You may have heard that 15 McDonald’s franchise locations in Colorado are getting into the full spirit of marijuana legalization by converting their McDonald’s Play Place areas into marijuana-friendly smoking areas.

The rumors are swirling around online and seem to be traced back to a site called Now8News.com, which claimed that each McDonald’s “facility will consist of 15 smoking pods in which customers can smoke a joint, bong, or pipe without being harassed or bothered by people who are offended by it.”

Too good to be true?

Yes. If your spidey sense is tingling, it’s because this story is made up.

With the social justice movement gaining more and more momentum, the word “shaming” continuously gets thrown around a lot. There is fat-shaming, skinny-shaming, slut-shaming, virgin-shaming, tattoo-shaming, shame-shaming. Shame-shaming-shaming, and everything else under the sun. While shaming people for their ways of life or their appearance is certainly something that is completely unnecessary and immature, is marijuana-shaming really a thing?

Oregon has clear advantages that make it the perfect test state for the recreational marijuana movement. However, that still doesn't guarantee that marijuana businesses will succeed.

Lately it seems as if the marijuana movement reaches a new milestone just about every week. Last week it was Oregon officially becoming the third state in the country to allow adults ages 21 and up to purchase marijuana for recreational use. Alaska also legalized recreational marijuana sales in the November 2014 election, but it hasn't given legal shops the OK to begin selling the drug as of yet.

California has finally decided to regulate medical marijuana, taking steps to end a two-decade-long free-for-all that has been blamed for worsening the state's drought and causing environmental damage, though it remains to be seen whether enough of the state's black market growers will abide by the new laws to make a significant impact.

Governor Jerry Brown signed three bills into law on Friday that collectively amount to a massive change for the federally illegal industry, which is currently governed in California by a motley collection of city and county laws that range from stringent to wildly permissive.

Why you may soon be seeing your medical cannabis producer in grocery stores

Hemp, quinoa, coconut and various oils have all had a comfortable place on Canadian retailers shelves for decades and consumers can now expect to find several new products to try in the massive battlefield of healthy food from some local cannabis farmers.

Enter the MMPR cannabis parent companies Mettrum Health Corp. and The Peace Naturals Project. Each company holds license to produce and sell medical cannabis under the MMPR in Canada via the mail to registered patients.

The core argument made by opponents of legal regulation is that any regulated market for cannabis would inevitably fuel a significant rise in use and associated harms – particularly among young people. So inevitably, as the first jurisdiction in the world to implement a legally regulated market for non-medical cannabis use, Colorado is under intense scrutiny, with advocates keen to demonstrate its successes, and prohibitionists keen to highlight its failings.

Looking to get away–both in a physical sense and in a mental state sense? Looking for a reason to finally finish off that entire bag of Oreos in one sitting? The Santee Sioux tribe has announced its plans to open the country's first weed resort in South Dakota. While pot isn't legal in the state, this June, the Justice Department gave the group permission to grow and sell marijuana. 

"We want it to be an adult playground," tribal President Anthony Reider told the Associated Press. "There's nowhere else in American that has something like this."

• The California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which will require police to get a court order before they can search messages, photos and other digital data stored on phones or company servers in the nation's most-populous state. Civil-liberties advocates called the new law that takes effect Jan. 1 an important advance and said it highlights the need for similar protections at the national level.

• A measure that compels crisis pregnancy centers that discourage women from getting abortions in California to provide information about abortions and other services. The measure imposes the first such statewide rule, after local communities around the country have tried similar efforts.

Since pro-slavery senator James Henry Hammond coined the term “cotton is king” in 1858, the textile has enjoyed top billing as the world’s primary fabric. In fact, cotton production is projected to quadruple by the year 2050. But should it really be "the fabric of our lives," or is hemp more worthy of that designation?

Joe Warren has joined Nick Diaz on the list of weed offenders in MMA.