AUGUSTA, Maine - The group that launched successful efforts to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado and Alaska is officially taking steps to do the same in Maine.

Today supporters of the Marijuana Policy Project submitted a draft initiative that they hope to qualify for the 2016 statewide ballot.

This is the second citizens' initiative to propose legalizing pot next year. Both measures have some similarities and some big differences. Both plans would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over and also allow adults to grow small amounts for personal use. Both also call for a tax.

Recreational marijuana has been legalized in four states, but that doesn't mean it's a tested consumer product. Some of those potent buds are covered in fungus while others contain traces of butane, according to an analysis of marijuana in Colorado.

Last May, after people began getting sick from edible marijuana products, the state of Colorado began requiring all products to be tested. Washington has mandated testing too, with a detailed checklist of items to analyze, including potency, contaminants, moisture and microbiology.

When it comes to overhauling pot policy in the U.S. Senate, the young pols are running headfirst into the old guard.

A high-wattage trio of junior senators — Democrats Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand plus GOP presidential contender Rand Paul — is mounting an ambitious effort to have the federal government bless the use of marijuana in the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) that have voted to legalize the drug for medical purposes. Their legislation would also allow banks to handle transactions involving marijuana and force the federal government to recognize that marijuana has a medical use, rather than lumping it in with heroin and LSD.

The state's marijuana overseers issued their first annual report

Colorado just got its first year-long batch of data on the state’s grand experiment with legal marijuana. In the first annual report on supply and demand, Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division disclosed on Friday that 4.8 million edible marijuana products and nearly 150,000 lbs. of marijuana flowers were sold in 2014.

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Just when marijuana supporters thought things couldn't get any better, last week brought incredible news.

On Tuesday, March 10, three Senate members introduced a bill that would make medical marijuana legal on a federal level and free legal medical marijuana users from the potential for federal prosecution.

The United States has said in a new report that Turkey's consumption of bonsai, or synthetic cannabinoid, surged a staggering 200 percent last year.

­Dr. Mark Ware, with a marijuana leaf image projected on his hand, is the director of the Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids. March 23, 2015 Claudia Dreifus A CONVERSATION WITH

Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, but scientific research into its appropriate uses has lagged. Dr. Mark Ware would like to change that.

Dr. Ware, 50, is the director of the Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids and the director of clinical research of the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit of McGill University Health Center. Medical marijuana has been legal in Canada for 16 years, and Dr. Ware, a practicing physician, studies how his patients take the drug and under what conditions it is effective.

Phoenix, AZ (MJbizwire) March 24, 2015

18-year Veteran Domain Broker, Neal Sutz, of Phoenix, Arizona, is today releasing his list of the most important .COM domain names ever to be offered on the open market. All of Sutz’s MJ domains are listed at www.MedPotCard.com.

“There are very few industries which can take advantage of the enormous benefits of using a “generic” .COM domain name to strengthen their brands and increase their profits than can the MJ industry.”

The judiciary committee in the Nebraska Legislature is expected to decide this week what avenues to pursue -- or not pursue -- in the medical marijuana debate. Many families are making a last minute push for change.

If any of the bills being considered become law, Nebraska would become the 24th state to allow a form of marijuana to be used as medicine.

“I just want to know what Nebraska is going to do for those who are sick and have debilitating illnesses," said Shelley Gillen, from her Bellevue living room.

She was joined by two other mothers. Their children all suffer from a form of epilepsy.

Charles Walker MP, Parliament’s cheerleader for the ‘skunk scaremongers’ shot himself and his hysterical campaign in the foot this week.

He had submitted a parliamentary written question asking: "How many people under 18 years of age have been treated in NHS-funded mental health units for cannabis-induced psychosis in each of the last five years?”

The answer from Jane Ellison MP, minister of state at the Department of Health, must have gravely disappointed Mr Walker. She revealed there have been average of just over 28 ‘finished admission episodes’ for each of the past five years. That doesn’t necessarily mean 28 people as it could include the same person being admitted more than once.