Washington State — King County Judge Mary Roberts recently ordered the Kent Police Department to become something of a medical dispensary. A man was arrested at a Kent pharmacy for possession of 11 pounds of marijuana but, in court, produced a California medical-marijuana prescription. Though he was charged with felony drug possession, he pleaded guilty [...]

Don Pio says he spent two hours in custody for possessing marijuana he depends on for his health. Pio, 35, says he has a medical condition that requires him to smoke pot every 40 minutes or so.  He had marijuana on his breath when he followed his wife into Kelowna Law Courts on Friday – [...]

A Legal Place to Socialize, Medicate PORTLAND, Ore.  — At first glance, the Cannabis Cafe, in a former adult club called Rumpspankers, looks like any other coffee shop.  Customers sip coffee while playing cards, working on computers or sharing a meal. It’s also where people approved to use marijuana for medical purposes can [...]

How the Potheads Outwitted Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A.  City Council Fourteen months ago, in a Los Angeles City Hall passageway just outside the Council Chamber, Yami Bolanos and her crew of medical marijuana dispensary advocates prepared for a day of lobbying.  They hoped the City Council would finally begin drafting a basic [...]

Water is already scarce without illegal marijuana gardens diverting and polluting streams in the Mendocino National Forest. A typical illegal garden found on public land fosters about 5,000 marijuana plants, according to law enforcement authorities, and each plant needs between three and five gallons of water per day. “It’s not unusual for an entire water [...]

Los Angeles — The city council here could vote as early as Tuesday on a set of rules for hundreds of local medical-marijuana dispensaries, amid a growing debate about whether many of those pot shops should be allowed to operate at all. California voters passed a law in 1996 that allowed a seriously ill person [...]