Business

A notorious Mexican drug trafficking organization has been selling counterfeit Microsoft software on the streets and has been shoving it in authorities' faces by stamping fake Office 2007 discs, for instance, with the familiar "FMM" logo of the Familia organization.

The LPGA has canceled the $1.3 million Tres Marias Championship in Mexico due to concerns over drug prohibition violence.

In a sign of the growing professionalization of the medical cannabis industry, Mark Rhoades and Ali Kashani, the owners of the Berkeley development company Citycentric Investments, have teamed up with Debby Goldsberry, a founder of the Berkeley Patients Group, to open a number of medical marijuana facilities around the East Bay. Goldsberry, Rhoades, and Kashani represent a new breed of medical marijuana entrepreneurs: people expert in land use policy, non-profit work, and running cannabis collectives. It’s a set of services that is growing in demand as more states adopt medical marijuana laws and as more people try to navigate the byzantine laws permitting medical marijuana in California.

Californians who use medical marijuana outside of work would be protected from job dismissal due to medical marijuana use under a bill that has been introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. The bill, SB129, would make it illegal for an employer to consider either a worker's status as a registered patient or a positive drug test when making hiring and firing decisions. The bill would not change existing laws that bar employees from using medical marijuana at the workplace or during work hours.

Monterrey, Mexico's business capital and third-largest city, is being pushed to the breaking point by a drug prohibition war that has left about 80 people, including 14 police officers, dead this year alone and pushed authorities to the limit. The city, home to more than 50,000 corporations, including some of the largest multinational businesses in Mexico, fears for its future if the prohibition-caused violence is not stopped. "This is a very difficult time, perhaps the most difficult in the recent history of Nuevo Leon" state, Gov. Rodrigo Medina said.

A former public works employee is suing the town of North Branford for terminating his job after he was unable to take drug tests due to a medical condition that prevents him from being able to "urinate on demand." The suit he filed this month says that he has never had "any sort of problem" with alcohol or drugs and that his medical issues came into play in February 2008 when he was required to take a drug test by urinating into a container. He asked instead for a blood test because of his medical disability and informed the town of the issue, but his request was refused.

Montana's House Human Services Committee today hears a bill tackling medical marijuana in the workplace. This the third bill to come from an interim committee that spent six months working on medical marijuana legislation, Republican Representative Gary MacLaren’s (House District 89,) House Bill 43 gives guidelines and restrictions to employers on how to handle employees who use medical marijuana. Medical cannabis supporters say they interpret the bill to mean that an employer could terminate an employee simply for having a medical marijuana card, at the same time subjecting them to drug testing that violates privacy.

Read about the new ganja service industry, test your medical marijuana knowledge with a quiz, or see the full Mother Jones special report on the coming pot boom.

The Internal Revenue Service is reportedly auditing some of California's largest and most reputable medical marijuana dispensaries, examining their compliance with an obscure section of tax law aimed at drug dealers. Dispensary owners say that the provision, if strictly applied, could effectively snuff out the nation's burgeoning medical marijuana industry.