While feds double down on marijuana prohibition, businesses stop bothering

"AutoNation may represent the first wave of a coming trend as marijuana becomes more socially acceptable and companies vie for workers in the tightest labor market in 17 years. As more states legalize -- Vermont will do so in July -- more employees are testing positive on drug tests, according to a Quest Diagnostics report released last year. Positive tests for marijuana rose about 75 percent from 2013 to 2016, the study showed. Results were based on more than 10 million drug tests."

Continue ReadingWhile feds double down on marijuana prohibition, businesses stop bothering

Banks Like Capital One Are Enforcing Bans on Cryptocurrency Purchases

"This isn’t the first time a national bank has taken such a strong and aggressive stance against digital currency. Last October, many customers of TD Bank experienced severe delays and blocks to their accounts while trying to purchase bitcoin on Coinbase. PNC Bank has also begun taking measures against bitcoin by preventing customers from buying it directly through their bank accounts."

Continue ReadingBanks Like Capital One Are Enforcing Bans on Cryptocurrency Purchases

Alfred McCoy: Tweeting While Rome Burns

"In just one extraordinary year, Trump has destabilized the delicate duality that has long been the foundation for U.S. foreign policy: favoring war over diplomacy, the Pentagon over the State Department, and narrow national interest over international leadership. But in a globalizing world interconnected by trade, the Internet, and the rapid proliferation of nuclear-armed missiles, walls won’t work. There can be no Fortress America."

Continue ReadingAlfred McCoy: Tweeting While Rome Burns

Both Sides of the Aisle Fire Back At Jeff Sessions’ New War on Weed

"With legal marijuana enjoying consistent majority support in opinion polls—a Pew poll released Friday at support at 61%--the blowback has been immediate, fierce, and across the board. Feeling particularly vulnerable, legal pot state Republicans howled especially loudly."

Continue ReadingBoth Sides of the Aisle Fire Back At Jeff Sessions’ New War on Weed

Orgies, devil men, knife-wielding maniacs: A history of cannabis in California

"California was home to the Haight-Ashbury counterculture movement, the Grateful Dead and Cheech & Chong. It’s also the home state of Richard Nixon, who birthed the modern drug war, and Ronald Reagan, the president who made Nixon’s war metaphor all too literal. Today, we’ll look at cannabis in California up until about the late 1960s."

Continue ReadingOrgies, devil men, knife-wielding maniacs: A history of cannabis in California