Free Republic

South Carolinians have been bombarded in recent weeks with massive door hangers from a political action committee affiliated with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. These missives encourage them to consider the second-term Sunshine State governor as an alternative to Donald Trump. A paid employee leaving these “door hangs” for the Never Back Down PAC wants a particular voter in Charleston, S.C. to consider something else that dangles, though. Specifically … his balls. “#### you, get off my ####### lawn,” the door-knocker is heard saying on a Ring door camera, mimicking a property owner in the area who apparently confronted him for...

The more marijuana is consumed, the more evidence mounts up that it ruins lives. As more states legalize marijuana, and as popular culture increasingly treats the narcotic as though it were harmless, it becomes increasingly apparent that using it involves serious risks. Lawmakers should stop decriminalizing recreational marijuana use, and allow it only as prescribed, via strict protocols, by licensed medical doctors. Even then, its use should be a last resort. The latest worrisome study, released earlier this month, was conducted by researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and at the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Mental...

Brandon Wheeler has grown pot professionally for 20 years. His parents grew pot before him, and so did his grandparents. Despite these deep roots in the industry, he still felt a weight lift when he pulled his last pot plants out of the ground this July and shut down his legal weed farm in Mendocino County. He was happy to be leaving the family business. “It was sad and depressing, but it was also a relief because [running a pot farm] just had taken a serious toll on my mental and physical health, and the same with my family,” Wheeler...

New York officials reach agreement to legalize marijuana Weed all about it! New York State officials have reached a deal to legalize marijuana, legislative sources told The Post on Wednesday — just hours after Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it “essential” to the state’s social and economic well-being. The reform measures will be included in the laws to be proposed as part of the state budget on April 1, the sources said The deal would allow New Yorkers over the age of 21 to legally buy and possess up to three ounces of pot for their personal use, with licensed sales...

Gov. Jared Polis urged Coloradans to “please don’t be stupid” at a news conference Wednesday. “Engage in social distancing,” Polis said. “What you're doing is you're jeopardizing the lives of your friends and their families and their relatives. So be smart here." Polis also nodded at the possibility of longer closures for K-12 schools, many of which are currently on extended springs breaks. He suggested schools could be closed through the scheduled end of the school year. No final decision has been made, and no order issued, but such an extended statewide shutdown would be unprecedented in the state. “We...

A Salisbury University student has been charged with illegal wiretapping after prosecutors said he streamed a meeting with a congressional staffer for Maryland Rep. Andy Harris via Facebook Live without permission. Jake Burdett, 20, was charged last week with two felony counts of making an illegal recording and distributing the video filmed during a Maryland Marijuana Justice rally at Harris’s Salisbury office in October, the state prosecutor’s office announced Thursday. Marijuana legalization protesters have long tangled with Harris, who in 2014 worked to block full legalization of the drug in the District of Columbia. A protest outside the Republican’s Capitol...

A Pennsylvania school district is arming classrooms with buckets of rocks as a last-ditch defense against mass shooters. David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, told ABC News on Friday that every elementary, middle and high school classroom in the district is stocked with a 5-gallon bucket full of river stones for students and teachers to pelt an armed intruder. “We’ve been trying to be proactive just in case,” Mr. Helsel said. “How can you aim a gun if you’re being pelted with rocks?”

As marijuana legalization continues across the country, weed is becoming increasingly mainstream. However, as much as the stoner stereotype has evolved into a broader label that also encompasses CEOs, educated millennials, and the Spicolis of the world, it still has a negative connotation. Industry leaders have quickly learned that destigmatizing marijuana use begins with educating the public, but Adrian Sedlin of Canndescent has figured out that, as with anything, it's really all about branding. Sedlin's luxury cannabis company offers premium flower alongside sophisticated packaging that no other company in the current market rivals. One look and I can almost guarantee...

A group of climbers had to be rescued from the top of a mountain after getting so stoned they couldn’t get back down. The four walkers got stuck on top of the 3,209ft Scafell Pike in Cumbria’s Lake District – the highest peak in England. After successfully reaching the top, however, they found themselves ‘incapacitated’ from having taken cannabis. Cumbria Police confirmed that mountain rescue and air ambulances had to be scrambled in order to rescue the climbers. ‘Persons stuck on mountain after taking cannabis. Now having to deploy mountain rescue, air support and ambulance to rescue them,’ Cumbria Police...

As canna-business strategist Elise McRoberts walked across an animal skin rug and into the living room of a Pacific Heights home for the recent San Francisco launch of Beboe, an upscale cannabis brand from Los Angeles, she assumed she would see the usual faces on the marijuana circuit — growers, dispensary owners and cannabis chefs. Instead, the party was a cross-pollination of the worlds of high society, Silicon Valley, politics, fashion and design: industrial designer Yves Béhar, former Mayor Willie Brown, who carried decriminalization bills in the state assembly in the 1970s, philanthropists Katie and Todd Traina, boutique owner Emily...

