For the Culture By The Culture. ISSN: 3064-9331.
Louisiana says HB 568 protects schools. Critics see something older beneath the language: another expansion of marijuana enforcement through invisible school-zone boundaries. As lawmakers rebuild cannabis penalties around geography and fear, the state’s long relationship with punishment politics comes roaring back into view.
Vault Series brings an unpublished October 2011 phone interview with Freeway Ricky Ross into the record, using the tape to examine the crack era, Gary Webb, federal punishment, prison literacy, and the street lie that sold easy money while hiding the years it would steal. Ross is not absolved or buried.
Legal cannabis is often blamed for rising traffic deaths, but federal data tells a more complicated story. NHTSA findings, toxicology limitations, and conflicting crash studies reveal that THC presence is not a reliable measure of impairment. This investigation breaks down how flawed testing and policy shortcuts have shaped the narrative around so-called stoned driving.
Arizona lawmakers are advancing legislation that would criminalize “excessive” marijuana odor detectable across property lines. Cannabis Lie Vol. 3 examines SB 1725 and SCR 1048, the proposed misdemeanor penalties, the legal implications of State v. Sisco, and why critics argue this is a backdoor attempt to reintroduce cannabis criminalization under the banner of nuisance law.
THE CANNABIS LIE is a reporting series examining how cannabis policy turns shaky assumptions into hard penalties. In THE CANNABIS LIE: Vol. 2, The Fiction of Impairment, THC detection is often treated like proof of impairment, even though blood levels show a weak, inconsistent relationship to functional driving ability. This installment explains why per se THC limits and zero tolerance rules create false certainty, why urine metabolites only show prior exposure, and why real impairment should be demonstrated through behavior and context, not presumed from a lab result.
Cannabis use rates are similar across races, but arrests are not. Black Americans are still arrested for marijuana possession at several times the rate of white Americans, even as legalization spreads. This investigation breaks down the data, the role of possession-only enforcement, and why legalization without repair keeps old lines firmly in place.