By Anya Sostek / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

First came marijuana legalization. And now comes commercialization.

Late last month, Willie Nelson announced plans to open a chain of marijuana stores in states such as California, Colorado and Washington, with a spokesman likening the business model to “a Whole Foods store.”

Within the last year, singer Melissa Etheridge announced plans to produce cannabis wine, Bob Marley’s estate launched Marley National, a marijuana brand “offering heirloom Jamaican cannabis strains” and movie producer and director Kevin Smith branded two strains of weed to promote his walrus horror film “Tusk.”

Louisiana residents, for the most part, have a much more relaxed and tolerant approach toward marijuana than current state laws reflect, according to findings from a statewide survey conducted by LSU this winter. 

LSU conducted its poll of 980 state residents between Jan. 12 and Feb. 13. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points in either direction. The survey is performed every year by the Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs as well as the Public Policy Research Lab. 

The university asked about three different marijuana policies. Here is what it found: 

The Boulder Transit Center at 1400 Walnut St. was briefly evacuated and the area around the downtown station shut down this morning after police received a report of a suspicious device that turned out to be a bong, according to dispatchers.

The report came in around 6:01 a.m. today after a security guard at the bus station found what he thought looked like a pipe bomb near the bike shelter on the east side of the station, according to police spokeswoman Kim Koblel. 

The guard described the object as a foot-long plastic pipe that was capped at both ends.

RTD evacuated the bus station and police briefly closed some streets in the area. But a Boulder police sergeant caught a look at the device and determined it was some sort of bong.

Taxes are too high, competition from medical marijuana too great and the bureaucracy is overwhelmed by the volume of applications -- the perfect recipe for a robust black market

The highs, and lows, of legal marijuana

Amber McGowan surveys the clutch of customers milling around the three counters in her tiny marijuana retail outlet and nods approvingly – pot is hot.

Men and women who appear to be mostly over 50 consider products with names such as Headband, Skunk, Banana Kush and THC Bomb. A five-pack of oatmeal cookies that are nothing like the ones your mother used to make go for $42 (U.S.). Behind a glass enclosure there are bongs of every colour and description. Psychedelic renderings grace the store’s wood-panelled walls.

MY son Haiden is 6 years old. For him, access to medical cannabis is a matter of life-and-death.

Haiden has Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. Haiden used to suffer from frequent seizures of all varieties — sometimes more than 100 a day, despite taking five prescription medications, all at the maximum dose our neurologist would allow.

First Floridians wanted marijuana for medical purposes.

Now Floridians want marijuana for fun.

Florida voters support the legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational use, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll.

The poll shows 55 percent of Floridians support the personal use of marijuana while 42 percent oppose it. As for the medical use, 86 percent are in favor while 14 percent disagree.

Although Floridians seem to favor the legalization of marijuana, the poll shows only 17 percent would use the drug if the measure passed.

LINCOLN PARK – A longtime family agriculture business in Morris County has partnered with a publicly-traded corporation to enter a new growth business — medical marijuana.

The VandeVrede family business began in 1973 with a small farm in Lincoln Park and expanded over the decades to the popular Gro-Rite Greenhouse and Garden Center on Hillview Road near the Lincoln Park Airport. That property includes about 25 acres of land and a greenhouse covering three-quarters of an acre.

This week, Mass Roots—a sort-of Facebook for weed lovers—will be one of the first canna-businesses to go public.

Depending on your appetite for certain leafy psychoactives, you may or may not be aware of the quiet revolution that is happening with marijuana-based social media apps. From dating sites like High There and My420Mate to invite-only networking platforms like KushCommon, a recent David and Goliath-like victory from one of their kind has opened the floodgates.

It all started when Mass Roots, an upstart “Facebook for stoners,” took on the mighty Apple after being banned from the app store last November and, somehow, managed to beat the behemoth.

Under the ResponsibleOhio measure, a regulatory Marijuana Control Commission would license nonprofit dispensaries to sell medical cannabis.

At 11, Lucy Scholten fights for her life. She experiences epileptic seizures every day, and she contends with cerebral palsy. She has tried more than a dozen medications to ease her symptoms, to no avail. The next step, said her mother Nicole Scholten, should be medical marijuana.

But the answer, Scholten said, is not full legalization as envisioned by a group of wealthy investors called ResponsibleOhio. Lucy and other children with catastrophic illness would not be protected under ResponsibleOhio's proposed constitutional amendment, Scholten said.

Opium poppy cultivation is up in Afghanistan despite the infamous mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater being paid $569m by the Pentagon to stop it

In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year.

Yet one clear winner in the anti-drug effort is not the Afghan people, but the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater.