Lawmakers in Springfield will consider several marijuana bills this session, including at least one that would decriminalize small amounts of pot.

Other proposed laws would:

• Extend the now-delayed medical marijuana pilot program.
• Add post-traumatic stress disorder to the list of conditions that make a patient qualified to use medical marijuana.
• Allow adults to possess or grow small amounts of marijuana.

Several other marijuana-related bills also are proposed.

And proponents of legalized marijuana see this influx of legislation as “baby steps” on the way to legalization.

Beer geeks thrive off finding common ground with one another. And the folks behind Washington D.C.-based DC Brau and Colorado-rooted Oskar Blues share a lot more than their love of microbrews. Both breweries now hail from areas of the U.S. that are home to the most relaxed cannabis laws in the United States — and they’re debuting a protest beer today (yes, St. Patrick’s Day) in honor of their 420-friendliness.

The new beer, called Smells Like Freedom, will be tapped tonight at D.C. hangout Meridian Pint in the Columbia Heights neighborhood — “where Initiative 71 supporters gathered on Election Night last year to celebrate legalization,” according to The Washington Post.

A group pushing for a 2016 ballot question on legalizing the recreational use of marijuana is warning against imposing excessive taxation or fees on the sale of pot.

Bay State Repeal on Wednesday released a statement saying it welcomes a bill filed by more than a dozen Massachusetts lawmakers that would allow marijuana to be taxed and regulated like alcohol. The bill also would let adults 21 years or older possess and grow limited amounts of marijuana.

But the pro-marijuana group says if taxes and fees are too high that will force up the cost of pot and help maintain a black market in the state. It says that could have the unintended consequence of giving minors the ability to continue obtaining marijuana illegally.

A new national survey of American voters has found a strong majority in support of marijuana legalization and an even larger majority in support of decriminalization of the drug.

The "Beyond the Beltway" report released Wednesday by Democratic-affiliated Benenson Strategy Group and SKDKnickerbocker found 61 percent of Americans in favor of marijuana legalization and 72 percent in favor of decriminalization. The drug remains illegal under federal law.

Graph appears courtesy of Benenson Strategy Group/SKDKnickerbocker.

Apparel that doubles as smoking apparatus reveals an alternative way of classifying functional wearables

Hood Horkerz and vapRwear sell hoodies where drawstrings can also be used for smoking.

PSFK talked to Hood Horkerz about the future of functional clothing and giving “high fashion” an entirely different definition.

Scientists who study medical marijuana will soon have access to a wider variety of strains. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) — the federal "dealer" that supplies the drug to scientists — has received numerous complaints from researchers that the drug they supply is too weak compared with what's sold on the streets, legal or otherwise. But the complaints aren't responsible for the change, Nature reports. NIDA's willingness to expand the types of plants available to researchers is tied to the fact that legal marijuana is becoming increasingly available.

"We want to be able to evaluate the claims that marijuana is therapeutically beneficial," Nora Volkow, director of NIDA in Rockville, Maryland, told Nature.

Ohio has taken the first step toward legalizing marijuana for recreational use after the state’s attorney general approved paperwork that would allow the issue to be decided by voters. On Friday, Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, certified ResponsibleOhio’s petition to put pot legalization on the ballot and has sent it to the Ohio Ballot Board, which has 10 days to review the language of the petition and approve it for signature gathering, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

It all started at a music festival at Hawaii’s Diamond Head in 1972.

For a little extra spending money, Don Maile rented a booth to sell roach clips, pipes and bongs — devices for smoking marijuana.

Maile is almost 80 years old.

“I’ve always believed marijuana was created for healing mankind,” he said.

He is amazed that he can finally bring his craft out from under the radar and advertise it to potential customers.

“We are just starting to get used to the idea that I can do this legally now,” Maile said.

He makes the smoking paraphernalia in his garage workshop in the Madrona area of Camano Island.

Maile was 17 when he joined the military in 1952.

Young men in United Arab Emirates have jumped on a bizarre, and weirdly “green” addiction, passing on cigarettes and sheesha to smoking dead ants to get high. They crush local black ants (Pachycondyla sennaarensis) and blend the crumbs in tobacco, drop them into a medhwak (smoking pipe) or sprinkle them on regular smokes before lighting up, according to Gulf News. Health officials say the consequences could be far more harmful than smoking marijuana or hashish.

CANNABIS CULTURE - We all know that the Irish saved civilization, or so says the bestselling book by Thomas Cahill.

Now comes the book, How the Irish Invented Slang, by Daniel Cassidy, who postulates that many slang words for which even the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) can't name the origin were in fact based on Gaelic.

After a friend died and left behind his Irish dictionary, Cassidy took his wife's advice and learned a word every night, soon noticing how similar the pronunciations were to slang words.