Pot News

From this week's Austin Chronicle comes some weed news:

The Texas Department of Public Safety reports that 2005 was another record-breaking year for drug seizures, with troopers collecting more than a ton of cocaine (2,285 pounds, to be exact), 153 pounds of methamphetamine, and nearly 23 tons of marijuana during routine traffic stops. In all, the seized booty is worth a cool $160 million, DPS reports.

Trooper traffic-stop acumen notwithstanding, however, the department's banner year was aided in part by the decidedly less-than-genius smuggling skills of some traffickers – including the driver of a white SUV who stacked the rear parcel area of the vehicle with bricks of marijuana (in plain sight) and then got popped after getting into a one-vehicle accident.

In other punitive drug-law news, Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski on June 2 got his drug-warrior wish when he signed into law a bill re-criminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana – the afterglow may be fleeting, however, since the state's ACLU has vowed to fight the regressive measure, which clearly conflicts with rulings from the Alaska Supreme Court, which legalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults in 1975, ruling that the right to privacy trumps worries that the drug would be harmful when used by adults at home. The court reaffirmed that position in 2003, striking down a 1990 ballot initiative that tried to recriminalize pot, ruling that it conflicted with the state's constitution, which guarantees that the "right of the people to privacy … shall not be infringed."


Check out these photos from the Texas DPS site.
What a pity and a waste of government resources and your tax dollars.