“Today is a celebration of the greatest plant known to me. I’m going to smoke one right now,” the comedian tells the crowd

Comedian Tommy Chong and Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero joined thousands of weed advocates at this year’s pro-marijuana rally at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday.

Chong, 76, famous as half of the duo “Cheech and Chong,” headlined the 44th annual event.

The comedian joked he’s been to hash bashes before, though he doesn’t remember them all.

Good Chemistry will open in Aurora next week.(Photo: Courtesy | Good Chemistry)

DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL - Aurora's newest marijuana dispensary will open next week at 16840 E. Iliff, making it the second location for Denver-based Good Chemistry.

The dispensary will offer recreational marijuana only, while Good Chemistry's original location at 330 E. Colfax Ave. offers both recreational and medical marijuana.

Matt Huron, founder and CEO of Good Chemistry, assembled a team of professionals including a botanist and an investment banker to help grow his company, which he eventually wants to debut on a national scale.

In what might turn out to be the best April Fools’ Day prank, an awkward marijuana sign came up on a college avenue in Arkansas. The sign, surprisingly, announced the future opening of the first marijuana dispensary in Arkansas inside a building that once housed EZ Mart. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for bringing up the sign and the owner of the building has claimed lack of knowledge about who placed the sign there, but what is clear is that marijuana is illegal in Arkansas as it is at the federal level.

Annual marijuana holiday (4/20)

As cops, part of their jobs was to put away drug sellers and users. Now, former law enforcement officials are doing private security work for Illinois’ now-legal medical marijuana industry.

Bud Genius Inc. (RIGH 0.0002 -33.33%), a leading cannabis laboratory and branding specialist, recently announced the addition of Dr. Peter Wilson, Ph.D., to its Executive Advisory Board. Dr. Wilson is a well-known and highly-respected expert in accounting, financial reporting, and business law with over 25 years of experience in corporate finance and 19 years at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Billed as being the “World’s Largest Legal Cannabis Celebration,” the annual World Cannabis Week will be returning to Denver this coming April. The event, which will be the third one so far, will run from April 16 through April 20 in Denver, Colorado, and tickets and packages are now on sale.

World Cannabis Week is quickly becoming one of the foremost cannabis trade shows and conventions in the industry. It is a much-anticipated convention by both purveyors of marijuana and cannabis-related products and by people who enjoy partaking in the recreational use of pot, or who are prescribed the drug for medical reasons.

Momma bears, it’s taking the momma bears to end the reefer madness.

Paige Figley, Holley Moseley and Dawn Wein are among a group of women who worked the Florida Capitol the past year persuading, pressuring and pleading with lawmakers to lift a prohibition on medical marijuana and authorize the use of cannabis products they believe will ease their children’s suffering and, in some cases, potentially save lives.

When they showed up at the Capitol it was to put an exclamation point on the generation-long shift in how Americans view marijuana – since the 1990s twenty-three states have authorized its use as medicine.

 THE LOBBYIST

More than 70 vendors will sell hemp-based products in Loveland on Saturday, while dozens of speakers discuss the benefits of the crop on a local, national and global scale.

There will be live artists sketching on hemp paper and stations where kids can make jewelry from hemp materials. But don't expect to find viable hemp seeds or plants for sale.

OVERLAND, MO (KTVI) – Every day, more than 9 million packages are shipped through FedEx. That’s a lot for workers to sift through, as they keep an eye out for prohibited items. But sometimes, one package stands out. Like a small freezer that arrived at the Overland FedEx terminal from California.

“They could tell it smelled like marijuana almost immediately,” says Overland Police Chief Mike Laws. FedEx employees called police immediately.

Officers discovered about 4,400 grams, or about 10 pounds, of high-grade marijuana, stuffed into 12 plastic bags, stacked inside the freezer.

Police say 19 year-old Zachary Haferkamp sent this package to himself from Redding, California. The Hillsboro resident was taken into custody at the FedEx in Fenton.

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About 20 marijuana plants sit on a table Wednesday, April 1, 2015, at Puff-n-Stuff on Grand River Avenue in Lansing. The dispensory sells plants, harvested marijuana, edibles and other products.(Photo: Dave Wasinger/Lansing State Journal)Buy Photo

LANSING – Mayor Virg Bernero's planned speech Saturday at Hash Bash in Ann Arbor is expected to get plenty of attention, but it's unclear if words will lead to any action that makes Lansing's policy on the drug easier to understand and enforce.

The city already allows limited use of marijuana beyond medicinal purposes. Bernero is expected to help drive the effort for a possible 2016 ballot initiative that would make recreational use of the drug legal in Michigan.