New Challenge for Police: Finding Pot in Lollipops and Marshmallows @NYTimes

Pot edibles, as they are called, can be much easier to smuggle than marijuana buds: They may resemble candy or home-baked goodies, and often have no telltale smell. And few police officers are trained to think of gummy bears, mints or neon-colored drinks as potential dope

An edible can take one to three hours to produce its maximal high, while smoking takes minutes. Inexperienced consumers easily eat too much, winding up severely impaired.

New Challenge for Police: Finding Pot in Lollipops and Marshmallows

Photo

Commercial marijuana products confiscated by Oklahoma agents in one seizure in July. Credit Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics 

After nearly 20 years on the job, Jim Jeffries, the police chief in LaFollette, Tenn., has seen his share of marijuana seizures — dry green buds stashed in trunks or beneath seats, often double-bagged to smother the distinctive scent.

But these days, Chief Jeffries is on the lookout for something unexpected: lollipops and marshmallows.

Recently his officers pulled over a Chevy Blazer driven by a couple with three children in tow. Inside, the officers discovered 24 pounds of marijuana-laced cookies and small hard candies shaped like gingerbread men, plus a tub of pungent marijuana butter perfect for making more.

The bags of Kraft marshmallows looked innocent enough. But a meat injector was also found in the car. After searching the Internet, Chief Jeffries realized that the marshmallows probably had been infused with the marijuana butter and heat-sealed into their bags.

“This is the first time that we have ever seen marijuana butter or any of this candy containing marijuana in the county,” Chief Jeffries said. “We hope it’s the last time.”

That seems increasingly unlikely. Across the country, law enforcement agencies long accustomed to seizures of bagged, smokable marijuana are now wrestling with a surge in marijuana-infused snacks and confections transported illegally across state lines for resale.

Pot edibles, as they are called, can be much easier to smuggle than marijuana buds: They may resemble candy or home-baked goodies, and often have no telltale smell. And few police officers are trained to think of gummy bears, mints or neon-colored drinks as potential dope.

In Flight @NYTimes

An excellent essay on flying well worth the read

En route from London to Tokyo, a pilot’s-eye view of life in the sky.

By MARK VANHOENACKER MAY 14, 2015

TAKEOFF

As we push back from our gate at Heathrow Airport we light the Boeing 747’s engines in pairs, starting with those under the starboard wing. A sudden hush falls in the cockpit as the air flow for the air-conditioning units is diverted. It’s this, air alone, that begins to spin the enormous techno-petals of the fans, faster and faster, until fuel and fire are added, and each engine wakes with a low rumble that grows to a smooth, unmistakable roar.

We begin to taxi. In legal terms, a journey begins when “an aircraft moves under its own power for the purpose of flight.” In aircraft manuals, elaborate charts that recall da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” illustrate the angles and distances that the extremities of the plane sweep through as we maneuver on the ground. A pleasing terminology accompanies these images of the plane’s turning limbs: tail radius and steering angle and the wingtip that swings the largest arc.

A quarter of an hour later we reach the runway. I push the four thrust levers forward for an experience that repetition hasn’t dulled: the unfurling carpet of guiding lights that say here, the voice of the controller that says now; the sense, in the first seconds after the engines reach their assigned takeoff power, that this is only a curious kind of driving down an equally curious road.

But with speed comes a transition, the gathering sense that the wheels matter less and the flight controls on the wings and the tail matter more. In the cockpit we sense the airplane’s speed-born life to come in the air, we feel clearly that long before we leave the ground we are already flying along it, and as the lights of the runway start to alternate red and white to indicate its approaching end, as the four rivers of power that equal nearly a quarter of a million pounds of thrust unfurl over the runway behind us, I lift the nose.

As if we are only pulling out of a driveway, I turn right, toward Tokyo.

We are underway.

When someone I’ve just met at a dinner or a party learns that I’m a pilot, he or she often asks me about my work. Three questions come up most often, in language that hardly varies. Is flying something I have always wanted to do? Have I ever seen anything “up there” that I cannot explain? And do I remember my first flight? I like these questions. They seem to have arrived, entirely intact, from a time before flying became ordinary.

Read the rest of the essay here: In Flight - NYTimes.com

"Welcome to the Spacious Era" Boeing #747 The Jumbo Jet 1970 PanAm.org

Fantastic!  If they only knew what actually happened... #SardinesInACan

https://youtu.be/w0n5_aJfEtg

When Pan Am's first B-747 came to London's Heathrow Airport in 1970,
the normally staid British were flabbergasted and awed by such a huge
aircraft.

As you can tell from this contemporary British newsreel clip, there
was no lack of eager observers crowding around, through, and on the
brand new clipper.

Pan Am was looking forward to a new epoch in global transport with
the advent of the 747, offering economies of scale that were scarcely
imaginable only a few years earlier. What it would mean to average
travelers - much more room, much lower fares, greater opportunity to see
the world - is an almost palpable current running through this bit of
history.



 http://www.panam.org/video/451-the-jumbo-jet-1970#.VVB-fMZoyDo.blogger



The Jumbo Jet (1970) - Pan Am Historical Foundation