Looks like this 1995 U.S. figure skating champion chose the wrong ice to make a career out of…

On Tuesday, Nicole Bobek, a former Olympic athlete, plead not guilty, via video from the Hudson county jail, to the charges of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Hudson County, New Jersey.

The 31-year old was arrested last week, at her house in Jupiter, FL, after a year long investigation into a drug ring. Bobek waived extradition rights and was sent to the Garden City. Nineteen people have also been arrested in connection with the drug ring.

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said:

She played a significant role in this operation. [...] She was actively involved in the upper echelon of this ring.

Bobek is free on bond, more than likely heading back to her other home in Manhattan, which coincidentally is in the same state where the investigation into the drug ring first began. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years and a $150,000 fine.

A court date has finally been set for actor of Harry Potter fame, 19-year old Jamie Waylett, who was busted back in April for having ten marijuana plants at his home in Kilburn, north London. On July 16th, Waylett and 20-year old John Innis are scheduled to appear in the Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Waylett plays the character, Vincent Crabbe, the right hand man of Draco Malfoy, Potter’s schoolyard nemesis. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is set for it’s world premiere on Tuesday, July 14th at Leicester Square in London.

Five. Five dollar. Five dollar foot lonnng.

Michael Phelps is finally back on the endorsement trail, after being shunned by some of his sponsors and dropped by Kellogs, because of a picture that circulated the internet five months back that showed him toking on a bong. The company that picked up the slack? Subway.

With their sandwich shops soon to be visited by hungry stoners worldwide, the ad execs that came up with this commercial brilliantly targeted the demographic, while at the same time, having it appear as a regular commercial for those that lack the radar for pot innuendo.

Some of the subtle clues:

• So… any coincidence that the video feed freezes on a frame where MP looks like a stereotypical stoner?
• Maybe… the looping soundtrack playing in the background — Thank you for letting me be myself again.
• Or… what about the the vibrant, eye catching colors with encrusted shiny jewels?
• Kicking it… Jared watches goofy shit on TV… you know you do it too.
• Easily the most obvious clue was the URL of the Subway website advertised… nice.
• Perhaps the words phresh, phave, and phlavor are meant for the sub-culture circle?
• Or… the use of the phrase ‘The man behind the marinara.’ What did you see the first time reading it?
• The new logo says it all… way fresh indeed.

As Kellog’s stock went down after they canned Phelps’ contract, Subway only stands to profit from their new push into an old demographic that more than likely has been eating at their franchise since its grand opening. Now, the pot smokers will simply go out of their way to eat $5 foot long subs, letting Subway and Phelps rake in the green.

This week, ABC news reported on the newest innovation in the battle for California’s medical marijuana market share.  Apparently a group calling itself the Artists Collective has been employing Twitter to coordinate weed drop offs for MMJ patients who prefer to do business in spurts of 140-characters or less. While the twits of the world are certainly proud of the entrepreneurship they’ve spawned, they don’t represent the most unique facet of the Artists Collective business plan.

You see, Artists Collective is a registered 501(c)3 (non profit). Moreover, its entire purpose is to raise enough money to give out grants to local artists. Move over Pew Charitable Trust. There is a new game in town. While the model is still brand new, and the scale relatively small, this sort of thinking could make waves in the greater philanthropy world.

In the current system, most philanthropy dollars flow from family trusts through private foundations. The programs selected for funding tend to do very conservative study or social work. Rarely would an esteemed organization (with some former Robber Baron’s name on the building) want to risk funding anything that would be considered countercultural or controversial.

Starting a foundation from the (weed harvested) ground up opens the door for a plethora of new alternative off-centered artists to finally receive some well-deserved patronage. For instance, it’s about time someone put some serious greenbacks behind the efforts of the Billboard Liberation Front.

With that in mind, here’s to hoping that the Artists Collective is the new JD Rockefellers of the Digital Herb Racket.

After dragging ass for years, by way of the U.S. Supreme Court, secret stings and raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, San Diego has finally complied to California’s medical marijuana law and began issuing medical marijuana ID cards to the medical marijuana patients.

Jordan Jarvis, a medical marijuana patient and operator of Top Quality Collective, said:

This kind of medicine has given me the ability to get up and do things and be part of a society again. [...] We can now get ID cards that are and should be respected among law enforcement without harassment. [...] It’s groundbreaking.

San Diego breaking down and issuing medical marijuana ID cards is a big step in California’s medical marijuana movement, yet after so many attempts to circumvent prop 215, something tells me it’s not the end of their fight politically.

The Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, is saying goodbye to Canada by way of a “fairwell tour”, scheduled to make its mark in 32 cities, before he is extradited to the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds to U.S. customers.

