Hemp Facts

How the Left can Stop Eating Itself

2018-11-22T12:29:00.002-10:00

“The elections of 2018 and 2020
will be vital in testing how far the
electoral system has deteriorated.”

"It is absolutely essential for not only moral but tactical reasons to internalize this point: There are people for whom our democracy has never worked, because our democracy was designed to not work for them. Any resistance movement that stands any chance whatsoever of gaining traction among America’s critical non-white and non-male demographics must take this basic fact into consideration before going any further.

The bottom line here is that we are at a time in American history where the threat of actual, full-blown fascism is too great to ignore. There are many people in our society who don’t have the luxury to give up, and the rest of us owe it to them, and ourselves, to try to find a way to come together and use all this righteous anger productively. At the very least, when history asks us “What did you do to help turn the tide of fascism?” we will be able to answer, “Something.” (Emily Pothast).

Read the full article on Medium.

A One Year Experiment in Microdosing with 'Shrooms

2018-10-15T10:12:00.003-10:00

In, How One Year of Microdosing Helped My Career, Relationships, and Happiness, Janet L. Chang describes her detailed one-year long experiment. The results won't surpriser dosers, even on microgram; but the normals may be in for an awakening. Read it now.

Halting Federal Intervention In State Marijuana Markets

2018-10-12T08:08:00.000-10:00

NORML reporting:

Legislation is pending before Congress, HR 331, to halt the federal government from taking civil forfeiture action against properties involved in state-sanctioned, medical marijuana-related conduct.

If approved, it would “amend the Controlled Substances Act ... to exempt real property from civil forfeiture due to medical marijuana-related conduct that is authorized by state law.

In the past, federal officials have sought to close dispensaries by threatening property owners with civil forfeiture proceedings. Under these proceedings, property may be seized if there exist evidence that it was involved in activities that violate federal law, regardless of whether those activities are licit under state law.

Presently, the Justice Department is barred from taking such actions because of the passage of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment. However, that protection will expire on December 8, 2017 unless renewed by Congress.

See how to take action to advance HR331 now, at NORML.

GOP Administration Seeks Public Comments On Marijuana Reclassification

2018-10-11T08:08:00.000-10:00

Do this part now! "FDA is 👉 accepting public comments 👈
on marijuana and the other substances currently under UN review via the web until October 31."

Forbes Magazine reporting:

The federal government wants your input on whether marijuana should be reclassified under global drug treaties to which the U.S. is a party.

Cannabis's international status means that nations who are signatories of drug control treaties are not supposed to legalize it, though that hasn't stopped Canada and Uruguay from doing so.

Public comments on marijuana's effects and legal status "will be considered in preparing a response from the United States to the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the abuse liability and diversion of these drugs," Leslie Kux, FDA's associate commissioner for policy, wrote in a Federal Register filing published on Wednesday. "WHO will use this information to consider whether to recommend that certain international restrictions be placed on these drugs."

For now, FDA is accepting public comments on marijuana and the other substances currently under UN review via the web until October 31. Interested parties can also submit written comments via mail.

Ultimately, WHO will make a scheduling recommendation for marijuana to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who oversaw the enactment of drug decriminalization as Portugal's prime minister, a policy he has touted in his current capacity.

Cannabis Cafes in Massachusetts? Inevitable. But not today.

2018-10-10T07:30:00.000-10:00

Boston.com reporting;

"This is going to be as normal as when you go to the Boston Common and see a movie and you can buy a drink. But it's not happening tomorrow."

After nearly two years of anticipation, the first recreational marijuana dispensaries in Massachusetts could be up and running within “weeks.” However, Bay State residents will have to take their purchases home; it’s going to be much longer before the opening of any businesses that allow customers to smoke or consume weed.

Urgent: Must Halt Fed Forfeiture Actions Against Marijuana Facilities

2018-09-29T09:09:00.000-10:00

This abuse of federal power has to be stopped right now and stopped for good.

HR 331 was referred to committee to halt the federal government from taking civil forfeiture action against properties involved in state-sanctioned, medical marijuana-related conduct. If approved, it would “amend the Controlled Substances Act ... to exempt real property from civil forfeiture due to medical marijuana-related conduct that is authorized by state law.” In the past, federal officials have sought to close dispensaries by threatening property owners with civil forfeiture proceedings. Under these proceedings, property may be seized if there exist evidence that it was involved in activities that violate federal law, regardless of whether those activities are licit under state law. (Source: NORML)

#DeleteFacebook Movement is Growing

2018-09-28T09:30:00.000-10:00

Some of the reasons why:

"I just couldn't take it anymore, so here's the other side of the story Brian Acton has been telling." @DavidMarcus

If you've had enough too, you can delete your Facebook account easily at DeleteFacebook.com

HighTime IPO Early Insider Opportunity

2018-09-28T06:30:00.000-10:00

Yes, you can now buy weed on Wall Street.

