State Courts

It's been fairly quiet on the dispensary front, but action is beginning to heat up at state houses in preparation for the 2013 legislative season.

There was medical marijuana-related election news -- see our Chronicle coverage this week -- but the ongoing battles over medical marijuana also continued.

A California appeals court has made a landmark ruling, the DEA keeps on raiding, and a Montana medical marijuana provider refuses a post-conviction plea bargain, and those are just the top stories.

The medical marijuana supporters who organized Montana's IR-124 initiative want it to lose. That's because it's a referendum on a bad medical marijuana law passed by the legislature last year. If it loses, the bad law dies.

The big news this week is that Oakland is suing the feds over their efforts to shut down Harborside. Meanwhile, the battles continue at the state and local level in California and beyond.

The Massachusetts drug lab testing scandal continues to reverberate. Now, the lab analyst at the center of it has been arrested, and courts are scheduling special sessions to free the more than 1,100 behind bars in cases where she was involved.

Los Angeles dispensaries got a reprieve last week -- or did they? The busts there continue, despite the ban on the ban. And there's more news from around the state and the country as well.

The battle of Los Angeles continues, Arizona prosecutors don't like their medical marijuana law, and a bill is pre-filed in Kentucky. There's also lots more going on.

Illinois police now have the right to wiretap or record "drug suspects" without a warrant under a new state law. At the same time, they want to arrest you if you do that to them. Some folks are more equal than others.

The feds strike again in California, this time in Orange County, and meanwhile, the battle over the LA dispensary ban heats up. There's plenty more news, too.