Synthetic Marijuana Or K2 Use On The Rise In New York City

Speaking in East Harlem, a community that has been an epicenter of hospitalizations the city blames on the drug, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the legislation that targets store owners who sell the drug with threats of fines and jail.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says his administration will continue "to build upon" the environmental record of his predecessor.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suggested late Wednesday that he is open to supporting the legalization of marijuana.

"We have more people in jail today than any other country on earth," the independent Vermont senator said during an appearance on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

"We have large numbers of lives who have been destroyed because of this war on drugs," he continued. "I think we have got to end the war on drugs."

Sanders pointed to Colorado, the first state to allow for recreational marijuana, and other states to learn more about legalization.

"But I am not unfavorably disposed to moving toward the legalization of marijuana," Sanders said.

Yes, Canada is the first nation to have a political party that has legalization of marijuana as a prominent policy plank in its platform that subsequently received a mandate from an election to form the government and make that policy real.

Opinion polls over the last few years have shown that Canadians favour legalization of marijuana in every province. The Liberal Party voted in its January 2012 convention to legalize marijuana, and the leader and now PM-elect embraced the policy and spoke to it routinely throughout the election campaign just concluded.

During the campaign, the Liberal leader was clear that he would move almost immediately after being elected to a legal regime of regulated and taxed marijuana distribution. 

PRINCETON, N.J. -- A majority of Americans continue to say marijuana use should be legal in the United States, with 58% holding that view, tying the high point in Gallup's 46-year trend.

This November, Ohio voters will have the opportunity to vote on The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative, Issue 3. If passed, Ohio will be the fifth state, the first in the Midwest, to legalize cannabis for recreational use.

House prices and rentals are skyrocketing in the mile high city and it’s all thanks to a law that made it possible for businesses to grow and sell marijuana and for residents to smoke as much as they like, wherever they like.

Five years after the US state of Colorado made pot legal, its biggest city is thriving. Thousands are moving from major cities for the lifestyle, buying up properties and buying pot.

Once unoccupied, derelict industrial buildings are filled to the brim with cannabis plants. Crime rates are down, tax revenue has ballooned and tourism is bigger than ever.

In 1998, Washington state passed I-692, allowing citizens with debilitating conditions to grow medicinal cannabis at home. The actual regulation of medical cannabis was largely left to the local governments until 2010 when the state attempted to regulate MMJ statewide. However, due to a last minute waiver by then-governor Kristine Gregoire, the attempt largely failed. Despite the falter, a set of loose regulations did emerge governing collective gardens and setting designated providers.

In a strongly worded new report out Tuesday, researchers at the Brookings Institution call on the federal government to eliminate roadblocks to medical marijuana research in the United States.

"The federal government is stifling medical research in a rapidly transforming area of public policy that has consequences for public health and public safety," the report, written by John Hudak and Grace Wallack, says. "Statutory, regulatory, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers have paralyzed science and threatened the integrity of research freedom in this area."

New Zealand could piggyback on Australian research into the wider use of medicinal cannabis, but associate minister of health Peter Dunne is cautioning people against getting their hopes up.

Cannabis advocates have created a monster, and its name is Buddie.

The green cannabis bud with a cool smile, six-pack abs and a cape is for campaigners the walking advertisement for Responsible Ohio, an initiative on the November ballot to legalize pot in the state.

But to many marijuana legalization advocates, Buddie represents an unsettling shift in power, out of the hands of the traditional policy movement and into those of green-eyed newcomers clamoring to be part of a burgeoning profitable industry.