News Brief

More restrictions on medical marijuana, more California dispensaries close, more Montana dispensary operators head for federal prison, and California activists file an initiative to regulate and tax the industry at the state level.

A North Carolina law aimed at heroin traffickers is rolling up people with pain pills and sending them to prison for a long, long time.

Busy, busy, busy. Here's this week's medical marijuana news digest.

A Virginia sheriff gets raided, a sleazy Michigan cop gets busted, a New Jersey cop gets convicted, and several Oklahoma lawmen are headed to prison.

A 24-year-old California man is dead after a shootout during an attempted drug bust, and a local gang is vowing revenge.

A new law allowing prosecutors to divert small-time drug possessors into treatment instead of prison went into effect Friday.

Spain's Basque County Autonomous Community is on course to legalize marijuana early next year.

A Republican congressman from Georgia has introduced a bill that would mandate drug screening assessments for unemployment applicants and drug tests for those assessed as having a "high probability" of being drug users. But he cited only apocryphal evidence for any need for such legislation.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has decided the state will argue in federal court that federal law preempts the dispensary provisions in the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.

Mass murders in Ciudad Juarez and the Comarca Lagunera, and the army killed 11 cartel gunmen in Tamaulipas. Just another week in Mexico's prohibition-related violence.