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NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1908.aspx Treasury Identifies Kassem Rmeiti & Co. for Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. as Financial Institutions of “Primary Money Laundering Concern” 4/23/2013 In First Use of Section 311 Against a Non-Bank Financial Institution, Treasury Acts to Protect the U.S. Financial System from Foreign Exchange Houses Tied to Global Narcotics and Money Laundering Networks and Hizballah WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named two Lebanese exchange houses, Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange (Rmeiti Exchange) and Halawi Exchange Co. (Halawi Exchange), as foreign financial institutions of primary money laundering concern under...

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers and suspects in last week's Boston Marathon bombing attack, may have financed their plot through drug sales, investigators believe.

MCDONALD, Pa., - Police in Pennsylvania said they responded to a report of two men burning something in a shed and discovered an alleged moonshine making operation. McDonald police said Midway residents called officers to their neighborhood April 11 with a report of neighbors burning something in a shed and one witness told police he suspected they were making moonshine because he had seen a man loading Mason jars into a vehicle, The (Washington, Pa.) Observer reported Tuesday. Police said they entered the shed to discover Matthew Zirwas III, 33, and Matthew Kirks, 29, operating what appeared to be an...

ST. LOUIS - Marijuana, the most prevalent illicit drug in America, seems to be getting less illicit by the day. Among recent developments that would have been unfathomable during the “War on Drugs” begun under President Ronald Reagan: • The states of Colorado and Washington voted last fall to legalize marijuana for recreational use, the first states ever to do so. Though technically still a violation of federal law, the administration of President Barack Obama has responded with a shrug. • The Illinois House voted last week to join the 18 states that have already legalized marijuana for medical use....

Susan Sarandon: ‘War on Drugs’ Is ‘Completely Racist’ April 22, 2013 By Melanie Hunter (CNSNews.com) – Actress Susan Sarandon on Wednesday called the war on drugs “completely racist,” arguing that only lower level drug defendants get locked up – “mostly people of color.” “The war on drugs is ridiculous, because you’re only getting—you’re spending a huge amount of money. It’s completely racist. You’re picking up everybody at the lower level because mandatory minimum drug laws let you trade in to get off, so if you don’t have anyone to trade in, if you’re at the bottom, you’re going to jail,"...

San Francisco park workers and volunteers spent much of Sunday picking up and hauling away 10,000 pounds of garbage strewn all over the eastern part of Golden Gate Park known as Hippie Hill, the remnants of Saturday's annual yet unofficial pot-smoking bacchanalia. But this year's annual celebration - which falls each year on April 20 and is known as "420" - drew a larger-than-average crowd of between 10,000 and 15,000 revelers on the warm weekend day. They proceeded to smoke, drink, eat and rack up more than $10,000 in costs for city crews to clean up the mess, ironically just...

Shots were fired in the area of the 4/20 marijuana rally being held at Civic Center Park in Denver, KDVR.com reports. Denver police say one person has been shot in the leg and another is down with unknown injuries. Witnesses say they heard three or more shots about 20 minutes after 4:20 p.m. Police swarmed the scene, and crime tape was around the pavilion where the celebration was being held. Aerial footage showed the massive crowd frantically running from the park. The pot celebration Saturday was the first since Colorado and Washington made marijuana legal for recreational use. Read more:...

Lax marijuana laws may soon become a reality in the United States. ... National support is rising for this cause.[5] Cohen’s proposal comes as a bipartisan coalition of House representatives have sponsored the Respect Marijuana Laws Act.[6] It would exempt businesses that comply with state marijuana laws from federal prosecution.[7] Moreover, Kentucky senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul recently supported the passage of a regulatory framework allowing industrial hemp in their state.[8][9] McConnell is a figurehead for the GOP establishment. Paul represents the rising libertarian caucus. Ergo, the Republican Party may soon change its position on pot.

Today the new print quarterly Modern Farmer published a lengthy piece on the crop of marijuana farmers’ markets popping up in states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational purposes. Penned by your humble editor, the feature focuses on the Organicann Harvest Market in Sonoma County – an elite member of the new crop of legal marijuana markets that are similar to the trendy, open-air vegetable markets of our time. “Still federally illegal, of course, such markets are legal under California state law, provided vendors and customers join a collective with a valid doctor’s recommendation for pot and a...

President Barack Obama's drug czar toed a strict line on marijuana Wednesday, saying federal laws will prevail regardless of state-level efforts to legalize pot. Gil Kerlikowske said enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 -- which ranks marijuana as a Schedule One drug alongside heroin, LSD and ecstasy -- remains in the hands of the US Department of Justice. "No state, no executive can nullify a statute that has been passed by Congress," the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy told a National Press Club luncheon. "Let's be clear: law enforcement officers take an...

There's a new congressional push to end the federal War on Pot in the states – and it's being spearheaded by some of the most conservative members of the Republican conference. The "Respect State Marijuana Laws Act" introduced in the House last week would immunize anyone acting legally under state marijuana laws from federal prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act. Depending on the state, the legislation would cover both medical marijuana and recreational pot, and would protect not only the users of state-legal cannabis, but also the businesses that cultivate, process, distribute and sell marijuana in these states. The legislation...

