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Nightmare neighbours smoking cannabis inside their own homes is a common problem for communities across Britain. The notoriously pungent stench may be a sign of a recreational user smoking the odd joint next door or the drug being grown in large quantities close by. And while you may not be bothered by what other people get up to in their own homes, there’s no denying the smell can be off-putting. So what action can you take if you suspect the drug is being used near your home? The Derby Telegraph and DevonLive took a closer look at the law surrounding...

The war on drugs has been going on since 1971, and we have a winner: marijuana. Back then, possession of pot carried heavy penalties in many states -- even life imprisonment. Today, 29 states sanction medical use of cannabis, and eight allow recreational use. Legal weed has become about as controversial as Powerball. One sign of the shift came in Wednesday's debate among the Democrats running for governor of Illinois. The state didn't get its first medical marijuana dispensary until 2015, and it decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot only last year. But most of the candidates endorsed legalization...

Colorado’s legal marijuana dispensaries generated over $1 billion in sales during the first eight months of 2017 — a 21 percent year-over increase putting the Centennial State on path to having its best year yet in terms of retail pot sales. Licensed pot shops in Colorado sold a total of about $1.02 billion worth of marijuana products between January and August 2017, including $733,057,112 in recreational sales and $291,978,141 in medical sales, according to data released Wednesday by the state’s Department of Revenue and analyzed by The Cannabist, the Denver Post’s marijuana news portal.

Cannabis users are more likely to commit violent crime, pioneering research has shown. It warned those who smoke the drug regularly run an increased risk of using violence against others. The project is the first to demonstrate that cannabis is not only linked with violent crime but is the cause...Researchers said that cannabis causes violence and they found no evidence that the link is the other way round – ie that violent people are more likely to use cannabis...The academics said the effect of cannabis use was clear and not diminished by other factors such as patients who were heavy...

The plaintiffs, who are represented by the ACLU of Georgia, were all stopped for briefly touching or crossing the line at the edge of their lanes—an offense that every driver on the road probably has committed at some point. They were all evaluated by Carroll, who deemed them stoned despite their protests to the contrary. They were all arrested for DUI and spent a night in jail. And in all three cases, as WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta, revealed in an exposé last May, the DUI charges were eventually dropped after blood tests found no trace of marijuana—neither active...

Do I smoke too much pot? It’s a question I’ve asked myself over the years, and it raised its uncomfortable head this week as I absorbed the results of the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The first thing to note about the report is the good news. One of the major and legitimate fears of those who have opposed legalization is that teen use would increase. Weed is genuinely harmful to the developing adolescent brain and those of us who passionately advocated legalization argued that making it legal would actually make it harder for teens to get...

Los Angeles is scrambling to make sure the City of Angeles soon starts collecting at least $50 million a year as the world’s top spot to buy recreational marijuana. The countdown clock is ticking down to January 2, 2018, when California joins Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Alaska and Washington DC as locations to legally buy marijuana for recreational use. California state bureaucrats and politicians are almost giddy over the $1.8 billion in annual tax revenue that the New Frontier Financials expects the state will collect from its 15 percent excise and dry-weight taxes on “weed.” But many of California’s...

Men who smoke too much marijuana could face fertility problems because the drug makes sperm 'mellow' causing it to 'swim in circles'. Cannabis - which is the most widely-used illegal drug in Britain - tends to leave users feeling chilled out and relaxed. But now researchers have revealed that it has the same effect on sperm and regular weed smoking can cut counts of the cells by as much as a third.

DENVER­–The Left views The American Legislative Exchange Council as a pawn of corporate influence. There were some protests at the organizations annual meeting in Denver, Colorado in July. They were mild. No fires were started, and no vandalism occurred. They came, they chanted, and then they dispersed. That was it. While progressives chanted the usual liberal talking points outside of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver, a significant number of state legislators were figuring out a way to knock out what seems to be an unstoppable killer: opioids. Around 1,700 people attended the event held in July, where the topic...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.

Help Musicians, Britain's largest independent music charity and provider of health and welfare support, has announced a new campaign for the music industry called MUSIC MINDS MATTER. This offers wide support of the world's first dedicated 24/7 mental health service for people working in the music industry. Help Musicians has been serving the music industry for almost 100 years and has identified a ‘mental health crisis’ in the music industry, which has led the charity to initiate a unique Mental Health Fund with an investment starting at £100,000. The announcement of the campaign sees Help Musicians call for ‘arm in...