And let the robots do the driving.

"Buy Weed on Wall Street, and leave the driving to us." - Ur New Robot Overlords.

California Cannabis Equity Act Signed Into Law

2018-09-27T15:36:00.000-10:00

Groundbreaking News from HighTimes:

Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed the California Cannabis Equity Act (SB 1294) into law on Wednesday, authorizing the expenditure of $10 million in state funds to support so-called cannabis social equity programs. The programs assist members of communities most severely impacted by the War on Drugs that wish to enter California’s newly legal cannabis industry. The grants will be used to offer equity applicants and licensees business loans or grants, waivers for licensing fees, technical support, and other services.

Cities including Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco have already established social equity programs. State Senator Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Gardena who authored SB 1294, told the Compton Herald in June that the measure will help expand municipal equity efforts.

States Want Legal Weed, Congress Tone Deaf

2018-09-15T16:26:00.001-10:00

"The newest poll out of Michigan looks good for marijuana legalization, and Manhattan’s district attorney announces he’s dismissed more than 3,000 marijuana cases, but congressional leadership has yet again failed America’s veterans" (Marijuana.com).

Expert Pundit Systems in the Post-Automation Era

2018-09-13T14:09:00.000-10:00

In America, our eteemed elder experts and pundits, very often, aren't experts at all. This makes it very difficult to let those who have accidentally or intentionally become sociocultural zombies, to know that they've become zombies, or are dangerously close to that fate. It's an all too real struggle in each of our families, and it massively scales up in complexity and consequence in those weird extended tribal families known as both major political parties.

Bear with us for a sec, we're going to do our best to use words (the worst invention in history, perhaps) to communicate some of the ways that ideas which transcend language, interact with and shape the material world. Weird. Yeah. So buckle up, Dorothy, and let's take a brief vacation from Kansas as we try to understand what's going on in an exponentially transforming world, from a much broader context than downtown Wichita.

When faced with current reality, our poor political zombie cousins (with whom we share 99.9% DNA, even more than the 98.8% DNA with our chimpanzee cousins) and other fam often become irate, flying off in a rage of sudden anomie, a tailspin of lost identity, flailing about, blaming everyone but themselves, and rallying fellow zombies to their cause. "No zombies! We're not the zombies, you're the zombies! How dare you, you arrogant punks! Do you know how long I've been doing this job? Have you seen my impressive resume and impeccable pedigree?" All of which may be truly impressive, and yet, over time, zombosis has taken over. On the other side of the equation, the messenger, of course, gets their face eaten off for the high crime of telling the truth.

"I'm sorry grandma (or uncle, or Mr. President), the zombosis has taken over. You're a zombie. We still love you and want to help you, but if you fight this, it will only get worse for all involved." There's no winning in this situation. Zombies gonna' zombie, so we're just all in for the hell that follows. The only question for us is, how to cope? How do we maintain some semblence of compassion and serenity in the midst of the inevitable zombie apocalypse? Sorry, but you're on your own, this is not a question we'll attempt to answer definitively, here.

So, at risk of getting our face eaten by some readers, here's the news: we're all fighting the dire socio-political-cultural disease of zombosis. But how did this happen? How can we stop it? If you gave up learning 30 years ago, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago and have coasted on your esteemed credentials all that time, the zombosis is setting in. The longer you've considered yourself a completed product, a perfectly manfactured interchangeable part for the 1970's industrial capitalist machine (or worse, the 1950's edition), the deeper the disease has potentially set it. The longer we feel we've been right about our worldview, the harder it is to see that we've gradually become wrong; or at least, increasingly out of sync with exponentially changing conditions all around us, over the course of our lifetime.

Case in point: our perceptions about when the Post Automation Anthropocene "might arrive." Almost everyone under 30 knows they've grown up in this era. There's no "might." It's just called Thursday. Yet, the further one's perspective is situated on the timeline beyond age 30, the further out of touch they are likely to be with this reality, aka, current reality.

Let's talk about just one tiny sliver of this particular reality. The current state and trajectory of autonomous vehicles. We'll use an excerpt from this week's, September 13, 2018 Angellist weekly email, to ask "When will driverless vehicles take over, completely?"

