With just three months left to draft new rules for marijuana sales in California, the state on Wednesday appointed a panel of industry members, health experts, law enforcement officials and union leaders to provide advice during the effort.

The 22-member Cannabis Advisory Committee will help the Bureau of Cannabis Control develop regulations on the cultivation, transport, testing and sale of medical and recreational marijuana, with state licenses scheduled to be issued starting Jan. 2.

"These individuals represent the diverse backgrounds of California and the cannabis industry and have the necessary experience to make the committee successful," said Dean R. Grafilo, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs. He said hundreds of people applied for the panel.

[continues 68 words]

Organizers of the Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition say they expect more than 2,000 people at the event Thursday and Friday at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

It's the first time this particular exposition has come to town. The organizers also held events this year in New York and Los Angeles.

"We are planting our flag here," said Dan Humiston, an organizer of the show.

"We anticipate the New England area is going to be the next big market for the industry. All the tea leaves say this part of the country will take off."

[continues 470 words]

If you are 21, you can grow marijuana in California. But the rules vary by city. Here is what's legal in Sacramento if you want to grow pot.

California's illegally grown marijuana, once largely produced in national forests and other outdoor locations, is increasingly found indoors, federal statistics show.

In 2016, authorities seized 313,000 plants from indoor operations in California, which made up 75 percent of all indoor plants taken nationwide, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

[continues 178 words]

Making indoor pot farms and manufacturing sites for edible products legal will boost the economy, create jobs and improve the quality and safety of local marijuana, City Council members said before approving the legislation in a 6-3 vote. (Oct. 4, 2017)

Making indoor pot farms and manufacturing sites for edible products legal will boost the economy, create jobs and improve the quality and safety of local marijuana, City Council members said before approving the legislation in a 6-3 vote. (Oct. 4, 2017)

[continues 349 words]

BOSTON - As he prepares an immediate budget request for this fiscal year and his agency's budget request for its first full year in existence, the chairman of the Cannabis Control Commission has been meeting with lawmakers and expects to have an estimate of the CCC's fiscal needs within two weeks.

Chairman Steven Hoffman said he's already held about a half-dozen meetings with state lawmakers and expects to hold another six or seven. The topic of funding for the fledgling CCC, which was not a hot topic of debate in the Legislature during debate on pot taxes, comes up "every single time," he said.

[continues 579 words]

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - A Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday preventing the town of Smithfield from enforcing a recent amendment to its zoning ordinance that restricted the cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana.

In his decision, Superior Court Associate Justice Richard A. Licht questioned whether local communities had the power to regulate "small-scale" medical marijuana cultivation under its zoning authority, which traditionally has been used to determine land use.

In April, the Smithfield Town Council passed an ordinance that limits licensed medical marijuana patients to two mature plants and two seedlings, and only at a patient's primary residence. Rhode Island law specifically allows for the cultivation of 12 mature plants and outlines where medical marijuana can be grown.

[continues 422 words]

People eager to start buying recreational marijuana from shops in San Francisco when sales become legal throughout the state in January are going to have to wait a little longer.

The city won't issue permits to sell recreational marijuana until it passes new laws to regulate the industry and creates an equity program to help low-income entrepreneurs, people of color, and former drug offenders break into the market.

According to Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who introduced an ordinance with proposed regulations at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, city officials still have no idea what that program will look like or how it will operate.

[continues 553 words]

Medical marijuana dispensaries would be allowed to stay open while the state decides who will get a license for the lucrative cannabis business under a pair of bills to be introduced in the state Legislature.

Sen. David Knezek, D-Dearborn Heights, and Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor, will introduce the bills in the Senate and House this week to counteract an advisory by the state to dispensaries that they should close before Dec. 15 or risk their chances at getting a license.

[continues 466 words]

Months before California allows the sale of marijuana for recreational use, the state has launched an education campaign about the drug, including highlighting the potential harms of cannabis for minors and pregnant women.

The state is scheduled to issue licenses starting Jan. 2 for growing and selling marijuana for recreational use, expanding a program that currently allows cannabis use for medical purposes.

In response, the California Department of Public Health has created a website to educate Californians about the drug and its impacts, including how to purchase and safely store cannabis.

[continues 329 words]

Maricopa County Attorney loses legal battle with tail between his legs

Earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state's medical marijuana industry by quashing a long-standing legal assault by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.

Montgomery constantly rails against imaginary dangers of marijuana, likely borne from knowing little to nothing about the plant, and based on flawed data. He was a major player in the fight against Proposition 205 along with Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk.

[continues 633 words]

Portugal treats addiction as a disease, not a crime.

LISBON - On a broken-down set of steps, a 37-year-old fisherman named Mario mixed heroin and cocaine and carefully prepared a hypodermic needle. "It's hard to find a vein," he said, but he finally found one in his forearm and injected himself with the brown liquid. Blood trickled from his arm and pooled on the step, but he was oblivious.

