Federal authorities have seized more than 15 tons of marijuana in a near-record bust at a border crossing in Southern California.
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The founders of
Co-founder Ben Cohen told the Huffington Post Live that the idea “makes sense to me,” when he was asked about a viewer comment suggesting the company make cannabis-infused ice cream.
Ben & Jerry’s other co-founder, Jerry Greenfield, is also open to the idea, saying that he and Cohen “have had previous experiences with substances.”
Although cannabis-infused products is sold in several states where cannabis is legal for medical or recreational purposes – including Colorado and Washington – no mainstream company has said that they’d be open to the idea themselves.
– TheJointBlog
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By Eric Bradner, CNN, Published With Special Permission
Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama said states could overhaul their laws to discourage marijuana the same way “we’ve been able to discourage a lot of other bad things that people do” — like using tobacco.
His comments to Kansas City-based KMBC during a series of interviews Thursday afternoon with local television stations, the same day that Washington implemented a new law decriminalizing the use of small amounts of marijuana over the objections of some congressional Republicans.
“I think that we have to separate out legalization — there’s a lot of concern about drug abuse of any sort by our children and the general population — versus the heavy criminalization of non-violent drug offenses,” Obama said. “And I think that a lot of states are taking a look to see, do we have proportionality in terms of how we are penalizing the recreational user.”
He said the United States has managed to discourage the use of other harmful products like tobacco without stiff jail sentences.
“I think that’s what every state across the country, including some very conservative states that don’t have a lot of tolerance for marijuana, are looking at,” Obama said, “is do we want to be throwing people in jail for five, 10, 15 years if they’re not major drug dealers but they’re using a substance that’s probably not good for them but is probably not hurting too many other people?”
Obama also repeated his previous stances on the Keystone XL pipeline, which he recently vetoed after Republicans sought to authorize it before the State Department completes a six-year-old review, and international trade.
He touted his administration’s push for a 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership as a way to correct the labor and environmental lapses of past pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement. And he said the new deal is an opportunity to keep China from setting international rules with other Pacific Rim countries.
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Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division has released its first annual report detailing the state’s legal cannabis industry.
According to the report, there was 74 tons of legal cannabis sold in Colorado in 2014. For those not wanting to do the math, that’s 148,000 pounds, or 4.1 million ounces. In addition, 4.8 million cannabis-infused edible products were sold. Although the majority of cannabis flower sold was to medical patients (55 of the 74 tons), a majority of edibles were sold to recreational consumers (2.8 million of the 4.8 million sold).
Most impressively, the report shows that the legal cannabis industry has brought forth a massive influx of new jobs.
According to the report, there was 9,400 above-board jobs created in Colorado’s cannabis sector since the beginning of recreational sales on January 1st, 2014, raising the total number of individuals employed by the cannabis industry to 15,992.
These numbers are despite the fact that 228 of the state’s 321 jurisdictions prohibit cannabis sales for both recreational and medical purposes.
The full report can be found by clicking here.
– TheJointBlog
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A few weeks after Jeb Bush’s teenage marijuana habit made headlines, the likely Republican presidential candidate on Friday came out in favor of states making their own decisions on legal cannabis. “I thought it was a bad idea,” Jeb Bush said today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “but states ought to have the right to do it.”
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