State lawmakers return to work Tuesday with more than 300 bills awaiting their action in the final four days of this year’s regular session.

The governor has called concurrent special sessions on healthcare and transportation that could go beyond Friday. But legislative leaders have said they want to wrap up action this week.

Outstanding issues include regulation of medical marijuana and electronic cigarettes, slashing gas use in the state and allowing physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill Californians.

A man sentenced to life without parole on a marijuana-related charge was freed Tuesday from a Missouri prison after being behind bars for more than two decades — a period in which the nation’s attitudes toward pot steadily softened.

Family, friends, supporters and reporters flocked to meet Jeff Mizanskey as he stepped out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center into a sunny morning, wearing a new pair of white tennis shoes and a shirt that read “I’m Jeff & I’m free.”

“I spent a third of my life in prison,” said Mizanskey, now 62, who was greeted by his infant great-granddaughter. “It’s a shame.”

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A caped green superhero stumping for marijuana-legalization votes at college campuses and bars in Ohio has sparked debate over its impact on children.

"Buddie" is a fuzzy, ever-smiling pot bud in a bulging white muscle suit with green trunks, gloves and boots. He arrives in a truck painted with marijuana leaves declaring: "Yes on legalization."

Children's health advocates opposed to legalization said Buddie is reminiscent of Joe Camel, the cartoon dromedary proven so effective at marketing cigarettes to teenagers in the 1990s that R.J. Reynolds was forced to retire his image. They said the pot mascot makes light of a dangerous illegal drug in a manner appealing to kids.

It is not often that you get a billionaire, a minister of state and a priest at the same table discussing cannabis decriminalization, but then Ireland has its own, very particular way of doing things. The country has a cannabis culture that is buried deep below the surface. Alcohol is embraced with abandonment but cannabis production and sale is controlled by criminal gangs. This has not helped bring the subject to public attention, especially as a drugs turf war rages in some parts of the country. Last Friday evening, an event by CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign was organized.

Who doesn’t like B.C. bud? It’s a big deal in the province, home to a significant number of both legal and illegal growers, and to people like the Prince of Pot himself, Marc Emery.

In a poll earlier this summer, Insights West found 67% of British Columbians supported the legalization of marijuana in Canada — only 7% thought pot should always be illegal without exception.

There was so much interest in the herb locally that at one point, half of Health Canada’s 40,000 patients under the old marijuana access regulations were in B.C.

Even today, the province’s six licensed producers — the highest count next to Ontario’s 14 — indicates the continued interest in cannabis.

Cultural icon Tommy Chong’s voice is drifting out over a vast portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, uttering these silky words:

“Support MILegalize… I do.”

The message is born on the radio waves of WUPS; the issue is legalization of marijuana; the breakthrough is the acceptance of marijuana issues by mainstream radio stations. The Black Tuna, Robert Platshorn, just announced a similar accomplishment in a few other states where radio spots in support of his The Silver Tour are popping up.

We parked the car at a train tracks. It had been a 25-minute drive from Portland, maybe more. My friend and I got out and stretched our legs. The train was going by and we couldn’t see anything.

“Is this the place?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He was local but hadn’t been out this way before. “I think there’s water down there. Maybe it’s on a houseboat.”

Several other people joined us at the train tracks, approaching warily and steadily, like deer at dusk.

“Are you here for the pot party?” one of them said, as though they couldn’t believe it was possible that such a thing existed.

Colorado has brought in more than $150 million in marijuana tax revenue, according to official state data.

That doesn't make it a budgetary panacea, warn lawmakers. 

"The big lesson we tell other states is you probably shouldn't legalize marijuana if you want to make money – that's not why you do it," said J. Skyler McKinley, deputy director of the governor's Office of Marijuana Coordination, to the Huffington Post. "You do it because you think that a regulated marketplace might be safer than an unregulated marketplace, or you believe that the war on drugs didn't work."

Bernie Sanders has increased his lead on Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire according to the latest NBC/Marist poll. The progressive insurgent candidate that many cannabis law reform advocates have rallied around, has been the target of criticism from Clinton surrogates in recent day. Sanders responded that Clinton’s campaign must be “nervous” if they are taking shots at him.

Few issues have garnered more attention from Americans in recent memory than the expansion of marijuana.

Marijuana's tug-of-war

Just a decade ago, based on a poll from Gallup, only around a third of respondents to its survey were in favor of seeing marijuana legalized on a national level. Yet, here were stand in 2015 with three major polls (Gallup, General Social Survey and Pew Research Center) all pointing to a majority of respondents being in favor of marijuana's nationwide legalization, at least by a slim margin. Focus solely on medical marijuana and the responses swing even more strongly into the "favorable" camp.