MONTEREY (BCN) — Six men were sentenced to two years in prison for smuggling 2,800 pounds of marijuana in a boat that landed off of the coast in Big Sur earlier this year, the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.

The men were identified as Alejandro Acosta Jr., 26, and Aaron Quintero, 23, both of Yuma, Arizona, and Jesus Israelas Carrion Corrales, 51, Gonzalo Ruiz Quezara, 28, Victor Sandoval, 41, and Jose Burgueno Sanchez, 39, of Mexico.

They all pleaded no contest to charges of transporting marijuana, possessing marijuana and conspiracy that stem from the discovery of a Panga boat that landed near Mill Creek in Big Sur during the early morning of June 12, prosecutors said.

A SUSPECTED drug dealer frantically tried to flush his mobile phone down the toilet as police stormed his flat.

The man – described as a “significant individual” in Edinburgh’s organised crime network – was one of 19 people arrested as police carried out one of their biggest co-ordinated crackdowns in the Capital in recent years.

Police in riot gear storm a flat early yesterday morning as part of the raids. Picture: TSPL

Yesterday’s dawn raids saw around 170 officers target homes and businesses across the Capital.

They seized £100,000 worth of heroin from a house in Niddrie as well as several “dealer quantities” in other properties.

LAMOTTE TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Members of the Sanilac County Drug Task Force discovered more than 355 pounds of dried marijuana plants and plant remnants and 10.5 pounds of processed marijuana during an investigation in Lamotte Township on Tuesday.

The task force served a search warrant at a resident in the north 2000 block of Lamton Road as part of an investigation into an illegal grow and processing of marijuana.

A 66-year-old man, a 44-year-old man, and an 18-year-old woman who live at the houe were questioned but have not been charged.

Battle is on for control of Michigan's marijuana market

Steve DeAngelo is a progressive visionary in the United States, widely known in the cannabis community as a pioneering dispensary owner and, most recently, author of The Cannabis Manifesto. He's someone you'd naturally assume would support like-minded Democrats like President Barack Obama.

One day in the perhaps-not-too-distant future, when we — not the royal we, of course — light up a joint and reflect on how marijuana became as accepted and as legal as alcohol and cigarettes in this country, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) probably won't be top of mind.

But future marijuana-legalization scholars won't soon forget the first presidential candidate to publicly support removing marijuana from the government's list of dangerous drugs. It currently resides on that list; Sanders wants it off entirely, which is a political turning point in our relationship with pot.

In a Virginia town hall broadcast (naturally) to about 300 college campuses Wednesday, Sanders told an audience of more than 1,700 applauding students:

GardaÍ seized more than €1.1 million worth of drugs in two separate seizures in Dublin yesterday.

Four people are currently in custody.

The first seizure took place on the N2 in the Finglas area, where two cars were searched.

A total of €300,000 worth of cannabis was seized and two men, aged 40 and 49, were arrested at the scene.

They are being held at Finglas Garda Station.

Later that day in an unconnected operation, the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau raided a property in the Irishtown area of Dublin 2 at around 4pm.

The search yielded €880,000 worth of heroin, cocaine, and cannabis.

A man and a woman, both 29, were arrested.

What could be a resolution to the long-running debate over medical marijuana in Los Angeles and across California took a step forward Friday when backers of a proposal to legalize the drug won the state’s OK to gather petition signatures needed to put the idea before voters.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.If enacted, the state would see a huge financial windfall through law enforcement cost savings and the new taxation of the drug and drug businesses.

More than $100 million in law enforcement costs could be saved if the measure becomes law, according to state officials. In addition, millions would be raised by taxing the drug industry.

Experts are mulling over the future of medical marijuana dispensaries.

Dispensaries, designed to help people gain access to medical marijuana more easily, have been controversial in many parts of the country.

On Thursday, Saskatoon Police arrested four people connected to the Saskatchewan Compassion Club, charging them with drug trafficking.

Since the incoming Liberal government has promised to legalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana, the question of how the new government will handle dispensaries has become top of mind.

Candidates vying for the presidency diverged this week quite a bit, with Bernie Sanders on one end, supporting the descheduling of marijuana as a controlled substance, effectively ending federal cannabis prohibition and Republicans Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina

Taking advantage of a 2014 Justice Department memo giving Indian tribes a green light to participate in marijuana commerce, as well as a 2014 congressional vote allowing for industrial hemp pilot programs, Wisconsin’s Menominee Tribe earlier this year planted some 30,000 cannabis plants as part of a pilot project with the College of the Menominee Nation.

Last Friday, the DEA came and cut them all down.