WeedLife News Network

New Jersey lawmakers are planning a hearing later this month to consider legislation to legalize recreational marijuana use in the state.

The judiciary committee will hear from clergy, health professionals, law enforcement officials and other policy experts on Nov. 16, Democratic state Sen. Nicholas Scutari said Monday.

"There is no question that we need to update our archaic drug laws in this country, and the majority of people support regulating, taxing and legalizing marijuana," Scutari said.

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The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe of Nevada and Oregon will grow marijuana on its reservation to be used solely in the production of medical marijuana, the tribe’s chairman told KNPR’s State of Nevada.

“After serious consideration and countless discussions among our membership, leadership and expert consultants (we have) decided to enter the medical marijuana marketplace,” Chairman Tildon

Smart said. Smart said the tribe’s remote location doesn’t allow for many “economic opportunities,” leaving the tribe with an unemployment rate between 70 to 80 percent. He said the tribe is mostly supported by a small travel center than contains a mini market and gas station.

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MACY, Neb. | Voters in Macy approved three referendums Tuesday that will allow the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska to move forward with plans to explore marijuana use and cultivation on the reservation.

"Today's referendum vote provided an opportunity for the Tribal Council to gauge the opinion of our people," Omaha Tribal Council Chair Vernon Miller said. "We're going to look to work with agencies and various other legal entities to ensure that whatever the tribe is able do is done appropriately."

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Kirby Kaufman ~ Sioux City Journal

HELENA — Montana is in the fifth year of a legal fight to severely restrict how medical marijuana is grown and distributed, even as attitudes in other parts of the nation appear to be shifting toward more tolerance for the drug.

Attorneys for the state argued Wednesday before the Montana Supreme Court to lift a judge's injunction that prevents enforcement of a 2011 law that would ban commercial sales of medical marijuana and limit providers of the drug to a maximum of three patients.

The state also wants to lift District Judge James Reynolds' block of other provisions that ban medical marijuana advertising and an automatic review of doctors who recommend the drug for more than 25 patients.

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ST. LOUIS • Missouri’s 2016 ballot could be filled with weed.

Competing proposals, bolstered by growing national support, are seeking to put medical marijuana legalization on the statewide ballot. If approved, Missouri would join 23 other states that have done so.

Proponents have an uphill battle. First they need to collect 168,000 valid signatures from at least six of the state’s nine congressional districts. Then they need to win approval from the state’s conservative-leaning voters. Only a handful of states that have legalized medical marijuana are in the Midwest (Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan). And there’s not one in the South, the region with which Missouri has been more politically aligned over the past decade.

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Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the shadow of legal marijuana is growing in the U.S. Based on the inability to generate sufficient ballot initiative signatures, it appears unlikely Mississippi will join that movement any time soon and certainly not by virtue of the 2016 election.

But electorates in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia have legalized small amounts of marijuana for adult recreational use.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some 21 states had legislation introduced in 2015 that would in some way allow or advance policy for adult recreational use of marijuana, including Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An advisory panel cautioned Wednesday against expanding Minnesota’s medical marijuana program to include patients suffering chronic pain starting next year.

The recommendation from the panel’s medical experts to Department of Health Commissioner Ed Ehlinger is not a final say — it’s up to Ehlinger to make the decision by Jan. 1. But five of eight panel members voted against the possible expansion, arguing that there’s limited evidence of marijuana’s efficacy in treating pain and noting physicians’ reluctance to using the drug as a treatment.

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The Associated Press

There’s been lots of debate over the past few days about the political wisdom of going ahead in Michigan with a couple of ballot campaigns after similar efforts suffered big defeats last week in Houston and Ohio.

OH to MI? Apples to oranges

Let’s begin in our neighboring state where The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative was trounced last Tuesday. That loss (64.1 percent to 35.9 percent) quickly got many political watchers wondering what the consequences would be on possible marijuana initiatives here in Michigan.

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BOSTON – The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, one of two groups attempting to place an initiative legalizing marijuana on the 2016 ballot, said Monday it’s gathered more than 100,000 signatures in support.

Groups seeking to place an initiative on the statewide ballot must gather at least 64,750 signatures from registered voters in Massachusetts. Campaigns often gather more signatures than necessary, anticipating that some may be deemed invalid.

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Gintautas Dumcius ~ Mass Live

Maryland's nascent medical marijuana industry is already booming.

More than 350 applicants for licenses to grow, process or dispense medical marijuana were filed with the state's Medical Cannabis Commission by Friday evening's deadline as entrepreneurs try to get in at the ground floor of the newest pot market. The applications cover every county in the state.

