Recreational Use Is Now Legal in Colorado, but What Exactly Does That Mean? DENVER Colorado is going to pot. It's just having a tough time figuring out how. Although an Election Day referendum legalized marijuana for recreational use, it left questions unanswered. Like: How high can you be behind the wheel of a car? Lawmakers are debating a specific blood level, as with alcohol, above which a motorist is deemed an uneasy rider. In a restaurant or private club, might the dessert choices someday include an upscale riff on the pot brownie and a double entendre of a pot de creme? One lawyer I spoke with lofted this possibility, but who knows. State officials still have many months to draft regulations for recreational pot's retail sale, which should begin next January. The new law has already made recreational possession OK. [continues 666 words]
Colorado is going to pot. It's just having a tough time figuring out how. Although an Election Day referendum legalized marijuana for recreational use, it left questions unanswered. Like: How high can you be behind the wheel of a car? Lawmakers are debating a specific blood level, as with alcohol, above which a motorist is deemed an uneasy rider. In a restaurant or private club, might the dessert choices someday include an upscale riff on the pot brownie and a double entendre of a pot de creme? One lawyer I spoke with lofted this possibility, but who knows. State officials still have many months to draft regulations for recreational pot's retail sale, which should begin next January. The new law has already made recreational possession OK. [continues 542 words]
Colorado is going to pot. It's just having a tough time figuring out how. Although an Election Day referendum legalized marijuana for recreational use, it left questions unanswered. Like: how high can you be behind the wheel of a car? Lawmakers are debating a specific blood level, as with alcohol, above which a motorist is deemed an uneasy rider. In a restaurant or private club, might the dessert choices someday include an upscale riff on the pot brownie and a double entendre of a pot de creme? One lawyer I spoke with lofted this possibility, but who knows. State officials still have many months to draft regulations for recreational pot's retail sale, which should begin next January. The new law has already made recreational possession O.K. [continues 687 words]
Let's Treat Alcohol As the Danger It Is and Make It Pay Its Way With Higher Taxes "Crack is wack." I heard many people repeat that phrase last week as they appraised the waste of Whitney Houston's later years and flashed back to her 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer, when she uttered those immortal words. Sawyer wanted to know what Houston was on. Everyone wanted to know what Houston was on, and news reports after her death took unconfirmed inventory of the pills in her hotel suite, wondering if they represented the extent of her indulgences. [continues 576 words]
Family Seeks Privacy In Bush Daughters' Case WASHINGTON -- As police in Austin cited President Bush's 19-year-old twin daughters Thursday for underage drinking, the White House implored reporters not to tread too far into the family's privacy. The daughters, Barbara and Jenna Bush, received misdemeanor citations. Police charged Barbara with underage possession of alcohol and Jenna Bush with trying to buy alcohol using identification that did not belong to her. The incident occurred Tuesday at a Mexican restaurant and bar. [continues 391 words]
WASHINGTON President Bush has selected a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science to head the first federal office intended to promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social services, several Bush advisers said today. The advisers said the opening of the office and the appointment of John J. DiIulio Jr. to fill it would almost certainly be announced at a White House event on Monday, and they acknowledged that it would draw heated opposition from organizations and religious groups that advocate a strict separation of church and state. [continues 1202 words]
NEW YORK -- With the arrests Saturday of two cruise ship employees as their vessel docked in Manhattan, federal law enforcement officials revealed the existence of an unusual drug ring that they said used luxury ocean liners to funnel cocaine, hashish and marijuana from New York City to the island of Bermuda. These officials estimated that the operation, which involved slightly more than a dozen people with code names like ``Fidel,'' ``007,'' ``Ratty'' and ``Puny,'' accounted for 25 percent to 50 percent of the illegal drugs flowing into Bermuda in recent years. [continues 398 words]
OAKLAND, Calif. -- It is difficult to imagine a man less threatening than Herman Walker. Slowed by a stroke one year ago, Walker, 75, spends much of his time in his dingy one-bedroom apartment here, passing the hours with a Bible on his lap and stuffed animals scattered around him like throw pillows on a fraying couch. "They're company," Walker recently said, his words slightly garbled. "I look at them so much they're human to me." But according to housing officials in Oakland, Walker poses a danger to his fellow tenants in public housing. And if these officials have their way, he and his menagerie will have to find a new home. [continues 681 words]
