While legalizing medical marijuana may still be in the distant future for the state of Maryland, the Democrat-controlled state senate ensured that criminal charges could not be brought on residents of their state for public use of marijuana or possession of marijuana paraphenelia. While possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana was decriminalized in 2014 while presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was governor, those who supported this bill said it was “really a correction to what we did a couple of years ago” when these specific applications were overlooked.

Having a marijuana pipe or rolling papers won't be a crime in Maryland any longer.

The General Assembly, led by Democrats, overturned five of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan's vetoes on Thursday. One result is that a bill making possession of drug paraphernalia a civil offense and setting a fine for smoking marijuana in public will become law.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The Maryland General Assembly overrode several of Gov. Larry Hogan’s vetoes on Thursday, including his veto of a bill decriminalizing the possession of marijuana paraphernalia and another to ensure third-party travel websites pay all of the state’s sales tax.

Both the Senate and the House, which are controlled by Democrats, also had the three-fifths majority needed to override the Republican governor’s veto of a bill to create a $300 threshold before authorities can seize money in criminal procedures and a separate veto that blocked $2 million for an arts facility in Anne Arundel County.

Maryland Congressman Andy Harris has been a thorn in the sides of marijuana reform supporters since he was first elected. Representative Harris has used his position in Congress to try to thwart reform efforts in Washington D.C. specifically, first trying to derail decriminalization in Washington D.C., and then once that didn’t work he focused his efforts towards fighting marijuana legalization in Washington D.C.. Andy Harris has led the charge in a big way against marijuana reform in Congress, and it sounds like not only is he obviously on the wrong side of history, but that voters are likely to take him to task for that position.

What could it cost Representative Andy Harris to be Congress’s leading voice against DC’s legalization of marijuana? Perhaps his career in national politics, according to a new poll of primary voters in the conservative Republican’s Maryland district which shows him losing badly to one of his three challengers.

People who want to buy marijuana in Maryland for medicinal purposes are probably going to have to wait until 2017, nearly four years after the state made it legal.

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission announced Monday that it will not award licenses to grow and process the drug until sometime in the summer — and industry officials say it will take an additional four to six months after that for the product to be ready to sell.

The commission said it has no target date for allowing retail dispensaries to begin operating and cannot say when marijuana will be available to patients.

Maryland’s medical cannabis program was approved by lawmakers in 2013, but it had to be adjusted multiple times before applications could be sought and submitted.

Residents of Maryland who want to buy marijuana for medicinal purposes are likely going to have to wait until 2017, nearly four years after the state first made it legal.

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission announced Monday that it won’t award licenses to grow and process the drug until sometime this summer.

It takes about four to six months to grow and process cannabis, industry and government officials say.

The commission had said it would start issuing licenses in January, but backed of that timetable last month after receiving more than 1,000 applications from would-be pot producers and dispensers.

Marijuana and Cannabinoids: A Neuroscience Research Summit is being convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will focus on the neurological and psychiatric effects of marijuana, other cannabinoids, and the endocannabinoid system. Both the adverse and the potential therapeutic effects of the cannabinoid system will be discussed. The goal of this summit is to ensure evidence-based information is available to inform practice and policy, particularly important at this time given the rapidly shifting landscape regarding the recreational and medicinal use of marijuana.

Peak Harvest Health (PHH), a Maryland-based medical cannabis manufacturing company, today announced that it will be partnering with Frostburg State University (FSU) to explore ethnobotanical research opportunities and workforce development in Western