News Brief

Texas will start requiring some applicants for unemployment benefits to pass a drug test after Gov. Perry signed a bill into law last Friday.

A third man has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to falsely arrest a Georgia woman who accused a judge of sexual misconduct. But the judge has yet to even be indicted.

Nevada took steps on two drug refom fronts Wednesday, as Gov. Sandoval signed bills creating a medical marijuana dispensary system and decriminalizing syringe possession.

France has taken a major step toward okaying marijuana-based medicines.

California dispensaries continue their vanishing act, thanks to feds and local officials, but Arizona fends off a challenge, Oregon adds PTSD to its list of approved conditions, and frustrated New Jersey patients rally.

A pill-popping Florida cop goes to jail, a coke-slinging New York TSA agent gets busted, and a North Carolina narc gets fired.

A trio of leading scientists, including British Professor David Nutt, have lambasted the prohibitions on psychoactive substances as amounting to censorship of science in a paper published Wednesday.

In New Jersey, the Senate Judiciary Committee is where marijuana decriminalization bills get stalled. A new poll may help prod legislators to move on them.

A Maine marijuana legalization bill morphed into a bill to allow a popular vote on legalization, but even that couldn't pass the House. If solons don't act, activists are looking at a citizen initiative in 2016.

Canadian "Prince of Pot" Marc Emery has been sent to solitary in a US federal prison over what looks like a bogus "investigation" into who (or what) took photos of he and prison bandmates practicing.