By EDITOR
With recreational marijuana now legal in Colorado, small-scale pot shops will open up soon in places like Denver and Boulder. But that’s not the only business that could get a boost: Large-scale commercial farmers may also be in line to benefit.
Why? When Colorado voters legalized marijuana last November, they also legalized hemp.
As plants, marijuana and hemp look related, and they are. But while marijuana is bred to get its users high, hemp is all business — grown for food and other everyday uses. Hemp contains very little of the chemical THC, the active ingredient in pot.
That might be news to farmer Michael Bowman’s neighbors. “When they hear that we’re growing hemp, they think we’re growing marijuana,” he says.
Bowman is from Wray, a small town on the eastern Colorado plains. He thinks hemp needs some rehabilitation and that he’s the man to do it.
A Wonder Crop?
Bowman will plant 100 acres of hemp this spring on his 3,000-acre farm, where the winter wind now whips across barren wheat and corn fields.
“We think 100 acres is a good number,” he says. “It’s not a garden plot, and it’s enough to have enough product at the end of the day that we can do something real with it.”
To hear him and other activists tell it, hemp can be used to make just about anything: rope, paper, plastic, clothing, shoe polish, car parts and even dog chew toys — to name just a few of the possibilities.
Bowman says he’ll turn his first crop into an edible oil. “Our goal is really to try to understand: Is this a viable crop? Getting the research and data gathered this year will be a good step one,” he says.
When asked if it’s a political experiment as much as an agricultural one, Bowman says: “It’s probably more of a political experiment at this point.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.wfpl.org/post/hemp-gets-green-light-new-colorado-pot-measure

By Ann Imse
Colorado Public News

Colorado closed the brand-new Colorado State Penitentiary II last year and now needs to shut down more prisons as the population shrinks.
 
Colorado’s prison population is diminishing so quickly that the state in the coming 18 months could close two to 10 prisons, depending on which facilities are chosen for closure.

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times
At KC College, a group of students is well-schooled in cannabis. They know its scientific name (Cannabis Sativa), they know how it is grown (as a cash crop), they know its importance to the local economy and the debate around its trade and consumption.
Distilled and packaged as a 29-minute documentary film, this group’s study of the drug has now won them the first prize at a student film festival.
 
The department of mass media at KC College has an annual filmmaking festival – Roll.Take.Turn – which features films covering various contemporary issues.
The group of 10 students who won the first prize for their film, Goonj worked over a six-month period, digging deep into the fascinating, multi-faceted and charged nature of the debate surrounding a simple weed.
As part of their third year Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) programme, students are required to choose a particular subject in a particular state, a search that ended with exploring the dynamics of cannabis in Himachal.
The students will screen the film in other cities in the coming months and also enter it for various film festivals.
“Drugs have always been shown in bad light but we wanted to show a plant that has a different side to it as well,” said Adhiraj Bose, 21, the film’s director and editor. “The cannabis plant has become synonymous with charas, but the other aspects aren’t considered. We tried to bring in different points of view.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Lights-camera-cannabis/Article1-1002727.aspx
 

 
Help “NJWeedman” go on a Jury Nullification Tour this spring, helping others marijuana defendants and spreading the word about Jury Nullification!
 
http://www.indiegogo.com/jury-nullification-tour-2013?fb_action_ids=537126636321546&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
 

The Huffington Post  |  By Ron Dicker

 
Hey, vermin, don’t bogart that evidence!
Wichita police in Kansas are hot on the tail of mice that chewed through bags of marijuana kept in a police storage facility, KMBC reported. The three packages were evidence seized during arrests in 2009.
The rodents apparently nested in the pot and ate some of it. “We’ve got some mice that are stoners,” Police Lt. Doug Nolte said on Thursday. The animals were probably attracted to the scent, he added.
 
Full Article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/stoner-mice-eat-marijuana_n_2552594.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

By Chris Roberts

Protesters will have to make do with this
 
Medical marijuana is not making U.S Attorney Melinda Haag’s life easy. Among Bay Area cannabis advocates, she’s become a loathed figure, scorned and mocked in unflattering effigy. All of this due to her role in the Justice Department’s crackdown on state-legal medical marijuana clubs.
Haag has shut down more than a dozen taxpaying “pot shops” in the Bay Area since October 2011, and is working to add the scalp of Harborside Health Center — the state’s biggest pot club — to her list.
Haag — who, we have been told, is actually a likable person — was scheduled to take time out of her busy day Wednesday to participate in an educational panel at Golden Gate University’s law school. Then the medical marijuana folks got wind of this event and quickly organized a protest in her honor.
Then Haag got wind of this protest and a few hours before she was scheduled to speak, she bailed.
 
Full Article:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2013/01/marijuana_protest_us_attorney_melinda_haag_golden_gate.php

By Ray Stern

Images: Ray Stern
Patrons at the Arizona Vapor Lounge in the west Valley belly up to a bar covered by bongs, not beer mugs, as a staff member looks on.
 
A group of medical-marijuana dispensary owners at the State Capital yesterday afternoon urged authorities to shut down unregulated cannabis clubs.
 
Meanwhile, up the road in a small, west Valley strip mall, medical-marijuana patients toked up openly in a “lounge” that has the look, feel, and scent of a Dutch coffeeshop.
It’s similar to a drinking establishment, but rented glass bongs rest on the bar instead of mugs of beer. Patrons can buy snacks and sodas, not alcoholic beverages. Colored, dimmed lights hang help provide a mellow atmosphere, A high-def TV plays music from YouTube; and video games are available upon request.
The entrepreneur behind the Arizona Vapor Lounge, BIll Hayes, says his business is a budding franchise: He expects 14 similar lounges across the state to open in the next two months.
 
Full Article:
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/01/medical-marijuana_vapor_lounge.php
 

By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer

 
Trial has again been delayed for marijuana advocate Roger Christie and prosecutors have filed additional charges against him as well.
Christie, founder of The Hawaii Cannabis Ministry, had been scheduled to start trial on Wednesday on federal charges of conspiracy to manufacture, distribute and possess 100 or more marijuana plants, plus manufacturing and possessing with intent to distribute 284 marijuana plants.
Trial is now scheduled for March 19, the seventh trial date set in the case, although it may be delayed further.
 
Full Article:
http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/local-news/christie-faces-more-charges.html
 

 
Former congressman Tom Tancredo says he’ll honor a bet to smoke marijuana.
In a video to promote Colorado’s Amendment 64, which legalized the personal use of marijuana in the state, Tancredo reportedly pledged to smoke pot if the measure passed. Tancredo, a self-professed non-marijuana smoker, supported the measure.
“Look, I made a bet with the producer of the film that if Amendment 64 passed (I did not think it would) that I would smoke pot,” Fox News quotes Tancredo as saying. “I will therefore smoke pot under circumstances we both agree are legal under Colorado law. Hey, it’s better than having to do a stupid dance as [Denver] Mayor [Michael] Hancock must perform as a result of losing a bet on the Broncos beating the Ravens.”
 
Full Article:
http://www.kmbz.com/pages/15362790.php