating the terms of her release in two pending local cases. [continues 562 words]
Court: Yuma Official Must Give Back Medical Marijuana Seized in 2011 The Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled that the Yuma County Sheriff's Office must give back marijuana that was seized from a California woman who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes. Valerie Okun was stopped in 2011 at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Yuma. Authorities seized marijuana and other contraband from her car. She was cited for violating Arizona drug laws and the case was turned over to Yuma County officials. The charges were dismissed after she showed she was authorized to possess marijuana under California law. [continues 277 words]
SASKATOON - A grieving Saskatoon mother wants the community to join her in demanding the government help parents protect their teenage children from lethal drug addictions. Chantaey Katchmar was 16 when she died from an overdose last July. Her mother, Carla Fenton Katchmar, wonders why the law gives teens the right to refuse treatment that could save their lives when their adolescent brains haven't finished developing and they're incapacitated by a physical disease that's overtaken their rational decision making. [continues 334 words]
Re: 'Marijuana busts in Northumberland spark online debate' by Crystal Crimi, www.northumberlandnews.com/ "For the record, I do not support marijuana. No argument presented, no matter how convincing it may seem, will ever change that. Growing up just a stone's throw from Northumberland in Orono provided enough proof of the drug's dark side to etch those feelings in stone." -- Crystal Crimi I read this article and all I could do was shake my head. Shame on you and your ignorance when you have the power to teach and educate, instead you make the statement above. [continues 296 words]
Re: More Harm Than Good?, Meghan MacIver, Nov. 28. Atira Women's Resource Society is feminist identified, works within an anti-oppression framework and applies harm reduction principles in our day-to-day practice. With the possible exception of our feminist identity, these principles - anti-oppression and harm reduction - are widely embraced in our kind of work and are not unique to Atira. We reject the notion that the consequences of being assaulted or raped rests inside women's heads, to be "fixed" by professionals. We believe women with lived experience and women who reflect the diversity of the women who live with us are best suited to support women victims of violence. We do not refer to our women as "clients." [continues 237 words]
Society Hopes to Build, Run Home for Addicts at Murdo Fraser Park A Vancouver-based non-profit is proposing to build a nine-bed women's addiction recovery house for the North Shore. The Turning Point Recovery Society of B.C. held an information meeting for residents living near the site of the proposed house at the very north tip of Lloyd Ave, past Highway 1 on Monday night. Turning Point, which has run four other recovery houses in Richmond and Vancouver for the last 30 years, is hoping to build and finance the home on land it will lease from the District of North Vancouver, according to Coun. Doug MacKay-Dunn chairman of the North Shore Substance Abuse Working Group. [continues 447 words]
A 10-year-old girl was arrested Tuesday after bringing allegedly marijuana to Evans International Elementary School. El Paso County Sheriff's deputies escorted the girl from Evans in handcuffs after getting the call from Falcon District 49 about 2:30 p.m. She was later released to a parent. The girl apparently got the pot from a relative with a medical marijuana card, Sgt. Joe Roybal of the Sheriff's Office said. According to Roybal, less than an ounce of marijuana was allegedly found on the girl who was "showing it to fellow students." [continues 114 words]
Lawsuit Filed Against Shasta County A woman who alleged earlier this year that deputies destroyed more than 200 legally grown marijuana plants on her Round Mountain property is now suing Shasta County. Esmeralda Sanchez Garcia alleges her civil rights were violated between August and October 2011 when deputies with the Shasta County Sheriff's Office and other county employees searched her property without warrants and then destroyed 203 plants, as well as unprocessed and processed marijuana, that she said were for medical use for her and several other patients. [continues 459 words]
A warrant to search a house for drugs resulted in a 29-year-old woman being convicted in the Whanganui District Court for administering cannabis through her breast milk to her 3-month-old baby. It is the first time in New Zealand anyone has been charged with and convicted of administering a class C controlled drug, namely cannabis, to a person under the age of 18 years. The search involved a police team and the armed offenders squad. The woman was convicted in the Whanganui District Court last week, after pleading guilty. [continues 356 words]
WATERLOO - A Georgetown mother who lost her only child to drug addiction urged people at a forum Wednesday to lobby hard to increase the availability of a life-saving drug that prevents fatal overdoses. Betty-Lou Kristy told about 100 people attending a forum on overdose prevention that her son, Pete Beattie, would be alive today if he had been given a drug named naloxone - the generic form of the brand-name drug Narcan - which is essentially an antidote used only by doctors and paramedics to revive people from an opioid overdose. [continues 458 words]
New laws to regulate "legal highs" are being welcomed by a Nelson woman who says her son is addicted to a synthetic cannabis product. The laws, announced by Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne yesterday, will see people fined $300 for possessing banned party pills, and dairies barred from selling them. Manufacturers will have to pay a $200,000 application fee and testing costs of up to $2 million to have the substance passed as safe for sale by a regulatory watchdog. [continues 758 words]
