TORONTO — The RCMP says a massive shipment of hash, disguised as “specially formulated” chocolate drink flavouring and hidden in hollowed-out particle board before being shipped out of Afghanistan for Toronto, likely would have seen profits returned to the troubled region to fund militants if not for an international police effort.

Five men — four Canadians and a Dutch national — were arrested in Toronto when they tried to pick up the 500 wood boards from the sea container. Another man was arrested earlier in the Republic of Tajikistan, where the load was first discovered before its wending, international journey.

To the shock of the men in Canada, police say, most of the expected cargo — 5.7 tonnes of hash, with an estimated street value of $69-million— had not even made it out of Asia.

After the load was discovered in the mountainous country of Tajikistan, one of the former Soviet republics that shares a border with Afghanistan, local police contacted the RCMP, starting a complicated international effort, said RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson.

Just 10 kilos of the drug, a sticky cannabis resin, were allowed to continue on its journey by rail through a dozen countries before being loaded onto a ship to Montreal where the sea container was loaded onto a flatbed truck for the drive to Toronto, police said.

Source:http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/13/six-tonne-afghanistan-hash-shipment-disguised-as-chocolate-drink-intercepted-en-route-to-canada/

Alcohol: Ancient Sumeria

Fans of alcohol are in good company; this is a drug that’s been in use since the dawn of human time—if carbon dating of jugs found in Jiahu, China to around 8,000 BC is to be believed. But it wasn’t until we settled into agricultural societies that the wine really got flowing. Written records from ancient Sumeria document the uses and quantity of the beer—called “kash”—that was brewed. They even indicate that Sumerians had regulated drinking places similar to modern-day bars. The booze, for its part, was considered worthy of offering to the gods, and even thought to have a civilizing effect: The Epic of Gilgameshmentions a wild man named Enkidu who was seduced to join civilization after he drank seven jugs of beer, “became expansive and sang with joy.” (A harlot was also, apparently, involved.)

Peyote: Mexico

Mescaline—the psychoactive ingredient in the peyote plant that’s native to Mexico and the Southwest US—has probably been used in religious ceremonies since 3780–3660 BC, according to carbon dating of dried buttons found in a cave on the Rio Grande in Texas. Written records began once Catholic Spanish conquerors arrived in Mexico and were alarmed by the practice of eating or drinking peyote during religious festivals. In an effort to discourage use, priests were in the habit of asking their new congregationalists to confess to having experienced the drug’s hallucinogenic effects, right after they asked “Have you eaten the flesh of man?” and “Do you suck the blood of others?”

Marijuana: Siberia

Think medical marijuana is a new phenomenon? Not exactly. Chinese emperor Shen Nung first recommended brewing the leaves into a tea to relieve the symptoms of menstrual cramps, rheumatism, gout, malaria and even—hilariously—absentmindedness back in 2737 BC. Scythians, a people that lived in Siberia around the 7th century BC, were more into the drug for the fun; they were known to throw marijuana seeds onto stones that were heated during funeral ceremonies, inhaling the fumes to become intoxicated. Russian archeologists began to suspect that both male and female Scythians smoked marijuana regularly for pleasure when they found primitive pot pipes in tombs in 1929.

Opium: Greece

Those Sumerians were really into their substances. In addition to brewing beer, they also cultivated the opium poppy, which they called “the joy plant.” The Sumerians passed on their knowledge of opium-induced joy to the Assyrians, who in turn passed it on to Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks. By the time of the Greek classical period, farmers on the island of Cyprus had invented harvesting knives of surgical quality to get the most out of the poppies, and extracts of the flower were a common additive to the poison hemlock cocktail used in executions. During this period, poppies were considered of such usefulness in inducing sleep and forgetfulness that they are often depicted as part of the clothing or possessions of three gods of the Greek pantheon: Hypnos (sleep), Nix (night), and Thanatos (death).

Coco: Peru

Early use of coca leaves resulted from a fortuitous correlation between optimal growing weather and the high altitudes in the South American Andes Mountains. From the reign of the Inca until the South American revolutionary wars, native laborers and soldiers chewed the leaves to increase alertness and oxygen intake, helping them fight, ferry goods or messages over long distances, or mine without requiring much food or rest. As one European visitor noted in later years, “Where Europeans would have halted and bivouacked, the ill-clad, barefooted Indians merely paused, for a short interval, to chew their Coca.”

