Free Republic

Dec 29 (Reuters) - Zach Lazarus, chief executive officer of A Green Alternative, a marijuana dispensary in San Diego, California, has lost count every time he re-opened a bank account after it was closed because of his connection to the cannabis industry. Lazarus has had to play a game of "whack-a-mole" with banks, likening his frustrations to a popular arcade game in which a player repeatedly gets rid of something only to have it re-appear somewhere else. Lazarus and other marijuana business owners in the $8 billion industry resort to cash-only transactions for business and to pay employees because they...

Prosecutors say Layman was on a first date with attorney Anthony Buzbee late Dec. 23. Buzbee told police Layman was too intoxicated, so he called her an Uber when they returned to his River Oaks home. The woman allegedly refused to leave and hid inside the home. Buzbee located her and called her a second Uber, but the suspect allegedly became aggressive. She is accused of yelling obscenities while tearing down two original Andy Warhol paintings, estimated at $500,000 each, from the wall of the attorney's home. She then allegedly threw two sculptures, valued at $20,000 each, according to charging documents.

CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) - According to court documents, a man is facing charges after striking his girlfriend, who was 37 weeks pregnant, with a baseball bat. Court documents also say he injected her with methamphetamine. 21-year-old Kyle Wilson Stowers, is now facing charges of malicious wounding.

Last weekend got downright bizarre in the eastern Missouri town of Sullivan, and police say they know why. Four people went on a rampage, barking and yelling, breaking into buildings, even stripping off their clothes and showering in soda water, police say. They suspect the synthetic drug flakka is behind the behavior. “We had multiple incidents this past weekend of people on some kind of substance acting out of their minds,” Sullivan Police Lt. Patrick Johnson told the Sullivan Independent News. “Barking like dogs, running up and down the street, or other farm animals, entering people’s homes, breaking into a...

A Pennsylvania man was arrested after police say he murdered his female friend when she rejected his marriage proposal, according to NBC Philadelphia. Christopher Tucker, 34, has been charged with murder and criminal homicide for allegedly killing 19-year-old Tara Serino, who was last seen by her family early on the morning of October 30. According to local police, Tucker asked Serino to marry him at his home in Berks County, Pennsylvania, sometime between Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon.

KESHENA, WI (WFRV) – The Menominee Tribal Police department is asking the community to check their children’s Halloween candy thoroughly after a substance found in a child’s candy has tested positive for meth. According to the police department’s Facebook page, the Menominee police received a complaint of a suspicious package located in a child’s Halloween candy. A small yellow Ziploc type baggy containing a crystalline powder was located, that was later identified as methamphetamine. The parent reported the child trick-or-treated in the Keshena area on the Menominee Indian Reservation. Police in the area are urging parents to check their children’s...

Mexican authorities have removed the soft drink from shelves in the Mexicali area, just south of the California border, and are investigating how the drug made its way into the soda, according to a news release from the Baja California Health Department and a Facebook post from the Baja attorney general on Monday. The reported cases were in the Mexicali Valley, about 120 miles from San Diego. Experts are warning travelers to the area to pay extra attention to whether the seals on their food and drinks are intact. Banner Health, which operates 28 hospitals in six U.S. states, says...

Muncie man accused of murder: ‘I took out a meth dealer!’ By Vi Nguyen Published: August 10, 2017, 7:32 pm Updated: August 11, 2017, 8:25 am MUNCIE, Ind. (WISH) — A stabbing in Muncie on Thursday ended with a man dead and another arrested for murder. The 19-year-old suspect told police he would refer to himself as a martyr and wanted to purge the wicked. It happened a few minutes after noon Thursday at an apartment near South Franklin and West Seventh streets. Muncie police arrested Jaylin Ammon on a preliminary charge of murder. He was being held in the...

The L.A. County Coroner has reported the death of Gemmel Moore, 26, of an accidental meth overdose at 7:22 p.m. on July 27 at the West Hollywood home of top Democrat donor and political activist, Ed Buck.

The Los Angeles County Coroner has reported the death of Gemmel Moore, 26, of an accidental meth overdose at 7:22 p.m. on July 27 at the West Hollywood home of high-profile Democratic Party donor and political activist, Ed Buck. The youth’s death reportedly occurred just hours after he left his family in Texas in order to join Buck. While a case detail report filed by the medical examiner lists the manner of Gemmel Moore’s death as an “accident” and its cause as “methamphetamine use,” the deceased man’s mother told the WeHo Times that something more nefarious may have occurred in...

