Although saddled with a questionable headline — “Marijuana activists seize on California fiscal jam” — the sourcing and writing in this Reuters article on legalization efforts in the state are both above average for mainstream media.
“With California teetering perpetually on the edge of financial ruin, marijuana activists have seized the moment, claiming that legalizing and [...]

A former Mississippi heart surgeon who later opened a medical marijuana clinic in California was captured on secret recordings urging witnesses to lie in a drug cultivation case in Mississippi, prosecutors said in this Associated Press report from the San Jose Mercury News.
The allegation came during a bond hearing for former Pascagoula, Miss., heart surgeon [...]

The Siskiyou County city of Yreka, the last bastion of minimarts on Interstate 5 before you begin the climb to Oregon, has extended its moratorium on medipot dispensaries, according to this densely written article in the Siskiyou Daily News (which isn’t daily, either). The issue should come up again sometime in August, if I read [...]

Canadian teenagers are among the largest consumers of cannabis worldwide, according to this press release posted on Science Daily. The damaging effects of this illicit drug on young brains are worse than originally thought, according to new research by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. [...]

Many thanks to Beach Goat for bringing this New York Magazine post to our attention, featuring ex-con and home diva Martha Stewart “rapping” with Snoop Dogg while mixing up some brownies. The magazine’s Daily Intel blog reports this exchange:
Snoop: “Trying to make some brownies, but we’re missing the most important part of the brownies.”
Martha: “Which [...]

After twiddling our thumbs on Twitter for a couple of weeks, we’re now turning our fuzzy focus toward Facebook. You can find the page by searching FB for “California Pot News,” and because we’re friendly folks we’ll confirm your friend requests as soon as humanly possible.
Also on Facebook, we launched a discussion board on [...]

“Medical marijuana was, from the start, a back door to legalization, and now it’s swung wide open. If we really believed cannabis was a normative medical remedy, it would be sold in pharmacies like everything else your doctor prescribes. Instead, the (Los Angeles city) council is trying to regulate it in just the way we [...]

The Los Angeles Times reports that the L.A. City Council will delay consideration of a draft ordinance regulating medical marijuana dispensaries until a Jan. 13 special meeting.
“The City Council’s proposed restrictions on where medical-marijuana dispensaries could locate in Los Angeles would eliminate most sites, according to maps drawn by city planners,” the Times reports.
“City Councilman [...]

The following is taken from the official Web site of proponents of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act. The measure’s name has been shortened in some media accounts, which may lead to confusion with another proposed ballot initiative still in circulation. The Web site itself refers to the measure with the shorthand “Tax and [...]

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, offers this insightful opinion piece in The Huffington Post calling for President Obama to ease restrictions on marijuana research.
Bandow writes: “The War on Drugs continues, four decades after President Richard Nixon commenced hostilities. President Barack Obama — the third president in a row to have [...]