The old cotton gin on the west edge of Gunter seems an odd place to launch an economic boom. A breeze blows through broken windows and holes in its rusting, corrugated metal walls. Inside, a half-dozen or so squat machines that once separated cotton from seed sit corroding in a…
Prescription opioids — painkillers like oxycodone, hydrocodone and the old standby morphine — kill more Americans than any other drug. In 2014, the official death toll was 18,893, which is probably an undercount but is nonetheless more than three times the number of Americans (5,415) who fatally overdosed on cocaine and more than twice the…
Alexis Bortell stands behind the podium, atop a stepping stool, addressing a packed house at the Southwest Cannabis Conference & Expo in downtown Fort Worth. She doesn’t look like the face of decriminalization. She’s not even old enough to buy the glass pipes being sold just a few aisles over…
Amid growing worries about public safety among downtown residents, the Dallas Police Department said Wednesday afternoon that it made its first two felony arrests for the distribution of K2 — the synthetic drug that’s been blamed for more than 200 calls to paramedics and police downtown since the beginning of…
The problems that have dogged Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk over the last 16 months or so — prescription drug abuse, paranoid delusions and a bout of severe depression that sidelined her from work for months — are yesterday’s news. She’s feeling better, and her employees say her office…
You may have read about how firefighters discovered several dozen marijuana plants inside a burning house at the corner of Peavy Road and Carnegie Drive in East Dallas on Sunday. Crazy, right? Well, what you may not have realized is that, after the fire, a team from the Observer discovered an antique…
Just after the 2015 legislative session, Texas Governor Greg Abbott vetoed a bill that would have given limited criminal immunity to good Samaritans who called 911 to report a drug overdose. That wasn’t a very nice thing to do — something we were more than happy to point out. The…
First, please don’t expect us in the news business not to act like we’re in the news business. Second, speaking of the news business, Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk is off to a real bad start. Hawk, who disappeared from public view three months ago apparently struggling with mental…
In 2011, the Texas Legislature passed an awesome law allowing people to shoot feral hogs from helicopters, which was both the first and last time that feral hogs (to say nothing of the bill’s sponsor, current Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller) produced anything good. Otherwise, the creatures are a scourge upon nature and…
In Colorado, adults can now legally grow Marijuana. In Arlington growing marijuana is reason enough for the SWAT team to raid one’s home. Two years ago, officers stormed a hippie commune called the Garden of Eden early in the morning on a no-knock warrant. The Garden of Eden, which we…
It’s one of the essential tenants of making local news: If you hear about a drug that you hadn’t previously, you need to freak out about it. Monday night, WFAA led its 5 p.m. newscast with a story that purports to be about flakka, a synthetic drug. There is very…
Every year, the energy drink company Red Bull sponsors a touring cliff-diving competition. (Cliff-diving, for those unfamiliar, is the sport of jumping off a cliff). The Texas stop on the tour, late last month at Possum Kingdom Lake, sure looked fun, the type of event where you might expect to…
Another day, another list dropped unceremoniously into the email account of the artist formerly known as Unfair Park. This time, with summer approaching, it’s WalletHub’s guide to the best cities for your summer vacation. (A sidebar: We get about 300 of these best-whatever lists every month from assorted websites, and curiously, no…
Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a law that is intended to make cannabis-based oils with low levels of THC legally available to people who suffer from intractable epilepsy.The problem is, no one is likely to be able to get it. State Senator Kevin Eltife announced the plan to legalize…
Of all the marijuana bills flitting about the state capitol in Austin this year, Representative David Simpson’s is the most radical. Simpson somewhat famously wants to regulate weed like any other crop because, in his words, “God doesn’t make mistakes.” It was shrewd gambit by Simpson, appealing to his Tea…
BY STANTON BRASHER Three bills that take different approaches to reforming Texas’ marijuana laws got a hearing before the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence on Wednesday. Supporters packed the only committee hearing scheduled on the bills in either chamber. With the clock running out on the session, other hearings aren’t…
The most progressive plan yet to fix Texas’ backwards marijuana policy has come from, of all places, a Longview Republican. A new bill from State Rep. David Simpson would control pot just like any other plant. “I am proposing that this plant be regulated like tomatoes, jalapeños or coffee,” Simpson…
Kevin Eltife and Stephanie Klick are taking the safest approach possible to an issue that, for them, is politically dangerous. The two legislators, both Republicans, have put themselves behind legalizing the narrowest sliver of medical cannabis. The Tyler state senator and Fort Worth state representative want to OK the use…
Hard to believe just looking at their mugshots, but Julia Thacker and Keith Fields were running a medium-scale marijuana farm out of their Southlake home, police say. On January 12, cops received a call suggesting that they check on the safety of an infant who lived at 125 Sweet St…
Good news for E. Cannabis Unum supporters across the country: Texas, land of big businesses and economic prosperity, could stand to gain a ton of money from legalizing marijuana — more than $166 million per year, by some estimates. That’s a Texas Miracle if we’ve ever heard one. Of course,…
A new report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) collects data from each state to determine the use of alcohol and drugs. Among the findings? We Texans like our booze, and we like a lot of it. The report divides the findings by age group and…
Ever since a doctor from Fort Worth became one of two Americans recently infected with the Ebola virus on a mercy trip in Liberia, the Western public has developed a renewed interest in the rare disease, often described as incurable. For researchers like University of Texas virologist Dr. Thomas Geisbert,…
