ASSOCIATED PRESS: Police in Tacoma could soon be in real trouble over pot. The department could be found in contempt if they continue to refuse to return a small amount of marijuana seized from a man after a traffic stop. Municipal Court Judge Jack Emery repeated an order to police Thursday to return the drug to Joseph L. Robertson within seven days or they could be found in contempt. “Appeal or comply,” Emery told assistant city attorney John Walker. “Or next week, show up, and I would advise you to bring counsel.” MORE
DENVER POST: A proposal that could lead to the repeal of marijuana legalization in Colorado has gained momentum at the state Capitol. The repeal would be linked to a measure on marijuana taxes that is expected to go before voters in November, according to legislators and advocacy groups involved in the discussions. The premise is that, if voters do not approve the taxes, then Amendment 64, the initiative passed just months ago to legalize marijuana, would be repealed. It’s also possible that voters would be given a choice of repealing marijuana legalization if the taxes don’t pass. After only a few days of behind-the-scenes talks, the proposal emerged publicly Friday. The leaders of both chambers are receptive to the plan. MORE
RELATED: Then the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that workers may be fired for their after-hours medical marijuana use. Medical marijuana is legal in some form in 18 states, including Colorado, but the drug remains illegal under federal law. On the other hand, public support for legalized marijuana has never been higher. A Pew Research Center study released earlier this month found that 52 percent of adults favor legalization with 45 percent 
against, the first time in more than four decades of Pew polling that supporters outnumber opponents. MORE
RELATED: [A]ll this drug fervor has provoked a response from the Obama administration, which last week released a revised National Drug Control Strategythat’s been touted as a substantial shift in business as usual. We’re talking moves like seeing drug use as a “public health issue” that we can’t “arrest our way out of,” and focusing on “treatment for individuals with substance use disorders” and other “alternatives to incarceration.” You can almost hear the sound of celebratory bong rips being prepared around the country. Not for nothing, guys, but you might want to save the packs. While on some level it’s notable to hear the Obama administration, in a small way, step away from the “tough on crime” stance that virtually every president since Nixon has adopted, the whole report, which is not an actual change in policy but a proposed change in ideological approach, smacks terribly of lip service to voters. At best, we’re looking at a baby step that appears to be not even on par with Obama’s “symbolic endorsement” of gay marriage. Essentially, we’re looking at a shift from forcing substance users into an overburdened prison system to forcing substance users (a.k.a. “people”) into soon-to-be-overburdened drug-abuse programs. And that’s required treatment that the convicted must pay for. What’s worse, there even seems to be lip service to the lip service. As much as the new drug policy touts an approach centered on treatment and prevention, there’s no doubt that enforcement and interdiction will remain a huge force in the newly rebranded Drug War. In fact, the Obama administration is allocating $9.5 billion for those purposes alone—up from $9.3 billion this year and $9.4 billion in 2012. MORE
RELATED: “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.” ?Terence McKenna
RELATED: “When the state sends us to prison for essentially exploring our own consciousness, this is a grotesque abuse of human rights. It’s a fundamental wrong. If I as an adult am not sovereign over my own consciousness, then I am absolutely not sovereign over anything. I can’t claim any kind of freedom at all. And what has happened over the last forty or fifty years under the disguise of the war on drugs, is that we have been persuaded to hand over the keys of our consciousness to the state. The most precious, the most intimate, the most sapien part of ourselves, the state now has the keys. And furthermore, they’ve persuaded us that that’s in our interests. This is a very dangerous situation.” ?Graham Hancock
RELATED: “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.” ?Bill Hicks
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