Alaska brothers James and Giono Barrett have a dream: that some of the scores of cruise ship passengers who crowd the streets of the state capital each summer will one day use their shore excursions to kick back and light up a joint in a pot store's lounge.

The Barretts own Juneau's first marijuana retail store and want to tap into the $260 million or so that tourists dropped in the small coastal city last year.

Regulators could decide soon whether to make that happen. At a meeting Thursday in Juneau, they will consider allowing marijuana retail stores statewide to provide separate areas of their businesses for onsite consumption.

“Marijuana is safe, we know it is safe. It’s our cash cow and we will never give up,” Belita Nelson told an audience of doctors and nurses at the Marijuana for Medical Professionals Conference in Denver, Colorado this month.

Nelson says that was the first thing she learned from her Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) education coordinator, Paul Villaescusa, when she was hired in the Dallas office in April 1998.

“I was having fun, I was very good at my propagandist job—I was the chief propagandist for the DEA,” she said.

Getting up close and personal with a fully mature, living cannabis plant is somewhat of a transcendent experience. The bouquet of aromas captured in a single sniff off a living bud will completely redefine your expectations of the relationship between cannabis flowers and their many complex fragrances. However, facilitating a translation of these distinct flavors and aromas into a consumable product is easier said than done.

President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, hails from Colorado, a state known for marijuana legalization and being a strong proponent of state’s rights over the federal government. Has Gorsuch said anything about his views on legalization?

Here’s what you need to know.

There’s really not a lot to go on when it comes to determining Gorsuch’s views on marijuana. There’s little evidence for how he feels about this topic.

Across our country, we routinely take a pledge that ends in “with liberty and justice for all.” 

Yet that fundamental promise has been broken in six of the eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana use, as tens of thousands of people remain in state prison for nonviolent marijuana crimes.

The majority of America is now cannabis friendly; nearly 60 percent of our nation’s population resides in states with some form of legalized marijuana. 29 states plus Washington, D.C. have legalized medical marijuana and eight of those states have also legalized marijuana for recreational use: Alaska, California, Colorado, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Washington DC. 

The idea that smoking pot causes can make you crazy is straight out of Reefer Madness. But although we've thankfully gotten away from such a hilariously extreme portrayal, the idea that using marijuana puts you at risk for developing all kinds of mental disorders persists. As usual, the truth is way more complicated than that.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says the Liberal government is determined to bring forward legislation to legalize and regulate the recreational use of pot this spring, despite the fact it is working overtime to manage many unknowns associated with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Wilson-Raybould says Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is talking with U.S. counterparts about any potential impacts of the government’s plans.

There are concerns introducing marijuana legislation in Canada could create problems with the U.S.

Wilson-Raybould says the Liberal government is seriously considering a report presented by a special task force late last year.

A medical marijuana patient is asking the Montana Supreme Court to rule whether the state can prosecute him and other patients for possessing more than one ounce of marijuana, even if the plant is not yet dry.

Steven Penning filed the request earlier this month after District Judge Rod Souza denied his motion to dismiss a marijuana possession charge. Penning argued that the marijuana plants he had grown and harvested in October 2015 were not usable because they were not yet dry, The Billings Gazette reported.

State law defines usable marijuana, in part, as the dried leaves and flowers of the marijuana plant.

State lawmakers on Monday offered hope to throngs of veterans who have for years been asking the state to add post-traumatic stress disorder as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana.

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee unanimously backed the legislative proposal, offering a symbolic endorsement of the normalization of medical marijuana.

The bill was assigned directly to the Senate "consent calendar," meaning it likely won't face much debate as the bill moves through the Senate. If the legislation passes the Senate, then it will head to the House for debate.

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