Angellist Weekly Email:

In the last few months alone, Uber has deepened its dealings with Toyota, taking on $500 million more in investment to expand its self-driving tech to minivans. Waymo has partnered with Walmart to help riders get their groceries faster and more efficiently. And Tesla has said its new self-driving chip, promising to process video data 10x faster than its predecessor, is finally ready.

“Four years ago, I said there was no way I was going to see autonomous vehicles in my lifetime,” said Dennis Mooney, SVP at truckmaker Navistar International, in an interview. [Today,] “We could see autonomous vehicles on the road commercially within three years."(Emphasis added).

Poor Mr. Mooney, poster-zombie for the great elder industry non-expert. Zobmies just can't grok that that this type and pace of acceleration in technologically leveraged automation productivity has been the norm since the birth of computing. Like the acceleration due to gravity, it's not a speed, it's a derivative. A rate of change. This is what zombies just can't grok. When these zombies run everything from the local parent-teacher association to the local community college, to the local "jobs center," many people today find themselves living in a hellish world of absolutely idiotic norms and rules that haven't applied to the realities of everyday life, for decades, or even longer.

For many, it's like living in a world where everyone around you keeps reenacting Star Wars Episode IV, while everyone born after 1985 or so was given the script to Episode IX. This kind of world makes zero sense, all the characters are behaving as if Episode IV is the only episode in existence, yet here we are, standing in front of them, actively filming what may be the final installment in the franchise. No, really, this time. Regardless, there sits Obi-Wan, pontificating. Dude, you're a good Jedi, and thank you for all that you did, but um, there's absolutely nothing you can possibly teach us, anymore. We know far more about you than you know about yourself. Okay, yes, we can learn to be patient and listen to you read your famous lines, nonetheless. The one thing we can learn from you is patience and understanding that all you know is the script you were given. True. That's important.

Meanwhile, back here on Earth, in the United States, in 2018, the proportion of economic dividends from the aforementioned automation productivity gains that have accrued to labor -- whether in the form of income, decrease in hours worked, let alone anything even remotely resembling liberation from the drudgery of the 1950's world view -- has been very near zero when compared to the dividends accrued by capital. Particularly, when compared to the top one percent of the top one percent of wealth holders and income takers. Yes, takers, because all of those decades of unearned productivity-gain dividend income are not in any way attributable to individual merit, much less your own sole labor.

If those few facts happen to hit our dear reader like a Mack truck, consider this:

U.S. trucks carry more than 10 billion tons of freight each year, according to the American Trucking Association, and 43% of the expenses they incur track back to drivers. It's also an industry currently understaffed by about 50,000.

That, my friends, is the end of truck drivers. It's called demand pull, demand pressure, and it is just the lastest evidence of the vacuum that has been sucking civilization through a tiny wormhole the size of a straw, into dimensions that most of us chimps just can't wrap our minds around. Also, "analysts don't expect broad adoption of self-driving cars to hit until the 2030s (or for them to become "common" among passengers until the 2050s)." That's another why "it's easy to see why freight vehicles" will take off long before that. At the same time, remember our thesis here: the most impressive expertise demonstrated by many of these "analysts" is the capacity for underestimating the rate of change by orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, our 99% chimp DNA still likes to drive sports cars, so there's room for behavioral inertia with the adoption of autonomous cars; but the monotony of long-haul trucking, the risks, the accidents? Not so much excitement to keep that going. This is one reason why the karma of self-driving trucks is about to flatten the dogma of millions of industrial leaders and labor theorists when it comes to the immediacy of the economic impacts we're all facing, right now. Exhibit A:

TuSimple, an autonomous-tech startup, has been touting a breakthrough in the vision of its semi trucks this year — they're now able to "see" up to 1,000 meters ahead on the highway. No other autonomous system is known to have such long-sighted vision, and TuSimple is getting rewarded greatly for the algorithms that enable it. The company has raised more than $80 million from investors including Nvidia. Competitors like Waymo are testing autonomous semis, but so far don't seem to have the depth of vision TuSimple's team says it's unlocked.

Embark is a 2-year-old self-driving truck company whose founders think they can get to market first. After raising $30 million from Sequoia in July, bringing capital raised to nearly $50 million, its founders are focused on expanding their fleet of trucks from five to 100. Their trucks completed a coast-to-coast drive earlier this year.