Laudenum and Morphine: Great Britain/USA

The opium poppy may have been discovered in the Near East, but the processing of it into innocuous-seeming salts, injections and liquids was a product of the industrial revolution in the West. In the 1800s, white women in particular were fond of a liquid opium preparation called laudanum that was sold through mail order companies and at local apothecaries. This preparation was also a favorite of English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who may have been inspired to pen his poem Kubla Khan while in a laudanum-induced dream. After the US civil war, injured soldiers with morphine habits expanded the need for opium products, and opium-smoking dens started popping up in major cities like New York and San Francisco.

Cocaine: Austria

Once Coca was synthesized into cocaine and introduced to the world at large in the late 1800s, it found an unlikely proponent in the world’s most famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Even after attempting to cure a friend’s morphine habit by introducing him to the drug (the man died, addicted to both drugs, within seven years), Freud touted cocaine as a cure for everything from headaches to depression to sexual impotence. Not unexpectedly, he used quite a bit of the white lady himself, writing licentious letters to his fiancée containing such passages as: “When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you should see who is the stronger—a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough, or a big, wild man who has cocaine in his body… I am just now busy collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.”

Amphetamine: Germany

German scientist Lazar Edeleanu first synthesized amphetamine in 1887, and it became a useful cold remedy and diet pill throughout the world over the next 50 years. Once World War II broke out, however, amphetamine—along with injectable methamphetamine produced in Japan—became a weapon on a par with submarines and fighter planes. Thousands of soldiers on all sides of the conflict were issued drugs to keep them awake during all-night bombings, and Japanese kamikaze pilots used methamphetamine before every flight. The German blitzkreig, in particular, is well known for having been influenced by the use of meth among pilots. By the end of 1940, however, the German army had cut back substantially, having determined that the substance was incredibly addictive.

MDMA: USA

Though it was discovered in 1912 by a chemist working for Merck, not much was known about the psychoactive effects of MDMA until an eccentric chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesized it as part of a pet project at Dow Chemical in 1967. When Shulgin gave a small gift of the drug to a psychologist friend, it became the focus of therapeutic zeal in the psychology community, with one doctor even calling it “penicillin for the soul.” Soon after, MDMA popped up in the club dance scene in Dallas, and the DEA held hasty meetings to add the drug to the illegal schedule—fighting tooth and nail with psychologists all the way. Shulgin, meanwhile, wrote and published a book called PIHKAL, short for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved, which is still known worldwide as a club drug cookbook.

Benzodiazepines: New Jersey

While researching potential tranquilizers for Hoffman-LaRoche in New Jersey in the 1930s, Polish American scientist Leo Sternbach discovered the benzodiazepine that came to be known as Librium. Next came Valium and Klonopin—both of which were also discovered by Sternbach. Before long, the high anxiety culture of the mid-20th century led to increased use of benzos and thousands became addicted. Sternbach, meanwhile, continued his successful career, likely because he never developed an addiction to the drugs himself. “My wife doesn’t let me take [them],” he once told the New Yorker.

Source:http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2012/02/14/10-Most-Seductive-Drugs-And-Their-Fascinating-History

“The FREE MARC campaign wants the Canadian government to repatriate Marc Emery from the US federal prison system so he can serve his sentence in his home country of Canada. Marc Emery is a political prisoner, imprisoned for activism and funding the marijuana movement through marijuana seed sales.”

Who is Marc Emery?

Marc Emery is a Canadian businessman and political activist who owned and operated Cannabis Culture Magazine, Pot-TV, the BC Marijuana Party, and Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters (previously the BCMP Bookstore, and HEMP BC before that.)

He was also the world’s most famous marijuana seed retailer and the biggest financial supporter of the marijuana movement world-wide until the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Canadian law enforcement arrested him in Canada and shut down Marc Emery Direct Seeds in July 2005.

Marc is currently imprisoned in Yazoo City medium-security prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi after being extradited on May 20th, 2010 by the Canadian government. He was sentenced on September 10th in Seattle federal court to 5 years in prison for “distribution of marijuana” seeds, though the US Drug Enforcement Administration admitted it was actually for his political activism and financing the marijuana movement.

FACTS ABOUT MARC EMERY:

• Marc Emery is a Canadian citizen who never went to the USA as a seed seller.

• Marc Emery operated his seed business in Canada at all times, with no American branches or employees.

• Marc Emery declared his income from marijuana seed sales on his income tax, and paid over $580,000 to the Federal and Provincial governments from 1999 to 2005.

• Marc Emery is the leader of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, a registered political party that has regularly participated in elections.

