If California voters approve recreational marijuana for adults at the November 2016 ballot, Scott Wiener wants San Francisco to be ready.

The supervisor is expected to introduce legislation Tuesday to create a task force charged with figuring out how to best allow for recreational marijuana use in San Francisco. The task force will comprise officials from city government and the school district, along with neighborhood activists and medical cannabis industry players.

“Whatever one’s views on cannabis ... it looks like full legalization is going to the ballot,” Wiener told The San Francisco Examiner on Monday. “We have to be prepared.”

B.C.'s Chief Medical Officer says marijuana does have some medical benefits, countering claims from federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose that it has no medicinal value.

Last week, Ambrose spoke to On the Coast's Stephen Quinn about the City of Vancouver's plan to regulate marijuana dispensaries. 

A board shows different products for sale at a medical marijuana dispensary in Vancouver, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2015. The free-for-all era of Canada's commercial medical marijuana industry is over as a new crop of growers try to woo scarce investment dollars in an increasingly competitive business, observers say. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward (The Canadian Press)

If California legalizes cannabis for adults in 2016, what will become of San Francisco’s world-class medical dispensaries? How about the unlicensed Golden Gate Park gathering on April 20th? What should local recreational taxes be? How should San Francisco handle cannabis tourism? Gourmet canna-dining? Tastings? Conferences? Festivals?

The City faces all these questions and more in the near future. On Tuesday, a group that includes SF Supervisor Scott Wiener, former Entertainment Commissioner Terrance Alan, now co-founder of the state’s CA Cannabis Voice and others will propose to the city’s Board of Supervisors the creation of a 19-member “Cannabis State Legalization Task Force”.

We need to tackle the folly and futility of drug prohibition, in which we have created an irrational and unscientific bifurcation of drugs. An archaic system that favours, promotes and culturally embeds the use of some drugs, while fiercely policing, prohibiting and punishing the use of other drugs.

We need to tackle the folly and futility of drug prohibition, in which we have created an irrational and unscientific bifurcation of drugs. An archaic system that favours, promotes and culturally embeds the use of some drugs, while fiercely policing, prohibiting and punishing the use of other drugs.

Dutch laws governing marijuana use are so liberal that even the US pop star Miley Cyrus failed to spark too much controversy when she lit a joint on stage in Amsterdam last year.

Now, 35 mayors are urging the government to take it a step further and let them grow cannabis too, as a global shift in favour of legalisation is leaving the once forward-thinking Netherlands lagging behind.

In a manifesto signed last week, the mayors of cities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht argue that the current laws allowing the sale but banning the cultivation of marijuana mean the nation’s cannabis cafés have to turn to illegal gangs for their supply, encouraging organised crime and wasting valuable police time dismantling unlawful plantations.

AKRON – Two graduate students have invented a device that would allow law enforcement officers to determine how much THC — the active ingredient in marijuana — is in a motorist's system during traffic stops.

The Plain Dealer reports that two biomedical engineering graduate students at the University of Akron hope to market their roadside testing device to states where marijuana use has been legalized.

Mariam Crow and Kathleen Stitzlein's device tests saliva to determine the concentration of pot's active chemical in the bloodstream. Police must now wait weeks to get results from blood tests for marijuana use.

A former soldier living in Coleraine is calling for a Royal Commission to be set up to investigate the relaxation of the laws on cannabis.

Neil Paine (45), a member of the new party called Cista (Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol), is standing in East Londonderry where he hopes to unseat Gregory Campbell of the DUP.

He passionately believes that “total reform of cannabis legislation is long overdue” and says local homes will soon be receiving party literature outlining their controversial policies.

Mr Paine, who uses cannabis for medical reasons, has twice been raided by police in the past but he said they did not charge him.

Born with a mild form of spina bifida his spinal problems worstened as he got older.

For 40 years, Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, has believed psychedelics are an effective treatment for depression and anxiety. Now a growing number of scientists agree.

Imagine a family of drugs that could treat addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress: sicknesses of the soul for which modern medicine, in all its surgical wizardry, has few cures. Substances that were a fillip to creativity and could provide those who took them with an experience comparable to seeing God or witnessing the birth of a child. Say these wonder chemicals were found: why would a society make them illegal?

DENVER — With smiles, selfies and a few nervous chuckles, a group of Nevada legislators and policymakers got a first-hand look at Colorado's fast-growing legal marijuana industry this weekend, coming face-to-face with thousands of green growing plants.

The small group is part of Nevada's efforts to understand what legalization could mean. The Silver State has permitted medical marijuana, and now there's talk voters might be asked to legalize recreational pot next year.

The group met its Colorado counterparts, and toured several marijuana stores, including the high-tech, 40,000-square-foot Medicine Man in Denver, one of the state's largest.