It appears that the mind of David Brooks has been infected with the image of Donald Trump and he needs to take extreme measures to quit thinking about him. Perhaps Brooks could hang a pair of Barack Obama's pants in front of him and stare at its perfect crease for hours on end to take his mind off the Trump demon that has infected him. Yes, David Brooks in his August 8 column described his main problem in life as Getting Trump Out of My Brain:

The Oregon legislature passed two bills Thursday decriminalizing small amounts of six hard drugs, including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and ecstasy. The first of the two bills now headed to the governor’s desk, HB 2355, decriminalizes possession of the drugs so long as the offender has neither a felony nor more than two prior drug convictions on record, according to the Lund Report. The second, HB 3078, reduces drug-related property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Republican State Sen. Jackie Winters claimed the war on drugs as it currently exists amounts to “institutional racism” due to how more frequently minorities are charged...

A record 1.4 tonnes of the drug ephedrine has been found disguised as salt in a shipping container in NSW. The ephedrine, which is used to make the drug ice, has an estimated value of $650 million. After the discovery of the drug haul at Port Botany on Saturday, heavily armed police carried out 28 simultaneous raids on properties in the Sydney suburbs of Kurrajong, Glewood, Londonderry, Cabramatta, Canley Vale, George’s Hall, Merrylands, Minchinbury, Seven Hills, Fairfield and Penrith and the ACT suburb of Forde on Wednesday morning. Twelve people, aged between 23 and 44 were arrested as NSW top...

in a case of life imitating art, a former New Mexico science teacher went the way of "Breaking Bad" character Walter White -- and it didn't work out for him either. Authorities say a former science teacher has pleaded guilty to manufacturing methamphetamines in New Mexico. Prosecutors say a judge has ordered 56-year-old John Gose to undergo a 60-day diagnostic evaluation before sentencing.

Quote the article: "Prosecutors in Belgium have recently announced that executives with pharmaceutical companies based in the country will be charged with knowingly providing drug cartels with prescription drugs that were used to manufacture methamphetamine. . . . accused of providing the Mexican drug kingpin Ezio Figueroa Vazquez with several tons of ephedrine . . . seven executives who were charged with crimes . . . company made two shipments of two million pills containing pseudoephedrine in 2006 . . . big pharma drug Adderall is nearly identical to crystal meth . . .the only place to get massive quantities...

SPENCER, W.Va. (AP) - A former West Virginia sheriff who admitted to being a meth addict is due back in court for sentencing in a case in which he was charged with stealing the drug from a police locker. Bo Williams faces up to 10 years in prison for his guilty plea to a felony charge of entering without breaking. Sentencing is set for Tuesday in Roane County Circuit Court.

PRAIRIE COUNTY, AK — Police in two states are trying to determine why two caregivers of an elderly man allegedly stuffed his body in a suitcase and then loaded him into a car and drove more than 1,000 miles from Syracuse, in upstate New York, to dump the corpse in an Arkansas rice field.

Union leader says some stations continue to follow Obama 'catch and release' directives Some border patrol stations have been slow to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement executive order and instead have continued former President Barack Obama’s “catch-and-release” policies, according to a union official. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told LifeZette that he raised concerns Thursday with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello. He said he is confident that issue soon will be corrected. But Judd said as recently as Thursday, some border patrol stations were still releasing border-jumpers, often without even issuing notices to...

Officials in Florida say an Orlando police officer who arrested a man after mistaking doughnut glaze for meth has been disciplined. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins was given a written reprimand for making an improper arrest. An internal affairs report released Thursday by the Orlando Police Department found no evidence she acted in bad faith. The report says the department never trained its officers to use the department-issued roadside drug tests. Daniel Rushing was arrested in December 2015 when Riggs-Hopkins spotted flakes of glaze on his floorboard and thought they were pieces of crystal methamphetamine. Rushing told...

An attorney with the Internal Revenue Service’s professional standards office in Washington has been charged with conspiring to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, U.S. prosecutors said. Jack Vitayanon, 41, an IRS attorney since 2012 allegedly participated in a meth ring with others in Arizona and on Long Island between about September 2014 and January, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday. Public records show Vitayanon living in the U Street corridor. In the criminal complaint, prosecutors noted that during one alleged transaction, Vitayanon directed a buyer to make a cash deposit of $1,650 to...