The war on drugs has disproportionately punished minority groups and the less fortunate for decades. Now, with five states set to vote on legalizing and regulating the recreational use and sale of marijuana on Nov. 8, the cannabis industry is using newfound support to undo the harm caused by the drug war.

A potential sea change in marijuana legislation is coming, with ballot measures in several states giving voters the opportunity to make it legal for adults.

Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada will vote on legalizing recreational marijuana, while Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and North Dakota are considering medical marijuana initiatives.

With the election less than a week away, it’s not surprising that the candidates are widening their stances on many issues in order to appeal to larger and more diverse groups of voters. For Hillary Clinton, one of these ever-changing stances focuses on the legalization of marijuana.

She consistently hides behind the veil of lack-of-information on the topic. During an interview with KNPR.org earlier this year she stated, “I support states making this decision so that we can have some good on-the-ground experience as to what works and quite frankly, what doesn’t work.”

Leaked DNC emails suggest Clinton is not in support of legalizing marijuana.

Nevada already has legal brothels, round-the-clock casinos and a coy catchphrase declaring that “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” If voters approve, the state could soon add another vice in the form of recreational marijuana.

A proposal on the Nov. 8 state ballot would legalize pot, and entrepreneurs hope its passage could someday allow the drug at Las Vegas’ glamorous nightclubs and perhaps provide the framework for a future Amsterdam-style cannabis district.

Question 4, which would approve the taxing and sale of marijuana — instead of keeping it on the list of illegal drugs — is going before Massachusetts voters next Tuesday. But the results are expected to have an impact in Rhode Island as well.

“I’m taking a slower approach to make sure [that] if we do it, we get it right,” Gov. Gina Raimondo told Eyewitness News on Wednesday. If Massachusetts okays it, she told the Providence Journal this week, “we have to look at it harder and faster.”

In late January this year, at little more than a month after he took office, Argentine President Mauricio Marci issued a presidential decree declaring a "state of emergency" in South America's second-largest country.

One of the things asserted in the decree was that trafficking of illegal drugs posed a "threat to national sovereignty."

In the months since, Argentina has pursued muscular law-enforcement practices in its anti-narcotics efforts.

Story highlights

• Defense Secretary Ash Carter announces plan to keep the military "relevant"
• The military will look its rules on pot, physical fitness, tattoos and single parents

The military may not weed out recruits who used marijuana.

Speaking at City College in New York on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced a wide-ranging review of recruiting standards and practices to ensure they are not "unnecessarily restrictive."

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has finalized a 2018 state budget that calls for millions of dollars in taxes generated from the legal cannabis industry to be allocated for a new program to help the homeless.

Reports show that Hickenlooper’s latest budget proposal would pull $18 million from the state’s cannabis tax coffers and put it toward building affordable housing for people who are either homeless or suffering with mental health issues that prevent them securing a place to live.

It is a program that he has been eager to launch for years, says Hickenlooper’s budget director Henry Sobanet.

The panel charged with putting the state’s new medical marijuana law in effect has come up with some rules for sites where marijuana would be grown in Ohio.

The number of proposed growing sites has upset activists who’ve had questions about the new law.  

Limited growing sites and other rules

The Ohio Department of Commerce’s proposals would limit the number of marijuana growing sites to 18. The licenses and fees for the 12 larger sites would be $200,000 each; those for the six smaller sites would be $20,000 each.

'Apparently they want to shut out the Ma and Pa shops.'

What could be Britain’s highest growth industry of the next decade? There is no shortage of plausible candidates. Driver-less cars could turn into a vast new industry for the first country to get its roads and legal system ready for them. 

Robotics has the potential to be far bigger than computing, given the range of tasks that machines driven by artificial intelligence could perform. Biotechnology has been around for a couple of decades, without quite living up to its hype, but no country has a stronger tradition in medical technology than the UK, and could yet make some stunning breakthroughs.