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It’s hardly unusual for police in the Sacramento region to find an illegal marijuana grow house in an otherwise quiet suburb. But in several recent police raids, the occupants of these grow houses have turned out to be Chinese nationals, raising questions about about who is recruiting them and financing their operations. Recent police raids in Yuba, Yolo, Placer and Sacramento counties have resulted in multiple arrests of people with Chinese passports, some of them speaking no English and apparently providing little help to investigators.

Colorado’s legal marijuana dispensaries generated over $1 billion in sales during the first eight months of 2017 — a 21 percent year-over increase putting the Centennial State on path to having its best year yet in terms of retail pot sales. Licensed pot shops in Colorado sold a total of about $1.02 billion worth of marijuana products between January and August 2017, including $733,057,112 in recreational sales and $291,978,141 in medical sales, according to data released Wednesday by the state’s Department of Revenue and analyzed by The Cannabist, the Denver Post’s marijuana news portal.

One of the things to blossom in California’s emerging marijuana industry isn’t green and leafy — it’s government jobs. Recreational marijuana use becomes legal in California in 2018 and the state is on a hiring binge to help bring order to the new pot economy. Scientists. Tax collectors. Typists. Analysts. Lawyers. There could be nearly 500 new jobs by mid-2019. …

California cannabis consumers will soon have two choices: clean, legal and pricey — or dirty, illicit and cheap. Think Whole Foods vs. El Chapo. The big difference will be the amount of pesticides in your weed. That’s because starting Jan. 2, when California’s vast legal marijuana market opens, all cannabis must be tested — and most chemicals will be banned. Much of California’s cannabis is tainted, including the “medicinal” stuff. But soon state-sanctioned weed may become the greenest in the nation. But here’s the catch: Most growers — particularly the get-rich-quick newbies and industrial-scale Big Weed wannabes — aren’t ready...

Rev. Al Sharpton argued that the fight to legalize marijuana is the next civil rights cause in a Thursday op-ed for the Guardian. Sharpton, an activist and preacher, said it’s crucial to decriminalize marijuana because laws against it have oppressed minorities over the years, making it difficult for them to get good educations and other opportunities.“It is a civil rights cause that we should not postpone, but accelerate during these dark and difficult times,” Sharpton said. “For Democrats and progressives, the arguments have always been clear: generations of Americans, overwhelmingly people of color, have been imprisoned and starved of access...

McDonald's is experiencing a feeding frenzy thanks to lots of people in legal pot states suddenly having the munchies. A joint study by Consumer Research Around Cannabis and Green Market Report found that 43 percent of people who bought recreational marijuana in the last four weeks chose McDonald’s as their go-to fast food spot. Another 18.3 percent went to Taco Bell, 17.8 percent went to Wendy’s and 17.6 went to Burger King. The study looked at Denver; Las Vegas; Washington, D.C.; Sacramento, California; and Portland, Oregon—all of which have legalized the wacky tobaccy. There's probably no link between pot consumption...

The plaintiffs, who are represented by the ACLU of Georgia, were all stopped for briefly touching or crossing the line at the edge of their lanes—an offense that every driver on the road probably has committed at some point. They were all evaluated by Carroll, who deemed them stoned despite their protests to the contrary. They were all arrested for DUI and spent a night in jail. And in all three cases, as WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta, revealed in an exposé last May, the DUI charges were eventually dropped after blood tests found no trace of marijuana—neither active...

Rapper Young Thug was arrested in Georgia on Saturday for one count of marijuana possession and tinted front windows, a representative for the Brookhaven Police confirmed to Variety. The rep confirmed that the rapper — real name: Jeffrey Lamar Williams — is facing felony charges although he was unable to provide further details at press time. It seems likely the stiff charge is related to Thug’s 2015 arrest after a police raid on his home in Sandy Springs, Georgia, that saw him charged with felony marijuana and cocaine possession and three counts of felony gun possession. All except the marijuana...

Northern Michigan University is offering students the chance to major in a new program called medicinal plant chemistry — marijuana analysis, basically. The program is the first of its kind at a four-year university in the U.S., according to CBS Detroit. Students will take classes in chemistry, plant biology and business entrepreneurship, and the program will also feature a capstone “research experience” involving “experimental horticulture and instrumental analysis of natural products.” As far as hands-on experience? “We’re not going to be actually growing anything on campus,” said Brandon Canfield, associate chemistry professor at Northern Michigan University, to CBS Detroit. “Maybe...

