It’s true– this is not some one-off survey conducted by amateurs. This research was completed by Dr. Melanie Creagan Dreher PhD, RN FAAN whom served as the dean for four prestigious nursing schools, received a Bachelors of Science from Long Island University as well as a Masters and Doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University and Teachers College.

In the state’s first checkup on recreational-marijuana stores, four of 22 stores sold marijuana to underage buyers, according to the Liquor Control Board.

The state last week announced it would use 18- to 20-year-old buyers as part of a compliance-check program launching this month.

If asked for identification, the buyers were directed either to say they did not have ID or present a real state-issued identification. People must be 21 and older to legally buy marijuana.

Brian Smith, a spokesman for the Liquor Control Board (LCB), said the agency had spent the past year educating retailers on best practices to not sell to minors.

“We recognize this is a new industry. Any news of this will spike compliance — that’s how compliance checks work,” Smith said.

by Johnny Green

A little known fact about my home state, Oregon, is that we do not have a sales tax. This if fairly rare in America these days. I remember traveling to surrounding states with my family growing up, and being bewildered by seeing a price tag on a pack of baseball cards, but then having to pay extra once I got to the cash register. It was a very foreign concept to me growing up. Now that I’m older and pay a state income tax, which is basically the trade off for no sales tax, it makes more sense to me.

When Erik Christiansen started smoking pot, he became fascinated by the look of different marijuana strains. But the photographs of marijuana he saw didn't capture the variety.

So he went to the hardware store and picked up two lights and a cardboard box. "I didn't even have a macro lens — I was shooting through a magnifying glass," he says.

Christiansen has created high-resolution 360-degree views of some strains of marijuana, including this one of Platinum Bubba.

The California-based photographer tinkered with his macro technique until he had created a consistent way to capture highly detailed images of marijuana.

Expanding the cannabis market will require not just drug reform legislation, but also a consistent infusion of capital.

The convention floor at Denver Airport's Crowne Plaza on a recent afternoon could have been the trade show for any well-established industry -- gray-haired execs in conservative suits mingling with office park dads in polos and fresh-out-of-college types in brand-emblazoned T-shirts. Only this is a new kind of business conference with a special Colorado theme: legal weed.

Colorado has not only been at the forefront of the marijuana revolution through the state’s efforts to legalize recreational marijuana, but Colorado is also a leader in industrial hemp research. The University of Colorado Boulder has scientists studying industrial hemp for research purposes.

These efforts are being led by Nolan Kane, a geneticist who specializes in evolutionary biology. Right now, Kane is only allowed to grow strains. The rest of his research material is cannabis DNA, which is supplied by Colorado growers who extract it using methods he’s taught them.

Support for legalized marijuana seems to be growing in Colorado and Washington state, which became the first U.S. states to regulate the weed for recreational use two years ago.

A survey released Wednesday from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows that 56 percent of voters in Washington state approve of their state's recreational marijuana laws, while 37 percent are opposed. The opposition is lower than that in the 2012 vote to approve legalization, in which 56 percent supported the measure, and 44 percent disapproved.

Wider teen access to the drug is at issue, given concerns about its impacts on the developing brain.

With a growing number of states allowing medical use of marijuana and, in several cases, recreational use as well, specialists told a AAAS-organized briefing that it is important to better understand both the benefits and risks of such legislation.

Nora D. Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), said she is concerned about increased access to marijuana by adolescents in states with laws that increase availability of the drug, even if a law may explicitly prohibit use by those under 21.

We recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Humiston, founder and president of the International Cannabis Association, who represents a large demographic of hopeful entrants to the cannabis industry. While there are plenty of people across the U.S. who are looking to transition from a black market cannabis career to owning a regulated business in the legal industry, there is also much interest from people who see cannabis purely as a business opportunity and who may have never grown–or even consumed–it themselves.

In this interview, Dan talks about how he made the choice to transition from his successful career as a business owner to founding a cannabis business association, and what he predicts the future holds for the legalization movement.

Are you a boy? Do you smoke weed? Are you short? The Agriculture University Rawalpindi in Pakistan thinks you're short. They told me. Well, they didn't. But they are willing to bet you're nearly 5 inches shorter than boys who don't smoke weed. 

That's right, short-stuff. This week's weed revelation circling the stoner-net is a study that suggests weed smoking boys are 4.6 inches shorter than their non-smoking counterpartsby the age of 20.