Choice cuts from Acadiana's news media for Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014:
Choice cuts from Acadiana's news media for Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2014:
Photo courtesy of Vermilion Today
Sen. Jonathan Perry
Louisiana isn't ready for Mary Jane
Sen. Jonathan Perry got real during a recent Abbeville Kiwanis Club meeting on the unlikelihood of any marijuana legislation passing muster during the upcoming session, reports Vermilion Today.
"Is there a chance? I don't think," says Perry. "I think someone said there are maybe 12 bills filed this session for either legalization or medicinal purposes. I think one will get heard. I think that one will get shot down and something will come back next year. I just don't think it is going to happen right now."
He's probably right, despite the fact Louisiana has some of the nation's harshest penalties when it comes to simple possession, which thanks to our state's habitual offender statutes, can lead to a life in prison simply for a third possession marijuana charge. No joke.
Officials ignoring the law
The city of Jeanerette has a law requiring large or dangerous animals be kept in kennels, or at least leashed and muzzled, but for one resident, the lack of enforcement resulted in a chunk of her hand being bitten off by a pit bull mix, according to this report from The Daily Iberian.
"I just let out a Tarzan yell," Linda Legnon tells the newspaper.
Legnon has since brought the issue to the attention of Jeanerette Mayor Aprill Foulcard, but so far, she says that has done little toward getting the law enforced.
"It's one thing to say you are going to enforce the ordinances ... it's another thing to actually do it," says Legnon's neighbor Ronnie Landry, a former city alderman. "The ordinance is explicit in its wording. It's been on the books a long time."
Yet, according to Legnon, despite assurances from the mayor that the issue would be brought up before the city's Board of Alderman, her K-9 attacker continues to get loose in the neighborhood, and the police have yet to do anything about it.
"They have been in other people's yards several times since I was bitten," says Legnon. "It's only a matter of time before they attack someone else."
The issue still has not made its way onto the Board of Aldermen's meeting agenda.