Marijuana use was never something to put on a job application… until now. In the first 34 weeks of legal recreational sales in Washington State, 110 pot shops have opened, a number that is expected to double by years-end. “Retail job opportunities are booming,” said David Rheins, CEO and co-founder of the Seattle-based Marijuana Business Association. Managers are looking for employees who bring retail experience and product knowledge.

Eric Gaston, owner of The Evergreen Market, is looking for a sales staff that loves cannabis for his new stores in Renton and Auburn Washington.  Employees “should be evangelists for the growers and the products,” he said at a recent Green Jobs Fair in Bellevue Washington.

An Alaska marijuana club owned by a former TV reporter was raided on Friday, authorities say. 

Last September, KTVA reporter Charlo Greene quit her job in a brazen fashion that many of us would like to duplicate: revealing herself to be the owner of the club she was doing the segment on.

She then exited following the now infamous statement: "Fuck it, I quit." On Friday, police in Anchorage raided the Cannabis Club that Greene—aka Charlene Egbe—owns, seizing marijuana and impounding two vehicles. Egbe described the scene to KTVA: 

Source: Flickr user Mark

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

Marijuana gets a double-dose of good 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.

KINGSTON, Jamaica—Attend any outdoor sound system party in Kingston and you are guaranteed to experience at least two things: loud, bass-thumping reggae and dancehall blasting from a gigantic stack of speakers, and clouds of marijuana smoke rising over the crowd. Like peanuts at a baseball game, the two go hand-in-hand, and it’s been that way for almost five decades.

While not everyone at the party is smoking, marijuana is usually easy to come by if you’re looking. Just stop one of the vendors who will be periodically walking through the crowd with 12-inch stalks, selling buds from the dried plant for $100 Jamaican dollars ($1).

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Marijuana buds are often two to three times as potent as they were 30 years ago.

More than a year into Colorado's experiment legalizing marijuana, labs testing the plants are able for the first time to take stock of the drug's potency and contaminants—and openly paint a picture of what's in today's weed. At the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), one such lab will present trends—and some surprises—that its preliminary testing has revealed about the marijuana now on the market.

A GREENS MLA has proposed a bold new plan to make Canberra the medical marijuana capital of Australia.

The legislative assembly is currently holding an inquiry into a bill containing a medical marijuana scheme proposed by minister Shane Rattenbury which is due to be ruled on by June 2015.

In the latest move by the minister, he has outlined a plan that would allow the ACT to develop a monopolised cannabis industry akin to Tasmania’s $120 million dollar poppy industry.

Mr. Rattenbury would like to see the ACT government granted an immediate exemption from the federal ban on importing the plant and is calling on the inquiry to allow Canberra businesses to begin developing a medical marijuana industry.

This is not your father's weed.

Colorado marijuana is nearly twice as potent as illegal pot of past decades, and some modern cannabis packs triple the punch of vintage ganja, lab tests reveal for the first time.

In old-school dope, levels of THC — the psychoactive chemical that makes people high — were typically well below 10 percent. But in Colorado's legal bud, the average THC level is 18.7 percent, and some retail pot contains 30 percent THC or more, according to research released Monday.

Legislation to bring together Washington’s two dueling marijuana systems is moving forward. As KUOW’s Amy Radil reports, the challenge may come in deciding which medical dispensaries get to stay open.

TRANSCRIPT:

Since Initiative 502 legalized marijuana in Washington in 2012, a number of issues have emerged that legislators are hoping to address this year. One is the competition licensed marijuana stores are facing from unlicensed medical marijuana businesses. Another is the difficulty finding legal locations for marijuana stores, which can’t be too close to parks and schools.

Philip Dawdy is a consultant to marijuana businesses. He says two bills moving forward this year seem poised to address those problems.

The president of Costa Rica’s Social Security System, María del Rocío Sáenz Madrigal, on Friday denied stories by several local media outlets stating that the agency’s board of directors had approved the medicinal use of cannabis.

Caja board members on Thursday were complying with a Legislative Assembly request to evaluate the drafting of a bill that would propose the regulation of growing, processing and marketing of cannabis for medicinal use, Sáenz explained.

Originally seen on Cannabis Culture| A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, examined whether marijuana lowered intelligence levels in users. The study was largely ignored by US media, while within Canada, the results seemed to depend on which newspaper headline you read.