The "official" weed appreciation thread!!!

[RightJab]

Got some Strawberry Cough atm, how the fuk you post pics?
URL? Can't i just copy and paste from my pics file? Sorry for my ignorance, someone my age i am pretty technophobe, my bad.

[HughJass]

Got some Strawberry Cough atm, how the fuk you post pics?
URL? Can't i just copy and paste from my pics file? Sorry for my ignorance, someone my age i am pretty technophobe, my bad.

get the link to your phot of where you upload them to and under the smilie face go along to the insert image and you will get an option like the photo i done here , then just click post.

[RightJab]

[IMG]ttp://tinypic.com/r/2q24s1t/6[/IMG

Hope worked.

[RightJab]

Awww fuk it....

[RightJab]

[RightJab]

This is that bigger bud up a little closer. Very strawberry, smells like sweets,very sweet.

[RightJab]

I guess the pics are small cos' i used tinypic maybe (am noob at this), i'll address that for future pics of ma pickups.....

[HughJass]

Democratic lawmakers from states that recently approved pot legalization measures are pushing a pair of proposals at the federal level that would end the national ban on marijuana -- regulating and taxing the drug instead.
While the measures are giving the cannabis movement some publicity in Washington this week, realistically, the bills are unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House. Critics say legalizing marijuana will not provide the economic windfall proponents promise. They also argue that it would only worsen the drug problems facing states, which they say include addiction and violence.
Still, some say, getting them this far is a milestone on an issue that was laughed off less than a decade ago.
“Marijuana prohibition is on the way out,” Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project told FoxNews.com Wednesday. “There’s a national conversation taking place and there are lawmakers who are taking this issue seriously.”
On Tuesday, Reps. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., introduced two separate bills that would drastically change the country’s marijuana laws by addressing what they say are the human and fiscal costs associated with pot-related arrests.
“We are in the process of a dramatic shift in the marijuana policy landscape,” Blumenauer said in a written statement.
“We want the federal government to be a responsible partner with the rest of the universe of marijuana interests while we address what federal policy should be regarding drug taxation, classification and legality,” he added.
Blumenauer’s bill would create a tax model for the drug similar to those in place for alcohol and tobacco. His bill would impose a 50 percent excise tax on the first sale of marijuana from growers to retailers. Pot producers would be forced to pay an annual $1,000 fee. Civil and criminal penalties would apply if producers and retailers don’t pay their taxes.
While his proposal won’t force states to legalize the drug, it will give states that have already legalized it “the certainty of knowing that federal agents won’t raid state-legal businesses.”
Polis’ bill would essentially treat marijuana like alcohol or tobacco on the federal level. It would give states the choice between prohibiting it entirely, making it medically available and decriminalizing the possession of it.
“Congress should simply allow states to regulate marijuana as they see fit and stop wasting federal tax dollars on the failed drug war,” Polis said in a statement.
Together, Polis' and Blumenauer’s bills mark the most sweeping pieces of federal legislation aimed at changing the laws on a national level. In the past decade, plans proposed by lawmakers like retired Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul have chipped away at the social stigma attached to the issue, Tvert said.
More states have been addressing the pot debate on their own.
Last November, residents in Oregon and Colorado voted to legalize and regulate the sale and use of marijuana recreationally by adults 21 and older.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, the state’s attorney general and Denver’s mayor had all publicly opposed the measure. Hickenlooper told smokers not to “break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly” but in the end, signed the measure early since he had no power to veto the amendment which passed with 55 percent of the vote.
So far, 15 states around the country have decriminalized pot possession. The punishments carry about the same weight as a traffic citation. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws.
On Wednesday, two Rhode Island lawmakers introduced bills that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug in the state. At least five other states have introduced or will soon introduce similar bills this legislative session.
In Vermont, a group of 39 co-sponsors backed a bill Tuesday that would remove criminal penalties for small amounts of pots and replace with fines. On Friday, lawmakers in Hawaii say they will hold a hearing to take up the issue.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2OURcE7sR

[HughJass]

Two states took the plunge: Colorado and Washington State recently voted to decriminalize possession, if you are over 21, of small amounts of marijuana (although you still can't smoke it in public there). But the White House is warning that these state moves are in violation of federal law – the Controlled Substances Act – which the government gives notice it intends to continue to enforce.

Indeed, Obama is thinking about more than a warning: he might actually sue the states, and any others that follow Colorado's and Washington States' leads. Pot legalization proponents, however, point to the fact that the states' change in the law has been hailed by local law enforcement, because being able to leave small-scale pot users alone means freed-up resources for police to go after violent crime.

