State & Local Legislatures

The end of dispensaries in LA looms, more threat letters in Colorado, and a medical marijuana initiative in North Dakota!? That's just some of the news.

Springfield, Missouri, voters will have a chance to vote for marijuana decriminalization in November -- if the city council doesn't approve it first -- after an initiative there qualified Thursday.

Harborside fights for its life, LA bans dispensaries, and Oregon transplant hospitals are lightening up on medical marijuana patients. Those are the big stories this week, but there's plenty more, too.

The federal crackdown on medical marijuana continues in California, the first plants are now being grown in New Jersey, and there's lot's more medical marijuana news, too.

With state budgets pinched all across the land, some states this year have adopted sentencing reforms.

Flint, Michigan, and Springfield, Missouri, could see marijuana reform measures on the local ballot this November after activists in both cities handed in petition drive signatures last week.

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.

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.