Palm Desert has tightened its reins on medical marijuana, adopting an ordinance that strengthens its current ban on dispensaries while adding a moratorium on cultivation and delivery.

Palm Desert has tightened its reins on medical marijuana, adopting an ordinance that strengthens its current ban on dispensaries while adding a moratorium on cultivation and delivery.

The city already has a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in place, but tightened its regulations ahead of California’s Senate Bill 643, the “Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act” of 2015 – or MMRSA – which goes into effect Jan. 1.

America's drugs tsar insists addicts should be treated like cancer patients, not criminals.

The radical new policy would fly in the face of 40 years of anti-narcotics policy in America, which has focused on justice rather than treatment.

However, Michael Botticelli - a former addict himself - claims that approach was 'all wrong' and the White House needs to dramatically transform its approach to the issue if it is to trigger genuine change.

'We can't arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people,' Botticelli remarked bluntly in an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday. 

Three days before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government delivered its Throne speech - and with it the first formal indication of the Liberals intention to legalize marijuana for recreational use - the Mounties were busting down the doors of three pot shops in Nanaimo, B.C.

RCMP Supt. Mark Fisher said the force was "compelled" to raid the shops after a grandmother complained about her 15-year-old granddaughter allegedly buying weed from an illegal storefront.

One of the stores remains defiant, denying the allegations and reopening the following day.

Trees spokesman Alex Robb said the raids "fly in the face of public opinion, and the stance of our newly elected federal government."

We’ve already taken a look at the freshly amended California legalization initiative from Napster billionaire Sean Parker. With those 35,000+ words out of the way, today let’s look at the far shorter 5,000+ words of Marijuana Policy Project’s (MPP) Nevada marijuana legalization initiative, marketed under the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (CRMLA). It is already on the ballot for 2016 in Nevada; this will be voted on come November 8.

A number of parties are behind Alternativet’s bill to legalise the drug for medicinal use

Will Kentucky become the next Colorado or Washington and gather millions of dollars in sales for legalizing marijuana? Colorado and Washington have found success with legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and now it appears that Kentucky is following their lead.

WHAS 11 was one of the first to report the breaking news story on December 11, and they state that “Kentucky Senator Perry B. Clark (D-Louisville) pre-filed an act that would legalize and regulate cannabis in a similar way the Bluegrass State handles alcohol.”

Nothing kills a buzz like the sight of federal agents seizing tens of thousands of marijuana plants from a tribe's reservation.

One year ago, a wave of euphoria swept Indian country when the U.S. Department of Justice released a memo that many read as the feds giving the nation's more than 560 tribes an unrestricted green light to grow and sell marijuana on their reservations — even in states such as Wisconsin where weed remains illegal.

WASHINGTON — Among the top contributors to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign are the usual suspects — a financial management firm, a real estate developer, a manufacturer of hand tools.

But Paul also is getting significant support from an unlikely source for a conservative Republican — the marijuana industry.

The Marijuana Policy Project gave Paul’s campaign $5,000 — the legal limit that a political committee can give a candidate, according to campaign finance records.

The National Cannabis Industry Association gave $5,000. Its executive director and federal lobbyist added another $2,000, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign spending.

TALLAHASSEE (NSF) – Three nurseries rejected by health officials for medical-marijuana licenses are challenging the licenses granted to Florida’s first “dispensing organizations,” with possibly more appeals on the horizon before a Monday deadline.

In a challenge filed Friday, Gainesville-based San Felasco Nurseries argued that the grower was erroneously disqualified because of issues surrounding a background screening of its research and development director. The nursery also alleges that the winner of the license for the state’s Northeast region, Chestnut Hill Tree Farm, is ineligible to be one of the five dispensing organizations, which will grow, process and distribute non-euphoric marijuana legalized last year.

VERNON – Supporters of local medical marijuana dispensaries rallied today in Vernon. The show of support was organized after police visited all of the city’s dispensaries.

Elizabeth Bakker was among those who joined the rally appealing to keep Vernon’s dispensaries open for people like her 13 year old daughter.

“This summer we were up to 140 to 170 seizures a day,” she says, with her daughter standing by her side. “[We were] restricted to our house because she could not walk because of how many seizures she was having.”