Ninjas Target Drug Users, Are Arrested

Police in New Jersey arrested two ninjas yesterday; the men (arrested in Clifton) said they were on a mission to tell drug dealers and users to stop, lest they suffer harm.

Guys, I know you’ve heard my column is coming back off hiatus soon, but this really isn’t the best way to handle it.

Calling themselves “Shinobi warriors,” the men wore black SWAT-type vests and carried knives, throwing stars, swords, nunchucks and a bow and arrows.

After being arrested early Wednesday in a car on Route 46, the men said they were delivering warning letters to drug dealers and drug users urging them to stop their “impure” activities.

The letters said those who persisted would be stopped with “justified yet, merciful force.

I have to imagine these two are part of the government’s new plan to fight the drug war with ninjas. Pretty soon the DEA will move on to other internet favorites and fight it with pirates and LOLcats.

Also, the headline on the story is awesome: N.J. men with Asian weapons claimed to target drugs.

Photo by R’eyes, Creative Commons license

Global Cannabis March This Saturday

Also on Saturday is the Global Cannabis March, the annual event protesting the nearly a million arrests a year for marijuana crimes, most for simple possession. I covered this last year, naturally; only later did I learn that Herb Hash and Stoney McGlynn were not the best pot-related baseball names — there was a pitcher who played briefly for Philadelphia named Lil Stoner.

The march takes place in over 200 cities worldwide; the Philly march starts at Broad and South; meet at around 4, march at 4:20. The speakers include Sonnet Gabbard of Americans for Safe Access (a medical marijuana group), Amber Langston of Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Fraser Frazier of PhillyNORML and Freshgrocer. And check out the sweet t-shirt (pictured).

I know what you’re thinking: Only Lil Stoner could think he could be in two places at once. Well, whatever, I’ll be a little late after I get eliminated from the RPS tournament and I’m done refereeing. Hell, with how I play I’ll probably end up done early.

Update: Meanwhile, a report from Brazil says a court has banned the Global Cannabis March. There are people in America who’d like to do this, too, actually.

College-Aged Kids #1 Issue: Income Tax

Praise Zeus! Ron Paul has spoken in the state of Pennsylvania — at the University of Pittsburgh — and he got a packed house to cheer him on.

Alli Katz (Friend of D-Mac™, and also a co-worker) notes on Independence Brawl that the biggest cheer Ron Paul got all night was not for his talk of ending the drug war, but for his talk of ending the income tax.

“I didn’t realize that people your age knew so much about money and inflation,” Paul said. “But it gets the largest applause at college campuses. I figured the first time it happened it was an accident - it was at the University of Southern California. But then at the University of Michigan, they started to burn Federal Reserve notes.”

Damn self-hatin’ druggie college kids!

Still, it’s good to see Ron Paul is in the Keystone State and is somehow still running for president despite McCain clinching the nomination. That kind of panache is going to get my write-in vote come November.

RON PAUL IS STILL ALIVE [Independence Brawl]

Heroic Villanova Prof Protests Drug Laws

Villanova engineering professor Edward Ritter apparently wanted to show his students the art of civil disobedience. His target? The nation’s (and state’s) ridiculously harmful cannabis laws. His act? Why, allegedly possession of marijuana with intent to deliver!

Cops arrested the 48-year-old at his Collegeville home yesterday. Action News got a nice moralistic quote from a Catholic student: “Any university, but specifically here, we uphold certain morals and values and that’s completely against all of them.” Drinking some unblessed blood of Christ on St. Patrick’s Day is 100 percent Catholic, though.

Ritter faces 100 million years in prison, or maybe 1-3. I haven’t talked with the other media guys, but is Professor Pothead okay for a nickname?

Villanova professor charged with marijuana possession [6 ABC]

Crack, Weed, Nicotine Make Local News

Oh, so apparently this story is gaining a lot of traction: A 7-year-old in Trenton was found with crack in school; his 10-year-old sister turned him in. This was a little different than the usual minuscule amount kids manage to steal from idiot parents and bring into school for show and tell. Our little 7-year-old had seventy grams of cocaine.

The kid won’t be punished — hooray! — but his parents have been arrested on drug charges and endangering the welfare of a child. A commenter on Action News‘ website plainly states: “does anyone who has made it out of the inner city care enough 2 put their successes aside 2 mentor 1 child 2day honestly it does no good 4 the white community 2 step up 4obvious reasons 2 numerous 2 list as a community both blk n wht n other we r in trouble.” Uh, yes.

The Eagles’ Mike Patterson was recently charged with possession of a drug of a less dangerous nature, i.e. marijuana, reefer, pot, ganja, cannabis and about 150 other stupid names. The Daily News‘ John Smallwood goes and says he shouldn’t be smoking pot because of Andy Reid’s sons!

