A Wisconsin lawmaker says the state should legalize marijuana to reduce crime and improve the state's economy.

Rep. Melissa Sargent, a Madison Democrat, introduced a bill Monday that would legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes.

In a news conference Monday Sargent said that legalizing the drug would reduce crime associated with growing and selling cannabis and create jobs.

But the bill will likely go up in smoke. Republicans control both chambers and don't seem eager to support the measure.

Gov. Scott Walker last spring signed into law a measure that permits the use of marijuana derivatives to treat certain medical disorders. His spokeswoman, Laurel Patrick, said Walker opposes legalization and sees marijuana as a gateway drug.

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A day before a scheduled vet appointment to euthanize her dog, Wendy Mansfield decided to try one last resort to alleviate the chronic pain of her 15-year-old labrador mix: cookies from a marijuana dispensary made specifically for ailing dogs.

Kali, a mild-mannered 80-pound rescue, was never much of a complainer. But she often licked her paws—an obvious sign of pain, according to her vet—which was typically accompanied by bouts of coughing because of the shedding fur that got in her throat. One cookie and 20 minutes later, the licking suddenly stopped.

A Saskatoon student is taking a medical marijuana complaint to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission after his school wouldn't let him use it on its property.

Michael Wileniec, 21, suffers from a rare bone condition called hereditary multiple exostoses. His body produces bone bumps which interfere with movement and pinch his nerves.

He told Saskatoon Morning host Leisha Grebinski that he is in pain much of the time. He has a prescription for medical marijuana, but his high school, Nutana Collegiate, won't let him smoke it at school.

Saskatoon Public Schools has asked Wileniec to drive home to smoke his prescription if he feels pain. So far, the school has denied his request to use a vaporizer in the nurse's room.

Charles Lynch was running a legal medical marijuana dispensary in California — but that didn't stop the feds from raiding his store in 2007, throwing him in jail, and later placing him on home arrest, rendering him unable to find work and, as a result, leading to the loss of his home.

"I have no work and no money," Lynch, 52, told the New York Times's Erik Eckholm, "and I'm depending on others to survive."

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- Military veterans in North Carolina, especially around Fayetteville, a center of both active military personnel and vets, are now organizing to put marijuana legalization on the state's GOP platform.

Polish marijuana laws are harsh, arguably the harshest in all of Europe. For simple posession of any amount you can go to prison for up to 3 years. If the amount you are caught with is „considerable” (a term not defined by the law, always left for the consideration of the judge), the sentence can be raised to 10 years. Transport and trafficking within the EU is a serious crime penalized with 3 to 15 years in jail.

Johannesburg - Andre du Plessis admits it proudly. Yes, he was the one who had disbursed the mysterious bankies of dagga seeds to the tables of delegates attending a government-hosted conference on the medical use of cannabis this week.

“God is in every garden,” smiles Du Plessis, of the Cannabis Working Group.

“Do try to grow those seeds. Plant them, water them and watch them grow.”

Of the stash of only three seeds that Du Plessis had deposited in small, zip-locked bags, some had been furtively stashed into handbags, while others were left, rejected at the Kopanong Conference Centre in Benoni.

Catherine Hiller, author of "Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir," at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, where she believes she first smoked marijuana in the 1960s. April 12, 2015 Side Street By DAVID GONZALEZ

As much as Catherine Hiller refuses to admit it, marijuana is a gateway drug. Seriously, after smoking more or less every day for the past 50 years, there had to be some consequences. Yet, she did not go to jail after a random police stop. She did not end up strung out on heroin, sprawled in an alley. She didn’t even binge-munch herself into obesity.

Her daily puffs led her to write a book, “Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir.”

Marijuana legalization may not be a top priority of Congress or President Obama, but the American public is certainly doing its best to make it apparent that marijuana is an important issue.

We've seen a complete transformation of the American public's opinion of marijuana and even individual state law over the past two decades. What once was an illegal substance in all 50 states is now legal from the aspect of medical purposes in 23 states, and legal from a recreational, adult-use standpoint in four states.