Kodiak Robotics has its sights set on long-haul trucking. Led, in part, by ex-Uber, ex-Google Self-Driving Car Don Burnette, the company has raised $40 million to test AI-enabled trucks and hire engineers.

And potential contenders keep popping up, like Kache.ai, which has kept a low profile so far this year. The company has connections to ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, who was previously in the middle of the Uber v. Waymo lawsuit. Check out 30+ startups working on autonomous tech.

So there you have it, today's dose of zombosis treatment. There's no cure for zombosis except constant learning, so if this is the first dose you've received in awhile, the effects could include many of those mentioned at the top of this little prose pill. However, if you can find a way to not eat the faces off of absolutely everyone around you, there may be a way to recover from some of the worst symptoms. Depending on how deeply the zombosis has you, there could even be a complete healing. But not if you stop here. Only if you keep moving forward into the chaos and uncertainty that lies ahead, because the only safe and stable place for those with the worst cases of zombosis is to remain a zombie. Sadly, for many, a world of absolutely certainty and stability mean so much, that they are more than willing to accept that fate, rather than the fate of change.

We love you, forever unchanging stoic zombies, but we are not obliged to allow you to eat our faces so that you can feel comfortable with your choice. To use a tired cliché from the social darwinist zombie clan, you're just going to have to adapt or die. Oh, does that feel uncomfortable now that it's you who are incapable of adaptation? So sorry. Maybe you can find some bootstraps at the local thrift store to help you through that little personal crisis.

Natural resource more valuable than oil

2018-09-10T12:32:00.001-10:00

Valley Jesus: Chapter 4, Verse 20

2018-09-02T11:05:00.001-10:00

"I was at a bar the other night to watch a comedy show and everyone was pretty hammered. I started seeing everyone act differently,” he said.

Talmo also said that he noticed how childish people would act depending on how much they’d had to drink and he realized, “Wow, this is a lifestyle that I can’t do anymore.”

Talmo was a comic who never got on stage without a drink. Now he’s doing it with nothing in his hand except for water. Transitioning to a “dry” comic wasn’t easy — especially with cancer — because his anxiety became more amplified than ever before.

“In the beginning I was freaked out because it was anxiety on top of anxiety,” he said. But now he says his comedy is free flowing and fearless. “Really, what do you have to lose? If you’re fighting for your life, what do you have to lose on stage?”

Talmo said he now sees weed as a healthful alternative to drinking, particularly as he realized that with weed, he wasn’t going to end up with terrible hangovers and alcohol’s negative long-term effects. He also found that with marijuana, he’d wake up with his brain feeling more refreshed.

Talmo admits that he’s not the type of person who finds creativity while stoned. It really just helps him to feel relaxed. Through a lot of trial and error, such as eating an entire weed Rice Krispies treat followed by two weed-infused espresso beans, Talmo figured out that he does best stopping at 10 mg of THC."

Read the full story at Marijuana.com

Tunnel Vision. Kate Tempest. Let Them Eat Chaos.

2018-08-30T11:11:00.000-10:00

Tunnel Vision
Kate Tempest
Produced by Dan Carey
Album Let Them Eat Chaos
Lyrics Via Genius.com

[Verse 1]
Indigenous apocalypse, decimated forest, the Winter of our discontent’s upon us
Desolate apostles, left with Strongbow at the crossroads
We are nothing but an eating mouth, esophagus, colossal
We won’t stop until we’ve beaten down the planet into pellets
Before the interstellar mission to inflict more terror

It’s killing me, it’s killing me, it’s filling me, I’m vomiting, it’s still in me
Everything is fine really, silly me
Poor kids shot dead, poor kids locked up
Poor kids saying, “This is the future that you left us?”
Stopped up lunch meat, processed, punch from an unclean fat cat
Tasty, tasty poison
Carcinogenic, diabetic, asthmatic, epileptic, post-traumatic, bipolar and disaffected
Atomised, thinking we’re engaged when we’re pacified
Staring at the screen so we don’t have to see the planet die

[Hook]
What we gonna do to wake up?
We sleep so deep, it don’t matter how they shake us
If we can’t face it, we can’t escape it
But tonight the storm’s come

