Steep Hill Lab says it became the nation's first medical cannabis screening facility in collaboration with some of the industry's stakeholders, when it opened for business in Oakland four years ago.

Now, by utilizing their industry experience and developing innovative software and scientific instrumentation, Steep Hill says it has significantly improved the ease by which cannabis can be tested for medical use on site.

San Francisco's roughly two dozen licensed collectives must pay the city's 8.5 percent sales tax rate, coming from California's 7.25 percent sales tax with a local one percent sales tax going to S.F.'s general fund, and a .25 percent sales tax that goes to other areas like transportation, reports David Downs at the East Bay Express.

Counting the most recent reporting period -- which ended with the third quarter of 2011 -- a year's worth of general fund revenue from sales tax on medical marijuana totals "just over 410,000," said Curt Fuchs, senior economist in the controller's office, East Bay Express reports.

Since that figure is one percent of sales, that means S.F. dispensaries sold about $41 million worth of marijuana in a year, "which equals a $50 (or about an eighth of an ounce) dispensary purchase for every person in the city," Downs reports.

Turns out that you're not the only one who thinks so. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton agrees, and she gave quite a spanking to Gov. Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne on January 4 while dismissing the lawsuit.

The ove came after the agency said last week that the application process was "suspended indefinitely," and that announcement had come after the city had announced it would continue licensing the shops. And that announcement had come after the initial suspension of licensing in December following a court ruling.

State voters passed a medical marijuana law 14 years ago, back in 1998, but the city council is concerned about federal raids continuing in Spokane and elsewhere in Washington and other states that have legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes.

The council approved a nonbinding resolution endorsing a letter that Gov. Chris Gregoire and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee sent to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in November requesting that marijuana be reclassified from being a Schedule I drug to a Schedule II drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act, reports Jonathan Brunt at The Spokesman.

"I am not for it mostly because I don't know how you regulate common, everyday things such as driving while impaired," the Republican former attorney general said, reports Kim Kozlowski at The Detroit News. "If it becomes legal, I don't think I'll ever use it again. That being said, philosophically I am not against it. They haven't come up with a good way to regulate in the workplace or driving to measure it and deal with it."

Permits had been on hold since last fall, after a state appeals court case halted similar permitting programs across California, reports Chris Roberts at SF Weekly. That case was appealed to the state Supreme Court, and during the appeal, permits could resume being processed, a spokesman for the City Attorney told SF Weekly last week.

The Left party is proposing that Germans be allowed to open cannabis clubs where members can grow marijuana, reports PanArmenian.net. They also recommend that consumers be allowed to possess up to 30 grams of pot for personal use, double the current limit in Germany.

The proposal was written by Frank Tempel, former director of an anti-drug group that worked with police in the eastern German state of Thuringia, reports The Local. Tempel, who is now the Left party's advisor on drug policy, said there needs to be a sea change in Germany's attitude to marijuana.

The city's permitting process had been on hold for a few months after the state appeals court ruling in Pack v. Long Beach, reports Chris Roberts at the SF Weekly. That ruling -- which held that cities and counties can't regulate marijuana, since it's against federal law -- led local governments throughout the state to suspend, repeal, or reconsider their dispensary regulations.

Since the state Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal, the lower court's ruling has become invalidated, according to a spokesman for San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office. So the S.F. Department of Health's medical marijuana dispensary permitting process can start back as normal, and several proposed shops which had been put on hold can finally receive the go-ahead to open their doors.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy on Friday is another blow to Montana's medical marijuana industry, reports the Associated Press. Montana's medicinal cannabis community was already on the ropes; in the past year, it has seen tough, new state restrictions, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, as well as federal raids by Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

Judge Molloy ruled that medical marijuana providers can be prosecuted under the federal Controlled Substances Act even if they are strictly following state law. He cited the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which says that federal law prevails if there is any conflict between state and federal statutes.