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<p>LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) - As the price of marijuana continues to drop, Washington pot businesses are struggling to keep up with the changes.</p> <p>The Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/1O6nqKx ) that since legal marijuana entered the market in July 2014, prices have dropped from $25 to $30 per gram to about $10 a gram now.</p>

“If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism…The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” – Ronald Reagan We’re entering an unusual time in politics. It used to be conservatism versus liberalism; that was the standard by which everything was judged. There was little to no nuance within the two groups. I’m not saying that was incorrect. For the time, it was perfectly appropriate. Now, however, we’ve become a less...

On Monday, when he announced that a grand jury had declined to indict two Cleveland police officers in the 2014 shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said enhanced video of the incident showed the boy was drawing what looked like a gun from his waistband. Although the object was actually an Airsoft pellet pistol, McGinty said, Timothy Loehmann, the officer who killed Tamir within two seconds of arriving at the scene, had no way of knowing that. Even if we accept this account, it does not explain why Frank Garmback, Loehmann's partner, drove right...

Billionaire philanthropist and Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch blasted the hypocrisy of pot criminalization’s disproportionate enforcement in an October interview on CBS This Morning. In the interview, which can be seen in the above-embedded video, Koch said, “Some poor kid in the inner city smokes a joint, goes to prison, ruins his life, where we have a president who is more privileged, who smoked a joint, becomes president. We have a candidate who admits smoking a joint — he’s running for president. Now, where is the justice in that?”

Recreational marijuana use would be legal in Kentucky in 2016 if proposed legislation becomes law. State Sen. Perry Clark, D-Louisville, is sponsoring a bill called the Cannabis Freedom Act. The bill proposes to legalize recreational marijuana use for those 21 years or older, decriminalize offenses such as unauthorized growing and distribution and consuming cannabis in public and place an excise tax on the drug. "Originally what inspired me was a group of retired Teamsters," Clark said. The Teamsters knew that using marijuana was a cheaper alternative to costly prescription painkillers they needed, he said. "They didn't want to be criminalized...

DENVER (KMGH) - A local nonprofit hit the streets of downtown Denver on Christmas Eve and gave away a thousand free, pre-rolled marijuana joints to the homeless and anyone else who wanted one. "Merry Christmas and a puff puff, New Year's," said one woman who accepted a joint. Nick Dicenzo, the founder of Cannabis Can and the one responsible for handing out the free weed, said they're trying to raise awareness about homelessness and encourage people to donate to their cause. The cause? To raise money to buy several RV's and provide restrooms and showers for those in need. Dicenzo...

There's a long and not-very-proud tradition of anti-drug advertising that gets ridiculed for missing the mark with young audiences. Australia's New South Wales government just added a classic new entry to that hall of shame with #StonerSloth, a campaign designed to shame teens who get high—but who are finding the ads hilariously delightful instead. In three short videos, marijuana has turned teens into giant sloths—and the metaphor is made literal, as the kids are actually depicted as giant hairy beasts with long, curved claws. Socially, they're utterly useless. All they can do is moan, since they're so high. And they...

As another month goes by in Colorado's marijuana legalization experiment, Denver's 2015 crime wave cranks up yet another notch. November's crime data is out for the city, and it doesn't tell a pretty story. There were another eight murders in Denver during November, bringing the year-to-date total to 50, which is more than 72 percent higher than last year's numbers. Across the board, other violent crime in Denver is also skyrocketing this year. The number of rapes has increased 16 percent, robberies are up 13 percent, and aggravated assaults are up 14 percent based on the UCR standards and up...

NAPLES, FL - They're normally the guys locking people up for marijuana possession, but a group of current and former law enforcement officers will meet in Naples to push for people's right to get high. Not all law enforcement officers are on board, however. Legalizing marijuana, it's a hot-button issue in Florida. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is pushing for the change to save taxpayer dollars and valuable resources. "Sixty-thousand people get arrested every year for marijuana possession. That's a waste of law-enforcement resources," said Ray Strack of LEAP. The group meets Thursday in Naples. The Florida Sheriff's Association is not...

