Is it a drug, an herb, a supplement, a nutritional powerhouse?

I live in Colorado, so like any self-respecting revolutionary, on Jan. 1, 2014 – the day marijuana was legalized for the fun of it – I headed out to a local pot shop and made a small purchase. Good times.

A few months later, I got into a morning accident. Still made it into work, but after a while sitting in my desk chair, I could see that I needed stronger medicine than the ibuprofens. I never signed up for a medical marijuana card (as half the country can now do) because I never had anything wrong with me (lifetime of taking supplements, I guess).

Police discovered a cannabis “forest” the size of a football pitch growing openly in one of London’s most affluent boroughs.

Officers posted images of the shocking discovery on Twitter after an anonymous tip on Thursday informed the force of “a few cannabis plants.” The plantation was found on disused private land on leafy Kingston’s Lower Marsh Lane, situated near a college, university halls, fitness center, and Berrylands train station. Upon arrival, officers were greeted by scores of plants of extraordinary heights, with some standing at around five feet.

Doctors have projected Tom Clint will only live another four months.

A dentist visit in 1994 revealed leukoplakia in the Ashtabula man's mouth, which later progressed into stage 3 oral, nasal and skin cancers. In February, doctors said the only way to save his life was to remove his tongue, but he chose against a life in which he couldn't talk, and hasn't seen an oncologist since.

The 57-year-old upholsterer said he's counting on the natural qualities of marijuana to halt, or even reverse, the spread of cancer through his body. 

"I've decided I've got the rest of my life to live," Clint said. "I've held (cancer) back all these years and I believe it's because I've smoked marijuana.

The "Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol" sounds like an interesting statewide ballot initiative, but it really is false advertising.

Avoid it at all costs.

Supporters kicked off the smokescreen Tuesday at the Statehouse, making a case for following the Colorado model of legalizing marijuana for recreational use. The hook is that Massachusetts would be able to "regulate" marijuana by licensing businesses to sell it, mandating an ID for adult-only buyers, and taxing the heck out of the drug to raise revenues for the public treasury.

Well, that's not "regulation" -- and certainly it's not how the state regulates the alcohol industry.

Riverfront Park might be the worst place to get high in Spokane.

Data from Spokane Municipal Court shows marijuana users are far more likely to be fined for consuming pot in public by a park security guard than by a Spokane police officer, though they’re unlikely to get a ticket at all.

Citywide, law enforcement officers have written 28 tickets for public consumption of marijuana since March 2013, when an ordinance prohibiting public consumption was added to the city code. Only six of those tickets were written by Spokane police officers, who say they’re usually too busy with other calls for service to deal with pot smokers.

On New Year’s Day 2014, media from near and far descended on a snowy Denver to capture a spectacle: the first legal sales of marijuana for recreational use.

Most crews left soon after. But one group of Denver-based filmmakers stayed on the story for a full year, following the staffers at the Denver Post as it became pot’s paper of record. The resulting feature-length documentary, “Rolling Papers,” screens Saturday at Aspen Filmfest.

She was preaching to the converted but still managed to wow the audience at last week's Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo, in Los Angeles. Melissa Etheridge, the Grammy and Academy Award winner singer, blurted it out during an intense keynote: "We are all one, aren't we? Cannabis is going to save the world. I have seen the future, the possibility of a world without war." The audience of business people, entrepreneurs, and cannabis evangelists cheered on as the rock star told how she fell in love with the plant. It started over ten years ago, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo extremely aggressive chemotherapy.

INDIANAPOLIS – Concerned that lawmakers will act hastily in allowing the medicinal use of a marijuana extract, prosecutors are calling for more research into a controversial treatment.

At a four-hour hearing Wednesday, officials with the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council urged a legislative committee to abandon efforts to legalize cannabidiol -- a non-psychoactive marijuana extract – until more mainstream science weighs in.

“As prosecutors, we think we need to base decisions on evidence,” said Aaron Negengard, the prosecuting attorney for Dearborn and Ohio counties, who told lawmakers it would be “reckless and careless” to follow other states that have allowed use of cannabidiol with little regulation.

By the time the four of us had been in the room for an hour, we had figured out many things — mostly about ourselves. It turns out that some of us are better at logic, and others at visual clues. One of us has a tendency to be loud (OK, we knew all along that it’s me). We all look ridiculous in big, round glasses.

We also realized that we’re a good team of pals. At one point or another, each of us did or said something stupid or something smart, and we were all pretty forgiving of the former and exuberantly supportive of the latter. Also, eating a pot cookie whose strength is untested can be a great idea, or … not so much.

The one thing we hadn’t done? Solved the puzzle.

Recreational marijuana use is legal in Oregon, but that hasn’t stopped the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from engaging in an eradication program costing American taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In 2014 alone, the agency spent $960,000 to remove 16,067 pot plants in the state of Oregon, where the drug was made legal in 2012. If you do the division, the price tag comes to almost exactly $60 dollars per plant destroyed. The number appears even more startling when considering the average nationwide per-plant-destruction cost is $4.20, the Washington Post reported Thursday.