[Verse 2]
She’s screaming, she’s screaming
The drones turned her beautiful boy into a pile of bones
No body to bury, nobody is home
Running from war, the boat’s full, the boat’s sinking a mile off shore
No beds in the hospitals, our minds are against us
Imagine your daughter was gunned down defenceless on her way to school
There’d be uproar
But she’s collateral damage, it doesn’t matter
Now if our kids are fine, that’s enough for us
You can’t love into a vacuum, there’s got to be a limit
Welcome to the biggest crime that’s ever been committed
You think you and I are different kinds, you’re caught up in specifics
You and I apart are easier to limit
The illusion’s so complete it’s impossible to bring it into focus
Cinematic stock footage, you think people are locusts
Uniform men keep unleashing explosives

[Hook]
What we gonna do to wake up?
We sleep so deep, it don’t matter how they shake us
If we can’t face it, we can’t escape it
But tonight the storm’s come

[Verse 3]
Tunnel vision, tunnel vision
Work, drinks, heartbreak
You can’t face the past, the past’s a dark place
Can’t sleep, can’t wake, sitting in our boxes
Notching up our victories as other people’s losses
Another day, another chance to turn your face away from pain
Let’s get a takeaway
And meet me in the pub a little later, we’ll say the same things as ever
Life’s a waiting game
When we gonna see that life is happening?
And that every single body bleeding on its knees is an abomination
And every natural being is making communication
And we’re just sparks, tiny parts of a bigger constellation
We’re minuscule molecules that make up one body
You see the tragedy and pain of a person that you’ve never met
Is present in your nightmares, in your pull towards despair
And the sickness of the culture, and the sickness in our hearts
Is a sickness that’s inflicted by this distance that we share
Now, it was our bombs that started this war
And now it rages far away
So we dismiss all its victims as strangers
But they’re parents and children made dogs by the danger
Existence is futile, so we don’t engage
But it was our boats that sailed, killed, stole, and made frail
It was our boots that stamped
It was our courts that jailed
And it was our fuckin’ banks that got bailed
It was us who turned bleakly away
Looked back down at our nails and our wedding plans
In the face of a full-force gale, we said
“Well, it’s not up to us to make this place a better land
It’s not up to us to make this place a better land.”
Justice, justice, recompense, humility
Trust is, trust is something we will never see
Till love is unconditional
The myth of the individual has left us disconnected, lost, and pitiful
I’m out in the rain
It’s a cold night in London
And I’m screaming at my loved ones to wake up and love more
I’m pleading with my loved ones to wake up and love more

Sexy Flex Tantra Yoga. Plus Cannabis, Of Course.

2018-08-30T07:07:00.000-10:00

"This is Sexy Flex, in which women are encouraged to connect with their own sensuality, through tantric yoga and cannabis."

Read the Full Article at Leafly.

Legal Psilocybin by 2020

2018-08-29T10:10:00.000-10:00

"It’s even possible that psilocybin, like cannabis, will be legalized in certain states. That could happen as soon as 2020 here in Oregon."

Read the full article at Canna Law Blog.

Seniors Home Won’t Administer Medical Marijuana

2018-08-29T07:07:00.000-10:00

"A Niagara woman says the long-term care home where her grandfather lives is denying him pain relief by refusing to administer his medical marijuana."

Read the Full Article at Cannabis Culture.

When Truth isn't Truth, Legal Doesn't Mean Legal

2018-08-28T14:22:00.000-10:00

Time to vote in people who believe in both, humans. Your thoughts are literally creating your own reality. Don't like it? Fix your thinking, fix the world.

"A forklift operator with chronic pain who declined to take a drug test. A van driver hit by an uninsured motorist. A fast-food supervisor who slipped and fell on the job. All of these workers fired. And all were terminated because of cannabis—in states where the drug is legal." Read Full Article at Leafly

Stop the Drug War

2018-08-27T22:09:00.000-10:00

Source: StopTheDrugWar.Org

NY Gov Signs Opioid Bill, Vermont Dems Want Full Pot Legalization. An Arizona prosecutor gets challenged for trying to profit off small-time pot offenders, Oregon regulators slash the daily purchase amounts for medical marijuana patients, a Louisiana prisoner featured in the Chronicle years ago gets a break, and more.

If you're serious about stopping the drug war, go follow @StopTheDrugWar right now.

Fire Up the Phones for STATES ACT, Now!

2018-08-27T18:10:00.003-10:00

Source: Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

Tell Congress to pass the STATES Act NOW

It's time for Congress to pass legislation that establishes marijuana policy as a states' rights issue. If a state decides to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, there should be no interference from the federal government.

Although 29 states and the District of Columbia have approved laws to allow marijuana for either medical or adult use, federal law presents many challenges to marijuana businesses and regulators.