Nevada state officials declared a state of emergency after stores that sell recreational marijuana reported that their supply is running out just less than two weeks after the drug went on sale legally. Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nev., issued the state of emergency on Friday, which will allow state officials to decide on new rules that could ease the shortage of marijuana, according to Fox 13 Now. Nevada’s Department of Taxation released a statement that said it will contemplate emergency regulations that would permit liquor wholesalers to cash in on the marijuana sales. “Based on reports of adult-use marijuana sales already...

Last month I gave the keynote address at the Cannabis World Congress Business Expo in New York City. CWCBExpo is the trade show for the cannabis industry. I had the pleasure of meeting thousands of like-minded cannabis activists, and the experience was truly refreshing and inspiring on many levels. I learned firsthand that those in the legal cannabis industry — whether they're growing hemp, medical marijuana or recreational marijuana in Colorado or California or Oregon or wherever — have formed a united front. Everyone at the convention was looking to work together to come up with solutions on how to...

Recently, there was a report posted about the decline of the Denver Public Library, due to rampant drug usage and criminal activity. Apparently, a lot of the library "regulars" are homeless people who have been victimized by drug dealers who take over the bathrooms to do their deals. Other library users complain that the computer terminals are all taken up by the homeless people and back packing vagrants passing through the area, and that the place stinks. Apparently, the Denver Police have increased patrols and at least cleaned it up to some extent. They even closed off the bathrooms on...

As canna-business strategist Elise McRoberts walked across an animal skin rug and into the living room of a Pacific Heights home for the recent San Francisco launch of Beboe, an upscale cannabis brand from Los Angeles, she assumed she would see the usual faces on the marijuana circuit — growers, dispensary owners and cannabis chefs. Instead, the party was a cross-pollination of the worlds of high society, Silicon Valley, politics, fashion and design: industrial designer Yves Béhar, former Mayor Willie Brown, who carried decriminalization bills in the state assembly in the 1970s, philanthropists Katie and Todd Traina, boutique owner Emily...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Latest on Nevada becoming the fifth state in the U.S. with stores selling marijuana for recreational purposes (all times local): Minnesota resident Edgar Rosas Lorenzo on Saturday flew with his family to Sin City for a wedding. But even before he checked in to his hotel, he stopped at a pot dispensary on the Las Vegas Strip. The 21-year-old says he learned of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Nevada while he was at the airport waiting for his flight to depart. He waited in line about 40 minutes before he could buy one-eighth of...

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – 20 kilos of deadly fentanyl are off our streets after a major drug bust, but authorities say more is coming, and they can’t keep up. The Montgomery Sheriff’s Office is already predicting that overdose deaths in 2017 will be double the amount reported last year.We’re gonna crush records,” Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer said. “This year, at this pace unfortunately.” Setting the pace, is a Mexican drug cartel known as Sinaloa. They’re the source of the more than 20 kilos of fentanyl recovered in Wednesday’s massive drug bust.

Drug overdose deaths have increased by 33 percent in the past five years across the country, with some states seeing jumps of nearly 200 percent. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 states saw increases in overdose deaths resulting from the abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers, a class of drugs known as opioids. New Hampshire saw a 191 percent increase while North Dakota, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine had death rates jump by over 100 percent. …

A BBC chief insists she is 'proud' of the controversial programme targeting children as young as six about a schoolboy who takes sex-change drugs. Children's director Alice Webb defended Just A Girl after parents reacted angrily to the CBBC show, which depicts an 11-year-old's struggle to get hormones that stunt puberty, making it easier to have sex-change surgery in the future. Concerned campaigners said it could 'sow the seeds of confusion' in young minds. But Ms Webb said the BBC has a duty 'to make sure that we are stimulating conversation'.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union released a report on Wednesday in support of the effort to stop drug arrests and convictions for the personal use of all drugs, citing the harm it does to people, including non-citizens, who might face deportation. “The consequences of a conviction can mean that individuals and sometimes whole families are excluded from public benefits such as food stamps, housing, wages and job opportunities and even the voting booth next month,” Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at both liberal organizations and author of the report, said at a press conference at the...