With the Utah State Legislature past the halfway mark of its session, Cache County’s legislators held to a common theme in their reports at the weekly constituent meeting Saturday morning: money.

“One thing I’ve always said when you’re looking at who’s supporting what issue is to follow the money,” Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, said when discussing medical marijuana legislation in the Senate. “If an initiative comes along to put marijuana legalization on the ballot, ask yourself where all the money is coming to pay for it, because I guarantee it will be lambasted with money. It’s not going to be these poor sick people, but the people who see money in selling the drug.”

A Texas Department of Public Safety highway patrol trooper arrested a 25-year-old woman and a 22-year-old manafter seizing 60 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop Thursday in Kleberg County.

Around 3:30 p.m., a trooper pulled over a 2004 Ford F-150 traveling northbound on U.S. Highway 77 and discovered five bundles of marijuana in a false compartment in the rear seat. The bundles were estimated to be worth more than $360,000, according to a news release.

The man and woman were arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana and booked in the Kleberg County Detention Center Jail.

A new tack on stemming drug-related violence

JUAN FRANCISCO TORRES LANDA, LL.M. ’90, a corporate attorney in Mexico City, has never used marijuana and doesn’t plan to start now, even though he recently became one of only four people in Mexico granted the right to do so, after a legal battle that went all the way to the country’s Supreme Court.

For him, the fight isn’t about the freedom to grow his own pot or a desire to get high. It’s about the catastrophic violence engulfing his country, fueled by drug trafficking—murders, kidnappings, torture, extortion—and the desperate search for some way, any way, to stop it.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A push to legalize recreational marijuana in Rhode Island has won support from a top lawmaker.

Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio, a North Providence Democrat, has signed on as co-sponsor of a bill to treat marijuana like alcohol by legalizing, regulating and taxing it.

Ruggerio says it’s an important conversation to have after watching the experience of states that legalized the drug, such as Colorado.

The bill’s main Senate sponsor, Democratic Sen. Joshua Miller, of Cranston, had introduced his long-shot legislation for several years without success but says there’s more momentum this year. He points to Vermont, where lawmakers are advancing a bill, and Massachusetts, which might ask voters in the November election.

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Feb. 18, 2016–Laws for the decriminalization of marijuana, for possession of up to 10 grams, are in the works. Amandala is reliably informed that after Cabinet gave its nod for the legal drafting, the Attorney General’s Ministry began working on amendments to the Criminal Code which would remove criminal penalties in the event that persons are found with marijuana within what would become the new limit.

Of note, though, is that Government is not moving to legalize marijuana use. Persons found with small quantities of marijuana would instead receive a fine through a sort of ticketing system. It is only in the event that the person fails to pay the fine that he or she would face incarceration.

Salt Lake City —

(KUTV) Enedina and Michael Stanger's hopes to move back to Utah were crushed when lawmakers made big changes to SB 73 - Utah's controversial medical marijuana bill.

In October, The Stanger's left their life in Utah behind to move to Colorado where marijuana is legal. Enedina needed cannabis for relief of severe symptoms caused by EDS a genetic disease that affects the body's connective tissue.

"It's really sad to be rejected by a community and by a culture and by a state that I love so much," said Enedina of having to leave.

College pothead Jeb Bush now thinks marijuana has "devastating impacts on productivity and brain damage." He said this at the Republican presidential candidates' Town Hall in South Carolina on Feb. 18. 

This time, Florida’s vote on medical prescription of marijuana will be different.

At least, we hope so.

Amendment 2 on the November ballot, allowing physicians to prescribe marijuana when they think its medical benefits outweigh potential risks, almost passed in 2014. The proposal was placed on the ballot by a public petition campaign and got 57.6 percent of the vote, just shy of the three-fifths super-majority required for adoption.

The debate over medical marijuana in Utah will continue Monday after lawmakers ran out of time debating the issue Friday, the Associated Press reported. The Mormon church has come out against proposed legislation that would allow for marijuana use in edible or vapor form for medical purposes.

Salt Lake City —

(KUTV) Mixed emotions were found on Capitol Hill today during discussion of the controversial medical marijuana bill. Last minute changes were made to the bill that helped it gain some support in Senate, but lose some patient support.

An amendment says the entire plant can no longer be used, only an extract.

This brought Enedina Stanger, a 27-year-old mother to tears. Enedina suffers from a brittle bone condition and had to move her family to Colorado so she could have access to the medicinal cannabis she needs.

"We just wanted to come back home this year and it doesn't look like that's going to be possible, even if the bill passes. I need the whole plant," Stanger told 2News.