police state

Crackdown on cannabis 'gray market' in NYC

Posted on August 29th, 2023 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , .

NYCThe long-promised crackdown on unlicensed cannabis sales is finally arriving in New York City. The permanent cannabis carnival in Washington Square has been cleared by the police, and unlicensed stores are being raided. Yet, in a bitter irony, obstacles to the licensed retail sector, including legal challenges, continue to mount.

Will raids of Empire Cannabis outlets be a test case for New York's MRTA?

Posted on July 13th, 2023 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , .

NYCNew York City’s Empire Cannabis Clubs has been pushing the proverbial envelope on the possibilities for unlicensed dispensaries that still comply with the law. But raids on two of their Manhattan locations may provide a test case for the viability of this model.

California's persisting cannabis dystopia

CaliforniaThere is grim news from California, where cannabis industry profits are dropping, robberies of dispensaries are soaring, and police raids on unlicensed growers continue in the Emerald Triangle. Can the seeming slip back into pre-legalization dystopia be arrested?
 

Executed for cannabis in Singapore —amid tentative progress in Southeast Asia

Posted on May 1st, 2023 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

South East AsiaSingapore just executed a man for cannabis—and for just one kilo. Even worse, the trial appears not to have even met basic standards for fairness. This outrage comes just as neighboring Malaysia is finally following through on pledges to limit use of the death penalty—five years after a global outcry when a compassionate care provider was sentenced to be hanged for supplying cannabis oil. Despite the quasi-decriminalization in Thailand, Southeast Asia remains one of the most repressive regions on earth where the herb is concerned.

Even in freedom, Brittney Griner remains a political pawn

Brittney GrinerIt’s a fairly open secret that Brittney Griner was Putin’s geopolitical pawn when she was in Russian detention for nine months on a minor cannabis charge. And her freedom came at a high price—swapped for a Russian “Death Merchant” who now boasts he’ll aid Putin’s savage war in Ukraine. But GOP exploitation of Griner indicates that she remains a political pawn even as a free woman in America.

Brittney Griner gets her day in court —amid geopolitical intrigue

Posted on June 30th, 2022 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Brittney GrinerUS Olympic gold-medalist Brittney Griner, held in a Russian jail since February, is finally going before a judge. But the trial is looking more and more like a political show.

The odds for justice in Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russia are already slim—and especially, we may assume, for a dreadlocked African American icon of the international LGBTQ community. But the war in Ukraine and the geopolitical rivalry between Moscow and Washington are now explicitly at play in the case of Brittney Griner.

Brittney Griner: celebrity cannabis bust to become Putin's geopolitical pawn?

Posted on March 10th, 2022 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , , , , , .

Brittney GrinerUS basketball star, Olympic gold-medalist and LGBTQ icon Brittney Griner was popped at the Moscow airport, supposedly in possession of cannabis oil. She faces up to 10 years—and given the anti-cannabis, anti-gay and anti-American atmosphere in Russia, things are not looking good for her. Will she be used as a bargaining chip to exact concessions from the US in the war for Ukraine?

Good news, bad news in national study on drug arrests and imprisonment

Posted on March 4th, 2022 by Bill Weinberg and tagged , , , .

prisonersIn a proverbial case of "good news, bad news," a national study finds that even as overall incarceration rates have dramatically dropped over the past decade, drug arrest rates have remained high—and racial disparities in arrests have persisted. The disparities have, nonetheless, decreased, as have overall cannabis arrests—with a big uptick in meth arrests taking up the slack.

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