Travelers who like to toke a little on their adventures may be driving up interest in states that have recently made recreational marijuana legal, including Oregon.

According to the travel website Hotels.com, the legalization of marijuana has helped fire up the number of hotel searches that legal states have seen.

In Colorado in 2014, for example, Denver saw a 73 percent year-over-year increase in hotel searches for check-ins during the weekend of April 20 versus 2013. Hotels.com reported that searches for the same weekend this year were up 60 percent over last year.

ALBANY COUNTY— There is a new form of pot on the block prompting a warning from police.
 
In the last few months authorities have made a handful of arrests-- including two arrests in Albany County just in the past two weeks-- connected to what is called marijuana wax.
 
Marijuana wax is a highly-potent form of the drug. Police say it is basically weed on steroids.
 
“It’s nasty stuff and it's messing people up," Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said. “It’s like 90 percent THC. 90 percent pure."
 
Depending on how it is cooked it can look like rock candy or peanut brittle. Police say it is often hidden in lip balm containers.
 

Published: Apr 10, 2015, 2:49 pm

By Ricardo Baca, The Cannabist Staff

Colorado sold a record amount of recreational marijuana in February 2015, according to new data released by the state on Friday.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Cleveland Indians fans won't be the only ones who will be humming "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" Friday afternoon. Petitioners for two separate efforts to legalize marijuana will also be at Progressive Field looking for support for their proposals to change Ohio's constitution.

ResponsibleOhio and Ohioans To End Prohibition each are collecting signatures from registered voters. The Tribe game with a crowd of more than 40,000 fans offers a chance for each group to get a lot of signatures on their petitions.

Legalizing marijuana Several proposals are in the works to legalize marijuana in Ohio. Check here for an update on the status of those efforts.

This March, our video advocacy team attended the 58th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the largest drug policy gathering in the world, to find out how governments and NGOs feel about the prospects of drug policy reform. We produced a series of short thematic videos, to give you an overview of the current state of political debate on the burning issues of international drug control.

Internationally, drug policy is at a crossroads: the debate is shifting from a paradigm based on criminalising drug users, to a more public-health-oriented approach. But is this only a change in rhetoric, or a sign of real political reform? We asked activists who have been attending the CND for several years. 

At the beginning of 2014, when Colorado became the first state to allow the sale of marijuana for recreational use, the whole world was watching. “It was insane,” says Toni Fox, owner of Denver’s 3D Cannabis Center, where the first sale happened. “On January 1, there were close to 200 reporters here. Controlled chaos. It was just packed with reporters.”

But the more successful Colorado’s model is and the more imitation it inspires, the less attention it will get. “Colorado is not going to be the top dog for much longer,” says Kayvan Khalatbari, co-owner of the Denver Relief dispensary. “I think it’s only a matter of time before Colorado really gets overlooked.”

“How did I anticipate this question?” President Barack Obama joked during a Q&A event in Jamaica on Thursday when a Rastafarian man in the audience asked about the legalization of marijuana and hemp industry’s potential ability to lift Jamaicans out of poverty.

Obama resisted the urge to pander to the friendly crowd, but rather explained the situation as it stands in the U.S. now and how he think it might develop in the future.

If money is all that matters, we should legalise prostitution and arms trade, says researcher

The Drug Control and Addiction Treatment Fund strongly criticised the proposal submitted to the cabinet to legalise the hashish trade in Egypt on Sunday.

In response to the proposal produced by Osama Salama, head of the Cairo and Giza Tobacco Traders Association, the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s Drug Control and Addiction Treatment Fund released a statement on their official websiteexplaining that legalising hashish poses a serious threat to the Egyptian society, which is “safe by nature”. The statement claimed that the “consumption of hashish is a major factor in road accidents in Egypt” because it causes “lack of awareness to one’s surroundings”.

SYNTHETIC cannabis made half of young Australians who tried it feel scared and paranoid, with some so badly affected they thought they were dying.

An online survey of more than 1700 people found one in five had chest pain after trying the illegal drugs, which can still be purchased in some stores flouting the law.

More than a third felt nausea and almost half felt scared and paranoid.

Other serious side-effects included seizures, loss of consciousness and repeated vomiting that was so severe they thought they would “vomit their heart out”.

One survey participant told the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre they were so scared that they thought they were drowning, leading to hours of panic.

Over the past year, Washington, D.C. has become a lot more marijuana-friendly. Last summer, the District Council decriminalized the drug. Then, in November, voters in the nation’s capital passed a ballot measure completely legalizing possession and cultivation.

Now, a local falafel joint is offering a a special line of sandwiches it says pair well with specific cannabis strains.

Describing one new creation, for example, the Amsterdam Falafelshop menu says, “The root vegetables and tahini complement the earthy pine scent and woodsy undertones of the OG Kush strain.”