• Marc Emery has never been arrested or convicted of manufacturing or distributing marijuana in Canada, as he only sold seeds.

• Marc Emery gave away all of the profits from his seed business to drug law reform lobbyists, political parties, global protests and rallies, court litigation, medical marijuana initiatives, drug rehabilitation clinics, and other legitimate legal activities and organizations.

• Marc Emery helped found the United States Marijuana Party, state-level political parties, and international political parties in countries such as Israel and New Zealand.

• Marc Emery has been known as a book seller and activist in Canada for 30 years, fighting against censorship laws and other social issues long before he became a drug law reform activist.

• Marc Emery has been a media figure for 20 years with regards to marijuana and drug law reform. He is very well-known to Canadian, American and international news media organizations.

• Marc Emery operated his business in full transparency and honesty since its inception in 1994, even sending his marijuana seed catalogue inside his magazine “Cannabis Culture” to each Member of Parliament in Canada every two months for years.

Marc openly ran “Marc Emery Direct Marijuana Seeds” from a store in downtown Vancouver and through mail-order from 1994 to 2005, with the goal to fund anti-prohibition and pro-marijuana activists and organizations across North America and the world.

Marc always paid all provincial and federal taxes on his income and made no secret to anyone of his seed-selling business. Marc was raided by police for selling seeds and bongs in 1996 and again in 1997 and 1998, but despite the seizure of his stock by police, the Canadian courts sentenced Emery only to fines and no jail time.

Canadian police then pressured the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to launch a cross-border attack against Marc. They arranged to have him charged under America’s much more severe laws against seeds.

Marc was arrested in Canada by American agents in 2005, and originally faced a minimum 30-year sentence in the US, with the possibility of life behind bars. After years of legal efforts, and ensuring his two co-accused received no prison time, Marc made a plea-bargain for a five-year sentence in the US. Marc had originally secured a deal with US officials to serve his five-year sentence in Canada, but the Conservative Government of Canada refused to allow this, and forced him to be extradited to the US.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration admitted on the day of Marc Emery’s arrest that his investigation and extradition were politically motivated, designed to target the marijuana legalization efforts and organizations that Emery spearheaded and financed for over a decade.
Here is the original text of DEA Administrator Karen Tandy’s statement released on July 29th, 2005 (also available in its original letterhead form by clicking here):

“Today’s DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group — is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General’s most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery’s illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.”

On May 10th, 2010, Marc was ordered extradited by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. He was taken to the USA on May 20th. Marc was forced to endure three weeks of complete solitary confinement for recording a “prison podcast” over the phone for release on the internet.

Ways you can help:

http://www.freemarc.ca/group/freemarcca/how-you-can-help

75 Ways you can help Marc Emery:

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/things-you-can-do-free-marc-emery

Go to their website for more info:

http://www.freemarc.ca/

Two Packs of Cigarettes is One Ounce of Tobacco — Now Think About Pot…

With so many initiatives going on the ballot in various states (Washington, Colorado) that “legalize” up to an ounce of marijuana at exorbitant prices and with all kinds of dumb restrictions it makes sense to ask the question. How much cannabis is an ounce anyway? So I broke up a couple of cigarettes and weighed them on my trusty scale and it turns out that an ounce is basically 2 packs. This kind of puts it all in perspective doesn’t it.

What if I told you that tobacco is legal but you can only possess up to two packs or it becomes a felony? Right. I can hear your response from here. So why do we accept that kind of hogwash when we’re talking about marijuana? Cigarettes in California cost about $7 dollars a pack so we are paying just under $15 dollars an ounce. This still generates huge profits and taxes because tobacco costs about $3 dollars a pound and even less overseas where most of it is grown. So why can’t we apply this economic structure to cannabis? That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Source:http://www.marijuana.org/post/16653738479/two-packs-of-cigarettes-is-one-ounce-of-tobacco-now

Tess Taylor – model, former reality star, and sister to Burglar Buncher Alexis Neiers; has entered rehab for a heroin addiction.

Sources close to Tess tell us, she entered the Pasadena Recovery Center last Sunday — after her felony drug possession arrest last month. We’re told the arrest was the primary catalyst behind her seeking treatment again.

Tess entered rehab for an opiate addiction one year ago — but quit after 30 days.

Sources tell us, her family had nearly given up on Tess after she pulled out of rehab last year — but when the reality star hit rock bottom after her most recent arrest … they helped usher her back into treatment.

