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Some Michigan communities are already prohibiting adult-use marijuana businesses, a little more than a week after voters in the state approved legalization of recreational cannabis. According to various newspaper reports, Niles City in southwestern Michigan and Pinckney village in the southeastern part of the state have decided to opt out, at least for now. St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan is expected to do the same. Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press reported Tuesday that officials at colleges across the state say marijuana won’t be allowed on campuses. That’s because they don’t want to jeopardize federal funding since marijuana is still illegal...

Times change, attitudes change, and (thankfully) hairstyles change. In the last few years we’ve been witness to one amazing change that is surprising in its speed – the idea that adults should be allowed to smoke marijuana, either for medical purposes or because they want to. There’s no reason to think this trend will ever reverse itself. In the interest of full disclosure, while it’s been more than a decade, I am intimately familiar with marijuana. I didn’t experiment with it, I majored in it in college. But, like most people, I grew out of it. I didn’t make a...

Marijuana legalization had a very good election night on Tuesday. The big news came from Michigan, which became the first state in the Midwest to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes. And it appears to have won by a fairly big margin: With 87 percent of precincts reporting, the “yes” vote got 56 percent of the vote — topping the “no” vote by 12 percentage points. There were also a couple of medical marijuana victories in Missouri and Utah. Both states went Republican in state races (particularly the Senate), yet they still showed solid support for legalizing medical pot. The winning...

Citizens in four states vote Tuesday on ballot initiatives to legalize some form of cannabis. Residents of Missouri and Utah will decide on its medical availability, Michigan and North Dakota on recreational consumption for adults. If all four measures pass, the tally of states that allow some sort of cannabis use will jump to 32, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. The trend could not be clearer: Cannabis prohibition is coming to an end. A Gallup poll last month found 66% of Americans favor legal marijuana. I am now one of those Americans. It began when a friend of mine who...

AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) – A 24-year-old woman is in jail after being accused of breaking into one of Aurora’s newest fire stations, flooding it, ransacking the building and even decapitating a bird. Multiple Aurora fire department sources told CBS4 about the bizarre incident that occurred late Monday night. Firefighters from Station 15, located at 1880 South Flat Rock Trail, had left the station for a call. Firefighters and police theorize that after they drove away and before the station’s bay doors automatically closed, Yesenia Griego sneaked into the building. When they returned, the firefighters found an alarm going off, the...

Instead of tricks or treats, a teen in Maine said she received a bag of marijuana Wednesday night while trick-or-treating near a middle school. Steve Gagne, the fiance of the teen's mother, said he turned it in to Auburn police Thursday morning and filed a report. "I'm just dismayed," the Lewiston resident said. "The world is a crazy place these days."

WASHINGTON – Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was “wrong” about marijuana when he opposed legalizing the drug while serving in Congress. Boehner predicted that national cannabis legalization is going to happen in less than five years. “That sound bite about being ‘unalterably opposed’ to cannabis is almost a decade old. Back then, like a lot of folks, I was getting faulty information,” Boehner said of his 2011 remark during today’s American Cannabis Summit online seminar organized by the National Institute for Cannabis Investors. “I realized I was wrong and, let me tell you, I’ve been having more...

CNN) – The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that the probable cause of a crash that killed 12 people on a church bus near Concan, Texas, in March 2017 was that the 20-year-old man whose truck hit the bus was under the influence of marijuana and a sedative. In its report, the board says that there has been an increase in the number of drug-impaired drivers across the country and that something must be done about it. That call to action seems to match up with a report released Thursday from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Highway Loss...

As of today, recreational cannabis consumption is legal in Canada. While many Canadian citizens and companies will be celebrating the reform, not to mention preparing to capitalize on this green-golden opportunity, the Canadian oil and gas industry will be ringing in the new era with considerably less enthusiasm. Canadian oil companies and workers’ unions are busy scrambling to finalize a plan to maintain safe operating standards in an era of legal and easily attainable marijuana. In Canada’s oil sands, workers perform risky maneuvers and operate heavy equipment daily, making health and safety an especially critical issue. Legal weed poses a...

Cannabis becomes legal in Canada Country becomes second and largest with legal national marketplace. The Canadian government is ready to pardon those with a cannabis possession record of 30 grams or less as the country becomes the world’s second and largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace. Canada legalizes marijuana: here's everything you need to know Read more A federal official said Canada would pardon people with convictions for possessing up to 30 grams of marijuana, the new legal threshold, with a formal announcement due later on Wednesday. The use of medical marijuana has been legal in Canada since...