On Sunday, Emery began the tour in Calgary saying:

I’m being taken to a U.S. prison for something I did in Canada as innocuous as selling seeds, which don’t even have any drug quality, and yet I have to face a five year term for that. [...] It’s difficult to say what will happen in a U.S. federal penitentiary. It’s never very pleasant. American jails aren’t run nearly as well as Canadian jails. [...] I’m going away for a long time so I expect everybody to do their best and pick up the slack for me.

Emery is referring to the fight coming up in form of bill C-15, a federal bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana in Canada. The bill has already passed the House of Commons and it is now in the hands of the Senate. Emery advises activists to back the NDP, the Bloc, and the Green Party — all pro-cannabis political parties.

Emery’s fairwell tour continues in Saskatoon on Wednesday and Edmonton on Thursday.

A factory converted into a cocaine laboratory in Bolivia, that could produce up to 100kg (220 lbs) of cocaine per day, was raided by Drug Enforcement officers of the Bolivian government. According to senior Bolivian anti-narcotics officer, Oscar Nina, five Colombians were arrested.

The factory was the 4th largest raided since early 2009. Bolivian Interior Minister Alfredo Rada blames U.S. anti-narcotics officials for not locating the factory, that they estimate has been running for a year.

Previously in 2008, Bolivia booted the DEA from it’s borders and accused Washington with conspiring against the left wing government of President Evo Morales.

As a reward for doing and finding what the DEA could not, the U.S. announced last week that they were cutting trade benefits for Bolivia and reimposing duties on some imported Bolivian goods.

The Marijuana Policy Project Foundation is stepping up their game and launching a commercial in California that aims to help the state budget crisis by advocating the legalization of marijuana through taxation and regulation. The commercial will air Wednesday July 8th, on cable news networks:

• CNN
• CNN Headline News
• MSNBC
• CNBC

A couple of TV stations in Los Angeles (KABC) and San Francisco (KGO) refused to air the ad stating in an e-mail that “standards rejected the spot” and they were “not comfortable.”

Aaron Smith, MPP California policy director said:

We are astonished that three major California TV stations chose to censor a discussion that Governor Schwarzenegger has said our state should have on an issue supported by 56 percent of voters, according to the Field poll. [...] The 2 million Californians who use marijuana in a given month deserve to have their voices heard — and their tax dollars should help solve the fiscal emergency that threatens our schools, police and parks.

It is odd why two TV stations in two major cities in California that are pro medical marijuana would censor a commercial like this, but then again that could very well be the reason.

More  bad news for the land down under in form of tainted ecstasy. The Crime and Misconduct Commission in Australia is planning on releasing a report saying that ecstasy cooks are spiking their drugs with:

• Painkillers
• Anti depressants
• Methamphetamine
• Ketamine

CMC intelligence director Chris Keen said:

Whereas previously a tablet may have mainly contained ecstasy as the active drug there is now an increased incidence of tablets containing other types of drugs within one tablet. [...] A person who believes they have overdosed from ecstasy may be shown from a toxicology perspective to be from anti-depressive drugs because that was major content of the tablet. [...] To meet the high market demand tablets are being sold as ecstasy that contain no ecstasy at all. [...] Another result of lower purity tablets is that consumers are on average swallowing more tablets in a session (from one to two) than they were five to six years ago, possibly this is to seek achieving the same high. [...] This type of behaviour creates a greater risk for adverse reactions and overdoses.

According to a report by the Australian Crime Commission, Australia has the highest use of ecstasy per capita in the world.

DEA agents and New York City’s finest were shocked last weekend to find yet another segment of society corrupted by the War on Drugs — Teddy Bears. In a raid on a Bronx safehouse, police and federal agents uncovered over 44 lbs of heroin and $150,000 in cash trafficked by the customizable bedtime friends known as Build-A-Bears.

According to one onlooking neighbor at the raid site:

My daughter has one of those toys. I’m very surprised something like that was going on right here and I’m especially surprised it was a Build-A-Bear.

While the news certainly comes as a shock to the community that calls the bears home, one wonders whether we might have seen this coming earlier. After all, these bears are so diverse in the way they choose to live their lives. There are firefighter bears, surgeon bears, even subprime mortgage-lending bears. Is it any wonder that some of these bears turned to the high-risk, high-reward lifestyle of smack trafficking?

In this economy, trying to eek out a living as a high school musical bear or a bear on a military pension just isn’t possible the way that it was in the halcyon days of beardom.  A bear has got to make ends meet, just like anyone else.

Some will argue that these bears, as couriers, were just bit players; pawns in a game played by weathered New York City drug traffickers. And every single Build-A-Bear caught up in this mess will have his day in court. But before they go out and summon their fancy lawyer bears and publicity bears, they’ll have to own up to the part they had to play in this operation. Yes, these bears were built for a purpose. They were designed and raised as heroin mule bears. But does your build determine your fate? Does not every bear ultimately choose his or her own destiny?

Perhaps the most famous bear of all, Winnie the Pooh, once said:

People who don’t Think probably don’t have Brains; rather, they have grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake.

