I’ve Supported NJ Weedman for Years; Post RE: Police Raid

I’ve supported NJ Weedman for more years than I can remember. He is an advocate for weed, and a very brave, respectable man in my eyes. I support him fully and wish him the best of luck. RESPECT!

Check him out above or read the article below (original post cited).

TRENTON — Days after heavily armed police raided his downtown restaurant and pot temple, arresting him and 10 others and carting off $19,000 in alleged marijuana, a defiant NJ Weedman says he won’t back down.

In fact, less than 30 hours after his arrest he posted to his Facebook page a video of him rolling up a joint, lighting it up and smoking.

“Fifteen years ago I said I was never going to take a plea,” he says on the video. “Since then I’ve beaten the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office twice. And now Mercer County has lined up for their ass whoopin’.”

Ed Forchion aka NJ Weedman

The notorious marijuana advocate, who operates the eatery and cannabis sanctuary across from City Hall, is facing a litany of charges alleging he was drug dealing and maintaining a narcotics nuisance and a fortified premises in the business, which opened last June.

Forchion, a former congressional and gubernatorial candidate, says authorities “exaggerated and misconstrued the goings on at the temple.”

Sure, there’s plenty of weed in there, he says. And lots of smoking, both inside and out on the building’s eclectically decorated backyard. That he doesn’t deny.

But he says he plans on defending himself in court and convincing a jury to acquit him by explaining that he doesn’t deal drugs — he just shares. And if people feel like leaving some money in a donation jar, they can.

“I believe I’m conviction proof,” he says, figuring that sensible jurors from Mercer County will see that “it’s just weed.”

Getting a jury to return a not-guilty verdict based on their belief that a law is unjust is a concept known as jury nullification — and judges in New Jersey don’t allow defendants to instruct juries to do this. It was tried unsuccessfully last year by a Mays Landing man at trial on charges that he grew marijuana plants in the Pinelands. He was sentenced in January to eight years in prison.

But Forchion has fought the law before and won. He defended himself in a 2012 trial on drug-dealing charges but was found not guilty after a retrial.

In 2003 he convinced a federal judge to release him from prison after he was jailed for advocating marijuana law reforms, which officials claimed violated his parole. Forchion had pleaded guilty in 2000 to drug dealing charges after he and his brother picked up a 40-pound package of marijuana that had been shipped by FedEx. Forchion was sentenced to 10 years but was released on parole after 16 months.

Sharing is caring

On Friday afternoon he decided to give his own side of the story, so he invited reporters to his establishment — which is actually a combination of the restaurant called the Joint, which serves turkey sandwiches and other fare for $4.20; an adjoining smoke shop that sells bongs and pipes; and the Liberty Bell Temple, which is says is a bona fide religious institution and exempt from the city’s business curfew.

Forchion said the paraphernalia charges were based on the items for sale in the smoke shop. He says the fortified premises charge against him is probably based on his surveillance-camera system. He pointed to a mess of detached wires on the wall of his office where he says police during the raid grabbed the system’s recording device. He says he installed the cameras to prove that police were lying or exaggerating about alleged disturbances outside his restaurant.

The temple, meanwhile, is the focus of a federal civil rights lawsuit Forchion filed last month after police busted his shop on the curfew violation. He claims the ordinance violates his religious liberties. The city, which is being defended by the law firm of state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, disagrees.

Police say they Wednesday’s sting was sparked after complaints from “multiple sources” about drug dealing and “constant foot traffic in and out of the establishment at all hours.”

Benefit to the community?

Inside,

Government Attacking Medical Privacy, Statistics Show if they Continue, Heroin Use Likely to Increase.

“In New York, according to Attorney General Schneiderman’s report, the state spends more than 10 times as much on arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating drug users and dealers as it does on treating addicts.”  -quote from below.

And that’s all it is about. New and old ways of putting people in prison to increase money flow. Disgusting.

My Rant on Soda Related Deaths, Alcohol & The History of Marijuana/Hemp – & the Many Reasons It Should Be Legal.

I should be studying but I can’t help but have to post this really fast… I just saw a tweet pop up with an article discussing death related to drinking “sugary beverages” such as soda… And it made me think of weed, of course! First I would like to make note, I do not do drugs, but I am a firm believer in fighting for people who DO and giving them whatever it is they are lacking, or doing the best we can as a society, to help ensure people don’t have to turn to drugs to ease their pain. I know there are other reasons people use drugs, and I know there are always going to be users.

However, I believe the majority want better, just as I don’t believe dealers really enjoy their “job” and also need help. But I digress!

Point is, I don’t view weed as a drug and though I love soda, it upsets me that it can be legal, while weed, a multipurpose, good for all plant, can’t! Yes, there is a connection or a point somewhere coming up.

Let’s go back a bit. According to Harvard researchers, 25,000 people died from “sugary beverage drinking” in America back in 2010. Worldwide, it was 180,000 in 2010. An actual quote from the article states:

“The data presents new evidence on the public health hazard triggered by artificial drinks.”

And while I believe these “sugary beverages” killing people could also have to do with not only sugar, but I believe it probably also has something to do with the aspartame, aseselfam and artificial crap they pour in them as well. So it’s not solely the sugars fault, though researchers have linked to the drinks to being (and I quote) “directly responsible” for 133,000 diabetic deaths. Whether or not they had diabetes prior, I am not sure. In addition, “sugary drinks” were also found to have been”directly responsible” in the deaths of 44,000 people with cardiovascular disease, as well as 6,000 people who passed away with cancer.

Gallup has reported nearly half Americans (around 48%) drink at least one glass of soda a day, with an average amount being 2.6 glasses. (Um, how in the world do they get information regarding how often we drink and what it is we are pulling out of the fridge!? There’s something else for you to look into. It’s not a joke.) Due to the amount of daily intake as well as the high mortality rate from the “directly responsible” drinks, researchers at Harvard have now labeled drinking “sugary beverages” as a public health hazard.

“We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to obesity, and that a large number of deaths are caused by obesity-related diseases. But until now, nobody had really put these pieces together,” Singh said while presenting the results of the study at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans.

In my home city of New York, Bloomberg has been trying to implement an intrusive city-wide ban any artificial drink in a container over 16 ounces. Here I would just like to say, if a person is over weight and wants to drink a soda or eat a cheeseburger, they should do just that. It shouldn’t matter if you drink soda or not to share this belief. It should scare everyone when the government begins to regulate the amount of food or drink we can have. It should scare us all because though food or drink bans may not impact you, but it is the start of more bans to come which WILL impact you. We should -and are- all be in this together. But back to my rant (I am almost done with the sugary drink department). Finally, researchers conclude with the following: