This week, 11 Latin American leaders convened in Mexico City to make a formal statement calling for the U.S. to revise its current drug policies and consider legalization as a means of curbing the high demand for illegal drugs in the U.S.
Once again, calling for shared responsibility among drug-consuming countries, Latin American heads of state looked to the U.S., the number one consumer of illicit drugs in the world.
In recent years, Latin America countries and the U.S. have differed about who is most to blame for the uninterrupted drug trafficking, with Mexico leading the charge with the claim that it is the steady and insatiable demand for drugs in this country that drives the huge industry.
 
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/latin-american-leaders-blast-drug-policies_n_1163110.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
 

by Rose Krzton-Presson, Kentucky Public Radio
 
When Kentucky’s General Assembly reconvenes in January, one of the measures up for consideration is an industrial hemp bill sponsored by Senator Joey Pendleton.
The Christian County Democrat says if Kentucky were to legalize the growth of industrial hemp, it would create over 17,000 jobs and add up to $500 million dollars to the state budget.
“85% of the industrial hemp raised in Canada is exported to the U.S. and a lot of it is
exported into Kentucky,” Pendleton said. “It’ll be good for our agricultural community. It’ll be good for our economy and bringing more revenue to the Commonwealth.”
In addition to providing another crop to the agricultural industry, he says industrial hemp will provide a number of manufacturing opportunities.
“There’s a great opportunity in the clothing business and cosmetics and suntan lotions and stuff,” Pendleton said. “The best you’ll see is always said to be made from hemp products.”
 
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http://www.wfpl.org/2011/12/27/state-senator-plans-to-introduce-bill-to-legalize-industrial-hemp/
 

By MICHAEL STARR

No doubt about it — she inhaled.
A clip from the upcoming season of WE’s “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best ?,” shows Joan Rivers inhaling a generous lungful of smoke from a bong, a glass or plastic water pipe commonly used to smoke marijuana.
In the clip, posted online yesterday, Rivers appears to be in a medical marijuana shop. Putting her mouth to the circular bong, she takes a deep breath while a store employee, who’s holding the bong, instructs her to “Suck it in!”
Rivers inhales the smoke, which she immediately coughs up to raucous laughter all around before saying, “I’ll take it!”
 

by Greggory Moore
Last week’s conviction of Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron for selling cannabis out of three storefront collectives may have huge ramifications for the medpot community.
That is, if the verdict survives the appeals process.
The reasons why it may not aren’t hard to fathom. For starters, courtroom observers –including OC Weekly writer Nick Schou — have marveled at the perceived bias of Judge Charles D. Sheldon (“Sheldon’s intense dislike of the defendants and their lawyers [was] obvious,” Schou writes), whose questionable efforts ranged from trying to prevent the jury from considering the California law allowing patients to ” associate within the State of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes” — an effort an appeals court thwarted a day before the trial began — to erecting a screen so as to prevent the jury from viewing trial attendees.
 
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http://www.lbpost.com/news/greggorymoore/12981