[photo] MJ Freeway, a Denver company whose tracking software is used by hundreds of marijuana companies to comply with state regulations, said its main servers and backup system each went down Sunday morning and remained offline as of Monday afternoon.

Marijuana shops across the country, including seven medical dispensaries in Massachusetts, are being affected by the apparent hack of a sales and inventory system widely used in the cannabis industry.

Two medical marijuana dispensaries in the state suggested patients delay their appointments until the system was back up or a fix is in place.

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In a state that just legalized the recreational use of marijuana, can field sobriety tests used to determine whether drivers are drunk also be administered to demonstrate that a person is too high to operate a motor vehicle?

The state Supreme Judicial Court on Friday took up that question in a case that is being closely watched by police and advocates for marijuana legalization.

The justices also heard arguments over whether police officers can give jurors their opinion of whether a driver is drugged on marijuana.

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Maxwell Baker wanted to be a doctor. His father, a physician himself, said he would have been a great one.

"He was remarkably brilliant," said Dr. James L. Baker of Holden. "And he had compassion."

But Maxwell also had an addiction, one that he battled and managed to tame in the last two years of his life. He fell deeply in love, was taking pre-med classes in college and was filled with energy and purpose. Two days before Christmas, he told his dad that his goal was to treat addicts and educate society about substance abuse.

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Lieutenant Michael Pappalardo said the 10-month-old girl's family is cooperating with an investigation that includes state child-protection authorities.

METHUEN - A 10-month-old girl who narrowly survived after ingesting fentanyl is the latest victim of an opioid epidemic that has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in Massachusetts.

Police were called to the baby's home shortly before 12:30 p.m. Saturday when the girl was having trouble breathing. She was rushed to Lawrence General Hospital, where she stopped breathing twice and had to be resuscitated. She was later flown by helicopter to Tufts Medical Center in Boston and was listed Monday in stable condition, according to police.

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MILLBURY - After barely drawing a quorum of 100 voters, with an unofficial count of 108, special town meeting voters approved zoning bylaws Tuesday to restrict the location of methadone and other medication-assisted drug treatment centers and to impose a moratorium on recreational marijuana outlets until May 31, 2018.

Both articles received a two-thirds majority to pass, according to Town Moderator John M. Bartosiewicz. A vote count was not taken.

Article 3, which established a temporary moratorium on marijuana establishments and the sale or distribution of marijuana and marijuana products, was supported by the Planning Board after its public hearing on the measure earlier in the evening.

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Giving away -- or "gifting"-- up to one ounce of marijuana is now legal in Massachusetts, but are some people pushing the new law too far?

Days after Governor Charlie Baker signed a measure delaying the opening of recreational marijuana retail shops statewide by six months, a budding entrepreneur took to Craigslist to offer people a backdoor approach to getting their hands on some pot - one that authorities say would violate the new law.

In an ad posted to the website titled "Bud, weed, marijuana, cannabis," a person who identified himself as "Corey" listed for sale empty plastic bags ranging in price from $20 to $325. Depending on which bag is purchased, the seller promised to include a "gift" of marijuana inside.

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Medical Marijuana advocates rallied before a public meeting on proposed changes to the rules.

Proposed changes to the state's medical marijuana program do not address problems that hamper people from registering for the program, according to patients and advocates who testified Tuesday at a crowded public hearing in Boston.

The proposals are part of a larger initiative by the Baker administration to review and update all state regulations, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which oversees the marijuana program.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading a new effort to make sure vendors working with marijuana businesses don't have their banking services taken away.

As marijuana shops sprout in states that have legalized the drug, they face a critical stumbling block: lack of access to the kind of routine banking services other businesses take for granted.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading an effort to make sure vendors working with legal marijuana businesses, from chemists who test marijuana for harmful substances to firms that provide security, don't have their banking services taken away.

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Doctors are being more careful with opioid prescriptions as addiction and its effects get more recognition.

More than half of doctors across America are curtailing opioid prescriptions, and nearly 1 in 10 have stopped prescribing the drugs, according to a new nationwide online survey. But even as physicians retreat from opioids, some seem to have misgivings: More than one-third of the respondents said the reduction in prescribing has hurt patients with chronic pain.

The survey, conducted for The Boston Globe by the SERMO physicians social network, offers fresh evidence of the changes in prescribing practices in response to the opioid crisis that has killed thousands in New England and elsewhere around the country. The deaths awakened fears of addiction and accidental overdose, and led to state and federal regulations aimed at reining in excessive prescribing.

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LUBBOCK, Texas - Across from a sprawling cotton field, among mobile homes in varying states of decay, one stood out: a double-wide with a new, expansive metal garage and the only paved driveway on the dead-end street.

It was here that an unemployed former computer repairman with a bad back ran what a drug informant called the biggest fentanyl ring in Lubbock. All Sidney Lanier needed was a computer and an elementary knowledge of chemistry to order shipments of the potent synthetic opioid from China and turn it into a highly profitable - and dangerous - street drug.

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Action by the governor and legislature doesn't change a new law that allows adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of recreational marijuana and grow as many as a dozen pot plants in their homes, but it pushes back the timetable for opening retail marijuana stores from the beginning of 2018 until the middle of that year.

BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill Friday aimed at delaying by up to six months the opening of marijuana shops in the state until mid-2018.

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