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Colorado emerged as the state with the second-highest percentage of regular marijuana users as it began legalizing the drug, according to a new national study. The Denver Post reports the study by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found about 1 out of 8 Colorado residents older than 12 had used marijuana in the past month. Only Rhode Island topped Colorado in the percentage of residents who reported using pot as often, according to the study. The study averaged state-specific data over two-year periods. It found that, for the 2011-2012 period, 10.4 percent of Colorado residents 12 and...

Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Raphael Ramos in cold blood on Saturday.On Monday New York police officials announced that Brinsley had attended a Mike Brown rally in New York City.He took video at the protest.On Tuesday police Commissioner William Bratton said Ismaaiyl was carrying $100 bills in his pocket. But he had no job or home.The Yeshiva World reported: New York City’s police commissioner says investigators are looking into how the gunman who killed two officers had money despite not appearing to have a job or a home.

Congress Quietly Ends Federal Government's Ban On Medical Marijuana Under a provision in the spending bill passed by Congress over the weekend, states where medical marijuana is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations. Agents would be prohibited from doing so. By EVAN HALPER Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy. The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates....

The Obama administration will direct attorneys to not prevent Native American tribes on reservations from growing and selling marijuana even in states where pot is illegal, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. Some federal restrictions will still apply. Marijuana can't be sold to minors, grown on public land, fall into the hands of drug cartels, or systemically spread to states where the drug remains illegal. It's unclear how many tribes will take advantage of the opportunity. Many are opposed to marijuana legalization. The federal government will continue enforcing prohibition for those tribes, at their request, even in states where...

WASHINGTON — Opening the door for what could be a lucrative and controversial new industry on some Native American reservations, the Justice Department on Thursday will tell U.S. attorneys to not prevent tribes from growing or selling marijuana on the sovereign lands, even in states that ban the practice. The new guidance, released in a memorandum, will be implemented on a case-by-case basis and tribes must still follow federal guidelines, said Timothy Purdon, the U.S. attorney for North Dakota and the chairman of the Attorney General's Subcommittee on Native American Issues. It remains to be seen how many reservations will...

A congressional deal to avert another government shutdown contains a provision to stop the District of Columbia from allowing the sale of marijuana, angering supporters of a pro-pot initiative that D.C. voters approved overwhelmingly in November, The Washington Post reports. The anti-pot measure — a budget "rider" slipped into a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill that would keep the government running past Thursday — could prevent the nation's capital from joining Colorado and Washington as legal weed havens. The measure does not overturn the results of Initiative 71, the legalization referendum that passed on Nov. 4 with more than 60...

… The data coming out of Colorado is exhibit A on why voters should reject legalization efforts. Even the Democratic governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, said that legalizing marijuana in Colorado was “reckless.” As I have written at Heritage, pot-positive traffic fatalities have gone up 100 percent since voters legalized pot in Colorado. This is true despite the fact that overall traffic fatalities in Colorado have gone down since 2007. A report by a federal grant-funded agency in Colorado found seven specific negative side effects that pot legalization has caused in Colorado: the majority of DUI drug arrests involve marijuana;youth...

That whiff of pot that drifts your way at a rock concert or outdoor event could damage your heart and blood vessels as much as secondhand cigarette smoke does, preliminary research suggests. Blood vessel function in laboratory rats dropped by 70 percent after a half-hour of exposure to secondhand marijuana smoke -- similar to results found with secondhand tobacco smoke, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported Sunday. Reduced blood vessel function can increase a person's risk of developing hardened arteries, which could lead to a heart attack. "Smoke is smoke. Both tobacco and marijuana smoke impair blood...

KENNEWICK, WA- Measure 91, approving recreational marijuana use in Oregon, has lawmakers developing rules and regulations. Many wonder if Oregon will adopt similar policies as Washington. Both Liquor Control Boards have set rules for both I-502 in Washington and Measure 91 in Oregon that will take effect on July 1st of next year, but there are a few big differences between the states. NBC Right Now spoke with both boards Tuesday to simplify the details. In Washington and Oregon you can have up to 1 ounce of usable marijuana in your possession. In Oregon you can have up to 8...

