The American public may have an increasingly positive view on marijuana, but the GOP presidential debates suggest that any chance of federal reform is still a long way off.

Even though presidential elections only happen every four years, it seems like the campaigns begin earlier each time. Presidential candidates are metaphorically putting out the Christmas lights in August in the hope of gaining an advantage over their opponents.

Nothing is more suspect than a man in a suit talking about drugs. Unless he's your attorney, he's inevitably police. And even if he's not literal law enforcement, he'd flip in an instant if you got caught with a brick of cocaine, weed, or insider information about Sour Diesel futures.

On New Year’s Day 2014, media from near and far descended on a snowy Denver to capture a spectacle: the first legal sales of marijuana for recreational use.

Most crews left soon after. But one group of Denver-based filmmakers stayed on the story for a full year, following the staffers at the Denver Post as it became pot’s paper of record. The resulting feature-length documentary, “Rolling Papers,” screens Saturday at Aspen Filmfest.

She was preaching to the converted but still managed to wow the audience at last week's Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo, in Los Angeles. Melissa Etheridge, the Grammy and Academy Award winner singer, blurted it out during an intense keynote: "We are all one, aren't we? Cannabis is going to save the world. I have seen the future, the possibility of a world without war." The audience of business people, entrepreneurs, and cannabis evangelists cheered on as the rock star told how she fell in love with the plant. It started over ten years ago, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo extremely aggressive chemotherapy.

INDIANAPOLIS – Concerned that lawmakers will act hastily in allowing the medicinal use of a marijuana extract, prosecutors are calling for more research into a controversial treatment.

At a four-hour hearing Wednesday, officials with the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council urged a legislative committee to abandon efforts to legalize cannabidiol -- a non-psychoactive marijuana extract – until more mainstream science weighs in.

“As prosecutors, we think we need to base decisions on evidence,” said Aaron Negengard, the prosecuting attorney for Dearborn and Ohio counties, who told lawmakers it would be “reckless and careless” to follow other states that have allowed use of cannabidiol with little regulation.

By the time the four of us had been in the room for an hour, we had figured out many things — mostly about ourselves. It turns out that some of us are better at logic, and others at visual clues. One of us has a tendency to be loud (OK, we knew all along that it’s me). We all look ridiculous in big, round glasses.

We also realized that we’re a good team of pals. At one point or another, each of us did or said something stupid or something smart, and we were all pretty forgiving of the former and exuberantly supportive of the latter. Also, eating a pot cookie whose strength is untested can be a great idea, or … not so much.

The one thing we hadn’t done? Solved the puzzle.

Recreational marijuana use is legal in Oregon, but that hasn’t stopped the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from engaging in an eradication program costing American taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In 2014 alone, the agency spent $960,000 to remove 16,067 pot plants in the state of Oregon, where the drug was made legal in 2012. If you do the division, the price tag comes to almost exactly $60 dollars per plant destroyed. The number appears even more startling when considering the average nationwide per-plant-destruction cost is $4.20, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Having cancer is a good enough reason to legally take marijuana in Minnesota. Same with epilepsy or AIDS.

But pain so severe it can drive a person to suicide? No way.

That's the No. 1 problem with the state's new medical marijuana law, according to testimony at a hearing Friday at the state Capitol.

"Please add intractable pain to the list," said Jennessa Lea of St. Paul, a single mom who suffers from a body-deterioration condition.

She was one of 12 people who addressed the Task Force on Medical Cannabis Therapeutic Research. The group met to hear public feedback about the medical marijuana law, which went into effect July 1.

Pope Francis criticized the global War on Drugs in his address to the United Nations on Friday. While the Catholic Church’s Vicar of Christ did not prescribe specific solutions, he spoke plainly the shortcomings of efforts to combat drug trafficking and the effects on everyday citizens.

The United States Justice Department just announced that it will instruct all U.S. attorneys to no longer prevent any Native American tribes from growing, or selling marijuana on reservation land.

This includes reservations within states that prohibit marijuana use, as the reservations are sovereign entities, apart from the states that surround them.

That means, in the words of High Times, “the law of the land will be left up to each individual tribe.”