Democratic state lawmakers say the time is ripe for New Mexico to legalize and tax marijuana sales for recreational use as the state grapples with a budget deficit and plunging revenues.

Democratic Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque on Wednesday announced details of a forthcoming bill to legalize marijuana and tax sales by at least 15 percent to help shore up shaky state finances and reinvigorate the economy.

Local governments would choose whether to allow marijuana sales and could collect a 5 percent tax. Former district attorney and Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has consistently opposed legalizing marijuana or industrial hemp production.

The National Football League Players Association is putting a formal structure to a growing movement within its ranks that is calling for change in how the league treats marijuana.

Mark Maske of the Washington Post reports that NFLPA leaders are drafting a proposal which will change how the league penalizes players who test positive for marijuana.

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith has not provided any specifics on how the union might look to alter the penalty structure, but he has said that the union has been looking at shifting the focus of the “discipline” from a punitive approach to a treatment emphasis.

The entire cannabis community is still waiting on bended knee to find out exactly what Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions will do with legal marijuana if he is confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States. So far, the AG nominee has been extremely vague in his answers with respect to if he plans to continue allowing weed to be grown and sold in legal states or if he will call out the dogs of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and let them devour the industry and squat it out on the White House lawn.

Earlier this month, Sessions testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he wouldn’t “commit to never enforcing federal law,” but in a roundabout way he agreed that kicking down the doors of legal cannabis businesses could be a waste of federal resources.

State lawmakers will soon debate two more possible changes to Arkansas’ medical marijuana law.  One bill that is likely to be filed would prohibit patients from smoking marijuana. The other would delay implementation until the federal government legalizes its use.

“All this is,” said State Senator Jason Rapert, “is snake oil wrapped up in a joint that you’re going to smoke.”

Sen. Rapert supports a smoking ban, and said he will author a bill to harmonize the state law with a federal law. He mentioned that he is watching the implementation of the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment closely, “to make sure that, if this is going to go forward, that it’s going forward as medicine. You don’t have to smoke dope and get high to get well.”

A renewed push to end marijuana prohibition in Vermont kicked off Wednesday with a news conference at the State House.

Members of the Vermont Coalition to Regulate Marijuana, including representatives from Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, ACLU-VT, and the Marijuana Policy Project, said Vermont should join other New England states that are removing legal penalties for adult possession and home cultivation of small amounts of marijuana. Massachusetts and Maine are in the process of implementing voter-approved initiatives to make marijuana legal for adults and regulate it like alcohol.

A legal form of cannabis, C-Pure, is being bought, sold, and consumed in Switzerland due to an inadvertent legislative loophole – throwing into question the wider ability and purpose of policing cannabis.

C-Pure is legal under Swiss law as it contains less than one per cent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis. Dario Tobler, director of Bio Can AGOrganic – the company that created C-Pure – says that the product “has no intoxicating effect” because of its low THC content.

In a flashback to 2015, some Republican legislators are looking to marijuana revenue as a possible solution to Washington’s education-funding problems. Democrats aren’t totally opposed but say there’s not nearly enough pot money to fill the school funding holes.

It’s a question that Republican senators have asked during state budget battles from time to time: Why can’t Washington, flush with marijuana tax revenue far outpacing old projections, use that money to help solve the state’s school-funding crisis?

Well, it can. To a small extent it already does. And there is at least surface-level bipartisan agreement that maybe the state should look at pot money as a partial solution to the education-funding gap that the Supreme Court has ordered the Legislature to fill.

With eight states legalizing recreational cannabis and 26 other states legalizing medical cannabis use, federal government is the biggest obstacle to freedom – despite more and more U.S. lawmakers pushing for medical access and even complete decriminalization.

By far the biggest obstruction to a fact-based approach to cannabis is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which maintains cannabis as a Schedule 1 narcotic. This most restrictive category, which includes heroin and methamphetamine, is described as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

The Justice Ministry recommended to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked that the use of marijuana not be prosecuted criminally, but fined or punished by administrative sanctions, instead.

A 120-page legal opinion reviewing concerns raised by decriminalizing marijuana was first reported by the Walla website. The document notes concerns that the number of users could rise, particularly among minors; that road accidents might increase; that decriminalization of soft drugs could be a gateway to the use of more serious drugs and that leniency could make it more difficult to collect evidence against drug dealers.

Marijuana legalization supporters, and other civil rights advocates, have been understandably glued to the attorney general confirmation hearings for Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, but the upcoming nomination to head the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could soon take center stage.