Bumbling Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson wandered onto national television Tuesday to finally admit, with pride, that he does not study trivial things like world leaders and foreign nations. “If that’s a disqualifier, so be it,” Johnson hollered on CNN, echoing a line he coughed up last month after he failed to recognize Syria’s largest city. Johnson — baring bedhead hair and yelling nearly every time he opened his mouth — ostensibly appeared to defend his month of stunning ignorance about world affairs. In recent live TV appearances, Johnson didn’t know what Aleppo is and said “nobody got hurt” in...

A 51-foot joint will make an appearance in Philly for the Democratic National Convention next week. No, it doesn’t actually contain marijuana – just a lot of air. The giant joint has circulated at past events in New York City and Washington, D.C. DCMJ, an organization pushing for marijuana legalization, will lead the joint-centered march. It’s expected to start sometime after noon on July 25th, according to PhillyVoice. Volunteers will help carry the joint to the convention, and activists will support it on the return journey. According to the Associated Press, the Secret Service flagged and restricted the whereabouts of...

DENVER (AP) A marijuana tax for schools in Colorado raised more in the first five months in 2015 than it did for all of 2014. May excise tax collections reported this week showed the recreational pot tax for school construction raised $3.5 million, bringing the 2015 total to $13.7 million The tax brought in just $13.3 million in all of 2014.

DENVER (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul courted donors from the new marijuana industry Tuesday, making the Kentucky senator the first major-party presidential candidate to publicly seek support from the legal weed business. Paul's fundraiser at the Cannabis Business Summit - tickets started at $2,700, the maximum donation allowed for the primary contest - came as the marijuana industry approached its first presidential campaign as a legal enterprise....

It claims to be the first radio station of its kind in the United States and its getting a lot of different listeners. “We’re like 420 friendly, we play music for stoners, we have marijuana comedy, this summer we’re giving away trips to Amsterdam and Jamaica,” Gary Ganja said as he started a show in mid-June. The radio station at Smokin’ 94.1, which includes DJ’s named Mary Jane, Ed Blaze, Stoney Reynolds and the owner Gary Ganja, started on June first. Its marijuana themed from what goes out over-the-air down to the décor inside the office space and, for now,...

A large pro-legalization group ranks Paul above all Democratic candidates.Sen. Rand Paul bested his rivals for the White House in a candidate report card issued Friday by the Marijuana Policy Project, one of the largest organizations pushing to regulate the drug like alcohol. The group gave the Kentucky Republican an A- in recognition of his efforts to overhaul federal drug laws and his support of states’ right to legalize marijuana. Second place – a B+ – went to former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who has not officially announced a bid, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a former Republican seeking...

We are entering a Stoned New World here, as Colorado entrepreneurs come up with new ways to make money in the new… ah… atmosphere… of tolerance. It’s also an interesting test case for longtime proponents of legalization such as myself, to see what happens when perfect theory encounters an imperfect world. Our first stumbling block is that the state-sponsored growers and sellers cartels have kept prices artificially high (no pun intended), so we still have a black market for the green herb. That also means, as we’ve discussed here before, that tax revenues are not meeting expectations.

Tommy Chong, star of such films as Up in Smoke and until this week a contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, was the #OneLuckyGuy on Fox News’ Outnumbered (for some reason) Wednesday, and while he was there he weighed in on issues like marijuana legalization (naturally), health care, and immigration. But when the issue of Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber’s controversial comments came up, Chong surprised the show’s co-hosts by comparing it to another hot topic on Fox: Benghazi. Andrea Tantaros and Harris Faulkner were expressing outrage over Gruber’s comments and the Obama administration’s reaction to it when Chong decided...

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says his state's voters were "reckless" for voting to become the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The Democrat's statement came during a debate Monday with his Republican opponent, Bob Beauprez, just four weeks before voters head to the polls for the state's hotly contested gubernatorial election. In 2012, more than 55 percent of voters in Colorado supported Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use. The amendment aimed to regulate marijuana in roughly the same way alcohol is regulated.

Remember when Occupy Wall Street was considered by leftists to be the wave of the future? The New York Times, the Guardian, and several other lefty publications had daily updates on the "movement" (that wasn't a movement at all), and bored, spoiled millenials across the country showed up to camp out and demand the government give them a job. Well, those times are long gone. OWS has been erased from the left's collective consciousness when it turned out that the kooky collection of commies, anarchists, and kids who couldn't figure out why they were unable to get a job after...