On Thursday, Delaware's governor signed a bill into law that decriminalizes the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana. That brings the number of states that have decriminalized small amounts of the drug to 20, according to the Huffington Post. 

Under the new law, marijuana sales are still prohibited, but possession is no longer considered a crime that warrants the intervention of the criminal justice system. Instead, being caught with marijuana is akin to committing a traffic violation, prompting a civil fine of $100.

Baker trying to weed out problems for Bay State medical marijuana sale

"Cannabis 01 bgiu". Licensed under Creative Commons

Gov. Charlie Baker has given a three-month waiver to medical marijuana dispensary Alternative Therapy Group of Salem, allowing the dispensary to sell marijuana without having to meet all the state’s testing requirements.

Alternative Therapy Group has been growing medical marijuana at its cultivation center in Amesbury since December, the first in the state approved to grow the drug.

Police cited and released a Lake Havasu City man Friday for keeping marijuana in a jar after he was contacted in a fight.

Police said Ruben Kervanian was cited for the marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia for the rolling paper inside of the jar.

After police investigated a potential fight, they discovered the jar and Kervanian claimed ownership. He told police he did not have a medical marijuana card because but uses it for medicinal purposes and hasn’t obtained a card because the marijuana issued at the dispensary is not strong enough.

I have been closely following all of the articles about legalization of marijuana and how the group, ResponsibleOhio, was started. I have only read one letter to the editor from a concerned Ohio resident about the increased probability of mental illness developing among users.According to the National Institutes of Health, "Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug worldwide, with approximately 5 millions of daily users worldwide.

Emerging evidence supports a number of associations between cannabis and psychosis/psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia."A program from National Geographic stated an actual percentage of those who will experience psychosis: 50 percent of all marijuana users will experience psychosis.

As police combat an epidemic of heroin overdoses, fewer people are landing in jail in Pennsylvania for possessing marijuana, a reflection of a change in battle tactics and attitudes about the drug, experts say.

“The nation is clearly taking a long, hard look at this. … There's blowback on the war on drugs,” said Tony Gaskew, a former drug agent and director of the University of Pittsburgh's criminal justice program. “Is it cost effective? We cannot arrest every person that wants to get high.”

An Accra Fast Track High Court (Criminal Division) has remanded a 46-year-old businessman into the custody of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for allegedly exporting 6,240kgs of cannabis sativa, a narcotic drug worth $20m, to the United Kingdom (UK).

The accused, Kofi Appianin Ennin, was arrested through a collaboration between the UK security agencies and Ghana’s Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) when the drug had successfully left the shores of Ghana for that country.

The businessman is facing a two-count charge each of exportation of narcotic drug without licence from the minister of health and possession of narcotic drug without lawful authority.

Novice cannabis grower suffered 'Breaking Bad' style attack as he tried to sell crop at Bradford home, court hears

A MIDDLE-AGED cannabis grower who was attacked with a knife when he tried to wholesale his crop to pay off mortgage arrears was compared to the main character in the hit TV series Breaking Bad by his barrister at Bradford CrownCourt.

Joseph Pickles was severely injured when he grabbed the blade of the weapon while he was threatened at his home by criminals wanting to steal his crop.

One-time waiver granted for limited amounts to be sold by Salem, Massachusetts dispensary, while state labs secure more rigorous testing.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker yesterday, June 19, approved the issuance of a one-time, temporary waiver that will allow the first medical marijuana dispensary to begin selling its product after meeting final inspection protocols.

One of the Commonwealth’s first medical marijuana dispensaries, Alternative Therapy Group of Salem had requested the waiver because labs in Massachusetts are not yet able to complete the array of quality testing required by Department of Public Health protocols.

To say that marijuana has a plethora of hurdles to overcome might be an understatement. Just because the American public's opinion of marijuana has made an about-face from where it stood 10 years ago doesn't mean marijuana's path toward a potential federal approval or decriminalization has been made any easier.

Marijuana's many challenges
For starters, researchers have decades' worth of studies focused on the dangers of marijuana to sift through with a corresponding snippet of data concerning the benefits of marijuana use. Although new trials are under way examining marijuana's potential benefits, it could be years before the data is given time to mature and researchers (along with lawmakers) feel comfortable making those side-by-side comparisons.

The ResponsibleOhio campaign seeks to legalize marijuana for adults in Ohio. The campaign has received a lot of criticism because it only allows ten entities to grow marijuana for profit if the initiative passes. The initiative didn’t have a home grow provision at first, but a provision was added to allow home grow after the campaign received a lot of feedback. I know that a lot of orgs and prominent activists have came out publicly opposing the initiative, while others have refrained from opposing it, but haven’t issued an endorsement yet. To be fair, I haven’t seen any organization or prominent activist that has opposed the measure step up and promise to bring a better initiative in the future, complete with language polling and sufficient funding.