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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.

heroin, Heroin At Home - SW Ohio boy, 13, dies of suspected heroin overdose; dad jailed - WBNS-10TV Columbus, Ohio | Columbus News, Weather & Sports - heroin, Heroin At Home SW Ohio boy, 13, dies of suspected heroin overdose; dad jailed SW Ohio boy, 13, dies of suspected heroin overdose; dad jailed NEWS ASSOCIATED PRESS PUBLISHED: 04/04/17 08:46 AM EDTUPDATED: 04/21/17 05:27 PM EDT DAYTON, Ohio — Authorities say a 13-year-old Ohio boy died of a suspected heroin overdose, and his father has been jailed in a previous drug-related case. Nathan Wylie's father and another man brought the unresponsive...

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.

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...

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...

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...

Entry-level position can give preview of industry demands According to New Frontier Data, a national research firm, by 2020 the legal cannabis market will create more than a quarter of a million jobs. Comparable statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that will be more jobs than the manufacturing industry. If you want to be part of this industry but don’t know much about growing or selling, consider starting as a budtrimmer. This entry-level position in the growing and processing side of the industry provides a foot in the door for cannabis career opportunities. Budtrimmers are asked to...

A big player in the world of entertainment and digital media plans to bring 4,000 jobs and a 70-acre campus to Parker by 2020. At an Aug. 11 press conference at the state Capitol in Denver, Gov. John Hickenlooper, Parker officials and Redbarre executives announced plans to create the Redbarre Digital Media & Technology Campus in the Compark area just north of E-470. The 1.9 million-square-foot, mixed-use development will focus on feature film, television and digital media production. "Something like that can be transformational," said Dennis Houston, CEO of the Parker Area Chamber of Commerce. "It's life changing, what it...

PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - On Tuesday morning Doyen Elements officially broke ground on a 234-thousand square foot cannabis grow facility in Pueblo. It'll be located at 1900 Freeway Drive in Pueblo, which is the former Pepsi bottling facility. "We've taken the facility and we are retrofitting it into a 234,000 square foot grow facility that will be developed into three separate phases," said Geoff Thompson with Doyen Elements. "Phase one will take 9-11 months and then the next two phases through an 18 to 24 month period of time." Once construction is complete the entire facility will run 24 hours...

Pollution from illegal marijuana farms deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into waste dumps so toxic that simply touching plants has landed law enforcement officers in the hospital. The volume of banned or restricted pesticides and illegally applied fertilizers in the woods dwarfs estimates by the U.S. Forest Service in 2014, when a top enforcement official testified that the pollution was threatening forest land in California and other states. California accounts for more than 90 percent of illegal U.S. marijuana farming, with much of it exported to other states...

<p>WEAVERVILLE, Calif. (Reuters) - Pollution from illegal marijuana farms deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into waste dumps so toxic that simply touching plants has landed law enforcement officers in the hospital.</p>

American Green Inc. announced Thursday it is buying all 80 acres of Nipton, which includes its Old West-style hotel, a handful of houses, an RV park and a coffee shop. It says it plans to transform the old Gold Rush town into what it calls "an energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination." The town's current owner, Roxanne Lang, said the sale is still in escrow, but confirmed American Green is the buyer. She declined to reveal the price before the sale closes, but noted she and her late husband, Gerald Freeman, listed the property at $5 million when they put it up...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.