As attitudes toward marijuana become more lenient and states authorize its use for medicinal — or even recreational — purposes, a long-simmering debate over the efficacy of workplace drug testing has found a new flash point.

Marijuana accounts for more failed workplace drug tests than any other substance, and the new laws have the potential of decreasing or eliminating employer testing for it.

Defenders of drug testing maintain that employees who use drugs, including marijuana, have been found to miss more work, cause more accidents, change jobs more frequently, and ultimately cost employers more money.

Will the USA legalize cannabis!?

According to a Harris Poll taken in 2015, 81% of adults are in favor of legalizing medical marijuana, and half of Americans support legalizing cannabis for recreational use.

Marijuana is also commonly seen as safer than alcohol.

Only smoke-free medical marijuana, sold as pills, oils or tinctures, will be available for qualifying patients.

Jessica Blake has been battling a potentially deadly brain tumor for months. The former Esko high school teacher lives in Duluth, where her parents have moved in to help care for her.

It’s been tough lately. Blake can’t keep most medicine down, and the conventional drug she got from her doctor didn’t work.

“It actually gave me hallucinations,” she recalled. “It was terrifying. I don’t ever want to experience that again.” The hallucinations went on for two days.

“When Jessica said that was two lost days, that’s very difficult,” said her mother, Kathleen Blake. “Because she is not sure how much time she has.”

I want to write about credibility in the Cannabis world.  Obviously medical Cannabis is a controversial subject at the moment.  Hopefully, it will be come less so over time.  The research that has been done speaks volumes, and more is soon to come.  However, the people who represent that data to patients, the public, and the politicians need to be above reproach so that the sole focus can be on advancing the medical needs of patients.

Medical Cannabis Professionals are Misrepresented

You don't have to be Don Draper to dream up a pitch for pot. In Portland, home to a thriving culture of marijuana use and a fast-growing medical marijuana industry, the product practically sells itself.

But retailers and producers, scrambling for a share of an increasingly crowded market, are taking steps to promote their brands. Competition is likely to intensify as Oregon approaches October, when the state is expected to allow limited cannabis sales to recreational consumers.

"Everybody is doing lots of angles right now," said Andrew Shenker, an owner of Uplift Botanicals, a Northeast Portland dispensary. "That's what it takes in a market this crazy."

CINCINNATI — The marijuana legalization effort in Ohio is in danger because it does not have enough signatures yet to put a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot.

“We’re coming in lower than we were expecting,” said Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio, the private investor group that wants to legalize marijuana this year.

Ohio’s secretary of state is expected to announce as early as Monday whether ResponsibleOhio gathered enough valid signatures of registered Ohio voters to get the measure before voters in 2015. ResponsibleOhio needs 305,591 signatures to qualify. On June 30, the group turned in 695,273 signatures with the goal of ensuring it would have the right number, 50%, to qualify.

Denver’s ABC affiliate KMGH-Channel 7 is on the verge of running what is said to be the first marijuana-related TV commercials. But after confirming the controversial move in The Cannabist, the station on Friday put the ads on hold.

For now, the issue is in the hands of owner E.W. Scripps’ lawyers.

KMGH-Channel 7 is weighing one 15-second spot for The Green Solution, a company with several dispensaries in the state, and another for Neos, a company that sells cannabis-oil-loaded vape pens.

At the Cannabis Club Collective in Tacoma, Wash., Brian Caldwell has installed a top-of-the-line alarm system, motion sensors and a safe, hoping to protect the cash he collects from the 200-plus customers who buy marijuana at his store on an average day.

“We pretty much had to make a bank within our walls,” he said.

And at Auntie Dolores, a marijuana edibles shop in Oakland, Calif., Julianna Carella uses pouches to bag up her cash at the end of the day, then sticks it in her trunk, feeling nervous as she drives away.

“It’s actually a huge headache to have to deal with all that cash. . . . It’s horrible,” she said.

Foster care can be a dangerous place for children. Foster children may be neglected, injured, sexually and physically abused, or even murdered by foster parents. But for foster children living in medical marijuana states, often the greatest danger can be CPS itself.

Every single one of the 20,000 people who march through Golden Gate Park during the annual AIDS Walk on Sunday will be exposed to marijuana. 

There will be no choice — the cannabis industry has sponsored one of the checkpoints. The water, the tents, the DJ booth, that's all paid for with volunteered cannabis cash.

"We're trying to have a presence here," says Christopher Esposito, a former board member of the SF AIDS Foundation who's now running the "Team Cannabis" fundraising cadre at the walk. "It's the Gap, it's Chevron — and it's Team Cannabis."

And in some instances, cannabis's activist streak is winning, handily.