The official name of Amendment 64, the ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, was the “Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol”.

Amendment 64 was passed in 2012 with 55 percent of the vote (66 percent in Boulder County), and legal marijuana became a reality in Colorado on January 1, 2014. But the regulatory regime that has been applied to marijuana is far more severe than anything alcohol has been subjected to.

If there’s any doubt on this point, try this thought experiment: Think what obtaining booze would be like if instead of marijuana being regulated like alcohol, alcohol were regulated like marijuana.

Colorado's green goldrush is turning into something of a bummer for some would-be marijuana-growing mavens, as an oversupply of pot is causing wholesale pound prices for the state's booming recreational market to drop dramatically. But with retail prices not following suit, it's pot shops, not consumers, who are making bank on the price drop.

The wholesale price is the price paid to growers by pot shops, edibles manufacturers and others.

According to Cannabase, an online wholesale marketplace, the average monthly asking price per pound for wholesale buds has declined by a full third so far this year. In January, the average price was $2,106 per pound; by June, it was $1,402.

Google — the major online search engine, advertising platform, and creator of the Android mobile operating system — may be eyeing ways to involve itself with the cannabis industry, according to a report by Marijuana Business Daily‘s Omar Sacirbey.

There have been several anecdotal reports of cannabis curing cancer. But less discussion has been publicized about cannabis curing Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel and gut diseases that are considered incurable by mainstream medicine.

Perhaps the most dramatic story has a woman named Shona Banda at its center. Shona was severely stricken with Crohn’s. She was bedridden, and whatever she managed to eat didn’t provide nutrition because her gastrointestinal tract simply wouldn’t absorb nutrients.

She was losing weight and began suffering from cachexia, a wasting away that accompanies chronic disease. Told after several surgeries and stacks of pharmaceutical medications there was nothing more that could be done for her, she was waiting to die.

Amendment 139, a proposal that's seeking a spot on the November ballot, is getting attention primarily for a section that would limit the potency of marijuana products to 16 percent THC — a reduction for a huge number of currently available items.

But that's not all the measure would do. A139, which is on view below, would also put childproof-packaging regulations into the Colorado Constitution along with labeling rules that could require warnings about mood swings, impaired thinking, possible addiction and even temporary paranoia.

CBSA says its agents were simply enforcing the law, as marijuana remains illegal in Canada.

Parents of children suffering from epilepsy say a recent move by Canadian border agents to seize shipments of medical marijuana oil from an American company could have a catastrophic effect on their children’s health.

The families have sent letters to the federal government pleading for the border to allow shipments of Charlotte’s Web, a type of marijuana oil that has been touted by some researchers as an effective therapy for hard-to-treat forms of epilepsy.

Acceptance of marijuana seems to have reached a tipping point in the United States. Four states and the District of Columbia have already legalized it, half the states have medical marijuana laws now (two-thirds if you count the CBD-only states), and as many as a half dozen states, including California, could vote on legalization in November.

Public opinion polls now consistently report majority support for legalization nationwide, and pot is increasingly moving from newspapers' crime pages to the finance and culture sections.

The night Dahlia Mertens first dropped some marijuana leaves in her bath was a revelation. “I couldn’t believe how relaxed it made me feel,” Mertens says. Soon after she created her signature "hash bath" mixture. “It’s essentially a big tea bag of cannabis mixed with lavender, chamomile and peppermint and some bath salts,” Mertens explains.

The “hash bath” is part of Mertens’ Colorado-based Mary Jane’s Medicinals topical product line, which she founded in 2010. Mertens currently works with a growing number of Los Angeles dispensaries that offer her non-psychoactive, marijuana-infused massage oil, lip balms, salve and bath products.

Bend processors say they cannot keep up with demand.

The whir and hum of pumps provided background music in a warren of small rooms in a second-floor, nondescript section of an industrial building in northeast Bend. 

That music was money being made, in the form of oil extracted from marijuana flowers and leaves, and infused into edibles like gel candies, or baked into macaroons, or, in a solid form, dusted onto nuts and pretzels. 

Cameron Yee, owner of Lunchbox Alchemy, said that since food, beverages, extracts and topical applications infused with THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, became available to all Oregon adults in June, his firm can barely keep up with demand. 

Every kilogram of cultivated marijuana leads to about 4.3 tons of carbon dioxide.

Slowly but surely, medicinal use of cannabis is becoming more widely acceptable across the United States and the world, while states like Colorado and Washington are filling to the brim with luscious and towering grow operations.