On any given day in the United States, at least 137,000 men and women sit behind bars on simple drug possession charges, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.

Nearly two-thirds of them are in local jails. According to the report, most of these jailed inmates have not been convicted of any crime: They're sitting in a cell, awaiting a day in court which may be months or even years off, because they can't afford to post bail.

"It's been 45 years since the war on drugs was declared and it hasn't been a success," lead author Tess Borden of the Human Rights Watch said in an interview. "Rates of drug use are not down. Drug dependency has not stopped. Every 25 seconds we're arresting someone for drug use."

What you need to know about Canna Vine.

Pot wine has been around ever since people decided they wanted to be tipsy and high at the same time (in ancient China, it was said to have been used for pain relief), but it’s lately gotten more official by entering the marketplace. The latest is a product called Canna Vine, a commercial marijuana-laced wine from winemakers in California.

There are a few things Andrea Brooks wishes she’d known before getting into the cannabis industry.

It’s been almost one year since Brooks founded Sava, an e-commerce platform for hand-crafted cannabis goods in San Francisco, California.

As nine states prepare to vote on recreational or medical marijuana legislation in the upcoming U.S. election – and prospective cannabis professionals in those states gather in growing numbers on the sidelines – Brooks considers it more important than ever to share what she’s learned about the challenges (and the joys) of operating within this complex and ever-evolving industry.

The 5th Annual Marijuana Business Conference & Expo will be hosted at The Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada next month; however, according to a memo sent to Caesar employees (Caesar’s owns The Rio), individuals caught possessing cannabis will be turned over to Metro Las Vegas Police.

The memo, which was shared by Denver, Colorado-based Hoban Law Group, reads in part:

WikiLeaks has arguably been the most important thing that has happened to elections, if not the veneer of democracy, in quite a long time. We’ve been able to see the true side of politicians and bureaucrats like never before.

In Hillary Clinton, we see a figure beholden to Wall St., working diligently to advance the influence of financial corporations over government policy and taxpayer money. Her mega-donor list is a who’s who of megabanks that also happened to benefit from the TARP government bailout.

Two years ago, Florida voters just barely missed a 60 percent threshold to legalize medical marijuana in the state. That won’t happen this November — at least not if a new poll on the measure from the University of North Florida is even close to accurate.

UNF’s survey, released this morning, finds that 77 percent of Floridians back Amendment 2, which would legalize medical pot statewide. Just 18 percent of voters said they were against the move, and 4 percent were still undecided.

A deep-pocketed coalition is spending big to keep marijuana illegal in Arizona. Drug companies, the Chamber of Commerce, and the alcohol industry, have together poured millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat Proposition 205, a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for those over 21. And  as opinion polls show a tight race, another industry entered the fray: prison food providers.

Some makers of marijuana concentrates, extracts and edibles are sounding dire alarms about how the state's new testing rules are holding back their products from the market and jeopardizing their businesses.

They complain that the state lacks approved labs to carry out all of the required tests, causing long delays, forcing them to mull layoffs and generally leaving them out of the state's new recreational marijuana program that opened this month.

The state has 18 accredited and approved labs for marijuana; only four are approved to test for pesticides, a hallmark of Oregon's marijuana regulation.

When Carey S. Clark sent out a public letter last month expressing her support for Maine’s cannabis legalization initiative, she received a lot of supportive responses. She also heard from a few critics. One nurse told her “you should be ashamed of yourself.” Others questioned her professional standing and her employment. Clark is a highly respected nurse, researcher, and associate professor of nursing at the University of Maine. She responded to her critics “with kindness,” she said, and encouraged them to further explore the issue.

It was a typical response from a medical professional with 22 years of experience, who has been working intensively around cannabis issues for the last two years.

Most cannabis entrepreneurs huff and puff at the financial regulations in their industry. Not Lamine Zarrad.

“For me, personally, it was an opportunity,” said Zarrad, 37, the founder of Denver cannabis technology startup Tokken (pronounced like an arcade token).

In SEC filings since March, Zarrad has reported raising $750,000 to build Tokken, an app consumers can use to purchase marijuana from their phones. Because regulators subject legal marijuana to sharper scrutiny than other industries, many banks and payment processors shun cannabis companies, leaving them to operate on a cash-only basis.