Even bears with grey fluff upstairs should have known better on this one. Thanks, Pooh.

Oklahoma officials are set to extradite a California prisoner who has already served his allotted sentence for growing marijuana plants over a decade ago. Will Foster, arrested in 1998 for growing marijuana in his home, was originally sentenced to an unfathomable 93-year sentence in an Oklahoma State Court.

After the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that the unfathomable sentence was also unconstitutional (it represented cruel and highly unusual punishment), it reduced his sentence to 20 years which Foster served. Upon earning his parole, Foster was allowed to relocate to California.

And so Will Foster met with his parole officer, and demonstrated that he was living the life of the law-abiding, and even started a new family with girlfriend Susie Mueller and her three daughters. But Oklahoma apparently was not satisfied with his California-approved parole term, and attempted to extradite him.

Even after having the new warrant dismissed by filing a writ of habeus corpus, Oklahoma persisted and successfully lobbied the Governator to sign an extradition order to send Foster back to Oklahoma.

And so Oklahoma officials are spending millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars because it feels that a man with a garden in his home needs to be punished more severely than he already has.

If ever the American populace decides to adopt a measure of compassion and rationality and put an end to the political and legal morass known as the War on Drugs, the entire state of Oklahoma may just spontaneously combust. It’s difficult to envision a role for Oklahoma that isn’t the one of mustache-twirling villain, ruining lives and displacing families with its draconian legal code and archaic notions of justice.

Will Foster still has some time before the extradition order is carried out. For information on how to participate in the campaign for his release, you can find useful contact info on Ed Rosenthal’s blog.

Finally!

Above is some video footage from a mainstream news organization, BBC, reporting the overall result of the legalization and decriminalization of drugs in Portugal. Where many experts said that drug use would go up in the country and it would become a drug safe haven for tourists, the exact opposite has occurred.

Drug use in the country has gone down and there has been no influx of drug users seeking to abuse the system. As usual, there are those that are against the policy and feel nothing has changed, but the statistics speak for themselves. Is it time for other countries to start their own experiments with legalization?

Long story short.

Dumbass in New Hampshire and two accomplices come up with the brilliant idea of selling store bought shiitake mushrooms, mixed with blue food coloring, as a hallucinogenic drug for $900. Unfortunately for them, the person buying the mushroom was a CI (cooperating individual or confidential informant,) who gladly told the police about the deal. The Police used serial trackable money and staked out the “drug” buy.

The result lead the seller directly to jail and trial, where he was sentenced 1-3 years in a state prison for selling a controlled substance and conspiracy to sell a controlled substance. His other two buddies are facing charges as well. Only in America.

Via MPP, we learn that on last Tuesday that a Food and Drug Administration panel voted on the fate of Acetaminophen, commonly found in Tylenol, Excedrin and other medication:

• 21-16 to lower the current maximum daily dose of nonprescription Acetaminophen.
• 24-13 to limit the maximum single dose of the drug to 650 milligrams.
• 1,000-milligram dose should only be available by prescription.
• 24-13 to keep the products on the market.

According to the FDA, Acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure, having sent around 56,000 people to the hospital every year. It is also linked to acute renal failure. Total sales of Acetaminophen drugs reached $2.6b, with 80% not having to be prescribed.

Suspended since May for failing a random drug test, NASCAR driver Jeremy Mayfield has been spinning his wheels in anticipation for his day in court to have the suspension lifted. On Wednesday, July 1st, Mayfield received his chance in federal court. NASCAR revealed that Mayfield had tested positive for methamphetamines. Mayfield says he never touched the drug and contends that a mixture of taking Adderall for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Claritin-D for allergies caused him to test positive.

Mayfield’s lawyer, Bill Diehl, argued that Aegis Sciences Corporation, based in Nashville, TN, that runs the testing program for NASCAR, tested both the “A” and “B” samples. Diehl stressed the fact that Mayfield should have been given the opportunity to send the “B” sample to an independent laboratory.

Diehl said:

They say ‘We’re not bound by anything. We’re NASCAR. We can do what we want to do’. [...] If they decide to ban Coca-Cola, or coffee or orange juice, their argument is ‘We can’. That smells bad, and it stinks enough that the court should intervene.

Apparently the court felt the same way, U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen, reinstated Mayfield into NASCAR by issuing a temporary injunction. However the damage had already been done, preventing Mayfield from entering this past Saturday’s race in Daytona, FL.

Only owning a low budget team, Mayfield had to lay off ten employees, borrow money from family and sell any personal assets he had in order to keep up with living expenses. His wife, Shana, owns the #41 Toyota now, but hasn’t been having it race because of financial reasons.

Mayfield said:

Shana and I, as well as everyone at Mayfield Motorsports, will do everything in our power to race next weekend.

Unfortunately he’s not on the race entry list for next week’s race in Chicago. Mayfield has missed eight races since his suspension back in May.