Marijuana | featured news

With 48% opposed, legalization effort faces a difficult challenge, pollster says. Californians likely to vote in November are evenly split over whether to legalize marijuana, with only a small percentage of the electorate still undecided about the controversial issue, according to a poll conducted last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

A California voter initiative that would legalize possession and sale of marijuana has qualified for the November ballot, state election officials said on Wednesday, in what supporters called a "watershed moment" for their cause.

The latest trend at teen parties isn't warm beer or prescription medicines pilfered from parents' medicine cabinets. Instead, increasing numbers of youths are turning to an herb-based product to get high, and unlike marijuana, it's perfectly legal.

Selling legal pot is a booming business. Denver now has more medical-marijuana shops than Starbucks locations.

The reel-to-reel silent, color film taken at a private home in New Jersey was recently purchased by collector Keya Morgan for $275,000 from the person who took the film, who has asked to remain anonymous.

Recent ballot initiatives on medical marijuana lead a surge of support for legalizing the drug.

Under new legal guidelines, federal drug agents won't pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana.

Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get as many as three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.

At least one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of more than 38 million the first in the nation to legalize marijuana.

Yesterday, "Marijuana is Safer" hit number 14 on Amazon's bestselling book list, beating out heavyweights like Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" and the newest installment of the "Twilight" saga -- even though Mason Tvert's straight-to-paperback tome won't actually be released until September 15.

A Long Island mother was very drunk, with an extra-large bottle of vodka in her car, and was smoking marijuana before she caused a wrong-way crash on a New York highway that killed her, her young daughter and six others, police said Tuesday.