Every month, Jamie Perino hires a security detail to come to her three recreational marijuana dispensaries. They stop by, collect thousands of dollars in cash and head out to deliver the money to the state, county and city. Perino, the CEO of Euflora dispensaries, said she can't find a bank that will work with her. She pays her employees and her landlord in cash. She can only accept cash from customers. She must even pay her taxes in cash. "I can't bank my money," she said. "It's really frustrating. ... When I go to pay my federal taxes, you get a 10 percent penalty for paying in cash, but we can't have a bank account.

At least 67 people are in prison right now, sentenced to die there for selling marijuana, according to the best available data. Until last week, Jeff Mizanskey was one of them. 

“Man, I feel great,” the great-grandfather told MSNBC, as he contemplated his first weekend as a free man in more than 20 years. His sentence was commuted in May from life without parole to simple life, and on Tuesday he walked out of a maximum security Missouri prison.

Someone helped him dial this wondrous new thing called a smart phone. “Do you have children?” he asked. “The day a child is born – that’s what this feels like for me. I’ve finally made it to freedom.”

Legal marijuana could be the first billion-dollar industry not dominated by men, writes Gogo Lidz.

It seems fitting that a plant called Mary Jane could smash the patriarchy. After all, only female marijuana flowers produce cannabinoids like the potent THC chemical that gets users buzzed. Pot farmers strive to keep all their crops female through flowering female clones of one plant, called the Mother. And women are moving into the pot business so quickly that they could make it the first billion-dollar industry that isn’t dominated by men.

Tribes are weighing the risks and opportunities of legalizing pot

This New Year’s Eve, Tony Reider wants to throw a party unlike any his South Dakota tribe has seen.

There will be live music, food, outdoor games—and, floating over the revelry, a haze of marijuana smoke, from a first-of-its-kind pot lounge that is set to open by the end of the year, said Reider, the tribal president of the Flandreau Santee Sioux in Flandreau, S.D.

That pot lounge—modeled on an Amsterdam coffee shop, where customers would be able to buy and smoke up to 2 grams of marijuana a day—would be illegal anywhere else in South Dakota, which, like most U.S. states, bans the sale, possession and public smoking of pot.

The Government is preparing to begin under strict security structure

The cultivation of cannabis plants in Puerto Rico for medical and research uses is scheduled to begin in early 2016, through a process regulated by the departments of Health and Agriculture, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), and federal laws and local laws.

Planting plants "cannabis sativa" and "cannabis indica" both on land and in hydroponic systems, the initial wheel will move the new public policy on marijuana in Puerto Rico.

The crop would be the responsibility of self government of the island and / or duly authorized private farmers. In regard to government level, they have not yet selected the land where the crops would be developed, the USDA said.

TYLER, TX (KLTV) -

Hundreds of new Texas laws went into effect last week, but one East Texas House candidate is fighting for a bill that didn't make it across the governor's desk. 

On the Tyler Square, Libertarian Joel Gardner held a Labor Day rally calling for an end to marijuana prohibition. 

A few dozen people joined Gardner on the square in support of full legalization of the cannabis plant and Texas bills that could make that happen. 

"The majority of people support changing the marijuana laws," said Gardner. "Upwards of 75 percent, and our representatives do not represent us."

When I was still a serving police officer, I would often find myself debating drug law reform with colleagues. Sometimes I would find others who were similarly disillusioned, others I would manage to convince of the Drug War’s true costs.  Much of the time it was frustrating and pointless, as the belief structures of individuals prevented rational debate. Those that agreed, and those that disagreed generally had something in common; the feeling that their own beliefs did not matter. The general view is that Policy is for the law makers, not the law enforcers. So why are the views of the police now so relevant to the debate, and should the police have more involvement?

Juvenile Judge Andreas Müller reiterates his call for regulation of cannabis

Müller received support from a total of 120 German criminal law experts 

The War on Drugs may have reached its pinnacle of absurdity when 94-year-old World War II veteran Douglas Ponischil was arrested for felony marijuana charges earlier this year.  The pot had been mailed to his home on someone else’s behalf, and law enforcement swept him up with no further investigation.

The case against Mr. Ponischil, who miraculously survived a Nazi U-Boat attack, was dismissed on June 30 after months of negotiating with prosecutors by attorney Christopher Connelly.

I spoke to a reporter from Rolling Stone who is doing a story on the division within the drug reform community over Ohio’s 2015 marijuana legalization amendment. Indeed, the proposal to create both medical marijuana and a taxed-and-regulated adult marijuana market has alienated many supporters of legalization with its assignment of just ten commercial cannabis cultivation sites to the ten investor groups who have funded the initiative campaign.

I was at the International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco when Drug Policy Alliance’s director Ethan Nadelmann weighed in on the Ohio initiative: