Steven Weigert of West Burlington, IA, has been sentenced to 5 years in prison for growing marijuana.  Weigert claimed he needed marijuana to ease his pain after he tried to kill himself.  Police found 56 marijuana plants, growing equipment, packaging materials and a pipe with marijuana residue during a search of Weigert’s home in May.

Steven Weigert claimed he grew the marijuana for his own medical use, but District Court Judge Mary Ann Brown rejected the argument Monday, noting a presentence investigation showed the 53-year-old Weigert smoked marijuana before he shot himself in the shoulder in 2004. Reported The Hawk Eye.  Weigert’s attorney, James Beres, requested a suspended sentence and probation, saying there were “mitigating circumstances” for the crime and that the marijuana Weigert grew was not grown for profit.

Ohio State Patrol Troopers seized 21 pounds of hydroponic marijuana from a traffic stop on Tuesday on the Ohio Turnpike in Wood County.  The marijuana was valued at more than $100,000.  The suspect, IIya Klyuchnikov, 33, of Greenwood Village, Colorado, is facing felony drug charges.

The federal prosecutor says three of the six men, associated in the bust for growing thousands of marijuana plants in the Chequamegon National Forest, have pleaded guilty  The other three who tended the illegal crop are expected to enter guilty pleas later this week.  Pleas were entered Monday for Jorge Lopez-Ontiveros, 24, Abraham Ramirez, 29, and Cesar Tinoco, 21.  All three could be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in a federal facility when they are sentenced next year.

The six were arrested in August near Clam Lake in a joint operation by county sheriff’s deputies and drug enforcement agency officers when a marijuana farm in the northern Wisconsin forest was raided last year.   Authorities reported they found nearly 10,000 marijuana plants. The take was estimated at a million dollars.

U.S. attorney John Vaudreuil says he says he hopes it sends a message to the Mexican drug cartel who hired them and a warning to the public to be careful when hiking in the national forest.

“I hope the message is clear you know sometimes it too often well it’s marijuana blah blah blah. It really lots and lots of marijuana worth millions of dollars and these are really armed camps,” he said.

Several rifles and hand guns were found at the camp in the forest near the marijuana field. Vaudreuil says he knows these pot farmers are only low level players in drug war. But he’s hopeful that destroying the 10,000 plants they were growing and an ongoing investigation will lead to the people who paid them each $5,000 to tend this high yield crop in the Wisconsin woods.

In the wake of a federal crackdown announced eight weeks ago, 139 (or 62%) of the medical marijuana dispensaries in the San Diego area have closed their doors.  The shut downs are due to threats of criminal prosecution by the Feds.  That is a huge percentage of dispensaries closing down, considering there were only 222 total dispensaries in San Diego to begin with.  Authorities expected a further 20 to shut down in the coming two weeks.

The U.S. Attorney’s office and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration led the crackdown on dispensaries that are approved under California law, but illegal in the eyes of federal agencies, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.  Pressure on those that remain open, however, is increasing.

Alex Kreit, a professor at San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law, doubted the move would remove medical marijuana from the city.

“If you only had 10 places operating and you prosecute five, the other five are going to close. But if you have 200 and there’s still 100 operating after these letters, well, the letters clearly haven’t worked,” he said. “I think that the places operating now are assuming that there’s probably going to be a few federal prosecutions, and they are just keeping their fingers crossed hoping that it’s not them.”

California approved medical marijuana 15 years ago, but the drug is still illegal un

Feds agents have discovered a major cross-border tunnel that links warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana and found more than 32 tons of marijuana in one of the largest pot busts in U.S. history.  The tunnel was discovered by San Diego’s Tunnel Task Force in cooperation with Mexican authorities.

According to an police incident report, an undercover detective of the Somerville Police Department posed as a UPS worker to deliver marijuana to its intended recipient.  The recipient was arrested upon receipt.   The arrest took place in Somerville, MA. (suburb of Boston) Nov. 22 at 2 Meacham St., in the Ten Hills area, at about 3:15 p.m.

Undercover detectives received information from Massachusetts State Police that UPS, through its screening process, had discovered a package containing a large amount of marijuana. UPS contacted State Police when they made the discovery, the report says.

According to the report, Somerville detectives responded to the UPS customer center on Third Avenue to inspect the package, and one of the detectives arranged to pose as a UPS delivery worker.

With surveillance units set up around 2 Meacham St., to where the package was addressed, the incognito detective rang on the doorbell, and when a man answered, the detective asked if he was the person listed on the package’s address label. The man said he was, then signed for the package, according to the report.

The surveillance team then moved in and arrested the man. When they searched him, they allegedly found two small plastic bags, also containing what police believed to be marijuana.

The man was charged with drug possession with intent to distribute and drug violation near a school.