This last week I attended a reception for Oregon members of the National Cannabis Industry Association. The event took place at one of my favorite venues, the Kennedy School McMenamins location in Portland, Oregon. It’s an old schoolhouse converted into a hotel and bar. For those of you not from Oregon, McMenamins is a company that restores historic locations and makes them into fantastic places to hangout. If you are ever in Oregon, definitely check one out, they have several locations.

Exclusive Police cite shrinking budgets and reduced stop and search, as possession offences recorded in England and Wales drop by almost a third

The number of cannabis possession offences in England and Wales has plummeted since 2011 as forces divert shrinking budgets into tackling more serious crime and officers rein in stop and search.

Figures released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act reveal offences recorded by English and Welsh police forces – including penalty notices, cautions, charges and summons – fell by almost a third from a peak of 145,400 in 2011-12 to 101,905 in 2014-15.

Company:

BioTrackTHC.

Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale.

Business: Develops and sells seed-to-sale marijuana inventory tracking software for government regulatory agencies and authorized marijuana businesses.

Years in business: Six years in the marijuana space.

Management team: Steven Siegel, founder and chairman emeritus; T.J. Ferraro, founder and chief software architect; Patrick Vo, chief executive officer; Dr. Moe Afaneh, chief operating officer; Efrain Vega, chief financial officer.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Up to 25 Idaho children with persistent seizures will soon have access to an experimental drug derived from marijuana, but experts say far more children could benefit from the treatment.

An April executive order from Gov. Butch Otter is allowing the very limited use of the non-psychoactive drug. Otter signed the order after vetoing less-restrictive legislation that would have allowed the marijuana extract to be used in children with severe seizure disorders.

The Idaho program allows 25 children to use the extract, cannabidiol, or CBD oil. But estimates of the number of children who meet the requirements number as high as 1,500 or more, though experts say it’s hard to know for sure because the state doesn’t track the number of children with epilepsy.

A shot of vodka is a shot of vodka, but the THC level in a marijuana joint, vape or edible can vary tremendously from one strain or brand to another. This lack of uniform potency can make it harder to monitor marijuana’s impairment effects, and as marijuana legalization moves from state to state, more people will wonder how to use it safely. That’s what inspired the creators of Canary, an app that will tell users if they are impaired.

LEXINGTON, Ky. • For more than 100 years, Jane Harrod’s family set aside a corner of their farm to grow tobacco. The 20 acres they grew when she was a girl was only a fraction of the 400 acres the family owned outside of town but it promised good money — about $1,000 an acre.

“Most all of us farmers raised some tobacco,” said Harrod, 63, of Lexington, Ky. “Tobacco definitely put the clothes on our backs when we were kids.”

But tobacco isn’t the reliable cash crop it once was. That has Harrod and hundreds of other farmers across the South revisiting a plant from deep in the region’s past: industrial hemp.

The National Football League has survived more public relations crises in the past year than most multi-billion dollar organizations endure in a decade. Yet the greatest existential threat to the NFL - if not to the existence of football itself - still remains Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or “CTE.”

As former All-Pro linebacker Junior Seau’s documented struggle with CTE demonstrated, the presentation of symptoms that occurs in most stricken with the disease are not always readily apparent. Concussions and sub-concussive impacts on the brain cause the rapid brain decay that is a precursor to CTE. Eventually, the lobes of the brain blacken and loose density—causing depression, early on-set dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and eventual death.

Responsible OhioAccordiing to a recent survey commissioned by WKYC, the NBC station in Cleveland, most Ohio voters support Issue 3, an initiative on next month's ballot that would legalize marijuana for medical and recreational use. The same survey found that most voters also support Issue 2, an initiative aimed at nullifying Issue 3. In fact, most of the voters who favor Issue 2 said they favor Issue 3 as well.

Concerns over the medical marijuana industry aren’t just heating up in Detroit.

Across 8 Mile in neighboring Warren, Mayor Jim Fouts is proposing registration requirements along with other regulations to govern where medical marijuana can be grown, how it can be transported, and controls on odors.

His proposal is prompted, the mayor said, by concerns about growing medical marijuana in residential areas.

Fouts said his proposal “goes much beyond what the state Legislature is doing” and would “control the whole aspect of medical marijuana growing in the neighborhoods.”

OSAGE | A Des Moines-based pediatric nurse practitioner will speak on the potential pitfalls of marijuana legalization Monday at a town hall meeting in Osage.

Concerned primarily with the lack of medical research on usage, Jennifer Sleiter will speak on questions she said still need to be answered if the state would consider any expanded form of marijuana legalization.

The Mitchell County Substance Abuse Coalition will hold the event at 7 p.m. in the Osage High School gym, 820 Sawyer Drive.

State legislation passed last year made it legal to possess an oil form of medical marijuana called cannabidiol, or CBD, but not access it, which some parents have said is a barrier to using it as a treatment.