Marijuana

Just five months after Washington state and Colorado voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use, a poll released Thursday found that a majority of Americans now agree and say it should not be illegal to smoke the drug.

MEXICO CITY – Three former heads of state are urging the United States to engage in a serious discussion of drug legalization, saying its counternarcotics policies are becoming untenable in the wake of voter approval last fall of measures that legalized the recreational use of marijuana in Washington state and Colorado.

California voters favor legalizing pot for recreational use, strongly support the existence of medical marijuana dispensaries and want the feds to butt out of the California cannabis business.

A challenge by medical marijuana patients to a Tehama County ordinance that regulates marijuana cultivation was rejected Wednesday by a Sacramento-based appellate court.

California's highest court Tuesday took on the issue of whether cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries, and the pointed legal arguments that ensued seemed to put the state's nebulous marijuana laws on trial.

Inspired by victorious measures to legalize marijuana in Colorado and Washington, California activists are readying a new ballot push to expand legalization in the Golden State – but not until 2016.

A partner in a medical marijuana enterprise pleaded guilty to federal drug charges Friday, even as the debate rages over a federal crackdown against marijuana providers operating under California law.

One of California's most renowned marijuana-growing counties is fighting a federal grand jury subpoena, seeking to protect the names of pot growers who agreed to let the local sheriff inspect their gardens and count their plants.

Medical marijuana advocates, failing in a petition drive to force a ballot measure to overturn a Sacramento County dispensary ban, appealed Tuesday to supervisors to reconsider their refusal to permit cannabis outlets.

West Sacramento may join a string of cities across the region in at least temporarily banning outdoor plantings of medicinal marijuana.

Bryan Davies, an evangelical Christian with a long, drifting beard, is the CEO of a family business that doles out marijuana and spirituality in fragrant, faithful harmony.

Following a statewide trend, the Sacramento City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night outlawing the outdoor cultivation of medicinal marijuana in residential neighborhoods.

Stoner humor just got a lot more complicated.

In October 2010, with a quixotic marijuana initiative leading in California polls, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder answered an urgent letter from retired heads of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Beginning today, it is illegal to harvest outdoor medical marijuana in Roseville.

State law says medical marijuana users can grow pot on their own property, but a growing number of California cities are telling them to keep it indoors.

California's annual medical marijuana harvest is just about done, but this year brings a new revelation sweeping the nascent industry: The feel-good herb may not, in fact, be so good for the environment.

Saying the practice has become a magnet for crime and a nuisance to neighbors, the Sacramento City Council moved forward Tuesday with prohibiting outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana within the city limits.

Less than a third of a gram of "concentrated marijuana" might get Juan Carlos Rivera deported.

Gino DiMatteo, the operator of a South Lake Tahoe medical marijuana dispensary, found himself in a jam last summer.

A Los Angeles lawyer was indicted on federal charges Wednesday for allegedly orchestrating a marijuana business that persuaded two Sutter County farmers to convert their greenhouses for heirloom tomatoes into massive grow rooms for pot.

Many question whether Los Angeles has finally figured out how to control its marijuana landscape.

A once-thriving San Francisco pot shop forced to close this week is also on the hook for a serious IRS bill, following a new U.S. Tax Court decision that could complicate life for others in the medical marijuana business.

Bryan James Epis, the first person associated with a California cannabis dispensary to duke it out at trial with federal prosecutors over medical marijuana, has had 2 1/2 years whacked off his mandatory 10-year prison term.

The Harborside Health Center reveled in its boast of being the world's largest pot dispensary. It was featured in a hit reality series on the Discovery Channel last year. And it has been one of the largest taxpayers in Oakland, a city that turned to tax revenue from medical pot sales for fiscal relief.

California's famed Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research – established by the Legislature to answer the question, "Does marijuana have therapeutic value?" – has now all but completed America's most comprehensive studies into the efficacy of pot.

A push to regulate California's medical marijuana industry amid heightened federal scrutiny of cannabis producers and sellers has fizzled due to a lack of support in the state Senate.

As medical marijuana demonstrators waved signs – "Free my medicine!" and "Troops out of Sacramento!" – a co-founder of a Sacramento dispensary raided by U.S. authorities last week protested the action Wednesday in a rally outside the federal courthouse.

Motion detectors sounded the alarm at 2 o'clock in the morning, and Chinda Nomesiri knew exactly what was happening, police said – thieves jumping the fence into his family's Del Paso Heights backyard once again to steal pot plants.

The Internal Revenue Service has seized bank accounts it says took in more than $870,000 in cumulative deposits in recent months, part of a federal probe into alleged money laundering involving a Sacramento marijuana dispensary.