At the top of the news the latest on Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A "candid discussion" was reported in Saudi Arabia between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi officials including King Salman. President Trump spoke by phone with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He says both the king and crown prince have denied any involvement or knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. Trump told the Associated Press that Saudi Arabia was being treated as: "guilty until proven innocent"..... Turkish officials say their search of the Saudi consulate where Khashoggi disappeared after entering October 2nd revealed more evidence of...

An American cannabis producer took out a full-page ad in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal warning that the United States is “rapidly losing” its competitive advantage in the industry to Canada, the first G7 member to greenlight legal recreational pot. An American cannabis producer is warning President Donald Trump that Canada is poised to dominate the North American marijuana industry unless the United States takes steps to eliminate barriers to financing and market capital south of the border. A full-page ad in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, framed as a plea to the White House and its most prominent occupant, warns the...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says Canadian citizens working in the cannabis industry should be able to enter the U.S. for reasons unrelated to the marijuana industry. The agency updated its website Tuesday, providing a measure of clarity after a vague statement last month left the industry and investors facing uncertainty about travel of any kind to the U.S. That statement sparked weeks of confusion and rumours that those tied to the cannabis industry could face lifetime bans from the U.S. It read that "As marijuana continues to be a controlled substance under United States law, working in or facilitating...

-snip- A pair of Rhode Island political hopefuls, who aspired to be The Ocean State's governor and attorney general, was arrested Thursday after police allegedly uncovered 48 pounds of illegal marijuana in the duo's West Greenwich home. State police said they arrested Anne Armstrong, 58, and Alan Gordon, 48 -- the Compassion Party’s candidates for governor and attorney general, respectively -- after a search at the pair’s home uncovered nearly 50 pounds of marijuana. Officials said they searched the pair’s home after receiving a complaint of a “strong odor of marijuana emanating from marijuana plants being illegally grown outdoors.” -snip-...

Violent crime, including murders, are increasing in Denver and Colorado, according to new statistics from police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Murders in Colorado have jumped 27 percent in the last three years. In 2015 there were 173 murders, while there were 220 in 2017. ... murders in Denver have increased six percent in the last year. So far in 2018, there have been 51 murders, compared to 48 at this time last year, according to Denver Police. Police say the increase is because there are more incidents where multiple people have been killed. ... And for some perspective...

Working on a complex issue often takes creativity. When it’s an issue like homelessness, every angle is worth exploring. So when the nonprofit Oroville Southside Community Improvement Association Inc. asked to partner with the city on its Haven of Hope on Wheels project, which includes a trailer outfitted with showers, toilets and laundry facilities, the Oroville City Council obliged. The council sensibly saw the project for what it is — another way to help the disenfranchised while keeping them from disrupting businesses or taking baths, doing laundry and going to the bathroom along rivers and in parks. The council voted...

A group of teens smashed a stolen van into a marijuana dispensary in Colorado Springs and stole a bunch of herb. Actually, it was herbs. Oregano, to be specific. The owners of Native Roots, at Academy Boulevard and Austin Bluffs Parkway, told our partners at KKTV they don’t put real marijuana in the display cases.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last five years, then you know that there are now 8 states that have legalized cannabis for adult use. Colorado and Washington State legalized cannabis in 2012, Oregon, Alaska (and Washington D.C.) legalized cannabis in 2014, and Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, and California legalized cannabis in 2016. All of those states (and D.C.) legalized cannabis via the citizen initiative process. Going into 2017 it seemed like at least one state would legalize cannabis via legislative action, and Vermont was very close to doing so until its Governor vetoed a legalization bill...

It sounds like the opening for another stoner movie, maybe “Harold and Kumar Go to Heaven.” Giant bundles of marijuana, apparently containing individually wrapped five-kilo bricks, have been washing up on the shores of Florida since the approach of Hurricane Florence last week, possibly from a boat that was either capsized by the storm or an airplane drop that went awry.

WASHINGTON—Canadians will be barred from entering the United States for smoking marijuana legally, for working in Canada’s legal marijuana industry and for investing in legal Canadian marijuana companies, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official says. Todd Owen, who spoke to the U.S. website Politico, said the U.S. does not plan to change its border policies to account for Canada’s marijuana legalization, which takes effect on Oct. 17. “We don’t recognize that as a legal business,” said Owen, executive assistant commissioner for the office of field operations. Owen’s comments corroborated anecdotal reports that have accumulated over the course of...