The evidence is conclusive: Marijuana causes blindness. At least if you work at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Responding to a pair of petitions by two Democratic governors and a nurse practitioner, the DEA flatly declined to change how marijuana is classified under federal drug control laws. The petitioners asked that it be moved out of Schedule I, a classification for drugs that come with a high potential for abuse and no accepted clinical application. This places marijuana in the company of substances like heroin and LSD, and means it is a more highly regulated substance than cocaine.

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

Recreational marijuana supporters will be taking over billboards around the Las Vegas area before Nevada voters head to the polls in November.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is formally unveiling a billboard Thursday with the message “Support Schools, Not Cartels.” Campaign officials say marijuana prohibition has driven money to criminals, but a ballot measure to legalize the substance could generate $20 million a year for Nevada schools.

The billboard is the latest advertising move in support of Question 2.

Supporters of the ballot measure have reserved more than $800,000 in TV airtime at Las Vegas stations and plan to run commercials starting in early October and running through Election Day.

One of Gary Johnson's signature issues is the legalization of marijuana. Do most Americans favor the legalization of marijuana? Surveys say yes.

In a Medium post touting his Libertarian presidential candidacy, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson addressed a variety of policies in his platform, including fiscally conservative policies, criminal justice reform and caution before committing troops overseas.

He also returned to what has become one of his signature issues: the legalization of marijuana.

The Drug Enforcement Agency refused to relax restrictions on cannabis last week, meaning marijuana will remain Schedule 1 — the strictest category of the Controlled Substances Act, designated for dangerous and addictive drugs with no medical value — in spite of growing evidence that marijuana is relatively safe and medically useful.

The DEA is claiming marijuana lacks medical value. If that’s true, why did the U.S. government file a patent for cannabis — stating that the plant has multiple therapeutic benefits — way back in 1999?

Sponsors of an anti-marijuana initiative that failed to qualify for November's ballot are claiming they submitted enough signatures to put the measure before the voters, but that thousands of names were lost or wrongly rejected by county officials.

The sponsors, a group called Safe Montana that is led by Billings car dealer Steve Zabawa, planned to present Secretary of State Linda McCulloch on Wednesday with a list of more than 3,500 voter signatures they say are valid, but were rejected by county officials across the state. The group separately filed a lawsuit asking a state judge to count those rejected signatures plus an additional 2,588 signatures they say Flathead County election officials lost.

Twenty-five states, including California, allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes.

On Nov. 8, voters in California and eight other states will cast ballots to decide if they’ll join Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. to allow recreational use of marijuana.

According to an article published in The Hill [Poll: Majority of voters support marijuana legalization, June 6, 2016] which cited a Quinnipiac University poll, 54% of those surveyed said marijuana should be legalized. The same poll also showed that 89% of respondents believe people should be allowed to use medically prescribed marijuana.

Opinion: Redmond's partnership with 'seed-to-sales' software purveyor Kind is bound to bring more legitimacy to an already-thriving business.

The last two months have been busy ones for the marijuana community. Most recently, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) declined to loosen restrictions on medical marijuana, and kept the drug classified in the same 'Schedule 1' category as LSD and heroin.

On September 2, 2016, scientists, politicians and pioneers in the cannabis industry will gather in Montego Bay Convention Centre in Montego Bay, Jamaica for the Cannabis Business Conference and Symposium hosted by CanEx. Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett and Minister of Transport and Mining Mike Henry will attend as well as Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) board member Delano Seivwright.

Those who support the nationwide legalization of marijuana for therapeutic use, were disappointed by the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) recent failure to reclassify marijuana's status from that of a Schedule I drug to another more appropriate classification.

Since 23 states have now legalized marijuana for medical use, and since numerous studies have confirmed its value as medicine and have proven that it is safe, it seemed the logical next step to begin relaxing the laws at the federal level.