Clear-bright and chilly this Friday morning on California’s north coast with a fairly-decent rainstorm slated for this weekend.
And more cool temperatures with the storm, too, as a low pressure shifts southward from the Gulf of Alaska and brings showers to the region — appears as if the season is indeed coming upon us.

In a surprise source for enlightened marijuana attitudes (from Scientific American): ‘Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the green light to growing marijuana for recreational use in a landmark decision that could lead to legalization in a country with a bloody history of conflict with drug cartels.’

(Illustration found here).

This comes in the wake of Tuesday’s defeat by Ohio voters on making pot legal — most commenters, however, report it was how the weed measure for the ballot was produced instead of an actual denial by citizens.
In Mexico’s Supreme Court, the ruling came from a 2013 case by an advocacy group that prohibiting people from cultivating the drug for personal use was unconstitutional. The action a good start: ‘Alberto Islas, a security consultant, said he expected marijuana to be legalized within the next three or four years, and that drug policy would be a key issue in the 2018 presidential race.’

Meanwhile, here in the US, law enforcement is finally seeing the torched doobie in broad daylight — this week a survey from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s “2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary,” revealed police no longer believe marijuana is a threat.
From yesterday’s Washington Post:

The DEA asked a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 law enforcement agencies what they saw as their biggest drug threats.
Marijuana came in at the bottom of the list, named by only 6 percent of survey respondents.
The share of law enforcement agencies naming pot has been declining steadily since the mid-2000s, even as states have moved to legalize medical and recreational marijuana during that time period.
By contrast, nearly three quarters of police departments named heroin and meth as their top drug threats this year.
The perceived threat of heroin has more than quadrupled since 2007, according to the survey.
And after rising sharply from 2007 to 2013, the threat posed by prescription painkillers has subsided considerably in the past two years.
The findings indicate a statement by law enforcement of a fact that drug policy experts and researchers have known for a long time: compared to other recreational substances, including alcohol, marijuana doesn’t cause that much harm.
It’s probably even safer than many people think.
And whether you’re worried about potential harms to individuals or to communities, marijuana is very low on the list of recreational substances.
…
Despite this shift in thinking, arrests for marijuana possession continue unabated.
Cops keep arresting people for marijuana possession.
This might be a simple question of low-hanging fruit: Marijuana is by far the most widely used illegal drug, and more users means more potential arrestees.
But these arrests have serious consequences for the people caught up in them, and they divert precious police time and resources away from more serious crimes, like rape and murder.

Cops seem slow to move away from procedures used for decades, but this is a good move in the right direction, and bodes well for marijuana’s standing within the mainstream of American life.
Mary Jane is getting her groove back…