David Sirota reported, in Salon this past week, on a petition he submitted to the White House, in which 46,000 people asked Obama to support proposed legislation that would not legalize marijuana on a federal level but simply change federal law so that states could choose to legalize personal use if they wished to do so. Sirota points out that polls demonstrate that "between 51% and 68% of Americans believe states – and not the feds – should have marijuana enforcement authority."

The White House ignored the petition – in spite of Obama's promise to take action on petitions that garner such levels of support. And the New York Times reports that the administration is considering taking legal action against any states that claim the authority to legalize marijuana. One approach being contemplated is for the federal government to sue the states "on the grounds that any effort to regulate marijuana is pre-empted by federal law".

Initially, I found it hard to care much about the grassroots movement to legalize pot – the right to get high with impunity seemed like a very trivial concern given the other issues facing the nation. But when one sees how the "war on drugs" generates far bigger consequences than mere buzz suppression – from racist incarceration outcomes, to prison lobbies writing our laws, to the mass disenfranchisement of the felons convicted of marijuana possession, whose conviction prevents them from being allowed to vote – then the move toward decriminalization by these two states seems urgently needed, and a model for others. And the White House's response appears especially benighted.

The larger critique also make the case that US drug laws go to heart of the issue of who controls our justice system. Besides the trend toward privatization of local police forces, which I've written about, many of our prisons too are being privatized, and for these businesses, punitive marijuana laws are at the center of this growth strategy.

Indeed, marijuana legalization groups argue that some prison lobbies are so powerful and intrusive that they directly affect state law – to make sure that prisons have 90% occupancy. (This is hard to achieve solely by prosecuting violent crime, major hard-drug trading, and white-collar crime.) Forbes notes that any easing of the laws that ensnare small-scale users also threatens the profitable spin-off of the "war on drugs" – the businesses that want to grow privatized incarceration.

Not only does US drug policy boost US incarceration, but many claim it also devastates our neighbors to the south. Some in Latin America are breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of US decriminalization: leaders from Mexico to Colombia bemoan what they call the distortion of their nations' violence levels and economies in the orbit of militarized US drug trade interdiction, blaming American policies for escalating local cartel warfare, resulting in the deaths of soldiers, police, traffickers and, in Mexico, scores of journalists, too.

A congressman in Mexico, Fernando Belaunzarán, introduced a marijuana bill modeled on the ones that recently passed in the US:

"Everyone is asking, 'What sense does it make to keep up such an intense confrontation, which has cost Mexico so much, by trying to keep this substance from going to a country where it's already regulated and permitted?'"

Federal actions are not addressing this grassroots revulsion at a failed policy; they are, rather, riding roughshod over state voters' decisions at the ballot box. So, to all the other bigger issues the "war on drugs" raises, add that it is the latest infringement by an overweening federal government against the expressed will of the people.

Though medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996, distributor Aaron Sandusky was recently sentenced in federal court to ten years in prison. Sandusky joins four defendants in the US who have been targeted by federal prosecutors for medical marijuana dispensation – in states in which that is legal. He told the courtroom that colleagues of his similarly ensnared are being "victimized by the federal government who has not recognized the voters of this state".

California's four federal prosecutors are not stopping with arrests of distributors: since 2011, they have also threatened landlords with seizure of their property, which has forced hundreds of dispensaries to close their doors. The feds have added this latest chapter to an under-reported but important trend of states' legislators finding themselves in a fight with federal laws.

States' efforts, for example, to fight the TSA's invasive screenings have created a cluster of such battles: Texas's bill to opt out of TSA screening is one example. The TSA, however, has fought back before against such efforts. In 2010, New Jersey and Idaho sought to ban invasive body image scanners and individual airports at that time could opt out of screening. But the TSA closed that legal option for states in 2011 – effectively federalizing a state resource.

State nullification bills regarding the National Defense Authorization Act are another example of this fight: Michigan's house passed a bill, 107 to nothing, against the NDAA.A similar bill has been introduced in Nevada. Northampton, Massachusetts, also voted to "opt out" of the NDAA is another. Texas has introduced a similar bill, and such efforts are taking place across the country. (I have written extensively about the grave civil liberties concerns over the NDAA, most recently here.)

The cry of "states' rights" is not often associated with progressive causes, but with the "war on drugs" comprehensively declared a $1tn failure by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the call has reason and justice on its side. Will the feds carry their fight against the voices expressing popular will from California to Colorado, Washington State and beyond? Or will the White House temper its approach with respect for local democracy?

[HughJass]