“For the first time ever, more Americans said they smoke marijuana (16%) than tobacco cigarettes (11%) in a Gallup survey conducted July 5-26. The milestone is the result of decades of anti-tobacco campaigning in the US and a string of successful state-by-state marijuana legalization efforts. It’s the latest sign that a budding cannabis sector is displacing the waning power of the once-mighty tobacco industry.”
— “More Americans are smoking marijuana than tobacco cigarettes now,” Nicolas Rivero, Quartz
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“The Texas Kid’s Retirement Run,” Alvin Crow & The Pleasant Valley Boys, 1977. The band included Herb Steiner on lap steel guitar and former Texas Playboy Al Strickland on piano.
Drug smugglers in Mexicali took aim at the USA, firing packets of marijuana over the border with a cannon. The improvised artillery, made from plastic pipe and an old metal tank, used compressed air to fire packets weighing up to 30 pounds into California.
Chivalry may be dead, but the Middle Ages are alive on the Mexican Border. Federales found a catapult used by drug smugglers to propel pot over the border fence and into the Arizona desert. Cops captured the catapult and cannabis but the flingers fled. Anybody missing from the Centro de Estudios Medievales at the Universidad de Sonora?
On a final vote, the District of Columbia Council unanimously passed B18-0622, a bill legalizing medical marijuana. DC doctors will be able to prescribe from 2 to 4 ounces of cannabis per month to registered patients with chronic diseases (acne probably won’t count). The pot will be gown in registered cultivation centers and sold in registered dispensaries.
Similar laws, but without all the safeguards, exist in several states. Under the many compromises of Washington’s limited home rule, though, Congress has 30 days to mess with the legislation, even though it involves no federal funds.
The drive to pass this bill began in 1998. City Paper‘s Jason Cherkis has the back story.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
The Council of the District of Columbia voted unanimously to make marijuana available to chronically ill patients in Washington, DC. In a cosmic coincidence, the action took place on April 20th, World Marijuana Day. Heavy. The Council will take a final vote on the measure later this month.
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