Health

In all likelihood, recreational marijuana will be legal in California within a matter of months. The state’s voters will decide Nov. 8 whether they want to legalize the drug, and recent polls show support is strong. Proposition 64, also known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), would make it legal for adults to use small amounts of cannabis ...

Election Day is fast approaching, and it’s a big one for California. Along with a critical presidential contest, voters in the Golden State will decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreation. The case for a yes vote is strong, and polls show it’s winning. Roughly 60 percent of Californians say they support the idea generally, and most plan to vote ...

In what could mark a major development for medical marijuana patients, a Northern California hospital could soon allow patients to openly use pot as medicine. Officials at Marin General Hospital in Kentfield, Cal., are considering a policy change that would make Marin the first mainstream healthcare facility in California to officially allow marijuana use on its campus. Members of the ...

Conventional wisdom, especially the kind touted by opponents of marijuana reform, says that legalizing pot is a sure way to convince more kids it’s OK to smoke it before they reach 21. A new study pops that myth. The federal report, released in September by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Centers for Disease Control ...

It’s a well-established fact that rap and marijuana go hand in hand. They’re both popular, they both fuel important social movements, and they both help people relax. It should be no surprise, then, that rising hip hop artist The Game bought a stake in a Southern California medical marijuana dispensary this summer. The Game, a protégé of Dr. Dre, disclosed ...

A U.S. appellate court ruled in August that marijuana users, including medical tokers in California, may not own guns. The ruling, handed down Aug. 31 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, prohibits even legitimate medical pot patients from owning firearms. A panel including three of the court’s judges upheld a federal law barring all gun ownership ...

A mass marijuana overdose sent 19 Bay Area residents to the hospital in early August after consuming super-potent THC-laced gummy candies, authorities said. The victims, including both adults and children, were poisoned in San Francisco at a 15-year-old girl’s quinceañera, a birthday celebration popular in Latin American communities. Police said they were taken to multiple area hospitals and treated for ...

Activists pushing to legalize marijuana for recreation in California scored a major endorsement in July, as the state’s second-largest medical association gave its support to the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA). The AUMA is a proposed law that will appear on the statewide ballot in November. It has strong public support, and if it passes – as expected – ...

Los Angeles County officials moved in July to withdraw a proposal that would have taxed medical marijuana sales and used the revenue to fight homelessness in the City of Los Angeles. The decision by the county’s Board of Supervisors followed an earlier vote to put a tax initiative on the Nov. 8 countywide ballot. The proposal would have levied a ...

A fight over taxes in the small Inland Empire city of Upland has landed at the California Supreme Court in a case that could determine whether medical marijuana dispensaries can survive there. The case started in 2015, when pro-cannabis activists collected enough signatures to require a special election so voters could decide the issue. Advocates have long pushed for a ...