Cannabis use is going mainstream in North America, but that's not the case everywhere. If you're travelling to any of these destinations, you'll want to consider a temporary hiatus from herb.

WASHINGTON — Leading up to his meeting with the Black Lives Matter group Campaign Zero at the Frederick Douglass House in September, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders steeled himself for an argument.

He’d only previously come face-to-face with Black Lives Matter protesters who wanted to interrupt him. But over the course of the meeting, the activists spoke authoritatively on policy recommendations to curb racial disparities in the criminal justice system, while Sanders impressed by synthesizing their talking points on police militarization, community empowerment, and systematic oppression.

Rihanna was once a lucrative pop artist who released music pretty consistently. And while her long-awaited eighth studio album Anti is supposed to drop at some point this millennium, no release date has been announced or (as far as we know) even secured.

Recreational marijuana policy is great for studying how effective policy adoption and implementation works, mainly due to its unique nature. Colorado cities, municipalities, and counties can currently choose how to adopt marijuana legalization policies, and whether or not they want to at all. By using this state as a case study, one researcher has found that public opinion, tax revenues, and existing medical marijuana policies have the biggest impact on local governments’ decisions to allow the sale of recreational marijuana. The study was published in State and Local Government Review, a SAGE journal.

While the United States government continues to sandbag the issue of nationwide marijuana reform, the newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has already set into motion the procedures necessary to bring down prohibition in the northern nation.

POT IS IN for a big change. As more states legalize the herbal commodity, the companies selling it will find themselves in stiffer and stiffer competition with one another. Of course, where there’s competition, there’s marketing—and where’s there’s marketing, there’s branding.

The opening of medical marijuana dispensaries in the suburbs has some substance abuse prevention experts worried.

Will teens get hold of marijuana meant for medical use and abuse it?

Will the positive message about the drug's benefits for the chronically ill change perceptions about its risks for others?

Experts such as Dr. David Lott, medical director of addiction services at Linden Oaks Behavioral Health in Naperville, think it very well could.

"The more you think (marijuana is) dangerous, the less you're going to use," he said. "By making it more legal, it's inevitable that it's going to seem less risky because it's more available and people are talking about it more in a positive way."

According to the Marijuana Policy Project, Massachusetts could consider completely decriminalizing cannabis in 2016. Bill H.1561, which Rep. Dave Rogers and Sen. Patricia Jehlen co-introduced in March, would reorganize the laws in Massachusetts to regulate marijuana more like alcohol. But for the time being, Massachusetts has only decriminalized cannabis for medicinal purposes.

The latest research from Denmark shows how industrial hemp can efficiently make chemicals normally produced from petroleum. New developments could push hemp to the forefront of a new wave of biorefinery technology that aims to use plants to produce fuel and chemicals that, up until now, we have extracted from fossil fuels.

Most people smoke weed without many health problems, and stop without difficulty – but some users go on to become dependent on the drug.

Researchers have unravelled one reason why this week, and it could be partly genetic.

People who’ve suffered childhood abuse are particularly vulnerable – but having one particular genetic variation seemed to protect against dependence.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis focused on 1,558 Australian survivors of childhood trauma – in particular sexual abuse.

Even among survivors of abuse, not all went on to become dependent. But those who did had one particular variation within the body’s endocannabinoid system – the system which cannabis affects.