Puppies and Flowers

From the 'Chronic' article:

Salvia divinorum is a bright, leafy green plant from Mexico that when chewed or smoked causes intense hallucinations comparable to LSD or "magic mushrooms."

And it's legal in California.

The drug is available all over the Bay Area, mostly in smoke shops and herbal stores. It's also sold over the Internet. For $15 to $50 a hit, users get a high that sends them into a dream-like state for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or two.

(image credit: Flickr)

That may seem like an odd question for straight-laced government types to tackle. But it's a serious attempt to shore up the state's medical marijuana law, which has been around for nearly a decade without defining the "60-day supply" patients are allowed to have on hand.

Now, after years of unsuccessful attempts to amend the law, the state Health Department has been ordered to spell out how much marijuana makes up that theoretical two-month cache.

Prosecutors and police seem generally happy with the change, saying it should help rank-and-file officers determine whom to arrest and whom to leave alone.

The American Civil Liberties Union and supportive state lawmakers think it could be the beginning of even broader reforms by the state's Democratic-controlled Legislature.

But some patients wish the state simply wouldn't bother, spooked that the government will make the limits too restrictive and spark far more arrests for people in frail health.

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PORT ST. LUCIE — The city has accumulated so much evidence from its 74 marijuana grow house seizures in the past year, it doesn't have enough room to store it.

The police department is using several empty city-owned houses, as well as the defunct Ravenswood Community Center, to store materials ranging from grow house lights, air-conditioning units, hydroponics gear and the green leafy stuff itself. But police say they need more space as the city grows. They want to shift money from planning the eastern substation at the future City Center to build a new evidence warehouse.

Link to article 

Link to tax stamp site

and check out 10 related links here 

Update:

A U.N. report showing Canadians use more marijuana than people in any other industrialized country is more evidence that the drug should be legalized, activists said on Tuesday.

The 2007 World Drug Report found that 16.8 percent of Canadians between 15 and 64 used marijuana, otherwise known as cannabis or pot, at least once in the past year, four times more than the global average of 3.8 percent.

Continue reading article 

Photo: Courtesy of the Operation Alesia Joint Information Center

From news article: 

California -- The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.

"Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.

After touring gardens raided this week in Shasta County, Walters said the officers who are destroying the gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain. He said growers have been known to have weapons, including assault rifles.

"These people are armed; they're dangerous," he said. He called them "violent criminal terrorists."

read more at Redding.com 

Photo: hardran3

Article:

The mail-order minister of a Hollywood church that burns marijuana during services and allegedly sells it to members says that's protected under federal law because the drug is a religious sacrament.

But Judge Mary Strobel has ruled that the Reverend Craig X. Rubin can't use federal law as a defense because he faces only state charges.

Rubin, who's representing himself at his drug trial, says members of his Temple 420 believe that marijuana is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible.

Though ordained in 1990 by the Universal Life Church, police and prosecutors describe Rubin as a drug dealer. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of possessing marijuana for sale.

The 41-year-old Rubin has no legal experience, and says he spent last weekend praying and smoking marijuana with Indians in a sweat lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Found here 

80% are within a mile of my place, woo hoo! 

Link 

Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant.

The test wouldn't be used to finger any single person as a drug user. But it would help federal law enforcement and other agencies track the spread of dangerous drugs, like methamphetamines, across the country.

Oregon State University scientists tested 10 unnamed American cities for remnants of drugs, both legal and illegal, from wastewater streams. They were able to show that they could get a good snapshot of what people are taking.

Link 

This is nothing new, I read about a similar experiment in Washington DC last spring and one in another in a large Italian city last year but having difficulty finding links to the articles. 

Stay tuned or post links in comments.

Fairfax, VA Takes Part in Unusual Wastewater Experiment 2006

Link to wtopnews

Link to Washington Post article 

Link to timesonline (Italian tests)

THE rivers of Italy are flowing with cocaine, say scientists who have adopted a new approach to measuring the extent of drug misuse. The biggest river, the Po, carries the equivalent of about 4kg (8lb 13oz) of the drug a day, with a street value of about £20,000.

