Story highlights

• Defense Secretary Ash Carter announces plan to keep the military "relevant"
• The military will look its rules on pot, physical fitness, tattoos and single parents

The military may not weed out recruits who used marijuana.

Speaking at City College in New York on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced a wide-ranging review of recruiting standards and practices to ensure they are not "unnecessarily restrictive."

Diehards still watching broadcast TV may remember CBS as the “Tiffany Network,”  and the venerable “60 Minutes” newsmag as its crown jewel. Sadly, the show’s pre-election curtain-raiser about historic votes to legalize marijuana felt more like shopping for cubic zirconia knockoffs at the strip mall.

A draft of rules released today by the state would limit the number of medical marijuana growers in Ohio to 18 and slap a $20,000 application fee and $180,000 license fee on the top-tier grower positions.

In California, the city of Oakland was the first to regulate and tax medical marijuana dispensaries. Now, some city leaders see the industry's profits and are proposing to take a bigger piece of the action. The Oakland City Council is voting later this month on a pot profit-taking plan.

Harborside Health Center in Oakland is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the nation.

Its executive director, Steve DeAngelo, says his dispensary brings in about $30 million in annual revenues.

"We've created over a 150 well-paying jobs and we're the second largest retail taxpayer in the city," he says.

DeAngelo says Harborside pays about $1.5 million in taxes every year.

A burgeoning cannabis industry could bring thousands of new jobs to California, a new report from the Marijuana Policy Group estimates.

The report, “The Economic Impact of Marijuana Legalization in Colorado,” uses a “Marijuana Impact Model” to measure the economic impacts of legalizing weed — and uses Colorado as proof. The group found that 18,005 jobs were created in the state because of legalization. 

If the same proportion holds in California, at least 130,432 jobs could be created if Proposition 64 is approved by voters. The situation isn’t directly comparable because, unlike Colorado, the Golden State had legal medical marijuana before.

Cannabis traditionally has been produced on a small scale to evade the law for decades. As a result, many people have connections to someone who has dabbled in cultivation. With the legal market, however, consumers now can purchase an array of products without considering cultivation, much like grocery store produce. Grocery stores are supplied by farms that take care of the cultivation for us and grow a product at a reasonable price. This is, for the most part, also true for cannabis, but let’s take a look at the numbers and see how the finances compare between growing your own supply and buying it from a medical dispensary or an adult use retail store.

When thinking about how to cast your ballot on Question 4, to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, consider the social justice implications of your vote.

"Marijuana is safer than than alcohol or tobacco."

I came across that claim again last week while scrolling through Twitter. This time, the tweet was from Dr. Peter Grinspoon, who practices primary care at Mass General.

Grinspoon supports ballot Question 4 in Massachusetts, which would make marijuana legal for recreational use. He has a lot of personal experience with drugs; he's in recovery from an addiction to Vicodin and a few other opioid painkillers. But when asked about his tweet, Grinspoon talks about his patients. He says as many as half of his patients use marijuana, many to relieve pain or in other ways Grinspoon says are a health benefit.

It’s tough times here in the key battleground state of Florida, there’s only one option on the ballot to push marijuana legalization forward: the Use of Marijuana for Debilitating Medical Conditions, otherwise known as Amendment 2. The more liberal use act, The Florida Cannabis Act (#15-19), will not be on the November 8th ballot.

Under Amendment 2, marijuana will be considered a legal treatment for patients suffering from cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Crohn's disease, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis.

With Arizona voters deciding on whether to legalize recreational marijuana this election, 12 News turned to Colorado as an example of what passing Proposition 205 could mean for the state.

Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. And Colorado was the first state to begin selling to the public – commercial sales started on January 2014.

In Colorado, and under Arizona’s proposed law, adults 21 years and older can purchase, possess and grow small quantities of marijuana.

Colorado’s Pot Czar Andrew Freedman says it’s too soon to tell if the long-term benefits of legalized marijuana will outweigh the drawbacks. But we can share what they have learned so far.

Marijuana and the economy