Deschutes County is taking applications for its Marijuana Advisory Committee, which will make recommendations to the county commissioners on land use regulations for both medical and recreational marijuana.Commissioners voted to temporarily ban marijuana businesses in unincorporated areas of Deschutes County in December. The board wanted more time to look at the impact of proposed regulations.The committee will develop and recommend regulations looking at the sights, sounds and smells associated with marijuana land use. County commissioners will consider those recommendations if they or voters decide to overturn the temporary opt-out ordinance, according to a news release from the county.Commissioners will appoint as many as 12 members to the marijuana panel in early February.

IRONTON, OH -

Ohio lawmakers announced this week the formation of a task force to address the issue of medical marijuana in the Buckeye State. 

Ohio voters shot down the ballot measure that would have legalized recreational and medical marijuana in November, but an October Quinnipiac poll shows 90 percent of Ohioans support marijuana for medical use.

“Nobody’s cooking it, nobody’s mixing it, it just grows like grass, or trees or anything else. It’s a lot better than taking pills in my opinion," said Charles Ratcliff, an Ohio resident who said he uses marijuana to cope with his medical disorder. “I have PTSD and I don’t care who knows it, I smoke it.”

Maryland Congressman Andy Harris has been a thorn in the sides of marijuana reform supporters since he was first elected. Representative Harris has used his position in Congress to try to thwart reform efforts in Washington D.C. specifically, first trying to derail decriminalization in Washington D.C., and then once that didn’t work he focused his efforts towards fighting marijuana legalization in Washington D.C.. Andy Harris has led the charge in a big way against marijuana reform in Congress, and it sounds like not only is he obviously on the wrong side of history, but that voters are likely to take him to task for that position.

GUNTER — The Gunter Police Department raided a house Tuesday and found $230,000 worth of high-grade marijuana.

“I would not classify this as a grow house; I would describe it as a marijuana factory,” Gunter Police Chief Doug Ritter said. “This was something from out of the movies.”

Gunter Police and the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office suspected illegal drug activity on the property in the 400 block of S. 4th Street and executed a search warrant at 7:30 p.m. Gunter Police said because of the size of the drug operation, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer was at the scene of the raid to help officers collect the evidence. Police seized nearly 50 pounds of the marijuana.

Some long time advocates of medical marijuana are questioning why they were not included in the Ohio House's new task force to study the subject. 

Ohio Public Radio's Jo Ingles reports.

Although a number of media reports have suggested that an experimental cannabis-based painkiller is what caused a “serious accident” during a clinical drug trial this week in France, leaving one person brain-dead and hospitalizing at least five others, the nation’s health ministry has confirmed that the tragedy was not the result of a medication containing cannabinoids.

Canadians could soon be allowed to legally purchase marijuana and that has caught the attention of some law enforcement officers in Montana.

Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jim Sanderson said law enforcement across the state has seen an increase of marijuana in the state now that some nearby states have legalized the drug.

“We saw an immediate impact when Colorado legalized marijuana and we’ve seen the same with Washington and Oregon,” he said.

One person is brain-dead and five more have been hospitalized after a phase I clinical trial in France went horribly wrong. At least three of the patients may suffer irreversible brain damage if they survive, a doctor treating them said today.

The patients were previously healthy volunteers who participated in a study, conducted by Biotrial, a private company in the city of Rennes, to test the tolerability of a candidate drug. French officials haven't announced which drug, and it's not yet clear why many others who participated in the study since it began in July apparently haven’t experienced similarly severe side-effects.

What could it cost Representative Andy Harris to be Congress’s leading voice against DC’s legalization of marijuana? Perhaps his career in national politics, according to a new poll of primary voters in the conservative Republican’s Maryland district which shows him losing badly to one of his three challengers.

A Canadian man has been handed a mandatory life sentence for his role in a multimillion-dollar drug-trafficking operation that smuggled thousands of kilograms of marijuana into the U.S.