Tourist Fined $2,000 For 3 Grams Of Marijuana In Bermuda

Photo: Cruise Law News

Don’t carry your weed to Bermuda.

An American tourist who said she smoked marijuana for medical reasons was fined $2,000 on Thursday in Bermuda.

Teresa Sheridan, 53, or Oregon, pleaded guilty in Magistrates’ Court to one count of importing cannabis, reports Mikaela Ian Pearman of the Bermuda Sun.

Sheridan arrived on a flight from New York to Bermuda on May 23 at 2:10 p.m. She was selected for a search by Customs officers because a drug-detecting dog had alerted to her seat on the plane.

In the ensuing search, a Customs dog alerted on Sheridan’s groin area. When asked if she had any drugs, she said, “Yes, in between my legs.”

Officers searched her luggage and discovered a black container, a clear herb grinder with traces of plant material, rolling papers and a ceramic pipe made to look like a cigarette.

In a private search room, Sheridan removed a white sock from her groin area. The sock contained two plastic bags, one with coffee grounds and another with three grams of cannabis.

She was arrested on the spot for importing drugs into Bermuda.

Counsel Marc Daniels told the court that Sheridan used cannabis as a treatment for depression. “She uses weed to calm her nerves and should be dealt with by way of a fine,” Daniels said.

“The fact that she had it hidden between her legs would indicate she knew it was contraband,” remarked Senior Magistrate Archibald Warner. “She knew it was illegal.”

Warner fined Sheridan $2,000, to be paid immediately.

Just one day before, Edith Lord Wolffe, a tourist from California, was given 30 days in jail and a $3,000 fine for importing 35 grams of cannabis. The court heard that Wolffe’s physician had recommended cannabis for her chronic illness, Ménière’s disease.

Wolffe’s lawyer, Mark Pettingill, has launched an appeal and a bail application.

Bermuda is notoriously unfriendly to marijuana and tourists who possess it, although politicians there last year called for a debate on decriminalization.

$2.5 Million in Marijuana Found in San Gabriel Valley

On Thursday the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arrested two men on suspicion of running a marijuana growing operation in the San Gabriel Valley. Deputies from the Department’s “Asian Gang Team” seized some 440 plants and 150 pounds of dried cannabis – along with weapons and hydroponic equipment – from a condo in San Gabriel and a commercial building in Alhambra.

The operation was being run by a man named Joseph Hsu, a suspected member of a Chinese gang known as Wah Ching. Of course, without marijuana prohibition, this operation doesn’t exist, and a violent Chinese street gang wouldn’t be reaping the profits.

Prohibition causes a restriction in supply, raising prices, making it more profitable for gangs to enter the market. And these gangs will often use any means necessary to protect those profits. Without the massive profits to draw them in, these gangs aren’t going to bother with marijuana growing.

True, they will move onto to other drugs and illicit products; that’s why prohibition never works, no matter what it is you ban. Banning something just makes sure that violent criminals can make a lot of money off of it.

But at least the Sheriff’s Department gets some publicity for making a slight dent in the cannabis black market; a dent that is already filled by someone else who was drawn in by prohibition profits. The police create their own job security.

It’s Not Just A Plant

Watch this documentary about marijuana!

Follow me on a 10 Minute Adventure into the world of Medical Marijuana.

My name is Kain Derrick, I’m a 22 year old film maker in the field of the Cannabis Culture.

I made this Documentary as part of my Media Degree.

If you take this message and turn a blind eye and don’t look into this stuff for yourself. you can only blame your own arrogance which is what you should fear the most. It’s you that can make a change by helping spread the word and heal the nation.

Feds Throw Weight Around On Washington’s Medical Marijuana Bill

The feds are throwing their weight around again when it comes to Washington state’s medical marijuana law. A proposal to rewrite the state’s medicinal cannabis rules attracted federal attention after Governor Christine Gregoire asked for “clear guidance” about the U.S. Department of Justice’s position on state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries, which would be legalized under the new rules.

Gov. Gregoire, who sent the letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday, claims she “became concerned” about a “potential federal crackdown” after speaking with the U.S. attorneys for Eastern and Western Washington, Michael Ormsby and Jenny Durkan, reports Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times.

The prosecutors claim they are concerned that the proposed legislation “would legalize commercial sales of marijuana,” according to state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, the bill’s prime sponsor.

Photo: Seattle Weekly

U.S. Attorney Michael C. Ormsby likes to run his mouth and throw his weight around.

U.S. attorneys Ormsby, who already started threatening Spokane dispensaries last week, and Durkan noted that the U.S. attorney for Northern California was threatening to prosecute operators of a proposed commercial grow farm in Oakland, even though the farm was licensed by that city and legal under state law, Gov. Gregoire said in her letter to the Attorney General.

The bill in question, SB 5073, would create new state licenses for dispensaries, grow farms and cannabis food processors. State licensing of dispensaries is already in place or is currently being implemented in states like Colorado, Maine, New Jersey and New Mexico, as well as in the District of Columbia.

Gregoire’s letter seeks federal input before considering whether to sign the bill. Some political observers of a cynical bent believe the governor may simply be seeking political cover for a spineless veto of all or portions of the bill.

“The governor wants to make sure that if a law goes forward, it’s done in a way that won’t set up Washington state for an endless battle of court cases,” claimed her spokesman, Scott Whiteaker.

Photo: News Junkie Post

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles: “Why should our state be treated any differently than other states?”

​ But Sen. Kohl-Welles said she was mystified why the Department of Justice would treat legalized dispensaries in Washington any differently from six other states and D.C., which all currently license and regulate dispensaries.

“Why should our state be treated any differently than other states?” Kohl-Welles rightly asked.

Ormsby, the headline-seeking hot dog of a U.S. attorney in Spokane, last week threatened in a news release to seize property where dispensaries were operating. An estimated 40 dispensaries do business in Spokane.

Ormsby warned that “marijuana stores” are illegal, and threatened property owners who rent to them with forfeiture of their buildings if they refused to evict the dispensaries.

“We are preparing for quick and direct action against the operators of the stores,” Rambo, I mean Ormsby, wrote.

At least 120 dispensaries are operating statewide in Washington, with marked differences in enforcement from county to county. The shops are using a gray area of the voter-approved 1998 medical marijuana law, which neither expressly allows nor prohibits the dispensaries.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law as a Schedule I substance, but the U.S. Department of Justice has taken a mostly hands-off approach to patients and providers in states where medicinal cannabis is legal since an October 2009 memo issued shortly after Attorney General Holder took over.

That memo famously said that patients and providers in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws were not a priority of federal law enforcement, but a trickle of federal raids has continued to take place, including multiple raids in the past month in Montana and California.

However, the DEA has to our knowledge, so far at least, never raided any state-licensed medical marijuana growers or dispensaries in states like New Mexico and Maine, which explicitly allow and license the facilities through their state health departments.

http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2011/04/feds_throw_weight_around_on_washingtons_med_mariju.php