From Ich Bin Ein Beijinger's blog

The Midi Music Festival has become a real cultural phenomenon, drawing young people from all over the country and giving me increasing hope that the still-marginal rock culture has reached critical mass and momentum. This year, I hear there were 80,000 people on the first day, and the line for tickets was nearly a kilometer long, wrapping from the east gate of Haidian Park all the way around the north side. Organizers did a terrific job of crowd control and security, but I still worry whether the auhorities will squash the thing next year--especially if there's as much dope-themed stuff for sale as I saw this year.

Interesting Flickr set here 

One stop shopping:

Another big cache of drugs off the streets...this time in a legitimate shipment of Chips Ahoy cookies!

634 pounds of marijuana were seized early Friday morning on Cleveland’s west-side. It represents the second $1,000,000 seizure of marijuana in as many weeks.

This latest bust resulted from a three-month joint Cleveland Division of Police, BCI&I and Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office investigation.

Cleveland Police Commander Gary Gingell says the pot was in the sleeper cab of a tractor trailer rig carrying Chips Ahoy cookies.

Gingell reports that the shipment originated in Mexico and was transported to Cleveland through McCallen, Texas.

Police are planning to take ownership of the big rig under drug laws. The driver and two others are in custody. The three Hispanic males have addresses in southern Texas.

Mayor Frank Jackson is praising the undercover work of his officers, and claims breaking the grip of organized crime is a top quality of life issue in Cleveland.

A few weeks ago, pot was nabbed in a shipment of frozen broccoli.

Arrested and facing aggravated drug trafficking charges are 34-year-old David Ponce and 33-year-old Abel Avalos, both of Edinburg, TX, and 40-year-old Ramon Luna of McCallen, TX.

Each is confined in Cleveland city jail awaiting formal charges.

Link
 

9 ads from Ramón Rubial - Fundación Españoles en el Mundo, the Foundation for Spanish people all over the world. The campaign warns Spanish tourists about the dangers of doing (and getting busted for) drugs abroad. Beautiful work. Links to higher rez versions can be found here.

Cuba 

Denmark 

El Salvador 

Greece 

Liberia 

Thailand 

Togo 

Uruguay 

United States 

Links to higher rez versions can be found here.

Currently being auctioned on eBay, this 'special tax stamp' from 1951-52.

Previously on P&F:
US Marijuana Tax Stamps 

From The Sun:

RAF Top Guns have blown up the world’s biggest drug haul – in desert trenches in Afghanistan.

Harrier jets dropped three 1,000lb bombs on almost 237 tons of cannabis unearthed by Britain’s Special Boat Service and local commandos.

The haul – weighing more than 30 double-decker buses and spread over a site the size of two football fields – had a street value of at least £225million.

Last night a delighted Whitehall source said: “It was unbelievable – truly staggering.”

Link to full story with more pictures. 

…or so the site claims. One other flavor available, Maple-Bacon.

Link to lollyphile.

So it’s been about a week that I landed in my birth place of Geneva Switzerland. I realized something funny popping out of a lot of windows and balconies: WEED. A lot of it. In deed the law are pretty sweet in Switzerland as far as weed. You can’t go to trial or get fines anymore if you get busted with small quantities of weed or if you get busted smoking a L. You are also allowed to grow your own material.

Link to photos 

A Swiss researcher said Thursday he had hit on an unlikely way of recreating the unique sound of a Stradivarius violin -- by treating the wood of a replica instrument with mushrooms. 

Francis Schwarze of the Zurich-based Federal Materials, Science and Technology Institute (EMPA), made a replica of a violin by the Italian master Antonio Stradivari from the year 1698, which was presented this week at the "Swiss Innovation Forum" in Basel.

Schwarze found that treating the maple wood used for the violin with "Xylaria longipes" mushrooms -- which grow on the bark of trees -- meant the sound quality was akin to an original Strad.

This mushroom lightly "nibbles" away at the wood's surface, thus reducing its density and improving the sound of the violin as a result.

"It has a very good sound and also carries well," violin maker Michael Rhonheimer said of the replica.

"I am convinced that the wood treatment at the EMPA has made an audible improvement."

Source

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