Is Missouri going to pot?

​Missourians could get to vote on whether to legalize marijuana if two recently filed initiatives get enough signatures to land on the November 2012 ballot.

On Monday the Missouri Secretary of State's Office approved the wording for the petitions that would legalize the purchase and possession of cannabis for anyone over 21, allow for the use of medical marijuana for anyone regardless of age and allow the legal sale of the drug. The initiative would also free anyone currently serving a prison sentence for a crime solely having to do with marijuana and expunge marijuana offenses from anyone's criminal record.

Marijuana would be taxed at $100 per pound under the initiatives, which could provide millions of dollars for the cash-strapped state. The two initiatives are identical in language, with one changing the Missouri Constitution and the other changing state laws regarding the drug.

Columbia attorney Dan Viets, a lawyer for NORML, filed the paperwork for the initiatives. Viets made news last year serving as legal counsel for St. Louis concert promoter Jimmy Tebeau, who the feds accuse of allowing drugs sales on his rural Missouri farm that doubled as a music venue.  
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​Illinois State Police have seized 743 pounds of cannabis valued in excess of $3.4 million during two traffic stops along Interstate 70 in metro East St. Louis within the past 30 days.

On August 29, District 11 troopers stopped a silver Ford pickup on I-70 near Troy and located 633 pounds of cannabis. Weeks later, on September 24, troopers stopped a gray Chevrolet SUV on I-70 near Marine and discovered 110 pounds of marijuana hidden inside the vehicle. Both towns lie about 20 miles northeast of downtown St. Louis near the junction of I-70 and I-55.
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linnstate.edu

Technical college technically violates the Constitution, says ACLU.

​Well, that didn't take too long. Last week we told you about how administrators at Linn State Technical College planned to drug test every new student entering the school. Today we're back to report that the ACLU has now filed suit against the central Missouri school that hoped to become the first university in the nation with mandatory drug tests of the student body.

In its suit filed yesterday in federal court, the ACLU argues: "The mandatory, suspicionless drug testing required under the College's new policy is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Ordinarily, the Fourth Amendment prohibits such searches, with some exceptions, none of which are applicable here. Moreover, the College can demonstrate no legitimate special need for drug testing its students that is sufficient to outweigh the students' individual privacy expectations against the state."
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facebook.com

Will Nixon: His father has his back.

​A son of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon was cited for possession of marijuana early Saturday morning in Columbia.

The CBS affiliate for mid-Missouri, KRCG, broke the story yesterday. According to the television station, 21-year-old Willson (aka "Will") Nixon was at the Brookside Apartments on South 10th Street when police responded to complaints of a loud party around 1:23 a.m. September 10.

When arriving at the scene, the officers noted an "overwhelming smell of marijuana in the hallway." Through an open door, the officers say they saw Nixon seated at a table with marijuana. When Nixon saw the officers, he attempted to conceal the drug, and the police stepped into the apartment and made an arrest under the "plain view doctrine" that allows law authority to enter a residence when a visible crime is taking place.
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Now that IS slippery.

​Time is running out for a southeast Missouri man determined to stop House Bill 641 from going into law this coming Sunday.

The bill, signed by Governor Jay Nixon this summer, would ban the sale of all forms of synthetic marijuana and cocaine in Missouri effective August 28. Missouri resident Rodger Seratt filed suit back in June aiming to block the bill from becoming law on grounds that it would deprive him and others of their livelihood by prohibiting the sale of a product that remains legal in other states.
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Many talented musicians enjoy marijuana.

​This one time, at band camp...everyone ate brownies and got stoned to the bone.

Earlier this month at O'Fallon Township High School in Illinois, three band nerds brought weed brownies to band camp and passed them out to the other band nerds without telling them that the brownies were special.

The Post-Dispatch reports that the three malefactors may be facing charges. The brownies haven't been tested for that real sticky-icky, but apparently one of the kids suspected they contained some after eating one.

The cops said no one experienced any ill effects, though there's no word on damage to the surrounding Cheetos supplies. "We won't let this slide," O'Fallon police Sgt. Rob Schmidtke told the P-D. "It could have been an interesting band practice."
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Rodger Seratt: Synthetic drug wholesaler files another lawsuit aimed at saving his industry.

​Sheriff deputies in southeast Missouri's Stoddard County confiscated $12,000 worth of synthetic marijuana during raids on local businesses last week. Now the distributor of the fake pot is suing the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney to get his product back  -- and send a message to authorities.

"Enough is enough," says Rodger Seratt, who yesterday filed a federal suit seeking $6,000 in actual damages and $1 million and $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages, respectively, from the county sheriff and prosecutor. "I know that what I do isn't a socially acceptable business, but it remains legal and what the sheriff and the prosecutor did is wrong."

Last Thursday, the same day sheriff deputies seized Seratt's merchandise from store shelves, Governor Jay Nixon signed into law House Bill 641 outlawing the possession and sale of all forms of synthetic marijuana and "bath salts" said to mimic the effects of cocaine.

The new law doesn't go into effect until August 28 and therein lies the rub. Did the Stoddard County sheriff and the prosecutor overreach when they decided to crack down last week on Seratt's merchandise?
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The 300-acre marijuana plantation found in Mexico is a quarter the size of Forest Park (above) and just a tad larger than Tower Grove Park.

​As you may have heard, the Mexican army last week uncovered that country's biggest marijuana plantation ever.

Hidden in the remote desert of Baja California (approximately 150 miles south of Tijuana) lay a 300-acre field of cannabis, grown under miles and miles of mesh cloth. The farm was four times larger than anything Mexican authorities had previously discovered during the nation's long and bloody war on drugs, which has cost the nation more than 40,000 lives since 2006.

But how can St. Louisans comprehend the magnitude of last week's discovery in Mexico?
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Medical marijuana: You're outta here!

​On Friday the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services at long last responded to an 11-year-old petition that asked the federal government to reconsider its stance on the use of medical marijuana.

The ruling last week likely won't encourage Missouri to join the more than one dozen states and the District of Columbia, which have approved some use of marijuana for treating illnesses in recent years. In sticking to its guns, the DHHS cited three key reasons why it believes medical marijuana is crackpot science. They are: 
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Head Trip gave one man a trip to the ER.

​A couple tokes of fake pot sold under the name "Head Trip" sent a 25-year-old man from western Missouri to the emergency room last week.

Johnny Adkins, 25, says he purchased the drug -- sold as "incense" -- at a gas station in Odessa, Missouri. Moments after inhaling the synthetic marijuana, Adkins went into a seizure. His mother, Tammy Groves, gave her son CPR and called for an ambulance. Groves tells Fox 4 in Kansas City that her son's heart actually stopped beating for three minutes before he was revived.

Groves say that she has since gone to the gas station where her son bought a packet of Head Trip for $40 and asked that the business stop selling the drug.
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