SOUTH BEND — When a judge this week sentenced Jerome Scott for growing dozens of marijuana plants in his South Bend home last year, the 18 months of probation, a relatively light penalty for a felony conviction, didn’t bother him.

Scott, 30, didn’t even contest the fact that he was growing the weed. But he and his girlfriend, 23-year-old Melanie Schmidt, see the state's marijuana laws as unjust and offered an unusual argument as they fought to have his felony reduced to a misdemeanor.

International action star Jackie Chan and Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman have come out on opposite sides of the marijuana debate in the last few weeks, begging the question: who would win if the two were to fight?

Chan, known for films like “Rumble in the Bronx” and the “Drunken Master” series, who also serves as an official Narcotics Control Ambassador for the Chinese government, spoke out in defense of China’s tough anti-drug laws at a recent anti-drug press conference in Singapore, stating that he supports the death sentence for some offenders.

Because of Wichita’s approval of a city ordinance in April and House action last week, Kansas no longer seems like the last place you’d expect to weaken marijuana laws.

The Kansas Supreme Court’s order Wednesday in response to Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s challenge of Wichita’s new marijuana ordinance was welcome news. The September oral arguments and resulting ruling should clarify the future of the ordinance, which is caught up in legal confusion.

Ed Perlmutter, a Democratic congressman who represents a district just to the north and west of Denver, has introduced HR 2076, addressing the federal barriers to banking for state-legal marijuana businesses. Though the text of the bill describes its purpose as the creation of “protections for depository institutions that provide financial services to marijuana-related businesses,” but there is some reason to believe that its approach is far to0 narrow to be effective.

The House referred the bill to the Committee on Financial Services, where Perlmutter serves, and to the Committee on the Judiciary.

As people in Oregon will be able to legally possess up to 1 ounce of pot, law enforcement officers in Oregon and Idaho are preparing for the change - and the influx of people they say will be crossing state lines to get high.(Photo: Mary Kienzle/KTVB)

ONTARIO, Ore. - Oregon's marijuana law is set to take effect on July 1, allowing for recreational sales and use of the drug for people 21 and older.

Now, as people in Oregon will be able to legally possess up to 1 ounce of pot, law enforcement officers in Oregon and Idaho are preparing for the change - and the influx of people they say will be crossing state lines to get high.

Ontario Police Chief Mark Alexander says legalizing recreational marijuana will have a big effect on the community he serves.

A new kind of greenhouse — designed for marijuana production and soon to be completed in Maple Ridge — is set to make the green business even greener, say the facility’s owners.

The entrepreneurs behind Tantalus Labs describe their 115,000-square-foot purpose-built cannabis greenhouse as the first of its kind in North America, with a horticultural approach they say will produce a better, more sustainable sun-grown product with a substantially-reduced energy footprint.

As marijuana moves toward the mainstream, Tantalus’ owners say now is the time for the crop to “rise out of the shadows and into the light.”

One of Colorado’s largest chains of marijuana stores on Wednesday laid off 65 employees — or about 45 percent of the company’s total workforce, according to owner Shawn Phillips.

The pot layoffs are believed to be the largest in Colorado’s 16-month recreational era.

Phillips owns nine cannabis stores in Colorado, all of which are part of the Strainwise-branded network, and he called the cuts “drastic” but “temporary” in a letter he wrote to employees obtained by The Cannabist.

Psychotropic drugs could be making depression worse

 on 14th May 2015 @ 9.21pm

© Press Peter Gotzsche argues that the long-term affects the use of antidepressants has on us, and in particular the elderly, outweigh the benefits.

The debate over whether antidepressant drugs are safe to use has been circulating for a while now. One leading scientist has made claims that trial designs for almost all psychotropic drugs underplay the harms and overplay the benefits of them. If he is correct is there a suitable alternative out there, or were his results based on biased experiments?

As marijuana legalization goes mainstream, entrepreneurs have rushed to develop businesses in the recreational and medical consumer markets, as well as several other auxiliary niches. One such entrepreneur is Mike Siffin, founder of Hash Brothers Entertainment LLC, who recently unveiled his plan to create a crowd-funded board game for adult cannabis consumers. Siffin was interviewed by the cannabis business news website Ganjapreneur.com as part of an ongoing series of interviews that the site conducts with cannabis start-ups, business experts, and investors.

SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday he's open to legalizing marijuana in Utah for medical use.

"I'm open to the idea of medical marijuana and the discussion of how it can be used as a medicine based on science, and making sure we have good, collaborative efforts so we can answer the questions that are out there," the governor said.

Herbert said during the taping of his monthly news conference on KUED Ch. 7 that the state has "a history of looking at opportunities, for medical purposes, to bring substances on board that maybe historically have not been traditional medicine."

He cited cannabis oil, approved by lawmakers a year ago, as "helping people who have had seizures, and seems to be demonstrating scientifically there is some benefit."