All full of his normal bombast and bluster, on 4/11/13, Bill O’Reilly once again proved he hadn’t a grasp on the subject at hand, whether or not to legalize marijuana. His plan is to put responsible adults or children who smoke into the legal system, destroying them and their families. He wants to keep feeding the corrupt legal system that thrives off of these “offenses/freedoms” (depending on your point of view). He wants these draconian punishments because he feels that pot will destroy anyone trying it, a view responsible for turning more people into...

Last year, the University of Colorado-Boulder made national headlines for its efforts to stamp out what has historically been one of the most popular days on campus — the 4/20 marijuana smokeout, which in the past has drawn up to 11,000 pot smokers who toke up on the university’s quad at 4:20 p.m. on April 20. Determined to see an end to the tradition, university officials took the unusual step of closing the campus to nonstudents and hosing down the lawn with a fish-based fertilizer that made the quad smell as appealing as an Alaskan pier. Activists were outraged, but...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday he has introduced a bill to repeal mandatory minimum sentencing for drug use and told the story of two young men—Barack Obama and George W. Bush—who were said to use drugs but did not go to jail. “In this story, both young men were extraordinarily lucky. Both young men were not caught using illegal drugs, and they weren’t imprisoned. Instead, they went on to become presidents of the United States. Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky,” Paul said in a speech at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC. “The law...

Seattle, Washington (CNN) -- If you think 2013 will be a half-baked year for tourism in Seattle, you haven't been paying attention to the curiously pungent smoke signals emanating from this city. On a recent chilly evening, an unmistakable smell has drifted across the street from an industrial space in the SODO neighborhood. Inside, a DJ spins an eclectic mix of rock while a man in a tie-dyed hoodie distributes cannabis-infused buttered rum and root beer-flavored hard candy to a diverse crowd of revelers. Another volunteer passes around a 12-foot-long "vape bag" filled with marijuana vapor -- one way to...

A list of rappers and stars, including Russell Simmons, LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Kim Kardashian, and many more, have written an open letter to President Obama to ask that he ease the nation's drug policy. They also ask that prison policy be changed, too. "During your presidency you have made important steps and you now have the opportunity to leave a legacy by transforming our criminal justice system to an intervention and rehabilitation based model. Many of those impacted by the prison industrial complex are among your most loyal constituents," they write. "Your struggles as the child of...

Criminologist Professor Alex Stevens has refuted media reports that reducing penalties for cannabis possession has led to increased drug use, crime and health problems. He said published data shows that these claims are unfounded and in fact highlight that cannabis use and crime have gone down since the 2004 declassification of cannabis to a class C substance.He said: ‘Government policy on cannabis hit the headlines again recently, when both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph ran articles on it claiming reductions in penalties for users of the drug have increased both crime and drug-related hospital admissions. If cannabis declassification...

<p>The synthetic drugs being invented, refined, and produced today—and often shipped in from China—would have blown Timothy Leary’s mind. Who knows what they’re doing to the brains of users.</p> <p>A few years ago, on the West Coast, I made the acquaintance of a 32-year-old whom some people call “the Wizard.” He’s a nice guy, quiet, with a long beard that he wasn’t going to cut until Americans stopped killing civilians in our two wars, and a deep interest in organic chemistry. He was once a computer programmer and at another time a pot dealer. “It wasn’t uncommon for me to drive around with pounds of weed in my truck,” he says. “I’d just put on a hillbilly hat, load up the car, and throw tools in the back.” Now, though, he’d wandered through a different door and found himself in the midst of a bazaar of weird new drugs. In the Wizard’s offline world, which was made up of patchwork-­wearing hippies and Rainbow Family elders, there was acid, pot, and MDMA, usually called ecstasy, and that was about it. But on the online forums he began to obsessively frequent, the Wizard learned about a vast array of new white powders. It was as if MDMA (now being called “Molly”) and LSD had somehow melded together, producing dozens of new psychedelic substances. On the forums, there were also whole new classes of dissociatives, stimulants, sedatives, and cannabis-based products (“cannabinoids”), along with a group of drugs called “bath salts,” which, of course, have nothing to do with Epsom salts or the lavender-scented kind purchased at Aveda.</p>

More than 300 convicted inmates have been released from Massachusetts state prisons in the US as a result of the September 2012 arrest and subsequent indictment of Annie Dookhan, who worked in a Department of Public Health state laboratory and allegedly falsified evidence used in criminal cases. Now the scandal has grown with the prosecution of another Massachusetts state lab chemist for tampering with evidence and stealing drugs seized as evidence. Sonja Farak, who worked at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory in Amherst, was charged with tampering with four drug samples stored at the lab on 1 April. In two...

CNN) -- A deputy shot and arrested the suspect who authorities believe killed a West Virginia sheriff known for his tough stance on drug dealers, authorities said Wednesday. Mingo County Sheriff Walter E. "Eugene" Crum was eating lunch inside his marked patrol vehicle just blocks away from a courthouse when he was killed, officials said. The suspect, who is known to police, parked his car close to the sheriff's SUV and shot through the window twice, hitting the sheriff twice in the head, according to a state official who was briefed on the investigation. After a brief chase, the suspect...