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4/27/2013
By KRISTEN WYATT / AP
DENVER — Marijuana taxation brought the Colorado Legislature to a standstill early Saturday, with the House giving up and heading home without voting after the pot debate stretched past midnight.
The standstill was not exactly caused by the bill to tax pot more than 30 percent, though Republicans were in the middle of trying to lower the tax rate when the House stopped work. Instead, the breakdown came as a result of frayed nerves after long, divisive debates on unrelated measures, from a renewable energy bill to an education funding overhaul.
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4/23/2013
(video showing suspect at the end)
DENVER – Denver police said Monday they had identified a man wanted in connection with a shooting at a weekend marijuana rally that wounded two people, but officers declined to identify the suspect because an arrest had not yet been made.
The man was shown on a video posted on YouTube and is believed to have been an accomplice to the primary shooter at the Saturday event, said police spokesman Sonny Jackson. Police had urged the public to watch the video, which showed a man wearing a brown and white [...]
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4/22/2013
By Jason Buch / My San Antonio
AUSTIN — A Mexican multimillionaire related to jurors here Monday how he was kidnapped, beaten and forced to travel to Oklahoma to purchase a horse for the Zetas drug cartel.
Alfonso Javier Del Rayo Mora, 46, told jurors that he was kidnapped in December 2010 in a bar in his home town of Veracruz. His kidnappers, who called themselves Zetas, held him for nine days, beating him severely and demanding 50 million pesos, or about $4.5 million at the time.
Jurors were shown pictures of Del Rayo, a real estate [...]
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4/40/2013
by Alex Zielinski / KCBD
LUBBOCK, TX – Lubbock Police and federal agents seized 200 lbs of marijuana and 3 lbs of mushrooms in a drug bust at Aero Lubbock at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Crews initially responded to a suspicious plane, and after the pilot refused to let police conduct a search a K9 alerted crews that drugs were present.
Police arrested two men, Ethan Oliver Wynne-Wade and Michael Paul Gallanter, both of San Francisco, and took them to the LPD holding facility where they were booked.
The DEA had the lead on the investigation and [...]
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4/17/2013
By Jazmine Ulloa / American-Statesman Staff
Years before he was accused of funneling drug money from the Zetas cartel into U.S. horse racing, Francisco Colorado Cessa channeled millions of the narco group’s dollars to a gubernatorial candidate in the Mexican state of Veracruz, a former accountant for the Gulf Cartel testified Thursday in federal court.
Jose Carlos Hinajosa, 35, told jurors he remembered that between 2004 and 2005 Colorado received hundreds of thousands of dollars from cocaine sales in the United States — on one occasion about $180,0oo, which he used to buy at least one horse, [...]
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4/17/2013
By Jazmine Ulloa / American-Statesman Staff
A former drug trafficker from Dallas testified Wednesday that he helped funnel about 300 assault rifles and fully automatic weapons to the Zetas, as the narco group battled with the Gulf Cartel for turf in Mexico more than five years ago.
Jose Vasquez Jr. said he was supplied thousands of kilograms of cocaine by the criminal organization over nearly two years and that he pocketed $1.5 million a month or more in profits. Vasquez said a half-dozen people working for him bought the guns at Texas gun shows, mostly in the [...]
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4/17/2013
By Mike Riggs / Reason.com
When’s the last time you heard someone argue that we need to raise taxes to fund torture? Or to pay for violent paramilitary raids on peaceful U.S. citizens? Or to incentivize extrajudicial killings carried out by our own government, yes, but also by a neighboring country? Probably never. As every good citizen knows, taxes are for taking care of the poor and the indigent, paying (good) teachers and (good) cops, investing in the future, and making sure the elderly have enough Viagra and cat food to fuel 25 years of post-workforce bingo, [...]
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Officials: Two major Austin drug rings busted
4/13/2013
By Jazmine Ulloa / American-Statesman
Central Texas law enforcement officials said they have busted two elaborate drug distribution networks based in Austin, one of which operated out of an East Austin body shop and had strong ties to a powerful Mexican cartel.
The investigations recovered more than $1 million in proceeds and large amounts of cocaine and marijuana, but most alarming, U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman and other officials said at a news conference Thursday, was the ample amount of methamphetamine — more than 75 kilos.
The addictive drug, once cooked [...]
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4/13/2013
By Peter M. Tase / Spero News
Paraguayan Government concluded another successful operation on the war against drugs in its territory. On April 11, Paraguay’s National Police conducted a major raid on narcotrafficking operations in the Department of San Pedro, destroying more than two tons of marijuana while also incinerating illegal facilities for drying and packaging marijuana.
Some 30 officers of Paraguay’s Drug Enforcement Agency (SENAD) and San Pedro police participated in the sweep.
Law enforcement destroyed 10 hectares of marijuana that was ready to be harvested. The raid was made possible when the owner of [...]
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4/12/2013
By Ben Goad / The Hill
The Obama administration is outlawing forms of synthetic pot even as some states are moving to legalize the real thing.
In a notice to appear in Friday’s Federal Register, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is announcing plans to designate three synthetic cannabinoids as Schedule 1 drugs. The substances — known in chemical terms as UR-144, XLR11 and AKB48 — join other synthetic marijuana mixtures that are already banned. Recreational use of the drugs, known on the street by names like “Spice” and “K2,” has exploded since they first became available in [...]
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