[photo] MJ Freeway, a Denver company whose tracking software is used by hundreds of marijuana companies to comply with state regulations, said its main servers and backup system each went down Sunday morning and remained offline as of Monday afternoon.

Marijuana shops across the country, including seven medical dispensaries in Massachusetts, are being affected by the apparent hack of a sales and inventory system widely used in the cannabis industry.

Two medical marijuana dispensaries in the state suggested patients delay their appointments until the system was back up or a fix is in place.

[continues 100 words]

In a state that just legalized the recreational use of marijuana, can field sobriety tests used to determine whether drivers are drunk also be administered to demonstrate that a person is too high to operate a motor vehicle?

The state Supreme Judicial Court on Friday took up that question in a case that is being closely watched by police and advocates for marijuana legalization.

The justices also heard arguments over whether police officers can give jurors their opinion of whether a driver is drugged on marijuana.

[continues 630 words]

Maxwell Baker wanted to be a doctor. His father, a physician himself, said he would have been a great one.

"He was remarkably brilliant," said Dr. James L. Baker of Holden. "And he had compassion."

But Maxwell also had an addiction, one that he battled and managed to tame in the last two years of his life. He fell deeply in love, was taking pre-med classes in college and was filled with energy and purpose. Two days before Christmas, he told his dad that his goal was to treat addicts and educate society about substance abuse.

[continues 840 words]

[photo]

Lieutenant Michael Pappalardo said the 10-month-old girl's family is cooperating with an investigation that includes state child-protection authorities.

METHUEN - A 10-month-old girl who narrowly survived after ingesting fentanyl is the latest victim of an opioid epidemic that has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in Massachusetts.

Police were called to the baby's home shortly before 12:30 p.m. Saturday when the girl was having trouble breathing. She was rushed to Lawrence General Hospital, where she stopped breathing twice and had to be resuscitated. She was later flown by helicopter to Tufts Medical Center in Boston and was listed Monday in stable condition, according to police.

[continues 755 words]

MILLBURY - After barely drawing a quorum of 100 voters, with an unofficial count of 108, special town meeting voters approved zoning bylaws Tuesday to restrict the location of methadone and other medication-assisted drug treatment centers and to impose a moratorium on recreational marijuana outlets until May 31, 2018.

Both articles received a two-thirds majority to pass, according to Town Moderator John M. Bartosiewicz. A vote count was not taken.

Article 3, which established a temporary moratorium on marijuana establishments and the sale or distribution of marijuana and marijuana products, was supported by the Planning Board after its public hearing on the measure earlier in the evening.

[continues 529 words]

Giving away -- or "gifting"-- up to one ounce of marijuana is now legal in Massachusetts, but are some people pushing the new law too far?

Days after Governor Charlie Baker signed a measure delaying the opening of recreational marijuana retail shops statewide by six months, a budding entrepreneur took to Craigslist to offer people a backdoor approach to getting their hands on some pot - one that authorities say would violate the new law.

In an ad posted to the website titled "Bud, weed, marijuana, cannabis," a person who identified himself as "Corey" listed for sale empty plastic bags ranging in price from $20 to $325. Depending on which bag is purchased, the seller promised to include a "gift" of marijuana inside.

[continues 416 words]

Medical Marijuana advocates rallied before a public meeting on proposed changes to the rules.

Proposed changes to the state's medical marijuana program do not address problems that hamper people from registering for the program, according to patients and advocates who testified Tuesday at a crowded public hearing in Boston.

The proposals are part of a larger initiative by the Baker administration to review and update all state regulations, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which oversees the marijuana program.

[continues 705 words]

Senator Elizabeth Warren is leading a new effort to make sure vendors working with marijuana businesses don't have their banking services taken away.

As marijuana shops sprout in states that have legalized the drug, they face a critical stumbling block: lack of access to the kind of routine banking services other businesses take for granted.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading an effort to make sure vendors working with legal marijuana businesses, from chemists who test marijuana for harmful substances to firms that provide security, don't have their banking services taken away.

[continues 568 words]

Doctors are being more careful with opioid prescriptions as addiction and its effects get more recognition.

More than half of doctors across America are curtailing opioid prescriptions, and nearly 1 in 10 have stopped prescribing the drugs, according to a new nationwide online survey. But even as physicians retreat from opioids, some seem to have misgivings: More than one-third of the respondents said the reduction in prescribing has hurt patients with chronic pain.

The survey, conducted for The Boston Globe by the SERMO physicians social network, offers fresh evidence of the changes in prescribing practices in response to the opioid crisis that has killed thousands in New England and elsewhere around the country. The deaths awakened fears of addiction and accidental overdose, and led to state and federal regulations aimed at reining in excessive prescribing.

[continues 994 words]

LUBBOCK, Texas - Across from a sprawling cotton field, among mobile homes in varying states of decay, one stood out: a double-wide with a new, expansive metal garage and the only paved driveway on the dead-end street.

It was here that an unemployed former computer repairman with a bad back ran what a drug informant called the biggest fentanyl ring in Lubbock. All Sidney Lanier needed was a computer and an elementary knowledge of chemistry to order shipments of the potent synthetic opioid from China and turn it into a highly profitable - and dangerous - street drug.