As for how Tess plans to pay the massive medical bills — we’re told several family friends are pitching in … and she’s expecting a $20,000 check from Sofia Coppola within the month, which should alleviate some financial pressure.

The check is for Tess’ role as a consultant on the Burglar Bunch film Sofia is currently developing.

Andrea Neiers said “I hope Tess takes this opportunity to work on herself and become someone she will be proud of, and who can help other young people avoid making the same choices.”

Source: TMZ.com

Nas is great at a lot of things … rapping, feuding … but paying taxes isn’t one of them … and now he’s on the hook for another $339,000 he allegedly kept from Uncle Sam.

According to official documents obtained by TMZ, Nas never forked over $339,005.49 in federal income tax he owed for 2010 … and now the U.S. government has obtained a lien on his property.

Being a tax scofflaw is nothing new for Nas … according to public records, dude is also on the hook for more than $6 MILLION DOLLARS in back taxes from previous years.

Source:tmz.com

The Lakers returned from their road trip to beat the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday, but that wasn’t what had social media buzzing in L.A. late on Valentine’s Day. Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s ex-wife, attended her first game of the season at Staples Center, according to the Orange County Register’s Kevin Ding.

Just 61 days ago, Vanessa split up with the Lakers star, filing for divorce on December 16 in Orange County’s Superior Court of California, citing “irreconcilable differences.” She won $75 million and three mansions in a divorce settlement with the NBA star, according to the New York Post (via TMZ).

Right alongside Jeremy Lin, Kate Upton and Best Valentine’s Day, Vanessa Bryant was a trending topic on the microblogging site Twitter in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.

The fact that Vanessa Bryant, 29, witnessed her first game of the season on Valentine’s Day, apparently without the former couple’s children, is intriguing for romantics thinking reconciliation could be in the works. Fueling hopes and speculation is the fact that she waited outside the Lakers’ locker room after the game to see Kobe.

A photo of Vanessa (from the back) wearing red high heels, quickly made its way around Twitter. (See below.)

Source: http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/201202/kobe-bryant-gets-surprising-valentines-day-visitor

Mmm thanks to Hailmaryjane.com heres this amazing recipie for a munchie you’ll love!

What We’ll Need:

4 pieces (squares) Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate
1 stick of Cannabutter (113 grams)
1 cup Powdered Sugar
2 whole Eggs
2 whole Egg Yolks
6 Tablespoons Flour
2 cups Real Whipping Cream (seriously It’s So Much Better!)
2 Tablespoons Sugar

Makes 4 molten ganja cakes

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Spray 4 custard cups with Pam and place on cookie sheet.

Microwave chocolate and cannabutter in large bowl on high for about 1 minute, until butter is melted. whisk until chocolate is also melted.

Stir in sugar until well blended. Whisk in eggs and egg yolks. Stir in flour.

Divide between cups.

Bake 20-25 minutes until sides are firm and center is soft. Let stand 1 minute.

Combine sugar and heavy cream and whip until stiff.

Invert cakes on dishes and top with whipped cream.

ENJOY and tear that ass up!

Keep it green and O.V.E.R.G.R.O.W!!!

Deadmau5 must have been tipped off that Skrillex would be winning three awards, because he pulled quite the stunt down the red carpet. The DJ printed Skrillex’s number on the front of shirt with a quote underneath that said, “u mad bro?” Tweets made by Skrillex later confirmed that he wasn’t mad, and took the joke with stride. He said, “Haha @deadmau5 just wore my phone number on his fokin shirt on tv gotta retire this phone.” Apparently, Skrillex tried to forward all of the incoming calls to Deadmau5, but Deadmau5 had anticipated this and made sure Skrillex was unsuccessful.

This is the kind of entertainment that we should see more often during award season. Personally, I think it’s more clever than anything Gaga or Nicky Minaj try to shock us with! I think if either of them showed up somewhere looking normal, I’d be much more surprised.

Source: http://collegecandy.com/2012/02/13/deadmau5-pranks-skrillex-at-grammys/

Diddy was hospitalized this AM for an extreme migraine.

The mogul hosted a post-Grammy party at the Playboy Mansion Sunday night (below). After the party, Diddy went home and got a massive headache.

Diddy’s entourage became so concerned … they drove him to the UCLA emergency room — btw, the same place where Michael Jackson was pronounced dead.

Diddy was treated and is back at home … feeling a lot better. A Diddy source tells us … the migraine was unrelated to anything that went down at the Mansion.

Source: tmz.com