Fireweed Farms of Prosser sold about 300 pounds of pot to state-licensed processors and retailers Saturday...Buyers were provided with a detailed list of strains and lot sizes that provided a complete potency profile, labeling requirements and the date the batch was tested by Confidence Analytics, a state-certified laboratory.

CLAM LAKE — The war on drugs has a new battleground and it’s deep in the heart of Wisconsin’s great northwoods. Drug traffickers with ties to Mexican cartels are setting up shop in our state and national forests. FOX6 Investigators got an exclusive invitation to see what’s left of one massive pot farm near Clam Lake. In just the past four years, state agents have wiped out more than $70 million worth of marijuana grown on the same public lands where people go to hunt, hike and camp – and that’s just what they’ve found. Drug traffickers are setting up...

PROSSER, WA- Fireweed Farm made history Saturday after they hosted the first marijuana auction in the state. Nearly 500 pounds of marijuana were auctioned off Saturday to approved producers, retailers, and processors. Those bidders came from all over to get in on the marijuana action. There is a first time for everything, and many did not know what to expect. “I expected nothing to be quite honest with you and everything at the same time,” said Jack Ron, marijuana grower. Nearly 100 producers, processors, and retailers from Spokane, Vancouver, Bellingham, and other areas around the state, bid on marijuana from...

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe plans to pardon his son for a felony drug charge from more than a decade ago. "It will probably be in the next few weeks," said Matt DeCample, a spokesman for the governor. "For any pardons the governor does the person has to have finished all terms of their sentence ... and then had a period of time where they've shown they have straightened their lives out." Kyle Beebe, who is now 34, was charged in 2003 with possession of a controlled substance -- marijuana -- with intent to deliver. He was fined and sentenced to...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he wants recipients of food stamps and unemployment benefits to undergo drug tests, a move that could face possible legal trouble. The state is already one of five that require public assistance applicants who are convicted of drug felony charges to be tested for drugs, along with Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Should Walker propose a broader measure that involves testing benefits applicants either randomly or without suspicion that they have used drugs, it could be found unconstitutional because of a 2003 Michigan Court of Appeals...

Researchers from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas have found evidence that the effects of chronic marijuana use may depend on when a person started smoking pot and for how long. For the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 10, Francesca Filbey from the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, and colleagues involved 48 adult marijuana users who started to use weed when they were between 14 and 30 years old. The participants smoked pot thrice a day...

Experimental mice have been telling us this for years, but pot-smoking humans didn't want to believe it could happen to them: Compared with a person who never smoked marijuana, someone who uses marijuana regularly has, on average, less gray matter in his orbital frontal cortex, a region that is a key node in the brain's reward, motivation, decision-making and addictive behaviors network. More ambiguously, in regular pot smokers, that region is better connected than it is in non-users:The flow of signal traffic is speedier to other parts of that motivation and decision-making network, including across the superhighway of "white matter"...

The national marijuana legalization debate is moving into the backyard of a Republican-controlled Congress, now that the District of Columbia has voted to legalize growing, possessing and sharing small amounts of pot. Voters in Oregon and Alaska also approved legalization initiatives, joining Colorado and Washington state, where pot is already legally available. But while states out West enjoy both autonomy and distance, federal lawmakers have the power to quash any District law they don’t like. And with legalization getting a foothold on the East Coast for the first time, the District’s initiative could force Congress to make decisions affecting the...

Marijuana legalization appeared on its way to passing easily at the polls in the District on Tuesday, putting the city at the vanguard of a nationwide movement that also saw Oregon and Alaska consider pro-pot initiatives on Election Day. Many D.C. voters who took to the polls Tuesday framed their support of the initiative in terms of social justice, saying they favored legalization because it would bring an end to arrests and discrimination against marijuana users, specifically young black men.

NEW YORK (AP) — Voters in Oregon and the District of Columbia approved ballot measures Tuesday allowing the use of marijuana by adults, elating legalization activists who hope to extend their winning streak across the country. Oregon will join the company of Colorado and Washington state, where voters approved the recreational use of pot two years ago. And the District of Columbia is on the same path unless Congress, which has review power, blocks the move. Still to come were results from Alaska, which also had a marijuana-legalization measure on its ballot Tuesday. Other volatile issues on state ballots include...

link only: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/03/irs-limits-profits-marijuana-businesses/18165033