For medical marijuana patients, going to the airport can be a particularly stressful endeavor.

Michigan medical marijuana dispensary owner Donald Barnes has been fighting a legal battle against local police for the past three years. The police claimed that Barnes was using his dispensary as a cover to sell recreational marijuana illegally, while Barnes has asserted that the dispensary is a legitimate nonprofit.

The dispensary owner said that cops seized marijuana from his dispensary, along with money, property, and even his Christmas presents. “They seized my personal assets, not just my business bank accounts, but they also seized stuff from my home and my personal properties,” Barnes said.

All photos via Wikimedia Commons

Throughout eight years of bitter partisanship from Republicans, including nearly a year-long refusal to confirm Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, the GOP made it clear they weren’t willing to give an inch to Democrats.

Massachusetts is set to open the East Coast’s first major recreational cannabis market. Voters passed Question 4, the state’s recreational adult use law last November, and after a few delays it seems fairly certain that by July of next year, adults 21 and older will be able to walk into a Boston shop and buy weed. However, the weed sold in those stores will all come from indoor grow houses backed by wealthy investors - something Massachusetts’ small farmers aren’t too happy about.

“That’s not a fair market,” Ted Dobson told the Boston Globe.

Last month, a federal judge in Illinois granted vaporizer manufacturer Grenco Science nearly $50 million in damages from online retailers knowingly selling counterfeit versions of its products. The Los Angeles-based company has been making vaporizers and personal vape pens like the G Pen and G Pro since 2012, and is well known for collaborations with Snoop Dogg, Burton Snowboards, HUF and others.

This popularity drew the interest of overseas counterfeiters, who began creating and selling lower-quality knockoff versions of Grenco's most popular products.

They might call cannabis by a different name in South Africa, but best believe that advocates in the African nation are persistent about getting “dagga” decriminalized. 

Last weekend, the Western Cape province High Court ruled that sections of the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act, 1992— particularly regarding personal use of cannabis inside of the home— are unconstitutional and should not be enforced. However, the court’s decision still has to be approved by parliament and the constitutional court. 

Although this judicial process can take up to two years, local advocates consider the verdict to be small step towards decriminalization.