In a statement at the lauded Cleveland Clinic, Drug Enforcement Administration acting head Chuck Rosenberg said: “marijuana is not medicine.” The event was a Cleveland Clinic Community Healthcare Forum held on Thursday, May 25th, and the topic for the evening was “Our Nation’s Opioid Epidemic.”

Five people have been appointed to the state of Michigan's newly created medical marijuana board, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Friday.

The board will be tasked with implementing the system that allows licensing of medical marijuana operations, such as dispensaries, processors, growers and transporters. It will be housed within the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

License applications for such operations will be available by the end of the year.

"This board will help provide the proper oversight of medical marihuana facilities to keep the public safe by ensuring proper health and safety standards are being met," Snyder said in a statement.

France intends to soon stop prosecuting marijuana possession with years of imprisonment, according to a statement by Gérard Collomb, the newly appointed interior minister.

Under new rules that are currently being developed, cannabis possession will be degraded from the highest status of crime to the lowest one, called "contravention" in the French judiciary system. As such, violators will no longer be subject to imprisonment; instead, people found in possession of marijuana will simply have to pay a fine of €100 ($111).

Colorado's two U.S. Senators are leading a new bipartisan effort to provide banking for marijuana businesses.

Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Cory Gardner are co-sponsors of the legislation.

“The lack of access to banking services for marijuana businesses is a key issue in Colorado,” Bennet said.

“It raises significant public safety concerns for both employees and customers of these businesses and creates compliance and oversight challenges. This common-sense bill would address those issues by allowing our banking system to serve marijuana businesses that are in compliance with state laws.”

There's no doubt marijuana businesses are a target for criminals. In the past 18 months, L'Eagle Cannabis Gallery in Denver has been burglarized three times.

This year's 4-20 marijuana day of protest in Vancouver cost the city more than $245,000.

The city says estimates 40,000 people were at Sunset Beach Park and the Vancouver Art Gallery during the April 20 protest.

The city says in a news release that police costs came to over $170,000, while other costs such as sanitation, and fire and rescue pushed the costs even higher.

The city refused to grant a permit to protest organizers, but the event went ahead without approval.

The release says the bill doesn't include ambulance service or hospital costs.

The city says it will bill the organizers of the Sunset Beach event to recover expenses.

The Legislature has given preliminary approval and may soon send to Gov. Paul LePage a bill that funds and designates the agency that will administer recreational marijuana sales in Maine, approved by voters at referendum in November.

The bill gives the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations the authority to oversee recreational marijuana use. That’s a change from the measure approved by voters, which would have given regulatory authority to the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Economic advisors in Oregon have released their first estimate of what the state will make taxing marijuana sales. As in Colorado and Washington, the numbers are large and growing.

By the end of 2017, the state expects to have brought in as much as $67.2 million in marijuana taxes. That number is expected to grow to more than $156 million from 2017 to 2019, giving the state more than $210 million to distribute from marijuana tax coffers.

It also means that those who have invested in the marijuana industry are doing well.

Gov. Phil Scott's veto has thrown the legal marijuana bill back to the Legislature, setting up more work for the summer and fall.

"We can all work together on this issue in a thoughtful and responsible way," Scott said Wednesday, suggesting that there is still a "path forward" for legalization.

Given the complexities of legislative procedure, however, that path could be more like a maze. Among the possibilities:

1. Game over

The bill could land with a splat, leaving lawmakers with the option of reviving their marijuana legalization efforts in 2018.

2. Move forward anyway

Lawmakers could override the governor's veto — which would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers.

Florida health officials are taking the very earliest steps toward rolling out rules to let patients use medical marijuana after state lawmakers failed to resolve the issue during the final hours of their session earlier this month.

The Department of Health on Thursday published a notice outlining special procedures for them to implement Amendment 2, which passed with 71 percent of the vote last November and allows patients with a list of conditions including HIV/AIDS, cancer and PTSD to access medical cannabis.

DOH faces a quickly approaching deadline of July 3 to write the rules governing what could within a few years be a $1 billion medical marijuana industry.

An Oregon Senate bill could bring cannabis clubs to the state, giving locals and tourists alike a legal place to consume in a social setting outside their own homes.

Senate Bill 307 would allow state-licensed lounges to permit cannabis consumption among adults 21 and older, provided the city or county has not banned cannabis establishments.