Considering his family’s ordeal, it would be difficult for Reid to simply dismiss Patterson’s actions and let them drift away. For Reid to do nothing to Patterson would be a tacit acknowledgment that drug use isn’t that big a deal, and really, how can he possibly do that? Yet, if Reid hands down an overly harsh penalty on Patterson, would it be viewed as him allowing his personal issues to influence his professional duties?

Sigh. Meanwhile, Philly Edge points to a debate about a legal drug: Some snooty teenagers in Bensalem want to take away our right to smoke in parks and playgrounds! If not the suburbs, there’s nowhere else to smoke! The kids are part of the Extreme Service and Intergenerational Training Experience, and we all know how much extreme power that group has. Guess we’ll have to be content to smoke elsewhere. Who knew you were even allowed to smoke at a playground anyway?

The White/Snow Puns Have Been Exhausted Already

Police said yesterday a man sent cocaine in Christmas cards to Philadelphia from Peru. He got caught, somehow, and now we have puns like “white Christmas” and “Muletide greetings” (ha!).

The message in the card, in part (this is translated from Spanish, I believe):

“I’m sending this card, which makes me so happy, and through it I want to express immense affection toward you.”

With cocaine? Yeah, okay, that sounds about right.

Muletide greetings [Daily News]

Inquirer Decides To Print Some Lies

A potent type of marijuana known as AK47 - so strong that some users are treated in emergency rooms for overdoses - has hit the Philadelphia area.

In order to overdose on marijuana, you’d have to smoke several hundred pounds all at once. Several hundred pounds. All at once.

Police seize high-potency marijuana, arrest 2 men [Inquirer]
A brief history of the criminalization of cannabis [Drug War Rant]

Marijuana Eradicated From Philadelphia Streets

Sorry, pot smokers! A City Line bust of particularly potent marijuana has completely shut down the supply of marijuana in Philadelphia, and it simply won’t be available anymore. Score one for the War on Drugs!

Philadelphia police arrested 24-year-old Michael Cascioli and say they seized $1.4 million worth of marijuana and ’shrooms from his City Ave. apartment. The cops also say the seized marijuana was of the AK-47 variety, which is, like, almost as good as Purple Haze. (Or maybe it’s better? We got a copy of The Big Book of Buds: Volume 3 (really) in the office recently, so perhaps I will scan though and take a look.)

The MJ was destined for rich Main Line pot smokers, so between this and the Reid kids, white drug users are under attack from the government.

Anyway, the cops wasted six weeks on this investigation because it’s for the children, according to this hilarious lie in the CBS 3 report:

Police said the drugs would typically end up in the hands of wealthy teens who would often end up in the hospital due to the potency of the pot.

Anyway, with this bust, the War on Marijuana is finally over. Marijuana no longer exists, at least in Philadelphia; we’ve finally won the war. Sales of Teddy Grahams are expected to plummet.

Police Seize Million-Dollar Drug Cache in City Ave. Apartment [KYW 1060]
Potent Pot Seized In Million Dollar Drug Bust [CBS 3]

Drug War Gets Another Villain Off City Streets

So a lawyer was going to visit his client in jail, and, whoops, this lawyer had coke on him!

So what was he doing, trying to smuggle in a stash of cocaine for his client? Nah, of course not:

[D. Scott] Perrine last night described the incident as a misunderstanding. Before visiting Curran-Fromhold, “I had a meeting with a client and his mother, and she had brought out [the vial] to demonstrate what she has to put up with,” Perrine said. “There was nothing really in it at all, and that vial is what was found in my briefcase.”

Perrine’s attorney, Larry Krasner, said there were .001 grams of cocaine in the vial - roughly 1 percent of the normal amount of cocaine that would be sold in the type of vial found in Perrine’s briefcase. Police officials confirmed that the amount of cocaine in the vial was minuscule.

Phew! It’s a good thing this menace to society has been arrested.

Visiting jailed client, lawyer had coke vial [Daily News]

Allentown Mayor Kids Self

This is awesome, I don’t even need to find a new image for this one; I can just use the one I found earlier today. Why the dunce cap again, you ask?

Yesterday, Allentown police showed off all the drugs they had confiscated from the 208 arrests they’ve made so far this year. Amazingly, they’ve only gotten $200k of drugs, but apparently that’s an incredible bust:

Mayor Ed Pawlowski vowed, ”We will not rest until we completely cripple the illegal drug trade in the city.”

Hey! Mayor Pawlowski invented a perpetual motion machine!

Allentown police tout success in war on drugs [Morning Call]