A Denver judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit against the state’s largest marijuana grower over its alleged use of pesticides saying the consumers behind the case were not actually harmed.

Denver District Judge J. Eric Eliff said the consumers — one of them a medical-card holder with a brain tumor — couldn’t sue because they bought the pot and used it without repercussion.

The nationwide movement to legalize the responsible use of marijuana is a badly needed change in public policy, because it will eventually eliminate all but a few of the 700,000 marijuana arrests that occur each year in this country (there will always be a few who insist on operating outside the limits set by legalization). That fact alone would justify ending prohibition. We are needlessly criminalizing millions of otherwise law-abiding marijuana smokers.

The Fourth Amendment Protections

Across the world, more and more people are asking: Why is marijuana banned? Why are people still sent to prison for using or selling it?

Most of us assume it’s because someone, somewhere sat down with the scientific evidence, and figured out that cannabis is more harmful than other drugs we use all the time — like alcohol and cigarettes.

Somebody worked it all out, in our best interest.

But when I started to go through the official archives — researching my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs — to find out why cannabis was banned back in the 1930s, I discovered that’s not what happened.

Not at all.

BARRE — Vermont police dogs are no longer trained to recognize the smell of marijuana, a decision made in preparation for possible marijuana legalization.

“The class that is going through right now is not being trained to alert on marijuana odor,” said Robert Ryan, Vermont’s head K-9 training coordinator.

This year marks the first Vermont Police Academy K-9 class in which marijuana is left out of the training.

“We started talking about it last year and we made the decision for this class to not do marijuana,” said Ryan.

The reason according to Ryan, is the assumption that Vermont will legalize marijuana. “And if for some reason it doesn’t become legalized, it’s an odor that (dogs) can be trained to alert on later.”

OLYMPIA — The Washington State Department of Agriculture would license hemp farmers under a bill that’s ready for a vote by the full Senate.

After several years of frustration, hemp lobbyist Joy Beckerman said Wednesday that she thinks lawmakers and WSDA have found the right way to nurture the cannabis crop.

“This is the responsible route to take,” she said. “Our department of agriculture has gotten impressively sophisticated year by year.”

Legal pot sales jumped by more than 42% in Colorado last year, pushing the Centennial State’s revenue from marijuana taxes and fees to a new high.

Colorado saw $996.2 million in legal sales of medical and recreational pot in 2015, according to the Denver Post‘s calculations of tax data reported this week (and throughout 2015) by the state’s Department of Revenue. In 2014, the state’s legal pot vendors sold roughly $699 million of the drug.

Yesterday, Chris Christie officially dropped out of the race for President. Although many would argue that his showing in New Hampshire, at just about 8%, was good enough to warrant a continuation of his campaign, Christie’s chances of reaching the GOP nomination were always stacked against him.

American political leaders around the country are casting about for a policy response to the widespread abuse of opioid painkillers that doesn’t replicate the mistakes of past punitive approaches to drug use.

Now, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has thrown her clout into that push for solutions – and in a way that underscores the injustices of the War on Drugs over the past several decades.

Marijuana use is on the rise, with an estimated 12.5 percent of adults living in the United States reportedly using the drug at least once in 2013, according to a new study that looked at drug usage over the span of a decade.