Recreational marijuana has been legalized in four states, but that doesn't mean it's a tested consumer product. Some of those potent buds are covered in fungus while others contain traces of butane, according to an analysis of marijuana in Colorado.

Last May, after people began getting sick from edible marijuana products, the state of Colorado began requiring all products to be tested. Washington has mandated testing too, with a detailed checklist of items to analyze, including potency, contaminants, moisture and microbiology.

The state's marijuana overseers issued their first annual report

Colorado just got its first year-long batch of data on the state’s grand experiment with legal marijuana. In the first annual report on supply and demand, Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division disclosed on Friday that 4.8 million edible marijuana products and nearly 150,000 lbs. of marijuana flowers were sold in 2014.

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A request from at least one Glenwood Springs retail marijuana shop to extend the allowed business hours for recreational pot sales in the city beyond 7 p.m. has prompted City Council to consider doing just that.

Currently, business hours for both recreational and medical marijuana sales are limited to between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., seven days a week.

While the hours for medical sales are governed by state statute, municipalities have the flexibility to establish their own hours of operation until as late as midnight for recreational sales, which became legal in Colorado last year.

Initially, when the city wrote its regulations to allow establishments to sell both medical and retail recreational marijuana, the hours were kept the same.

Lawmaker: Misinformation about issue creating 'frenzy'

Washington’s unregulated medical marijuana market has repeatedly been described as the wild, wild West.

Well, the gunslinging has started.

One activist Photoshopped a portrait of Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, a key lawmaker pushing the Cannabis Patient Protection Act, adding fangs and devilish red eyes to the photo.

A medical marijuana user said Rivers’ measure, which has gained momentum in the state Legislature, would be so detrimental to patients, he has a hard time picturing her as anything other than an “evil person.”

Rivers, for her part, said she’s been miscast, and is empathetic to those who, as her dying father once did, rely on medical marijuana to ease the pain.

Local business stakeholders say legalizing marijuana could further impact a workplace already marred by an inability to find workers who can pass a drug test.

As several issues promoting marijuana legalization in Ohio move forward in an effort to be placed on November’s ballot, a major concern is how employers would deal with workforce safety and drug testing.

“We don’t really support legalizing marijuana as an employer,” said Robert Toews, chief financial officer for Kaivac Inc., adding that having workers able to smoke cannabis, even off the job, could create confusion in the workplace.

The American government owns a CBD patent even though the plant that it comes from isn’t exactly legal on a federal level.

“The NIH may have gotten the patent to control the use of CBDs and prevent them from being added to the list of controlled substances,” said Bob Hoban, a cannabis and CBD attorney in Denver. “If the government controls the patent for CBDs, they can stop scientists and manufacturers from researching and creating synthetic CBD products.”

In the business world, the word synergy gets thrown around a lot. Synergy is the interaction between two or more elements that, when combined, form something greater than the sum of the individual parts. Synergy is often used to describe when two great companies come together, but in the context of today’s discussion, it describes the partnership between two great conferences.

A panga boat stocked with nearly three tons of marijuana worth about $3 million was spotted in the Channel Islands, and three men on board -- all citizens of Mexico -- were arrested, authorities said Monday.

Alfonso Ramirez-Lopez, 40; Marco Montes-Lopez, 46; and Daniel Garcia-Sanchez, 32, are being held without bail on federal drug trafficking charges, according to U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. 

The boat was spotted about 12:40 p.m. Saturday near San Miguel Island by an off-duty officer with the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, according to a sworn affidavit by a DEA agent obtained by The Times.

BOSTON - Attorney General Maura Healey detailed her opposition to legalizing marijuana on Monday while distinguishing that stance from her prior support for a voter referendum that decriminalized possession of up to one ounce of the drug.

"I supported the effort to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana a few years ago, and I appreciated the motivation behind that move and ultimately, the law," Healey told Boston Herald Radio. "What I oppose though now is full legalization of marijuana."

Pot smokers have a reputation for being laid back. But in the US, the pot market is anything but mellow. Legal sales of cannabis - it is legal for medical use in 23 states and for recreational use in four - grew 75 per cent last year to reach $US2.7 billion, according to ArcView Group. ArcView expects that 14 more states will legalise recreational use in the next five years.