Smoking cannabis can induce psychosis-like effects, similar to the symptoms people diagnosed with schizophrenia endure, scientists have said. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3345090/Just-HALF-joint-cannabis-causes-psychosis-like-effects-healthy-people-s-similar-schizophrenia-say-experts.html#ixzz3tNIdlPgG Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

The liberals were quick to blame conservative Christians, Republicans, and others on the right for the carnage in the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic. It turns out the killer was a paranoid pothead who probably moved to Colorado because it offered him plenty of legal weed. The murders were just the latest example of President Obama's pro-pot policies causing "active shooter" cases in which innocent people get maimed and killed. While "progressives" hope to capitalize on the killings by stopping investigations into Planned Parenthood, the case of Robert Lewis Dear has backfired on them in more ways than one. Dear, who...

By way of preamble, I know a lot of you folks are more or less down on the SSD program. Either that it's being abused or it shouldn't exist. That being said, a Marine buddy of mine whose attorneys expected him to have a slam dunk SSD case (multiple back injuries with multiple medical documentation) went into a Chicago courtroom this morning and left it wondering where Kansas went, so to speak. He got grilled and scoffed at and was told to go to a clinic where they do "wacky tobaccy." Federal judge, mind you, and this was all on...

Dear wrote that “herb” was created by God, so man’s laws against the drug are against God. He also ranted against women, posting, “god made the woman out of the mans side sorry but womans lib cant change it.”

The suspect accused of killing three people in an attack on a Planned Parenthood in Colorado was once a happy father and art dealer who painted and listened to rock music, a report has revealed. Robert Dear, 57, who allegedly burst into the clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday and opened fire, was a recluse who moved to a remote cabin in the state a year ago, his neighbors have told Daily Mail Online. But a new report by the New York Times has revealed that Dear was once a happily married family man who lived with his wife and...

Dazzan said that when they looked at the corpus callosum of those who smoke high-strength cannabis, they found that there was a significant difference in the white matter compared to people who have never tried the drug, and people who smoke low-strength cannabis. The THC chemical acts on cannabinoid receptors which the corpus callosum contains. The team utilized two scanning methods to examine the corpus callosum in the brains of 56 patients who reportedly experienced a first episode of psychosis, and 43 healthy participants from the local community. One method required the use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) while the...

[...] Last week a group of 12 House members led by Ted Lieu of California wrote to House leadership to push for a provision in the upcoming spending bill that would strip half of the funds away from the DEA's Cannabis Eradication Program, and put that money toward programs that "play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people:" domestic violence prevention and overall spending reduction efforts.Each year the DEA spends about $18 million in efforts with state and local authorities to pull up marijuana plants being grown indoors and outdoors. The program has...

Marijuana legalization advocates want the support of Black Lives Matter activists in 2016. But a debate on tactics is brewing legalization groups and Black Lives Matter activists who worry people of color are being left out of the burgeoning legal marijuana industry. WASHINGTON — Leading up to his meeting with the Black Lives Matter group Campaign Zero at the Frederick Douglass House in September, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders steeled himself for an argument. He’d only previously come face-to-face with Black Lives Matter protesters who wanted to interrupt him. But over the course of the meeting, the activists spoke authoritatively...

It turns out that Denver, Colorado may not be the only major American city seeing an increase in crime following marijuana legalization. Seattle, Washington looks to be experiencing some blowback as well. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, "[a]dult possession of marijuana became legal [in Washington State] on December 6, 2012, 30 days after the passage of I-502, the voter-approved initiative legalizing marijuana for adults 21 and older. A year-and-a-half later, the first retail marijuana store opened its doors on July 8, 2014." When we look at the number of total and property crimes in Seattle from 2008 through 2014,...

Another day, another controversy. Medical marijuana activists are rightly upset over comments DEA head, Chuck Rosenberg, made to reporters last week.During a Q&A, he talked about his stance on medical marijuana. "What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal because it's not. We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke." Right, so you want to have an intellectual debate prefaced with medical marijuana is a joke. Want to clarify that bit a more? "There are pieces...

Canada was recently ranked the freest country in the world, but newly installed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn't about to let it rest on its maple leaves. He won the October national elections after proposing something no major American presidential nominee has ever dared to endorse: legalizing marijuana. His Liberal Party argued that because of the current ban, "proceeds from the illegal drug trade support organized crime and greater threats to public safety, like human trafficking and hard drugs." Its platform called for legalizing, regulating and taxing cannabis. The Liberals probably benefited from Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's hysterical claim...