7/10 is unfortunately placed for a stoner holiday cuz it's so close to the 4th. If elected your stoner president, I pledge to move Oil Day to the second Saturday in August so more can participate. And you'll get a free hat. Hats for all!
Ok ok I'll type up some NEWS, sheesh. Somebody's sure grumpy today.
Maryland
First, we got our favorite prosecutor, Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, testifying before the House that marijuana prohibition is a flawed policy.
"I am here today because I refuse to accept the status quo any longer. I refuse to be complicit in the destruction of our Black and Brown communities," Mosby said, which is straight fire and I am here for it. Knew she was a star. Hot damn.
In other news, a Montgomery Co officer made national headlines after getting charged with assault for planting his knee on the neck of this nineteen year old they arranged to buy mushrooms from off the Snapchat. Sigh. Is that where you want your tax money going, folks?
I watched the video and it doesn't show Penoa resisting arrest or spitting on the officers, as they wrote in their report, but it's clearly missing some time. I don't see the officer's knee "slamming" into Penoa's neck as the article's headline states, either. It does show the officer using his knee to pin Penoa, which seems unnecessary when it's four armed, adult men against one skinny kid in handcuffs lying facedown on the ground.
Virginia
A bust in Southern VA has netted ten arrests and seven more suspects are at large. The Tri-County Drug and Gang Task Force from Lunenburg, Charlotte, and Mecklenburg counties turned up meth, coke, heroin, and weed during their raids. I've got sympathy for addicts and think the Drug War is a failed policy across the board, but not much for folks selling hard drugs.
One benefit of legalization as that, as a consumer, you know your money isn't funding operations like this that are destroying people's lives. Except that you pay taxes on it now which means some of it goes to the CIA who introduced crack to the ghettoes and some is going to DHS contractors holding asylum-seeking immigrants in concentration camps so, yeah, I suppose it's all fucked, Merry Christmas.
Washington DC
The Coalition for Nonprofit Housing & Economic Development, a District-based community advocacy organization, discussed the District's cannabis laws at this month's meeting.
The most interesting thing in this article about it is that it took a year for the city's Metropolitan Police Dept to provide FOIA-requested arrest data to the ACLU. Even then, it was provided incomplete, leaving the ACLU to examine 31,000 bodycam videos to figure out the race of all the people MPD stopped- something the police are supposed to record.
Man, this dystopia is sure getting dark fast. I don't suppose there's a Girl on Fire or a Neo or, heck, any generic ol' Chosen One coming to save our democracy, is there? Sigh. I'm surprised the ACLU isn't suing them over it. That's, like, the ACLU's thing, isn't it?