In a win for supporters of commercial medical marijuana in Calaveras County, a judge has ordered county officials to yank a May ballot measure that, if passed, would have banned the industry altogether.

Judge Richard D. Meyer, a visiting judge from Alpine County, found that the language of the initiative was illegal.

Rather than stating clearly that it was a citizen’s initiative, Measure B invoked the county’s Board of Supervisors, implying that voters were being asked to approve an action that already had been taken by local elected officials.

This “undermines the integrity of the initiative process,” the judge found.

A recent survey suggests that one-in-five tourists are more interested in visiting an American state if it has legalized cannabis.

More than three years ago, Noah Stokes was running a security company in Oregon when a nervous medical marijuana grower approached him. "Hey, you guys do security, right," the grower asked Stokes. The man's grow had been robbed. Someone had cut a hole in the ceiling, opened a door and loaded a truck with the harvest of several thousand square feet of grow space.

Everyone can agree that driving while stoned is dangerous, but how do states remedy the flawed science behind marijuana drug tests?

Gagan Singh rolled a “fat blunt” before he hit the slopes at Lake Tahoe on a sunny Wednesday morning.

By the end of the day, he needed a refill, so he drove to Reno and stopped at one of the local medical marijuana dispensaries. With his Patagonia jacket and bleached-blond man-bun, Singh was eager to head to his hotel and smoke.

The only reason he wouldn't be smoking while driving to the hotel was because he believes Nevada cops are stricter than the ones in the Bay Area.

The passage of California's Adult Use of Marijuana Act in November left a 14-month gap before businesses could begin selling marijuana to recreational users.

For residents eager to purchase and use cannabis, that may have seemed like a long time. But that period is almost half over — and for the state, which has been tasked with regulating the sprawling cannabis industry, there's a lot more to do.

"In order to start issuing licenses on Jan. 1 or Jan. 2, we need people in place and we need them to be up to speed," said Alex Traverso, chief of communications at California's Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, or BMCR. "From everything we've seen and heard, there's an amazing amount of interest. We expect to be busy on that Jan. 2 date."

​California native Malcolm Mirage's dream was to own a legal cannabis dispensary. For years, he had grown marijuana and sold it on the black market, while working a day job as a personal trainer. But in his late 20s, Mirage decided it was time to jump into the growing legal industry — before it got too crowded — and build his expertise into a sustainable, above-board business.

In order to open up that business, which he calls Mirage Medicinal, he needed to come up with $500,000 in startup capital, so Mirage began to scale up his operation, expanding into lucrative markets in other states.

Like many states, Illinois is in deep financial trouble. Looking at the latest audit,  its black hole has deepened to $9.6bn (£7.6bn) and, according to the state’s financial comptroller, the books are “abysmal”.

But there could be salvation at hand if it becomes the first state in the midwest to legalise and tax the recreational use of marijuana. Two Democrats in the state legislature have introduced a bill to change the law, arguing this could raise as much as $700m a year.

Should the bill go through, it would bring the number of states where recreational pot is legal up to nine. If you throw in Washington DC, then more than 80m Americans would be free to enjoy cannabis.

California-based company Beboe has launched a new range of high-end marijuana products for the sophisticated cannabis consumer.

Founded by celebrity tattoo artist Scott Campbell and fashion veteran Clement Kwan, Beboe offers a rose gold, pre-loaded single-use vaporiser "intentionally engineered for social consumption", as well as low-dose cannabis pastilles.

Federal legislators are working on a cluster of proposed laws aimed easing the growing conflict between state and federal marijuana laws, with a number of protections and new regulations that could impact cannabis consumers and businesses in California.