[continues 1455 words]

Action by the governor and legislature doesn't change a new law that allows adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of recreational marijuana and grow as many as a dozen pot plants in their homes, but it pushes back the timetable for opening retail marijuana stores from the beginning of 2018 until the middle of that year.

BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill Friday aimed at delaying by up to six months the opening of marijuana shops in the state until mid-2018.

[continues 476 words]

Lexi sat under a highway overpass where she sleeps near a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue nicknamed "Methadone Mile" in Boston last April.

Just 49-percent of adult patients who check into state-licensed residential substance abuse centers complete their treatment programs, while a substantial portion of patients walk away from treatment or relapse, according to a new state report.

And despite intense focus by advocates and government officials to cast opioid addiction as not a character problem but a public health crisis, the stigma attached to substance abuse remains "a significant deterrent to seeking care."

[continues 611 words]

In November, Massachusetts voters decided to make recreational marijuana legal, allowing it to be bought and sold in stores by January 2018. But this week, state lawmakers quietly voted to delay the sale date by at least six months.

The delay has outraged some marijuana-legalization advocates, less so because they'll have to wait a few months to buy pot and more so because they feel the legislature is trying to subvert the will of the people by fundamentally changing what they voted for. A similar skirmish is happening in Maine over the minimum wage, and progressives in both states are worried that their opponents are trying to delay or even reverse their remarkable success via ballot initiatives.

[continues 581 words]

THE PASSAGE OF the marijuana legalization referendum in November doesn't mean that the new law's exact language must stay frozen in amber forever. But the fact that the law was approved directly by the voters should mean that lawmakers consider changes with more caution than they showed on Wednesday, when both the House and Senate approved a six-month delay to some of the law's provisions without hearings or a formal roll-call vote.

That decision, reached in informal session and sent to Governor Charlie Baker for his signature, doesn't change the basic structure of the legalization law. But if approved by Baker, it would slightly delay the opening of marijuana retail stores in Massachusetts and the creation of a new commission to oversee the industry. Legislative leaders say the delay will help implement legalization effectively.

[continues 261 words]

Dugan Arnett wandered down Winter Street while looking for marijuana in Boston.

Call me old-fashioned, but I trusted Nancy Reagan when she urged me to Just Say No. I listened when McGruff the Crime Dog insisted that "users are losers." And when my younger sister arrived home one night back in high school smelling of the devil's lettuce, I did what any self-respecting graduate of the DARE program would do: I told my mom.

So when my boss approached me to ask if I'd be willing to go out on Thursday - the day marijuana officially became legal in Massachusetts - and attempt to buy some, it's safe to say I was caught off guard.

[continues 1008 words]

Just a half-dozen Massachusetts legislators passed a controversial measure on Wednesday delaying the opening date for recreational marijuana stores in Massachusetts by six months.

How could so few legislators decide such an important issue?

The move, which took less than an hour, was extraordinary, but technically allowed.

Here's how it works.

First, keep in mind that legislative cycles in Massachusetts run on two-year calendars, beginning in odd-numbered years. So currently, we are at the end of a two-year cycle that began in 2015.

[continues 394 words]

A man showed the marijuana he was selling on Boston Common earlier this month.

It took less than an hour and about a half-dozen state legislators to undo the will of 1.8 million voters expressed just last month.

The House and Senate passed a bill on Wednesday delaying the opening date for recreational marijuana stores in Massachusetts by half a year - from January to summer 2018.

The extraordinary move would unravel a significant part of the marijuana law. About 1.5 million people voted against legalization on Nov. 8.

[continues 726 words]

BOSTON -- The process for licensing retail marijuana shops would be delayed by six months under legislation that surfaced Wednesday in the Senate before clearing both branches, the result of which could push the legal sale of marijuana, authorized by a successful ballot campaign this year, well into 2018.

The House and Senate on Wednesday morning during lightly attended informal sessions passed a bill (S 2524) amended by Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Winchester, pushing out the effective dates of several key milestones in the new law, including the dates by which the state will begin accepting applications and issuing licenses for retail pot shop licenses. The state, under the bill, would have until July 2018 to issue the first licenses for retail pot sales.

[continues 591 words]

Andrew Freedman is Colorado's director of marijuana coordination.

DENVER - Marijuana legalization brought unexpected challenges to Colorado, and it was rarely clear what part of state government was supposed to solve them, or how.

Businesses were selling marijuana-infused, animal-shaped candy attractive to children. Residents growing pot at home were selling it illegally in other states. Growers were applying pesticides to cannabis plants even though none was specifically approved by the federal government for such use.

Enter Andrew Freedman, Colorado's pot czar, who is bringing together the state's bureaucracy, marijuana industry, law enforcement community, and public health advocates to fix problems no other state had faced.

[continues 1132 words]

Deadly synthetic opioids are streaming into the United States amid a flood of mail that arrives unscreened from abroad every day, overwhelming the Postal Service and fueling the drug epidemic gripping much of the country, security experts and Massachusetts lawmakers say.

Nearly 1 million packages a day enter the country without any advance electronic information that might flag the presence of dangerous opioids such as fentanyl, much of which is manufactured in China, said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant Homeland Security secretary.

[continues 926 words]