Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to randomly drug test every single state employee in Florida — from department heads to minimum wage DMV janitors — has already failed the common-sense test and an appeals court ruling. A trial run of the program found that almost no state employees were failing, while an appeals court ruled that the program violated the constitution.
But Scott hasn’t given up on the idea yet. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely decide this week whether to take up the latest petition filed by Scott’s lawyers.

Both the State of Colorado and City of Denver tourist agencies have resisted the temptation to use marijuana as a way to lure visitors to the area, despite mainstream media pot coverage that’s essentially free advertising. It seems their non-approach isn’t working.
Against that backdrop comes word that hotel searches for Denver on 4/20 weekend are up 73 percent from this time last year — and a national cannabis activist thinks the digits might be even higher if officials weren’t so shy about embracing weed.

More people have been bringing their pets to Phoenix-area animal hospitals to treat marijuana ingestion, according to a local chain of animal clinics. According to the Emergency Animal Clinic — which owns five hospitals across Phoenix, the East Valley, and West Valley — there’s been a pretty sharp increase in such cases over the past few years.
According to the Emergency Animal Clinic, they averaged about six cases a month in 2012, nearly a dozen a month in 2013, and nearly two dozen a month so far this year.That increase happens to coincide with the opening of medical-marijuana dispensaries in Arizona. And you’d better believe the vets are making that connection.

Denver city officials expect organizers of this weekend’s 4/20 event at Denver’s Civic Center Park to actively discourage public pot smoking — an activity that’s illegal under Colorado law. However, liquor will be sold and can be consumed at the McNichols Building on the Civic Center complex during the festival. Among those who sees this situation as contradictory is Miguel Lopez, the 4/20 weekend’s organizer who applied for the right to sell beer in the first place.
According to Lopez, the beer-sale request was submitted to Denver Arts & Venues, the city department that oversees the McNichols Building — and it has been approved.

Efforts to release Jeff Mizanskey, the only man in Missouri serving a life without parole sentence for a nonviolent marijuana charge, are continuing this month with help from Show-Me Cannabis and Change.org.
Show-Me Cannabis has bought billboard space on I-70 near Kansas City (and near Sedalia, where Mizanskey was arrested). The billboard features a photo of Mizanskey and says: “Life without parole for a non-violent pot crime? It’s time we fix our unjust cannabis laws.”
The Riverfront Times has the full story on this heinous injustice.

As we wrote earlier this week, some have come to blame the rise in heroin production south of the border on legalized cannabis in the United States. It’s a bunk assertion, and the problem was created by an epidemic of pharmaceutical abuse… but either way, we’re left with cartels producing heroin to keep up with a growing demand in the U.S.
A Washington Post article this week reported on the rise of heroin coming into the United States and mentions Mexican drug traffickers’ “shrewd marketing strategy”: targeting areas where prescription-drug abuse is high, including St. Louis.

Thanks to a few bad parents who let their children get into marijuana edibles that shouldn’t have been left out, Colorado lawmakers now feel the need to play parents. Under a proposed bill, any marijuana edible that resembles a commercially-available food (thing gummy bears, lozenges, and cookies) would be banned.