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"Duane Stone is a veteran Seattle mental health specialist. He's seeing a surprising increase in patients experiencing psychotic episodes as well. Many have never had any mental health problems before. "I get lots of first break kind where this person doesn't have an experience with mental illness, they don't have a diagnosis, they're 30 or 40-years-old. And the only thing they've been doing has been smoking marijuana for the last year or two," Stone said. It's not just your stereotypical stoner. They're family people working at places such as Microsoft and Amazon."

Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn't: taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels' profits. The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. Agents snagged roughly 1.5 million pounds of marijuana at the border, down from a peak of nearly 4 million pounds in 2009. The data supports the many stories about the difficulties marijuana growers in Mexico face in light of increased competition from the north. As domestic marijuana production...

An 8-year-old boy said he helped his mother's boyfriend grow "special medicine that can cure anything at all," The Times-Argus reportsA second-grader's story about helping a farmer grow "special medicine" plants led to the bust of an indoor marijuana growing operation in Vermont, authorities said. According to an affidavit, an 8-year-old boy told school officials and Windsor police detective Jennifer Frank that he helped his mother's boyfriend, 54-year-old Steven Mann, grow "special medicine that can cure anything at all," The Times-Argus reports. Police said they found 50 marijuana plants worth $75,000, along with two "grow rooms" next to the...

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- An Oregon woman is supporting Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign by selling ceramic pipes featuring his campaign logo. Ariel Zimman, a 29-year-old artist from Portland, is selling the pipes through her company Stonedware and promising a portion of the sales towards donations to Sanders' campaign."It was really just a way to show my support for him as a candidate," Zimman told the Center for Public Integrity. "People love [the pipes], and once they hear they are contributing in some way to the campaign they are all about that too." Zimman offers both short and long...

A Federal Court judge has struck down federal regulations restricting the rights of medical marijuana patients to grow their own cannabis

On my way to a voodoo ceremony with a Ghanian tour guide, I reflected on my career path, admitting to him that I'd lost focus and felt unfulfilled. What he told me changed the course of my life: "You either work on something you love, or work because it supports the people you love." That's when I quit Google. For years, I had structured my life around achieving work-related success: Work hard, get promoted, make more money. Lather, rinse, repeat. I craved the validation of corporate success. I wanted badly to be recognized for my intelligence, for my parents to...

I am unfamiliar with this website. Here's the excerpt: Though the Court of Appeals initially ruled the search and seizure unconstitutional, the Supreme Court “found that the police were not investigating a crime but exercising their ‘community caretaker’ function." In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court just killed the rights of citizens outlined in the Fourth Amendment by stating that police officers may enter a home, or parts of the home, without a warrant and can seize evidence to use in the arrest and prosecution of citizens. The Fourth Amendment states that unreasonable searches and seizures are not allowed...

In October of 2014, Steven Pratt was supposed to begin his life anew. He had served out a 30-year prison sentence and gone home to Atlantic City, N.J., where his family held a party to welcome him. But a violent history would repeat itself all too soon. Pratt was 15 when he got into an argument with his next-door neighbour, Michael Anderson. Court records show that Anderson was a father figure of sorts to Pratt. On Oct. 11, 1984, he asked Pratt and his friends to vacate a hallway in their apartment building where they were noisily hanging out and...

Legal marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington State have grossed billions, but legal dealers will see little of that thanks to a draconian federal law meant to punish street pushers. In one of the first years of legal sales, 2015, Colorado moved nearly $1 billion worth of marijuana and is estimated to take in $135 million in taxes on it. Meanwhile, Washington is expected to pull in around $1 billion in revenue from sales taxes between 2015 and 2019. Despite technically being illegal on the federal level, these businesses must file taxes to the Internal Revenue Service—and they may pay...

An 8-year-old Klamath Falls boy became ill last Saturday after eating a marijuana-infused cookie that he found on the ground. The child's mother, Jessica Hart, 30, said her son, Jackson, came home from an afternoon outing at a local rock quarry complaining he was sick. He pulled at his chest and made motions that suggested he was choking. He had trouble keeping his eyes open.

