Cannabis News The November Coalition
  Denver Votes To Legalize Marijuana Possession
Posted by CN Staff on November 03, 2005 at 06:31:34 PT
By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA Today 
Source: USA Today 

cannabis Denver -- Voters here approved making Denver the first major city to legalize small amounts of marijuana, but the mayor warned that state law still makes possession of the drug illegal.

"OK of pot issue gives new meaning to Mile High City," said Wednesday's headline in the Rocky Mountain News. The measure, which passed Tuesday with 54% of the vote, says adults 21 and older may possess up to an ounce of marijuana without penalty in the city.

A few other cities, including Seattle and Oakland, have laws that make marijuana possession a low priority for police. A dozen states, including Colorado, have decriminalized possession of small amounts but still issue fines.

Unlike Denver, the Colorado ski town of Telluride, population 2,300, narrowly defeated a measure Tuesday that would have made possession of marijuana the lowest police priority. It might be already: Just 17 citations were issued there last year for pot possession.

Don't expect clouds of marijuana smoke to fill Denver's thin air. Mayor John Hickenlooper said police will continue to arrest and charge people for marijuana because state law still makes possession illegal.

Hickenlooper said the city can adopt an ordinance that is stricter than state law on marijuana but not one that is weaker.

Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., said Denver's vote will spur initiatives in other cities to legalize and regulate marijuana like alcohol or tobacco.

"It's certainly likely to energize people. This is the wind in the sails of reform," Mirken said Wednesday. "Rethinking marijuana prohibition is mainstream. This is the heart of America saying, 'Hold on, maybe our current marijuana laws don't make a lot of sense.' And the fact is, they're right."

Snipped:

Complete Article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-03-pot_x.htm

Source: USA Today (US)
Author: Patrick O'Driscoll, USA Today
Published: November 3, 2005
Copyright: 2005 USA Today, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Contact: editor@usatoday.com
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/

Related Articles & Web Site:

Safer Choice
http://www.saferchoice.org/

Pot Issue Gives New Meaning To Mile High City
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21254.shtml

Denver Pot Issue Passes By Thin Margin
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21253.shtml

Pot Measure Wafts To Victory
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21252.shtml


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Comment #2 posted by runderwo on November 03, 2005 at 17:07:54 PT
conflation
They could have mentioned that these people died from heroin and alcohol overdoses instead of simply "drugs", especially immediately after talking about marijuana for most of the article.

And because animals cannot handle LSD does not mean that humans cannot. What happens if you give an animal an unlimited supply of alcohol, for example? It can't handle it either. I've never heard of even the most LSD-inebriated human attempting to eat him or her-self.

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Comment #1 posted by FoM on November 03, 2005 at 06:35:34 PT
Off Topic Music Trivia: Everything in Moderation?
Hit Me One More Time

November 03, 2005

By Jared Wolfe, Sun Staff Writer

Last week I revealed that a lot of great musicians from the 1960s used drugs. Now before everyone goes and rolls joints out of their old TakeNotes, let’s delve a little deeper into the effect that drugs had on the music of that wonderful era. Everything began to change in strange ways when Bob Dylan turned the Beatles on to pot in 1964. This was such a historic event that when journalist Al Aronowitz (who introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan) died a few months ago, the first sentence of his obituary stated, “Introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan, and … to marijuana.”

Before Aronowitz’s greatest life achievement, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single Beatles song that wasn’t about young love. After that most fortuitous introduction in 1964, however, the Beatles spent more time with their new love, smoking weed all day on the set of their 1965 film, Help.

During this time, they also began work on what was to become the first of many masterpieces, Rubber Soul. Their “pot album,” as Ringo Starr likes to describe it, was full of magnificent oddities, from John Lennon crawling off to sleep in the bath in “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” to Paul McCartney looking through you on “I’m Looking Through You.” What’s more, on “Girl,” you can hear the Beatles actually inhale pot throughout the song. They thought they were so cool with their drugs and everything that they even made a beat out of repeating “tit” over and over again in the background.

Such chemically-induced artistic triumphs are clearly not limited to the Beatles. The Monkees posed the question, “Can You Dig It?” on their psychedelic album Head, their only worthwhile musical achievement (check out their too-fucked-up-for-words movie by the same name). Once again, you can have the privilege of hearing a legend smoking pot when Paul Simon inhales on Bookends, the album he has repeatedly referred to as the quintessential Simon & Garfunkel album.

Alas, there is a downside to drugs. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Massiel Santos and Jim Morrison all died with so much music left in them because of too much debauchery. For all intents and purposes, Santana died from drugs, as well. And let’s not forget Ringo Starr’s pet pigeons, which wound up eating themselves after John Lennon fed them sugar cubes laced with LSD.

Copyright: 2005 The Cornell Daily Sun

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/11/03/436970d92f2cb

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