"Are you O.K.?" Rita Lopes, a psychologist working for an outreach program called Crescer, asked him. "You're not taking too much?" Lopes monitors Portuguese heroin users like Mario, gently encourages them to try to quit and gives them clean hypodermics to prevent the spread of AIDS.

[continues 2049 words]

Two men were killed in Hartford in a few-hour span Friday into Saturday.

Six people were shot, two fatally, in separate narcotics-related shootings in Hartford Friday night and Saturday morning, police said.

As of Sunday morning, victim identifications were being withheld, but Deputy Police Chief Brian Foley said at least one of the victims was from out of state.

Foley said the two shootings immediately appeared to be narcotics related, with heroin, cocaine and other drugs found at the scene. Police said they believed multiple guns were involved and at least one of the shootings was described as a "gunfight."

[continues 516 words]

The idea of alarms critics of the marijuana industry, who argue that such venues would become a nuisance and drag down property values.

The idea of alarms critics of the marijuana industry, who argue that such venues would become a nuisance and drag down property values.

Los Angeles lawmakers are laying the groundwork for what is widely expected to be one of the hottest markets for marijuana in the country, one that could bring more than $50 million in taxes to city coffers next year.

[continues 1218 words]

At Philip Tulkoff's food-processing plant in Baltimore, machines grind tough horseradish roots into puree. "If you put your arm in the wrong place," the owner says, "and you're not paying attention, it's going to pull you in." It's not a good place to be intoxicated.

Drug abuse in the workforce is a growing challenge for American business. While economists have paid more attention to the opioid epidemic's role in keeping people out of work, about two-thirds of those who report misusing pain-relievers are on the payroll. In the factory or office, such employees can be a drag on productivity, one of the U.S. economy's sore spots. In the worst case, they can endanger themselves and their colleagues.

[continues 1072 words]

Oregon officials twice neglected to deliver key documents when The Oregonian/OregonLive sought to learn about a state-licensed day care operating in the home of a Portland marijuana entrepreneur.

The search started July 10 with a public records request to the state Office of Child Care. It asked for documents including anything submitted by Step by Step's employees, operators or owners.

Agency officials provided records between July 15 and Aug. 2.

But missing from the documents were forms that Step by Step's top employees, Bre Murphy and Shai King, each submitted when they closed the business June 20.

[continues 277 words]

In 2016 more people were arrested for marijuana possession than for all crimes the FBI classifies as violent, according to 2016 crime data released by the agency on Monday.

Marijuana possession arrests edged up slightly in 2016, a year in which voters in four states approved recreational marijuana initiatives and voters in three others approved medical marijuana measures.

These figures should be regarded as estimates, because not all law enforcement agencies provide detailed arrest information to the FBI. But they do show that the annual number of marijuana arrests is down from their peak in the mid-2000s and stands at levels last seen in the mid 1990s. Marijuana use, particularly among adults, rose during this time.

[continues 446 words]

When more cannabis businesses begin operating in San Jacinto, Councilman Andrew Kotyuk said residents don't need to be struck with a case of reefer madness.

"This is not Cheech and Chong," Kotyuk said. "This is a biotech doctorate and masters who work with highly trained technicians in a medical environment."

The City Council voted last week to increase the number of cannabis businesses from six to 16.

San Jacinto already has given preliminary approval to three license requests for outdoor cultivation and three more for indoor, which had been the limit. Those have gone to five companies, one that applied for both indoor and outdoor operations.

[continues 522 words]

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Two plainclothes detectives were driving a white unmarked pickup truck through a heavily forested road in Polk County on an overcast day in March 2012.

A woman had called the sheriff's office in December. Her identity had been stolen, she said, and new credit cards were being sent to an address in Polk County.

The detectives couldn't find the home in the rural area 45 miles north of Springfield, so instead they stopped at the next closest address -- the home of Charles Frederick White.

[continues 895 words]

State regulators allowed a Portland man to have a childcare business in his home while owning a storefront dispensary selling marijuana.

Those potentially dueling interests didn't surface until this summer, after two childcare employees quit and contacted the state. They accused the day care owner, Samuel Watson, of keeping large amounts of marijuana inside his Alameda home and said he was putting children at risk. Watson categorically denies the allegations, and state officials have not found him at fault.

Without key employees, Watson in June was forced to shut down his in-home day care and a second location in Concordia.

[continues 2387 words]

Prosecutors in New York announced this week that an August drug raid yielded 140 pounds of fentanyl, the most in the city's history and enough to kill 32 million people, they told New York 4.

Those numbers underscore the dizzying size of the current opioid crisis, and the report of the New York bust comes the same week as another shocking piece of evidence that America's pill problem has reached a critical milestone: On Tuesday, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an analysis showing the crisis has actually negatively impacted life expectancy in the United States.

[continues 325 words]