What are the long-term effects of marijuana use on the body’s metabolic health?

That’s what a doctoral student, Michael Bancks, at the University of Minnesota set out to learn when he dug into the data for CARDIA, a long-term health study whose 5,115 participants were recruited by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in 1985-1986. At the time, they were ages 18 to 30.

Now, in the 30th year of the study, the group has entered middle age. This is when prediabetes, a major metabolic risk factor, often starts to appear.

For thousands of years, the world’s most well-heeled wine lovers have gathered together amid runny cheese and rare truffles to discuss the relative merits of various fermented grape juices. Arguing over a particular vintage’s “notes of sandalwood” and “hints of elderberry” with an air of insufferable pretension so palpable it’s a shop-worn cliche, those at the upper echelons of power and influence routinely pop the cork on bottles that cost more than the rest of us spend on rent for a month—or a year.

Marijuana legalization is often compared to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the 1930s. Many see marijuana following the same trajectory as alcohol, where the states, just as they did with alcohol, start with medical regimes and one-by-one create a patchwork of state-based marijuana regulations leading up to recreational use.

The legalization of marijuana is steadily moving — or perhaps creeping — forward in the United States.

This has some experts concerned that the public health battles fought against Big Tobacco are about to be repeated — this time against the burgeoning Big Marijuana industry.

“Given the lessons learned from the 20th-century rise of another legal addictive substance, tobacco, we believe that such an industry could transform marijuana and its effects on public health,” wrote the authors of a 2014 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

TORONTO -- Medical marijuana producers are bracing for the possibility that Canadians could elect a new government this fall -- a change that could accelerate the already breakneck pace of growth in the burgeoning industry and usher in new players such as tobacco companies and pharmacy chains.

"This whole election's very interesting," said Bruce Linton, the CEO and chairman of Tweed Marijuana Inc. (TSXV:TWD). "When you have a business that has the potential to see quite a lot of acceleration because of outcomes, you watch it more carefully."

Marijuana became a hot-button issue in the election campaign on Thursday, when Joy Davies, a Liberal candidate in British Columbia, pulled out of the race because of posts she had made on Facebook about marijuana.

Since Colorado voters legalised pot in 2012, prohibition supporters have warned that recreational marijuana will lead to a scourge of “drugged divers” on the state’s roads. They often point out that when the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, there was a surge in drivers found to have smoked pot. They also point to studies showing that in other states that have legalized pot for medical purposes, we’ve seen an increase in the number of drivers testing positive for the drug who were involved in fatal car accidents. The anti-pot group SAM recently pointed out that even before the first legal pot store opened in Washington state, the number of drivers in that state testing positive for pot jumped by a third.

Envision a day when you might stroll into a facility, something like a bar or a coffee house, have a seat at a table or possibly on a couch, and illuminate a joint.

Far-fetched? Maybe not so much. There was recently a movement afoot in Denver to obtain an initiative on the Nov. 3, 2015 tally; nevertheless, the effort was withdrawn on Sept. 3 so it will not be seeing the light of day this year.

DETROIT — With some medical-marijuana stores in Detroit now offering drive-through purchasing, the city's marketplace for medical pot has spiraled out of control and needs to be regulated, Mayor Mike Duggan said.

Dozens of dispensaries line 8 Mile and other major thoroughfares in the city, and a Free Press investigation found that at least three offer drive-through service.

It took nearly two decades and the threat of a more sweeping initiative, but California lawmakers are finally ready to regulate medical marijuana.

The last-minute, bipartisan deal was announced late Thursday night in Sacramento, after years of disagreements between key stakeholders over details of a regulatory structure — and weeks of squabbling between the Senate and Assembly over who would take credit for the final legislation.

Colorado pot sales — recreational and medical — were thriving in July 2015, the most recent month for which the Department of Revenue has released marijuana tax data.

After topping $50 million for the first time in June, recreational sales cleared the $55 million hurdle in July when sales totaled more than $56.4 million — a record for retail cannabis in Colorado. Medical marijuana sales numbers in July were also at their highest in the recreational era’s 19 months of recorded data, reaching more than $39.8 million.