.Phillip Smith

Now, one Colorado driver has managed to get something done about it. Peter Vasquez sued a pair of Kansas Highway Patrol officers over a stop and search on I-70 that turned up no drugs and resulted in no arrest. Last week, a federal appeals court vindicated him. On a 2-1 vote, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that the two troopers violated Vasquez's constitutional rights by stopping and searching him based primarily on the fact that he came from a state that was a 'known drug source.'

As the Omaha World-Herald reports deadpan, police were called to a house last week to investigate an accidental overdose. The victim, a 53-year-old man, had found and devoured four brownies left in the back seat of a car by his adult kids. The man's wife told police he began feeling 'bad anxiety' while watching TV, and she tried to call the kids to ask what was in the brownies, but got no answer. While police were at the scene, one of the children arrived and told them the brownies belonged to his siblings and he was pretty sure it was just marijuana in the brownies.

Those whose sentences were commuted will walk out of prison Dec. 1. Obama has now commuted the sentences of 562 men and women sentenced under harsh federal drug laws, including 197 people doing life for drug offenses. That's more commutations than the last nine presidents combined.

Researchers found that 7.73 percent of Americans age 12 and older reported using marijuana at least once a month. Similar reports based on the data have allowed us to determine the top 10 marijuana-using states, but this time around researchers divided each state into a number of 'sub-state' areas. The sub-state regions include some that have high marijuana-use levels but no cities to speak of. They don't make the list, but places like these deserve honorable mention: Alaska's North Coast (14.93 percent), Northern California (13.97 percent), southeastern Maine (13.29 percent) and northern New Hampshire (12.40 percent).

>They then had the drinkers drink until they were too drunk to legally drive (0.08 percent blood alcohol level) and the tokers vape up 300 micrograms of THC per kilogram of body weight, enough to get them nicely baked. The control group, being the control group, missed out on the intoxicants.

Pence did sign emergency legislation allowing for needle exchange programs in some Indiana counties last year, but only after initial resistance, during which more than 150 cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in one county alone. His hesitation was in line with his values, as evidenced by his 2009 vote as a U.S. representative to maintain a federal ban on needle-exchange funding.

Ever since Herodotus, we've known that the nomadic pastoralists of Asia Minor, the Scythians, burned marijuana as part of religious rituals and ceremonies. Now comes new evidence that human commerce with pot extends back even further, and could have even helped stimulate the rise of Western civilization.

Sanders supporters didn't get the descheduling language they wanted, but they did get a commitment to rescheduling, which could be a path toward allowing medical studies of cannabis' benefits. The matter will be taken up at the national convention. Getting the word 'legalization' in there, even if the phrase 'a reasoned pathway for future legalization' is a bit mealy-mouthed, is a small victory, but the Democratic Party now has marijuana legalization as part of its platform.