Synthetic marijuana — K2 and its chemical analogues — is the scary-new-drug du jour in Dallas, having sent somewhere close to 100 users to local emergency rooms in the past week. Even scarier: This represents a spike of only 50 percent. Baylor alone treats 70 fake-weed overdoses per month.
Parkland hospital’s North Texas Poison Center would like to take the opportunity to remind you of other potentially lethal substances: cinnamon, nutmeg and marshmallows. “If you have teens in your house, it’s essential to keep an eye on your spice rack!” the center warned in an email “Poison Alert” dispatched yesterday. Seriously. Dallas Observer has more.

At Arizona’s BC Wellness Center, a small retail shop in Black Canyon City, two black vending machines sit side by side behind a counter, where they can be accessed only by employees.Instead of Famous Amos cookies or soda pop, packets of buds and various cannabis-infused edibles and juices sit tucked into the rows of dispensing trays.
The machines are the flagship product of Medbox, one of the fastest-growing companies in the burgeoning industry of legal marijuana. Or, are they? Phoenix New Times‘ Ray Stern looks into a company that many of us in the legal marijuana world have yet to actually see despite how popular the company claims to be.
While you’re at it, check out this March 2013 piece on MedBox from our own Jack Daniel, “Helpful or Hype?”

A coalition of groups working toward marijuana reform has earned a six-figure settlement from the City of Springfield after council members there unconstitutionally quashed a petition to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. Now Springfield will have to pay $225,000 to those pro-reform groups.
It all started back in 2012 when Show-Me Cannabis and the American Victory Coalition introduced a citizen-funded ballot initiative slated for the November 2012 election.
But according to the lawsuit complaint filed in July 2013, Springfield City Council tried to be slick and prevented the measure from going to the voters by passing it themselves with the sole intention of immediately repealing it, which they did.

Don’t assume for a second that people who enforce our laws actually follow them.
Broward County drug court judge Gisele Pollack, who has had a history of substance abuse (ncluding one time when she arrived to work drunk) was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence early last Friday. Pollack, who just a month ago took leave of her duties to deal with her personal problems, is now facing several charges, including DUI with damage to property or persons and failure to use due care.

DEA administrator Michele Leonhart has made it clear she doesn’t like marijuana. This is a person who sat with a straight face and told the U.S. Congress that she didn’t think meth or heroin was any worse than marijuana.
So it should come as no surprise that she (and her ilk at the DEA) would freak out over the fact that some people have chosen to break the law and travel out of Colorado with marijuana – like they’ve been doing since well before Amendment 64 passed, making the possession of up to an ounce legal in the state.