A group of climbers had to be rescued from the top of a mountain after getting so stoned they couldn’t get back down. The four walkers got stuck on top of the 3,209ft Scafell Pike in Cumbria’s Lake District – the highest peak in England. After successfully reaching the top, however, they found themselves ‘incapacitated’ from having taken cannabis. Cumbria Police confirmed that mountain rescue and air ambulances had to be scrambled in order to rescue the climbers. ‘Persons stuck on mountain after taking cannabis. Now having to deploy mountain rescue, air support and ambulance to rescue them,’ Cumbria Police...

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a pastor calls your radio show asking how to respond to a congregant who claims that cannabis was sanctioned by God in the Torah. That’s right, sanctioned by the Lord Himself, not to be smoked but to be burned in large quantities by the priests of Israel. Far out! To be sure, there was a time in my life when I would have readily believed something like this, since I spent 1969-1971 as a heavy drug-using, hippie rock drummer, consuming everything from pot to LSD and from speed to heroin. Not surprisingly,...

Do I smoke too much pot? It’s a question I’ve asked myself over the years, and it raised its uncomfortable head this week as I absorbed the results of the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The first thing to note about the report is the good news. One of the major and legitimate fears of those who have opposed legalization is that teen use would increase. Weed is genuinely harmful to the developing adolescent brain and those of us who passionately advocated legalization argued that making it legal would actually make it harder for teens to get...

Eaze is moving into recreational marijuana delivery with $27 million in new funding The cannabis industry has lit up in the last year, including weed delivery startup Eaze, which just raised $27 million in Series B financing and claims a 300 percent year-over-year increase in gross sales. But the weed delivery startup has come under scrutiny recently for burning through at least $1 million in cash per month. In contrast, other software-based pot delivery startups like Meadow have played it lean, focusing more on improving the software and logistics. Eaze has gone hard on marketing spend, using aggressive growth tactics...

Los Angeles is scrambling to make sure the City of Angeles soon starts collecting at least $50 million a year as the world’s top spot to buy recreational marijuana. The countdown clock is ticking down to January 2, 2018, when California joins Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Alaska and Washington DC as locations to legally buy marijuana for recreational use. California state bureaucrats and politicians are almost giddy over the $1.8 billion in annual tax revenue that the New Frontier Financials expects the state will collect from its 15 percent excise and dry-weight taxes on “weed.” But many of California’s...

Well before dawn Thursday, about a dozen local and federal law enforcement agents drove to an abandoned well pad near De Beque, shouldered some 60 pounds of gear each and began a three-mile trek through the chilly dark of the Colorado River banks by way of Union Pacific railroad tracks. Agents with night optics peered down from cliffs on either side of Interstate 70, and three Mesa County Sheriff’s Office boats took to the river as the team made its way to one of two river islands they believed were home to a massive illegal marijuana grow guarded by three...

Past-month cannabis consumption by 12-to-17-year-olds is down by more than 20 percent since 2002. Survey data released today indicate that teenagers were less likely to smoke pot last year than at any point since 2002, despite the message supposedly sent by the relaxation of marijuana laws during that period. In the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 6.5 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds reported using marijuana during the previous month, down from 8.2 percent in 2002. That 21-percent decline occurred during a period when 20 states and the District of Columbia legalized marijuana for medical use and eight states...

“The light passed about 100-200ft above their aircraft. They assumed it to be a drone and reported it to air traffic control. There was no time to take avoiding action,” said the report on the incident, which happened on May 26. ... In 2013 another A320 also had a narrow miss with an unidentified object over Glasgow. The A320 was flying with its landing lights on, in clear conditions and at an altitude of about 4,000ft above the Baillieston area of Glasgow, when the pilot and non-flying pilot saw an object “loom ahead” at a range of about 100m. The...

Men who smoke too much marijuana could face fertility problems because the drug makes sperm 'mellow' causing it to 'swim in circles'. Cannabis - which is the most widely-used illegal drug in Britain - tends to leave users feeling chilled out and relaxed. But now researchers have revealed that it has the same effect on sperm and regular weed smoking can cut counts of the cells by as much as a third.

IÂ’m no saint, nor have I ever professed to be. There are too many people currently living who could give testimony to the contrary should I ever decide to, so I wonÂ’t here. With that out of the way (itÂ’ll make more sense later in the piece), there is an area on the issue of this countryÂ’s drug laws where Republicans could both do the right thing and win some support. LetÂ’s be honest: there isnÂ’t much to vote for in the in 2018 midterm elections. For Democrats itÂ’s all about not being Donald Trump. They arenÂ’t offering up much,...

Federal and state data show that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana has more than doubled since 2013. A Denver Post analysis of the data and coroner reports provides the most comprehensive look yet into whether roads in the state have become more dangerous since the drug's legalization. It shows that Increasingly potent levels of marijuana were found in positive-testing drivers who died in crashes in Front Range counties. The trends coincide with the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado. However, Colorado transportation and public safety officials say the rising number...