"It's very busy, and we're very excited," said Dr. Paul Davies, the commission's chairman. "There's an awful lot of excitement buzzing around."

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PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- A marijuana convention drew thousands of people to the University of Southern Maine campus on Saturday.

The Portland Cannabis Convention, hosted by the New England Cannabis Network, displayed 65 vendors and 50 speakers from across the country.

It is the first time an out-of-state group has brought a convention to Maine.

NEW ORLEANS —Some consider it very controversial: medical marijuana. But as more states are beginning to move toward allowing it as a treatment for some diseases or illnesses, one Louisiana mother feels this state is lagging behind the times. To treat her daughter’s illness, she’s packing her bags.

Some days, Ella Grace is at her best: smiling, saying “cheese,” playing on the jungle gym and being a typical 4-year-old. But her mother, Michele Hall, said it's not the norm.

"Today is a very, very good day," Hall said. "She's thinking, she's talking, she's interacting, she was performing for you. Those are very rare, rare days in my world."

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A Farm Bill passed by Congress last year included an amendment granting states and universities the right to research hemp. Several states have since started research projects, but Kentucky is at the forefront, experimenting with creating a new industry around this plant. NewsHour's Christopher Booker reports.

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PBS

TOPEKA (KSNT) – The north side of the Statehouse became a graveyard Saturday afternoon.

And a funeral.

All symbols used by the advocacy group Bleeding Kansas to bring awareness of a bill they’ve been trying to get out of committee for years.

MACY, Neb. —Leaders of the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska are considering land in western Iowa for growing marijuana.

The Sioux City Journal newspaper reports tribal members approved three referendums Tuesday giving the Tribal Council the authority to legalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational use and to grow plants for industrial hemp.

Tribal Chairman Vernon Miller says a study will examine whether the business would make financial sense.

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INDIANAPOLIS – Lawmakers may crack a door for use of medical marijuana by protecting doctors involved in drug trials from prosecution.

On Tuesday, a group of lawmakers endorsed clearing the way for medical studies of cannabis oil - a non-psychoactive extract of the marijuana plant that’s illegal in Indiana.

The measure falls far short of the acceptance advocated by some parents and lawmakers. They want state clearance to use the controversial drug for all children with seizure disorders - not just those involved in a study.

Bill Wilson can't stand the smell of marijuana. He said he's anti-drug and anti-alcohol, yet there he was Monday, buying medical cannabis on the first day it was authorized by Illinois law.

After years of taking anti-inflammatory drugs and prescription painkillers that messed up his stomach, the 52-year-old Chicagoan who has degenerative spinal disease said he hoped that marijuana would help him reduce his use of such medications. After seeing cannabis help his sister with multiple sclerosis, and trying it himself in Colorado, he said he's convinced of its benefits.

"This is going to be a godsend," he said, holding vials of pot that cost him $180. "I really believe that."

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Up to 25 Idaho children with persistent seizures will soon have access to an experimental drug derived from marijuana, but experts say far more children could benefit from the treatment.

An April executive order from Gov. Butch Otter is allowing the very limited use of the non-psychoactive drug. Otter signed the order after vetoing less-restrictive legislation that would have allowed the marijuana extract to be used in children with severe seizure disorders.

The Idaho program allows 25 children to use the extract, cannabidiol, or CBD oil. But estimates of the number of children who meet the requirements number as high as 1,500 or more, though experts say it's hard to know for sure because the state doesn't track the number of children with epilepsy.

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Hawaii lawyers assisting the state's first medical marijuana dispensary applicants were provided relief Tuesday, thanks to a figurative pardon from the Hawaii Supreme Court.

The state's highest court ordered an amendment to the Hawaii lawyer rules of professional conduct, allowing counsel or assistance to "...a client regarding conduct expressly permitted by Hawaii law, provided that the lawyer counsels the client about the legal consequences, under other applicable law, of the client’s proposed course of conduct."

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The father of medical marijuana legislation in Georgia is leading a two-day delegation to Colorado to explore what the state learned from its great pot experiment.

State Rep. Allen Peake said the Monday-to-Tuesday visit aims to get a better understanding of Colorado’s regulatory structure for cultivating medical marijuana. He was quick to add, though, that any notion of legalizing the drug for recreational use in Georgia is off the table.

“The biggest question may be what do we make sure that we don’t do,” the Macon Republican said of the trip.

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