Bipartisan legislation introduced by Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) would protect states that legalize and regulate marijuana. The STATES Act is the most significant piece of marijuana-related legislation ever introduced in Congress.

Please click to contact your Senators and Representative today and tell them to pass the STATES ACT and allow states to make their own decisions on marijuana policy.

Colorado Makes History @DrugPolicyNews Press Teleconference Thurs Dec19 Noon ET

2013-12-18T09:11:00.000-10:00

Colorado Makes History When Marijuana Legalization Law Goes Into Effect on January 1
via Drug Policy Alliance Network

Colorado will make world history on January 1st when commercial sales of marijuana become legal for adults. New Year’s Day marks full implementation of Amendment 64, the Centennial State’s ballot initiative ending marijuana prohibition. Colorado and Washington both voted to tax and regulate marijuana in November 2012, and the Colorado law is the first to go into full effect. At the global level, Uruguay last week became the first country to adopt a marijuana legalization law.
How will the new laws work? Who can purchase marijuana where? What impact will marijuana legalization have on drug arrests? How much time and money will be saved in police and judicial resources? What impact have Colorado and Washington had on the marijuana legalization debate? What states and countries will be next to reform their marijuana laws?
Find out the answers to these and more questions when leading drug policy experts from Colorado and the nation participate in a teleconference on Thursday.

What: Press Teleconference.
When: Thursday, December 19th Noon. ET, 10 a.m. MT, 9 a.m. PT.
Location: Please contact Tony Newman for call-in information.

Who: Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy AllianceArt Way, Senior Drug Policy Manager in Colorado for the Drug Policy Alliance
Jack Finlaw, Chief Legal Counsel, Office of Colorado Governor John W. Hickenlooper

Moderator: Sharda Sekaran, Director of Communications for the Drug Policy Alliance

Contact: Tony Newman 646-335-5384 or Art Way 720-288-6924

Do the Math: Drug War Costs will never be fully recovered

2013-12-17T21:11:00.000-10:00

Counting the Costs:

Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000
Number of people arrested in 2012 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1.55 million
Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2012: 749,825
Number of those charged with marijuana law violations who were arrested for possession only: 658,231 (88 percent)
Number of Americans incarcerated in 2011 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,266,800 or 1 in every 99.1 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world
Fraction of people incarcerated for a drug offense in state prison that are black or Hispanic, although these groups use and sell drugs at similar rates as whites: 2/3
Number of states that allow the medical use of marijuana: 20 + District of Columbia
Estimated annual revenue that California would raise if it taxed and regulated the sale of marijuana: $1,400,000,000
Number of people killed in Mexico's drug war since 2006: 70,000+
Number of students who have lost federal financial aid eligibility because of a drug conviction: 200,000+
Number of people in the U.S. that died from an accidental drug overdose in 2009: 31,758
Tax revenue that drug legalization would yield annually, if currently-illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco: $46.7 billion

Legislation fuels momentum for wider legalization of marijuana, including United States and Europe

2013-12-17T17:42:00.002-10:00

Está ¡Uruguay! World's first (por eso, sanest) country legalizes marijuana

"... legislation is expected to fuel momentum for wider legalization of marijuana elsewhere, including the United States and in Europe. Decriminalization of all drug possession by Portugal in 2001 is held up as a success for reducing drug violence while not increasing drug use.

"This development in Uruguay is of historic significance," said Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, a leading sponsor of drug policy reform partially funded by Soros through his Open Society Foundation.

"Uruguay is presenting an innovative model for cannabis that will better protect public health and public safety than does the prohibitionist approach," Nadelmann said (NBCNews via Drug Policy Alliance).

Journalism's Smokin' New Job: Pothead in Chief

2013-12-17T17:22:00.004-10:00

"On January 1st, Colorado will be the first state to allow recreational marijuana use. To cover the story The Denver Post has hired a full-time pot editor to run a dedicated pot page. Ricardo Baca is his name and despite being a longtime, experienced journalist, he's spent the last few weeks enduring joke after joke about his new position. Bob talks with Baca about the new gig and all the jokes" (OnTheMedia).

Uruguay: first nation to legalize marijuana once and for all; cada día surgen más voces a favor de la legalización de la marihuana

2013-12-10T11:05:00.000-10:00

"On Tuesday, the Uruguayan Senate votes on whether the country will become the first in the world to legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of cannabis."

Jose Mujico, el president de Uruguay

"Este martes el Senado uruguayo vota si el país se convertirá en el primero del mundo en regularizar el cultivo, venta y consumo de cannabis."