This week, Jeff Sessions finally revealed some of his evil plans for weed, which involved… nothing that was very evil-sounding (for now). Also, doctors deny they attributed a Colorado baby’s death to marijuana. Anthony Bourdain visits a Washington cannabis farm, and Art Garfunkel gets funky with pot poetry. Read on.
Sessions: Obama Policy Still in Effect
After all the huffing and puffing about blowing the weed house down, Sessions seemed to be taking the soft approach to maintaining Obama-era policies on marijuana when he spoke at a congressional hearing on Tuesday:
Our policy is the same, really, fundamentally as the Holder-Lynch policy, which is that the federal law remains in effect and a state can legalize marijuana for its law enforcement purposes but it still remains illegal with regard to federal purposes.
Though the Cole Memo, which helps protect states who have legalized weed from federal interference, will stay as it is, and Sessions even admitted that cannabis is less dangerous than heroin, don’t expect marijuana to be anything less than a Schedule 1 drug anytime soon.
“First Ever Marijuana OD” Is Fake News
Remember back in March when news came out about a baby in Colorado who was said to the “the first marijuana overdose” ever? Yeah, um, not a thing, it turns out. A report suggesting a link between the 11-month-old’s death and cannabis, which was found in a urine test, drew controversy and media attention when it came out. But the doctors that authored it said that the term they used—"associated with"—was not meant to indicate any cause and effect.
"We are absolutely not saying that marijuana killed that child," said Thomas Nappe, one of the authors of the report. The official cause of death was myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.
California Has Released Their Marijuana Rules
And there are 278 pages of them! For now, everything is temporary and aimed toward getting their freshly-legalized weed market rolling by January 1. They’ll go through much of the same motions regarding licensing and distribution, advertising rules, and other regulatory issues to work out that other states have been through since they legalized. Welcome to the club, Cali!
Another Eastern Washington County Bans Weed
Mostly, they say, because of the “terrible” smell that pervades the area around harvest time. It’s part of a larger pattern of counties and towns that have banned cannabis production and possession in Eastern Washington.
Anthony Bourdain Checks Out the Weed Scene in Washington State
He visited the family-owned and operated Hollingsworth Cannabis Company in Mason County, and raves about their "solar-powered greenhouses, hand-trimmed buds, and hand-packed bags." Did he get high in Seattle? Most assuredly. His visit to Seattle for Parts Unknown will be broadcast on Sunday.
What Is This Guy On, Anyway?
A neighborhood zoning board meeting took Parks and Rec into the Upside Down the other day when a man there went off against a proposed medical marijuana store around the corner from where he lived. He said the store will "bring undesirable elements into the neighborhood" and bad-mouthed everyone from vets living with PTSD to breast cancer survivors.
Later, he told NBC Boston that he was intentionally using "satire" to point out the hypocrisy of neighbors who may oppose the store. And maybe it worked—the dispensary was approved by the zoning board by a unanimous vote.
Art Garfunkel Waxes Poetic on Pot
In 1983, folk singer Art Garfunkel took a "walking tour" of the country, and brought a notebook—and some weed—on his journey. He’s now releasing some of the poems he wrote on that journey in a new memoir, including one about weed, and duuuuuuuuuude—it’s deep.
—The trouble with pot, said a doctor I know,
is: the insights, the color, quite wonderful—
are like fireworks...there and gone...
points in time...last year's clouds
