Author: Eric Sheetz

Payment processing powerhouse Mastercard this week revealed the company is taking steps to prevent PIN-based debit card transactions for marijuana purchases, dealing a blow to a regulated cannabis industry already struggling with limited payment options for consumers. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Mastercard, the world’s second-largest payment solutions provider, had informed financial institutions and other […]

A campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Ohio fell short of the number of verified signatures needed to qualify a proposed ballot measure for the ballot, missing its goal by less than 700 signatures. The effort is not dead, however, as activists have been given 10 more days to make up the signature deficit. On […]

An employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) pleaded guilty to using COVID relief designed for small businesses to fund an illegal cannabis operation. A NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) employee agreed to plead guilty to defrauding a government loan program developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. He admitted that he used part of the […]

Slightly more than 14% of workers recovering from an on-the-job injury used cannabis to help them recover, according to the results of a recent study conducted in Canada, where marijuana has been legalized for both medical and recreational purposes. To complete the study, which was published this month by BMJ Open Journals, researchers affiliated with […]

Albanian lawmakers on Friday approved a measure legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. The country’s parliament “voted 69-23 to allow limited and controlled growth of cannabis plants, a move harshly contested by the opposition,” according to the Associated Press. As the AP noted, the bill’s passage is notable given Albania’s history as “a European crossroads for […]

States that have legalized recreational marijuana use for adults have also seen a drop in mental health treatment admissions, according to newly published research. The findings, which came in a study published last month in the journal Health Economics, were based on data from ten states that have legalized adult-use cannabis.  “Recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) […]

New York cannabis regulators this week approved more than 200 additional retail dispensary licenses and adopted new rules that will allow cannabis growers to sell directly to consumers at farmers markets. Characterizing the moves as “bold actions to swiftly grow the state’s legal cannabis market,” the New York State Cannabis Control Board (CCB) and the […]

The Sonoran Desert Toad, with glands secreting a venom rich in the hallucinogens 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin, is invading Arizona now that monsoon conditions have kicked in for the late summer. They can measure up to 7 inches long and have a low-pitched croak that inevitably serenades the night in multiple states during hot wetter months. […]

Tupac Shakur’s still-unsolved murder mystery was revived—nearly 30 years later after his murder at the peak of his career in 1996—as police agents in Las Vegas, Nevada executed a new search warrant Monday. A gunman in a white Cadillac rolled up and shot Shakur four times while he sat in a black BMW with Death […]

Japan has a long history with plant medicines, including cannabis and psychedelics, but like most of the world, after WWII they were forced to change their drug laws to match those of the United States. Now, Japan is in a similar place to where the United States was back in the 1990s, with activists fighting […]