State & Local Executive Branches

Last week's middle of the week holiday made things fairly quiet on the medical marijuana front, but it looks like Massachusetts voters will have a chance to join the ranks of the medical marijuana states in November, and other efforts are underway in some surprising places.

Georgia's governor was quick to sign a welfare drug testing bill into law, but now he wants to wait for a legal challenge to a similar law in Florida before implementing that law that was supposed to go into effect July 1.

There's a whole lot of nastiness going on inside the Nevada Highway Patrol's drug dog program, and now a lawsuit by disgruntled troopers is revealing some highly questionable policing.

California continues to have conniptions over medical marijuana, a scientific review finds marijuana's Schedule I status "untenable," and much, much more.

The feds continue to play hardball in California and local elected officials across the state are grappling with the issues. Meanwhile, Vermont moves ahead on dispensaries while New Hampshire's medical marijuana bill can't overcome a gubernatorial veto, and that's not all.

An effort to override Gov. John Lynch's veto of a medical marijuana bill succeeded in the House but fell short in the Senate.

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch has vetoed a medical marijuana bill--again. Now, it's up to the legislature to see if it can muster the votes to override the veto.

Following the lead of some of its suburbs, Chicago has decriminalized the possession of less than 15 grams of marijuana for adults.

A decriminalization bill has passed the New Jersey Assembly, but faces an uphill battle to overcome a veto threat from Gov. Christie.

NYPD refuses to stop charging people with misdemeanor marijuana possession after stopping and frisking them and forcing them to empty their pockets so they can be charged with "public possession," so now the Legal Aid Society is suing to make them knock it off.