The Sacramento branch of the California tax collection agency reeks of marijuana. That's because it's cash day at the collection center - when marijuana dispensary owners are allowed to bring in paper money to pay their quarterly sales tax bill - and the smell of their inventory clings to everything. California, like all states with any form of legalized marijuana, faces a growing problem over the federal government's position that cannabis remains a Schedule 1 illegal drug, classified the same way as meth or cocaine, with no legal uses - and therefore no legal access to traditional banks. That means...

Just got back from Colorado Springs. Sad to see what CaliPorninans and LIBERALS have done to this once Beautiful City and State! Pot Holes and POT Shops EVERYWHERE! frown emoticon! O well Broadmoor, Garden of the Gods and Woodland Park was nice.

US veteran's children taken away over his use of medical marijuana When Raymond Schwab talks about his case, his voice teeters between anger and sadness. "People who don't understand the medical value of cannabis are tearing my family apart," says the Kansas father and US veteran, who has a prescription for marijuana in neighboring Colorado, where it is legal. Nine months ago, Schwab tried to move to Colorado to grow medical marijuana for fellow veterans. While he and his wife were there preparing for the move, the state of Kansas took five of their children, ages 5 to 16, into...

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider the role legal marijuana could play in the prescription opioid epidemic.Warren asked for more research into medical marijuana and painkiller addiction in a letter to the CDC director, Thomas Friedan."Opioid abuse is a national concern and warrants swift and immediate action," Warren wrote. Her request comes as politicians, including the presidential nominees, search for the best response to the opioid epidemic. The use of prescription opioids doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the CDC. And Massachusetts experienced its highest number of unintentional opioid...

Donald Trump's position on cannabis appears to have flip-flopped wildly over the years. (No comb-over jokes - promise.) "Legalized marijuana is always a very difficult question - for medicinal purposes and medical purposes, it's fine," says Trump in the video. Earlier this year, Trump told FOX's Sean Hannity he supports medical users "100 percent," but added that overall, marijuana legalization has been "a bad thing for Colorado." He added the Evergreen state is now facing some "big, big problems." But back in 1990, Trump told the Sarasota Herald America's drug policy was "a joke," and legalizing all drugs was the...

Just after Uncle Ike's Pot Shop opened in Seattle's Central District, it boasted in an ad, "Our weed cures Ebola." Knowing that merchants in the new industry weren't allowed to make any medical claims about pot, the fine print disclaimer winked: "If you believe this ad, you are a (expletive) moron." That in-your-face Vern Fonk-on-weed sensibility has helped make Uncle Ike's the state's top-selling pot store, with $1.4 million in monthly sales. It's also changing the personality of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street, once a predominantly African-American corner, with neon signs, a wall-mural ad, food truck, sign-waving mannequin and...

Obama's war against medical marijuana is the biggest of any president, which is the exact opposite of what he had promised Campaign promisesIn May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt said that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it's legal.Also in 2008, Obama said that he supported the "basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs" and that he was "not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws."Federal raids against medical marijuana in states where it's legalDespite Obama’s campaign...

California's largest organization of practicing physicians, the California Medical Association, announced Monday that it is backing a proposed 2016 ballot initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. A coalition of entrepreneurs, activists, environmentalists and state politicians are backing the initiative, led by billionaire technology investor Sean Parker. CMA said in a statement that its members believe controlling, tracking and studying pot will better protect public health than "ineffective prohibition." Spokeswoman Molly Weedn said the medical association is most interested in provisions of the proposal that would expand marijuana research. "We feel that this initiative specifically is in line with...

New research published today in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine confirms what many of us have suspected for some time: If you smoke a lot of weed -- like a lot of it -- it can potentially do permanent damage to your short-term memory. Professor Reto Auer of the University of Lausanne led a team of researchers who examined data on the marijuana habits of nearly 3,400 Americans over a 25-year period. At the end of the study period, the subjects took a battery of tests designed to assess cognitive abilities -- memory, focus, ability to make quick decisions, etc....

Floridians will decide this November whether to allow medical marijuana in the state. On Wednesday, a constitutional amendment to legalize the drug gained enough signed petitions to qualify for the ballot next November. If passed, the amendment would allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for people with “debilitating conditions” such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy or multiple sclerosis. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article56931218.html#storylink=cpy