Hingham - Town Clerk Eileen McCracken's job duties have expanded. She is now the collector of marijuana possession fees. "It's like a parking fee," one selectman noted at a recent meeting. "We've had violations already," McCracken said. "I have four citations on record so far, but nobody has stepped forward to pay them yet." The fine must be paid within a certain timeframe. After that, McCracken notifies the Hingham Police Department. During the November election, Hingham voters voted "yes" to decriminalizing marijuana use, 8,101 to 5,150. [continues 189 words]
Hingham - I don't worry about conservative or liberal labels. In the last two months I've ideas from the far left and from the far right. Doctrinaire people bore me. Here comes my Libertarian side. Some, perhaps most Libertarian positions are right leaning; others are quite left. They'd like government completely out of almost all regulation of business and education funding, but they also want "the state" out of our personal lives. It's the later position that resonates with me. [continues 1072 words]
Hingham - Hingham High School and the Hingham Police Department are two institutions with very different stated purposes. The goal of the High School is to educate and enlighten the young minds of our town. The goal of the Police Department is to find and arrest criminals. These two goals could not be more disparate. So then why, however, are the Hingham High School administration and the Police Department becoming so cozy with one another in recent years? If a student at HHS is arrested, or even picked up for any reason by the Hingham Police, the school is normally notified. In this manner, many students each year receive serious punishments from the school administration, without doing a single thing at the school itself. [continues 474 words]
I don't know about you but if I were a narc I'd dump the badge and invest my IRA in Acapulco Gold, Jamaica Ganja or Big Sur Holy Weed. I don't know if it is worth the effort fighting "reefer madness" anymore. Now, don't confuse me with a fan of marijuana. I haven't had a cigarette of any shape, form, medical quality or condition of legality since May 17, 1964, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when I got on a Fifth Avenue bus in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it seems like every time the Good Guys get a break, like the Supreme Court giving permission for the Feds to overrule the state laws on medicinal pot, the Bad Guys come up with a game-tying touchdown of their own. I was reading last week where Federals narcs knocked over a storefront medical research center in Cool, Calif., and arrested attorney Dale Schafer, 50, and his wife, Marion Fry, 48, on charges of growing and distributing marijuana. California was one of those states where folks with glaucoma were allowed to puff away on the weed legally on the assumption it was good for you. Of course, anything that is good for you immediately comes under government suspicion. "They are charged with violating the old marijuana laws, which are now back in effect, and I'm hoping that the jury will see that Dr. Fry was acting as a physician," said their attorney, Laurence Lichter, But that's not all, as the TV pitchmen like to say. On the same page in USA Today was a report that Canadians now have access to a new drug called Sativex, which is derived from the marijuana plant and which you spray in your mouth rather than smoke. [continues 250 words]
