According to Britain's leading expert on the drug, Professor Roger Pertwee of Aberdeen University, cannabis should be available for recreational use in shops under restrictions similar to those used to control the sale of alcohol and tobacco.

The California Beer & Beverage Distributors disclosed it donated $10,000 to defeat Prop 19 — which would regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol. The alcohol lobbyist's funds will help spread the lie that employers must tolerate stoned employees, and the talking point that 'California doesn't need another legal, mind-altering substance.' The move echoes the tobacco and alcohol industry's help creating leading drug war group Partnership For a Drug-Free America.

An estimated 200 medical marijuana users and supporters protested against the raids of medical marijuana establishments in Ferndale and Waterford. Six buses brought protesters from Ypsilanti, Lansing, Port Huron and Oak Park, who carried signs that blamed Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard for police brutality during the raids.

California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative to legalize the sale and use of marijuana, has won the support of one of the state’s most powerful unions, offering the proposition a shot of mainstream legitimacy as well as a potential financial and organizational lift. The decision by the executive board of the Service Employees International Union of California will be announced in the next few days, according to officials who have been briefed about it but were not allowed to speak publicly before it was announced.

Actor and author Christopher Kennedy Lawford, the cousin of California’s First Lady Maria Shriver and nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, has called on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign legislation to allow pharmacies to sell sterile syringes to adults.

About 60 medical marijuana users and their supporters gathered outside the Health Department's offices to protest the agency's announcement last week that it was not granting licenses to any of the 15 groups that had applied to become the state's first medical marijuana distributors.

The plant fiber used to make the sails that took Christopher Columbus' ships to the New World is now a building material. In Asheville, N.C., a home built with thick hemp walls was completed this summer, and two more are in the works. Dozens of hemp homes have been built in Europe, but they're new to the United States.